Not all Christian love is love of God: there may be human loves that are distinctively Christian. But these other loves are suffused by the love of God, and, as we shall see, their real object always is, in a way, God. So understanding Augustine's view of the love of God is our central task. On Augustine's doctrine of love, see Brown (1967), Arendt (1929, 1996), Di Giovanni (1964); on the spiritual journey of Christian life in general, see Gilson (1949); for a fine general account of Augustine's philosophy of mind, see O'Daly (1987); on his relationship to pagan culture, see Marrou (1938). For an interesting account of the role of desire in the Confessions, see Miles (1992), and for a fascinating account of the relationship of this work to Augustine's biography, see Wills (1999). [2]: Confessions 1.13. All translations from Augustine are my own. Wills suggests, plausibily enough, that The Testimony is a better translation of the title, Confessiones, than Confessions: confiteor means to acknowledge or testify, not simply to confess in the narrow sense. I retain the traditional title for clarity's sake. [3]: I do not take any stand on the vexed question of whether Augustine actually read Plotinus, or only heard of the views at second hand. This is irrelevant to my argument, since he clearly is familiar in a general way with the structure of the Platonist contemplative ascent. [4]: My account of Augustine's development is close to that advanced in Brown (1967), a work for which I have much admiration. In many respects I am simply giving more elaboration and philosophical structure to the picture he has laid out. But I believe that he has not presented a complete picture of the arguments that lead Augustine to reject the Platonic ascent: see note 9 to this chapter. [5]: Because we cannot be sure in what version Augustine encountered Plotinus (see note 3), it is all the less clear how, precisely, he interpreted various disputed points in Plotinus' complex and contested text. I reconstruct his Neoplatonism, simply, from his own doctrines in the works under discussion. [6]: Both works are dated to 388 C.E.: they are thus among his earliest postconversion writings. [7]: "... labor, et contra huius mundi molestias atque blanditias magnus acerrimusque con-flictus" (73). [8]: "Ingenti quadam et incredibili fiducia pergit in Deum, id est, in ipsam contemplationem veritatis." One can see here how superficial the Christian modification to the Platonist conception has been: the name of God is explicated by a reference to the contemplation of truth. [9]: "Ipsa cogitatio ab omni cupiditate ac faece rerum mortalium sese cohibuerit et eliqua-verit." Compare the reflexive verbs of Brunetto Latini in Dante's Hell - see Chapter 12. [10]: Brown stresses the first group of arguments. Even his chapter title, "The Lost Future," implies that some goal, still desirable, is simply being found to be unavailable. But I believe that the second group of arguments has even greater importance. [11]: Brown (1967), p. 155. [12]: See Genealogy of Morals II. The extent of Nietzsche's sympathy with Augustine's project should not be underestimated: for Nietzsche, this "bad conscience," though unfortunately linked in the Christian tradition with hatred of this world and of the body, is also the "pregnancy" out of which all great creative achievement and all philosophy must grow. [13]: Here there would appear to be an especially sharp critique of Plotinus, Ennead 1.6 (much indebted to Plato's Symposium), where self-knowledge is equated with knowledge of the good that you are. Once again, it may be disputed precisely how Plotinus understands the role of the bodily in the perception of beauty; but it is reasonable to suppose that Augustine understood Neoplatonic doctrine to urge a progressive separation of soul from bodily distraction. [14]: