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Augustine and Ethics

Kim Paffenroth editor Sean Hannan editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Lexington Books

Published:29th Nov '23

Should be back in stock very soon

Augustine and Ethics cover

Augustine and Ethics examines the topic of ethics in the life and works of Augustine of Hippo. Adopting a global perspective on ethics as a field of philosophical and theological investigation, this volume includes reflections on virtue and vice, love and sin, and the political outcomes to which certain ethical stances tend to give rise. For Augustine himself, ethics was never merely theoretical. Ethical concerns are concrete; and ethical solutions should be practical. Accordingly, this volume gives Augustinian ethical arguments realization by connecting them to modern anxieties about ministry, health care, diet, and incarceration.

Divided into five sections, the essays collected here highlight the ongoing relevance of Augustine’s work even in settings quite distinct from his own era and context. The first section lays down the groundwork for Augustinian ethics by examining the foundations of his thoughts on morality, self-formation, domination, and abuse. The next three sections are oriented around the themes of love, sin, and politics. The final section makes clear the consequences of Augustinian ethical thinking today, with a view to how pastors preach, how physicians heal, how prisoners suffer, and even how we should approach the ethics of eating.

“This exciting collection of essays brings together work by a new generation of scholars to explore Augustine’s ideas about the moral life across a range of traditional and contemporary issues. The depth of knowledge, creativity, and independence of mind exhibited here augurs well for the future of scholarship on the redoubtable Bishop of Hippo. Highly recommended.”

-- Richard B. Miller, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Religion, Politics, and Ethics, University of Chi

ISBN: 9781666953398

Dimensions: 236mm x 158mm x 29mm

Weight: 753g

422 pages