On Christian Asceticism Spiritual Exercises in Saint Augustine's

Joseph Grabau

Spiritual Exercises in Saint Augustine’s Confessions*

SUMMARY – The present article seeks to address an important point of contact between early Christian ascetic practice and the heritage of Platonism through the end of the fourth century ad. In short, I find marked similarities between Pierre Hadot’s reading of Plato’s Phaedo, for example, and that of St Augustine’s personal prayer book, the Confes- sions. After outlining essential characteristics of Hadot’s take on spiritual exercises and Augustinian anthropology, I subject the text of the Confes- sions to critical examination in order to determine whether an emphasis on ‘spiritual exercises’ is indeed present. I argue that similar spiritual practices may be clearly discerned. First, I discuss the distinct ‘Christian’ and Augustinian character of ‘spiritual exercises’ which incorporate biblical typology of Adam and Christ as paradigmatic for the spiritual life. Next, in terms of concrete practices, I then discern from the first four books of the Confessions a series of exercises through which such a path of spiritual progress (i.e. from ‘Adam’ to ‘Christ’) may occur. Of note, I consider the dialectic praxis of 1) contemplative reading, 2) prayer- writing and 3) prayer itself, or ‘pure’ prayer – distinct from Augustine’s written reflections; 4) the role of lectio divina or meditation on Scrip- ture; and, finally, 5) meditation on death. In addition to developing these individual practices, it is the traditional Augustinian anthropology (rooted as it is in a theology of divine grace) that reveals the essential ‘Christian’ contribution of Augustine’s.

Pierre Hadot, the late French philosopher and historian of late antiquity, understood ancient philosophy not simply as an academic discipline but rather as a disciplined way of life.1 As such, philosophy for Hadot consists of specific

* With a number of relatively minor revisions, this paper represents the third and final chapter of my 2009 master’s thesis directed by Prof. dr. Matthias Vorwerk in The Catholic University of America’s School of Philosophy, Washington, D.C. 1 pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life: Spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault (trans. Michael Chase), Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995, parts of which were previously published in 1993, now available in the updated edition, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (rev. ed.),

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practices, which are what the author called ‘spiritual exercises’. Plato’s Phaedo, the Letter to Menoeceus, and the short treatise ‘On Attention’ – each an example of the practical meditations characteristic of Hellenistic philosophy – together serve to demonstrate the value of Hadot’s praxis-hermeneutic. I would like to extend this interpretation the Frenchman had applied to those texts now to consider also the Confessions of Saint Augustine (written 397-403ad). With a view to these ‘spiritual exercises’, I note in particular the dialectic at work between Augustine and others in the late Roman Empire, as well as Augustine’s own indebtedness to the previous philosophical and theological tradition.2 In so doing, we may gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of Christian ‘asceticism’ at its origin. In the fourth chapter of Philosophy as a Way of Life, Hadot explored how these themes of ‘philosophy as a way of life’ and the essential practice of ‘spiritual exercises’ in fact continue beyond the Hellenistic period in the history of philosophy, even to appear in Christian writings.3 Yet Hadot carefully distin- guished the spiritual exercises of ancient Greek philosophy from those of Saint Ignatius, the 16th century founder of the Jesuit order. Augustine stood between these two strands in the history of Western spirituality and philosophy, and one may find continuity between Greek and Christian thought, which Hadot

Paris: Michel, 2002. On the point of view of the author in his treatment of philosophy, see Pierre Hadot, ‘There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers’ (trans. J. Aaron Simmons), in: Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19 (2005), 229-237. For critical reception, see also Alven M. Neiman, ‘Self examination, philosophical education and spirituality’, in: Journal of Philosophy of Education 34 (2000), 571-590; Thomas Flynn, ‘Philosophy as a way of life: Foucault and Hadot’, in: Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (2005), 609-622; François Renaud, ‘Philosophy as a way of life: Spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault, and: Qe’est-ce que la philosophie antique? [reviews]’, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 (1997) no.4, 637-640; Pierre Hadot, What is ancient philosophy? (trans. Michael Chase), Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002; and Alexander Nehamas, The art of living: Socratic reflections from Plato to Foucault, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. On the late antique situation of Augustine’s own reflection and use of the spiritual exercises in rhetorical training, see also Paul Kolbet, Augustine and the cure of souls: Revis- ing a classical ideal, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. 2 See Plato’s Phaedo, trans. G.M.A. Grube in Plato: Complete works (ed. John M. Cooper), Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997; Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus in: Hellenistic philosophy: Introduc- tory readings (2nd ed.; trans. Brad Inwood & L.P. Gerson), Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997, 28-31; and the Discourses of Epictetus in Stoic and Epicurean philosophers: The complete extant writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius (ed. Whitney J. Oates), New York: Random House, 1940. For secondary literature on Hellenistic philosophy beyond the work of Hadot, the place to begin is Martha C. Nussbaum, The therapy of desire: Theory and practice in Hellenistic ethics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. 3 pierre Hadot, ‘Ancient spiritual exercises and “Christian philosophy”’, in: Philosophy as a way of life, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995, 126-144.

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demonstrated by citing Clement of Alexandria and the subsequent synthesis of Stoic, Neoplatonic and Judeo-Christian elements in the third, fourth and fifth centuries of the common era. St. Augustine himself received notice in Hadot’s work primarily for the former’s affinity to the Platonic separation of the soul from the body, a feature shared by the bishop of Hippo with early Christian monasticism as well as the ascetic theology of the Cappadocians. Yet rather than dwelling upon a single author, Hadot’s focus in the present context was to sketch how spiritual exercises occur in Christian writings and how these compare to the earlier tradition. For its value both in describing the author’s own conversion and as a protreptic designed with intent to bring about the conversion of others, I will focus specifically on Augustine’s Confessions. Not only the general concept but also even individual spiritual exercises, such as attention to the present moment and meditation on death (analyzed elsewhere in the Platonic and Stoic sources above), reappear in Augustine’s thinking. Accordingly, I will provide a brief overview of how Hadot deals with Augustine, and, with this orientation in place, I will apply the model of spiritual exercises given in Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life to a handful of passages in the Confessions, presuming that my reader has some basic knowledge of ancient philosophy. In the end, I hope not only to demonstrate the value of Hadot’s understanding of spiritual exercises for reading the Confessions, but also how this concept can be extended to include distinctly Christian spiritual exercises, to be found particularly in the ascetic theology of the fourth (and fifth) century. In what is arguably just as true of the Cappadocians, Augustine of Hippo writes both as a philosopher and as a Christian, and my proposal is to launch an attempt to reconcile the two modes of authorship.4 In that respect, one must reckon with a central debate in Augustine’s own lifetime, namely the Pelagian controversy and its insistence on the integrity of human action. In opposition to claims of ‘original sin’ from the side of Augustine, Pelagianism would defend the nobility of human nature in line, so it seems, with the legacy of Greek philosophy. That Augustine would adopt any form of spiritual exercise or technique of philosophical and spiritual ascent must, in the end, also come to terms with an apparent discontinuity between the human ‘effort’ entailed in the exercises, and the unearned merit of free

4 On this issue, Peter Brown, ‘Introduction’, in: Augustine, Confessions. 2nd ed. (trans. F.J. Sheed; ed. Michael P. Foley), Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006, xxv writes, ‘Augustine remained to the end of his life an unreconstructed ancient philosopher. He believed that human beings should take their lives in hand, and that no training of the self could hope to succeed if it were not grounded in reality – that is, in as true a view as was possible for humans to attain of the nature of God, of the universe, and of the human person’.

