Augustine’s is a sensibility that has since become so common that we no longer experience the Confessions as the earthquake they were felt to be by readers of late antiquity. For Augustine is the first human being to say “I”—and to mean what we mean today. His Confessions are, therefore, the first genuine autobiography in human history. The implications of this are staggering and, even today, difficult to encompass. A good start is made, of course, by reading the Confessions themselves and falling under their spell. But in order to grasp the immensity of Augustine’s achievement, one must read
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