Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-05T12:16:45.618Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Philosophical Autobiography: St Augustine and John Stuart Mill1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Martin Warner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Many classic philosophical debates converge on the twin questions ‘What is man?’ and ‘What is his place in nature?’, in the sense that taking up a position in those debates normally commits one to a certain range of answers to these questions. Such answers typically lie near the centre of one's web of belief, deeply entrenched in the structure of one's concepts, and thus remain remarkably resistant to the standard techniques of confirmation and refutation.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 16: Philosophy and Literature , September 1983 , pp. 189 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

My thanks are due to Dr R. A. Gekoski for many valuable discussions about these matters. The epigraphs are taken from Dilthey, 214, and Wittgenstein, 18e.

References

Augustine, (1): The Confessions of St Augustine, trans. Warner, Rex (New York: Mentor Books, 1963).Google Scholar
Augustine (2): Augustine, Saint, The Retractations, trans. SisterBogan, Mary (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1968).Google Scholar
Augustine (3): Augustine, Saint, The Trinity, trans. McKenna, Stephen, (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1963).Google Scholar
Augustine (4): Augustine, Saint, Christian Instruction, trans. Gavigan, John (Washington, Catholic University of America Press, 1950).Google Scholar
Augustine (5): Augustine, Saint, The City of God, trans. Healey, John, Tasker, R. V. G. (ed.), 2 vols. (London: Everyman, 1945).Google Scholar
Ayer: Ayer, A. J., ‘Philosophy and Language’, in his The Concept of a Person and Other Essays (London: Macmillan, 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown: Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London, Faber and Faber, 1967).Google Scholar
Champlin: Champlin, T. S., ‘Self-Deception: A Problem about Autobiography’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. liii, 1979.Google Scholar
Cohen: Cohen, L. Jonathan, The Probable and the Provable (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collingwood: Collingwood, R. G., An Autobiography (London: Oxford University Press, 1939).Google Scholar
Cumming: Cumming, Robert D., ‘Mill's History of His Ideas’, Journal of the History of Ideas xxv (1964).Google Scholar
Dilthey: Dilthey, W., Selected Writings, ed. & trans. Rickman, H. P. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).Google Scholar
Durrant: Durrant, Michael, ‘Cumulative Arguments in Theology’, Sophia xv (1976).Google Scholar
Locke: Locke, Don, Memory (London: Macmillan, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malcolm: Malcolm, Norman, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1962).Google Scholar
McDonnell: McDonnell, James, ‘Success and Failure: A Rhetorical Study of the First Two Chapters of Mill's Autobiography’, University of Toronto Quarterly xlv (1975–1976).Google Scholar
Mill (1): Mill, John Stuart, Autobiography (ed.) Stillinger, Jack (London and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).Google Scholar
Mill, (2): The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, Stillinger, Jack (ed.) (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961).Google Scholar
Mill, (3): Mill on Bentham and Coleridge, Leavis, F. R. (ed.) (London: Chatto & Windus, 1950).Google Scholar
Mill (4): Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, 8th edn., London, Longmans Green Reader and Dyer, 1872.Google Scholar
Mill, (5): The Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Elliot, Hugh S. R., 2 vols., London, Longmans Green & Co., 1910.Google Scholar
Mill (6): Mill, John Stuart, ‘Bain's Psychology’, in his Dissertations and Discussions, vol. III, London, Longmans Green Reader and Dyer, 1867.Google Scholar
Mill (7): Mill, John Stuart, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and of the Principal Philosophical Questions Discussed in his Writings, London, Longman Green Longman Roberts and Green 1865.Google Scholar
Mill (8): Mill, John Stuart, ‘Inaugural Address: Delivered to the University of St. Andrews’, in Mill's Essays on Literature and Society, ed. Schneewind, J. B. New York, Collier Books, Macmillan, 1965.Google Scholar
Mill (9): Mill, James, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, Mill, John Stuart (ed.), 2 vols. (London: Longmans Green Reader and Dyer, 1869).Google Scholar
Mitchell: Mitchell, Basil, The Justification of Religious Belief (London: Macmillan, 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montaigne, : The Essays of Michel Eyquern de Montaigne, trans. Cotton, C., Hazlitt, W. Carew (ed.) (Chicago, London and Toronto: William Barton, 1952).Google Scholar
Newman: Newman, John Henry Cardinal, An Ewsay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Westminster Md.: Christian Classics Inc., 1973).Google Scholar
Nietzsche: Nietzsche, Freidrich, Joyful Wisdom, trans. Common, Thomas, Reinhardt, Kurt F. (ed.) (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1960).Google Scholar
O'Connell (1): O'Connell, Robert J. S.J., ‘The Plotinian Fall of the Soul in St Augustine’. Traditio xix (1963).Google Scholar
O'Connell (2): O'Connell, Robert J. S.J., ‘The Riddle of Augustine's Confessions: A Plotinian Key’, International Philosophical Quarterly iv (1964).Google Scholar
Pascal: Pascal, Roy, Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960).Google Scholar
Rousseau, : The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. Cohen, J. M. (London: Penguin Books, 1953).Google Scholar
Sartre: Sartre, Jean-Paul, Words, trans., Clephane, Irene (London: Penguin Books, 1967).Google Scholar
Shumaker: Shumaker, Wayne, English Autobiography: Its Emergence, Materials, and Form (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954).Google Scholar
Spengemann: Spengemann, William C., The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980).Google Scholar
Thomas: Thomas, William, ‘John Stuart Mill and the Uses of Autobiography’, History 56 (1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein: Ludwig, Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch, G. H. von Wright (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980).Google Scholar