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divine grace. Nevertheless, because Pelagianism became an open issue for Augustine only well after the publication of his Confessions, the criticism that ‘spiritual exercises’ are fundamentally Pelagian is probably insensitive histori- cally, despite the apparent attractiveness of such an interest. Beyond mention of the problem in its general outline, I must unfortunately limit myself to raising possible avenues of response – mainly to acknowledge the central role of grace (or gratia) in the thought of Augustine, most of all in the contexts of human salvation, theological anthropology and any Augustinian spirituality that takes account of the author’s entire corpus. When Hadot begins to address the Confessions, he wonders how a reader should even approach the text. After all, it transcends the narrow categories of patristic authorship, or even ancient philosophy, to become what is well recog- nized for its standing among the most influential pieces of world literature.5 Relying upon the scholarship of one of his primary influences, Pierre Courcelle, Hadot suggests that the Confessions should not be read as an autobiography but as theology in the strictest sense.6 For example, when Augustine describes the moment in which he sat beneath a fig tree weeping, Courcelle interprets this as a symbol of the destructive effects of sin; and it is in fact an example of the typology at work in the Confessions.7 The fig tree, according to Courcelle and

5 Arnold I. Davidson, ‘Introduction: Pierre Hadot and the spiritual phenomenon of ancient philosophy’, in: Philosophy as a way of life, 1-45 (esp. 15-17) notes that Hadot is clearly dependent upon Pierre Courcelle, Recherches sur les ‘Confessions’ de saint Augustin. Nouvelle édition augmentée et illustrée, Paris: Boccard, 1968 (orig. publ. 1950), particularly for his view of Augustine’s conception of biblical typology along the trajectory of Adam-David- Christ. On the genre of the Confessions, see also Charles T. Mathewes, ‘Book One: The pre- sumptuousness of autobiography and the paradoxes of beginning’, in: Kim Paffenroth & Robert P. Kennedy (Eds.), A reader’s companion to Augustine’s Confessions, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003, 7-24; and Francis M. Young, ‘“The Confessions” of Saint Augustine: What is the genre of this work?’, in: Augustinian Studies 30 (1999) no.1, 1-16. Introductions to all standard English translations will likewise address this question of literary criticism that remains perennial for Augustine’s masterwork. 6 Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life, 51-52. See also Brian Stock, ‘Reading, ethics, and the literary imagination’, in: New Literary History 34 (2003), 1-17, at 8 where the author writes, ‘the Confessions employs a wide range of classical literary devices in telling a good story in which, as Pierre Courcelle demonstrated, the factual record is occasionally altered in order to enhance the theological message’. 7 On the role of typology in the history of (patristic) exegesis, see Manlio Simonetti, Biblical interpretation in the Early Church: An historical introduction to Patristic exegesis, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994, passim; Peter W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The contours of the exegeti- cal life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012 (Oxford Early Christian Studies); Michael Cameron, Christ meets me everywhere: Augustine’s early figurative exegesis, Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 2012 (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology), 97-214. Note also Robert Wilken, ‘In defense of allegory’, in: Modern Theology 14 (1998), 197-212; and idem, ‘Foreword’, in:

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Hadot, represents the shadow of sin; while the voice of the child calling out, ‘Take it up and read’, corresponds to God’s response to Augustine’s inner questioning. For Hadot, this moment signifies a difference in how readers should interpret the relevance of the Confessions. As he writes, ‘the Confessions is essentially a theological work, in which each scene may take on a symbolic meaning’.8 Augustine’s theft of pears in Book 2 is a second example of how this difference of genre might affect a reader’s understanding of the text. Because of the obvious connection with Adam’s eating of the ‘fruit’ in the Garden of Eden (Gn 3:1-7), this scene becomes not just an account of Augustine’s life from a historical and biographical point of view, but a meditation on the nature of sin from a theological and anthropological point of view also. In other words, Augustine rises to the level of ‘universal humanity’ – to use the language of Hadot – seeking not so much to dwell on himself as an insolated ego, but rather to offer up a reflection on the nature of humanity in general, especially in relation to God. In his introduction to Hadot’s thought, Arnold Davidson also focuses on the same scene, contemplating how to understand it from the perspective of spiritual exercises.9 Although Hadot has suggested that the Confessions are theological in nature, not primarily autobiographical, in them Augustine nevertheless reveals much concerning the ‘mystery of the self’.10 Davidson writes, ‘Hadot came little by little to realize… that one must not be misled by Augustine’s use of ‘I’, that the autobiographical part of the Confessions is not as important as one might believe’.11 The reason for this attention is that Augustine speaks not so much of himself but of the universal humanitas. Thus, he seeks to give expression to what is most human in each individual. Davidson explains how ‘the “I” of Augustine’s Confessions continues the “I” of Job, David, or Paul, that is, Augustine “identifies himself with the self who speaks in the Scriptures. Ultimately, the human self who speaks in the Bible is Adam, a sinner without doubt, but converted by God and renewed in Christ”’.12

Henri de Lubac, Medieval exegesis. Vol. 1: The four senses of Scripture (trans. Mark Sebanc), Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), ix-xii (orig. French publ. 1959). 8 Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life, 52. This language (i.e. symbol) is evidence of Hadot’s distinct characterization of Augustine’s reflexive and dynamic use of typological exegesis. 9 Davidson, ‘Introduction’. 10 Ibid., 15. 11 Ibidem. 12 Ibidem. For support of Hadot’s interpretation, see Erich Feldmann’s entry, ‘Confessiones’, in: Cornelius P. Mayer (Ed.), Augustinus-Lexikon, Vol. 1, Basel: Schwabe, 1986-1994, 1134- 1194. I find this author’s concern for Augustine’s as ‘protreptic’, an ancient genre of philosophical literature designed in view of the reader’s conversion to a specific school of philosophy, and a theme to which I will return below, largely corresponds to Hadot’s views expressed above – cf. Dorothea Weber, ‘Confessiones’, in: Karla Pollmann & Willemien Otten (Eds.), The Oxford guide to the historical reception of Augustine. Vol. 1, Oxford: Oxford University

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This passage reveals the need for human beings to become reoriented away from their own selves and towards God, that is, towards the other and ‘higher’ self. In this line of thinking, all of Augustine’s work may well aim to bring about the same spiritual renewal and transformation in his readers.13 In fact, the progression of the narrative in Confessions resembles this movement, as Augustine begins focused on himself and his own path through sin to God in Books 1-9, but closes in Books 11 through 13 looking deeply into the meaning of Genesis.14 In the final stage, his authorial voice now becomes the ideal reader of the scriptures, one who has resolved the intricacy of his own life’s meaning and mystery in the light of the cross and incarnation. Such a perspective does not dismiss the great psychological value for today’s readers of the Confessions. Instead, it demonstrates the place of spiritual exercises in Christian thinking. If the human self-speaking throughout the Confes- sions represents a universal voice of humanity, first marred by sin, then ‘renewed in Christ’, then the goal of the spiritual exercises in this context is to recreate resemblance to Christ who is the new Adam. Charles Mathewes addresses this in discussing the opening lines of the Confessions: As beginnings go, this is fascinating on several levels, for it begins by allowing another to go first, in at least three senses. First, it begins not with its own words, but with a citation of another work, the Psalms (specifically Ps 48:1). Second, it

