It’s easy to dislike Augustine (AD 354-430), bishop of the Numidian port city of Hippo Regius, today’s Annaba. His oeuvre is infused with biblical metaphors that appear strange to today’s reader. He disowned the woman he was living with, and nowhere in his autobiography does he even bother to mention her name. His conclusion that the government should, if necessary, force people to do good predates the Inquisition. He is notorious for his ideas about original sin, the pessimistic view that humans have a natural tendency to do evil.
And yet, original sin can be compared to what we now call the ‘reptilian complex’: the oldest part of our brain, full of primitive reflexes and primal urges. We have to admit that Augustine understood a bit of psychology. His view of the phenomenon of time, namely, that it did not exist before Creation, has been adopted in its entirety by contemporary cosmologists. In other respects, the Numidian bishop anticipated modern philosophy,
