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Augustine of Hippo

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On the Coordinates: 1.4 Philosophy of Time · 2.2.3 Memory · 3.3.5 War and Political Violence

Aurelius Augustinus

Also known as Saint Augustine, Augustine

354 – 430 · Thagaste, Carthage, Rome, Milan, Hippo Regius

Traditions: Medieval Christian

In brief

Augustine (354–430) was a North African teacher of rhetoric who became bishop of Hippo Regius in Roman Africa and the most influential Christian thinker of the Latin West. His Confessions tells, as a prayer to God, the story of his restless search through Manichaean religion and Platonist philosophy to Christianity. He wrote about time, memory, the will, the nature of evil, grace, and the relation between earthly politics and the community of God. His ideas shaped medieval thought, the Protestant Reformation and modern philosophy, and his inward, first-person voice still feels unusually direct.

In depth Last reviewed

Connections

Places
Hippo Regius worked, died
Tradition
Medieval Christian
Influences
8 sourced relationships

Life

Augustine was born on 13 November 354 at Thagaste, a town in the Roman province of Numidia. His mother, Monnica, was a devout Christian; his father, Patricius, was baptised only on his deathbed. He studied grammar and rhetoric at Madauros and Carthage. At about eighteen, reading Cicero’s now-lost Hortensius fired him with a love of wisdom. For about nine years from around 373 he was a ‘hearer’ in the Manichaean religion, which taught that good and evil are two rival powers. He taught rhetoric in Carthage and Rome, and in the mid-380s became the publicly paid professor of rhetoric in Milan, then an imperial capital. There he heard Bishop Ambrose interpret scripture allegorically and, in 386, read ‘books of the Platonists’ (works of Plotinus and Porphyry in Latin translation). In the summer of 386 he converted, and Ambrose baptised him at Easter 387. His mother died at Ostia in 388 as they travelled home. Back in Africa he was ordained priest at Hippo Regius in 391 and became its bishop around 396. He spent the rest of his life preaching and writing against Manichaeans, Donatists and Pelagians. He died on 28 August 430, while the Vandals besieged Hippo.

Problems

  • What evil is and where it comes from
  • What time is
  • Whether the will is free, and how grace relates to it
  • How we can know anything with certainty
  • How the earthly city relates to the city of God

Core ideas

Evil as privation

As a Manichaean, Augustine had thought of evil as a substance, a dark power opposed to the good. Platonist reading gave him another view. Everything that exists, insofar as it exists, is good, because it comes from God, who is goodness itself. Evil is not a thing at all but a lack or corruption of good that should be there, as blindness is the lack of sight. Moral evil arises when a created will turns away from the higher good towards lower goods. This explains how a good God can create a world in which evil occurs without creating evil. Critics ask whether calling pain or cruelty a mere ‘absence’ captures how real they are.

Time and the mind

In Book XI of the Confessions Augustine asks what time is, and admits: ‘If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not’ (11.14.17, in the Pilkington translation). The past no longer exists, the future does not yet exist, and the present seems to have no length at all; so how can we measure time? His answer locates the measuring in the mind. There are three times, ‘a present of things past, memory; present of things present, sight; present of things future, expectation’, and time may be an extension of the mind itself. God is outside time, which is itself created, so there was no ‘then’ before creation.

Will, grace and the two cities

Augustine first defended free choice of the will against the Manichaeans: we, not God or some evil power, are responsible for sin. Later, against Pelagius and his followers, he argued that since Adam’s fall human beings cannot will the good without God’s grace, and that God chooses whom to save. The City of God, written after Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410, divides humanity by what it loves: the earthly city, built on love of self, and the heavenly city, built on love of God. Pelagian critics such as Julian of Eclanum charged that his teaching on predestination fell back into Manichaean fatalism.

Certainty and inner illumination

Against the sceptics of Plato’s later Academy, Augustine argued that some knowledge is certain. Even if I am deceived, I must exist in order to be deceived: ‘si fallor, sum’ (if I am mistaken, I am), as he puts it in The City of God (11.26). This anticipates Descartes’s cogito, though Augustine uses it differently. He also held that we judge eternal truths, such as those of mathematics, not by learning them from the senses but by an inner light: God, the ‘inner teacher’, illuminates the mind, as the sun makes things visible in Plato’s analogy. How this illumination works is much debated.

Works

  • Against the Academics (Contra Academicos) 386A dialogue written at Cassiciacum arguing against ancient scepticism.
  • On Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio) 388 – c. 395A dialogue on the origin of evil and human responsibility.
  • Confessions (Confessiones) c. 396–400Thirteen books: an autobiography addressed to God, ending with reflections on memory, time and creation.In the Book corner
  • On Christian Teaching (De doctrina christiana) begun 396/7, completed 426/7A guide to interpreting scripture and a theory of signs.
  • On the Trinity (De trinitate) 399 – 419 or laterSeeks images of the Trinity in the human mind’s memory, understanding and will.In the Book corner
  • The City of God (De civitate Dei) 412–426Twenty-two books answering pagan claims that Christianity caused Rome’s decline, and setting out a theology of history.In the Book corner
  • Reconsiderations (Retractationes) c. 427–428A critical review of his own writings.