Press, 2013, 167-174. For a counter-opinion, see also J.J. O’Donnell, Confessions. Vol. 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, xvii-lxxi, while Henry Chadwick, Saint Augustine: Confessions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, xiii appears to agree with the protreptic approach. 13 the type of ‘conversion’ being sought will depend, of course, on the text at issue. On this issue, cf. Brian Dobell, Augustine’s intellectual conversion: The journey from Platonism to Chris- tianity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Although I concern myself here primarily with Augustine’s ‘philosophical’ conversion, brought about by his reading of the Hortensius, Dobell’s treatment of the subsequent change in Augustine’s outlook to a variety of Platonism and later to Catholic Christianity provides further texture to the ancient notion of ‘conversion’ – and its simultaneous meanings in philosophical schools and religious communities. 14 Brown, ‘Introduction’, xxii. See also in the same text Michael Foley, ‘Typological exegesis’, in: Augustine, Confessions, 333-334 where the author writes: ‘One of the purposes of Augus- tine’s allegorical reading of Genesis in book thirteen is to show how a spiritual reading of the order of creation recapitulates the order of re-creation, of Christ’s redemption of fallen humanity through his Church’. The point is that Augustine’s narrative cannot be understood without reference to the biblical narrative, and that both Scripture and Augustine’s Confessions aim to bring about ‘change’ in the lives of their readers. In that respect, Augustine is also dependent upon the ancient philosophical schools, according to Pierre Hadot, whose position I aim to defend here. My focus on the first four books of the Confessions does not rule out their significance for later books, particularly lines from books 7 and 8 on the contrast between ‘Christian’ and ‘Platonic’ exercises, the whole of book 10 as an extended meditation on the self in relation to time and memory, and books 11-13 as one giant exercise in biblical exegesis.

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begins not in Augustine’s own voice, but in that of another – namely, David. Third and finally, it is not speaking of the self, but of someone else – namely, God. In three ways, our assumptions about autobiography’s egocentric incipit – our expectations of ‘what autobiographies are like’ – are subverted. Something quite different is going on here.15 Just as Hadot’s above quotation suggests, Mathewes articulates how Augus- tine’s voice is essentially one with the voice of the biblical king, psalmist and one-time shepherd boy, David. Augustine begins by adopting the voice of another, in this instance David, and in doing so he becomes by extension another self – namely, Christ, who is himself one ‘self’ stretching into another (Phil 2:6-8). This self-emptying, which the Christian tradition will call ‘imita- tion of Christ’ is the goal of all Christian askēsis. Augustine says as much, less directly, in the opening prayer of Book 11, where he questions God, ‘why am I giving You an account of all these things? Not, obviously, that You should learn them from me; but I excite my own love for You and the love of those who read what I write, that we all may say, The Lord is great, and exceedingly to be praised’.16 Indirectly, then, Augustine is writing about transformation in Christ, for to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves are the great command- ments that Christ gives to his followers (Mk 12:28-34). To learn to love in such a way is to see the heart of the Father in Christian tradition, to become Other-centered, looking past one’s own faults and self-history in order to identify with the experience of compassion modeled in Christ.17 Facing God

15 Mathewes, ‘Book One’, 10-11. 16 Augustine, Confessions 11.1.1. All quotations of the Confessions are drawn from the translation of F. J. Sheed cited in n. 4 above. Of course, English translations abound – most notable among them that of Henry Chadwick in the Oxford World’s Classics book series, and John K. Ryan of the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. Strictly for its lyricism, I prefer that of Maria Boulding, O.S.B. to Chadwick’s, yet here I have chosen to make use of Sheed’s translation (first published in 1942) at the suggestion of Msgr. Robert Sokolowski. For the Latin text, one must consider the most recent critical edition Sancti Augustini confessionum Libri XIII, ed. Luc Verheijen, Turnhout: Brepols, 1981 (Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 27). Although it was characteristic of Hadot’s philosophical and scholarly method to take up the Latin (or Greek, where appropriate) texts of ancient authors in the late Roman empire, here I limit my work to English. 17 Jn 1:18. The Christian tradition of spiritual ‘re-orientation’ from self-centeredness to unity with Christ in his self-emptying is at least as old as the apostle Paul and his disciples (as for example Gal 2:20, Rom 6:4, Phil 2:4-9, Col 2:11-12 and 3:1-4, Eph 2:4-10, 2 Tm 2:11-13), and certainly continued much later than Augustine, for example in the Franciscan spirituality of St Bonaventure’s Itinerarium and Breviloquium, for which see Kevin Hughes, ‘A song of ascent: Bonaventure’s Itineratium as a spiritual exercise’, in: Collectanea Franciscana 79 (2009), 505-515.

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in prayer, Augustine draws readers up into his growing knowledge of scriptures and radical restructuring in love.18 John Matthews distinguishes three phases of such a turning or ‘conversion’ in the Confessions.19 These will help to clarify the ideas above, addressing in particular what is unique about Christian spiritual exercises, and to what extent Augustine explicitly spoke about or indirectly taught about such ‘exercises’. First, there is the conversion to philosophy, which Augustine experienced as a youth studying law and rhetoric in Carthage. There, he read a work by the Roman political leader and philosopher Cicero, the Hortensius. In it, Cicero sought to persuade a certain Quintus Hortensius Hortalus that philosophy is superior to rhetoric in sustaining true happiness. Second, however, Augustine goes on to describe his conversion to a Gnostic sect led by a Syriac-speaking Babylonian named Mani.20 This conversion resulted in a more specific way of life carried out with other sect members, and it exerted a powerful effect upon Augustine’s thinking for nearly a decade. Finally, in Milan in 386/7, Augustine experienced conversion to Christianity under the influence of the bishop Ambrose. This was the final stage of conversion for Augustine, and as such, it represents most clearly his actual formation in Christ. Each phase displays elements of Hadot’s notion of philosophy as a way of life, but in the first, Augus- tine describes how philosophy itself, apart from and prior to religion, requires conversion.21 This will serve as a good introduction into Augustine’s way of leading his reader into transformation in Christ.22

18 See Brown, ‘Introduction’, xviii: ‘Augustine’s back is turned to us throughout the Confessions. His attention is elsewhere. He is speaking with his God. The pronoun tu – “Thou”, “You” – occurs in 381 out of the 453 paragraphs of the Confessions. Praising, questioning, “confess- ing” sins in the modern sense, Augustine’s prose works magic with us. It brings an invisible God almost unbearably close. Readers can feel that they have stumbled, unawares, on the most intimate of all scenes – a human being (themselves quite as much as Augustine) brought with joy and trembling into the presence of God, their judge and friend’. 19 John F. Matthews, ‘St. Augustine’, in: Simon Hornblower & Antony Spawforth (Eds.), Oxford classical dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012 (4th ed.), 206-207. 20 Augustine, Confessions 3.6.10-3.10.18. See also John F. Matthews, ‘Manichaeism’, in: Oxford classical dictionary, 917. 21 Augustine, Confessions 3.4.7-8. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, 40 emphasizes on the other hand the religious nature of even this first, philosophical conversion. Brown writes: ‘For centuries now, the idea of philosophy had been surrounded with a religious aura. It involved far more than an intellectual discipline. It was a love of ‘Wisdom’. ‘Wisdom’ would console and purify its devotees; it demanded, in return, self-sacrifice and moral readjustment’. 22 on this Brown, ‘Introduction’, xxix explains, ‘We should have no doubt about it, Augustine’s Confessions is an adult book. It was written to make the minds and hearts of its readers grow to its measure’. See e.g. above (n. 12) for scholars supporting this position.

