A Feminist Appraisal of Augustine

Abstract

AbstractEmploying several major lines of argument, I claim that Augustine exhibits styles of thought, literary methods and modes of inquiry that are not only accessible to feminist scholarship, but that are genuinely feminist‐friendly. I first examine the Confessions, and then proceed with analyses of Augustine's style, a comparison of his work to that of another major thinker in the Christian tradition, an analysis of his use of the notion of unity, and a final look at City of God. The work of commentators such as Chadwick, Clark, McMahon and Mallard is used in order to support the argument. Augustine's standing as one of the founding Church Fathers may make it difficult for us to mention him in the same breath as the concept of “feminism.”1 Yet in our attempts to try to come to grips with thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Quine, we have frequently noticed that concepts useful to feminists are where one finds them.