The space of time: a sensualist interpretation of time in Augustine, Confessions X to XII 9789004266865, 9789004269316, 9004266860, 9004269312

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 7
Acknowledgements......Page 11
List of Abbreviations......Page 12
Note on Citations......Page 16
SYNOPSIS: Dilation and the Question of Time......Page 17
Introduction To Recover Augustine’s Time-Question......Page 21
Proem......Page 23
Chapter 1 Augustine and the Temporal Intrigue......Page 27
1.1 Against a Truncated Interpretation of Confessions XI......Page 32
1.2 Preliminary Remarks on the Term ‘Sensualist’......Page 35
1.3 Axiology and Temporality in Augustine’s Confessions......Page 40
1.4 Time in Augustine’s Triplex Division of Philosophy......Page 50
Chapter 2 Augustine and the Physical Question of Time......Page 54
2.1 Time and Augustine’s Rerum Natura......Page 56
2.2 Time in the Confessions: A Typology of the Received Interpretations......Page 60
2.3 Confessions XI and Typologies of Time in Antiquity......Page 73
Part One Anticipations and Clarifications......Page 81
3.1 Preliminary Remarks on Genre......Page 83
3.2 Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline: A Source for the Confessions?......Page 87
3.3 Confessio Ignorantiae: Cicero and Augustine’s Confessions......Page 89
3.4 Confessio Scientiae: Epicurus and Lucretius in Augustine’s Confessions......Page 96
3.5 Confessions X to XII: Dialectics and Song......Page 112
3.6 Concluding Remarks on Genre......Page 115
Chapter 4 Towards a Lexical Clarification of ‘Time’ (Conf. XI.22–24)......Page 118
4.1 A Distribution of Augustine’s Time-Investigation (Conf. XI.14–29)......Page 121
4.2 “We Say ‘Time,’ We Say ‘Times’ ” (Conf. XI.22–24)......Page 124
4.3 Towards Augustine’s “Power and Nature of Time” (Conf. X.6–7, XI.23–24)......Page 129
Chapter 5 Towards the Speculative Terrain of Confessions XII (Conf. XI.30–31) ......Page 133
5.1 Temporal Presence: Varieties of ‘Impresence’......Page 135
5.2 Temporal Dilation: A Preliminary Characterization......Page 142
5.3 Expectatio Is Never Praescientia (Conf. XI.31)......Page 147
5.4 A Discarnate Mind and a Dilation of the Senses (Conf. XI.31)......Page 153
Part Two Time Is Illuminated by Timelessness......Page 159
Chapter 6 What Is and Is Not in Question in Confessions XII......Page 161
6.1 Time and the Prophetic ‘Letter’......Page 162
6.2 How Timelessness Will Illuminate Time......Page 165
Chapter 7 Cohesion to God, Inhesion of the Flesh: Augustine’s Caelum Intellectuale ......Page 168
7.1 Axiology and Temporality Revisited......Page 170
7.2 Augustine’s Hyper-Heavenly (Caelum Caeli)......Page 173
7.3 Timelessness and the Root-Verb Haerere......Page 180
7.4 More on Augustine’s Root-Verb Haerere......Page 182
Chapter 8 Corpus et Anima: The Duplicity of Praesens from Confessions X......Page 187
8.1 “A Body and a Soul Are Present in Me” (Conf. X.6.9)......Page 190
8.2 The Sense of Anima, the Sense of Animus (Conf. X.7)......Page 191
8.3 “Cattle and Birds Possess Memory” (Conf. X.17)......Page 196
8.4 Excursus: Time Is in the Beasts......Page 200
8.5 The Root-Sense of Anima and Animus (Conf. X–XII)......Page 209
Chapter 9 Physical Movement and Mutive Times: Augustine’s Materia Informis......Page 212
9.1 Informitas and Timelessness (Conf. XII.6)......Page 213
9.2 “Times are Produced by the Movements of Things” (Conf. XII.8)......Page 216
9.3 The Register of ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII......Page 220
9.4 The Evidence for ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII......Page 221
9.5 Excursus on Logical Precedence (Conf. XII.29)......Page 226
9.6 Excursus on Sensual ‘Outness’ (Epist. 137)......Page 230
Part Three A Sensualist Interpretation of Confessions XI......Page 239
Chapter 10 Intimacy with the Flesh Is Intimacy with Time (Conf. XI–XII)......Page 241
10.1 “Words Begun and Ended, Sounding in Times” (Conf. XII.27)......Page 243
10.2 Familiaritas Carnis and Familiaritas Temporis (Conf. XI.14)......Page 245
Chapter 11 Times and Time from Augustine’s Eternity-Meditation (Conf. XI.3–13)......Page 250
11.1 Time, Times, and a Proto-Distentio (Conf. XI.11–13)......Page 252
11.2 Imago, Affectio and Distentio in the Confessions......Page 254
11.3 “Sense Roves” and “Sense Dilates” (Conf. XI.13, XI.31)......Page 260
Chapter 12 A Preparation of Augustine’s Time-Investigation (Conf. XI.11–29) ......Page 262
12.1 The Soul’s Capacity to Sense Time (Conf. XI.15–16)......Page 263
12.2 “A Long Time Cannot Become Long . . .” (Conf. XI.11)......Page 265
12.3 The Production of Times as a Condition for Time (Conf. XI.11, XII.8)......Page 267
Chapter 13 From a Sense of Passing Time to a Dilation of the Senses (Conf. XI.14–29)......Page 270
13.1 Praesens Tempus and a Sense of Temporal Intervals (Conf. XI.15–16)......Page 272
13.2 Times Are Not ‘Times’ and Presence Is Not ‘Presence’ (Conf. XI.20)......Page 280
13.3 “As I Just Said, We Measure Times as They Pass” (Conf. XI.21)......Page 285
13.4 Vagaries of Motion and the Introduction of Dilation (Conf. XI.24–26)......Page 287
13.5 Sensation and Originary Temporal Mensuration (Conf. XI.27–28)......Page 293
13.6 “The Verse Is Sensed by a Clear Sensation” (Conf. XI.27)......Page 301
13.7 “Something Remains Infixed in My Memory” (Conf. XI.27)......Page 313
13.8 “These Are ‘Times,’ or I Do Not Measure Times” (Conf. XI.27)......Page 316
13.9 “Songs and the Dimensions of Movements” (Conf. XI.27–28)......Page 322
ENVOI: Time Exceeds Us because Time Is in Us......Page 328
Appendix 1 Remarks on Plotinus, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus and Augustine......Page 330
Appendix 2 Augustine and the Paris Condemnations of 1277......Page 336
Appendix 3 Pierre Gassendi’s Metaphysical Confession of Time......Page 340
Appendix 4 Thomas Hobbes’s Physical Confession of Time......Page 344
Select Bibliography......Page 350
Index......Page 372

Citation preview

The Space of Time

Supplements to the Study of Time VOLUME 6

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sst

The Space of Time A Sensualist Interpretation of Time in Augustine, Confessions X to XII By

David van Dusen

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Emblem for the month of November, 354 a.d.—Augustine’s natal month and year—in Furius Dionysius Filocalus’ Chronograph or Codex-Calendar of 354. A priest of Isis shakes a rattle and moves in a field of floating pomegranates. He is surrounded by other Isis-cult symbols. KBR MS 7543–49, reproduced with permission from the Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique/Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Van Dusen, David.  The Space of time : a sensualist interpretation of time in Augustine, Confessions X to XII / by David van Dusen.   pages cm. — (Supplements to The study of time, ISSN 1873-7463 ; VOLUME 6)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-26686-5 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-26931-6 (e-book) 1. Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. Confessiones. Liber 10–12. 2. Time. I. Title.  BR65.A62V35 2014  115.092—dc23 2014007723

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1873-7463 isbn 978 90 04 26686 5 (hardback) isbn 978 90 04 26931 6 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

for Davin Lloyd naturali ex illa filio meo

∵

Χρόνος, i.e. the space of time.

Cicero, De Natura Deorum II.25

One ‘time,’ i.e. the space of one short syllable. Augustine, De Rhythmo VI.1

Present-time has no dimension, no space. Where then is the time we call ‘long’? Augustine, Confessions XI.15

∵

Contents Acknowledgements  xi List of Abbreviations  xii Note on Citations  xvi Synopsis: Dilation and the Question of Time  1

Introduction To Recover Augustine’s Time-Question  5 Proem  7 1 Augustine and the Temporal Intrigue  11 1.1 Against a Truncated Interpretation of Confessions XI  16 1.2 Preliminary Remarks on the Term ‘Sensualist’  19 1.3 Axiology and Temporality in Augustine’s Confessions  24 1.4 Time in Augustine’s Triplex Division of Philosophy­­   34 2 Augustine and the Physical Question of Time  38 2.1 Time and Augustine’s Rerum Natura  40 2.2 Time in the Confessions: A Typology of the Received Interpretations  44 2.3 Confessions XI and Typologies of Time in Antiquity  57

part I Anticipations and Clarifications  65 3 Remarks on the Genre and Sources of Augustine’s Confessions  67 3.1 Preliminary Remarks on Genre  67 3.2 Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline: A Source for the Confessions?  71 3.3 Confessio Ignorantiae: Cicero and Augustine’s Confessions  73 3.4 Confessio Scientiae: Epicurus and Lucretius in Augustine’s Confessions  80 3.5 Confessions X to XII: Dialectics and Song  96 3.6 Concluding Remarks on Genre  99

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Contents

4 Towards a Lexical Clarification of ‘Time’ (Conf. XI.22–24)  102 4.1 A Distribution of Augustine’s Time-Investigation (Conf. XI.14–29)  105 4.2 “We Say ‘Time,’ We Say ‘Times’ ” (Conf. XI.22–24)  108 4.3 Towards Augustine’s “Power and Nature of Time” (Conf. X.6–7, XI.23–24)  113 5 Towards the Speculative Terrain of Confessions XII (Conf. XI.30–31)  117 5.1 Temporal Presence: Varieties of ‘Impresence’  119 5.2 Temporal Dilation: A Preliminary Characterization  126 5.3 Expectatio Is Never Praescientia (Conf. XI.31)  131 5.4 A Discarnate Mind and a Dilation of the Senses (Conf. XI.31)  137

part II Time Is Illuminated by Timelessness  143 6 What Is and Is Not in Question in Confessions XII  145 6.1 Time and the Prophetic ‘Letter’  146 6.2 How Timelessness Will Illuminate Time  149 7 Cohesion to God, Inhesion of the Flesh: Augustine’s Caelum Intellectuale  152 7.1 Axiology and Temporality Revisited  154 7.2 Augustine’s Hyper-Heavenly (Caelum Caeli)  157 7.3 Timelessness and the Root-Verb Haerere  164 7.4 More on Augustine’s Root-Verb Haerere  166 8 Corpus et Anima: The Duplicity of Praesens from Confessions X  171 8.1 “A Body and a Soul Are Present in Me” (Conf. X.6.9)  174 8.2 The Sense of Anima, the Sense of Animus (Conf. X.7)  175 8.3 “Cattle and Birds Possess Memory” (Conf. X.17)  180 8.4 Excursus: Time Is in the Beasts  184 8.5 The Root-Sense of Anima and Animus (Conf. X–XII)  193 9 Physical Movement and Mutive Times: Augustine’s Materia Informis  196 9.1 Informitas and Timelessness (Conf. XII.6)  197 9.2 “Times are Produced by the Movements of Things” (Conf. XII.8)  200 9.3 The Register of ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII  204 9.4 The Evidence for ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII  205

Contents

ix

9.5 Excursus on Logical Precedence (Conf. XII.29)  210 9.6 Excursus on Sensual ‘Outness’ (Epist. 137)  214

part III A Sensualist Interpretation of Confessions XI  223 10 Intimacy with the Flesh Is Intimacy with Time (Conf. XI–XII)  225 10.1 “Words Begun and Ended, Sounding in Times” (Conf. XII.27)  227 10.2 Familiaritas Carnis and Familiaritas Temporis (Conf. XI.14)  229 11 Times and Time from Augustine’s Eternity-Meditation (Conf. XI.3–13)  234 11.1 Time, Times, and a Proto-Distentio (Conf. XI.11–13)  236 11.2 Imago, Affectio and Distentio in the Confessions  238 11.3 “Sense Roves” and “Sense Dilates” (Conf. XI.13, XI.31)  244 12 A Preparation of Augustine’s Time-Investigation (Conf. XI.11–29)  246 12.1 The Soul’s Capacity to Sense Time (Conf. XI.15–16)  247 12.2 “A Long Time Cannot Become Long . . .” (Conf. XI.11)  249 12.3 The Production of Times as a Condition for Time (Conf. XI.11, XII.8)  251 13 From a Sense of Passing Time to a Dilation of the Senses (Conf. XI.14–29)  254 13.1 Praesens Tempus and a Sense of Temporal Intervals (Conf. XI.15–16)  256 13.2 Times Are Not ‘Times’ and Presence Is Not ‘Presence’ (Conf. XI.20)  264 13.3 “As I Just Said, We Measure Times as They Pass” (Conf. XI.21)  269 13.4 Vagaries of Motion and the Introduction of Dilation (Conf. XI.24–26)  271 13.5 Sensation and Originary Temporal Mensuration (Conf. XI.27–28)  277 13.6 “The Verse Is Sensed by a Clear Sensation” (Conf. XI.27)  285 13.7 “Something Remains Infixed in My Memory” (Conf. XI.27)  297 13.8 “These Are ‘Times,’ or I Do Not Measure Times” (Conf. XI.27)  300 13.9 “Songs and the Dimensions of Movements” (Conf. XI.27–28)  306

x

Contents

ENVOI: Time Exceeds Us because Time Is in Us  312 Appendices  314 1 Remarks on Plotinus, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus and Augustine  314 2 Augustine and the Paris Condemnations of 1277  320 3 Pierre Gassendi’s Metaphysical Confession of Time  324 4 Thomas Hobbes’s Physical Confession of Time  328 Select Bibliography  334 Index  356

Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to professors Robert J. Dodaro, Johannes Hoff, Mathijs Lamberigts, James Luchte, Gerard J.P. O’Daly, James J. O’Donnell and Gerd Van Riel, for patronage in the old style. It is thanks to the singular generosity of the Paters Augustijnen of Thomas van Villanovaklooster that I revised The Space of Time while in residence at the Augustijns Historisch Instituut in Louvain. The work has benefited from their holdings, and I from their camaraderie. My editors in Leiden, Joed Elich and Nicolette van der Hoek, were supremely helpful, and Brill’s reviewers were generous and perceptive. Rebecca Mahay went over the typescript with a keen eye and a light hand. And finally I thank my kin, who have seen past fortune and misfortune with the inconcussible evenness of love. Louvain, 2013 D.D.

List of Abbreviations Ael. Nat.anim. Aelian, De Natura Animalium Alb. Phys. Albertus Magnus, Physica Amb. Hymn. Ambrose of Milan, Hymnae Amm. R.gest. Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae Anon. C.Phil. Anonymous 6th-century composite, Contra Philosophos Aq. S.Th. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ar. Rhyth. Aristoxenus, Elementa Rhythmica Arist. Anim. Aristotle, De Anima Arist. Aud. Aristotle, De Audibilibus Arist. Cat. Aristotle, Categoriae Arist. Gen.corr. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione Arist. Mem. Aristotle, De Memoria et Reminiscentia Arist. Met. Aristotle, Metaphysica Arist. Phys. Aristotle, Physica Arist. Poet. Aristotle, Poetica Arist. Post. Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora Arist. Prob. Aristotle, Problemata Arist. Rhet. Aristotle, Rhetorica Arist. Sens. Aristotle, De Sensu et Sensato Arist.Lat. Phys. Aristoteles Latinus, Physica Arist.Lat. Rhet. Aristoteles Latinus, Rhetorica Arr. Ind. Arrian, Indica Aug. 83 quaest. Augustine, De Diversis Quaestionibus Octoginta Tribus Aug. An.orig. Augustine, De Anima et eius Origine Aug. Annot. Augustine, Annotationes in Iob Aug. Beat. Augustine, De Beata Vita Aug. C.Acad. Augustine, Contra Academicos Aug. C.Faust. Augustine, Contra Faustum Aug. C.Parm. Augustine, Contra Epistulam Parminiani Aug. C.Petil. Augustine, Contra Litteras Petiliani Aug. Civ. Augustine, De Civitate Dei contra Paganos Aug. Conf. Augustine, Confessiones Aug. Cons. Augustine, De Consensu Evangelistarum Aug. Div.daem. Augustine, De Divinatione Daemonum Aug. Doctr. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana Aug. Enarr. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos Aug. Epist. Augustine, Epistulae

List of Abbreviations Aug. Fid. Augustine, De Fide Rerum quae non Videntur Aug. Fid.simb. Augustine, De Fide et Simbolo Aug. Gen.c.Man. Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos Aug. Gen.lib.imp. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram imperfectus liber Aug. Gen.litt. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram Aug. Gramm.reg. Augustine or Pseudo-Augustine, De Grammatica Aug. Imm.anim. Augustine, De Immortalitate Animae Aug. Lib.arb. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio Aug. Mag. Augustine, De Magistro Aug. Mor. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Aug. Nat.bon. Augustine, De Natura Boni Aug. Ord. Augustine, De Ordine Aug. Orig.anim. Augustine, De Origine Animae Hominis = Epist. 166 Aug. Quant.anim. Augustine, De Quantitate Animae Aug. Retr. Augustine, Retractationes Aug. Rhyth. Augustine, De Rhythmo = De Musica Aug. Serm. Augustine, Sermones Aug. Sol. Augustine, Soliloquorum Aug. Tract. Augustine, In Evangelium Ioannis Tractatus Aug. Trin. Augustine, De Trinitate Aug. Util. Augustine, De Utilitate Credendi Aug. Vera rel. Augustine, De Vera Religione Aver.Lat. Phys. Averroes Latinus, De Physico Auditu . . . Bed. Temp. Bede, De Temporibus Boeth. In Cat. Boethius, In Categorias Aristotelis Calc. Epist. Calcidius, Calcidii ad Osium Epistula Can. Quaest. John the Canon, Quaestiones super . . . Physicorum Cens. D.nat. Censorinus, De Die Natali Cic. Acad. Cicero, Academica Cic. Div. Cicero, De Divinatione Cic. Fin. Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum Cic. Inv. Cicero, De Inventione Cic. Nat.deor. Cicero, De Natura Deorum Cic. Off. Cicero, De Officiis Cic. Or. Cicero, Orator Cic. Orat. Cicero, De Oratore Cic. Part. Cicero, Partitiones Oratoriae Cic. Rep. Cicero, De Re Publica Cic. Tusc. Cicero, Disputationes Tusculanae Conc. Glos. William of Conches, Glosae in Timaeum

xiii

xiv

List of Abbreviations

Dam. Hist. Damascius, Historia Philosophica Dant. Inf. Dante Alighieri, Inferno Epic. Epist. Epicurus, Epistulae Eug. Exc. Eugippius, Excerpta ex Operibus S. Augustini Gand. Quodl. Henry of Ghent, Quaestiones Quodlibetales Gross. In Phys. Robert Grosseteste, Commentarius in Physicorum Harc. Q.Ord. Henry of Harclay, Quaestiones Ordinariae Herac. Fr. Heraclitus, Fragments Hipp. Prog. Hippocrates, Prognosticon Hom. Il. Homer, Iliad Hom. Od. Homer, Odyssey Hon. Imag. Honorius of Autun, De Imagine Mundi Hon. Lum. Honorius of Autun, De Luminaribus Ecclesiae Isid. Etym. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum Jer. Epist. Jerome, Epistulae Kil. Quaest. Robert Kilwardby, Quaestiones in . . . Sententiarum Kil. Temp. Robert Kilwardby, Tractatus de Tempore Long. Subl. Pseudo-Longinus, De Sublimitate Luci. Auct. Lucian, Vitarum Auctio Lucr. Rer.nat. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura Macr. Sat. Macrobius, Saturnalia Man. Astr. Manilius, Astronomica Map Nug.cur. Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium Mar. Gramm. Marius Victorinus, Ars Grammatica Ov. Fas. Ovid, Fasti Pius Comm. Pope Pius II, Commentariorum Pii Secundi Pl. Crat. Plato, Cratylus Pl. Ion Plato, Ion Pl. Leg. Plato, Leges Pl. Ph. Plato, Phaedrus Pl. Phil. Plato, Philebus Pl. Theaet. Plato, Theaetetus Pl. Tim. Plato, Timaeus Plin. Hist.nat. Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis Plot. Enn. Plotinus, Enneades Plut. Ad.Stoic. Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos Plut. Delph. Plutarch, De E apud Delphos Plut. Is.Os. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride Plut. Plat.Q. Plutarch, Platonicae Quaestiones Poss. Vita Possidius, Vita Sancti Aurelii Augustini

List of Abbreviations Proc. Tim. Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria Prosp. Chron. Prosper of Aquitaine, Chronicon Quint. Inst.orat. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria Sall. Catil. Sallust, De Coniuratione Catilinae = Bellum Catilinae Sall. Jug. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum Scot. Q.Disp. Duns Scotus, Quaestiones Disputatae Sen. Brev. Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae Sen. Nat.quaest. Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones Sext. Ad.Gramm. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Grammaticos Sext. Ad.Mus. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Musicos Sext. Ad.Phys. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Physicos Simpl. Anim. Pseudo-Simplicius, De Anima Commentaria Soph. El. Sophocles, Electra Stras. S.Ph. Nicolas of Strasbourg, Summa Philosophiae Temp. Coll. Stephen Tempier, Collectio Errorum . . . Ter. Met. Terentianus Maurus, De Metris Tert. Anim. Tertullian, De Testimonio Animae adversus Gentes Var. Ling. Varro, De Lingua Latina Virg. Aen. Virgil, Aeneis Virg. Ecl. Virgil, Eclogae Virg. Georg. Virgil, Georgica Vit. Quodl. James of Viterbo, Disputatio Tertia de Quolibet

xv

Note on Citations Wherever a work is cited taking the form I.1 or I.1.1 without a title being given, the reference is to Augustine’s Confessions. I quote the Confessions from J.J. O’Donnell’s Latin text, and at places have silently modified punctuation. I have leaned heavily on J.G. Pilkington’s workmanlike 19th-century translation, The Confessions of St. Augustin. Translations from pre-modern works are rarely my own, but have generally been modified. All the translations that I have used, and at places taken into the text unchanged, appear at the back of the volume.

