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Religion and society in the age of Saint Augustine
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NOTES
The other parable for which no Indian origin is known is about a prince who in his drunkenness mistook a corpse for his wife. For this compare a verse in a treatise on meditation translated by Lu K’uan Yii in The Secretsof ChineseMeditation (1g64), p. 120: Embrace not a stinking corpse in sleep for it contains impurities and is miscalled a human being. This is not a story, but again the basic simile and its reference are the same. Unfortunately the passage is inadequately identified as being part of Chih-I’s ‘ T’ung Meng Chih I&an’, a work which appears neither in Leon Hurvitz’s list of the 36 extant works ascribed to Chih-I (Chih-I, 1962, pp. 332-3), nor in his list of the 21 lost works ascribed to him. Nor can the title be found in the Hcbcgirin catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka. But if the provenance of Lu K’uan Yii’s secrets is obscure, the parallel is marked enough to suggest a widespread currency. M.P.
BROWN, PETER, Religion and Societyin the Age of Saint Augustine, Faber and Faber, 1972, pp. 352. E3.25; MACINTYRE, ALASDAIR, Against the Self-Images of the Age, Duckworth, 1871, pp. vi-284. E3.45; WINCH, PETER, Ethics and Action, Routledge and Kegan Paul, ‘972, pp. 23 I. A2.75. Most of the essays in these collections have been published before, but the majority are of sufficient interest and importance to justify their reproduction. Peter Brown follows up his universally acclaimed biography of Saint Augustine of Hippo with a volume which illuminates many aspects of the religious situation in the later Roman Empire. The author’s dazzling gifts of imagination, intelligence and industry are fully deployed in his treatment of such topics as the interpretation of the religious crisis of the third century, the Christianization of the Roman aristocracy, Christianity and local culture in late Roman Africa, and the relationship between sorcery, demons and the rise of Christianity. Alasdair MacIntyre and Peter Winch have long been at loggerheads, and the whiff of grapeshot is detectable in both volumes. Though primarily of interest to philosophers, the student of religion cannot fail to be stimulated by Winch’s essays on ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’ and ‘Human Nature’, while MacIntyre writes provocatively about many topics including ‘God and the theologians’ and Goldmann’s Hidden God. S.P.M.
SHORT
REVIEWS
AND
BOOK
NOTES
The other parable for which no Indian origin is known is about a prince who in his drunkenness mistook a corpse for his wife. For this compare a verse in a treatise on meditation translated by Lu K’uan Yii in The Secretsof ChineseMeditation (1g64), p. 120: Embrace not a stinking corpse in sleep for it contains impurities and is miscalled a human being. This is not a story, but again the basic simile and its reference are the same. Unfortunately the passage is inadequately identified as being part of Chih-I’s ‘ T’ung Meng Chih I&an’, a work which appears neither in Leon Hurvitz’s list of the 36 extant works ascribed to Chih-I (Chih-I, 1962, pp. 332-3), nor in his list of the 21 lost works ascribed to him. Nor can the title be found in the Hcbcgirin catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka. But if the provenance of Lu K’uan Yii’s secrets is obscure, the parallel is marked enough to suggest a widespread currency. M.P.
BROWN, PETER, Religion and Societyin the Age of Saint Augustine, Faber and Faber, 1972, pp. 352. E3.25; MACINTYRE, ALASDAIR, Against the Self-Images of the Age, Duckworth, 1871, pp. vi-284. E3.45; WINCH, PETER, Ethics and Action, Routledge and Kegan Paul, ‘972, pp. 23 I. A2.75. Most of the essays in these collections have been published before, but the majority are of sufficient interest and importance to justify their reproduction. Peter Brown follows up his universally acclaimed biography of Saint Augustine of Hippo with a volume which illuminates many aspects of the religious situation in the later Roman Empire. The author’s dazzling gifts of imagination, intelligence and industry are fully deployed in his treatment of such topics as the interpretation of the religious crisis of the third century, the Christianization of the Roman aristocracy, Christianity and local culture in late Roman Africa, and the relationship between sorcery, demons and the rise of Christianity. Alasdair MacIntyre and Peter Winch have long been at loggerheads, and the whiff of grapeshot is detectable in both volumes. Though primarily of interest to philosophers, the student of religion cannot fail to be stimulated by Winch’s essays on ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’ and ‘Human Nature’, while MacIntyre writes provocatively about many topics including ‘God and the theologians’ and Goldmann’s Hidden God. S.P.M.