ABSTRACT
Recent scholarship has done much to clarify the extent to which Augustine engages with Stoic and (Neo)Platonic thought in his moral psychology and his metaphysics. On the overarching question of the place of happiness in ethics and how Augustine’s moral psychology relates to his views on value scholars have, however, come to remarkably diverse conclusions. Some commentators have even suggested that Augustine rejected eudaimonism and championed a distinctively new conception of happiness. Ekenberg examines Augustine’s relation to classical eudaimonism with a special eye to his view of evil and pain and misery. While Augustine clearly considered as authorities neither Epicureans nor Stoics nor any other ancient school, and while he considered his own Christian philosophical outlook importantly different from all the others, the ancient debate exerted a profound influence on his thought. Ekenberg argues that the purportedly anticlassical elements are part of a larger set of presuppositions about the human condition that are largely consistent with those of Epicurean hedonism.
