Joshua's PhD

I've opened up this fundraiser for those wishing to support Sydney and I in this last year of the Phd. Currently, we are living solely off of my own stipend, which was calculated in 2019 to cover the expenses of a single student living and studying in Aberdeen. Unsurprisingly, this is not sufficient to sustain a family of four, much less cover things like Visa fees or trips home. While I have been able to supplement this through teaching at the University of Aberdeen and teaching online at CIU, rising costs of living have made it increasingly difficult to sustain. Additionally, as I will be simultaneously applying for jobs (not a simple process in academia) and pushing to finish the PhD this year, I will not have as much capacity to teach. While Sydney and I are both looking for additional sources of employment, the limitations of being abroad on a student visa have made this challenging, and our status as students renders us ineligible for many of the benefits that are offered to British parents. We're also trying to save a bit in preparation for an international move next Summer. If you'd like to support us financially, please do, but regardless we ask our friends to pray with and for us. Pray for wisdom and clarity in my writing and teaching, for faith and patience in this last year, and for direction as we begin to look at what comes after Aberdeen. I've listed a brief sketch of what I've been up to, but there's more of what I'm doing at my website. Thank you for reading and for being in our lives.

With grace,

Joshua

Teaching

Since I've been at Aberdeen I've had the priveledge to teach three undergraduate courses: Atheism, Controversial Questions (applied ethics), and The History of Theology from Christ to Calvin. I plan to continue teaching here in the Auturmn term. At CIU I am teaching Personal and Social Ethics. I've taught this two-week intensive course about a dozen times now, and really enjoy being able to stay connected to CIU and life in South Carolina. In October, I am teaching theology to clergy at St Geroge's House at Windsor Castle, which will be a great professional experience, and also just sounds so fun.

Conferences and Essays

Since starting at Aberdeen, I've shared my work with a number of other scholars here in Aberdeen, but also in Oxford and Cambridge, Rome, and back in the States. Two of these papers I've presented have been accepted for publication, though that will take some time.

Podcast

Yes, like most people, I've started a podcast. It's on Augustine. It's nothing glamourous, but it's a chance to sit down with leading scholars and talk about their lives and their work on Augustine

Thesis

The thesis has been coming along well. The first year was mostly reading and figuring out what I'm doing. This second year has been about finding a new supervisor and getting writing. This next year will see the completion of the thesis and hopefully a few more journal articles. Thus far, I've drafted about half the body (chapters 2&3) and hope to finish up the full draft by the end of the year.

If you are interested in learning more about my project you can find the full outline below:

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Title: Politics without Persons: Augustinian Anthropology in Liberal Democracy:

Central Question: What does Augustine say about personal identity; how does it underpin his ethics and politics?

Introduction: How Augustine; How Now?

December 2023

Ethics and political philosophy demand rich accounts of philosophical anthropology. Contemporary accounts often rely on modern notions of autonomy, rationality, and the persistence of the self. Despite his antiquity, Augustine’s reflections on the individual offers relevant refutations to these notions and articulates a conception of the individual that is continually frustrated by the inaccessibility of self-knowledge, the supremacy of the will over rationality, and the apparent discontinuity of the self throughout change. However, rather than providing alternative accounts anthropology and politics, Augustine offers a wholly foreign ontological schema in which such accounts are lost cosmological movements to or way from the love of God. Likewise, Augustine’s rhetoric leads his readers away from cerebral questions of self-knowledge and politics, into affective dialectic, evoking the reader into participation in these cosmological movements. Thus, Augustine describes his own work as philosophy, interested in loving wisdom, rather than understanding something about wisdom.

This thesis follows the rhetorical intentions behind Augustine’s anthropology, focusing on the frustrations of self-knowledge in Confessiones and de Trinitate. Further, it seeks to reconcile tensions between Augustine’s emphasis on interiority and reflection in these works and his admonitions against self-love in de Ciutas Dei. Its distinction as a work of theology is twofold. First, it seeks to answer the philosophical questions, ‘what is the nature of individual identity?’ and ‘what are the epistemic status of this self-knowledge?’. Second, following Augustine’s paradigm, it is a thesis in philosophy as it exposes limitations of these intellectual questions, and prompts affective critiques against the centrality of the individual in ethics and politics.

