I have probably been formed by Augustinian thinking so much throughout my life that when I finally read Augustine, I thought, "I've heard all that before." So a rating of 4 stars isn't fair to Augustine, I know. The chiastic structure of books 1-9 is pretty cool, as are the parallels between Confessions and Virgil's Aeneid.

The BU reading group read this in the Spring 2014 semester, but I couldn't attend because of class.

Random notes:
Books 1-9 have a chiastic structure (see Finding a Common Thread).
Book 10 has its own chiastic structure?
Paul Ricoeur's book on time (Time and Narrative) connects Book 11 with Aristotle's Poetics (narration as a way to avoid subjectivity). Cf. Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time.
Augustine intended for people to read his confessions: 1-9 is for anyone, 10 is for baptized believers, 11-13 is for parishioners and other bishops.
Platonism can't give you the Trinity, creation ex nihilo, or the incarnation.
Augustine's allegorical/moral interpretation of Gen. 1 in Book 13 strikes modern readers as arbitrary, but it seemed obvious to Augustine.
Re: Augustine's argument for the plurality of interpretations (cf. On Christian Teaching): the modern notion of only one true answer comes from the advent of science and math (Descartes)—the plurality of interpretations doesn't underwrite the project that gets us penicillin. Cf. WCF 1.9.
Smith makes some good comments here and here. His book On the Road with Augustine came out in 2019.

Been over a decade since I last read this, but still it enraptures me. This time around I noticed just how much scripture was weaved into everything he said. Often he blends St. Paul into whatever he is talking about; especially in the later chapters after the main part of his conversion story.

Also this time I tried an audiobook version for my commute.

The narrator was Bernard Mayes whose voice matched the material. Kind of British professorial.

Didn't know who he was and looked up his Wiki entry. Oddly for a narrator of St. Augustine the man was a priest who left the priesthood became an atheist and had same-sex attraction. Still he did an excellent job of narration.

I managed to get this audiobook for basically $3.99, by buying the .99 Kindle ebook and then the Audible version for another $2.99. Thank you Amazon.

Confesiunile sunt spectacolul frământărilor eului, angrenat într-o stare interogativă permanentă: cine sunt, care este rațiunea existenței mele, de unde vin și unde trebuie să ajung sunt întrebările implicite ale unui discurs în aparență monologic, dar care este un dialog cu Dumnezeu. Ceea ce vrea Augustin să-i facă să înțeleagă pe semenii săi este proiectul Providenței în ceea ce-l privește.

,,Mare ești, Doamne, și cu adevărat vrednic de laudă! Mare este puterea Ta, iar înțelepciunea Ta nu poate fi măsurată. Și totuși, un om, o neînsemnată frântură din zidirea Ta, vrea să Te slăvească! Un om purtând asupra sa datul morții, purtând mărturia că Tu te împotrivești celor trufași. Și totuși, un om, o neînsemnată frântură din zidirea Ta, vrea să Te slăvească. Tu l-ai îndemnat să-și afle bucuria lăudându-Te pe Tine, căci pentru Tine ne-ai zidit, iar inima noastră este neliniștită până să-și afle odihna în Tine.”

Are you there God? It's me, St. Augustine.

Having read the comments of a GR friend about the difficulty of reading the unabridged Confessions, I'm glad it was this excerpted version that I ended up with instead. (I inherited it from a friend who went abroad and couldn't take his books with him.) I have to say, even this edition was challenging at times: I had to reread a lot of paragraphs to unpack the author's meaning, and some of them were still so dense to me that I just gave up and moved on.

Nevertheless, I'm very glad to have finally read at least a basic version of this Christian classic for myself. As others have been, I was impressed by Augustine's honesty and self-reflectiveness, especially his open admission where his understanding of God failed him. I love that the book is addressed to God, rather than to the readers, which makes the experience of reading it sort of like participating in a prayer. The way Augustine continuously glorifies God throughout his confessions is beautiful to me, and something I hope to incorporate more into my own prayer life.

Written during the waning of the Roman Empire around 400AD, this account of the early life of a seminal theologian of the Catholic church is a personal perspective on what he regards as his sinful life leading up to his conversion. His writing is surprisingly accessible, almost modern in its approach to weighing the factors that contribute to growing up. His mother was a Christian, but he took a long time to come around. He excelled in school and hungered to elucidate abstract knowledge, eventually becoming a master of rhetoric, like his hero Cicero. Yet from his youth, he cherished sexual and other worldly pleasures while paradoxically aligning himself with the Manicheeism theology that condemned the Christian tenet of a human Christ for not being spiritual enough.

