Augustine and Roman Virtue seeks to correct what the author sees as a fundamental misapprehension in medieval thought, a misapprehension that fuels further problems and misunderstandings in the historiography of philosophy. This misapprehension is the assumption that the development of certain themes associated with medieval philosophy is due, primarily if not exclusively, to extra-philosophical religious commitments rather than philosophical argumentation, referred to here as the 'sacralization thesis'. Brian Harding explores this problem through a detailed reading of Augustine's City of God as understood in a Latin context, that is, in dialogue with Latin writers such as Cicero, Livy, Sallust and Seneca. The book seeks to revise a common reading of Augustine's critique of ancient virtue by focusing on that dialogue, while showing that his attitude towards those authors is more sympathetic, and more critical, than one might expect. Harding argues that the criticisms rest on sympathy and that Augustine's critique of ancient virtue thinks through and develops certain trends noticeable in the major figures of Latin philosophy.

Two important theologians of early Christianity were Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo. Both were intellectually formed by philosophers, such as Cicero, who taught that virtue was the way to greatness. Yet they saw contradictions between Roman and Christian ethical ideals. Could these competing visions of greatness be reconciled?

Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine is a study of Augustine's political thought and ethics in relation to his theology. The book examines fundamental issues in Augustine's theological and political ethics in relation to the question, 'How did Augustine conceive the just society'? At the heart of the book's approach is the relationship that Augustine outlines in his City of God and other writings between Christ and those believers who acknowledge him to be the only source of the soul's virtue. The book demonstrates how Augustine sees Christ's grace and the scriptures contributing to the soul's growth in virtue, especially as these issues are framed by the Pelagian controversy. Finally, the implications which Augustine sees for Christ's mediation of virtue are examined in relation to his revision of the ancient concepts of heroism and the statesman.

This work reveals how a distrust of learned and habituated virtue shaped both early modern Christian moral reflection and secular forms of ethical thought. The author's broad historical sweep takes in the Aristotelian tradition as taken up by Thomas Aquinas and has chapters on Luther, Bunyan, the Jansenists, Hume, and others.

Happiness and Wisdom contributes to ongoing debates about the nature of Augustine's early development, and argues that Augustine's vision of the soul's ascent through the liberal arts is an attractive and basically coherent view of learning, which, while not wholly novel, surpasses both classical and earlier patristic renderings of the aims of education.

An ambitious history of how medieval writers came to terms with paganism From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the "Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers—philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci—tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. A sweeping and original account of an important but neglected chapter in Western intellectual history, Pagans and Philosophers provides a new perspective on nothing less than the entire period between the classical and the modern world.

This important collection reveals that Augustine's political thought drew on and diverged from the classical tradition, contributing to the study of questions at the center of all Western political thought.

This authoritative English-language commentary discusses Books 1-5, in which Augustine argued that Rome suffered worse disasters before Christianity was known; that empire depends on injustice; and that everything depends on the will of the true God, not on the many gods of Roman tradition.

Dr Casey argues that the classical virtues of courage, temperance, practical wisdom, and justice, which are largely ignored in modern moral philosophy, centrally define the good for Man. The values of success, pride, and worldliness remain alive, if insufficiently acknowledged, part of ourmoral thinking. The conflict between these values and our equally important Christian inheritance leads to tensions and contradictions in our understanding of the moral life.