Synopsis: Dilation and the Question of Time Aurelius Augustinus was born on 13 November 3541 to the small-landowning Aurelii of Thagaste,2 an “obscure provincial city” in the uplands of Roman Numidia;3 and in the year of his birth the Christian emperor in Milan devised this new imperial epithet: “Eternity.”4 He died as Augustinus Hipponiensis,5 in the Vandal-besieged city of Hippo Regius6—fronting the Numidian coast, not far from Thagaste—on 28 August 430.7

1 It is curious that the sole surviving 4th-century Latin calendar—the strikingly illuminated Chronograph of 354 (Stern 1953; Salzman 1990)—was prepared by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus for an aristocratic Christian in Rome, in Augustine’s natal year. Similarly, the first extant book of Ammianus Marcellinus’ chronicle—which is book XIV of the original work—opens in the year 354 (Amm. R.gest. XIV.2). 2 On “les modestes Aurelii de Thagaste”: Lepelley 2001, 332–34, 344. ‘Aurelius’ appears to have been a common surname in late antiquity (Lepelley 2001, 332–34), and fairly common as a cognomen (Mandouze 1982, 105–31). Lepelley remarks, however, “la rareté, presque la singularité des cognomina” of our Augustinus and his father Patricius (Lepelley 2001, 333). It is our Augustinus who himself preserves the name of one other Augustinus—a Donatist bishop— at Aug. C.Parm. I.12.19: . . . quendam Augustinum episcopum eorum. 3 Lepelley 2001, 329: “Thagaste, en Numidie Proconsulaire . . . une obscure cité provinciale.” Merdinger (1997, 68) describes “the Numidian highlands” in the late 4th century as being “a region of pine forests and scrubby canyons” that benefited from a network of Roman roads. 4 Amm. R.gest. XV.1.3: . . . “Aeternitatem meam” aliquotiens subsereret ipse dictando. The emperor is Constantius II (317–361), and for Ammianus Marcellinus’ critique of this outrageous personal epithet, though he takes no exception to clichés like “the eternal city”: Amm. R.gest. XV.1.3–4. 5 Lepelley 2001, 333: “L’abandon du gentilice exprimait une rupture avec les vanités du monde . . . peut-être aussi une rupture avec la famille humaine, au profit de l’église dont l’évêque devenait le ‘père.’ ” 6 Merdinger 1997, 68: “Hippo was the second largest port of North Africa, overshadowed only by Carthage . . . It was also an ancient community, founded centuries earlier by the Phoenicians [cf. Sall. Jug. 19.2], who bequeathed it their characteristic . . . irregular streets; but after three centuries as a Roman municipality, it also featured the requisite forum, theater, baths, temples,” etc. 7 For a crisp survey of Augustine’s dates and environs: Drecoll 2007, 20–27, 36–49.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004269316_�02

2

synopsis

As of this writing, then, Augustine is ‘long dead.’8 And this expression, however banal, is suggestive,9 since Augustine asked when he was still living: “Where is the time we call ‘long’?”10 Or said differently: What is the condition of possibility of a Greek poet’s trope like “the long years of time” (τῷ πολλῷ χρόνῳ),11 or a hackneyed Latinism12 like “the space of time” (spatium temporis)?13

8

Augustine’s pre-modern biographical notices provide the clearest sense of his distance from us, for instance: Bed. Temp. 22: Arcadius annis XIII cum fratre Honorio. Joannes Chysostomus et Augustini episcopi prædicantur. Honorius annis XV cum Theodosio minore; Hon. Imag. I.32: Inde Numidia, in qua regnavit Jugurtha. In hac est civitas Hippone, in qua fuit Augustinus episcopus; Hon. Imag. III “Sexta Ætas”: Augustinus tunc obiit. Gildo tyrannus occiditur. Valentinianus filius Constantii comitis, annos duodecim. Atiila rex Hunnorum; Hon. Lum. II.38: Augustinus, Afer, Hipponensis oppidi episcopus, vir eruditione divina et humana orbi clarus, fide integer, et vita purus, scripsit tanta quanta nec inveniri possunt; Prosp. Chron. 737: Augustinus, beati Ambrosii discipulus, multa facundia doctrinaque excellens, Hyppone regio in Africa episcopus ordinatur. Hoc tempore Claudianus poeta insignis habetur. Theodosius imperator Mediolani moritur; Prosp. Chron. 744: Augustinus episcopus per omnia excellentissimus moritur v kal. Septembris, libris Juliani inter impetum obsidentium Vandalorum, in ipso dierum suorum fine respondens, et gloriose in confessione Christianæ gratiæ perseverans. 9 Cf. Arist. Phys. IV.13 (222a): “[We say] ‘He has come now’ if he came today. But we do not speak in the same way of the Trojan War . . . for time is continuous between us and those events, but they are not near to us (οὐκ ἐγγύς).” 10 See the volume’s third epigraph, Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: ubi est . . . tempus quod longum dicamus? Augustine’s question is importantly distinct from a similar one at Cic. Tusc. I.39.94: Quae vero aetas longa est aut quid omnino homini longum? 11 Plut. Is.Os. 23 (359f): “ ‘the long years of time,’ as Simonides said.” The same expression, τῷ πολλῷ χρόνῳ—which is difficult to render—appears at Plut. Delph. 17 (391f), without the attribution to Simonides. Cf. πολὺν χρόνον to describe the Achaeans’ wall, at Hom. Il. XII.9; πολὺν χρόνον for Odysseus’ misfortunes, at Hom. Od. XI.161; and more casually, ἐν πολλῷ χρόνῳ for Lysias’ speechwriting, at Pl. Ph. 228a. Cf. also Lucr. Rer.nat. II.1174: spatio aetatis . . . vetusto; Ov. Fas. II.443: nomen longis intercidit annis. 12 In the Totius Latinitatis Lexicon, Forcellini glosses the temporal sense of spatium, simply, as “tempus, seu intervallum & longitudinem temporis, tempo, intervallo o estensione di tempo” (1771, IV:179), citing Cicero, Julius Caesar, Livy, Ovid, Pliny, Propertius, Terence and Valerius Flaccus—inter alia—for this sense of spatium. 13 Aug. Conf. XI.23.30, XI.27.34, XI.27.36, etc.

synopsis

3

For Augustine in Confessions XI—as for Aristotle in the Categories14 and Physics,15 or Cicero in De Natura Deorum16—the Greek χρόνος and Latin tempus signify,17 in the first instance, a space of time.18 Thus, to ask with Augustine, in Confessions XI, “What is time?”19 is also necessarily to ask this: What is time’s dimension or space?20 14

Cf. for instance, Arist. Cat. 6 (5b): “An action is called ‘long’ (πρᾶξις μακρὰ) or a movement ‘long’ (κίνησις πολλή) since it occupies a long time (χρόνον πολὺν)”; 12 (14a): “Whenever we use the term ‘prior’ (πρότερον) in its proper and primary sense, that sense is determined by time (κατὰ χρόνον), as when we call a thing ‘older’ or ‘more ancient’ than some other thing, signifying that its time has been longer (τὸν χρόνον πλείω εἶναι).” In 9.5 and 13.6, I advert to the relevance of Aristotle’s Categories to time in Augustine’s Confessions. 15 Cf. time as a φορά or ‘dimension’ of motion at Arist. Phys. IV.11 (220a); time as τὸ μέγεθος, a ‘distance’ or ‘space,’ relative to motion at IV.12 (220b); Aristotle’s appeal to the ποσός, a ‘space’ or ‘magnitude’ or ‘quantum,’ of time at IV.13 (222a); and the use of ἀρόστασις for an ‘interval’ or ‘distance’ of time at IV.14 (223a). And of course, Aristotle’s conception of tragedy is defined by a ‘space of time’— namely, “one revolution, one periodic-cycle of the sun” (μίαν περίοδον ἡλίου)—at Arist. Poet. 5.7–9 (1449b), cf. 7.8–12 (1450b–1451a), 23.3 (1459a), 24.4–7 (1459b), etc. 16 Cic. Nat.deor. II.25.64: χρόνος, id est spatium temporis. Cf. Cic. Inv. I.26.39: in tempore perspiciendo longinquitas . . . est consideranda; I.27.40: in tempore spatium quodam modo declaratur quod in annis aut in anno aut in aliqua anni parte spectatur, in occasione ad spatium temporis faciendi quaedam opportunitas intellegitur adiuncta. 17 Aug. Epist. 197.2–3: χρόνους autem ipsa spatia temporum vocant . . . tempora ergo computare, hoc est χρόνους. Divjak (2002, 1033) dates Epist. 197 to 418–420. Regarding Augustine’s late acquisition of Greek—a vexed question—cf. for instance, Courcelle 1969, 149–65; Marrou 1983, 31–37. Cf. also Isid. Etym. IV.7.1: χρόνος enim, apud Graecos tempus dicitur; V.39.1: χρόνος enim Graece, Latine tempus interpretatur. 18 At Macr. Sat. I.8.6–7, the Greek χρόνος = the Latin tempus, while: Tempus est certa dimensio quae ex caeli conversione colligitur. Cf. also, for instance, Var. Ling. V.12: . . . neque unquam tempus, quin fuerit motus: eius enim intervallum tempus; VI.2.3: Tempus esse dicunt invallum mundi motus. 19 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: quid est enim tempus? A related question in Greek—“What is perpetual time? What is the limitless space of time?” (τί γὰρ ὁ αἰών ἐστι;)—appears at Luci. Auct. 14, and Lucian presumably works up Heraclitus’ response to it from Herac. Fr. 52 (Diels): perpetual time, writes Lucian, is “a child at play, backgammoning, tossing dice and collecting them (διαφερόμενος, συμφερόμενος).” This image goes back, at least, to Hom. Il. XV.362–64, and is criticized at Plut. Delph. 21 (393e–f). 20 Lampey (1960, 35) poses the question well: “Gibt es ein Dauern der Zeit, und was ist dieses Dauern?” Heidegger (2012, 58) is singularly forceful in his response: “Zeit: spatium, distentio!”

4

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In the Eighty-Three Questions, Augustine alludes to star-clocks that could subdivide hours into “sixty minutes” (sexaginta minutas), minutes into “seconds” (minutas minutarum).21 In Confessions XI, he then speculates that seconds could be subdivided into “hyper-minimal instants” (minutissimas momentorum).22 Only such a ‘microsecond,’ only a “hyper-minimal point of time” is ever present.23 This is why Augustine asks in Confessions XI, ‘Where is the time we call long?’ He responds, “in the soul.”24 And what is the space of time? In the last pages of Confessions XI, Augustine suggests that it is “some dilation” (quandam . . . distentionem),25 and apparently, “a dilation . . . of the soul-itself” (distentionem . . . ipsius animi).26 The formula has outlived him. From the late-antique excerpter Eugippius27 to the late-modern philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, Augustine’s timeinvestigation in Confessions XI and the ‘dilation’ it evokes have been taken up as seminal contributions to the concept of time.28 In The Space of Time, I first indicate how the canonical interpretations of Augustine’s ‘dilation’—and more generally, of his time-concepts in Confessions X to XII—are in crucial respects misinterpretations; and then demonstrate that a sensualist interpretation of time in the Confessions is not only philologically valid but philosophically acute. For times have changed since Augustine’s death, but time-itself—ipsum tempus—is not changed. 21 Aug. 83 Quaest. 45.2: In constellationibus autem notari partes, quales trecentas sexaginta dicunt habere signiferum circulum. Motum autem caeli per unam horam fieri in quindecim partibus, ut tanta mora quindecim partes oriantur, quantam tenet una hora. Quae partes singulae sexaginta minutas habere dicuntur. Minutas autem minutarum iam in constellationibus, de quibus futura praedicere se dicunt, non inveniunt. 22 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: si quid intellegitur temporis, quod in nullas iam vel minutissimas momentorum partes dividi possit, id solum est quod ‘praesens’ dicatur. 23 Aug. 83 Quaest. 45.2: . . . tam parvo puncto temporis contingit, ut in duas minutas minutarum non tendatur. 24 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.20.26, XI.28.37. 25 Aug. Conf. XI.23.30: video igitur tempus quandam esse distentionem. Cf. Hrdlicka 1931, 2: “The Late [Latin] fondness for abstract nouns, especially for those ending in -tio (-sio) and -tas is very evident in the Confessions.” 26 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: . . . mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem; sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi. 27 Colish 1985, 235: “[Augustine’s] writings had already begun to be rifled and anthologized by excerpters within a decade or so after his death.”  For Eugippius (c. 482–c. 533) specifically: Pietri and Pietri 1999, 676–79; Dolbeau 2005, 201–202. 28 Augustine’s distentio has antecedents in the Greek terms διάστασις and διάστημα, which are commonplace in Stoic, Pyrrhonian and Neoplatonic discussions of time: see Appendix 1.

Introduction To Recover Augustine’s Time-Question

∵

Proem Seven centuries before Augustine writes that there is “a presence of past-things, memory, a presence of present-things, observation, a presence of futurethings, expectation,”1 Aristotle writes that it is “in present-time” or “within the now” (ἐν τῷ νῦν) that “sensation (αἴσθησις) refers to what is present, hope (ἐλπίς) to what is future, memory (μνήμη) to what is past,” and that without such refraction, there can be no “sense of time” (χρόνου αἰσθάνεται).2 Or again: Aristotle takes it to be axiomatic that all objects of pleasure “must necessarily be present in sensation or past in recollection or future in hope: for one senses present-things, recollects past-things, hopes for future-things.”3 The purpose of opening this way is not to diminish the force of Confessions XI, or to suggest that Augustine takes his phrasing from Aristotle. It is conceivable that Augustine possessed Latinized excerpts of Aristotle’s De Memoria or Rhetoric, but this is indemonstrable, and perhaps uninteresting. Rather, these fore-echoes serve to underscore that—as Augustine confesses— time is “hyper-manifest and hyper-common.”4 Before it is recondite: time is common.

1 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: sunt enim haec in anima tria quaedam et alibi ea non video, praesens de praeteritis memoria, praesens de praesentibus contuitus, praesens de futuris expectatio. 2 Arist. Mem. I (449b). And noting an intellectivist shift, cf. for instance, Cic. Inv. II.53.160–61: ‘Memoria’ est per quam animus repetit illa quae fuerint; ‘intellegentia,’ per quam ea perspicit quae sunt; ‘providentia,’ per quam futurum aliquid videtur ante quam factum est . . . ‘veritas,’ per quam immutata ea quae sunt aut quae ante fuerunt aut futura sunt dicuntur; Tusc. I.10.22: ‘mens’ cogitare enim et providere . . . et meminisse; Rep. IV.1 (fr.): . . . atque ipsa mens ea, quae futura videt, praeterita meminit. Augustine transcribes the first of these Ciceronian passages, at Aug. 83 quaest. 31 (≈ Cic. Inv. II.53–55); and he later takes issue, specifically, with the lines I have quoted from Cic. Inv. II.53, at Aug. Trin. XIV.11.14. 3 Cf. Arist. Rhet. I.11.7 (1370a), Arist.Lat. Rhet. I.11: ἐν τῷ αἰσθάνεσθαι εἶναι παρόντα = in sentiendo presentia; ἐν τῷ μεμνῆσθαι γεγενημένα = in memorando facta; ἐν τῷ ἐλπίζειν μέλλοντα = in sperando futura; αἰσθάνονται μὲν γὰρ τὰ παρόντα, μέμνηνται δὲ τὰ γεγενημένα, ἐλπίζουσι δὲ τὰ μέλλοντα = sentiunt quidem enim presentia, reminiscuntur factorum, sperant vero futura. Cf. also Aug. Imm.anim. 3.3: Et exspectatio futurarum rerum est, praeteritarum vero memoria. At intentio ad agendum praesentis est temporis, per quod futurum in praeteritum transit . . .  4 Aug. Conf. XI.22.28: dicimus ‘tempus’ et ‘tempus,’ ‘tempora’ et ‘tempora’ . . . dicimus haec et audimus haec et intellegimur et intellegimus. manifestissima et usitatissima sunt, et eadem rursus nimis latent et nova est inventio eorum.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004269316_�03

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Thus, whatever conceptual refinements Augustine may introduce in the Confessions, his time-concept will not only echo Aristotle, but will redeploy a triplex distribution of ‘times’ that we see in the first lines of Homer’s Iliad, where it is a pagan auger’s prerogative to disclose whatever “had been, is, or should hereafter be.”5 Later, in the first lines of Hippocrates’ Prognosticon,6 it is a pagan physician’s prerogative to decipher the “things that are, and were before, and will be,”7 but note this: Hippocrates’ empiricist schema, his primitive division of ‘times,’ is still the Iliad’s. And later yet, in the Confessions, Augustine’s primitive division of ‘times’ is still the Iliad’s.8 For before time is obscure: it is manifest. This is a preliminary, but not a negligible point. Augustine believes in time, and what is more, he insists that—in a pre-reflective sense—he knows time.9 In his early collected work,10 the Eighty-Three Questions, Augustine writes: 5

In Thomas Hobbes’s translation. Cf. Hobbes 2008, 6; Hom. Il. I.70: τά τ᾽ ἐόντα τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα. Cf. also Virg. Georg. IV.392–3: novit . . . omnia vates, | quae sint, quae fuerint, quae mox ventura trahantur; Cic. Div. I.30.63: Cum ergo est somno sevocatus animus a societate et a contagione corporis, tum meminit praeteritorum, praesentia cernit, futura praevidet. And for a study of Homeric ‘time,’ specifically in the Iliad: Garcia 2013. 6 Cf. a similar reference to Hippocrates at Aug. Conf. IV.3.4 (Hippocraten intellexisset), where Hippocrates’ medicine is contrasted with astrology—rather than, as here, with augury. 7 Hipp. Prog. I: τά τε παρεόντα καὶ τά προγεγονότα καὶ τά μέλλοντα ἔσεσθαι. 8 At Macr. Sat. I.20.5, Macrobius also cites Hippocrates, Virgil and Homer on the triplicity of time. Then, after a number of dense, hermetic paragraphs, he rationalizes a Sarapis statue—“the statue of a three-headed creature (tricipitis animantis)”—so as to glimpse the form of time: Its central head, which is largest, has the aspect of a lion; on the right, the head of a dog rears up, tame and fawning; the left part of the neck ends in the head of a rapacious wolf. . . . Thus, the lion’s head indicates present time (praesens tempus), poised to move, impetuous and strong, due to its situation between past and future (inter praeteritum futurumque); but the wolf’s head signifies time past (praeteritum tempus), since the memory of finished things (memoria rerum transactarum) is dragged away and destroyed; and similarly, the image of the fawning dog designates the events of future time (futuri temporis), which hope (spes)—though manifestly uncertain—presents to us with a harmless aspect. (Macr. Sat. I.20.13–15.) 9 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: si nemo ex me quaerat, scio . . . fidenter tamen dico scire me quod, si nihil praeteriret, non esset praeteritum tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil esset, non esset praesens tempus. 10 Zarb (1934, 37–38) takes the period of composition to be 388–395, while Mutzenbecher (1984, xviii) suggests 388–397.

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9

All that the corporeal sense touches, and which is called ‘the sensible,’ is being altered without any respite or gap of time whatever.11 This is a sensualist, near-Heraclitean12 formulation of temporal flux.13 This is also a near-duplicate of the opening sentence of Augustine’s second surviving letter, composed in the last months of 386,14 where: All those things the corporeal sense touches15 can by no means remain unaltered—no, not even for some point of time—but they glide away,16 flow on (effluere),17 and retain nothing of ‘presence’ so that—to stay with Latin terms18—they are inexistent (non esse).19 11 Aug. 83 quaest. 9: Omne quod corporeus sensus adtingit, quod et ‘sensibile’ dicitur, sine ulla intermissione temporis commutatur. Cf. Aug. 83 quaest. 9: sine ulla intermissione temporis commutatur; Conf. XIII.33.48: eius informitatem sine ulla temporis interpositione formasti. 12 Pl. Crat. 402a: “Heraclitus says, you know, that all things rush on and nothing holds fast (πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει), and he likens all things to the flux of a river (ποταμοῦ ῥοῇ ἀπεικάζων τὰ ὄντα).” 13 Augustine refers to temporal ‘flux’ (fluxus), at Aug. Conf. IX.8.18: at tu, domine, rector caelitum et terrenorum, ad usus tuos contorquens profunda torrentis, fluxum saeculorum ordinate turbulentum . . . Cf. Hrdlicka 1931, 70: “fluxus, flow, tide (of time): [Conf.] 9, 8, 18, . . . fluxum saeculorum ordinate turbulentum;—a flowing, flow (of liquids) (Plin mai., Late).” 14 Divjak 2002, 1028: “Epistula 2 . . . Ende 386.” 15 Cf. Aug. Epist. 2.1: Omnia, quae corporeus sensus adtingit . . .; 83 quaest. 9: Omne quod corporeus sensus adtingit . . . 16 Cf. Aug. Conf. IX.3.6: “. . . when, look: those days had glided away” (cum ecce evoluti sunt dies illi). Thus Hrdlicka 1931, 76: “evolui, to roll away . . . glide away (Verg., Silver).” 17 Cf. also Aug. Enarr. 38.7: “All things are swept on, carried off by rolling instants of time: the torrent of all things rushes and flows” (Momentis transvolantibus cuncta rapiuntur, torrens rerum fluit). 18 Cf. Hrdlicka 1931, 7: “St. Augustine is very restrained in his employment of foreign loanwords”; Schieman 1938, 75: “In the use of Greek loan words . . . St. Augustine is very conservative.” This reticence to use Greek terms is addressed—as at many places in Cicero’s dialogues—at, for instance, Aug. Util. 3.5. And I must include this philological pearlof-great-price, which we owe to Clement Louis Hrdlicka (1931, 7): “The Greek adjective theatricus is the only one in the Confessions of which it can be definitely stated that it was introduced into Latin literature by St. Augustine.” 19 Aug. Epist. 2.1: Omnia, quae corporeus sensus adtingit, ne puncto quidem temporis eodem modo manere posse, sed labi, effluere et praesens nihil obtinere, id est, ut latine loquar, non esse.