His explorations of how he worked his way toward conversion represents an early advance in psychology. He covers well how his character was shaped by maternal nurturing, paternal discipline, peer relations, early loves, positive role models, and personal tragedies. His reflections on the relationship of sensory perception to knowledge, the relativity of perception and emotions, the prime role of memory to consciousness, and constructive capacity of language are refreshing precursors to current perspective. He tries to make sense of the issue of human free will vs. God being part of everything, but doesn't have a compelling solution to me. I enjoyed his musings on the nature of time, logically concluding past, present, and future are all meaningful only from a present perspective (with "now" ultimately infinitesimally short). His struggle to account for creation having a beginning with God existing outside time (and the meaning of the pre-creation "ithout form and void"version of matter) resembles to me the challenge for modern physics of what existed before the Big Bang.

On the downside for a non-religious person reading this book today is that he obviously couldn't escape the worldview of dualism between matter/body and spirit/mind/soul. Yet he doesn't come to cast worldly experiences and pleasures as meaningless or evil or speak much of the devil or Hell. For him, the origin of evil lies in being out of God's light or in willful ignorance, not from a separate source. It's a shame that this worldly Christian thinker didn't evolve more to the mystical view of God really being in the world, following the example of Christ for the "Word made flesh".

n  Entrust to the Truth all that you have from the Truth, and you shall lose nothing. The parts of you that are withered shall bloom again, and all your illnesses shall be healed. (4.11.16)

Seek what you seek, but it is not where you seek it. You seek a life of blessedness in the land of death; it is not there. How can there be a blessed life in a place where there is not even life itself? (4.12.18)

As for those who think there is another life, they are chasing after another joy, and not the true one. (10.22.32)n

___________
Going in with most works 'blind' (so to speak) as I like to do, I had no idea that Augustine’s Confessions was so suffused with the former's religious experience. The work is strongly interwoven with Scripture, but apart from this, Augustine muses on many topics such as Beauty, Memory, and Metaphysics.

A nice work, and great translation.
__________
For as we grow up, we weed such habits out of ourselves and throw them away; but I have never known any wise farmer, when weeding his plot, to throw good plants out with the bad. (1.7.11)

And yet we did sin . . . We paid less attention to our books than was expected of us. (1.9.15)

Adults have their games, which they dignify by the name of 'business'. (1.9.15)

It is but vanity to make a profession of these earthly things . . . (5.5.8)

They think they are radiant and exalted as the stars of heaven, when all the while they have fallen headlong to earth, and their heart is darkened in its folly. (5.3.5)

The daily ruin of our body is called ‘pleasure’. (10.31.43)

As for the reason why I hated the Greek literature in which I was steeped as a boy—for that I have still found no satisfactory explanation. I had fallen in love with Latin literature . . . (1.13.20)

I confess I was eager to learn these books, for they were the joy of my wretched life. (1.16.26)

But it was not surprising that I was drifting off towards these vanities . . . considering what sort of men were held up to me as examples to imitate. (1.18.28)

Around me lay the quagmire of carnal desire, bubbling with the springs of pubescence, and breathing a mist that left my heart fog-bound and benighted; I could no longer tell the clear skies of love from the dark clouds of lust. The two swirled around me in confusion; and in my youthful ignorance I was quickly drawn over the cliffs of desire and sucked down by the eddying currents of vice. (2.2.2)

My vanity was so excessive that I longed to be smart and sophisticated. (3.1.1)

My studies, too—'The Liberal Arts', as they were called—were leading me in a direction of their own. (3.3.6)

In the regular course of study I came to a book by a certain Cicero . . . this book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy; it is called the Hortensius. It was this book that changed my outlook . . . Suddenly all my vain hopes seemed cheap, and I began to lust with a passion scarcely to be believed after the immortality conferred by philosophy . . . It was not in order to hone my tongue that I took it up, nor was it Cicero's manner of speech that swayed me, but what he was saying. (3.4.7)

. . . in Cicero's exhortation to philosophy there was one thing that I loved especially, namely that his words aroused me and set me on fire not to be a lover of this or that sect, but of wisdom itself, whatever it may be; to love it and seek it and gain it and keep it, to embrace it with all my strength. (3.4.)8

He will find out for himself from his reading the nature of his mistake . . . (3.12.21)

