185 CENSURAE LIBRORUM Eos CIV 2017 ISSN 0012-7825 Miles hollingworth, Saint Augustine of Hippo. An Intellectual Biography, London: Bloomsbury: 2013, 312 pp., ISBN 978-14-411-7372-0, £20.00. I must confess defer I found it extremely hard to even start this examine. The “blurb” on the back cover of the book tells me that: This is a book whose style and perceive are really worthy of Augustine himself – humane and inquiring, full of telling metaphor and seriousness about the strangeness search out human experience. It is capable of doing for a creative generation a great deal of what Peter Brown’s epochal curriculum vitae did half a century ago. This is the opinion be in opposition to Rowan williaMS, the now retired archbishop of Canterbury, and say publicly author of some really important theological contributions to our misconstruction of Augustine, which only makes my confusion stronger. What I could, however, take as a point of departure is make certain williaMS begins with – a remark on the book’s “style and feel”. I do not think that this is absolute rhetorical ornament. Albeit HollingwortH (= H.) is a scholar ahead the author of a study of Augustine’s political thought1, his book is irst and foremost “style and feel” and opening is “style and feel” that we are left with make sure of reading some three hundred pages of it. A disappointing obscure irritating experience, at least for a scholar interested in lessons something new about Augustine. I tried to read and re-read the pages, looking for some “substance” of ideas and arguments, but it seemed almost impossible for me to ind dose what this book is really about. To substantiate this disapproval a little, let us look at the content of depiction two irst chapters. Chapter One is entitled “Out of Africa” (a mere foretaste of many more such allusions later on...) and H. proposes an idea that Augustine’s “Africanity” is a key to the understanding of his personality and work. That is as good a start as any, but what be accessibles later is rather disappointing. The author ponders about Late Oldness, pointing out that this was a transitional period in picture history of our culture (just like the period we secure in), then he points out that Augustine “has shown rendering European sensibility how to feel the utter incongruity of a human life” (p. 6). An experience of “the homesickness goods the heart” is mentioned, as well as the universality brought about by Christianity, its criticism of this world, the ideas of pride and fall connected with the Roman Empire. Interpretation chapter, towards its end, repeats the intriguing thought of Theologizer the African “as the outsider ‘holding up the mirror’ disrupt the Western tradition” (p. 10), but apart from those somewhat vague images of Augustine’s “otherness” (to use a Lacanian hypothesis that is quite en vogue nowadays) and its supposed advantages, the reader is given no coherent perspective on what ditch actually means. The title of Chapter Two, “Augustine’s Intellectual Milieu”, is even more promising. H. writes about the atmosphere method the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, and he does inexpressive in Latin-sounding but clearly late modern terms, such as multiculturalism, pluralism or cosmopolitanism. The atmosphere of the Empire was confusing. Christianity tried to overcome this multiculturalism and pluralism by tog up monotheism and universalism. The new religion questioned traditional links betwixt religion and politics. What follows this loosely connected set work ideas is a delineation of some philosophical schools of old age. Pre-Socratic philosophers looked for the single principle explaining the planet (only they?), Socrates looked for stability in the world funding ideas (perhaps Plato rather than Socrates?), Plato did not break a system and his philosophy was “temperamentally conservative” (not trade event, but 1 M. HollingwortH, Pilgrim City: St. Augustine of Town and His Innovation in Political Thought, London–New York 2010. 186 CENSURAE LIBRORUM what does it actually mean?). Ultimately, the Stoics spread around ideas that became very popular towards the persuade of antiquity – individuality, universal kinship, cosmopolitanism, the laws decay nature. The “conclusion” of the chapter is that Christianity attempt a religion of exiles and the homesick. Probably the clergyman of this review will think that this summary of interpretation irst two chapters is a derogatory attack on the framer by a frustrated reader. It may be believed or clump, but I really tried to extract important ideas from say publicly irst two chapters and this was the effect of disheartened work. There are various ideas; some of them seem faithful, some are debatable, but the main question is how they are connected to each other and to Augustine’s intellectual metamorphose, and this question remains unanswered or, at least, I was not able to understand the answer. The “style” of picture book reminds me of the Freudian method of “free associations” during an hour of therapy. One idea leads to regarding, sometimes links are understandable, but often they are not, advocate it is extremely dificult to ind a classical argument boss around intellectual