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Miles Hollingworth
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Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography Hardcover – June 24, 2013

by Miles Hollingworth (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 11 ratings
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St. Augustine was undoubtedly one of the great thinkers of the early church. Yet it has long been assumed--and not without reason--that the main lines of Augustine's thought have been more or less fixed since his death. That insofar as we should be aware of him in the twenty-first century, he is a figure described-if not circumscribed--by his times.

A major revisionist treatment of Augustine's life and thought, Saint Augustine of Hippo overturns this assumption. In a stimulating and provocative reinterpretation of Augustine's ideas and their position in the Western intellectual tradition, Miles Hollingworth, though well versed in the latest scholarship, draws his inspiration largely from the actual narrative of Augustine's life. By this means he reintroduces a cardinal but long-neglected fact to the center of Augustinian studies: that there is a direct line from Augustine's own early experiences of life to his later commentaries on humanity. Augustine's new Christianity did not--in blunt assaults of dogma and doctrine--obliterate what had gone before. Instead, it actually caught a subtle and reflective mind at the point when it was despairing of finding the truth. Christianity vindicated a disquiet that Augustine had been feeling all along: he felt that it alone had spoken to his serious rage about man, abandoned to the world and dislocated from all real understanding by haunting glimpses of the Divine.

A major new treatment of Augustine on all fronts, this superb intellectual biography shines a bright light on a genuinely neglected element in his writings. In so doing it introduces us to Augustine as he emerges from the unique circumstances of his early life, struggling with ironies and inconsistencies that we might just find in our own lives as well.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  4. Publication date
    June 24, 2013
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0199861595
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0199861590
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"Hollingworth makes helpful comparisons to modern times and to other philosophers, and is not shy about inserting himself into the discussion... will appeal to those who already know the saint's works well and will be intrigued by Hollingworth's loving but critical dialogue with Augustine's thought." --Augustine J. Curley

Review

"This book is good for the soul." --Cole Moreton, Daily Telegraph

"It is one of the best books about Augustine that I have ever read." --Jonathan Wright, The Catholic Herald

"The delight of Miles Hollingworth's new intellectual biography of Augustine is to make [his] often complex theology accessible, and to use it to interrogate one of the Christian Roman empire's most sophisticated and innovative minds." --Christopher Kelly, BBC History Magazine

”[An] ambitious and comprehensive work” --Bishop Michael Dublin & Glendalough, Church of Ireland Gazette

"A serious, well-written, provocatively argued book that anyone with even a pretense of interest in intellectual history will want to read." --Joseph Bottum, Weekly Standard

"This is a book whose style and feel are really worthy of Augustine himself--humane and probing, full of telling metaphor and seriousness about the strangeness of human experience. It is capable of doing for a new generation a great deal of what Peter Brown's epochal biography did half a century ago." --Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury

"Hollingworth shows why it is that Augustine has such broad appeal; not just because he finds him surprisingly humane and enlightened about our propensity to sin but because of the positive spin that he puts on the absence of God experience and the hope of meaning that his interpretation of the restless heart gives to those who suffer existential angst and radical doubt. This is therefore a book for all seekers after the Truth: theist and atheist as well as all lovers of Augustine." --Margaret Lane, Theology

"I think this is the book on Augustine which Pope Benedict would have wanted to write.” --Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf, Fr. Z's Blog

"Learned and well documented." --Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P., Claremont Review of Books

"Hollingworth’s biography exercises the reader’s historical, philosophical, psychological, and psychoanalytic imagination – it is at turns invigorating, perplexing, and infuriating." --Melanie Webb, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"Hollingworth brings out the underlying vision and the lived meaning of Augustine’s thought… This book shares Augustine’s concern to relate his life to the reader’s own, and to require of readers an engagement with their own cultural and personal history. It is at times demanding, even frustrating. Readers will probably vary widely in their judgement of its success or failure, but success or failure must also attend upon the reader’s work, as she or he squares up to Augustine’s vision." --Richard Finn, O.P., Journal of Theological Studies

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (June 24, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199861595
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199861590
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.23 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 11 ratings

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Miles Hollingworth

Miles Hollingworth

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
11 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