'What is it that we love except what is beautiful? What, then, is "beautiful"? And what is beauty? What is there in the things we love that charms and attracts us? They could not draw us to themselves unless there were some internal harmony and beauty of form about them.' I looked around and saw that within physical objects there is one sort of beauty that comes, so to speak, from the totality, and another which gives a sense of harmony through the congruence with which it fits in without another object, as part of a body fits in with the whole, or as a shoe fits a foot, and so forth. This thought welled up in the depths of my heart and filled my mind . . . (4.13.20)

I sought to know why I thought good the beauty of physical objects, whether in the heavens or on earth, and what it was that helped me judge correctly when I said of mutable objects, 'This thing ought to be such and such, but that thing so and so.' As I asked the question of why I judged thus (seeing that I did judge thus) I had found an eternity of truth, unchangeable and true . . . (7.17.23)

From that Beauty these craftsmen that pursue outward beauties take the yardstick by which they perceive what is good, but not the yardstick by which they should use it. (10.34.53)

I read by myself all the books on the so-called liberal arts, and understood all that I read . . . (4.16.30)

. . . I discovered that this erstwhile master of the liberal arts knew only literature—and had no special knowledge even of that. He had read some of Cicero's speeches, a few books by Seneca, some odds and ends of poetry, and the more literate of the Latin works of his own sect. (5.6.11)

I had not yet attained the truth, but had now been rescued from falsehood.(6.1.1)

As I passed through a street in Milan, I noticed a pauper begging. I suppose he had already had a skinful, and was now in a happy mood, full of jokes. I groaned, and observed to the friends who were with me how many were the sufferings of our own madness inflicted upon us. In all our strivings, such as those under which I was then labouring as I dragged my burden of unhappiness, driven by the lash of my own desires, making it heavier as I dragged it, we had but one wish: to arrive at a state of happiness and confidence. But that beggar, I said, had beaten us to it, and we would perhaps never reach it. What he had attained with the aid of a few small coins, and begged ones at that, I was approaching by a circuitous route, with many painful twists and turns: namely, the happiness that comes from earthly felicity. It was no true jot that he had; but the joy that I was seeking through my ambitions was far falser. He, at any rate, was cheerful, while I was anxious he was carefree, while I was full of trepidation. If someone had asked me whether I would rather be happy or fearful, I would have said, ‘Happy’. If they had asked again, whether I would rather be like the beggar, or as I then was, I would have chosen to be myself, exhausted though I was with worries and fears. But this is a perverse choice; what of the truth? I should not have regarded my condition as preferable to his because I was more educated, for I had no joy of my education. Instead, I sought to please men with it; not to teach them, but only to please them . . . It does matter, I know, why one is happy; the happiness that comes from faithful hope is incomparably different from my vanity. But even then, there was a difference between us: he was the rapper, not only in that he was drenched with high spirits, whearas I was even up inside with anxieties, but also in that he had got his wine by wishing people good day, whearas I sought to get my vain glory by lying. (6.6.9, 6.6.10)

I was not now in that state of vanity; I had transcended it . . . (8.1.2)

My will was perverted, and became a lust; I obeyed my lust as a slave, and it became a habit; I failed to resist my habit, and it became a need. (8.5.10)

I was in both the flesh and the spirit, but I was more myself in that which I approved in myself, than that which I disapproved in myself. (8.5.11)

He was capable of far greater literary activity, if he wished . . . (8.6.13)

. . . avoiding in his teaching all that might disturb the quiet of his mind; for that he wished to keep free and unoccupied for as many hours of the day as possible, while he sought to read or hear something concerning wisdom. (8.6.13)

All these tasks we endure—where are they taking us? (8.6.15)

He read, and was changed within . . . and his mind began to put off the world. For as he read . . . he pondered the shifting tides of his heart . . . he discerned the better course, and resolved upon it. (8.6.15)

Merely to seek this wisdom, even if I did not find it, now seemed preferable to difficult treasure houses or kingships of the nations, or an abundance of bodily pleasures that surpasses all my wishes. (8.7.17)

To progress toward it—indeed to attain it—was nothing other than the will to progress, but with a will that was strong and whole throughout. (8.8.19)

They did not block my path and speak out openly against me, but whispered behind my back and punched furtively at me as I left them behind, to make me look back. Nevertheless, they did delay my progress, and I was slow to tear myself away from them, shake them off, and hasten where I was summoned, as long as Habit, with all its force, said to me, 'Do you think you can do without these?' (8.11.26)

For those whose with it is to rejoice in outward things, soon waste away and spend themselves on things visible and temporal, and feed their famished mind by licking at illusions. (9.4.10)

. . . honeyed with the honey of heaven, radiant with your radiance. (9.4.11)