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By the time he comes to his account of reading the Hortensius, Augustine has already led his audience through the first sixteen years of his life. This period, however, was characterized by childish games and the like, epitomized most clearly perhaps in his robbing of the pear tree. In short, it was a time of imma- turity, and the Hortensius seems to have been the first work to wake his stupor. So often, Augustine recounts, his ambition in those early years was to excel beyond his peers in order to win the praise of superiors – another form of the distortion that is sin. Yet in the Hortensius, Augustine finds an author who cares little for the glory and honor that comes from persuasiveness; instead, apparently in the true spirit of Socrates, Cicero held up the value of wisdom. This, in turn, can be understood as the care of the soul, which Augustine by his own account had neglected for so long. One notable exception, a surprising admission for Augustine to make, occurs near the end of Book One, where he writes, ‘… even so early I had an instinct for the care of my own being, a trace in me of that most profound Unity whence my being was derived’.23 This is a surprising admission because it is not the characteristic attitude described in the early books. For him to read the Hortensius, however, inspired him to pursue this care of the soul, which as demonstrated above in the Phaedo was so exception- ally present, with renewed interest. ‘Quite definitely it changed the direction of my mind’, Augustine writes of the Hortensius.24 What else, if not this changed direction of the mind; do Hadot’s spiritual exercises seek to bring about? For Augustine as a Christian, however, this change of mind meant a new direction of the spirit upwards toward God, whereas in the Phaedo it amounts to a specific pattern of behavior and some conceptual regard for the Forms. Even in this passage, Augustine references the prodigal son who rose and returned to his father, an allusion that describes the return to God accom- plished through grace by Augustine and held out as possible, through the same grace, for the reader. For Augustine, this new direction of mind thus, ‘altered my prayers to You, O Lord, and gave me a new purpose and ambition. Sud- denly all the vanity I had hoped in I saw as worthless, and with an incredible intensity of desire I longed after immortal wisdom’.25 By taking this first conversion experience as our model, therefore, I wish to draw out a handful of spiritual exercises unique to Augustine’s Confessions. Some of these will repeat or at least resemble the spiritual exercises of Plato and the Hellenistic era; however, others will break new ground entirely. Each, to one degree or another, relates to the practice of reading a text and the distinct relationship that develops between reader, text, and author, different from that

23 Augustine, Confessions 1.20.31. 24 Augustine, Confessions 3.4.7. 25 Augustine, Confessions 3.4.7.

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which emerges in the reading of a Platonic dialogue, an Epicurean letter, or a Stoic treatise. Reading, writing, and attention to the present moment are so bound up in prayer to God that they are nearly indistinguishable. I will consider each of these in turn and close by relating the Confessions to the Phaedo through a final spiritual exercise, the meditation on death.

1. The Act of Writing as Attention to the Present Moment

Davidson notes how Pierre Hadot once intended to complete a translation and commentary of the Confessions, perhaps in order to apply his concept of spiritual progress and spiritual exercises to the work.26 Because he was unable to do so, it remains the goal of this article to defend the view that they can in fact be found. First among those to be discussed is the act of writing. For Augustine, writing has a different quality and goal than for any of the authors previously discussed. No longer is there a dialogue between characters, with the reader left to follow the flow of conversation and ultimately decide for himself about its content; nor is there instruction from a master to his pupil, the latter left to contemplate and apply the principles given to him. Instead, Augustine bares his soul before God, with the readers free to ‘listen in’ on the meditations and thoughts he shares. For Augustine, writing is a form of prayer, and it was a way to discover his thoughts about himself, his past, and his growing relationship to God.27 Hadot explores this theme in part in connection with other authors such as the monk and hermit St. Antony. As he writes, ‘according to his biographer, Antony used to recommend to his disciples that they take written notes of the actions and movements of their souls’.28 As such, writing was a form of the examination of conscience. Whenever one’s inner state may be in turmoil and confusion, the act of writing could help to smooth over what is disturbed. The effort required by this verbal, written expression both reveals the inwardness of the one writing and assists the reader in discovering and interpreting the movements of his own soul. In other words, writing is a form of therapy or healing,

26 See n. 88 in Davidson’s ‘Introduction’, 39. 27 Stock, ‘Reading, ethics, and the literary imagination’, 10 writes: ‘[Augustine] asks us, as his readers, to follow him on this experiment and to reauthor the stories of our own lives, as a part of this philosophical exercise. Through this means, the reader becomes a philosopher in search of an appropriate way of life’. As indicated in the notes above, one may view Book 10 of the Confessions as an example of the exercise discussed in this section, the use of writing as a spiritual exercise to adjust oneself more sensitively to the moment. In that respect, Book 10 is paradigmatic of the entire work. 28 Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life, 135.

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and if we recall a persistent theme in Hadot’s work, this practice in fact pro- motes a healing of the negative effects of the passions. For Hadot, these ideas about writing occur within the context of a discussion about attention (prosochē). Introduced above as a concern of the Stoic school most of all, attention also became an important theme for Christian authors as well. As such, it was a summons away from the passions, towards the life of the spirit and of the intellect. As Hadot writes, ‘Prosochē or attention to oneself, the philosopher’s fundamental attitude, became the fundamental attitude of the monk’.29 A line from the biography of St. Antony illustrates the value placed on attention well: ‘When describing the saint’s conversion to the monastic life, Athanasius [the hagiography’s author] simply says: “He began to pay attention to himself”’.30 Hadot cites from other authors such as Dorotheus of Gaza and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius further to demonstrate the connection between attention and philosophy. In one particular passage of note, he writes, ‘prosochē relocates man within his genuine being: that is, his relationship to God. It is thus equivalent to the continuous exercise of the presence of God’.31 More quotations from other ancient authors go on to show applications of the spiritual exercise of attention, which can be summarized as keeping watch over one’s heart or inner being. All of this surfaces in Augustine’s Confessions. That his narrative is embedded within the Psalms, not only citing from them from time to time, but beginning from within them so as to draw both himself and the reader up into the prayers of David, is in fact Augustine’s first call to attention. Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no number. And man desires to praise Thee. He is but a tiny part of all that Thou hast created. He bears about him his mortality, the evidence of his sinfulness, and the evidence that Thou dost resist the proud: yet this tiny part of all that Thou hast created desires to praise Thee. Thou dost so excite him that to praise Thee is his joy. For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.32

29 Ibid., 131. Although Augustine’s Confessions appear to follow a narrative trajectory, the connection between conf. 1.1.1 and the whole of Book 10 anchors this work of Augustine in the present moment, before God in prayer, yet also before himself in relation to the past and the world of others. 30 Ibidem. Augustine clearly follows this pattern of progressively more authentic self-realization. The story of Saint Antony will also play a crucial role in Augustine’s own conversion narrative; cf. conf. 8.6.14-8.12.30. 31 Ibid., 132. 32 Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1.