Chapter 1. Paradoxes of Self-Knowledge

April 2023

This chapter presents de trin. as a philosophical development of themes first introduced in Conf. and the Cassiciacum dialogues. Augustine presents an apophatic account of self-knowledge and provides a framework for an epistemology of humility and love, not rationality. Following Cavadini, it argues that de trin., like conf. is a cohesive rhetorical work, presenting the dearth of ontological substance of the individual, and instead urging its reader to location of one’s identity in the mind and act of God. In self-reflection, one finds certainty that one is and can identify the functions of the inner man, but finds no positive account of the content of those functions. Against accounts such as those of Cary and Taylor, Augustine’s frequent interiority is not an argument for an internal self, but a rhetorical paradox arguing against such a self.

Chapter 2. The Structure and Intention of Confessiones.

Feb 2023

This chapter analyses Augustine’s conception of his own self. It identifies the rhetorical structure behind the work and the cohesion of the text as a whole. It considers Augustine’s paradoxes for any notion of personal identity, and instead locates his identity as dependent upon the mind of God and work of Christ in Creation. It articulates the self as ontologically insubstant ial and self-love as thus becoming less substantial. The problems of change over time and the failure of the memory demand that God alone knows and sustains who Augustine is, and that this knowledge is only mediated to Augustine through the revelation of Christ in scripture. Thus, the chapter argues that the key to reading conf. as a whole lies in reading the work as one praise of God for who Augustine is, and that if this is the case, books 11-13 become the central text of conf., while books 1-10 nearly become a mere rhetorical prologue

Chapter 3. Confession as politics

August 2023

This chapter argues for a re-integration of Augustine’s anthropology into notions of metaethics and politics. It reads conf. as an ethical, and by extension, political text. Highlighting the disjunction between restless creation and God who is at rest, I argue that Augustine provides a model for a happy life in the act of confession, which is both self-unsettling and self-giving. In self-giving, Augustine articulates a eudaimonism unconcerned with the individual, but with the God who is converting the individual to a state of rest. This act is mirrored in the composition of conf, the public publication of which establishes a public life of confession. The key passages of this chapter are conf. 7, displaying Augustine’s rejection of Neoplatonist ethics, conf. 8 revealing his volitional unrest, conf. 13, articulating ontology, rest, and ethics.

Chapter 4. Disordered selves: reconciling interiority and self-love.

June 2023

This chapter addresses the tensions between claims that Augustine has no self, and Augustine’s rejections of self-love. It posits a constructive politic of confession. Focusing on the metaphysics of amour sui in ciu., this chapter reads ciu. as a continuation of the paradoxes presented in conf. and de trin., and reconciles tensions in the secondary literature. Last, this chapter argues for the rhetorical continuity between these three works, claiming they present Augustine’s cohesive and mature position on the work he began at Cassiciacum, to know God and the soul.

Conclusion. Epistemic Humility of the Self: How Can Dependent Identities Mitigate Political Tension?

October 2023

Having established conf. as a rhetorical exposition of the inaccessibility of personal identity, it considers its implications for theories of liberal ethics and politics. The inaccessibility of the content of one’s identity undermines tribalism through a suspension of the ‘self’; likewise it rejects person-based accounts of political goods, and raises questions for metaethics that depend on rights, rationality, and personhood. Augustine’s articulation of change and inconsistency rejects one’s autonomy and self-knowledge, this rejection of self-knowledge undercuts the individual’s authority over one’s own self, and his emphasis on volition reveals modern hyper-rationality to be ungrounded and inconsistent. This leads to a rejection of certain rights-based politics, and demands greater emphasis on humility in politics. Moreover, it demands a teleological orientation of political life, and an ethics of self-giving oriented toward God.