The scent of your ointments was heavy in the air . . . (9.7.16)

. . . scented with costly perfumes. (9.13.36)

You cast your fragrance, and I drew breath, yet pant for you; I tasted, yet hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I was on fire for your peace. (10.27.38)

The allurements of scents, however, does not bother me too much. When they are absent, I do not feel the need of them; when they are present, I do not reject them. I would even be ready to do without them for ever. Or so I think I would, I may be deceived. (10.32.48)

When our conversation reached the point at which no pleasure derived from carnal senses, however great, however illumined by bodily light, seemed in respect of the sweetness of that Life was worthy not only of comparison, but even of mention, then we raised ourselves up in a more ardent longing for the Same, moving step by step through all things corporeal, even the sky itself, from which sun and moon and stars shine upon the earth. Still higher we went, through inward contemplation and discussion and admiration . . . We came to our own minds, and passed beyond them to attain the land of richness unfailing where you feed Israel forever with the food of truth. There, life is the Wisdom through which all things that were and that are to be come into being . . . (9.10.24)

I shall therefore, transcend even that innate strength of mine, spending by degrees to him that made me. I shall come to the plains and broad palaces of memory, where there are boards of countless images brought in from the things of all kind that the senses perceive. There is the storehouse of all that we ever contemplate, whether by increasing or by diminishing or by altering in some way the objects that our senses have encountered, and of everything else which is entrusted for safekeeping there and has not yet been swallowed up and buried in oblivion . . . Some things come to hand easily and in unbroken sequence, just as they are requested; those that come first give way to those that follow on from them, and having given way, are stored up , to come forth the net time I want them. All this happens when I relate something from memory. (10.8.12)

All these things I do within, in the great hall of my memory. There heaven and earth stand ready for me, with everything in them that I have been able to perceive . . . (10.8.14)

Great is the strength of Memory, great indeed, my God; an inner chamber vast and infinite. Who has ever sounded its depths? This strength belongs to my mind and to my nature, yet I myself cannot comprehend all that I am. Is mind, then, too narrow to hold itself? And if so, what is the part of itself that it does not contain? How, then, can it be outside itself rather than inside itself? How, then, can it not contain itself? Great wonder arises within me over this question; bewilderment overwhelms me. (10.8.15)

But these are not the only things borne by my memory, with its innumerable capaciousness. In it also are all the elements of the liberal arts that I have acquired and not yet forgotten, as if kept apart in some placeless inner place. (10.9.16)

In the countless fields and grots and caverns of my memory, full beyond counting with countless kinds of thing, I range through images, as with all physical objects, through presences, as with the liberal arts, through mental concepts and records, as with my states of mind, which memory retains even when the mind is not undergoing them, though whatever is in the memory is also in the mind. Through all these things I range, flitting this way and that. I go as deep in as I can, and nowhere is there an end . . . (10.17.26)

And although I eat and drink for my health’s sake, a dangerous sweetness tags along at our heels and often attempts to go first, to make me do for pleasure’s sake what I say or wish to do for my health’s sake . . . My wretched soul is full of flee at this very uncertainty, and uses it in preparing the case for its defence, rejoicing that it is not clear what is the due amount of food to maintain one’s physical wellbeing, and covering the work of pleasure with the pretext of health. (10.31.44)

If I were given the choice of being on the one hand mad or mistaken on all matters and still praised by all men, or on the other hand of being firm in my wits, firmly convinced of the truth, and reviled by all, I know what I would choose. (10.37.61)

This is the profit I have of my confessions: that I should confess not what I was, but what I am, and confess it not only before you with secret exultation and trembling, and secret grief and hope, but also in the ears of those children of men who believe. These are my companions in my fellow-pilgrims; those that have gone before me, those that will come after me, those that come with me. (10.4.6)
___________
To Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears . . . (Virtue Chastises Folly: Allergory of Lust; 3.1.1)
___________
. . . each drop off time is precious to me. (11.2.2)

‘My son, for my part, I no longer take any pleasure in this life. What I am now doing here still, and why I am here, I do not know; my hope in this world is spent. There was one thing for which I used to long to remain a while longer in this life . . . (9.10.26)

The guy with the soothing voice on YouTube recommended this book. Honestly, it is probably just mind control, but I had to add this book. FYI....guy with soothing voice is actually called Jared Henderson. This is the video where he said this book was one of his Top 10 Books of All Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-56bg...

Also, part of James Mustich's 1,000 Books to Read: https://www.listchallenges.com/1000-b...

St Augustine of Hippo had a profound effect on the Catholic Church that many people don't appreciate.

