3. De vera religione 5.8 (BA 8:38); my trans.
chapter 2
Augustine the Philosopher
In his earliest publication, Augustine noted: "What is philosophy? A love of wisdom."1 The word's etymology, he believed, defined the endeavor: philosophy is life shaped by a love-spurred search for wisdom. In late antiquity, philosophy was never a mere academic enterprise.2 It required more than well-honed skills in dialectic, a fondness for abstraction, or an unflinching confidence in reason. It demanded a change of life, indeed, a conversion. It presumed renunciation of wealth and fame. It required ongoing ascetical purification, strict controls of diet and sexuality and the passions. It encouraged deep introspection, honest self-examination, a cleansing of mind and heart. Philosophy in late antiquity was inevitably religious since the search for wisdom implied a search for wisdom's source, the One who is true Wisdom. Thus Augustine, like his educated contemporaries, spoke of Christianity itself as a philosophy. Christians, he once noted, "believe and teach that, as for salvation, there is not one thing called philosophy, that is, the search for wisdom, and another thing called religion."3
Augustine began grappling with philosophers and with philosophy from an early date. In his training in rhetoric, he had been required to study Cicero, the Latin orator par excellence. But what captured the young Augustine's imagination was Cicero's other side, Cicero the philosopher, the epitomist and interpreter of Greek philosophy.4 Reading the Hortensius at age 18 led Augustine
1. C. Acad. 2.3.7 (CCL 29:21); my trans. See De ordine 1.11.32; conf. 3.4.7. On this, see Goulven Madec, Saint Augustin et la philosophie, CEASA 149 (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 1996), 15–24.
2. See Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy? trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); also Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, CEASA 88 (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 1981).
3. De vera religione 5.8 (BA 8:38); my trans. 4. See J. G. F. Powell, ed., Cicero the Philosopher (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Testard, Saint Augustin et