Toward an Early Modern Affect Theory: Christian Stoicism and the Augustinian Will in Medieval and Early Modern Thought

Abstract

Augustine provides us with an essential lynchpin between these classical, and particularly Stoic, theories of the passions and a Christian humanism that dominates theories of the passions through the early modern period. Many scholars have noted Augustine’s debt to the Stoics, and to Seneca in particular, so my account here will not aim to be comprehensive. Instead I will focus narrowly on the ways in which Augustine both inherits and bequeaths a view of passion as structurally gendered and as posing (especially in the form of grief) a dangerous challenge to the masculine coherence of the soul.