Sublime

You might think of Augustine as offering a hitchhiker’s guide to the cosmos for wandering hearts.

“To be is to be perceived,” said the Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753). We exist and give existence by virtue of perception. Berkeley meant that God’s omniscient perception maintains all things. For a moralist—and Berkeley was a bishop—this could mean you’re never out of the sight of God, so you’d better be good! For a metaphysician, “E

Augustine is our contemporary. He has directly and indirectly shaped the way we understand our pursuits, the call to authenticity.

Augustine represents the Christianity Camus doesn’t believe, which might make him more Augustinian than he realizes—and might make us more Augustinian than we imagined. An Augustinianism sans grace might nonetheless be a gateway.