Augustine's Inner Dialogue: The Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity

Augustine's philosophy of life involves mediation, reviewing one's past and exercises for self-improvement. Centuries after Plato and before Freud he invented a ‘spiritual exercise' in which every man and woman is able, through memory, to reconstruct and reinterpret life's aims. Brian Stock examines Augustine's unique way of blending literary and philosophical themes. He proposes a new interpretation of Augustine's early writings, establishing how the philosophical soliloquy (soliloquium) h...