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Yet this ‘inexistence’ of temporalia never implies the inexistence of tempus. To the contrary, in Augustine’s late counter-history,20 The City of God against the Pagans, he maintains that time Not only is (non solum est), but is so real and so harassing that no discourse can express it and no sophism can evade it.21 There is no Eleatic or finally sceptical tendency in Augustine, apropos of time. Against the “anti-physicists” (ἀφυσίκους) or “arresters” (στασιώτας),22 such as Parmenides; and against the radical sceptics,23 such as Sextus Empiricus: time—in Augustine’s corpus—is, and is common, and is manifest. Therefore, Augustine’s time-concept will take its rise from—at very least—a sensual manifestness of time that ‘no discourse can express and no sophism can evade.’ And accordingly, in Sextus Empiricus’ phrase, Augustine will follow on from those philosophers who—like the masses, and unlike Parmenides—“attend to phenomena” (τοῖς φαινομένοις προσέχων).24

20

Zarb (1934, 88) gives 413–426 as the date-range, while Mutzenbecher (1984, xx) has 412–426/7. 21 Aug. Civ. XIII.11: Nunc autem non solum est, verum etiam tam molesta est, ut nec ulla explicari locutione possit nec ulla ratione vitari. Admittedly, Augustine’s most immediate reference here is ‘death,’ not ‘time.’ However, in the same paragraph he suggests a strict parallelism of ‘death’ and ‘time’ that justifies my use of the sentence here. Cf. Civ. XIII.11: Ita etiam in transcursu temporum quaeritur praesens, nec invenitur, quia sine ullo spatio est, per quod transitur ex futuro in praeteritum. I would also suggest that Augustine may very well here—with his reference to a ‘sophism’ regarding death, and with his structural linkage of time-modalities and the ‘point’ of death—be conversing with, and criticizing, Lucretius at Lucr. Rer.nat. III.824–42, a passage that hinges on the Epicurean claim (‘sophism’?): “Therefore death is nothing to us” (Nil igitur mors est ad nos). This ‘sophism’ is flanked by stanzas on expectation and memory, and the inexistence of past and future in the absence of expectation and memory. 22 The terms here are Aristotle’s (via Sext. Ad.Phys. II.45–46), but for the epithet στασιώτας, cf. Pl. Theaet. 180d–181a, where the Eleatics are “partisans of the unmoving whole” (τοῦ ὅλου στασιῶται). 23 Cf. Sext. Ad.Phys. II.45–49. And though Sextus Empiricus is here addressing ‘motion,’ the interlinkage of ‘motion’ and ‘time’ is so close and so essential as to permit a transposition. Sextus turns to the question of time in the next chapter of Ad.Phys. II. 24 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.45: “That [motion] exists is affirmed both by the masses, who attend to appearances, and by the greater part of the physicists (φυσικῶν), such as Pythagoras and Empedocles and Anaxagoras and Democritus and Epicurus . . . but its non-existence is affirmed by Parmenides and Melissus.”

chapter 1

Augustine and the Temporal Intrigue “From book XI of the Confessions,” writes Jean-François Lyotard, “Husserl reads off the phenomenology of the internal consciousness of time. In this book Augustine sketches out from below a libidinal-ontological constitution of temporality.”1 Lyotard’s first observation is not contentious. Edmund Husserl opens his 1905 time-consciousness lectures—in manuscript, as in Martin Heidegger’s edition—with unmixed praise for Confessions XI.2 Nor is it contentious when Lyotard, later in his Confession of Augustine, traces Heidegger’s thematic of temporality to Augustine.3 Heidegger states in 1925 that he first encountered his Ur-phenomenon of concern (Sorge) in Augustine,4 and repeats in 1941 that “the sole question” of Sein und Zeit is indebted to him.5 Work on Heidegger’s published, and as yet unpublished,6 lectures and seminars continues to i­ dentify links between the Confessions and Heidegger’s 1920s phenomenology.7 And in 1 Lyotard 1998, 37–38/2000, 19. 2 Husserl 1966, 3; 1971, 21; cf. von Herrmann 1992, 145–57. And of course, Husserl (1960, 157; 1964, 39) closes his Paris Lectures and Cartesian Meditations with this injunction from Aug. Vera rel. 39.72: Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi. In interiore homine habitat veritas. 3 Lyotard 2000, 73–74: “The whole of modern, existential thought on temporality ensues from this meditation [sc. Conf. XI]: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre.” Cf. Ricœur 1983, 34: “[Distentio animi est] le trait de génie du livre XI des Confessions d’Augustin, dans le sillage duquel s’engageront Husserl, Heidegger et Merleau-Ponty”; Corradini 1997, 37: “An diesen genialen Gedanken [i.e. distentio animi] schließen Husserl, Heidegger und Ricoeur an.” 4 Heidegger (1979, 418/1985, 302) recalls that he first noticed “the phenomenon of care” (das Phänomen der Sorge), circa 1918, in his “attempts to arrive at the ontological foundations of Augustinian anthropology.” 5 Heidegger 1991, 48; where Heidegger also cites Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard. 6 Heidegger’s “Augustinus und der Neuplatonismus (SS 1921)” appeared in 1995 in the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe 60, and in English translation in 2004. His “Augustinus, Confessiones XI (De Tempore). Übungen im Wintersemester 1930/31” appeared in 2012 in Gesamtausgabe 83, which is titled Seminare: Platon—Aristoteles—Augustinus. Heidegger’s 26 October 1930 lecture at the Beuron Monastery, “Des hl. Augustinus Betrachtungen über Zeit. Confessiones Liber XI,” is scheduled to appear in Gesamtausgabe 80. 7 For instance: Barizza 2005; Brachtendorf 2007; Capelle 2005; Falque 2012, 2013; Fischer 2007; Sommer 2005, 2013; Van Fleteren 2005; von Herrmann and Fischer 2007. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004269316_�04

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the wake of phenomenology, not only Lyotard but Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricœur, Rainer Schürmann and Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann have taken Augustine as a difficult, yet essential, interlocutor.8 More arresting than Lyotard’s doxographic claim, however, is the hermeneutic claim that follows it, without conjunction or disjunction. In Confessions XI, ‘Augustine sketches out from below a libidinal-ontological constitution of temporality.’ The suggestion is oblique, and Lyotard does not return to it in The Confession of Augustine. Yet it could also be said that Lyotard’s Confession is in its entirety a lyrical, conflicted, but lucid gloss on this sentence. “From below” (par en-dessous),9 that is: Augustine writes under a speculative canopy of eternity, but without recourse to eternity. Several preliminary contrasts help to establish this point. When Cicero confesses how difficult it is “to define time-itself and in generic terms (generaliter),”10 he blithely proceeds to define it—for a rhetorician’s purposes, at least—as “some part of eternity (pars quaedam aeternitatis) which is indicated by a determinate space (spati certa),” such as year or month, day or night.11

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Lyotard 1998, 2000; Derrida 1991, 1998, 2001; Ricœur 1983, 1985; Schürmann 1993, 2003; von Herrmann 1992, 2008. 9 Lyotard 1998, 37. 10 It is presumably on the basis of Cicero’s demur here that, when William of Conches quotes Cicero’s definition of ‘time’ in his 12th-century Glosae in Timaeum—relative to Conches’ triplex division of the senses of ‘time’ into the generalis, the totalis and the partialis— he takes it to be a definition of ‘partial,’ not ‘general time.’ Cf. Conc. Glos. cap. XCIV: Partialis vero talis est data a Tullio: Tempus est quedam pars eternitatis, id est illius magni spacii, cum certa significatione alicuius spacii diurni, nocturni mensurnive: certa significatione, id est determinata certa quantitate et nomine. Que partialis est quia convenit parti et non toti. Unlike Conches, Pierre Gassendi (1658, I:220) later sets this Ciceronian caveat alongside Augustine’s much-cited, opening confession at Conf. XI.14.17: “Profectò verò haud abs re in ore eſt omnium, quod D. habet Auguſtinus, Si nemo, inquit, ex me quærat, quid sit Tempus, scio; si quærenti explicare velim, nescio. . . . Cúmque proinde Cicero dicat, difficile esse Tempus definire generaliter; parùm abeſt, quin pronunciemus eſſe id impoſſibile; adeò non licet definitionem, quæ ſatisfaciat reperire.” Gassendi (1658, I:226) completes Cicero’s provisional definition some pages later: “Cicero, Tempus eſt, inquit, pars quædam Æternitatis, cum alicuius annui, menstrui, diurni, nocturnive spaty certa significatione.” 11 Cic. Inv. I.26.39: Tempus autem est—id quo nunc utimur, nam ipsum quidem generaliter definire difficile est—pars quaedam aeternitatis cum alicuius annui, menstrui, diurni, nocturnive spati certa significatione.

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When Macrobius hails Saturn as “the inaugurator of times” (auctor est temporum)—by which he means that the sun institutes “an order of the elements [that] is passed down [and] delimited by intrinsically numbered times (temporum numerositate)”—he posits an “eternal bond” (nexus aeternitate) that sustains this diurnal order of times.12 When Calcidius glosses the infinite alterations that constitute—in his Latinized Timaeus—the very “rudiment and sequence of time,”13 he depicts these alterations as a “labile and irresistible”14 image of eternity;15 or as a numinous and periodized imitation of eternity (vices temporis imitantis aevum).16

12 Macr. Sat. I.22.8: Saturnus ipse, qui auctor est temporum et ideo a Graecis immutata littera Κρόνος quasi Χρόνος vocatur, quid aliud nisi sol intellegendus est cum tradatur ordo elementorum temporum numerositate distinctus, luce patefactus, nexus aeternitate conductus, visione discretus, quae omnia actum solis ostendunt? Apropos of Macrobius’ Κρόνος–Χρόνος manoeuvre here, vid. Plut. Is.Os. 32 (363d), which Panofsky (1972, 73 n. 8) cites as “the earliest [appearance of] this identity in writing.” Of signal importance for us is the identification of Κρόνος with χρόνος, and then a translation as spatium temporis, at Cic. Nat.deor. II.25.64: Κρόνος enim dicitur, qui est idem χρόνος id est spatium temporis. And of course, cf. also Aug. Cons. I.23.34: . . . nos tamen [say the pagans] Saturnum interpretamur ‘universum tempus,’ quod Graecum etiam vocabulum eius ostendit; vocatur enim Cronos, quod adspiratione addita etiam temporis nomen est, unde et Latine Saturnus appellatur, quasi saturetur anni. Pépin (1976, 515) concludes his pages on “Le temps et le mythe” in this way: “Si les Anciens n’ont cessé de recourir au mythe pour se défendre contre le temps, ils mettaient volontiers le temps au nombre des enseignements qu’ils découvraient dans les myths; en particulier, il leur arrivait constamment d’ajouter au dieu Cronos l’aspiration qui lui manque pour figurer adéquatement le chronos.” 13 Calc. Epist. 105: . . . vices, elementa seriesque temporis ex quibus menses et anni, partes eius ratione ac supputatione dividuae. 14 Calc. Epist. 106: praesentia vero neque plane esse neque omnino non esse propter instabile atque inrefrenabile momentorum agmen. 15 Calc. Epist. 105: . . . mundus intellegibilis exemplum est mundi sensilis . . . Imago quoque eius hic sensilis simulacro aevi facto atque instituto iungetur; imago enim demum aevi tempus est manentis in suo statu, tempus porro minime manens, immo progrediens semper et replicabile. 16 Calc. Epist. 105: . . . sunt haec omnia vices temporis imitantis aevum. . . . archetypus quippe omni aevo semper existens est, hic sensibilis imagoque eius is est qui per omne tempus fuerit, quippe et futurus sit.

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And when Proclus recalls that “the most eminent theurgists”17 had reverenced time-itself “as god” (θεὸν);18 and that, as an “image of eternity,” time is at very least the “image of a god” (εἰκὼν θεοῦ); he concludes—in a Parmenidean vein—that “time is eternal (χρόνος αἰώνίος ἐστιν) . . .  in regard to its essence (οὐσίᾳ).”19 In Confessions XI, to the contrary, time is neither part nor nexus nor image20 nor hypostasis21 of Augustine’s ‘eternity,’22 and accordingly, the word itself—aeternitas—disappears after the first sentences of Augustine’s ­timeinvestigation in Confessions XI.14.17, and only reappears in the penultimate sentence of XI.29.39.23 Augustine’s doctrine of ‘time’ is, indeed, resolutely 17

And I would add ‘poets’ to ‘theurgists’ here. Cf. for instance, Soph. El. 178: “Time is a mild god” (χρόνος . . . εὐμαρὴς θεός); Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007b): “No mean intuition (οὐ φαύλως ὑπονοῶν) seems to have been expressed by Pindar in the words, ‘The lord, the lofty, Time, who excels all the beatific gods’ (ἄνακτα τὸν πάντων ὑπερβάλλοντα χρόνον μακάρων).” 18 For the ‘Neoplatonists’ (philosophi . . . recentiores Platonici) on divinity and time: Aug. Cons. I.23.35. 19 Proc. Tim. III.26–27 (exc. Sambursky and Pines 1987, 50–53). 20 Pace O’Donnell’s (1992, III:279) numerological template for Conf. XI: “Aeternitas [1] belongs in a triad with veritas [2] and caritas [3] . . . hence tempus [in Conf. XI] is the quality of human experience that corresponds to (reflects? presents an image of?) divine eternity.” 21 Pace Milbank’s (2008, 198 n. 60) strictly useless formulation, “Christ is time,” in his recent glance at “Augustine on time.” Milbank’s sibylline synthesis has no grounding in Conf. X–XII or, to my awareness, in any Augustinian text. 22 Thus O’Daly 1987, 152: “Perhaps uniquely among ancient Platonists, Augustine does not attempt to understand time with reference to its supposed paradeigma or model, eternity. Elsewhere, indeed, he will refer to time as a ‘trace (vestigium)’ or ‘copy (imitatio)’ of eternity, but in conf. 11 it is rather the total contrast between God’s transcendence of time and man’s anguished experience of dispersion . . . in time that he wishes to emphasize.” And cf. Gross 1999, 134: “Augustine’s ontology of time is noteworthy for its departure from Plotinus. If in earlier writings he sees time as an ‘image’ or ‘vestige’ of eternity . . . from the Confessions forward, he will stress the radical contrast . . . the opposition between time and eternity”; 136: “For Augustine time and eternity are opposed and ‘not comparable’ (incomparabilem; Conf. 11.11).” 23 This is why Marion (2012, 193) is forced to invoke Conf. XI.30.40—which reprises the eternity-meditation of Conf. XI.3–13, not the time-investigation of Conf. XI.14–29 (see 5.1)— when he writes that “book XI of the Confessions is not about a definition of time . . . [but] aims rather to conceive how time is not closed to eternity any more than it is abolished in it—in short, how [time] could be articulated . . . with [eternity], without confusion or separation. And in fact, book XI will conclude”—as we will see in 5.3, this is simply incorrect—“with a recognition of this almost unthinkable articulation: . . . ‘Let them

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e­ laborated from within what Lyotard calls “this transitivity of finite being.”24 And within the space that his time-investigation occupies, Augustine not only proceeds ‘in time’—as he himself confesses (XI.25.32)—but also, methodologically, ‘from below.’ And what of Lyotard’s bid for a “libidinal-ontological (libidinale-ontologique) constitution of temporality” in Confessions XI?25 What Lyotard conveys with this compound term is the idea (α) that in Augustine’s time-investigation, it is “desire that bears three times the mourning of its things,” and (β) that Augustine’s time-itself (ipsum tempus) is “measured by affectio, in the singular mode in which things touch us (la chose nous touche) in their eclipse.”26 In the present work, I seek to clarify (β): Augustine’s ‘ontological constitution of temporality’ in Confessions X to XII. A necessary sequel to this research would be to elaborate, in light of the interpretation I develop here, (α): Augustine’s indisseverably ‘libidinal constitution of temporality.’ That is to say, the sense-affective rôles of desire (desiderium), concern (cura), lust (libido) and indigence (indigentia) in the ‘time’ of Augustine’s Confessions.27 But again—in Lyotard’s terms—my concern in this work is with the things that ‘touch us in their eclipse,’ with the things that a desirous soul ‘three times’ illuminates, measures, and mourns in time. And for Augustine, in Confessions X to XII, these things-themselves (res ipsa) that co-constitute time as affectio are corpora: bodies, in movement and at rest (XI.24.31). And for Augustine, in Confessions X to XII, a further condition of time-itself as ‘measured by affectio’ is sensus: sensation. And more specifically, sensus carnis: the sensation of the flesh.28 It is for this reason that I will refer to ‘sense-affective’ or ‘sense-imaginal’ time in Augustine. This formula is adumbrated in the last comprehend you as the eternal creator of all times and with whom no time or any creature is coeternal’ ([Conf.] XI, 30, 40).” 24 Lyotard 2000, 72. 25 Lyotard 1998, 38. 26 Lyotard 1998, 53/2000, 32. Lyotard’s reference here is explicitly to Conf. XI.27.36: he finishes this sentence, “affectio quam res praetereuntes in nos faciunt.” 27 Cf. for instance, Aug. Enarr. 6.13. 28 Aug. Conf. IV.10.15: illis . . . non stant: fugiunt . . . tardus est enim sensus carnis, quoniam sensus carnis est: ipse est modus eius. sufficit ad aliud, ad quod factus est . . .  In her meticulous short work on The Syntax of the Confessions of Saint Augustine, Sister Mary Raphael Arts (1927, 15–16) lists sensus carnis as an instance of a later Latin “descriptive or qualitative genitive,” a genitive that appears with Apuleius, is “also used by Symmachus, Sulpicius Severus, Sidonius Apolloniarus, etc.,” and is “due chiefly to the Hebraic influence.” That is to say: “This genitive has its origins in a Hebrew idiom which was preserved in the Greek text of the Bible and thence transferred to the Latin.”

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sentences of Confessions XI,29 and the arc of The Space of Time is devoted to, and determined by, the task of recovering Augustine’s much-cited (and miscited) ‘distentio animi’ in the Confessions as most originarily signifying a ‘distentio sensuum’: a dilation of the senses.30 1.1

Against a Truncated Interpretation of Confessions XI

While the interpretation I develop here is decisively influenced by phenomenological and post-phenomenological interpretations of Augustine— foremost by von Herrmann’s and Lyotard’s—it yet represents a fundamental departure. For even Lyotard sees distentio as a refraction or elongation of the ‘mind’ (intellectus, mens): “Waiting, attention, and memory [are] the presence to the mind (esprit) of the future, of the present, and of the past.”31 Or again: von Herrmann articulates distentio as “the flowing of time in the interiority (Innerlichkeit) of the time-attuned mind (Geistes),”32 while Ricœur insists that 29 Aug. Conf. XI.31.41: variatur affectus sensusque distenditur. 30 While he has in no way influenced my decision to render Augustine’s distentio with ‘dilation,’ J.-L. Chrétien (2007, 33–63) surveys Augustine’s use of dilatare in several sermons, and one appearance in the Confessions (dilatetur abs te, I.5.6), in his Essai sur la dilatation. There is a very interesting temporal use of dilatio at Sen. Brev. 16.4: Omnis illis speratae rei longa dilatio est; at illud tempus quod amant breve est et praeceps breviusque multo, suo vitio. 31 Lyotard 1998, 68/2000, 45: “Il nomme respectivement attente, attention, mémoire la présence à l’esprit du futur, du présent, du passé.” Esprit in this formulation should be taken as Augustine’s animus since Lyotard himself equates the terms in his section, “Temporize”: “the mind itself . . . animus” (l’esprit meme . . . animus) (1998, 51/2000, 30). And in a later passage, Lyotard explicitly re-renders Augustine’s animus with ‘intellect’: “Indeed the intellect (l’intellect), animus, takes up the hand again for the final four lengthy books [of the Conf.], the thinker multiplies analyses, explanations, allegorical interpretations . . .” (1998, 80/2000, 56; tr. mod.). In short: Lyotard’s esprit = Augustine’s animus, while Augustine’s animus = Lyotard’s intellect. Thus, Lyotard’s esprit = Lyotard’s intellect. It is strange, however, that Lyotard (1998, 68) also writes of Augustine’s co-presence of ‘times’ to the spiritus—“Augustin dit: à l’esprit, spiritu”—since the term spiritus is notably absent in Confessions XI, apart from Aug. Conf. XI.1.1: vocasti nos, ut simus pauperes spiritu et mites et lugentes et esurientes ac sitientes iustitiam . . . 32 Von Herrmann 1992, 151/2008, 155 (tr. mod.): “Was dagegen Augustinus als Zeitfluß in der Innerlichkeit des zeitverstehenden Geistes in den Blick nimmt, ist die objektive Zeit, und zwar so, wie sie innerlich verstanden wird. Die innerlich verstandene fließende Zeit ist auch die Zeit der äußeren dinglichen Welt.”

