The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

by Susan Wise Bauer

Unlike earlier writers, Augustine sees decisions and thoughts, not big external events, as the true landmarks of a life; like the hero of an ancient epic, he journeys toward a new shore, but his journey is an internal trek from corruption to holiness. Unlike earlier writers, Augustine puts his private self at the center of the universe; his story is not about a Roman, or a North African, or even a church member, but about Augustine, an individual whose hidden, private life has enormous supernatural significance. Unlike earlier writers, Augustine sees a single moment of his life—his conversion—as the pivot around which all else spins. Choosing a meaning for the past, relating all else to it, describing the inner life of the private self, finding that “watershed” event of the past that made the self what it is today: all of these become, after Augustine, the conventions of the autobiography.