Augustin, Contra Academicos: (vel De academicis) Bucher 2 und 3: Einleitung und Kommentar

This scholarly volume is a revised version of the author’s Habilitationsschrift, which was presented to the University of Bern in 1994. The body of the work is a line by line commentary on the second and third books of Augustine’s Contra Academicos, one of the first of the Cassiciacum dialogues written during the months preceding his baptism. Though I was initially puzzled that the author did not include the first book, Fuhrer convincingly argues that books two and three can be justifiably treated as a unity distinct from book one, both on grounds of their content and on the basis of their temporal sequence, for they follow after the dialogues, De beata vita and De ordine, while the first book precedes them.

The introduction, which runs 54 pages, deals with the dating of the work, the identity of Romanianus to whom the dialogue is dedicated, Augustine’s partners in the dialogue, the background, and the question of the historicity of the dialogue. Fuhrer then turns to a discussion of the dialogue form, the title and aim of the work, Augustine’s relation to scepticism, Platonism, and Christianity. Finally, she deals with Augustine’s language and style, his arguments, the transmission of the text, and the influence of the work.

In its meticulously careful philological as well as philosophical and theological approach to the text of Augustine, Fuhrer’s commentary calls to mind James O’Donnell’s splendid commentary on the Confessions. Like O’Donnell’s work in relation to future study of the Confessions, Fuhrer’s will be indispensable for any future serious work upon the last two books of Contra Academicos. On the other hand, because of its scholarly nature, the commentary will serve more as resource to consult for a particular passage than as something that one will read as a whole, as the author herself admits in the Foreword.

Following the commentary, there are two appendices, one listing corrigenda to the text of the CCL edition which was established by W. M. Green, the other listing departures from Green’s text which otherwise serves as the basis for the commentary. There is an extensive bibliography that first lists texts, translations, and commentaries, then lexical and grammatical studies, and finally monographs and articles. Finally, there is a thirty-page index of citations from the Bible, Augustine, and other authors.

Among the most fascinating parts of books two and three of Contra academicos are the sections in which Augustine reveals his highly positive reaction toward the Neoplatonic philosophy which he encountered in Milan and which permitted him to resolve the intellectual difficulties which were the principal causes that had kept him from Catholicism for so many years. Fuhrer’s treatment of Augustine’s first encounter with the libri Platonicorum is guided by the best contemporary scholarly literature and is balanced in its account of the influences of Platonic philosophy and Christianity upon the convert of 386–387. For example, one of the disputed questions about the dialogue centers upon the referent of “huic tanto bono” in II, 2, 5. Though I have preferred O’Meara’s view that Augustine was there expressing his conviction that the writings of Paul could not be opposed to the great good of Neoplatonism, Fuhrer presents a cogent argument for the opposite view. So too, in III, 19, 42, Augustine refers for the first time to the incarnation and speaks of the divine intellect’s descent to a human body. Fuhrer shows in four pages of commentary on that one line that Augustine is already expressing a certain reserve toward the Neoplatonism which he described as “verissima philosophia.”