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temporizing affectio is “in the soul (âme) only inasmuch as the mind (esprit) acts, that is, expects, attends, and remembers.”33 I will suggest, to the contrary, that for Augustine ‘the mind . . . expects, attends, and remembers’ (Ricœur) only because, and as long as, the soul (anima-animus) vivifies its flesh (caro)34 and thus ignites sensation (sensus). That is, ‘the soul’ that is dilated in Augustine’s time-investigation is essentially and incommutably the life of a body (vita corporis)—not intellectus, not mens.35 I will also suggest that Augustine’s identification of tempus with a ‘distentio animi’ does not resolve into an ‘interiority of the mind’ (von Herrmann), but rather, into an outness of the soul. This ‘outness’ is, indeed, co-given in and indicated by Augustine’s selection of the term distentio, which depicts not a contraction, intension or recoil, but a dilation, refraction and spatialization of the soul. And lastly, I will seek to demonstrate that distentio in Confessions XI is less originarily and decisively a ‘presence to the mind of the future, of the present, and of the past’ (Lyotard), than it is a refractive presence-of (praesens de) past and future things which is incommutably linked to, and trebly articulated by, sensation (sensus-contuitus).36 In Confessions XI, on my interpretation here,

33

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35 36

Cf. von Herrmann 1992, 120: “die distentio der Zeit die distentio des zeitverstehenden Geistes ist.” Ricœur 1983, 38/1984, 19: “C’est dans l’âme, donc à titre d’impression, que l’attente et la mémoire ont de l’extension. Mais l’impression n’est dans l’âme que pour autant que l’esprit agit, c’est-à-dire attend, fait attention et se souvient.” Cf. Ricœur 1983, 37: “Il ne faudrait pas croire que ce recours à l’impression [in Conf. XI.37] termine l’enquête. La notion de distentio animi n’a pas reçu son dû tant qu’on n’a pas contrasté la passivité de l’impression avec l’activité d’un esprit tendu en des directions opposées, entre l’attente, la mémoire et l’attention. Seul un esprit ainsi diversement tendu peut être distendu.” And cf. also, for instance, Guitton 1955, 187: “Elle est vraiment une extension, c’està-dire qu’elle implique une activité de l’esprit . . . l’esprit attend, l’esprit fait attention et l’esprit se souvient”; Jordan 1955, 398: “There are not three times, strictly speaking, but three modes of present time—a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future, each with its corresponding act of the mind—memory, sight (contuitus), and expectation.” Cf. Aug. Fid.simb. 10.24: Omnis enim caro etiam corpus est, non autem omne corpus etiam caro est: primo in istis terrestribus, quoniam lignum corpus est, sed non caro; hominis autem vel pecoris et corpus et caro est; in caelestibus vero nulla caro, sed corpora simplicia et lucida, quae appellat Apostolus ‘spiritalia’; nonnulli autem vocant ‘aetherea.’ Cf. Aug. Conf. III.6.10: vita corporum; X.6.10: tibi dico, anima, quoniam tu vegetas molem corporis tui praebens ei vitam, quod nullum corpus praestat corpori. Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.15.18: “The expectation of future things becomes sight when they have arrived, and this same sight becomes memory when they have passed by” (expectatio

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the privileged and incommutable crux of Augustine’s distentio, the hypertransitive point (punctum) from which time-itself is veraciously refracted, is what Augustine calls a praesens de praesentibus: a presence-of-present-things in sensation.37 But all of this will only come into clarity, and to validity, in Part III. And the route to Part III will not be direct, since a basic result of my research is the conviction that the time-investigation in Confessions XI.14–29 should not be interpreted, and cannot be adequately interpreted, as a discrete or freestanding investigation. (Goulven Madec is entirely in the right when he says that this sort of truncated interpretation is a “bad habit” of the philosophers.)38 As a single indication of this: Augustine is variously praised or dispraised for seeing time-itself at first “in the soul” (anima);39 and then, indistinctly, as “some dilation” (distentio);40 and finally—most likely41—as a dilation “of the soul” (animus).42 But what is anima, here? And what is animus? And are they different?43 There is nothing in Confessions XI.14–29 that approaches a definition of anima-animus, nor is there any concrete indication in book XI of what Augustine means by anima in XI.20 (etc.), and then by animus in XI.26 (etc.).44 Localizing time in anima, and identifying time with a dilation of animus, thus remain—within the limits of Augustine’s time-investigation—radically rerum venturarum fit contuitus, cum venerint, idemque contuitus fit memoria, cum praeterierint). 37 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: praesens de praeteritis memoria, praesens de praesentibus contuitus, praesens de futuris expectatio. 38 Madec 2001, 189: “Les philosophes, eux, ont la mauvaise habitude d’isoler dans le livre XI des Confessions le développement sur le temps et de s’y enfermer.” 39 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: sunt enim haec in anima tria quaedam et alibi ea non video. 40 Aug. Conf. XI.23.30: video igitur tempus quandam esse distentionem. sed video? an videre mihi videor? Cf. Arist. Phys. IV.4 (212a), albeit of ‘place’ (ὁ τόπος): “for there appears to be some dimension, some extension” (γὰρ φαίνεται εἶναι διάστημα). Διάστημα later becomes a terminus technicus in discussions of time: see Appendix 1. 41 That is to say, Academicorum more. Cf. Cic. Nat.deor. III.29.72: Academicorum more contra communem opinionem . . . pugnare ratione; Aug. Conf. V.14.25: itaque Academicorum more, sicut existimantur . . . 42 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: inde mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem; sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi. 43 Cf. Arts 1927, 4: “Augustine, in his Confessions, often seems to make no distinction at all in his use of anima and animus for the Christian conception of ‘soul.’ ” 44 Cf. for instance, Aug. 83 quaest. 7.

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and necessarily indeterminate findings.45 What generally occurs could be predicted: a pre-decided concept of ‘soul,’ ‘mind,’ ‘consciousness’ or ‘subject’ is imported.46 It is precisely this that my interpretation cuts against, while admittedly foregrounding and valorizing certain of Augustine’s motivations and aspects of his text. 1.2

Preliminary Remarks on the Term ‘Sensualist’

It is necessary to address the basic tendency of my interpretation, which is indeed a sensualist interpretation, before proceeding. (For the sceptical or impatient: the descriptor ‘sensual,’ apropos of the rhythmic enunciation of Ambrose’s line, Deus creator omnium, is originally Augustine’s: see 13.6.) In the first place, the term ‘sensualist’ is of course not chosen to insinuate that the bishop of Hippo Regius was a languorous type, a sybarite—since he was not. For a glimpse of time-analysis from a real Roman ‘sensualist,’ in the vulgar sense,47 we should rather turn to a passage from Seneca’s De Brevititate Vitae: I hear that one of these delicious types—if you can call it ‘delicious’ to deconstruct (dediscere) the habits of a human life—when he had been lifted from a bath by his unhappy slave-boys’ hands48 and placed in his sedan-chair, said curiously, “Am I now seated?” (Iam sedeo?)

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Nota bene: the same holds for sensus within the time-investigation of Conf. XI, and indeed, for sensus carnis within the Conf. as a whole. For incisive surveys of Augustine’s theory of sensus, in which the survival, in Augustine, of a Stoic notion of corporeal pneuma is of special interest: Colish 1985, 169–79; O’Daly 1987, 21–31, 80–105. O’Daly (1987, 80 n. 1), with characteristic modesty, cites Kälin 1920, 8–40 (non vidi) as being “the clearest account of Augustine’s theory of sense-perception.” Cf. Corradini 1997, 32: “Anima ist hier als Bewußtsein zu verstehen.” For ‘sensualist’ in the vulgar sense, cf. for instance, Sen. Brev. 12.7: Audio quendam ex delicatis . . .; Cic. Fin. II.7.21–22: Idque si ita dicit, non esse reprendendos luxuriosos si sapientes sint . . . Sed tamen nonne reprenderes, Epicure, luxuriosos . . . Unum nescio, quomodo possit, si luxuriosus sit, finitas cupiditates habere. I have transposed ‘unhappy slave-boys’ from Sen. Brev. 12.5: “How carefully these unhappy little slave-boys (infelices pueruli) wipe the spittle off the rich drunks’ chins!”

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Now, could you say that a man who doesn’t know whether he is seated knows (scire) whether he is alive, or whether he sees, or whether he is indeed ‘at leisure’?49 Note the time-word here, iam, which means ‘now,’ ‘already’ or ‘so soon.’ This nameless connoisseur of self-indulgence—despite Seneca’s over-reaching questions—still evidently ‘knows’ what time is in the most basic sense that Augustine opens his time-investigation with, at Confessions XI.14.17: “If no one asks me what time is, I know (scio).”50 Seneca’s “jellyfish”51 clearly knows that he was recently not seated; knows that time has passed; knows that he has now 49 Sen. Brev. 12.7: Audio quendam ex delicatis (si modo deliciae vocandae sunt vitam et consuetudinem humanam dediscere), cum ex balneo inter manus elatus et in sella p ­ ositus esset, dixisse interrogando: “Iam sedeo?” Hunc tu ignorantem an sedeat putas scire an vivat, an videat, an otiosus sit? 50 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. 51 ‘Jellyfish’ is one possible translation of Plato’s πλεύμων (‘sea-lung,’ ‘jellyfish’) in a passage of the Philebus which—I am convinced—directly or indirectly, but in any event decisively influences the passage I have just quoted from Seneca’s De Brevititate Vitae. What follows is a late-Platonic ‘Socrates,’ at Pl. Phil. 21b–d: Living thus, would you be enjoying the very intensest pleasures (μεγίσταις ἡδοναῖς) all your life? . . . But if you did not possess mind (νοῦν) or memory (μνήμην) or knowledge (ἐπιστήμην) or true opinion (δόξαν . . . ἀληθῆ), in the first place, you would not know whether you were enjoying your pleasures or not. . . . If you had no memory you could not even remember that you ever did enjoy pleasure, and no recollection whatever of present pleasure (παραχρῆμα ἡδονῆς) could remain with you; if you had no true opinion you could not think (δόξάζειν) you were enjoying pleasure at the time you were enjoying it, and if you were without the power of calculation you would not be able to calculate (λογίζεσθαι) that you would enjoy it in the future. Your life would not be a human life (ζῆν δὲ οὐκ ἀνθρώπου βίον), but that of a jellyfish (πλεύμονος) or some other sea-creature . . .  This is a hugely important Platonic glance at ‘time-consciousness,’ and the intimate link of time-consciousness to intense pleasure is still evident, obliquely, in the Epicureans’ apology at Cic. Fin. I.17.55–57: We can sense nothing by the body, but what is present [in time] and present to it [in space], whereas by the soul we can sense past-things and future-things. . . . [And] just as we are elated by the expectation of good things, so we are delighted by their recollection. . . . [And] when the things of the past are perceived by the force of the soul’s attention, then sorrow or gladness ensues, according as these things were unpleasant, or pleasant. Nam corpore nihil nisi praesens et quod adest sentire possumus, animo autem praeterita et futura. . . . [Et] ut iis bonis erigimur quae expectamus, sic laetamur iis quae

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(perhaps) been deposited in his balneal sedan-chair; or if not, knows that he will in future be ‘lifted from the bath,’ and so on. All of this indicates a primitive, sense-affective, yet formally unimpugnable grasp of ‘time’—which is by no means to say, a reflective grasp of ‘time.’52 But regardless, Augustine is no “soft-skinned, preening voluptuary,” as per the Epicureans’ undeserved yet enduring reputation.53 The bishop of Hippo Regius is no Lucullus. And while he confesses a predilection for Epicurus’ doctrines (plus a post-mortem life of “perpetual bodily pleasure”)54 as late as Milan, in Confessions VI,55 it is the idea of a demon-baited anchorite in the desert—and not the ideals of Epicurus’ Garden—that finally conquers Augustine’s will in a Milanese garden, in Confessions VIII.56 By the time Augustine writes Confessions X to XII (c. 400),57 he espouses a tempered­ recordamur. . . . [Et] cum ea quae praeterierunt acri animo et attento intuemur, tum fit ut aegritudo sequatur si illa mala sint, si bona laetitia. 52 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: quis hoc ad verbum de illo proferendum vel cogitatione comprehenderit? 53 Cic. Fin. I.11.37: . . . voluptuaria, delicata, mollis. 54 Aug. Conf. VI.16.26: si essemus immortales et in perpetua corporis voluptate sine ullo amissionis terrore viveremus. 55 Aug. Conf. VI.16.26: Epicurum accepturum fuisse palmam in animo meo . . . While Augustine himself inclines, “in late 385 or early in 386” (O’Donnell 1992, II:386), to the Epicurean doctrine, he writes in 410 that “the ashes” of the Stoic and Epicurean systems are so cold that not even “the slightest spark (scintilla) could be struck out from them against the Christian faith” (Epist. 118.2.12). Also note that, bizarrely, it is Augustine’s “fear of death” (metus mortis) in Conf. VI.16.26 that steels him against Epicurus’ cure for the fear of death. Cf. also Augustine’s acute “fear of dying” (moriendi metus) at Conf. IV.6.11. 56 Cf. Aug. Conf. VIII.6.14: Antonio Aegyptio monacho, cuius nomen excellenter clarebat apud servos tuos; X.43.70: agitaveram corde meditatusque fueram fugam in solitudinem, sed prohibuisti me. 57 Zarb (1934, 43–45), Mutzenbecher (1984, xviii) and several others date Conf. I–IX to a.d. 397, Conf. X–XIII to “ante annum 401.” More recently, Hombert (2000, 8–23) has assigned the composition of books I–IX to the years 397–400, and attempted to fix the composition of books X–XIII, quite firmly, in 403. Hombert’s efforts are impressive, but not conclusive. Indeed, the disjunct dating of Conf. I–IX/X–XIII is itself contested. O’Donnell (1992, I:xxxii) still writes—with his unsurpassed knowledge of the Conf. and its chronological literature, and without any ‘pious’ prejudice whatever—that “The Confessions are a single work in thirteen books, written in ad 397.” Even if a disjunct dating is accepted, O’Donnell (1992, I:xli) is still entirely correct in this: “Rhetorical and stylistic unity . . . [run] through the book like an electric current.” It is only whether this unity makes the Conf. “easiest to read as a work written entirely in 397,” as per O’Donnell, that remains a question.

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asceticism and a sublimated hedonism—or said differently, and with Friedrich Nietzsche, a Platonism for the common people.58 (And incidentally, the mass-Platonism that Nietzsche derides is precisely what Augustine vaunts in De Vera Religione.)59 Though Augustine is no epicure, then, it is nevertheless the Epicureans’ doctrine of time60—a doctrine that Augustine was acquainted with, already in Milan—which can be used to preliminarily fix the sense of my term, ‘sensualist.’ Or rather, a single tercet can be lifted from book I of Lucretius’ broadbacked Epicurean epic, where he writes: Time has no existence in-itself, but from the things-themselves a sensation results of what has occurred in the past, of what is present, and of what will occur later as a result.

58

This polemical line appears in Nietzsche’s preface to Beyond Good and Evil. It seems that a serious interpretation of Augustine and Nietzsche has yet to be written. It would presumably begin with Nietzsche’s reading of the Confessions in 1885, in the months prior to commencing work on Beyond Good and Evil. See letter 589 in the Nietzsche Briefwechsel (Nietzsche 1982, 33–35), where Nietzsche’s high-spirited—and not always perceptive—‘psychological’ critique of the Confessions agrees at one point with Augustine’s retrospective critique of that work, at Aug. Retr. II.6.2. This is an extraordinary convergence: it testifies, at once, to Nietzsche’s acuity as a reader and Augustine’s integrity as a writer. Also: in the first pages of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche describes all p ­ hilosophy as ‘confession’; and though Augustine is only named several times in the work, an attentive reading of part 3, on the ‘religious neurosis,’ reveals that Nietzsche’s concern with Augustine is deeper and more diffuse than his direct references suggest. 59 Aug. Vera rel. 1.1–5.8, esp. 4.6: “If those men [Socrates, Plato, etc.] in whose names men glory were to be raised to life again to discover . . . that the human race (humanum genus) is being called away from a desire for temporal and transient goods to the hope of eternal life and spiritual and intelligible goods, perhaps they would say . . . These are the things we did not dare to urge the common people to do (nos persuadere populis non ausi sumus).” 60 Bailey 1947, II:675–76: “Epicurus (Ep. ad Hdt., 72, 73 and, as the scholiast tells us, in the Μεγάλη Ἐπιτομή and the second book of the Περὶ Φύσεως) dealt with the question of time. . . . Lucr. [is] simplifying and abbreviating Epicurus, as he does all through this paragraph. . . . But the following lines 464–82 make it exceedingly probable that Lucr. here is not merely following Epicurus, but combating his natural opponents, the Stoics, who held, according to Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. x. 218, that time was ἀσώματον, but also καθ᾽ αὑτό τι νοούμενον πρᾶγμα (215), like the void.”

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Tempus . . . per se non est,61 sed rebus ab ipsis consequitur sensus,62 transactum quid sit in aevo, tum quae res instet, quid porro deinde sequatur.63 It is this formula that fixes the Epicureans’ doctrine of time as ‘sensualist,’ in De Rerum Natura I. And it is this formula that can help, preliminarily, to fix Augustine’s doctrine of time as ‘sensualist’ in Confessions X to XII,64 in which he nowhere confesses the notion of time that Lucretius then warns against: Nor should we confess that anyone senses time in-itself or far-removed from the motion and untroubled rest of bodies. nec per se quemquam tempus sentire fatendumst semotum ab rerum motu placidatque quiete.65 Rather, as I will lay out in Part II, Augustine’s idea of a discarnate, ­ yper-heavenly mind in Confessions XII—namely, a “heaven of heaven” (caeh lum caeli)66 which is, in Lucretius’ terms, ‘far-removed from the motion of 61

Bailey 1947, II:675: “Servius on [Virg.] Aen. iii. 587 says, referring to this passage in [Lucretius], per se tempus non intelligitur, nisi per actus humanos, and again on [Virg. Aen.] vii. 37 tempora, nisi ex rebus colligantur, per se nulla sunt.” Cf. Arts 1927, 25: “Such prepositional phrases as per se are uncommon in Cicero and Caesar, but very frequent in Livy. These phrases have their origin in popular speech . . . Examples of the expression per se in St. Augustine’s Confessions are as follows: per se ipsa intus cernimus, Conf. 10, 11. num et ipsa per imaginem suam sibi adest ac non per se ipsam, Conf. 10, 15. per se ipsam sibi praesto est ipsa memoria, Conf. 10, 16.” 62 Bailey 1947, II:676: “consequitur sensus: ‘there follows a sensation,’ not . . . ‘the sense perceives.’ ” 63 Lucr. Rer.nat. I.459–61. 64 Cf. Hagendahl 1967, 382: “There is no doubt that Augustine knew Lucretius and used him without intermediary. . . . Augustine never quotes a [full] line, but he hints, several times, unmistakably at the Epicurean poet when he deals with questions of Nature.” And I will argue in chapter 2 that Augustine’s time-question is a ‘question of Nature.’ 65 Lucr. Rer.nat. I.462–63. Cf. Munro 1920, II:11: “. . . no one feels time by itself abstracted from the motion and calm rest of things.” 66 This expression, ‘caelum caeli,’ is a later Latin appositional genitive that Augustine lifts from the Psalms. Cf. Arts 1927, 16: “In Ecclesiastical Latin, under the tendency to widen the uses of the genitive case, we find little if any restriction in the employment of the appositional genitive. This extension of the appositional genitive, including a noun with

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b­ odies’—cannot be conceived as “dilated in times”67 or as having “time in it.”68 For Augustine, a discarnate soul is an insensate soul,69 which is not to say a speculatively inconscient soul.70 And for Augustine—as for Lucretius—an insensate soul is eo ipso a timeless soul.71 1.3

Axiology and Temporality in Augustine’s Confessions

This is why it is necessary at the outset—and will be necessary throughout—to rigorously distinguish the question of temporality in the Confessions from the question of superiority in the Confessions.72 I will refer to the latter as a question of ‘axiology,’ with Augustine’s axiology being a mystico-logical, graded

a genitive of a synonym of that noun, marks an exceptional . . . element in the works of late Latin writers. . . . Striking examples of this late type of appositional genitive are the following, taken from Scripture: . . . super caelum caeli, Ps. 67, 34; in saeculum saeculi, Ps. 9, 6; in generationes generationum, Is. 51.8. . . . Augustine makes a lavish use of the late appositional genitive, which is indeed characteristic of African writers. . . . aetate annorum, Conf. 4, 15; . . . per spatia locorum, Conf. 7, 1; . . . nugae nugarum, Conf. 8, 11; . . . abyssus aquarum, Conf. 12, 8.” 67 Aug. Conf. XII.11.12: non habens futurum quod expectet nec in praeteritum traiciens quod meminerit, nulla vice variatur nec in tempora ulla distenditur. 68 Aug. Conf. XII.15.21: etsi non solum ante illam sed nec in illa invenimus tempus. 69 Cf. Aug. Epist. 137.2.5: neque sentire est nisi viventis, quod ab anima est corpora . . . certe sentire homo non potest, nisi vivat; vivit autem in carne, antequam morte utrumque dirimatur. 70 As we will see in Part II, Augustine’s caelum caeli is fused to god—the immutable god—in some wondrous mode of static ‘contemplation,’ but not as ‘sensation.’ For the Epicureans, on the other hand—per Cicero’s ‘Velleius’—an insensate soul is a speculatively inconscient soul. Cf. Cic. Nat.deor. I.12.30: “The inconsistencies of Plato (Platonis inconstantia) take a long time to relate. . . . He holds that god is totally incorporeal (sine corpore ullo), as the Greeks express it, ἀσώματον; but such a god . . . would necessarily be insensate (careat . . . sensu necesse est), would also lack foresight and be devoid of pleasure (careat voluptate); all of which we include within our concept of gods.” 71 ‘Timeless’ is very precise here, since Augustine writes (before god) of a hyper-terrestrial materia informis, as of a hyper-heavenly caelum caeli, at Conf. XII.12.15: duo reperio quae fecisti carentia temporibus. 72 Cf. Solignac 1962, 297 n. 1: “La transcendance de l’éternité divine par rapport au temps n’est pas selon le mode de l’antériorité mais selon le mode de l’excellence.”

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ordering of natures73 according to their participation in being (esse) as perdurance (in quantum manet) and as unicity (in quantum unum est).74 Augustine’s god is being, unicity, immutability.75 Such is his unvarying interpretation of the vetus Latina proclamation, Ego sum qui sum (Exodus 3.14).76 It is as immutability that god is ipseity,77 unicity, purity and beauty: ipsa ­beatitas.78 This unconditioned and immutable god is Augustine’s “arch-substance,”79 his summum and verum, while all conditioned and mutive natures are scaled 73

Cf. Aug. Epist. 18.2: distributione naturarum; Civ. XI.16: naturae ordine. In Civ. XI.16, Augustine contrasts the axiology of the ordo naturae—which I discuss here—with a commercial-libidinal modus aestimationis. He also characterizes this as a difference between axiology as determined by the rerum gradibus, and axiology as determined by libidinal necessitas. According to the ordo naturae, a jewel is inferior to a slavegirl; but according to the modus aestimationis, the slave-girl is inferior to the jewel. Despite the innate dignitas of the slave-girl, the jewel takes a higher price in Roman markets. 74 The Latin in parentheses here is taken from Aug. Epist. 18.2 (c. 390). 75 Cf. Aug. Epist. 18.2: est natura quae nec per locus, nec per tempora mutari potest; hoc deus est. The abstract noun incommutabilitas and the abverb incommutabiliter appear to be Augustine’s coinages: Hrdlicka 1931, 11, 14. 76 Cf. Aug. Doctr. I.32.35: Ille enim summe ac primitus est, qui omnino incommutabilis est et qui plenissime dicere potuit: Ego sum qui sum; Enarr. 121.5: Quid est ergo idipsum, nisi, quod est? Quid est quod est? Quod aeternum est. . . . nomen suum noluit aliud dicere quam: Ego sum qui sum; Gen.litt. V.16.34: Illa aeterna incommutabilisque natura, quod deus est, habens in se, ut sit, sicut Moysi dictum est: Ego sum qui sum; Serm. 6.4: Ergo incommutabilitas dei isto vocabulo se dignata est intimare: Ego sum qui sum; Tract. 38.10: Ego sum qui sum . . . Discute rerum mutationes, invenies fuit et erit: cogita deum, invenies est, ubi fuit et erit esse non possit; Vera rel. 49.97: Aeternitas . . . tantummodo est, nec fuit, quasi iam non sit, nec erit, quasi adhuc non sit. Quare sola ipsa verissime dicere potuit humanae menti: Ego sum qui sum. Cf. also Brunn 1978, for a survey of Augustine’s interpretation of this verse; and Runia 1995, for evidence of a direct Philonic influence on Augustine’s exegesis of Exodus 3.14–15. And note, finally, that Pierre Gassendi (1658, I:227) objects to this Latin translation in his chapter, “Quid Tempus ſit,” in which Augustine is several times cited: “Obiicitur tamen Scriptura, in qua Præſens tribuatur Deo, ut quid maximè proprium, exempli gratiâ, verbis illis, Ego sum, qui sum: &, Qui est, misit me ad vos. Verùm, ut præteream Hebraïcum eo loci exprimere non Præſens ſanè, ſed Futurum Tempus . . . Ero, qui ero; &, . . . Ero (ſeu mavis, qui erit) misit me ad vos . . . ” 77 Cf. Aug. Conf. IX.4.11: o in idipsum! . . . tu [domine] es idipsum valde, qui non mutaris; XII.7.7: tu, domine, qui non es alias aliud et alias aliter, sed idipsum et idipsum et idipsum, sanctus, sanctus, sanctus . . . 78 Aug. Epist. 18.2: summum illud est ipsa beatitas. 79 Aug. Conf. VII.16.22: summa substantia.