Influences and relationships

8 sourced relationships. Open one to read why, and the source.

Shaped Augustine of Hippo 2

  • Influenced byCicero106 – 43 BCE

    Cicero’s Hortensius, read at about eighteen, turned him towards philosophy as the love of wisdom.

    Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Augustine of Hippo

    Augustine credited Cicero's Hortensius with turning him to philosophy and God, and used Cicero's definition of a commonwealth in defending Christianity against the charge that it caused Rome's fall.

    Source: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Cicero

    Cicero’s relationships

  • Influenced byPlotinusc. 204 – 270

    Reading Plotinus and Porphyry in Latin in 386 gave him the idea of an immaterial God and of evil as privation; scholars debate which of the two influenced him more.

    Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Augustine of Hippo

    In Milan in the 380s Augustine read 'books of the Platonists' in Latin translation. The IEP says most scholars agree these included parts of the Enneads, though which books he read cannot be proved with certainty.

    Source: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Plotinus

    Plotinus’s relationships

Augustine of Hippo shaped or answered 6

Reception

For a thousand years Augustine was the most influential Christian thinker of the Latin West. The IEP traces his direct influence through Boethius, Anselm, Bonaventure and Aquinas in the Middle Ages, and through Martin Luther and John Calvin at the Reformation. In philosophy, his ‘si fallor, sum’ invites comparison with Descartes’s cogito, and the IEP also counts Leibniz, Heidegger and Wittgenstein among those he influenced. His account of time, his analysis of the will and his picture of the two cities are still discussed in metaphysics, ethics and political theology.

Disputed interpretations

Converted to Christianity or to Neoplatonism?

Some historians argued that the Augustine of 386 was converted chiefly to Neoplatonic philosophy, and that the Confessions, written a decade later, reads a fuller Christianity back into the story. Others hold that the early dialogues are already Christian and that Augustine saw Platonism as a step towards faith. A related dispute asks whether Plotinus or Porphyry was the main Platonist influence.

Did late Augustine abandon free will?

Augustine’s early defence of free choice and his later teaching on grace and predestination can look inconsistent. Julian of Eclanum accused him of fatalism. Some scholars see a sharp break after about 396; others argue that he always held that the will is free yet needs grace to choose the good, and that he only clarified what freedom means after the fall.

Primary texts

  • The Confessions of St. Augustine Free to read · Project GutenbergE. B. Pusey’s nineteenth-century translation, free on Project Gutenberg. Modern versions include Henry Chadwick’s (Oxford, 1991).
  • Confessions, Book XI Free to read · newadvent.orgJ. G. Pilkington’s translation in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, free on New Advent; the source of the quotations on time above.
  • The City of God, Volume I Free to read · Project GutenbergBooks I–XIII, translated by Marcus Dods with George Wilson and J. J. Smith; free on Project Gutenberg. Book 11.26 contains ‘si fallor, sum’.
  • The City of God, Volume II Free to read · Project GutenbergDods edition, second volume: Books XIV–XXII.

Sources

Scholarly sources and reference works, free to read online.

Guides

In the Book corner

  • On the Free Choice of the Will c. 388–395 · Intermediate
    A dialogue in three books between Augustine and his friend Evodius, begun in Rome around 388 and finished in Africa in the…
  • Confessions c. 397–400 CE · Intermediate
    Augustine's account of his life up to his conversion, written as a long prayer addressed to God, in thirteen books. Books I…
  • On the Trinity c. 400–420 · Advanced
    A treatise in fifteen books, written over about twenty years, in which Augustine tries to understand the Christian teaching that God is…
  • The City of God 413–426 · Intermediate
    Augustine began this enormous work, in twenty-two books, after the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410, when pagans blamed the…

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Written and kept up to date by the Coordinates of Thought editors. Each statement was checked against the sources listed above before publishing; this page is not peer-reviewed. Last updated 26 October 2026. How to cite this site.

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MLA (9th edition)

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BibTeX

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  author       = {{Coordinates of Thought Editors}},
  title        = {Augustine of Hippo},
  howpublished = {Coordinates of Thought},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  url          = {https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/augustine-of-hippo/},
  note         = {Last updated 26 October 2026}
}

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  1. On the Atlas · where they workedHippo RegiusSee the place, century by century, and who else was there.

Tradition: Medieval Christian philosophyThinkers A–Z