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Praise, above all, is the vehicle for bringing Augustine from a state of distraction and dispersion to one of attention and focus. Praise is what captures both his heart and mind so that he has no need of wandering. Praise is what prevents him from despair. Praise is what calls for his devotion.33 In this way, praying the Psalms is a primary means to practice the Christian watch of the heart and attentiveness to oneself. That Augustine recommends this practice to his reader should be understood. To compliment that form of inner attention with writing, as Augustine has done, only reveals the challenging nature of ‘Christian’ prosochē. With the Psalms firmly embedded in his mind and thought life, Augustine wrote and reflected on his experiences, and these gradually shaped his vision of God and the world. This is not unlike the Platonic and Stoic conception of prosochē. Whereas Epictetus and Plato envision this as attention to the present moment, Augus- tine understands prosochē as attention to God, above all. In a way that resembles the concentration of a Stoic described by Epictetus, meditating upon certain fundamental maxims and rules, Augustine concentrates on the Word of God. With a mind so accustomed to memorizing great lengths of Virgil or Cicero, Augustine was well suited also to memorize passages of Scripture. His abundant citations are evidence of the powers of his mind to remember and dwell upon the truths of the Bible and to interpret his life’s experiences by the truth of revelation. In this way, he is the ultimate guide for learning to read transformatively, for at every turn he has a word from Scripture ready at hand. This was the ideal for a Stoic, to have his fundamental dogmas crystallized into one or two succinct rules or sayings, so that he might apply their truth in each passing moment. In the case of some, such as Plato, Epictetus, and Augustine, writing was another form of practicing this prosochē.

2. Formational Reading

When a reader approaches the Confessions, he begins to identify more and more with the author. When Augustine takes a posture of prayer in his opening lines, the reader may be compelled to do the same. He or she then realizes that this reading of Augustine’s Confessions is an opportunity to learn from a master of prayer how to express the inmost self. In short, by overhearing the conversation Augustine has with himself and God, the reader learns to appreciate the various

33 henry Chadwick notes that praise is one of the essential meanings of the verb confessio, confiteri in Augusitine’s work, the other being confession ‘as acknowledgement of faults’; cf. Chadwick, Confessions, ix; and Cornelius Mayer, ‘confessio, confiteri’, in: Augustinus-Lexikon, Vol. 1, 1122-1134.

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dimensions present in his own self – as if by looking in a mirror. There is the greedy self who robbed pears for the sheer delight in doing evil, but there is also the sincerely repenting self, seeking reconciliation with God and neighbor. Reading the journey of Augustine’s transformation provides a rubric for the reader’s own transformation and self-realization. Augustine’s memories and stories may thus rekindle his or her own memories and stories. Augustine’s prayers and confessions may, in turn, inspire his or her prayers and confessions. The reader participates in and shares Augustine’s own growth. Augustine’s reading of the Hortensius gives an example of how one should read a work of ancient philosophy, especially Augustine’s own work, the Confes- sions. Ideally, the reading will take place in community, with other like-minded individuals who are on a similar path. Augustine read the Hortensius while enrolled as a student of law in Carthage; and though he relates nothing positive about his fellow students, his reading nevertheless took place as part of a formal curriculum. In fact, he speaks of one group, the Overturners, with particular contempt, bent as its members were on selfish ambition and pride. Still, Augus- tine reveals how he came upon Cicero’s work not through personal or inde- pendent exploration but ‘following the normal order of study’.34 In the Confessions, Augustine does not give a detailed account of what he read in Cicero’s Hortensius. Instead, he says in short that it ‘contains an exhortation to philosophy’.35 As such, the Hortensius fits into the category of protreptic, an ancient philosophical genre designed to introduce readers to the teach- ings of that particular philosopher or philosophical school. Augustine writes how ‘quite definitely it [the Hortensius] changed the direction of my mind’.36 As Jeannie Carlier indicates, this is the purpose of a protreptic work, and the Phaedo in particular satisfies her definition.37 At multiple stages of the dialogue, Socrates speaks of individuals who turn from one path of life or another to follow the path of philosophy. Hadot notes one striking example from the Repub- lic in which Socrates speaks of education as an inward turn of the soul.38 This

34 Augustine, Confessions 3.4.7. 35 Ibidem. 36 Ibidem. 37 For Carlier, moreover, the works of Hadot also are works of the same genre: ‘Beyond their great erudition, are your books not protreptics, that is, books that aim to turn (trepein in Greek) the reader toward philosophical life?’. See, e.g., Pierre Hadot, Jeannie Carlier & Arnold Davidson, The present alone is our happiness: Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson (trans. Marc Djaballah), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008 (Cultural Memory in the Present), ix. 38 See Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life, 121 – writing about conversion in ancient philosophy, Hadot highlights Republic 518c where Socrates says, ‘But our present discussion, on the other hand, shows that the power to learn is present in everyone’s soul and that the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without

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is what Augustine says the Hortensius did for him, even if it was still a long road before his entrance into the Church. In this, his first philosophical conversion, Augustine turns from the foolishness of games and the vanity of selfish ambition towards ‘immortal wisdom’.39

3. Prayer

The expression this conversion takes for Augustine, even at this early stage of his life, is prayer. The Hortensius, Augustine writes, ‘altered my prayers to You, O Lord, and gave me a new purpose and ambition’.40 Thus, prayer is the next Augustinian spiritual exercise to be discussed. Prayer, in cooperation with the spiritual exercises of writing, attention, and reading, is the centering point of the Confessions. The whole work is a prayer; and if it is a protreptic, then its author aims to turn his readers to God. Strangely, perhaps, Augustine locates the beginnings of this movement in his own soul at the time when he read the Hortensius. ‘Suddenly’, he writes, ‘all the vanity I had hoped in I saw as worthless, and with

turning the whole body. This instrument cannot be turned around from that which is coming into being without turning the whole soul until it is able to study that which is and the brightest thing that is, namely, the one we call the good (…) education is the craft concerned with doing this very thing, this turning around, and with how the soul can most easily and effectively be made to do it. It is not the craft of putting sight into the soul. Education takes for granted that sight is there but that it isn’t turned the right way or looking where it ought to look, and it tries to redirect it appropriately’. That reading may play a significant role in this process is in clear evidence in the Confessions, although it was also Augustine’s personal relationships with his friends, with his mother and with the Bishop Ambrose of Milan that contributed so decisively to his ultimate conversion. For this reason, should one be tempted to think of friendship as a form of spiritual exercise? Hadot never considers this topic as such, yet he is adamant on the role of the spiritual guide for Desert Fathers, in what was a different if related context. See Andrés G. Niño, ‘Spiritual exercises in Augustine’s Confessions’, in: Journal of Religion and Health 47 (2008), 88-102 at 98-99 for a promising review of community as itself a kind of ‘spiritual exercise’. 39 In a passage that applies equally to Plato and Augustine, Hadot writes how the purpose of the author of a work of ancient philosophy was not so much to inform his readers but rather to form them to a certain way of being: ‘[Plato] did not aim to construct a theoretical system of reality, and then ‘inform’ his readers of it by writing a series of dialogues which methodically set forth this system. Instead, his work consisted in ‘forming’ people – that is to say, in trans- forming individuals by making them experience, through the example of a dialogue which the reader has the illusion of overhearing, the demands of reason, and eventually the norm of the good’, in Hadot, What is ancient philosophy?, 73. The difference, of course, for Augustine is that his ‘dialogue’ takes place primarily between himself and God, not another (human) inter- locutor. Yet the effect achieved may rightly be described as at least similar. 40 Augustine, Confessions 3.4.7.

