Αποτελέσματα Αναζήτησης
A summary of Book 2 in Augustine's Confessions. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of Confessions and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
Confessions was written by the man who is now known as Saint Augustine or Augustine of Hippo, but who was born as Aurelius Augustinus in 354 CE in Roman North Africa (now eastern Algeria). His Confessions was published around 397 CE.
Augustine titled his deeply philosophical and theological autobiography Confessions to implicate two aspects of the form the work would take. To confess, in Augustine's time, meant both to give an account of one's faults to God and to praise God (to speak one's love for God).
Augustine begins Book II with a candid confession of the deep and burning sexual desires that he experienced as a teenage boy. He "ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures." He realizes, however, from the remove of middle age, that his one desire was simply to love and be loved.
One evening, Augustine and his friends stole pears from a nearby orchard not to eat them but simply out of “a greedy, full-fed love of sin” (37). Reflecting on this event, Augustine articulates a theory of sin.
In Chapter 2, he writes that “I cared for nothing but to love and be loved. But my love went beyond the affection of one mind for another, beyond the arc of the bright beam of friendship.” English writer G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really searching for God.”
The death of his friend depresses Augustine, who then reflects on the meaning of love of a friend in a mortal sense versus love of a friend in God; he concludes that his friend's death affected him severely because of his lack of love in God.