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according to (necessarily) more elusive analyses,80 which are frequently signaled in the Confessions by the word melior. For instance: “A totality gives more pleasure than singularities . . . but far superior (melior)81 is he that conditioned the totality”;82 or, “The life of bodies is superior (melior) to and more-certain (certior) than bodies.”83 This last sentence is suggestive since Augustine indicates here an inner relatedness of the melior and the certior. The ‘superior’ is the ‘more-certain,’ and thus it is that immutability—which is formally most-certain—is Augustine’s summum. A fundamental relation emerges: Augustine’s graded ordering of natura reflects a graded ordering of scientia. Axiology is his quasi-logical valuation of being—as perdurance, as unicity—according to a perdurance and unicity which are co-given in the concept. But this results in a difficulty that is glaring in the Confessions: the formally most-certain, namely Augustine’s god, is also less-present than a lizard in Augustine’s chambers.84 Analysis of the melior-certior in the Confessions is, in such instances, wholly irrelative to analysis of the praesentior—the ‘more-present’—as Augustine very precisely confesses at Confessions X.5.7.85 Augustine’s melior is not necessarily ­praesentior,

80

For instance: in Epist. 18 it is clear that the category, corpus, comprises beasts’ and humans’ bodies; whereas anima, as its decisive potentiality in this letter is ‘conversion’ (conversione ad summum), is strictly identified with the human soul. In contrast to this, Augustine decisively attributes anima and animus to the beasts in Conf. X (see chapter 8), which necessitates, then, his apostrophe to the “human soul” (anima humana) in Conf. XI.15. 81 Cf. Aug. Conf. IV.11.17: longe . . . melior; Arts 1927, 45: “. . . longe melior, longe magis are first found in Sallust.” 82 Cf. Aug. Conf. IV.11.17: plus delectant omnia quam singula ... sed longe his melior qui fecit omnia; Cic. Nat.deor. II.6.16: . . . est igitur id quo illa conficiuntur homine melius; id autem quid potius dixeris quam ‘deum’? . . . esse autem hominem qui nihil in omni mundo melius esse quam se putet desipientis adrogantiae est; ergo est aliquid melius; est igitur profecto deus. 83 Aug. Conf. III.6.10: melior vita corporum certiorque quam corpora. 84 Aug. Conf. X.35.57: quid cum me domi sedentem stelio muscas captans vel aranea retibus suis inruentes implicans saepe intentum facit? 85 Aug. Conf. X.5.7: et ideo, quamdiu peregrinor abs te, mihi sum praesentior quam tibi et tamen te novi nullo modo posse violari; ego vero quibus temptationibus resistere valem quibusve non valeam, nescio. . . . confitear ergo quid de me sciam, confitear et quid de me nesciam, quoniam et quod de me scio, te mihi lucente scio, et quod de me nescio, tamdiu nescio, donec fiant tenebrae meae sicut meridies in vultu tuo.

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while his praesentior is not necessarily certior—whence, of course, the leaden and relentless temporality of “temptation.”86 I will return to this conflicted register of the melior-certior and the praesentior at a number of places, but it is essential to observe, here at the outset, that Augustine’s rhetoric in Confessions X to XII has a pre-decided tendency towards his melior and certior—after all, he addresses himself to god87—while my interpretation has a pre-decided tendency towards the praesentior in his text.88 For Augustine’s philosophic vitality consists in a striking perdurance of this praesentior—the ‘more-present’—in his analyses. Thus, Augustine’s sudden foregrounding of affectio (which Lyotard cites) at the end of Confessions XI; and with it—which is decisive for my interpretation—a foregrounding of res and of sensus in Conf. XI.27.35, i.e. precisely where Augustine could be tempted, axiologically, to rarefy and de-sensualize his time-analysis.89 It is thus in no sense ‘revisionistic’—in the modish sense of that word—to propose a sensualist interpretation of time in the Confessions. This sensualist Augustine is, as I have said, no epicure. He remains a Platonist (sensu lato), axi­ologically; and he remains a Christian (sensu stricto), theologically. Or to again put Nietzsche’s terminology to use: the sensualist Augustine who is r­ ecovered 86

87 88

89

Cf. Aug. Conf. X.28.39: numquid non temptatio est vita humana super terram sine ullo interstitio?; X.32.48: nemo securus esse debet in ista vita, quae tota temptatio nominatur, utrum qui fieri potuit ex deteriore melior non fiat etiam ex meliore deterior. The first sentence of Conf. X.28.39 is especially interesting since Augustine uses a very similar expression for ‘temptation’ (sine ullo interstitio) and for ‘sensuality’ at 83 quaest. 9: “All that the corporeal sense touches, and which is called ‘the sensible,’ is being altered without any respite or gap of time whatever (sine ulla intermissione temporis).” For this novel mode of address: Herzog 2002. Augustine’s various ‘ascents’ in the Confessions are structurally pre-decided by his ‘axiology,’ in this fourfold sense: commencing with his surroundings (foris), Augustine (i) surveys and then turns from the world’s mutable parts, which are (qua ‘being’) good, (ii) to the totality of the world, which is mutable but (qua ‘totality’) very good, then turns (iii) from the corporeal tout court (i.e. foris), to the incorporeal yet mutable soul (i.e. intus), and finally turns (iv) from this mutable intus—the human soul—to that immutable intus to which (once a human soul is converted) all the foris also testifies, and which is Augustine’s highest good (i.e. god). Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.18.23: quamquam praeterita cum vera narrantur, ex memoria proferuntur non res ipsae quae praeterierunt, sed verba concepta ex imaginibus earum quae in animo velut vestigia per sensus praetereundo fixerunt; XI.27.35: pronuntio et renuntio, et ita est quantum sentitur sensu manifesto. quantum sensus manifestus est, brevi syllaba longam metior eamque sentio habere bis tantum . . . et ego metior fidenterque respondeo, quantum exercitato sensu fiditur, illam simplam esse, illam duplam, in spatio scilicet temporis.

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here is still militantly,90 unremittingly91 ‘Platonic-Christian.’ (I will identify, in 3.3, which vein of antique Platonism is most relevant to Augustine’s time-investigation, and to anticipate: it is not Neoplatonism.)92 Yet it is this Augustine who deploys and re-deploys sensus in decisive ways in his timeinvestigation (XI.14–29);93 it is this Augustine who identifies sensus as the “sensation of the body” (sensus corporis) in the eternity-meditation that precedes it 90

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Cf. Aug. Vera rel. 6.10: Haec enim ecclesia catholica . . . utitur enim gentibus ad materiam operationis suae; 5.9: . . . neque in confusione paganorum, neque in purgamentis haereticorum, neque in languore schismaticorum, neque in caecitate Iudaeorum quae­ renda est religio, sed apud eos solos qui christiani catholici, vel orthodoxi nominantur, id est integritatis custodes, et recta sectantes; Serm. 71.2: Paganus hostis Christi et Iudaeus hostis Christi, divisi sunt adversum se; et ambo ad regnum pertinent diaboli. Arianus et Photinianus ambo haeretici, et adversum se ambo divisi; Donatista et Maximianista ambo haeretici, et adversum se ambo divisi; omnia vitia erroresque mortalium inter se contrarii, divisi sunt adversum se; et omnes ad regnum pertinent diaboli. Augustine is less bloody-minded than Jerome, who writes at Jer. Epist. 109.3 (cit. and tr. Gaddis 2005, 183): “There is no cruelty in regard for God’s honor” (non est crudelitas pro deo pietas). Nevertheless, Augustine relishes a destruction of the old order by Christians, for which cf. Aug. Civ. VI.1: deos gentium, quos christiana religio destruit; Cons. I.21.29: quis est deus iste, qui omnes deos gentium sic persequitur, qui omnia eorum sacra sic prodit, sic extinguit?; Fid. 7.10: videmus relictis diis falsis, et eorum confractis usquequaque simulacris, templis subversis, sive in usus alios commutates; etc. For the term itself, ‘Neoplatonist,’ cf. Aug. Cons. I.23.35: philosophi eorum recentiores Platonici, qui iam christianis temporibus fuerunt . . . Apropos of Augustine’s Neoplatonists, O’Donnell (1992, II:416) is over-corrective but highly refreshing: “The platonicorum libri [which are given to Augustine in Milan] enjoy unparalleled prestige among scholars, to whom they have become a talisman . . . With the hope of restoring perspective, even at the risk of tarnishing their prestige, we may consider a few of the things that [Augustine] did not do with them. He does not identify the books he read; he does not quote them at Cassiciacum (where he quotes scriptural texts and Virgil explicitly); he does not make them the objects of explicit discussion with quotation; he does not write commentary upon them (the way he comments upon scripture); they never become part of his explicit, spontaneously quoted literary life; there is no sign of continuous contact with them . . . The intellectual movement of his recorded writings, beginning at Cassiciacum and lasting until his death, is consistently and continuously away from neo-Platonism.” Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.18.23: quamquam praeterita cum vera narrantur, ex memoria proferuntur non res ipsae quae praeterierunt, sed verba concepta ex imaginibus earum quae in animo velut vestigia per sensus praetereundo fixerunt; XI.27.35: pronuntio et renuntio, et ita est quantum sentitur sensu manifesto. quantum sensus manifestus est, brevi syllaba longam metior eamque sentio habere bis tantum . . . et ego metior fidenterque respondeo, quantum exercitato sensu fiditur, illam simplam esse, illam duplam, in spatio scilicet temporis.

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(XI.3–13);94 and it is this Augustine who evokes a ‘dilation of the senses’ in the last sentences of the book (XI.30–31).95 Ratio and mens are indisputably ‘superior’ to sensus and corpus,96 for Augustine—just as a timeless, hyper-angelic contemplatio in book XII is ‘superior’ to a hyper-temporized, sensual contuitus in book XI. Thus, in the conversion-narrative of Confessions VIII, the descriptors temporalis and inferius are substitutable.97 But again—Augustine’s melior is not his praesentior,98 and ‘time’ is manifestly for him a question of praesens, namely: “a presence of past-things, memory, a presence of present-things, observation, a presence of future-things, expectation” (XI.20.26). Axiology is thus analytically (if not rhetorically or theologically) irrelevant to Augustine’s time-investigation,99 precisely because he is concerned with 94

Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.3.5: nam si esset, tenerem eum et rogarem eum et per te obsecrarem ut mihi ista panderet, et praeberem aures corporis mei sonis erumpentibus ex ore eius, et si hebraea voce loqueretur, frustra pulsaret sensum meum nec inde mentem meam quicquam tangeret; XI.5.7: tu [fabro] sensum corporis quo interprete traiciat ab animo ad materiam id quod facit et renuntiet animo quid factum sit; XI.13.15: at si cuiusquam volatilis sensus vagatur per imagines retro temporum. 95 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.31.41: variatur affectus sensusque distenditur. 96 Cf. Aug. Epist. 3.4: Unde constamus? ex animo et corpore. quid horum melius? videlicet animus. . . . animus igitur magis amandus quam corpus. sed in qua parte animi est ista veritas? in mente atque intellegentia. quid huic adversatur? sensus; 140.2.3: Inest quippe homini anima rationalis, sed interest eiusdem rationis usum quonam potius voluntate convertat; utrum ad bona exterioris et inferioris, an ad bona interioris superiorisque naturae; id est, utrum ut fruatur corpore et tempore, an ut fruatur divinitate atque aeternitate. In quadam quippe medietate posita est, infra se habens corporalem creaturam, supra se autem sui et corporis creatorem; 140.2.4: Sicut enim bona sunt omnia quae creavit deus, ab ipsa rationali creatura usque ad infimum corpus: ita bene agit in his anima rationalis, si ordinem servet, et distinguendo, eligendo, pendendo subdat minora maioribus, corporalia spiritalibus, inferiora superioribus, temporalia sempiternis; ne superiorum neglectu et appetitu inferiorum (quoniam hinc fit ipsa deterior) et se et corpus suum mittat in peius, sed potius ordinata caritate se et corpus suum convertat in melius. 97 Aug. Conf. VIII.10.24: ita etiam cum aeternitas delectat superius et temporalis boni voluptas retentat inferius, eadem anima est non tota voluntate illud aut hoc volens et ideo discerpitur gravi molestia, dum illud veritate praeponit, hoc familiaritate non ponit. 98 Cf. for instance, Aug. Conf. XI.9.11: spe enim salvi facti sumus et promissa tua per patientiam expectamus; Enarr. 91.1: christiani non sumus, nisi propter futurum saeculum: nemo praesentia bona speret, nemo sibi promittat felicitatem mundi, quia christianus est; Civ. XIX.4: beatitudinem non iam tenemus praesentem, sed exspectamus futuram, et hoc per patientiam. 99 For those who would insist on assigning ‘time’ an axiological position in Augustine: it pertains to the lowly second “grade of the soul” (animae gradus, Quant.anim. 33.76)—of seven such ‘grades’—that Augustine introduces at Aug. Quant.anim. 33.

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this sweaty, intricate and slippery question of sense-temporal praesens,100 in which what I call ‘impresence’ (memoria-expectatio) is a duplex condition of ‘presence’ (contuitus) in a distinctly temporal mode—which is also to say, in an incommutably sensual mode. And while eternity is Augustine’s melior and certior in Confessions X to XII, time is his praesentior, and he is capable of pursuing a question of presence as such. Augustine demonstrates this in Confessions X, by articulating a decision (and a distinction) that is typically overlooked,101 but whose significance cannot be overstated. In his sole, oblique reference to the lapse of Adam in books X and XI, Augustine explicitly refuses to take this figure (and attendant doctrines)102 into consideration.103 To the question of whether “the life of bliss” (beata vita)104 is a generic Ur-memory— all humans having tasted it, obscurely, “in that man who first sinned [sc. Adam], in whom also we all died”105—Augustine says, “I do not now ask: but I ask whether a life of bliss is in memory.”106 This is a methodological exclusion that is decisive in book X,107 much as Augustine’s exclusion of ‘prophetic’ phenomena, possibly under the influence of Cicero’s De Divinatione,108 is decisive in 100 Lacey 1968, 230: “Part of the trouble here is that the word ‘present’ has several different uses.” 101 Heidegger (2004, 142) remarks this: “Augustine does not want to determine how all of us received [an idea of and will to beata vita], or how we lost it; he only wants to determine whether it is in the memoria.” 102 Cf. for instance, Aug. Conf. V.8.15: . . . reliquiarium Evae; V.9.16: . . . originalis peccati vinculum quo omnes in Adam morimur. 103 Whereas Adam figures prominently in Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of the Hexaemeron, at Conf. XIII.20.28: si non esset lapsus Adam, non diffunderetur ex utero eius salsugo maris, genus humanum profunde curiosum et procellose tumidum et instabiliter fluvidum . . . 104 It is the idea of this impossible bliss of desire (beata vita), and not sheer morbidity, that drives Augustine to speak of “this life” as being, “as it were, some sort of hell” (huius . . . quasi quibusdam inferis vitae, Aug. Civ. XXII.22). 105 Cf. Aug. Civ. XIII.14. 106 Aug. Conf. X.20.29: utrum singillatim omnes, an in illo homine qui primus peccavit, in quo et omnes mortui sumus . . . non quaero nunc, sed quaero utrum in memoria sit beata vita. 107 O’Donnell (1992, III:208) also notes an absence of demonology in Conf. X: “The discussion of temptation here is completely without mention of the devil as temptation’s agent (the closest we come in this book is the allusion to demonic influence on theurgic practices at 10.42.67).” I glance in chapter 7 at “the devil” in Conf. X.42. 108 Meijering (1979, 71) refers us to Cic. Div. in his pages on Conf. XI.18.24, but not to the most suggestive passage; O’Donnell (1992, III:282) limits comparisons to other works by

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book XI.109 For herewith, Augustine decides that his investigations of memory and time in the Confessions will not be pre-decided by facile appeals to the surface of his scriptures, but rather investigated on the terrain of presence. And that the temporal, for Augustine, is originarily a question of sensepresence is already suggested by his reference in Confessions IX to “those things which are seen and temporal (videntur et temporalia),” with ‘sight’—in the same passage—being expressly attributed to “the eyes of the flesh” (oculis carneis).110 This visible-temporal link (visibilia et temporalia) recurs in

Augustine. Hagendahl (1967, 70–72) registers no testimony here, though the below is a more convincing citation of Cic. Div. than most that Hagendahl’s proposes. More to the point: Testard (1958, II:27, cf. 135) only proposes one citation of Cic. Div. in the Conf., and it is an indirect one: Ennius’ phrase caeli scrutantur plagas, which Augustine recollects at Conf. X.16.25 (neque enim nunc scrutamur plagas caeli, aut siderum intervalla demetimur . . .), may have been mediated by Cic. Div. II.13.30 (quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat, caeli scutantur plagas). That Augustine quotes Ennius’ Iphigenia at Conf. X.16 is not in doubt, since the allusion is not only lexical but thematic; that his source is Cic. Div. II is only probable, however, since these Ennian lines were a commonplace. The links below, from Cic. Div. I to Aug. Conf. XI, are lexical and thematic, though space will not permit me to detail the thematic parallels: (i) Cic. Div. I.56.127: . . . reliquendum est homini, ut signis quibusdam consequentia declarantibus futura praesentiat. Non enim illa, quae futura sunt, subito existunt, sed . . . qui etsi causas ipsas non cernunt, signa tamen causarum et notas cernunt. (ii) Aug. Conf. XI.18.24: Quoquo modo se itaque habeat arcana praesensio futurorum, videri nisi quod est non potest. . . . cum ergo videri dicuntur futura, non ipsa quae nondum sunt, id est quae futura sunt, sed eorum causae vel signa forsitan videntur, quae iam sunt.  Cf. also Aug. Civ. V.9 (cit. Hagendahl 1967, 71), where Augustine cites Cic. Div.: In libris vero de divinatione ex se ipso apertissime praescientiam futurorum. Crucially, however, Augustine writes several sentences previously that this opposition to ‘foreknowledge of future-things’ in De Divinatione is absolute: . . . neget esse scientiam futurorum . . . vel in homine vel in deo, nullamque rerum praedictionem. It is Cicero’s denial of prescience in god that Augustine attacks in Civ. V.9, whereas in Conf. XI.17–19, he confesses his ignorance regarding prescience in man. 109 Aug. Conf. XI.19.25: tu itaque, regnator creaturae tuae, quis est modus quo doces animas ea quae futura sunt? . . . nimis longe est modus iste ab acie mea: invaluit. 110 Aug. Conf. IX.4.10: nec iam bona mea foris erant nec oculis carneis in isto sole quaerebantur. volentes enim gaudere forinsecus facile vanescunt et effunduntur in ea quae videntur et temporalia sunt, et imagines eorum famelica cogitatione lambiunt.

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Augustine’s late texts,111 and in a significant compilation of his pre-episcopal notes,112 the Eighty-Three Questions (c. 396),113 he categorically links temporalia and sensibilia in this way: All that the corporeal sense touches, and which is called ‘the sensible,’ is being altered without any respite or gap of time whatever. Omne quod corporeus sensus adtingit, quod et ‘sensibile’ dicitur, sine ulla intermissione temporis commutatur.114 In a still earlier work, the De Quantitate Animae (387/8)115—and in the first passage where Augustine speaks of a being-‘dilated’ in time (per tempus distendebatur . . . distenta per tempus)116—the temporal is assimilated to the sensual, and vice versa: Because all the things that are sensed are contained in time and space . . . all we sense with the eyes is divided through space, and all we sense with the ears is divided through time. Cum . . . locus et tempus sit, quibus omnia quae sentiuntur occupantur . . . quod oculis sentimus, per locum; quod auribus, per tempus dividitur.117

111 For instance, Aug. Civ. VIII.6: Ita quod notum est dei, manifestavit eis ipse, cum ab eis invisibilia eius per ea, quae facta sunt, intellecta conspecta sunt; sempiterna quoque virtus eius et divinitas; a quo etiam visibilia et temporalia cuncta creata sunt [≈ Romans 1.19–20]. Haec de illa parte, quam physicam, id est naturalem, nuncupant, dicta sint. 112 Cf. Aug. Retr. I.26. 113 Vid. Zarb 1934, 37–38. 114 Aug. 83 quaest. 9. 115 Both Zarb (1934, 87) and Mutzenbecher (1984, xvii) date the Quant.anim. to 387/8. 116 Aug. Quant.anim. 32.68: . . . ita maiorem temporis moram tenet, cum ‘Lucifer’ dicitur, quam si ‘Luci’ tantummodo diceretur. Quare si hoc significatione vivit in ea diminutione temporis, quae diviso illo sono facta est, cum eadem significatio divisa non sit (non enim ipsa per tempus distendebatur, sed sonus) . . . sicut illa significatio non distenta per tempus, omnes tamen nominis litteras suas moras ac tempora possidentes, velut animaverat atque compleverat. 117 Aug. Quant.anim. 32.68.

