I’ve been an Augustine scholar for fifteen years, since my undergraduate days. Was I called to action in some way, as was Augustine upon reading Cicero’s lost Hortensius? No. If my interest in Augustine stemmed from provocation, I was the one with the stick: as a junior at Emory University, I sought to lay at his feet all of the extant problems with embodiment and sexuality I was told originated in him. Instead, Augustine calmed me and taught me a way of philosophy that did not cut my body or my history from my self. Looking for a villain, I found a man, perhaps the most “real-life” philosopher I’ve encountered, though he’s been dead 1500 years or so. Because of the reality of this man, the palpability of his life and historical period, I learned to approach philosophy as someone in time, not outside of time.

Amongst books, trinkets, and pictures, in my office I have a comic strip one of my students drew a few years ago: it is of the Lion/Mouth exchange from The Teacher (De magistro). I often look at this picture, remembering fondly the student but also what fun Augustine shows in lovingly teaching. Augustine certainly provoked Adeodatus that day, and every day I enter the classroom I hope to follow in those confident, teasing footsteps.