An analysis of the classic work, Confessions, by St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Includes Roman history and Christian controversies at the time and background for understanding the book. Also discusses its ongoing usefulness and how it may serve as a guide despite the obvious difference between Augustine's world and ours.

The "Long Debate" on the nature of truth, the scale of real values, the life one should aspire to live, the character of justice, the sources of law, and the terms of civic and political life is encompassed by the name philosophy. Three persistent themes--understood as problems--are knowledge, conduct, and governance, on which there is a storehouse of insights, some so utterly persuasive as to have shaped thought itself. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle,...