Many contemporary editions of St. Augustine's "Confessions" end with Chapter Ten on the grounds that what follows is uninteresting; uninteresting, publishers contend, because 'Confessions' is supposed to be juicy biography, not philosophy. The sins -- the thieving (in one scene, he even pilfers fruit

Classical & biblical literature, Contemplative, Elegant, Religious, Sincere

Plato taught that the body is the mere avatar of the soul, its prison, or even its tomb. His student Aristotle, on the other hand, turned the order of things around. He conceived the soul as the emergent truth of the body, the body's most complete and self-fulfilling actualization. Obviously, Ari

Classical, Classical rhetoric, Clever, Contemplative, Eclectic, Masculine, Pioneering

Plato was a divided soul. Torn between reason and passion, he gave birth to a philosophy marked by disconcerting duality. On the one hand, Plato was an artist and a poet: he encased his concepts in mystifying myths and slippery metaphors, worked out arguments in the form of dialogues rather than dry

Classical rhetoric, Clever, Contemplative, Homoerotic, Ironic, Mythic, Pioneering, Spiritual

Contemplative, Intense, Pathos, Romantic literature, Romantic poetry, Self-reflection, Sturm und drang (storm and stress), Sublime