James Joseph O'Donnell [born 1950] is a classical scholar and University Librarian at Arizona State University. He formerly served as University Professor at Georgetown University [2012-2015] and as Provost of Georgetown University [2002-2012]. O'Donnell was previously Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania [1996–2002]. He is a former President of the American Philological Association [the national learned society for academics who work on the ancient world] and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. From 2012 to 2018, he chaired the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies.
O'Donnell writes and lectures on topics of the late Roman Empire, Augustine of Hippo, and also on the impact of information technology in the modern academic and cultural world. He was an early adopter of the World Wide Web for academic collaboration within the humanities. He co-founded and has been involved with Bryn Mawr Classical Review since it was founded in 1990. In 1994, he offered the first Internet MOOC when 500 students around the world participated [through gopher and email] in his University of Pennsylvania seminar on the life and work of St. Augustine.
Books[edit]
O'Donnell's books and scholarly articles include technical works on history and philosophy, with a special interest in Augustine of Hippo, and he has also written five books that are addressed to a general audience. Avatars of the Word [Harvard University Press 1998] outlines the history of writing and media from ancient Greek times to the present, while Augustine: A New Biography [HarperCollins 2005] was widely reviewed [e.g., The New Republic, The Economist, The New York Times]. An account of the end of Roman grandeur, The Ruin of the Roman Empire [HarperCollins: 2008], was widely praised. His Pagans was published in 2015. His latest book, a new translation of Julius Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic Wars, came out in 2019.
- Cassiodorus [1979] University of California Press; ISBN 978-0520036468
- Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing [edited, with Ann Shumelda Okerson] [1995] Association of Research Libraries; ISBN 0-918006-26-0
- Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace [1998] Harvard University Press; ISBN 0-674-05545-4
- Augustine: A New Biography [2005] Ecco Press; ISBN 0-06-053537-7
- The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History [2008] Ecco Press; ISBN 0-06-078737-6
- Pagans [2015] Ecco Press; ISBN 0-06-184535-3
- The War for Gaul: A New Translation [2019] Princeton University Press; ISBN 0-69-117492-X
Education[edit]
- 1972 A. B. Princeton University
- 1975 Ph.D. Yale University
- 1999 L.H.D. [honorary] Saint Michael's College
Esoterica[edit]
O'Donnell's website includes a biographical sketch of Doughbelly Price. Price was a cowboy turned real estate agent in Taos, New Mexico. The biography includes a profile from Life in 1949 and feature audio clips of old cowboy songs by Price. In 2023, Nighthawk Press of Taos reprinted The Wisdom and Insanity of Doughbelly Price with a preface by O'Donnell.
The 2007 edition of the Edge - the third culture Annual Question O'Donnell offered positive words on humanity: "we turn out to be a stubbornly smart, resilient and persistent species, and we do not forget the most important things."
I picked this up because I was impressed with the author's Ruin of the Roman Empire and was hoping that this book could enlighten me in similar ways about Roman North Africa. While it did help with that, there was much more about Augustine and his place in modern Christianity and modern Western thought than there was about the contemporary [to Augustine] situation in North Africa. The author got me interested enough to read the book all the way through, though I ended up with some quibbles. Before I get to those, I'll try to tell you whether you'd be interested in this book.Do You Want to Read It?This is a revisionist biography of Augustine. The author wants you to see Augustine from a 4th century view, not from the views of him that have been handed down over the course of the last 1600 years. He also assumes that you already know quite a bit about Augustine and have read at least The Confessions. So, if you know Augustine well, like him, and don't want your views revised, you can skip this, unless you want to argue with it. If you know Augustine well, but are unsure what you think about him, you'll find food for thought in this book. If you know some things about Augustine, but are not vitally interested in him, like me, you may find yourself drawn into the book, but wondering why much of this matters in this day and age, a question the author himself asks at the end of the book. If you're not interested in Augustine, or are only just starting to find out about him, this is not the place to start. Finally folks interested in writing alternate histories should see my section on North African history below.My Quibbles- There is a lot of redundancy in this book. I found the same thing in Ruin of the Roman Empire and assumed O'Donnell had introduced it so that people could read separate chapters without needing to read the whole book. However, he clearly intends that people read all of Augustine. I have decided the repetition is due to the author not writing in a linear way. He probably writes up chapters out of order and puts whatever he thinks of in that chapter. Then he doesn't go back and weed out the redundancies and decide where the information should best be placed. Nor, evidently, does he have an editor to do it for him.- His bibliography consists only of the major books by and on Augustine. Other books are listed in the end notes. Since my main interest was really a side issue in the book, I had to follow the notes very closely to pick out books that might be more germane to my area of interest.- At one point [pp. 207-208], he contends that one of Augustine's major contributions to modern Western thought is the idea of a supervening narrative, a story about why we're right and everyone else is wrong. He says, that while many would no longer agree with Augustine's narrative, "the most rigorous historians of human history, the most objective and dispassionate scientists, the most versatile wizards of the truth of what has actually happened in history" continue to have some kind of supervening narrative.I would argue that at least scientists do not have "a" supervening narrative. They have methodologies for accumulating facts and placing those facts in a narrative that explains the facts. These narratives are supervening only by being the best explanations of as many facts as possible. When another narrative is proposed that explains the facts better, the old narrative is replaced. So all narratives are temporary until replaced by others that explain the facts better. This is not at all how Augustine viewed his narrative. It was supervening for all time. There is a big difference between a narrative that cannot be changed and one that is acknowledged to be only temporary.So What about North African History?I suspect that this book did as good a job as it could in contextualizing Augustine within the 4th century Roman North African setting. Unfortunately, the largest body of documents we have about North Africa at that time are Augustine's own writings. So what he's not interested in simply isn't well documented. The author really tried to fill in the gaps, but I really wished there was more information to be had.However, if you are interested in alternate histories of North Africa or alternate Christianities, this book provides a lot of excellent ideas. O'Donnell constantly speculates on what would have happened if Augustine had made a different decision at various points in his life. His importance is such that it often results in a fairly big change in history.
What is the best biography of St Augustine of Hippo?
Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo is a brilliant tour-de-force that will delight any reader familiar with the history of theological thought or the late Roman empire.
Does Augustine believe in free will?
Augustine says," . . . we assert both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it." [in Solomon and Martin, 165 ]. He "embrace[s]" both God's prescience and free will [in Solomon and Martin, 168].
Which thinker was most influenced by Augustine's philosophy?
But the greatest and most influential of medieval thinkers deeply influenced by Augustine was Anselm of Canterbury [1033/34–1109], the originator [probably on the basis of suggestions in Augustine] of the still much discussed “ontological argument” for the existence of God [see religion, philosophy of] and a ...
What is the main point of Augustine's confessions?
It is a significant theological work, featuring spiritual meditations and insights. In the work, Augustine writes about how he regrets having led a sinful and immoral life. He discusses his regrets for following the Manichaean religion and believing in astrology.