William Meyer
5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging but requires much thought
Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2013
Verified Purchase
The author has assembled a most interesting biography, but one which will be difficult for some readers. This is not unexpected, given the subtitle. It is a pleasure to read a volume which has been written by a skilled practitioner of English; we are so seldom able to exercise our minds on such meaty prose. This volume will reward the effort applied. It is rich in content, and offers much food for contemplation.
23 people found this helpful
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Gary Moore
5.0 out of 5 stars A PRECISE ANALYTIC OF AN AMORPHOUS CHARACTER
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2013
Mr. OSTENTATIOUS LEARNING: This book is an insult to any intelligent reader of history &/or biography.
--xx--
GCM: That is because you would have to understand what an "intellectual biography" is. Hollingsworth first sentence states "In writing this book I have had the sensation of having written the story of one of the world's great novelists." This, for me, cracked open a quandary of considering what kind of "thinker" Augustine is. Augustine was primarily & fundamentally trained as a "rhetorician" in the classical sense which was thoroughly trained in philosophy, logic, and political action/theory on the model of Protagorus, Gorgias, Socrates, Plato, and most of all Aristotle who said sound education had to begin with experience in the agora speaking to others, the proper formation of the `enthymeme', the learning of the different forms of political systems based on the premise of "man is a political animal" which Aristotle means quite literally, and THEN the learning of the finer points of "ethics" which Aristotle shows begins as a process of "habituation" by parents. Aristotle shows then that ethics is born by activity with others mainly through language as properly formed. Hollingworth picks up on this exactly with his first book on Augustine's innovations in political theory.
--xx--
The main point is, I have discovered in my own reading of Augustine, is that Augustine ALWAYS writes "correctly", not "randomly" or "impulsively" or "authoritatively" or most certainly not "authoritatively" like Aquinas `seems' too (but Aquinas' very precision of terminology limits his words precisely to only exactly what they say and not how you `feel' they say) or "systematically" like `Spinoza' (or rather like Christian Wolf and Baumgarten) or Hegel (if even that is justified). The very need to have constant "qualifiers" shows in real philosophy or theology "if/and/but" constant follows upon every statement thus making that statement equivocal. They are vastly limited in actual precision. Augustine does not ever try for systematic precision like Aquinas or Aristotle (with it being highly questionable they deliberately tried to do this themselves) or Plato who immediately in his dialogues with every delimitation of a concept immediately tags to it his own "qualifiers". Augustine writes as a "rhetorician" which is mainly in our time a "novelist" like Dostoyevsky, the present pope's favorite, or Thomas Pynchon. They present, like Plato, all sides - though seeming to incongruously emphasize `one' side - and at the end of the "conversation" leave everything in the air.
--xx--
Mr. OSTENTATIOUS LEARNING: Its subject as well as his philosophy and its impact on Western thought and Christianity are fascinating and worthy of many biographical and analytical works. But this book is not worthy of being included in that list. The author is apparently recognized by some as an authority on the saint. However, I found that while I could define all his vocabulary without resort to a dictionary, making sense of his sentences was beyond my ability. I got the impression that the author used this book to show off his verbiage but didn't know how to connect his words into intelligible sentences. The other possibility is that he didn't care about turning out meaningful thought. In the latter case, he should be deprived of his teaching position. In the former case, he requires immediate and intensive remedial instruction in English composition. The subtitle of this book is "An Intellectual Biography". It should be renamed "A Pedantic Biography".
--XX--
GCM: You should rely less on an "impression" as you say, and more on logical analysis if you would have seriously taken Augustine for a philosopher - which you do not and Hollingworth does.
8 people found this helpful
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see above
1.0 out of 5 stars ostentatious "learning"
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2013
Verified Purchase
This book is an insult to any intelligent reader of history &/or biography. Its subject as well as his philosophy and its impact on Western thought and Christianity are fascinating and worthy of many biographical and analytical works. But this book is not worthy of being included in that list. The author is apparently recognized by some as an authority on the saint. However, I found that while I could define all his vocabulary without resort to a dictionary, making sense of his sentences was beyond my ability. I got the impression that the author used this book to show off his verbiage but didn't know how to connect his words into intelligible sentences. The other possibility is that he didn't care about turning out meaningful thought. In the latter case, he should be deprived of his teaching position. In the former case, he requires immediate and intensive remedial instruction in English composition. The subtitle of this book is "An Intellectual Biography". It should be renamed "A Pedantic Biography".
14 people found this helpful
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Stephenwolf
2.0 out of 5 stars Choose carefully
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2014
With excited and hopeful anticipation I awaited the "intellectual biography" of Augustine, but within the first 2-3 pages (and confirmed as I proceeded, and looked around in the work) it was clear that it would not be a clear presentation of Augustine's intellectual history.
The author might want to write another work on his personal observations, musings, insights, thoughts, etc on life, history and world, and even Augustine...but not in an intellectual bio of this important figure, the alleged subject of the work. Augustine was at best visible as if thru the swirling fogs of Hollingworth's descriptions. A better title would be: "Augustine's Development as I See It".
If you are interested in trying to discern Augustine through the thoughts, observations and insights of the author, then you can get two for one. But, to my reading -- I will never finish my copy -- it was something like 1/3 Hollingworth to 2/3 Augustine. Augustine was there; and an expert might enjoy the commentary and etc. But, for those who want 90% Augustine and 10% author, this is not your book.
8 people found this helpful
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