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It should thus come as no shock that it is sensus, as Augustine’s decisive condition for the presence of bodies tout court in this life,118 that illuminates and articulates the “power and nature of time, by which we measure the movements of bodies” (XI.23.30).119 Similarly, it should come as no shock that Augustine’s analysis of this modality of the ‘more-present’ in Confessions XI ends, not with the rare and “inexplicable sweetness” of his mystico-logical ‘ascents,’120 as in Confessions VII, IX and X, but rather with an outbreak of self-imprecation and lament: “Look! My life is dilation, my life is time” (XI.29.39).121 Nor is it insignificant that a state of ‘dilation’ and ‘time’ (distentio est vita mea)—i.e. Augustine’s praesentior—is immediately contrasted, in these last sentences of his timeinvestigation, with a divine mercy that is “superior to” (melior) his life qua life and time qua time (XI.29.39).122 118 As indeed, for any premonition of the presence of bodies after death, at Aug. Gen.litt. VIII.16.34: Nos enim quomodo intellegimus, cum dicitur resurrectio, quam nunquam experti sumus? Nonne quia sentimus quid sit vivere, et eius rei privationem vocamus mortem, unde reditum ad id quod sentimus, resurrectionem appellamus? Augustine also stresses in this passage that it is our “sense of life” (sensus vitae) that inspires our ‘sense’ of death, which is the “privation of life” (vitae privationem)—but which, of course, none of the living has experienced. 119 Aug. Conf. XI.23.30: ego scire cupio vim naturamque temporis, quo metimur corporum motus. 120 Aug. Conf. X.40.65: et aliquando intromittis me in affectum multum inusitatum introrsus, ad nescio quam dulcedinem, quae si perficiatur in me, nescio quid erit quod vita ista non erit. 121 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: ecce distentio est vita mea. Hrdlicka (1931, 81–82) and most commentators take distentio in Conf. XI.29.39 to mark one of the “miscellaneous changes of [a Latin term’s] meaning” in the Conf., a type of lexical shift that arises from “the fact that this new meaning was attached to [a] word by the early translators of the Bible.” I do not object to a scriptural inflection of the sense of the term distentio in Conf. XI.29.39 as ‘distraction’ or ‘affliction.’ Yet I insist that its duplex sense in Conf. XI.28.38 (distenditur vita huius actionis meae in memoriam propter quod dixi et in expectationem . . . expectatione prolongatur memoria)—and again, in Conf. XI.31.41 (expectatione vocum futurarum et memoria praeteritarum variatur affectus sensusque distenditur)—is its more certain and more provocative sense. Augustine’s distentio, here, most essentially signifies (i) ‘dilation’ or ‘elongation,’ and (ii) ‘time.’ His life, Augustine confesses here, is ‘dilation.’ This is a condition which only death, and no moralistic injunction, can liberate him from. Yet he can be ‘extended’ (extentus) in desire, in this life, towards eternity—which, because of death, is his absolute future (in ea quae ante sunt non distentus sed extentus, XI.29.39). 122 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: melior est misericordia tua super vitas.

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Augustine’s intent in the time-investigation is simply not to clarify the formal, prophetical or sacramental contours of this melior, this superior, this “mercy” (melior est misericordia tua).123 To peg Augustine’s rigorous analytic of temporal presence to his registers of axiological and speculative perfection— i.e. to aeternitas, to the melior and certior—is thus to do him an injustice. 1.4

Time in Augustine’s Triplex Division of Philosophy

The bishop of Hippo Regius recognizes that his time-question is a question of the ‘more-present,’ of “this life” (hac vita),124 and of “this temporal light” (hanc

123 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.1.1–2.4, Augustine’s proem to book XI, in which misericordia is a recurring term. In the time-investigation, misericordia only re-surfaces at XI.22.28 (noli claudere desiderio meo ista et usitata et abdita, quominus in ea penetret et dilucescant allucente misericordia tua, domine)—incidentally, this is the section of the book where I see a re-calibration and renewal of Augustine’s time-question (see chapter 4)—and as noted, in XI.29.39 (sed quoniam melior est misericordia tua super vitas), which I regard as the last section of the time-investigation (XI.14–29). 124 For the thematic of hac vita, cf. Aug. Conf. I. 6.7: nescio unde venerim huc, in istam dico vitam mortalem an mortem vitalem?; I.7.11: quis me commemorat peccatum infantiae meae, quoniam nemo mundus a peccato coram te, nec infans cuius est unius diei vita super terram?; I.7.12: . . . huic vitae meae quam vivo in hoc saeculo; II.5.20: et vita quam hic vivimus habet inlecebram suam propter quendam modum decoris sui et convenientiam cum his omnibus infimis pulchris; III.7.13: homines autem, quorum vita super terram brevis est, quia sensu non valent causas conexere saeculorum priorum; IV.4.7: ecce abstulisti hominem de hac vita . . .; VI.1.1: . . . placidissime et pectore pleno fiduciae respondit mihi credere se in Christo quod priusquam de hac vita emigraret me visura esset fidelem catholicum; VI.5.7: . . . omnino in hac vita nihil ageremus, postremo quam inconcusse fixum fide retinerem de quibus parentibus ortus essem; IX.3.5: cum Romae iam essemus, corporali aegritudine correptus et in ea christianus et fidelis factus ex hac vita emigravit; IX.6.14: cito de terra abstulisti vitam eius . . .; IX.8.17: sed non praeteribo quidquid mihi anima parturit de illa famula tua, quae me parturivit et carne, ut in hanc temporalem, et corde, ut in aeternam lucem nascerer; IX.10.26: “fili, quantum ad me attinet, nulla re iam delector in hac vita. quid hic faciam adhuc et cur hic sim, nescio, iam consumpta spe huius saeculi. unum erat propter quod in hac vita aliquantum immorari cupiebam, ut te christianum catholicum viderem priusquam morerer”; IX.13.37: Monnicae, famulae tuae, cum Patricio, quondam eius coniuge, per quorum carnem introduxisti me in hanc vitam, quemadmodum nescio. . . . parentum meorum in hac luce transitoria; etc. Cf. also, for instance, Lucr. Rer.nat. II.54: omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret?

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temporalem . . . lucem, IX.8.17).125 And what is more, he recognizes that this question of presence is a rigorously catholic,126 i.e. a universal one.127 ‘Time,’ that is to say, conditions Seneca’s epicure at the Roman baths just as it conditions Augustine and his mother, Monnica, standing in a window that gives out over a garden in Ostia and discursively flaming upwards towards— until they glimpse or seemingly “touch,” in a single “time-beat” (ictus), in their minds (in mentes nostras)—the hyper-exalted, ageless and indifferent god that they love.128 Our epicure’s question, ‘Am I now seated?’ sounds out on the air and in time with all the same sense-temporal determinations as Augustine’s question to Monnica, regarding their delectable cipher129 of a vita aeterna sanctorum: “And when will that be?”130 (The answer is, of course: post mortem.)131 Or to press it further yet, as Augustine himself will not hesitate to do (see 10.2), our epicure’s question, ‘Am I now seated?’ is formally identical— in terms of its originary sense-temporal determinations—to that “voice out of Thus Solignac 1962, 357 n. 1: “Iste désigne souvent chez Augustin les choses présentes, les choses d’ici-bas, les choses personnelles, avec une nuance dépréciative très classique (cf. iste mundus . . . par opposition à ille).” 125 Aug. Conf. IX.8.17: . . . in hanc temporalem . . . lucem nascerer. But this ‘temporal light’ is not, of course, unshadowed. Cf. for instance, Enarr. 22.4: in medio vitae huius, quae umbra mortis est; 43.18: . . . haec enim mortalitas umbra mortis est; Vera rel. 45.84: in rerum temporalium principatu . . . omnia transeunt tamquam umbra. 126 Courcelle (1969, 154) notes that Augustine is “barely able to give the etymology of . . . the term Catholic” circa 400, citing Aug. C.Petil. II.46.108. 127 Cf. Aug. Serm. 43.4: Intellegi omnis homo vult; intellegere nemo est qui nolit; credere non omnes volunt. 128 Aug. Conf. IX.10.24: et venimus in mentes nostras et transcendimus eas, ut attingeremus regionem ubertatis indeficientis . . . et ibi vita sapientia est, per quam fiunt omnia ista . . . quin potius fuisse et futurum esse non est in ea, sed esse solum, quoniam aeterna est: nam fuisse et futurum esse non est aeternum. et dum loquimur et inhiamus illi, attingimus eam modice toto ictu cordis. 129 For ‘cipher’ here, see where the stress falls in Conf. IX.10.23: conloquebamur ergo soli valde dulciter et, praeterita obliviscentes in ea quae ante sunt extenti, quaerebamus inter nos apud praesentem veritatem, quod tu es, qualis futura esset vita aeterna sanctorum, quam nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec in cor hominis ascendit. 130 Aug. Conf. IX.10.25: et istud quando? This question—with its “that” (istud)—takes its sense from the Augustine’s characteristic expression, “this life” (hac vita), in the first sentence of Conf. IX.10.23. 131 Regarding which ‘life,’ Augustine writes with admirable candour, at Aug. Civ. XXII.29: “If I wish to speak the truth”—and note well: ‘If I wish to speak the truth’—“I do not know [what immortal life will be like], for I have seen nothing of it by means of the bodily senses” (. . . si verum velim dicere, nescio. Non enim hoc umquam per sensus corporis vidi).

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a cloud” in the evangel, which pronounced over Jesus of Nazareth: “This is my beloved son.”132 This is why the time-investigation in Confessions XI crests—namely, where “the voice of a body begins to sound (incipit sonare) . . . and look: it ceases (desinit)”133—very precisely where Augustine’s mystico-logical rapture in Confessions IX, beside his mother, collapses: “We returned to the noise of our mouths, where a word that is uttered begins and ends (ubi verbum et incipitur et finitur).”134 It is no less indicative that Augustine refers to time, in the last paragraph of his time-investigation, as a condition in which “the inmost viscera of [his] soul are torn apart by tumultuous changes (tumultuosis varietatibus)” (XI.29.39).135 For this is the sole appearance of ‘tumult’ in Confessions X to XII, and Augustine has not selected the word since his Ostia-ascent, at Confessions IX.10.25, where ‘tumult’ is precisely a “tumult of the flesh” (tumultus carnis).136 This, for Augustine, is the level at which “the temporal intrigue”137 unfurls and is to be investigated: ‘from below.’138 With this much established, then, and recalling the triplex division of philosophy (philosophandi ratio 132 Aug. Conf. XI.6.8: sed quomodo dixisti? numquid illo modo quo facta est vox de nube dicens, ‘hic est filius meus dilectus’? illa enim vox acta atque transacta est, coepta et finita. sonuerunt syllabae atque transierunt, secunda post primam, tertia post secundam atque inde ex ordine, donec ultima post ceteras silentiumque post ultimam. unde claret atque eminet quod creaturae motus expressit eam. Cf. Augustine’s vetus Latina variant—dilectissimus—for ‘hic est filius meus dilectus,’ at Milne 1926, 3 (= Matthew 3.15), 79 (= Mark 9.7), 99 (= Luke 9.35). 133 Aug. Conf. XI.27.34: ecce puta vox corporis incipit sonare et sonat et adhuc sonat, et ecce desinit, iamque silentium est, et vox illa praeterita est et non est iam vox. 134 Aug. Conf. IX.10.24: et suspiravimus et reliquimus ibi religatas primitias spiritus et remeavimus ad strepitum oris nostri, ubi verbum et incipitur et finitur. 135 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: ego in tempora dissilui quorum ordinem nescio, et tumultuosis varietatibus dilaniantur cogitationes meae, intima viscera animae meae, donec in te confluam purgatus et liquidus igne amoris tui. 136 Aug. Conf. IX.10.25: dicebamus ergo, “si cui sileat tumultus carnis, sileant phantasiae terrae et aquarum et aeris, sileant et poli, et ipsa sibi anima sileat et transeat se non se cogitando, sileant somnia et imaginariae revelationes . . .” Cf. Conf. IV.11.16: in aure cordis tumultu vanitatis; VI.9.15: audivit omnesque tumultuantes; VII.7.11: numquid totus tumultus animae meae, cui nec tempora nec os meum sufficiebat, sonabat eis?; VIII.8.19: me abstulerat tumultus pectoris; IX.7.16: tumultuante laetitia. 137 Lyotard 1998, 97/2000, 71: “l’intrigue temporelle.” 138 Cf. Madec 2001, 190: “Le moindre battement verbal, le moindre ictus prend du temps. La syllabe ‘e-s-t,’ en trois lettres: e, s, t, prend du temps. . . . C’est la contrainte du langage, la contrainte de la vie ici-bas!”

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triplex) that Augustine inherits from Cicero139—i.e. ‘physical,’ ‘logical’ and ‘ethical’ ­philosophy140—it could be predicted that Augustine would regard the question of ‘time’ to be a physical question,141 a question of physical philosophy.142 And it is this taxonomic question of the placement of Augustine’s time-question that will permit us, in chapter 2, to fundamentally resituate his time-concepts in Confessions XI and XII; and to work up a crude but serviceable typology of the canonical interpretations of time in those books, while ­ indicating—preliminarily—how these interpretations are, at root, misinterpretations. 139 Cic. Acad. I.5.19: Fuit ergo iam accepta a Platone philosophandi ratio triplex, una de vita et moribus, altera de natura et rebus occultis, tertia de disserendo et quid verum, quid falsum. 140 Cf. for instance, Aug. Civ. VIII.3: Socrates ergo, primus universam philosophiam ad corrigendos componendosque mores flexisse memoratur, cum ante illum omnes magis physicis, id est naturalibus, rebus perscrutandis operam maximam impenderent; VIII.4: Plato . . . philosophiam perfecisse laudatur, quam in tres partes distribuit: unam moralem, quae maxime in actione versatur; alteram naturalem, quae contemplationi deputata est; tertiam rationalem, qua verum disterminatur a falso; VIII.10: . . . . vel naturalem Latine vel physicam Graece appellet eam partem, in qua de naturae inquisitione tractatur, et rationalem sive logicam, in qua quaeritur quonam modo veritas percipi possit, et moralem vel ethicam, in qua de moribus agitur bonorumque finibus appetendis malorumque vitandis . . . 141 Pace Jordan 1955, 394: “St. Augustine’s understanding of time is such that it makes time a problem not of physics nor of cosmology . . . but of moral philosophy.” 142 Augustine later observes that his natura translates the Greek’s φύσις (‘physicon,’ id est . . .  naturale, Aug. Civ. VI.5), and that ‘physical theology’ is the domain of philosophers (in hoc genere . . . quod ‘physicon’ vocant et ad philosophos pertinent, Civ. VI.5). This in no way complicates his praise or his censure of the philosophers of ‘this world’ in Conf. V. In the Conf., as in the Civ., what Augustine rejects is this: “In the opinion of the philosophers, the world is the most excellent of all things” (Hanc enim pertinere testatur ad mundum, quo isti nihil esse excellentius opinantur in rebus, Civ. VI.5). On the genre of ‘physical’ or ‘natural questions’ in late antiquity, cf. Marrou 1983, 143– 44: “. . . la φυσική proprement dite ou, comme disaient les Latins, les naturales quaestiones: même amputé de l’histoire naturelle, de la géographie et de la médecine, c’était encore un domaine très vaste . . . Au temps d’Augustin, coexistaient deux manières d’étudier ces problèmes; il y avait deux physiques: celle des philosophes, celle des érudits. L’une était faite des théories, l’autre rassemblait des faits. Les deux se trouvent représentées dans la culture d’Augustin.”

chapter 2

Augustine and the Physical Question of Time In the first paragraphs of his 13th-century Tractatus de Tempore,1 Robert Kilwardby, later Archbishop of Canterbury,2 opposes a “metaphysical” timeconcept in Augustine’s Confessions to a “physical” consideration of time in Aristotle’s Physics.3 Kilwardby’s contemporary and confrater, Albertus Magnus, is less evasive in his commentary on Physics IV: Augustine “wrote badly” on physical topics (naturas rerum), and specifically on time.4 In cause of brevity, I limit the scholastic reception of Confessions XI5—a sophisticated and conflicted reception-history which has yet to be written6— to this set of appraisals.7 In the decades during which the European masters 1 Silva (2012, 6) dates the Tractatus de Tempore, non-dogmatically, to 1245–50. 2 Vid. Silva 2012, 2–5. Kilwardby served as Regent Master of Oxford in 1256–61; was one of the three Dominicans—the others being Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas—who were consulted by the Master General of the Order, John of Vercelli, on (as yet) undetermined theological questions in 1271; and was consecrated as the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1273. 3 Kil. Temp. 10: Si est tempus, quid est? Quid sit secundum Augustinum dictum est [cf. Temp. 4]; set quia hec consideratio quoniam secundum Augustinum magis metaphysica videtur, videamus quid sit secundum phisicam considerationem Aristotilis, quid dicit in 4 Phisicorum, “tempus est numerus motus secundum prius et posterius.” 4 Alb. Phys. IV, tr. 3, cap. 4: . . . nec Galienus nec Augustinus scriverunt bene naturas rerum. 5 Though I proceed independently here, I am preceded in this by Kurt Flasch (1993, 160–95). 6 There is, however, much fine work on the concept of time in this period: Duhem 1959, VII; Flasch 1993; Fox 2006; Maier 1955; Mansion 1934; Porro 1987, 1996; Steel 2001; Trifogli 2000, 2001. The most commanding work is doubtless Jeck 1993, which—regrettably—only came to my notice once the manuscript was in press. Jeck’s work, Aristoteles contra Augustinum, would have refined my very brief remarks on Augustine, Aristotle and Averroes (see Appendix 2). 7 The most accurate scholastic Augustine-interpretation may be Robert Grosseteste’s, at Gross. In Phys. IV: Quidam autem, ut invenirent tempus esse aliquod, putaverunt quod tem­ pus esset affeccio relicta in anima ex transitu rerum mobilium. Et sic videtur velle Augustinus, ut memoria de preteritis et continuacio de presentibus et expectatio de futuris putantur ab ipso esse tria tempora; ibi sunt tria presencia et ibi sunt longa aut brevia. But I must also include what is—to my eyes—the single most ingenious medieval variation on Confessions XI, which is dated to the 1180s, and with which a Plantagenet courtier, Walter Map, introduces his De Nugis Curialium:

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were assimilating Aristotle’s newly recovered Physics and Averroes’ Physics commentaries,8 Augustine is perceived as writing ‘metaphysically’ on time (per the Oxford Dominican), or as writing ‘badly’ on the physical question of time (per the Paris Dominican). Accordingly, there is a scholastic precedent for resisting—and even, for reprobating—Augustine’s time-concept (see Appendix 2). But note well: in the 13th century—i.e. prior to the recovery of Lucretius in 1417, the publication of Cicero’s Opera Philosophica in 1471,9 the appearance of Marsilio Ficino’s Plotini Opera in 1492, the circulation of Gentian Hervet’s

“I live in time and I speak of time,” said Augustine, adding this: “I do not know what time is.” I can say with similar astonishment that I live in court and speak of a court, and I do not know—god knows—what this court is. And though I know that the court is not itself time, it is something temporal: mutable and variable, positioned yet erratic, never staying in one state. “In tempore sum et de tempore loquor,” ait Augustinus, et adiecit: “nescio quid sit tempus.” Ego simili possum admiracione dicere quod in curia sum, et de curia loquor, et nescio, deus scit, quid sit curia. Scio tamen quod curia non est tempus; temporalis quidem est, mutabilis et varia, localis et erratica, nunquam in eodem statu permanens. (Map Nug.cur. dist. 1, cap. 1.) I have consulted the translation of this passage by Alexander Murray (1985, 85), and owe the reference to him. 8 Note that this is, confessedly, a very crude characterization. What we find in Nicolas of Strasbourg’s Summa Philosophiae is no less representative of the period. Here, “Augustine, the Philosopher and the Commentator”—i.e. Averroes, “he who made the great Comment” (Averoìs che ’l gran comento feo, Dant. Inf. IV.144)—are not opposed, but assimilated. Vid. Stras. S.Ph. II, tr. 9, q. 5.13–21: Hoc idem probant auctoritatibus et sunt specialiter tres et trium auctorum, scilicet Augustini, Philosophi et Commentatoris. Prima igitur est Augustini XI Confessionum, ubi tractat istam materiam et ostendit, quod tempus non est nisi in anima et ab anima. Dicit enim ibi: “Video tempus esse quandam distentionem et miror si non animi.” . . . Secunda autem est Philosophi IV Physicorum quaerentis et determinantis propositam quaestionem. Dicit enim, ex quo tempus non est nisi numerus et numerus non est, nisi sit numerans, et numerans non est nisi anima, concludit tempus non esse, nisi anima sit. . . . Tertia autem est Commentatoris, qui idipsum dicit plane et specialiter super illo verbo, quod inquantum numerabilia tempus est in potentia, in quantum actu numerata sunt, tempus est in actu. . . . Ergo adhuc tempus non erit in actu, nisi anima actu numeret. Ergo tempus in actu est ab anima . . . Cf. also Arist. Phys. IV.14 (223a), Arist.Lat. Phys. IV.14: ἀδύνατον εἶναι χρόνον ψυχῆς μὴ οὔσης = inpossibile est esse tempus anima si non sit. 9 For Cicero’s impact on the Renaissance: Schmitt 1972.

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edition of Sextus Empiricus after 1569,10 and Pierre Gassendi’s valorization of Epicurus from 1647—Augustine’s time-investigation in Confessions XI was associated with Aristotle’s time-investigation in Physics IV as a matter of course. It is in large part due to the 13th-century transmission-history that the scholastic reception of Confessions XI results in a facile opposition of Aristotle’s ‘physical’ time-investigation and Augustine’s ‘metaphysical’ time-investigation, and a precipitous conclusion that Augustine, with his distentio animi, ‘writes badly’ on the physical question of time. In light of this scholastic reception, it will be useful to pick out several preliminary indications in Augustine’s corpus that he regards his time-question as a question of physical philosophy. 2.1

Time and Augustine’s Rerum Natura

Augustine is no stranger to the periodicity and predictability of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. In De Trinitate III (c. 400),11 Augustine selects the word ‘hyper-common’ (usitatissimo)—the same descriptor he gives to ‘time’ in Confessions XI12—to describe a host of periodicities which are produced physically (corporaliter) in the order of the nature of things (in rerum naturae ordine) by a hyper-common lapse of times (transcursu temporum), such as the rising and setting of stars, the births and deaths of living things, the innumerable diversities of seed and bud, the vapours and clouds . . . lightning and thunder . . . winds and fires, cold and heat, and all such things.13 Augustine is also no stranger to phenomena which are not ‘hyper-common,’ but which may yet be periodic; and which—in any event—are ‘produced ­physically in the order of the nature of things.’ Thus, in the same paragraph of De Trinitate III, he writes of phenomena 10 11 12

For the complicated transmission-history of Sextus Empiricus: Floridi 2002. Cf. Zarb 1934, 48–49. Cf. Aug. Trin. III.9.19: . . . illis quae usitatissimo transcursu temporum in rerum naturae ordine corporaliter fiunt; Conf. XI.22.28: dicimus ‘tempus’ et ‘tempus,’ ‘tempora’ et ‘tempora’ . . . dicimus haec et audimus haec et intellegimur et intellegimus. manifestissima et usitatissima sunt, et eadem rursus nimis latent et nova est inventio eorum. 13 Aug. Trin. III.9.19: illis quae usitatissimo transcursu temporum in rerum naturae ordine corporaliter fiunt, sicuti sunt ortus occasusque siderum, generationes et mortes animalium, seminum et germinum innumerabiles diversitates, nebulae et nubes . . . fulgura et tonitrua . . . venti et ignes, frigus et aestus, et omnia talia.

