An American poet, essayist, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau said:” read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all”. In my high school times, each year school provided a list of books that we must-read. The list included a classic work of literature, history, philosophy, and culture. Confession by St. Augustine is one of these great books that you must read.
St. Augustine of Hippo provides in Confession coherent rationale. The fundamental reason for reading great tests is to be wiser. For Augustine reading for any reason other than the sapiential is very little importance or value. He argues there that wisdom should lead to personal transformation – a matter of life or death.
” The overall effect of the Confession is to turn the reader inward, away from the individual journey of Augustine and toward the collective journey of humanity towards the divine” (Augustine 46).
Augustine was reading a lot, to have a better understanding of this journey; he measures his spiritual growth throughout the lenses of reading. The beauty of reading Confession is a documentary history that assembles the various fact of life. Augustine tells the story of his heart and soul.
I think one of the reasons we should read St, Augustine is that in Augustine there are two great main points, which are one in the love of Christ. An intellectual and a spiritual conversion. All this could be said to be fitting into an existentialist vision of love, in an analysis of holiness as the essence of God and the fullness of man. His work The City of God does not support anything else but Love as origin, explanation, evolution and support of reality and history. The question of the relationship between reason and faith is treated under the aspect of the relationship between faith and culture.