Becoming Divine Passions in Augustine's Spiritual Life

"Passions occupied a central place in Augustine's intellectual life, both in theory and in practice. How to free oneself from the passions relating to worldly matters and moving from egoistic desires (especially pride and the passion for domination) to the love of the divine life, became one of the main questions in Augustine's philosophical and theological tenets on emotions. This book presents the first systematic study of Augustine's conception of passions as well as his approach to salvation from their domination and the deification of passions. In addressing Augustine's developing views of the classical philosophy of emotions and his theological debate with heretics, Gao Yuan combines a critical evaluation of recent research with a rigorous philosophical analysis of the original Latin texts from the perspective of various research areas such as semantics, moral psychology, political philosophy, and theological anthropology, along with its three dimensions: soteriology, eschatology, and the doctrine of deification. The present book, grounded on the previous edition, makes a comprehensive contribution to the theoretical innovation of Augustine's doctrine of passions providing an ideal point of reference for the study of classical and medieval philosophy of emotions"--