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an incredible intensity of desire I longed after immortal wisdom. I had begun that journey upwards by which I was to return to You’.41 Should this be called ‘natural’ prayer? Yet how could any ‘prayer’ fit into the model of exercises developed by Hadot? Because Augustine does not speak openly and directly of faith in Christ in the first three books, in some sense this possibility might be the case. Neither the reader nor Augustine explicitly con- nects the person of Jesus and the event of the crucifixion to his awareness of God. Instead, in the present context, a pagan philosopher has aroused Augus- tine’s appetite for immortal wisdom. This is the beginning of his transformation in Christ, by all appearances, but it is also an initial conversion that takes place on the natural plane, so to speak. There is no concept of revelation in Cicero’s ‘immortal wisdom’, and Augustine even remarks that his reading of the Holy Bible at this point was unproductive. To his mind, Scripture was stale and dull. In comparison with the eloquence of Cicero and other rhetoricians, its words were too simple. Only at a later stage of maturity would Augustine learn a taste for the wisdom of the Bible, which the reader can recognize through his constant quotation of the Psalms most of all. John K. Ryan makes a series of related points nicely in the introduction to his translation of the Confessions.42 He writes of how even the formation in ancient literature and philosophy helped to prepare Augustine’s mind to receive Christ: As a student in Madauros and Carthage, and later as a teacher, Augustine learned many things of great value (…) During his years as a teacher, first in Thagaste, next in Carthage, later in Rome, and finally in Milan, his knowledge of philosophy grew in depth and extent. He became acquainted with the work of Plotinus (ca. A.D. 205-270), the last of the great Greek thinkers, and of other Neoplaton- ists, and their thought became a most important part in his personal praeparatio evangelica, the formation of his mind so that on the natural level it would be ready for acceptance of the gospel of Christ.43 As Ryan shows, Cicero’s Hortensius served as a valuable element of Augustine’s internal formation. It helped him to reach out for God, but as Ryan demonstrates, it also prepared his mind for a fuller understanding of God through

41 Ibidem. 42 The Confessions of St. Augustine (trans. John K. Ryan), New York: Doubleday, 1960, 17-38. 43 Ibid., 21-22. Philosophy certainly served a like role in medieval texts such as the Summa Contra Gentiles of Thomas Aquinas, and indeed its place in theological curricula even today attests to its ‘preparatory’ nature. While Augustine serves as a model for this conception of philosophy in the Western mind, such a view may lead unfortunately to the modern division between philosophy and theology in the West, a divide apparently avoided in the East by maintaining a stream of permeable continuity.

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Christ. Augustine’s response is to turn to God in prayer, asking for deeper understanding and a renewed desire for wisdom. ‘How did I then burn, my God, how did I burn to wing upwards from earthly delights to You. But I had no notion what You were to do with me’, Augustine writes.44 The divide from what is eternal and lasting, on the one hand, and what is temporary and fleeting, on the other, resounds as a theme of the Confessions even from the opening lines. Augustine finds himself there, as in the present passage, pulled upwards to God in flights of praise, and yet his earthly and mortal nature causes him to cling to objects of sense. This tension, pervasive throughout the work, is a familiar theme from Plato’s writings now clothed with the imagery of a Jewish and Christian imagination. Cicero’s Hor tensius began the process of unpeeling his mind from what is temporary and redirecting his gaze to what is eternal. ‘Love of wisdom’, Augustine continues, ‘is what is meant by the Greek word ‘philosophy’, and it was to philosophy that that book set me so ardently’.45 Because Cicero’s text is lost, there is no evidence with which to compare Augustine’s definition of ‘philosophy’, but it accords well with the words of Pierre Hadot: In general, since the time of Homer, compound words beginning with philo- had served to designate the disposition of a person who found his interest, pleasure, or raison de vivre in devoting himself to a given activity. Philoposia, for instance, was the pleasure and interest one took in drinking; philotimia was a propensity to acquire honors. Philosophia, therefore, would be the interest one took in wisdom.46 This newfound zest in study unified Augustine’s energies and sharpened his mind. No longer was he tossed about by competing philosophies; instead, he felt himself to be firmly on the path to wisdom. He continues, ‘the one thing that delighted me in Cicero’s exhortation was that I should love, and seek, and win, and hold, and embrace, not this or that philosophical school but Wisdom itself, whatever it might be’.47 Augustine goes on to relate his newly acquired interest in philosophy to Christianity. Above, it was suggested that his prayer at this point is strictly ‘natural’, lacking any reference to Christ and his work on the cross. Augustine addresses this very lack when he writes, ‘The book excited and inflamed me; in my ardour the only thing I found lacking was that the name of Christ was not there’.48 As a protreptic for Christian faith, therefore, the Confessions antic- ipate Augustine’s eventual conversion to Christ even in this, the telling of his

44 Augustine, Confessions 3.4.8. 45 Ibidem. 46 Hadot, What is ancient philosophy?, 16. 47 Augustine, Confessions 3.4.8. 48 Ibidem.

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philosophical conversion. Although the Hortensius awakened the young Augus- tine to a pursuit of wisdom, in opposition to mere eloquence for its own sake, it lacked the all-important figure of Christ. The wisdom of Socrates and Plato, distilled by the pen of Cicero, was not enough to satisfy the restless cravings of Augustine’s heart and mind. ‘For with my mother’s milk’, he continues, ‘my infant heart had drunk in, and still held deep down in it, that name according to Your mercy, O Lord, the name of Your Son, my Savior’.49 From his mature position as an author, therefore, Augustine writes with confidence how this initial conversion, however formative, was nevertheless incomplete. ‘Whatever lacked that name, no matter how learned and excellently written and true, could not win me wholly’, Augustine concludes.50

4. Interpreting the Young Augustine and Scripture

In what follows, Augustine describes his zealous, youthful effort to understand the Bible. The attempt was not very fruitful. Perhaps, in keeping with Ryan’s quotation above, Augustine’s still developing mind lacked the resources to recognize the wisdom contained in revelation. It was only after his subsequent encounter with Plotinus and the Neoplatonic tradition that his mind could readily accept the gospel. Whatever the case, at this point, Augustine floun- dered in his attempt to connect the philosophical awakening brought about by the Hortensius to the revelation of Scripture. ‘What I came upon’, Augustine writes, ‘was something not grasped by the proud, not revealed either to chil- dren, something utterly humble in the hearing but sublime in the doing, and shrouded deep in mystery’.51 Accustomed to the rhetorical flourishes and polished phrasing of pagan literature and philosophy, when it came to Scripture Augustine was at a loss. Regarding the Bible, Augustine writes, ‘I was not of the nature to enter into it or bend my neck to follow it’.52 This strikes an echo with one of the opening chords of the Confessions, that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. In light of Pierre Courcelle’s interpretation of the work, readers witness how the inner self, universal to all humanity struggles between the deeply conflicted poles of pride and humility. Growth in likeness to Christ, Augustine truly becoming himself, involves turning aside from the false self, lost in pride and ambition, and turning towards wisdom and truth. Only through repeated efforts at the spiritual exercises, as well as several major

