Intimacy and Intelligibility: Word and Life in Augustine's "De magistro"

by Erika Kidd

Overview

Intimacy and Intelligibility is a paradigm-shifting exploration of De magistro, Augustine’s overlooked and misunderstood dialogue about words and signs.

Erika Kidd's fresh approach to Augustine’s De magistro (On the Teacher) fills a gap in the emerging conversation about Augustine’s early dialogues, while avoiding the disincarnate bias of existing interpretations of this essential work. Kidd’s reading situates the dialogue within a broadly Augustinian tradition of reflection on language and intimacy. Drawing on the work of feminist philosopher and linguist Luce Irigaray, Intimacy and Intelligibility unpacks the literary form and the relational context of De magistro, including the women who lurk in the dialogue’s shadows. Kidd likewise reimagines the place of Christ, the inner teacher, in the dialogue. Though the inner teacher is often cast as a mere guarantor of meaning, she argues that the inner teacher summons Augustine and his son Adeodatus to an intimate space of meaning, rooted in the life they share.

Kidd reveals that De magistro is not a text about informing but a text about intimacy. It is a rich meditation on the blessed life and a worthy memorial to Augustine’s beloved son.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268210212
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	10/15/2025
Pages:	156
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Erika Kidd is an associate professor of Catholic studies at the University of St. Thomas.

Read an Excerpt

Augustine’s remembrance here summarizes two sides of the coin of a child’s independence from his parent. Side one: my child’s growing independence from my will is a relief, promising freedom for my child and myself. My child is not what I make or create. He can set out in new directions without being shackled by my imperfections and mistakes as a parent. In time, he can respond not out of obedience only, but out of his love. This independence turns out to be a surprising (but real) form of grace. Side two is the shadow side: my child’s independence from my will, from my absolute sphere of control, often means I cannot fix, cannot guarantee, cannot protect. My actions only play, often ineffectually, at the edge of what matters most. This can cause pain beyond reckoning. I cannot protect the bodies I love, to say nothing of their hearts. Can grace be found there too?

De magistro was probably published around 390, and Adeodatus likely died within a year of the dialogue’s publication. Whatever the precise timing might have been, the dialogue winds up serving as a memorial to the boy. It keeps the memory of Adeodatus alive, for Augustine and for others. Augustine’s comments in Confessiones 9 make clear the dialogue is not just a memorial to brilliance, Augustine’s as a teacher and Adeodatus’ as a student. Augustine does not memorialize Adeodatus for his cleverness in sussing out a theory of signification in response to his father’s questioning. No such theory is needed. They are already in conversation, making meaning together in fits and starts, and the connection—the intimacy—is already there. Instead Augustine’s memories frame De magistro as a memorial to the fullness of the person of Adeodatus, as he is held in love by his absent mother, his imperfect father, and his gracious God. De magistro memorializes Adeodatus not as a dead child, but as a child of love.

The book is a memorial to the love and the life shared between the two. To acknowledge that fact is not to turn our attention as readers away from the significance of the conversation; instead it makes us better readers of that significance. What might it mean for a father to ask a brilliant and beloved son (mag. 1.1) “What are we trying to accomplish when we speak with one another?” And what kind of answers could Augustine take comfort in having found, in conversation with his son, after Adeodatus' death? I have no interest in inventing the inner lives of these men after the fact. But it is hard to imagine that one who had lost his son—and felt the deep bonds of their familial connection—would find any sense in the claim that Christ, the inner teacher, arrives to supplant the father-son bond, to make possible understanding beyond the bonds of a shared life, and to motivate speech apart from the realities of human life. It is hard to imagine why Augustine would find any consolation in the notion that Christ makes possible disinterested and disincarnate communication.

Just as Christ is not some instrument by which Augustine and Adeodatus can make language function well, neither is love. Augustine’s insight in De magistro is not that loving people provides some kind of cognitive and communicative benefits, however true that may be. Love is not simply another effective instrument for getting on with language, one that facilitates good listening or patience in confusion. I take Augustine's point here to be more descriptive than prescriptive. We misunderstand language when we think it serves to make a connection between self and other. That is backwards. Language only works inasmuch as the connection is there. We already have what we need. Love undergirds meaning. Already. The love Augustine describes is no sentimental feeling of affection, but, as Eric Gregory puts it, “a form of arresting attention that knows the dangers present within love for others.” Augustine invites us to attend to the ways our lives form meaning, more or less, in ways well beyond our control.

(excerpted from chapter 7)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1. Informers

1. Informing

2. Prelude

3. Gods

Part 2. Intimates

4. Deliverance

5. Mother of the Word

6. Christ’s Life

7. Words, Afterwards

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

It is almost miraculous that a work as well-known as Augustine’s De magistro should successfully undergo a fresh and radical reinterpretation, yet Erika Kidd has done precisely that. She has single-handedly changed the conversation about this dialogue; scholars will be coming to terms with her thesis for generations.” —Michael P. Foley, editor of Ever Ancient, Ever New

“Intimacy and Intelligibility offers an original and persuasive reading of Augustine’s De magistro, one that I find exciting and valuable.” —Karmen MacKendrick, author of Material Mystery

From the Publisher