In these Confessions, Augustine argues that it was human choice - Adam's sin or original sin - that brought mortality and sexual desire upon the human race and so deprived Adam's progeny of the freedom to choose not to sin.

When Augustine was a younger man and had a mistress, he wrote a book On Free Will which agreed with the views of Pelagius, but he changed his mind later in life as indicated in these Confessions.
In this book, he argues that human beings are not free, as Adam was, to resist sin. Humans have no power to choose not to sin and we can't even control our sexual impulses.

In this book, Augustine refers to his past dalliances with women, his involvement with the Manichaean version of Christian doctrine, and his subsequent conversion to the way of Christ.

Ever since Augustine, the hereditary transmission of original sin has been the official doctrine of the Catholic Church.

I suspect most people today would not imagine that they have much in common with a Christian saint who lived over 1500 years ago. Remarkably enough however if they read this book I think they'd find much to relate to, just as I did. The Confessions is the famous autobiography of St. Augustine of Hippo, a North African saint. It is in part his life story, but to me it is really his spiritual biography. It is in effect a long letter from himself directed towards God, explaining his path towards the divine. It is the story of how Augustine went from a sinner — someone who in his own words had a restless soul and disordered mind — into the realm of divine knowledge and awareness. It is a familiar story to anyone who has read Ibn Arabi, al-Ghazali or any other individuals who have counseled taking what is often referred to as the spiritual path.

What was most notable to me about the book were how "normal" St. Augustine and his thoughts seem by today's standards. He did not want to surrender his bad habits and he did not want to be ridiculed for believing something that he'd (incorrectly) assumed was ridiculous. He wanted real knowledge and the company of his beloved friends and family. He loved his mother and he wanted to do what was right in his life, a life that he knew was inherently transient. The book describes the process of his spiritual awakening, likening it at one part to the resistance one feels to waking up in the morning and the efforts we take to remain asleep even when we know we must get up. He describes the components of existence as being like the words of a sentence, with one dying so the other can live and none but the highest intellect able to see the meaning of the entire sentence. His heart desires to come to a place of rest, rather than being in endless search for a thing that our minds cannot name. The prose is beautiful.

This is a book that deserves to be described as timeless, because it deals with the core issues of the human condition: who we are, why we are here and what we must do to be enlightened, peaceful and successful. It is also an advised read for those who incorrectly believe that Christianity is a superficial or intellectually unstimulating religion. This could not be further from the truth. To me St. Augustine was another Ibn Arabi, an earnest seeker of the truth who found his riches by looking within. As long as human beings still exist, this book has something very important to say to them.

It’s been 84 years… but I finally finished the whole thing. Books 10-13 as well

signore e signori a distanza di 14 anni recensisco la mia numero uno, con questa opera scritta agli albori del cristianesimo in una città dell'algeria, Ippona, prima e più importante autobiografia che sia mai stata scritta da un essere umano, è ciò che ha dato il via ad un meraviglioso viaggio che ho intrapreso e che continuo. La lettura delle vite della più grande mente del primo millennio e forse anche del secondo e del terzo, ovvero Sant'Agostino vescovo di Ippona è stato il mio battesimo da lettore. la prima vita del piccolo Augusto molto libertina e lasciva con i primi passi nel tribunale di Cartagine ha lasciato il posto anni dopo, a Milano, allora capitale dell'impero, e con l'auito del vescovo di Milano Ambrogio ad una vita consacrata a Dio quale primo e vero portatore di Verità. quella vera, non quella finta che l'avvocato Agostino declamava nei tribunali per far vincere i propri clienti. A Milano successe un unicum nella storia dell'umanità e del cattolicesimo, fino ad allora non era mai successo e mai succederà che due dei 4 Padri della Chiesa d'Occidente si incontrassero e che uno battezzò l'altro. l'opera è una lunghissima preghiera a Dio ma anche una confessione in cui il Vescovo appunto confessa e chiede perdono a Dio della sua precedente vita e del fatto che abbia abbracciato vari e finti dei prima di approdare nelle braccia dell'unico e vero Dio.

vi prego mi rivolgo a chi ancora non ha letto quest'opera per i motivi che solo lui/lei sa magari perché la vede come un'opera noiosa e/o difficile (cosa che non è) o perchè è ateo/a. provate a leggere, iniziate la lettura, troverete parole che non si usano più espressioni che non si usano più. ma credetemi quest'opera è più attuale della Bibbia. Tolto il Nuovo Testamento, le confessioni di Sant'Agostino è il testo più importante del Cristianesimo