49 Ibidem. 50 Ibidem. 51 Confessions, 3.5.9. 52 Ibidem.

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life events, could Augustine finally break the spell of sin. As always, praise and the awareness of God’s presence performs this miracle, and the bass chord with which Augustine begins, ‘Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no number’, resounds throughout.53 This is the very same remembrance of God of which Hadot writes in his Philosophy as a Way of Life, and through the spiritual exercises of reading, writing, focused attention, and prayer, readers too can turn heavenward. One final passage illustrates these points clearly: ‘when I first read those Scriptures’, Augustine writes, I did not feel in the least what I have just said; they seemed to me unworthy to be compared with the majesty of Cicero. My conceit was repelled by their simplicity, and I had not the mind to penetrate into their depths. They were indeed of a nature to grow in Your little ones. But I could not be a little one. I was only swollen with pride, but to myself I seemed a very big man.54 This demonstrates once again the insufficiency of a merely ‘natural’ conversion. As it is, Augustine still has over ten books in which to clarify how man can turn to God in full sincerity and true repentance, what Cicero’s book lacked, and how he found final rest in Christ. Of course, an encounter with Platonism intervenes, yet ultimately in terms of ‘moral’ conversion this interlude in Book 7 adds little to Augustine’s personal outlook beyond the initial impetus of philosophical energy received from Cicero, for which he would have to search deeper, and in ways impenetrable to the mind alone.

5. Meditation on Death

From the beginning of the Confessions, death is a theme that Augustine identifies as integral to the human condition. ‘[Man] bears about him his mortality’, Augustine writes.55 Though this mortality follows Augustine throughout his Confessions, he makes a pointed effort to dwell at length on it in Book 4. From Chapters 4 through 9, Augustine recounts the death of a close friend who remains unnamed. This amounts to a meditation on death, though as I will show it differs in an important way from that of Plato or the Hellenistic schools. Yet there are great similarities, and for this reason these chapters qualify both as the practice of this spiritual exercise and as an exhortation that readers attempt

53 Confessions 1.1.1. 54 Confessions 3.5.9. 55 Confessions 1.1.1. Niño, ‘Spiritual exercises’, 100-101 concludes by addressing the value of Confessions for training in the ‘ars moriendi’, a theme taken up in Nehamas, Art of living, 163-165 as well – not in reference to Augustine.

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it as well. By meditating on the death of his friend, Augustine invites readers to consider their own inevitable deaths, or perhaps those of loved ones past. In so doing, Augustine works out a distinctly Christian meditation, yet one with influences from the Platonic worldview. At all times, even in recounting his personal folly, Augustine maintains his prayerful posture, so that when he recounts his friend’s death, he nevertheless does so mindful of God’s presence. He prays, for example, ‘You took this man from the life of earth when he had completed scarcely a year in a friendship that had grown sweeter to me than all the sweetness of the life I knew’.56 Augustine describes how he had convinced this friend to stray from the ‘true faith’, meaning by that the Catholic faith of his mother Monica. Taken by the Manichean sect at that time, Augustine persuaded his friend to criticize Catholic Christianity. Yet when this friend falls ill, he receives Christian baptism; and rather than renounce the sacrament, as had been Augustine’s practice among friends, the ill friend demands that Augustine cease his childish mockery. As Augustine says, ‘But he [the friend] looked at me as if I had been his deadly enemy, and in a burst of independence that startled me warned me that if I wished to continue his friend I must cease that kind of talk’.57 Before Augustine could explain himself and seek understanding from his name- less friend, the young man died, disappearing from the young Augustine’s world. The death strikes Augustine sharply, with great pain of heart. ‘My heart was black with grief. Whatever I looked upon had the air of death’, he writes.58 Without a Christian hope in eternal life at that point in his life, Augustine falters. In Chapter 6, with the hindsight of years passed, Augustine recognizes that it was his worldly attachment that caused him such grief. ‘I was wretched, and every soul is wretched that is bound in affection of mortal things: it is tormented to lose them, and in their loss becomes aware of the wretchedness which in reality it had even before it lost them’.59 Augustine demonstrates just how ‘wretched’ he was by explaining that even in his deep grief he still rigidly clung to his own life for fear of losing it. The death of Augustine’s friend thus awakened a great fear of death in himself. ‘I was filled with the thought that [death] might snatch away any man as suddenly as it had snatched him’.60 By looking to God, however, Augustine remembers himself and his need of prayer even in the midst of adversity. It takes some

56 Confessions 4.4.7. 57 Confessions 4.4.8. 58 Confessions 4.4.9. 59 Confessions 4.6.11. 60 Ibidem.

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effort here, as in each of the opening books of the work, to distinguish between Augustine’s immature voice as a young man, caught up in emotion, and his mature voice as an author, looking back with the wisdom of experience and Scripture. From the perspective of the latter, Augustine recognizes his deep need of God’s sustaining grace; while from the perspective of the former, he tosses about with grief. ‘I hated all things, hated the very light itself; and all that was not he was painful and wearisome, save only my tears: for in them alone did I find a little peace’.61 Only by moving from Thagaste to Carthage and gradually building new friendships does Augustine begin to feel the pain of his heart lessen. Through the gentle expressions of friendship, reading books together, sharing conversation, and seeking mutual understanding, Augustine slowly regained strength. All the while, however, this tragedy caused him to think more deeply about his faith and the transience of this world. So much is precisely what a meditation on death ought to accomplish, thereby forcing an individual to reconsider his most deeply held beliefs and even to recognize the relative imper- manence of all life. Rightly, then, Augustine goes on to consider the nature of coming to be and passing away in all creation.62 At the same time, he draws an important conclusion about the nature of friendship, namely, that it is only authentic when founded in God.63 In the end, for the mature voice of Augustine as bishop, this first brush with death gives him reason to meditate on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.64 Together with the passing of time and the comfort of new friends, the redemptive death of Christ gives new meaning to life and death. Though there are other encounters with death in the narrative, especially the deaths of his son, Adeodatus, his mother, Monica (9.8.17-9.13.37), and his ‘old self’ and the moments of baptism and conversion (9.6.14; 8.5.10-8.12.30), the primary reference point for each of these is Christ. In this way, the meditation on death receives a transformation at the hands of Augustine. No longer is the meditation primarily about oneself or even one’s companions; rather, Augustine centers the meditation on death in Christ. Christ’s death becomes a model for Augustine and his readers, and in focusing upon it we perform a spiritual exercise that most nearly resembles Hadot’s category of exercises, ‘learning to die’.

61 Confessions 4.7.12. 62 this resembles the role of physics in the ancient schools designed to cultivate the ‘view from above’; see Hadot, What is ancient philosophy?, 202-211. 63 See Augustine, Confessions 4.9.14: ‘Blessed is the man that loves Thee, O God, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thee. For he alone loses no one that is dear to him, if all are dear in God, who is never lost’. 64 Confessions 4.12.18.

