Love and the Patriarch: Augustine and (Pregnant) Women

Abstract

Theories concerning love in the West tend to be bound by the problematic constraints of patriarchal conceptions of what counts ontologically as “true” or “universal” love. It seems that feminist love studies must choose between shining light on these constraints or bursting through them. In this article I give a feminist analysis of Augustine of Hippo's theory of love through a philosophical, psychological, and theological reading of his complicated relationships with women. I argue that, given the “embodied” nature of his many loves throughout his life, there is room in Augustine's account of love for a gendered reading of love that is unconstrained by patriarchal notions concerning which gender is capable of which kind of love. Augustine's theory of love is one that is not coldly universal but bodied and personal; indeed, although it is founded inside patriarchal historical constructions, it is capable of bursting out of these constraints and suggesting an egalitarian, nongendered view of love.

Andrea Nye, Socrates and Diotima: Sexuality, Religion, and the Nature of Divinity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, (ISBN 978-1-137-51601 5)

“…Numerous theorists, like Nye, have blamed Augustine for the negative views of erotic desire and the body, but others have argued that Augustine has been misread and that his philosophy of love does not deny eros or the flesh. For example, Margaret Miles and Patricia Grosse both argue that there has been widespread misreading of Augustine's Confessions that have led to misunderstandings about love (Miles 2005;Grosse 2016). Indeed, Grosse describes the misreading of Augustine on love as "The biggest crime against love in Western thought" (11).…”