1 Marion, Jean-Luc, God without Being trans. Thomas A. Carlson, with an intro. by David Tracy; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) 8Google Scholar.

2 In what follows I depart from Charles Mathewes's interpretation of Augustine's account of evil. For Mathewes, Augustine organizes his concepts of evil around the notions of privation of being and perversion of human nature. I concur with Mathewes regarding the first but not the second point, focusing as I do on Augustine's view of evil's origins. Perversion of human nature describes Augustine's account of the effect of evil and its secondary cause rather than its primal origin. See Mathewes, Charles T., Evil and the Augustinian Tradition Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 75–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Evans, G. R., Augustine on Evil Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1982Google Scholar); Rist, John, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 256–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.; Stalnaker, Aaron, Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006) 85–121Google Scholar.; Mann, William E., “Augustine on Evil and Original Sin,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine ed. Stump, Eleonore and Kretzmann, Norman; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 40–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.; Babcock, William S., “Cupiditas and Caritas: The Early Augustine on Love and Human Fulfillment,” in The Ethics of St. Augustine ed. Babcock, William S.; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1991) 39–66Google Scholar.; idem, “Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency,” in ibid., 87–114; and J. Patout Burns, “Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil,” in ibid., 67–86.

3 See, e.g., The Confessions 4.6.11 (trans. Maria Boulding; Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1997) 98. All following quotations are from this translation.

4 Ibid., 4.10.15.

5 Ibid., 1.20.31.

6 Ibid., 2.6.14.

7 Augustine describes the act as “a craving to do harm for sport and fun,” in ibid., 2.9.17.

8 Ibid., 2.4.9. Augustine's theft would be classified by medieval thinkers as a “sin of malice.” For Aquinas, no less than for Augustine, such a sin raises complex motivational questions. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1–2, Q. 78. For a discussion, see John Langan, “Sins of Malice in the Moral Psychology of Thomas Aquinas,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (1987) 179–98.

9 Augustine, Confessions 2.6.12.

10 Ibid., 2.6.14.

11 Ibid., 2.6.12.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., 2.9.17.

14 Augustine uses the language of “deficient” as opposed to “efficient” cause to describe Adam's movement of the will away from the Supreme Good. See Concerning the City of God against the Pagans 12.7 (trans. Henry Bettenson; New York: Penguin Books, 1972) 480. Further citations from The City of God are taken from this edition.

15 The pear scene in Confessions recalls the garden scene in the book of Genesis. When trying to explain how the first sin occurred, Augustine concludes that Adam and Eve sinned “in secret.” See City of God 14.13, and n. 14 above.

16 As Reinhold Niebuhr puts the matter: “Sin posits itself.” Niebuhr, See, The Nature and Destiny of Man 2 vols.; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941) 1:252Google Scholar.

17 Augustine, Confessions 3.7.12.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid., 3.6.12.

20 Ibid.

21 The point is put forcefully by Colin Starnes, Augustine's Conversion: A Guide to the Argument of Confessions I–IX (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990) xii.

22 Augustine, City of God 12.7.

23 Ibid.

24 The conundrum I am addressing differs from that which William S. Babcock explores. He focuses on Augustine's explanation of how evil can arise from a good will. See Babcock, “Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency,” 107.

25 I use the word “imaginary” here, following Charles Taylor's locution of a “social imaginary,” to focus on the way people imagine their surroundings, which is “often not expressed in theoretical terms, but is carried in images, stories, legends.” See Taylor, Charles, Modern Social Imaginaries Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004) 23Google Scholar.

26 Murdoch, Iris, The Sovereignty of Good London: Ark Paperbacks, 1970Google Scholar).

27 Evans, Donald D., The Logic of Self-Involvement London: SCM Press, 1963Google Scholar).

28 Ibid., 125.

29 Ibid., 127.

30 Ibid., 128. In a similar vein, Gene Outka invokes the idea of an onlook, focusing on its commissive and verdictive aspects, in his rendering of attitudinal and intentional features of Christian neighbor love in Agape: An Ethical Analysis (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971) 130–32.

31 Augustine, Confessions 4.4.7.

32 Ibid., 4.6.11. O'Donnell rightly identifies the parallel between this passage and Augustine's description of his friendship with his mother (more on this below). See James J. O'Donnell, “The Confessions of St. Augustine: Book 4,” n.p. [cited October 2009]. Online: http://www.stoa.org/hippo/frames4.html. There is a difference, however, between Augustine feeling “that my soul and his had been but one soul in two bodies” (describing his friendship with his unnamed friend, above) and experiencing friendship in terms of having “one life, woven out of mine and hers” (Confessions 9.12.30, describing his friendship with his mother, Monica). Augustine's first formulation, “unam fuisse animam in duobus corporibus” (had been but one soul in two bodies) comes from Ovid's description of the friendship between Orestes and Pylades (referenced in Confessions 4.6.11). The latter account defines Augustine's life and relationship with Monica subsequent to his conversion, described as “vita, quae una facta erat ex mean et illius” (one life, woven out of mine and hers).

33 Augustine, Confessions 4.4.7.

34 Ibid., 4.6.11.

35 Ibid., 4.4.8.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid., 4.1.10.

38 Ibid., 4.4.9.

39 Ibid., 4.6.11.

40 Freud, Sigmund, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in General Psychological Theory ed. Rieff, Philip; New York: Touchstone Books, 1991) 164–79Google Scholar., at 165. For Freud, melancholics suffer from an excess of internalized self-reproach, the remedy for which is the lifting of the conscience, or superego, in order for the ego to adjust to the reality of loss. On that view, we can properly mourn when the overbearing voice of conscience is silenced and the ego can adjust to the reality of another's passing. For Augustine, the remedy to melancholia is likewise a function of the reality principle. However, that remedy is made possible not by the lifting of the conscience but by the transformation of the agent's onlook and priorities.