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Nevertheless, just as the Platonic and Hellenistic heritage upon which Augus- tine built, this meditation is inextricably bound up with Hadot’s first category, ‘learning to live’, for in contemplating the death of others and oneself in relation to Christ, a new spirit of self-sacrifice and service is born.

Conclusion – Augustinian Spiritual Exercises

In conclusion, I would like to review these thoughts about Augustine’s practice of spiritual exercises by returning to Pierre Courcelle’s interpretation of the Confessions, modified and given further applications at the hand of Hadot. How are we to understand Augustine’s account of his reading of the Hortensius in light of Courcelle’s interpretation? What symbolic meaning might this even take from Augustine’s perspective as an author? One way to respond is to sug- gest the need and value of protreptic works of philosophy. Protreptic is necessary for several reasons. First, beginners in philosophy require a text that is easy to comprehend. It must have relevance to their lives. There must be some powerful connection between the reader and the author. For Augustine, the Hor tensius served just this purpose. Prior to his encounter with Cicero, Augustine wearily read the works of rhetoricians and lawmakers and pagan poets. How- ever, in the Hortensius, he found an author who urged his readers to take up the life of philosophy. The merit for Augustine was not in Cicero’s polished phrasing but in his earnest plea to consider wisdom, to live wisely, to love truth. Second, protreptic is necessary for their inspirational role. As Augustine says, the Hortensius gave him new direction and ambition. He left his reading of the work changed. Although his hunger for ‘immortal wisdom’ led him down multiple paths in the years that followed, by reading the Hortensius he began at last to stand firmly on a path toward wisdom. Whatever else he had read failed to inspire Augustine, and his depleted energies were spent on play and useless ambitions, rather than on the pursuit and love of wisdom. What his spirit needed was not advanced theoretical philosophy but rather simple and straight- forward instructions about how to improve his life. Viewed from the perspective of Courcelle’s interpretation, therefore, Augus- tine’s reading of the Hortensius may serve as a symbolic event for an individual’s first encounter with wisdom. This may occur in the form of a good teacher or a close friend whose behavior is attractive for its simplicity and goodness. On the other hand, it may take place in the form of one’s reading of the Confessions themselves. That their author intends for his readers to be changed and make a decision in favor of wisdom seems unquestionable. Still, to deny the real value of the Hortensius for Augustine would be dishonest. The reading described in Book 3 is an example of an event in a young person’s life that gives him new direction and hope.

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This idea introduces one final theme to be discussed in a first look at the Confessions, that of the role of a spiritual director. Every written document of a philosophical school, according to Hadot, was merely an impetus to further dialogue and conversation, leaving the one who composed a written text as one who would inspire future living encounters.65 To a certain extent, Augustine performs this role as an author, yet in Philosophy as a Way of Life, Hadot points out some thoughts worth remembering concerning the genre of the Confessions and their historical context in the tradition of ancient philosophy. In ‘Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse’, he describes three types of activities carried out by the philosophical schools of antiquity. These include (1) group discussions of specific theses, (2) ‘reading and exegesis of authoritative texts’, and (3) com- posing systematic treatises.66 None of these, according to Hadot, could be extracted from the immediate context in which they were written or per- formed.67 Following Michael Foley’s suggestion, perhaps it is best to see the opening books of the Confessions as addressed to the widest audience, somewhere between propaganda (a pejorative term) and protreptic (the more properly philosophical term).68 With each successive conversion experience and the path of development taken along the way, readers are drawn further in to the inner circle that is ultimately the Church. Thus, by introducing the spiritual exercises in a subtle and progressive way, taking into account the need of his reader to be formed in the spirit of Christ, who is the ‘way of life’ (Jn 14:6), Augustine serves as both author and spiritual director.69

65 hadot captures this well when he writes, ‘ancient philosophy itself is above all oral in character. Doubtless there are occasions when someone was converted by reading a book, but one would then hasten to the philosopher to hear him speak, question him, and carry on discussions with him and other disciples in a community that always serves as a place of discussion. In matters of philosophical teaching, writing is only an aid to memory, a last resort that will never replace the living word’. Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life, 63. 66 Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life, 63-64. 67 the author explains: ‘Unlike their modern counterparts, none of these philosophical produc- tions, even the systematic works, is addressed to everyone, to a general audience, but they are intended first of all for the group formed by the members of the school; often they echo problems raised by the oral teaching. Only works of propaganda are addressed to a wider audience’. Ibid., 64. 68 Foley, ‘Discipline of the secret’, in Augustine, 330. In this same vein, Hadot goes as far as to call Plato’s dialogues works of ‘propaganda’. Hadot, What is ancient philosophy?, 72. 69 hadot repeats the same notion in his book, pointing out the role of spiritual director played by Augustine as author of the Confessions. He writes, ‘Moreover, while he writes the philosopher often extends his activity as spiritual director that he exercises in his school. In such cases, the work may be addressed to a particular disciple who needs encouragement or finds himself in a special difficulty. Or else the work may be adapted to the spiritual level of the addressees. Not all the details of the system can be explained to the beginners; many details

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This observation leaves room, nevertheless, for the reader and student to practice the other spiritual exercises outlined above and explored in depth by Hadot. Notable among these is thoroughgoing research, required if one is to come to terms with how to read and apply Augustine’s philosophy even today. Each of the Augustinian exercises, however, prepares the reader for such a discipline or intellectual habit. Writing opens him or her to a new level of self, that of objectivity and universality – accessed by Augustine in his great works of literature and praise. Attention to the present moment, directly related to the first spiritual exercise as I have presented it, creates the space in which the movement of conversion can occur. Reading, secondly, forms the petulant into the image of Christ. Thirdly, prayer is the means by which he responds to wisdom’s work within him; it is the evidence of his or her longing for something even beyond that which natural conversion offers. At this natural level, prior to any repentance or surrender to Christ, this heart’s cry is the stirring of the seeker’s innermost being for true wisdom. Finally, the meditation on death, a distinctly Platonic spiritual exercise, becomes for Augustine a means to meditate on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as an example of the human meaning of life and death. With these four Augustinian spiritual exercises in place – together with my brief venture in discussing the role of Scripture within such a ‘system’ as a whole, what is unfortunately a concern left beyond the limitations of this article, yet perhaps should be viewed as a unique divergence from the Platonic- Hellenistic heritage – a beginner in the pursuit of wisdom may be well prepared to walk steadily along a path towards maturity. Just as Hadot recommends, these exercises are designed to bring about the healing of the one who under- goes them. The spiritual exercises, in this way, lift us out of the darkness of self-interest and place us on the road to light. Unlike Plato, however, Augustine adds the uniquely Christian element of formation into Christ-likeness as well as rich scriptural resources of the Jewish and Christian traditions. As such, he offers us a transformation of the Greek tradition examined so carefully by Hadot.

can be revealed only to those further along the path. Above all, the work, even if it is apparently theoretical and systematic, is written not so much to inform the reader of a doctrinal content but to form him, to make him traverse a certain itinerary in the course of which he will make spiritual progress. This procedure is clear in the works of Plotinus and Augustine, in which all the detours, starts and stops, and digressions of the work are formative elements. One must always approach a philosophical work of antiquity with the idea of spiritual progress in mind’. Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life, 64.

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