Augustine and Modernity

This monograph examines how Augustine's theological vision challenges fundamental assumptions of modern secular thought. Hanby argues that modernity's rejection of Augustine represents not merely a philosophical disagreement but a profound metaphysical rupture that shapes contemporary understandings of nature, freedom, and the self.

The work contends that modern thought, beginning with figures like Descartes and culminating in contemporary secular philosophy, systematically inverts Augustine's theological framework. Where Augustine grounds being, knowledge, and desire in divine participation, modernity posits autonomous nature, self-grounding reason, and immanent causality. Hanby demonstrates how this inversion creates what he terms a "nihilistic" metaphysics that, despite claims to neutrality, represents its own theological position—one that excludes transcendence from its fundamental categories.

Central to Hanby's analysis is Augustine's understanding of creation as gift and the human person as constituted by desire for God. He shows how modern conceptions of freedom as arbitrary choice and nature as mechanistic system emerge precisely from rejecting this Augustinian synthesis. The work engages critically with John Milbank's radical orthodoxy while developing its own genealogy of secular reason. Hanby traces how nominalism and voluntarism prepare the conceptual ground for modernity's characteristic separations: faith from reason, nature from grace, theology from philosophy.

The monograph's methodological approach combines historical genealogy with systematic theological analysis. Hanby reads modern philosophers not simply as secular thinkers but as crypto-theologians whose systems encode specific rejections of Christian doctrine. He argues that contemporary debates about science and religion, ethics and politics, remain trapped within categories that presuppose this anti-Augustinian settlement.

The work's significance lies in its comprehensive challenge to secular self-understanding. Rather than accepting modernity's presentation of itself as neutral rational inquiry, Hanby exposes its theological commitments and metaphysical costs. He suggests that Augustine's vision offers resources for moving beyond modern antinomies—not through nostalgic return but through recovery of participatory metaphysics that reunites being and gift, nature and grace. The study contributes to fundamental questions about whether coherent discourse about transcendence remains possible within modern categories and whether Augustine's theological vision might enable more adequate engagement with contemporary questions about human nature, scientific knowledge, and political order.