41 Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1967) 52Google Scholar.

42 Augustine, Confessions 4.4.9.

43 Ibid., 4.6.11.

44 Ibid., 4.7.12.

45 Ibid., 4.13.20.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid. Augustine adds that he once considered evil to be a “substantial reality.”

48 Ibid., 4.15.26.

49 Marion, God without Being, 10.

50 Miles, Margaret R., “‘Facie ad Faciem’: Visuality, Desire, and the Discourse of the Other, JR 87 (2007) 43–58Google Scholar, at 53.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid., 52 n. 42.

53 Ibid., citing Marion, God without Being, 19.

54 Augustine, Confessions 10.6.9.

55 On this distinction, see Sokolowski, Robert, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1982Google Scholar).

56 Augustine, Confessions 4.12.12.

57 Ibid., 4.4.9.

58 Ibid.

59 James Wetzel, “Book Four: The Trappings of Woe and Confession of Grief,” in A Reader's Companion to Augustine's Confessions (ed. Kim Paffenroth and Robert P. Kennedy; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2003) 69.

60 Gregory, Eric, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) 286Google Scholar.

61 Augustine, Confessions 4.7.11–12.

62 Wetzel, “Book Four,” 69.

63 Augustine, Confessions 4.6.11.

64 Ibid.

65 Following Boulding's edition, 236 n. 151.

66 “Augustine will never be alone,” Brown observes while describing Augustine's early life. See Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 61.

67 This line of interpretation was put forward by Nygren, Anders, Den kristna kärlekstanken genom tiderna Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses, 1932Google Scholar), trans. Agape and Eros (trans. Philip S. Watson; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953). It was dispatched by Burnaby, John, Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938) 92–100Google Scholar., 121–26.

68 Augustine, Confessions 9.10.24.

69 Ibid., 7.17.23.

70 Ibid., 9.10.25.

71 Ibid., 9.13.34.

72 Ibid., 9.12.33.

73 O'Donnell notes this contrast as well. He writes: “The death of M. resembles and disresembles the death of A.'s friend in 4.4.7. His grief in both cases is great: accepting Christianity does not eradicate grief, but perhaps transforms it from hopeless to hopeful.” Understanding how, for Augustine, grief can be hopeful is important to grasping how his response to Monica's death differs from his response to the death of his unnamed friend. See O'Donnell, “The Confessions of St. Augustine: Book 9,” n.p. [cited October 2009]. Online: http://www.stoa.org/hippo/frames9.html.

74 Augustine, Confessions 9.12.36.

75 Ibid., 9.12.30.

76 Kim Paffenroth, “Book Nine: The Emotional Heart in the Confessions,” in Reader's Companion, 147.

77 Augustine, Confessions 4.9.14.

78 Murdoch, Sovereignty of Good, 91 [emphasis in original].

79 Marcel, Gabriel, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1976Google Scholar). I am grateful to Mark Wilson for several conversations along these lines. For a discussion of Augustine, Marcel, and embodiment, see Mark Wilson, “The Emotion of Regret in an Ethics of Response,” Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 2007.

80 Marcel, Being and Having, 169.

81 Ibid., 174.

82 Augustine, Confessions 9.12.30.

83 Brown correctly understands the importance for Augustine of seeing the universe as consisting of differentiated goods, an insight made available to Augustine upon grasping neoplatonic metaphysics. Augustine of Hippo, 100.

84 I owe this thought to Margaret Mohrmann.

85 Augustine, Confessions 9.13.37.

86 We do well to note that Confessions Book 9 is followed by Augustine's searching discussion of memory in Book 10.

87 Here Augustine seems close to John McDowell's notion of virtue as reason, understood as “an ability to recognize requirements which situations impose on one's behavior.” See John McDowell, “Virtue and Reason, Monist 62 (1979) 331–50, at 333.

88 On rules in relation to time in general and the future in particular, see Richard B. Miller, “Rules,” in The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics (ed. Gilbert Meilaender and William Werpehowski; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 220–36.

89 Augustine, City of God 14.6.

90 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1106b20–24.

91 Augustine, City of God 14.9.

92 Ibid., 14.7.

93 Ibid.

94 Augustine, , “The Spirit and the Letter,” in Augustine: Later Works ed. and trans. John Burnaby, ; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960) 215–16Google Scholar.

95 Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Augustine's Political Realism,” in Christian Realism and Political Problems New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953) 119–20Google Scholar.

96 Lovin, Robin W., Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar [emphasis mine]. Lovin develops a form of Christian realism indebted to Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer along political, moral, and theological lines in Christian Ethics and the New Realities (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 1–18.

97 Niebuhr gets at some of these ideas in his own way, drawing not from Platonic thought but from biblical and theological symbols in his essay, “As Deceivers, Yet True,” in Beyond Tragedy: Essays in the Christian Interpretation of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937) 3–24.

98 Stanley Hauerwas expresses this idea in his discussion of “freedom as the presence of the other,” in The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983) 44–46. But rather than say, as Hauerwas does, that the other's “need is often the occasion of our freedom,” Augustine's idea is that one cannot ascertain the alterity of the other without first being freed from self-preoccupation. On those terms he and Hauerwas would concur with the latter's claim that “the ‘otherness’ of another's character not only invites me to an always imperfect imitation, but challenges me to recognize the way my vision is restricted by my own preoccupation.” Ibid., 45.