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which in the same [physical] order (in eodem ordine) occur infrequently, such as eclipses, unusual appearances of stars, monstrous births, earthquakes, and other such things.14 It is not unlikely that Augustine’s phrasing here in De Trinitate III, i.e. ‘in the order of the nature of things’ (in rerum naturae ordine),15 carries an echo of Lucretius.16 This is not only indicated by Augustine’s thematic material in the sentences just quoted from De Trinitate III;17 and by his inclusion of a Lucretian tag, “the walls of the world” (mundi moenia), in the proem to De Trinitate IV;18 but also by this clarification: [Of] all these things . . . the first and highest cause (prima et summa causa) is nothing but the will of god (voluntas dei), which is why in one of the Psalms, when certain physical phenomena (quaedam huius generis) have been called to mind—“fire, hail, snow, vapour, heavy wind”—it is immediately added, “which fulfil his word,” so that no one will believe they were produced by chance, or by solely physical causes . . . outside the will of god.19 14 Aug. Trin. III.9.19: illis quae in eodem ordine rara sunt, sicut defectus luminum et species inusitatae siderum et monstra et terrae motus et similia. 15 Cf. Aug. Conf. IV.3.5: . . . vim sortis hoc facere in rerum natura usquequaque diffusam . . .; VII.6.10: . . . quorum plerique ita post invicem funduntur ex utero ut parvum ipsum temporis intervallum, quantamlibet vim in rerum natura habere contendant . . . 16 Cf. similar expressions in a similar context, at Aug. Gen.litt. VIII.1.3: Sed alia est, inquiunt, narratio factorum mirabilium, alia institutarum creaturarum. Illic enim ea ipsa insolita ostendunt alios esse tamquam naturales modos rerum, alios miraculorum, quae ‘magnalia’ nominantur; hic autem ipsa insinuatur institutio naturarum. Quibus respondetur: Sed ideo insolita et ipsa, quia prima. Nam quid tam sine exemplo, et sine pari facto in rerum mundanarum constitutione quam mundus?; VIII.8.16: Quod enim maius mirabiliusque spectaculum est, aut ubi magis cum rerum natura humana ratio quodammodo loqui potest, quam cum positis seminibus, plantatis surculis, translatis arbusculis, insitis malleolis, tamquam interrogatur quaeque vis radicis et germinis quid possit, quidve non possit; unde possit, unde non possit; quid in ea valeat numerorum invisibilis interiorque potentia, quid extrinsecus adhibita diligentia . . . 17 Cf. for instance, Lucr. Rer.nat. I.174–214. 18 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. I.73–74: processit longe flammantia moenia mundi | atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque; Aug. Trin. IV.1: . . . praeposuit scire infirmitatem suam magis quam scire mundi moenia, fundamentum terrarum et fastigia coelorum . . . The Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout 1968) edition of the De Trinitate mis-cites Lucretius, giving Lucr. Rer.nat. II.73 for I.73. 19 Aug. Trin. III.9.19: istis omnibus quorum quidem prima et summa causa non est nisi voluntas dei—unde et in psalmo cum quaedam huius generis commemorata essent: Ignis,

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In the De Rerum Natura, Lucretius is relentless in his insistence that all phenomena are produced by physical causes ‘outside the will of the gods,’20 so that Augustine’s defence here confronts, if it is not raised against, Lucretius’ metaphysics. But regardless of Lucretius’ presence or absence in this passage, let it be said that Augustine has a metaphysics of time. In Confessions XI, it is stated thus: “The moments pass [o lord] at your will and pleasure.”21 And in the Confessions, this—Augustine’s metaphysics of time—is never in question. He relinquishes time to god’s ‘will and pleasure’ before he broaches the question, ‘What is time?’; and he falls back on the same ‘will and pleasure’ of god after his time-investigation, praising “the eternal creator of all times.”22 This “will and pleasure” (nutum) of god, in Confessions XI, is identical to the “will of god” (voluntas dei) in De Trinitate III.23 And this will and pleasure of god in Confessions XI is, like the will of god in De Trinitate III, precisely “the first and highest cause” (prima et summa causa) of time and all temporal phenomena.24 Therefore, Augustine has no metaphysical question of time. When, however, he writes in De Trinitate III of a swarm of “things which are produced physically (corporaliter fiunt) in the order of the nature of things”;25 and when he deploys the same root-verb, fieri, in Confessions XII to assert that “the movements of things produce times (fiunt tempora)”;26 we could infer that Augustine does have a physical question of time. That is to say, when Augustine asks, ‘What is time?’ we could infer that he is asking: What is this condition that ‘the movement of things produces’? And ‘the will and pleasure of god’ is impotent to resolve this question for a very simple reason: this will and pleasure of god, as Augustine’s first and highest cause, also produces ‘vapours and clouds, lightning and thunder, winds and fires . . .’ This divine will and pleasure is, precisely, Augustine’s indifferent cause. Thus, to respond to the question, ‘What is time?’ with the line: ‘The moments that pass at the lord’s will and pleasure’; is no subtler than to respond to the grando, nix, glacies, spiritus tempestatis, ne quis ea vel fortuitu, vel causis tantummodo corporalibus . . . praeter voluntatem dei exsistentibus agi crederet, continuo subiecit: Quae faciunt verbum eius [= Psalms 148.8].  20 Cf. for instance, Lucr. Rer.nat. I.146–158: “No thing is ever produced by divine power from nothing (e nilo gigni divinitus) . . . [and] everything is done without the working of gods (opera sine divom).” 21 Aug. Conf. XI.2.3: ad nutum tuum momenta transvolant. 22 Aug. Conf. XI.30.40: aeternum creatorem omnium temporum. 23 Aug. Trin. III.9.19. 24 Aug. Trin. III.9.19. 25 Aug. Trin. III.9.19. 26 Aug. Conf. XII.8.8: rerum mutationibus fiunt tempora.

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question, ‘What is fire?’ with the line: ‘The flames that burn at the lord’s will and pleasure.’ Indeed, in this mode, one could indifferently respond to the question, ‘What is time?’ with: ‘The flames that burn at the lord’s will and pleasure’; and to ‘What is fire?’ with: ‘The moments that pass at the lord’s will and pleasure.’ For precisely nothing is resolved, nothing is elucidated by this mode of reasoning at the level at which time and fire and thunder and vapour differ— which is to say, at the level at which time and fire and thunder and vapour are ‘physically produced,’ are ‘produced by the movements of things.’ And there is no indication, in Confessions XI, that Augustine intends to resolve his timequestion in this murky vein of first philosophy or metaphysics, while there is— to my mind—a very elegant and conclusive indication in his corpus that this time-question is conceived, and will be elaborated, as a question of physical philosophy. This indication is provided by the first sentences of Augustine’s Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis (c. 394),27 sentences that are of singular relevance—so I suggest—to his philosophical commentary on Genesis 1.1 in Confessions XI. For in that later commentary, Augustine writes—regarding his question of the essence of time—“I seek (quaero), father, I do not dogmatize, I do not assert (non adfirmo).”28 I will identify the source of this statement in 3.3; but here, it is Augustine’s Unfinished Literal Commentary that helps to fix its sense. And this is how Augustine opens his unfinished Genesis commentary: It is not by dogmatizing or asserting (adfirmando) but by seeking (quae­ rendo) that we have to treat obscure questions concerning natural things (de obscuris naturalium rerum)—all of which we hold to have been made by the omnipotent architect: god. Especially in the books that divine authority commends to us, rashness in asserting an inconclusive, doubtful opinion (temeritas adserendae incertae dubiaeque opinionis) is hard to distinguish from the crime of sacrilege (sacrilegii crimen)—yet still, doubt in seeking (quaerendi dubitatio) should not transgress the limits of the Catholic faith.29 27

Mutzenbecher (1984, xvii) dates this commentary to 393/4, but Zarb (1934, 87) has 393/4 plus a late, minor addition in 426: “Excepta igitur parva additione finali, quae poni debet anno 426, cetera conscripta fuere anno 393/4.” 28 Aug. Conf. XI.17.22: quaero, pater, non adfirmo. 29 Aug. Gen.lib.imp. 1.1: De obscuris naturalium rerum, quae omnipotente deo artifice facta sentimus, non adfirmando, sed quaerendo tractandum est in libris maxime quos nobis divina commendat auctoritas, in quibus temeritas adserendae incertae dubiaeque opinionis difficile sacrilegii crimen evitat: ea tamen quaerendi dubitatio catholicae fidei metas non debet excedere.

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As I have said, Augustine has no metaphysical question of time whatever, since the creation of time by god is a limit that is set by his faith. Yet there is no need to labour the point that Augustine seeks in Confessions XI, and does not dogmatize regarding the essence of time, precisely because—to use his phrasing in the Unfinished Commentary—his time-question is a question “concerning natural things” (de . . . naturalium rerum).30 That is to say, his time-question pertains to physical philosophy, and proceeds at the level of physical causality. This inference is solidified when we compare Augustine’s phrasing here—i.e. “obscure questions concerning natural things” (de obscuris naturalium rerum)31—with Cicero’s delimitation of ‘physical philosophy’ in the Academica. Physical philosophy, writes Cicero, is “concerned with nature and with obscure things” (de natura et rebus occultis).32 For over seven hundred years, Augustine’s interpreters have failed to discern this link; and as a result, the received interpretations of time in the Confessions have failed to situate Augustine’s concept of ‘dilation’ within the physical—or more precisely, sensual—problematic that gave rise to it. 2.2

Time in the Confessions: A Typology of the Received Interpretations

We will recall that in the first paragraphs Kilwardby’s Tractatus de Tempore, he opposes Augustine’s ‘metaphysical’ time-concept to Aristotle’s ‘physical’ definition of time.33 For Kilwardby,34 as indeed for Albertus Magnus35 and Henry of 30 Aug. Gen.lib.imp. 1.1. 31 Aug. Gen.lib.imp. 1.1. 32 Cic. Acad. I.5.19: Fuit ergo iam accepta a Platone philosophandi ratio triplex, una de vita et moribus, altera de natura et rebus occultis, tertia de disserendo et quid verum, quid falsum. 33 Kil. Temp. 10. 34 Kil. Temp. 4: Propter has et consimiles rationes posuit Augustinus quod tempus non est nisi in anima, sicut patet libro 13 Confessionum, et sicut patet ibidem, capitulo 30 [sic], tempus secundum ipsum est quedam distensio non alicuius existentis extra animam set affectionis animi presentis eidem et derelicte in eo ex rebus transeuntibus, in qua scilicet affectione intentio animi presens trahicit expectationem futurorum in memoriam preteritorum. 35 Alb. Phys. IV, tr. 3, cap. 3: Augustinus etiam disputans, an tempus sit in anima, quaerit, si tempus sit extra animam, ubi sit . . . ergo ratione illius non erit tempus extra animam; cap. 4: . . . et alia multa inconvenientia ex hoc sequi videntur, quae Galienus et Augustinus evadere non possunt, qui dicunt his de causis in anima esse tempus.

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Ghent,36 Augustine’s time-concept is ‘metaphysical’ since it posits time in the soul (in anima) and denies time outside the soul (extra animam).37 Kilwardby objects that time is per se “the cause of corruption” (causa corruptionis), as in Physics IV,38 which is impossible if time is isolated in or restricted to the soul;39 and that “motion is something outside the soul” (motum esse aliquid extra ani­ mam), as no one disputes, so that time—logically and concurrently—has its “being outside the soul” (ens extra animam).40 The Tractatus de Tempore is dated to 1250.41 In different ways, Carl Fortlage’s 1836 treatise, Aurelii Augustini Doctrina de Tempore,42 and Martin 36 Gand. Quodl. III, q. 11 (my transcription): Ecce plane quid de proposita quaestione sensit Augustinus, videlicet quod [tempus] non esset nisi in anima: et nihil aliud quam affectio seu conceptus transitus rerum pertranseuntium, manens in anima: ut quod tempus futurum nihil aliud sit quam conceptus secundum expectationem praetereundi: Preteritum nihil aliud quam conceptus secundum recordatione iam pertansiti. 37 Again: for aspects of the scholastic reception of Conf. XI in the 13th and 14th centuries, vid. Duhem 1959, VII; Flasch 1993; Fox 2006; Maier 1955; Mansion 1934; Porro 1987, 1996; Steel 2001; Trifogli 2000, 2001. And again: I regret that Jeck 1993 only came to my notice once the manuscript was in press. 38 Cf. Arist. Phys. IV.12 (221a–b); Kil. Temp. 5: tempus secundum Aristotilem, in 4 Phisicorum, est per se causa corruptionis. 39 Kil. Temp. 5: Set contra, tempus secundum Aristotilem, in 4 Phisicorum, est per se causa corruptionis . . . quod non posset esse si solum esset in anima. Pace Arist. Phys. IV.13 (222b): “But yet it is not actually time itself (οὐδὲ ταύτην ὁ χρόνος) that destroys things in this way, but it is incidental that this change also occurs in time (συμβαίνει ἐν χρόνῷ).” 40 Kil. Temp. 5: Cum tamen nemo ambigit motum esse aliquid extra animam, propterea dicendum tempus esse aliquod verum ens extra animam. Cf. Alb. Phys. IV, tr. 3, cap. 3: Cum ergo videamus motum esse ad sensum in rerum natura, extra animam erit et tempus aliquid extra animam . . .  41 Silva (2012, 6) dates the Tractatus de Tempore to the years 1245–50. 42 Fortlage (1836) seeks to render Augustine’s time-concept ‘metaphysical,’ but in a postSpinozist, post-Kantian sense. Fortlage’s systematic-deductive method still holds promise. I have not taken Fortlage as an interlocutor because I first obtained a copy of his Aurelii Augustini Doctrina de tempore—which has been digitized—weeks before The Space of Time went to press. Fortlage’s opuscule is of real interest for those reconstructing the concept of time in a post-Hegelian and pre-phenomenological milieu, no less than for those interpreting Augustine’s time-concept in Confessions XI. And however ‘uncritical’ it may seem, it is bracing—and illuminating—to see Fortlage range sentences from Plato’s Timaeus, Aristotle’s Physics, Cicero’s De Inventione, Sextus Empiricus’ Adversus Mathematicos, Plotinus’ Enneads, Boethius’ Consolations, Wolff’s Ontology, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel’s Encyclopedia and J.J. Wagner’s Organon der menschlichen Erkenntniss (Erlangen 1830), beside ‘theses’ he extracts from Augustine’s Confessions.

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Heidegger’s 1931 seminar, “Augustinus, Confessiones XI,”43 break decisively with the Tractatus’ problematic. Yet Kilwardby’s notion that Augustine’s timeconcept is ‘metaphysical’ is still much in evidence in the Augustine-literature. Kilwardby’s facile Physics-Confessions opposition is still a commonplace. And Kilwardby’s duplex concern that if ‘time’ (tempus) is restricted to the soul then there will be no ‘time’ posited in bodies per se, and there will be no ‘time’ produced by motion per se, is still very much with us. Witness, for instance, the title of Ricœur’s first chapter in Temps et récit III: “Temps de l’âme et temps du monde. Le débat entre Augustin et Aristote.”44 In late-modern terms, Kilwardby takes the time-concept in Confessions XI to be subjectivistic;45 and Augustine’s late-modern interpreters still take the timeconcept in Confessions XI to be subjectivistic.46 (Ludwig Wittgenstein’s chronic misapprehension of the Confessions’ time-question, in his 1930s typescripts47 and 1940s lectures,48 amounts to what is less than a misinterpretation.)49 What 43 44 45

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I have not incorporated this Heidegger (2012) seminar since I only obtained a copy in the weeks before The Space of Time went to press. Ricœur 1985, ch. 1. Cf. for instance, Alb. Phys. IV, tr. 3, cap. 3: Augustinus etiam disputans, an tempus sit in anima, quaerit, si tempus extra animam, ubi sit. Praeteritum enim cum non sit, nusquam est in rerum natura; futurum etiam cum nondum sit, non habet esse in rerum natura; ergo si tempus est in rerum natura extra animam, hoc erit praesens; Gand. Quodl. III, q. 11 (cit. Porro 1996, 6): Revera necesse est ponere instans sive praesens esse in natura rei extra animam, si transitum vel translationem aliquam ponamus extra animam . . . Et si concedatur nunc instans esse in re extra animam [etc.] . . . Nec plus possunt concludere persuasiones Augustini ad probandum tempus non esse in rebus sed solum in anima; III, q. 11 (my transcription): Ecce plane quid de proposita quaestione sensit Augustinus, videlicet quod [tempus] non esset nisi in anima: et nihil aliud quam affectio seu conceptus transitus rerum pertranseuntium, manens in anima: ut quod tempus futurum nihil aliud sit quam conceptus secundum expectationem praetereundi: Preteritum nihil aliud quam conceptus secundum recordatione iam pertansiti. Out of the hundreds of such formulations, cf. Lacey 1968, 220: “Augustine’s . . . chapter on time in the Confessions contains a quite coherent argument for time as subjective”; 225: “What we measure as time is a mental impression—past time, a memory; future time, an expectation. Measured time is . . . thoroughly subjective.” Wittgenstein 1969, 26–27. Wittgenstein repeats Augustine’s inaugural time-confession offhand—in English, and with characteristic incomprehension—during his last Cambridge seminar, in 1946. Vid. Wittgenstein 1988, 6 (Geach’s notes): “St Augustine on time. ‘If you don’t ask me, I know; if you ask me, I don’t know.’ He knew the [illocutionary] technique, but not how to describe it.” Brinkley (1973) evaluates Wittgenstein’s use of and sympathies for Augustine, and specifically, the Confessions.

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follows is a typology of late-modern interpretations of time in Confessions XI, all of which still take their rise from the scholastic question of Augustine’s subjectivism. In this fundamental regard,50 all the received, late-modern interpretations of time in Confessions X to XII are alike—and as a rule, unwittingly51—scholastic.52 Subjectivist Interpretations, via Éric Alliez Éric Alliez’s treatment of Confessions XI exemplifies the blunt, unrepentantly subjectivist type of interpretation. Alliez holds that time in Confessions XI is wholly irrelative to “physical movement” (mouvement physique),53 and it is this irrelativity of time to movement that constitutes, for him, the ­“autonomization/ subjectivation of time” in the Confessions.54 Alliez’s interpretation is issued “in defiance of any cosmological temptation that would inscribe time [in the Confessions] as dependent on physical movement.”55 And as a result—since time is most clearly ‘inscribed as dependent on physical movement’ in book XII of the Confessions—Alliez confines his interpretation to books X and XI. Confessions XII is never cited, and is only referred to in a polemical note in which Alliez dismisses the question of mouvement physique in book XII.56 This question of time’s ‘dependence’ (dépendance) on physical movement is decisive for Alliez’s ‘subjectivation of time’ in Confessions XI, and indeed, for any subjectivist interpretation of time in Confessions X to XII. Thus, to demonstrate a logical precedence of motion to time in Confessions XI and XII—as 50

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There are of course exceptions; but they are not, as yet, influential exceptions. A. Bardon (2007), for instance, recognizes that Augustine’s time-concept is basically, in a later terminology, ‘empiricist.’ Where I have related Augustine to Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century (see Appendix 4), Bardon relates him to David Hume in the 18th. The salient exception to this is Kurt Flasch (1993). In my judgement this holds good as it is written, but it is not meant to deprecate advances made in the literature. Several impressive works have appeared in English since The Space of Time was written in 2010, while I have obtained copies of a number of German works at the eleventh hour, as The Space of Time was being sent to press. All of these works appear in the bibliography, though I have preferred not to catalogue the points on which my interpretation converges, or nearly converges with them—and finally diverges from them—since they have neither influenced nor, to my mind, outstripped the interpretation I present here. Alliez 1996, 124/1991, 187. Alliez 1996, 89/1991, 144. Alliez 1996, 124/1991, 187 (tr. mod.): “. . . contre toute tentation cosmologique qui inscrirait le temps dans la dépendance du mouvement physique.” Alliez 1996, 273 n. 148.

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I will—is also to negatively and conclusively resolve the question: Is Augustine’s concept of time in the Confessions subjectivistic? Intellectivist Interpretations, via Paul Ricœur Paul Ricœur’s is a subjectivist interpretation57 of the intellectivist type. Like Alliez, Ricœur is silent on Confessions XII. But unlike Alliez, Ricœur makes his interpretation hinge on this specification: Augustine’s distentio animi is in the first instance a dilation, not of the soul, but of the mind.58 Thus, even when Ricœur momentarily (pour l’instant) treats ‘soul’ (âme), ‘mind’ (esprit) and ‘consciousness’ (conscience) as substitutable terms, in Temps et récit III, he in the same sentence betrays his preference for ‘mind’: Augustine’s disten­ tio, he writes there, is a “distention of the mind” (distension de l’esprit).59 What is more, Ricœur identifies precisely this intellective distention as marking the failure or miscarriage of Augustine’s time-concept: “l’échec d’Augustin.”60 However, it is precisely the importation of ‘mind’ that marks the miscarriage of Ricœur’s—or any intellectivist—interpretation of Augustine’s dis­ tentio animi. For as I will demonstrate, Augustine’s animus in the Confessions is ascribed to beasts no less than to humans, and by no means refers to the 57

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Cf. Ricœur 1983, 29/1984, 12 (tr. mod.): “The quasi-spatial language . . . remains in suspense so long as this extension of the human soul (cette extension de l’âme humaine), the ground of all measurement of time, has not been stripped of any cosmological basis (privé . . . de tout support cosmologique). The inherence of time in the soul (l’inhérence du temps à l’âme) takes on its full meaning only when every thesis that would put time in dependence on physical movement (toute thèse qui mettrait le temps dans la dépendence du movement physique) has been eliminated”; 1983, 32/1984, 15 (tr. mod.): “The notion of distentio animi will serve, precisely, as a substitute for [every] cosmological basis for the space of time (de substitut à [tout] support cosmologique de l’espace de temps).” Ricœur 1983, 38: “C’est dans l’âme, donc à titre d’impression, que l’attente et la mémoire ont de l’extension. Mais l’impression n’est dans l’âme que pour autant que l’esprit agit, c’est-à-dire attend, fait attention et se souvient.” Ricœur 1985, 22: “L’échec d’Augustin à dériver le principe de la mesure du temps de la seule distension de l’esprit nous invite à aborder le problème du temps par son autre extrémité, la nature, l’univers, le monde (expressions que nous tenons provisoirement comme synonymes, quitte à les distinguer ultérieurement, comme nous le ferons pour leurs antonymes, que, pour l’instant, nous nommons indifféremment âme, esprit, conscience).” Cf. for instance, Jordan 1955, 400: “Time is some kind of extension. In fact, it is, as [Augustine] says, probably an extension of the mind itself ”; Nightingale 2011, 57: “The vocalization of words and sounds over a specific temporal period allows [Augustine] to measure the passing of time and to analyze the distention of his mind ”; etc.  Vid. Ricœur 1985, 22.

