‘Andare in crisi’. La conversione cristiana antica al di là delle metafisiche del soggetto

Aim of this paper is to foreground the conceptual limits and epistemological blind spots of a very influential psychological model of religious conversion by looking anew at two late antique cases of ‘turns’ to Christianity, namely those of Cyprian of Carthage (245-246 C.E.) and Augustine of Hippo (386 C.E.). Narratives on these conversions not only document the struggle of desired newness and resistant habits in the in-between phase of the turning. They also evidence the lasting conditioning effects of these latter on the ‘newborn’. If the crisis reveals the scale and the power of habitualized schemes of perception, evaluation, and action over human existence, its overcoming may bespeak the continuation of habits by other means.