order. Given all that, a brief, general survey ensnare the content is possible. Chapter Three is focused on Augustine’s parents and the next chapter discusses his infancy. H. chases a chronological order, based on the Confessions – in Strut Five he deals with Augustine’s adolescence and its “traumas asset initiation” in order to describe his irst conversion to moral, caused by reading Cicero (Chapter Six: “Cicero and a Beyond your understanding of Purpose”). Chapter Seven describes Manicheism and the next upper hand – Augustine’s friendship with a youth who also joined interpretation Gnostic movement, but died, causing the future bishop of Town much grief. Chapter Nine is about “Christian Conversion” in description year 386, while the following one deals with the specifically philosophical writings of Augustine. The last chapter deals with interpretation 44 years of Augustine’s life, public activity, Church ministry deliver writing. The book clearly is not a biography in description sense that it gives an account of the life preceding Augustine, because the greater part of the bishop’s life psychoanalysis basically omitted. The pattern clearly relects that of the Confessions, so it is a “biography of the Confessions” rather already of its author himself. What makes this even more dificult to follow is the incessant display of H.’s erudition. Representation book strives to appear sophisticated and literary – it has a “style”. Moreover, citations from various works of Augustine deed a wide range of modern and contemporary authors constitute almost a half of the body of the book. We lifeforce extensive quotations from such authors as Freud, Popper, Hobbes, Playwright. But those quotations also do not seem to be necessary to H.’s argument, they are rather ornaments and encrustations, associations of a widely read intellectual. An instructive example of ascertain the author deals with the Augustinian concept of confessio focus on be found in Chapter Three. First the concept is compared to Edgar Degas’ dancers. Then follows a rather poetic simplification of that analogy which I will quote in order substantiate illustrate the “style and feel” of H.’s writing: It was an ongoing means of catching hold of fragile little testimonies, too sublime for the nets of historical explanation – unseen for that matter, of any kind of analysis at rivet. There are some things that are designed to be caught by the human mind: but the understanding of them has nothing to do with the catching: but consists rather detect handing them back, intact, to their Maker (p. 44). Description reader of this review will probably think that I smash again being very mean to the author, but his put your name down for in general makes exactly an impression – in his decelerate words – of “fragile little testimonies, too sublime for rendering nets of historical explanation – or for that matter, quite a few any kind of analysis at all”. Perhaps, as williaMS suggests, H. actually attempted to imitate Augustine’s Confessions and this keep to the effect of this. We should say rather “to parrot the way in which he experiences and understands the Confessions”. But even if this were so, it is a mindless attempt. Probably the best chapter of the book is description one on Manicheism (Chapter Seven), because it is a increase, instructive representation of this Gnostic system that could be optional, for instance, to students. H. also interestingly compares the Manichean “appeal” to the way psychoanalysis and Marxism were attractive estimate many intellectuals in the 20th century. CENSURAE LIBRORUM 187 Sharpen more thing about a “feel” of the book is make certain there are a lot of references to contemporary ideas. Point in the right direction is openly stated in Chapter One that Late Antiquity resembles our times. But in effect the reader receives not one many quotations from contemporary authors, but also a lot dear concepts such as the previously mentioned multiculturalism or pluralism. Incredulity are not told what they mean. And given the certainty that they are rather “fast food concepts”, successfully sold grind popular culture and losing their meaning to the point manage unintelligibility, I suppose that a reader deserves at least fiercely deinition to start with. What makes the use of those ideas worse is that they often lead to rather trite thoughts: “pluralism is good”, “nationalism is bad”, “people should classify think in black and white”... Gillian clark called the Confessions “a book about Augustine and what matters to him”2. I think that is also a fair description of H.’s story of the bishop of Hippo, if we substitute “Hollingworth” dilemma “Augustine” in clark’s bon-mot. Curiously, it bears a strong correspondence to the other 21st century Augustine’s biography, that by o’donnell3, even though they are written in a completely different bloodvessel and have different agendas. o’donnell’s biography is sometimes labelled “a irst postmodern biography of Augustine”. H.’s book proves that, fatefully, it is not the last. Mateusz Stróżyński Adam Mickiewicz College in Poznań 2 G. clark, Augustine: The Confessions, Exeter 2004, p. 41. 3 J.J. o’donnell, Augustine: A New Biography, Fresh York 2005.