Augustine And Gender

The relationship between Augustine of Hippo and the subject of gender raises important questions. Augustine and Gender address these issues head-on. This volume offers original interpretations of the many ways that gender appears throughout Augustine’s thought and works. Contributions draw from a wide range of sources including Augustine’s sermons, letters, treatises, and dialogues. Readers will discover detailed analyses about the nature of desire and emotion, the politics of sex and marriage, the possibilities of human speech and exegesis, and the hope of education and community. In addition, this book is a persuasive demonstration of the benefits of bringing together Augustinian scholars with the most pressing concerns of the present.

The author discusses Augustine's views on women, particularly women within Christian theology. The author also addresses how Augustine's views were based on his cultural and psychological circumstances, and how his ideas on and attitudes towards women changed.

Augustine of Hippo (b. A.D. 354) is considered the single most influential theologian in the history of the Church in the West. Among his many contributions, Augustine developed a sexual ethic that became decisive for all later teachings in the Christian West on issues of marriage, reproduction, and sexuality. Some of the most significant and representative passages on marriage and sexuality from his works are presented here. They recount Augustine's own struggle with sexuality, and stress the important role it played in his conversion to Christianity as well as its influence on his theological principles later in life. The passages in this collection are divided into four chapters which document the chronological development of Augustine's sexual ethic. The first chapter includes passages that pertain to Augustine's own life and illustrate some of his positive and negative models of marital relation. The second chapter recounts Augustine's responses to the Manichean teachings on the body, reproduction, and marriage, mostly from his early years as a Christian. The third chapter contains passages marking Augustine's reaction to the ascetic debates within late fourth-century Latin Christianity. And, finally, the fourth chapter illustrates Augustine's mature sexual and marital ethic, which he elaborated in the midst of--and in reaction to--arguments with Pelagian writers. In a separate introduction, Elizabeth Clark sets the development of Augustine's thought within the context of his own intellectual biography and views it against the background of related issues and movements in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, such as Manichaeism, Jovinianism, and Pelagianism. The selections she presents here offer a comprehensive and uncommonly well-balanced picture of Augustine and his work. St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality is the first in a projected series of volumes on various themes found in the writings of the church fathers. ABOUT THE EDITOR: Elizabeth Clark is John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion at Duke University. She is a past president of the American Academy of Religion and the North American Patristic Society, and a member of the editoral board of the Fathers of the Church series.

After establishing a feminist-historicist perspective on the tradition of biblical commentary, Tinkle develops in-depth case studies that situate scholars reading the bible in three distinct historical moments, and in so doing she exposes the cultural pressures that medieval scholars felt as they interpreted the bible.

The closing years of the eighteenth century were the particular domain of literary radicals whose work challenged ideas on gender and sexuality. During this transitional period, the poetry of William Blake reflected the changing mores of society as well as his own developing notions of gender. This work presents an in-depth exploration of gender issues in Blake's three epic poems, The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. The opening chapter discusses basic concepts such as notions of apocalypse, utopia and gender, all essential to the author's reading of Blake. Background regarding the literary atmosphere of the time, which included influence from the tradition of dissent, English Jacobinism and early feminism, is also included, effectively setting the context for Blake's work. The book then examines the poems in chronological order. It concentrates particularly on male and female activity within each work (refuting the common assumption that Blake was anti-feminist) while exploring the symbolism of the poetry. Blake's repeated theme of the struggle between the sexes receives special emphasis, as does the progress of his gender vision through the three poems.

What does it mean to say that a human being is body and soul, and how does each affect the other? Late antique philosophers, Christians included, asked these central questions. The papers collected here explore their answers, and use those answers to ask further questions, reading Iamblichus, Porphyry, Augustine and others in their social and intellectual context. Among the topics dealt with are the following. Humans are mortal rational beings, so how does the mortal body affect the rational soul? The body needs food: what foods are best for the soul, and is it right to eat animal foods if animals are less rational than humans? The body is gendered for reproduction: are reason and the soul also gendered? Ascetic lifestyles may free our bodies from the limitations of gender and desire, so that our souls are free to reconnect with the divine; but this need must be balanced with the claims of family and society. Philosophers asked whether life in the body is exile for the soul; Christians defended their claim that body as well as soul would live after death, and even the smallest fragment of a martyr's body is proof of resurrection.

Traditional accounts of the feminist history of philosophy have viewed reason as associated with masculinity and subsequent debates have been framed by this assumption. Yet recent debates in deconstruction have shown that gender has never been a stable matter. In the history of philosophy 'female' and 'woman' are full of ambiguity. What does deconstruction have to offer feminist criticism of the history of philosophy? Yielding Gender explores this question by examining three crucial areas; the issue of gender as 'troubled'; deconstruction; and feminist criticism of the history of philosophy. The first part of the book discusses the work of Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and contemporary French feminist philosophy including key figures such as Luce Irigiray. Particular attention is given to the possibilities offered by deconstruction for understanding the history of philosophy. The second part considers and then challenges feminist interpretations of some key figures in the history of philosophy. Penelope Deutscher sketches how Rousseau, St. Augustine and Simone de Beauvoir have described gender and argues that their readings of gender are in fact empowered by gender's own contradiction and instability rather than limited by it.