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human ‘mind’ (mens, ratio, intellectus) in Confessions X to XII.61 In fine Hellenistic fashion,62 Augustine’s mens is not the rudimentary stratum of soul (anima-animus) which is dilated in times;63 and in a distinctly Christian fashion, Augustine’s mens designates the seat of the human imago dei in the soul.64 Mens is that inborn force in us which can—periodically, and transiently— transpierce the confines of flux, i.e. the ‘dilation of the senses’ that is time. Disjunctivist Interpretations, via Carlos Castoriadis Carlos Castoriadis represents the disjunctivist type of interpretation of time in Confessions XI and XII. This is a strain of interpretation that has lingered on since it was first introduced, and unsuccessfully dealt with, in the mid20th century.65 In Castoriadis, it develops in this way. Having interpreted Confessions XI in a subjectivist66 and intellectivist67 vein, Castoriadis then proceeds to Confessions XII and reports “a flagrant contradiction,”68 which is that Augustine writes in book XII: Without variance of motion there are no times (sine varietate motionum non sunt tempora), and there is no variance of motion where there is no determination (species). (XII.11.14)69 61

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Cf. Arts 1927, 4: “Mens signifies ‘soul,’ ‘spirit,’ ‘consciousness,’ ‘reason.’ It differs from animus in that it means the ‘thinking spirit,’ the ‘understanding,’ while animus means the ‘feeling,’ ‘desiring spirit.’ . . . Intellectus is not a Classical word, and first occurs in Quintillian, meaning ‘understanding,’ ‘comprehension.’ It is synonymous with the Classical terms, intelle­ gentia, ratio, cognitio, etc.” As laid out very clearly at—for instance—Aug. Quant.anim. 30.58. Pace Gross 1999, 130: “As [Augustine] concludes, time is a distension or extension of mind (distentio animi), a sort of temporal ‘stretching’ of the rational soul produced by the men­ tal operations of remembering, attending, and anticipating.” Cf. for instance, Aug. Quant.anim. 28.54: Sensu enim nos bestiae multae superant, cuius rei causam non hic locus est ut quaeramus; mente autem, ratione, scientia, nos illis deus praeposuit; Serm. 43.3: Mentem, rationem, consilium, quod non habent bestiae . . . in eo facti sumus ad imaginem dei; etc. Vid. Jordan 1955. Castoriadis 1991, 45: “Augustine’s referents are purely subjective . . . expectation, attention, memory.” Castoriadis 1991, 44: “Distentio animi—a stretching of the mind.” Castoriadis 1991, 45. Lacey (1968, 231), for instance, is more restrained: “[Augustine] does not sort out this apparent incompatibility.” Cf. Castoriadis 1991, 48: “But he had already written (XI, XI, 4–10 [sic]): ‘whoever would say to me that, if all appearances were suppressed and annihilated and if only the i­ nformitas

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To Castoriadis, it appears that “Augustine . . . contradicts himself openly and naively,”70 so Castoriadis then states the ‘contradiction’ at the root of any disjunctivist interpretation: Time here [in Confessions XII] has ceased to be just the distentio animi [of Confessions XI], the stretching of my mind; it is that in which the forms vertuntur, are changing into one another, and it is produced by this mutation of forms, strictly dependent on it.71 As with Alliez, observe that ‘dependence’ on motion is critical. And this dependence is—as disjunctivists recognize—variously stated in Confessions XII, where Augustine maintains that “the forms of [material] things give rise to times” (XII.29.40). But of course, this is only ‘a flagrant contradiction’ of Confessions XI if such a dependence on motion is not stated in Confessions XI— which it is;72 and if the time-concept in Confessions XI is subjectivistic—which it is not. But there is something further to be observed here. When Augustine writes in Confessions XII, “without variance of motion there are no times (tempora)” (XII.11.14), Castoriadis glosses the sentence with reference to time: “Time here . . . is produced by this mutation of forms.”73 It would be boorish to fault Castoriadis for this imprecision, since none of Augustine’s interpreters—from Robert Kilwardby in 1250 to Jean-Luc Marion in 2010—has registered the fact that the oscillation from ‘time’ (tempus) to ‘times’ (tempora) in Confessions XI and XII signals a difference with a distinction.74 Nevertheless, the ­interpretation

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(form-lessness) were to remain, through which everything changes and varies from one form to another, this form-lessness would exhibit the vicissitudes of time? This is absolutely impossible, for there are no times without the variety of motions and where there is no form, there is no variety.’” Castoriadis 1991, 48. Castoriadis 1991, 48. Pace Jordan 1955, 402–403: “Augustine has suggested, in his definition of time, a relational conception of time. . . . But a relation must have a foundation, and we are not told in the eleventh Book of the Confessions what this foundation could be.” Castoriadis 1991, 48. Caveat lector! I let this sentence stand, despite having seen—in the last days before the manuscript went to press—that Roland Jurgeleit registered this distinction in the 1980s. Jurgeleit’s “Der Zeitbegriff bei Augustinus” remains, to my knowledge, the sole exception to my bold statement—and of course, this is salutary. What follows is Jurgeleit’s (1988, 227–28) discussion of tempus and tempora: “Aufgrund der Aufnahme und bewußten Verbindung von zwei Aspekten eignet dem Augustinischen Zeitbegriff ein subjektiv-objektiver Doppelcharakter: Sowohl die Wahnehmung objektiver

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I will present takes its rise from the conviction that Augustine’s deployments of tempus and tempora are conceptually significant, and that it is—in large part—this hitherto unnoticed lexical distinction that renders subjectivist, intellectivist, and disjunctivist interpretations of Confessions XI and XII null and void. Neoplatonist Interpretations, via Roland Teske Roland Teske introduces a Neoplatonist type of interpretation.75 Teske accepts the intellectivist interpretation of animus in Augustine’s time-investigation,

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Veränderung als auch die überspannende Kraft des Subjekts sind konstitutive Elemente desjenigen Phänomens, das in der alltäglichen Rede mit dem Begriff ‘Zeit’ vorgegeben ist. Sobald aber die ursprünglich vereint vorliegenden Aspekte . . . in der phänomenologischen Reflexion explizit erkannt worden sind, muß auch die Verwendung der Begriffe tempus und tempora im Kontext der Zeitabhandlung unter dieser Hinsicht untersucht werden. Dabei ergibt sich, daß tempus entweder die Zeit im allgemeinen oder insbesondere unter ihrem zweiten Aspekt der meßbaren, kontinuierlichen Dauer bezeichnet, während der Plural, wenn der nähere Zusammenhang nichts anderes erfordert, für gewöhnlich die zeitlich bestimmten Sachverhalte in ihrer jeweiligen Modalität meint. Diese Verwendungsweise von tempora bedeutet aber nicht, daß der Zeit damit zugleich eine vom wahrnehmenden Subjekt unabhängige, objektive Existenz durch Augustinus zugebilligt würde. Denn dieser . . . orientierte Zeitbegriff erfaßt die zeitlichen Sachverhalte nur als statische Gehalte derjenigen Zeitdimensionen, die in der Sprache durch die Modi Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft vorgegeben sind. Zeit is dadurch zwar gekoppelt an den Weltprozeß, aber dieser ist nicht identisch mit ihr; vielmehr stellt er sich der phänomenologischen Betrachtung lediglich als Abfolge eines objektiven Nacheinanders dar, das Augustinus deswegen als tempora ansprechen kann, weil der Mensch von diesem Prozeß nur als Ablauf zeitlich strukturierter und interpretierter Ereignisse . . . Eine eigenständige, vom menschlichen Erleben in ihrem Ablauf unabhängige Zeit, die der objektiven Welt als ihr Charakteristikum zugeordnet werden könnte, muß demnach als Ergänzung zu Augustins Zeitbegriff nicht postuliert werden. Im Gegenteil: Der Text der ‘Confessiones’ läßt vielmehr erkennen, daß es die Intention des Autors war, das Phänomen ‘Zeit’ in seiner Gesamtheit auf den Begriff zu bringen, wobei ihm jedenfalls zugestanden werden muß, dessen objektive Dimension ausreichend berücksichtigt zu haben.” But cf. also Suarez 1861, 950: “. . . dixerunt multi philosophi, tempus non esse unum tantum, sed plura. Cui sententiæ consonat D. August., lib. 11 Confess., c. 23, dicens: Audivi a quodam homine docto, quod solis et lunæ, ac siderum motus, ipsa sint tempora et anni. Cur enim non potius omnium corporum motus sint tempora? An vero si cessarent cœli lumina, et meveretur rota figuli, non esset tempus? ” Cf. Teske 2008a, 216: “The basic thesis of [my 1983] article met with approval by Kurt Flasch in his [1993] study of time in Augustine, Was ist Zeit? Augustinus von Hippo, Das XI. Buch der Confessiones.”

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i.e. “time as a distension of mind-soul,” but seeks to defang subjectivist and disjunctivist interpretations76 by means of this manoeuvre: [Augustine’s] definition of time as distentio animi can escape charges of inconsistency with what he says elsewhere about time as well as charges that such a definition of time is purely subjective and hopelessly idealistic. For, time . . . is for Augustine, as it was for Plotinus, primarily a distension of that soul by which form is given to the world.77 While Teske recognizes that there is “no explicit doctrine in the [Confessions] of a soul of the world,”78 Augustine’s ‘dilation’ is still taken to be a dilation of that ‘soul.’79 That is to say, ‘dilation’ in Confessions XI is ascribed (i) to a soul that can only tendentiously be called ‘Plotinian,’80 since Augustine would have originally associated it with Plato and the Stoics (via Cicero or philosophical florilegia); (ii) to a soul that is only fleetingly and obscurely referenced in Augustine’s pre-ordination texts;81 (iii) to a soul that is never openly posited or characterized—as Teske admits—in the Confessions; and (iv) to a soul that is repeatedly disavowed in Augustine’s Recensions.82 Objections to the Neoplatonist interpretation are legion, but I will limit them to the following. Firstly, Teske places it “beyond doubt that Augustine was quite familiar with [Plotinus’] Ennead 3, 7,” and while this acquaintance is not precisely ‘beyond doubt,’ regardless: the structural and dialectical ­elements that link Confessions XI to Aristotle’s Categories and Cicero’s rhetorical treatises (see 13.6)—or even to Sextus Empiricus’ Adversus Physicos (see Appendix 1)—outnumber and outweigh the possible links to Enneads III.7. Secondly, Teske imports a sense of anima-animus for which there is no clear

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Cf. Teske 2008a, 226: “If what Augustine says about the heaven of heavens is open to his holding that there is a world-soul with which individual souls are one, then his defi­ nition of time as a distension of mind-soul [= intellectivist interpretation] not merely is open to this idea, but requires such a doctrine both in order to avoid inconsistency with what Augustine says about time elsewhere [= disjunctivist interpretation] and to avoid the claim that his view of time is utterly subjective [= subjectivist interpretation].” Teske 2008a, 237. Teske 2008a, 223. Vid. Teske 2008a, 228. Cf. Aug. Retr. I.11.4: Sed animal esse istum mundum, sicut Plato sensit aliique philosophi plurimi, nec ratione certa indagare potui, nec divinarum scripturarum auctoritate persuaderi posse cognovi. Cf. Aug. Imm.anim. 15.24; Ord. II.11.30; Rhyth. VI.14.44 (cit. Teske 2008a, 219, 220). Cf. Aug. Retr. I.5.3, I.11.4 (cit. Teske 2008a, 219, 221).

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evidence in the Confessions—namely, that of a quasi-Plotinian ‘all-soul’—even as, and because, he abandons the sense of anima-animus that Augustine delineates in Confessions X, where anima and animus alike designate ‘soul’ insofar as it is the life of a body (see 4.3, 8.2–4). Thirdly, Teske cedes that “time [begins] with the motion of a creature” in the Confessions, but then adds, “no matter whether that creature [is] spiritual or corporeal.”83 However, in Confessions XI as in Confessions XII, it is specifically “the movement of . . . bodies” (corpo­ rum motus, XI.23.29) that produces ‘times’ (see 4.2, 9.4, 10.2). There is no more evidence for angelic intellection producing ‘times’ in the Confessions84 than there is for a quasi-Plotinian ‘all-soul’ in the Confessions. And finally, Teske’s Plotinian hypothesis85 leads him to grossly mischaracterize, not only the temporized anima-animus of Augustine’s time-investigation, but the preter-temporal animus-mens of Confessions XI.30–31 and Confessions XII, i.e. Augustine’s caelum intellectuale (see chapters 5 and 7). Whereas Augustine concludes his time-investigation by confessing that he lives “in times” (in tempora, XI.29.39), and introduces a heavenly animus-mens as perduring “beyond times” (supra tempora, XI.30.40), Teske drags Augustine’s heavenly creature into times. He even posits a bizarre, quasi-intellective ‘dilation of the senses’ in this hyperexalted creature.86 In short, the Neoplatonist type of interpretation ‘reconciles’ Confessions XI and XII—and thereby, ‘overcomes’ the subjectivist and disjunctivist types of interpretation—by modulating the intellectivist type of interpretation in such a way that Confessions XI and XII are alike rendered unrecognizable, while the time-concept of Confessions XI is rendered philosophically inviable. Diversionist Interpretations, via Goulven Madec Goulven Madec advances what could be called the diversionist type of interpretation, which is a theological type of interpretation. Madec has an incomparably subtler knowledge of Augustine’s corpus than Alliez, Ricœur or Castoriadis, 83 84

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Teske 2008a, 230. Sorabji (1983, 31–32) remarks that whereas Augustine discusses ‘angelic time’—i.e. some mode of transitivity or succession produced in and by the angels’ intellection—in “works straddling the Confessions: de Genesi ad Litteram Liber Imperfectus III.8 and de Genesi ad Litteram V.5.12,” there is “no hint of this theory in Confessions XII.” Teske 2008a, 237 n. 48: “I have repeatedly said that I regard . . . [this] as a very tentative hypothesis.” Teske 2008a, 236: “In the context [of Conf. XI.30–31,] sensus distenditur seems to refer to the awareness of iste animus.” This is nonsense. Cf. Pépin 1953, 219: “. . . caelum intellectuale, est celui que voit l’intelligence totalement séparée de toute activité sensorielle, et où elle contemple, sans pouvoir en parler, la substance même de Dieu.”

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and is unconstrained by Teske’s hyper-Plotinian optic. As a result, Madec dismisses the subjectivist, intellectivist,87 disjunctivist and Neoplatonist88 types of interpretation, more or less out of hand.89 (“Il n’est pas besoin d’être un augustinien inconditionnel pour juger ces explications invraisemblables, et inexplicables de la part d’un excellent connaisseur.”)90 Insofar as Madec’s interpretation is a negative one, then, it marks a break with the question of subjectivism that skews the other types of late-modern interpretation. But despite making certain positive contributions,91 Madec’s is a diversionist interpretation—like Jean-Luc Marion’s92—because, in the first place, he assigns 87

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There is nevertheless an intellectivist taint when Madec (2001, 193) writes this: “Les hommes aussi naissent, vivent et meurent. Mais, étant des esprits, créés par Dieu, ils ont la faculté, dans le temps qui leur est imparti, de mesurer le temps qui passe . . .” Still, Madec (2001, 193) overstates the Neoplatonic influence, and limits counterinfluences—prematurely, and ill-advisedly—to Augustine’s scriptures: “L’inspiration néoplatonicienne a pu être très important; elle est pourtant secondaire, subsidiaire; car la réflexion qu’elle provoque s’entretient dans un autre site, un autre monde, le monde de la Bible.” Cf. Madec 2001, 189: “Les philosophes, eux, ont la mauvaise habitude d’isoler dans le livre XI des Confessions le développement sur le temps et de s’y enfermer. Paul Ricœur [= subjec­ tivist, intellectivist interpretation] le fait, tout en reconnaissant d’emblée qu’il fait ainsi ‘au texte une certaine violence.’ Kurt Flasch [= Neoplatonist interpretation] est plus radical . . . En 1966, Ulrich Dochrow estimait illégitime de séparer l’analsye psychologique du temps des problèmes du temps physique et du temps historique. Il avait raison; mais il croyait devoir dénoncer une énorme incohérence chez Augustin [= disjunctivist interpretation]. . . . [Cette] ‘théorie psychologique’ [est] incompatible avec les doctrines chrétiennes et augustiniennes de la création et de l’histoire du salut.” Madec 2001, 189: “Il n’est pas besoin d’être un augustinien inconditionnel pour juger cette explication [sc. Ulrich Duchrow’s] invraisemblable, et inexplicable de la part d’un excellent connaisseur.” Madec is specifically referring back, here, to Dochrow’s disjunctivist interpretation; but he has listed—on the same page—Ricœur’s subjectivist and intellectivist interpretation, and Flasch’s Neoplatonist interpretation, no less dismissively. Thus, it is justifiable to emend his remark—as I have—to take in Ricœur’s and Flasch’s interpretations, as well as Dochrow’s. I have silently emended, here, only to simplify this aside. Cf. for instance, Madec 2001, 190: “Si je me mettais à chanter, par exemple, l’hymne d’Ambroise: ‘Deus creator omnium’ . . . je le ferais de corps; et cela prendrait du temps, pas seulement du ‘temps subjectif,’ du ‘temps-mesure,’ mais de la durée, du ‘temps objectif,’ du ‘temps mesuré.’ ” Marion (2012, 195) posits a “liturgical intention of Saint Augustine” in the ­time-investigation of Confessions XI, whereas I contend—to the contrary—that Augustine’s intention here is not only philosophical, but ‘physical,’ relative to the triplex division of late-antique philosophy into physical, logical and ethical questions. Marion can of course pretend that

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Augustine’s time-investigation to the ill-defined but manifestly theologistic genre of exercitatio animi.93 The time-investigation of Confessions XI, writes Madec, “ce n’est pas une dissertation objective sur le temps, mais un exercice spirituel.”94 And because, in the second place, Madec—unlike Augustine— seems to believe that the category of ‘creature’ elucidates Augustine’s concept of time, writing: “Le temps est créature, il est le mouvement de la créature . . . selon l’ordonnancement de Dieu.”95 Now, Augustine’s time-investigation is indeed not a ‘dissertation . . . sur le temps’ as regards its genre (see chapter 3), but neither is it less than an ‘objective’ philosophical enquiry, in the terms that Augustine imposed on a Manichaean bishop, Faustus, at Carthage (see 3.3): a ‘pious’ time-concept must, at very least, accord with whatever is convincing “in the works of secular philosophy” (in libris saecularis sapientiae, V.3.6). And if Madec’s theological exercitatio animi-genre is designed to lead a devotee up towards his god, then Augustine’s time-investigation is a wretched specimen. It peaks, as I have said (see 1.4), precisely at the point that Augustine’s ‘ascent’ to god plunges to, in Confessions IX, once his vision of god has faltered. Even on its surface: Augustine’s time-investigation only leads him deeper into time. And even on its surface, Augustine’s time-investigation at no point suggests that the prelate—like Madec—relies on the category of ‘creature’ to resolve his time-question. For before and after Augustine asks, ‘What is time?’ he is

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Augustine’s ‘liturgical intention’ in the time-investigation is a pre-modern one; yet this sort of post-modern, ‘liturgical’ optic for the time-investigation in Confessions XI must first justify itself by stating why it is that there is no pre-modern trace of ‘liturgy’ in the late 5th or early 6th century, when Eugippius extracts and redacts Confessions XI.23.29– 31.41 under this head, at Eug. Exc. VIII: “De Tempore, quod cum homo metiri videatur non tamen potest comprehendere quid sit tempus . . .” (pace Marion, this is very much the language of ‘definition’—and note, of a definition of time without reference to eternity); or why there is no trace of ‘liturgy’ in the first half of the 13th century, when Robert Grosseteste comments (and he is one of the first, if not the first, to do so) on Aristotle’s Latinized Physics, writing at Gross. In Phys. IV: “Et Augustinus cum quaesivit essenciam temporis . . . sic videtur velle Augustinus, ut memoria de preteritis et continuacio de presentibus et expectatio de futuris putantur ab ibso esse tria tempora; ibi sunt tria presencia et ibi sunt longa aut brevia”; and so on. Cf. Madec 2002, 1183: “. . . de même l’investigation des divers trésors de la mémoire, en conf. 10,37, pour trouver Dieu: ‘in te supra me’; de même la mise en énigme du temps en conf. 11, pour tâcher de comprendre que la transcendance éternelle de Dieu par rapport à la création est toute autre que la maîtrise relative que l’esprit crée exerce sur le temps qui passe.” Madec 2001, 190. Madec 2001, 193.

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persuaded that time is a ‘creature’; yet after Augustine asks, ‘What is time?’ he nevertheless knows that he does not know what time is (see 3.3). And moreover, in the last paragraphs of Confessions XI (see 5.1), Augustine alludes to some creature that may perdure “beyond times.”96 Now, if there can be a time­ less creature—such as Augustine’s materia informis and caelum intellectuale are timeless, in Confessions XII (see Part II)—then the category of ‘creature’ cannot promise to resolve his time-question. And here—apropos of Madec’s appeal to the ‘creature’—Augustine’s temporally regulated enunciation of Ambrose’s verse, Deus creator omnium, is devastating. For it is not at all the sense of the word ‘deus’ or ‘creator’ that illuminates, for Augustine, the condition of possibility of a space of time—namely, disten­ tio animi. Augustine himself makes the point: it is the enunciation of “songs or verses or any discourses”—or indeed, the observation of any “dimensions of movements”—with perfect indifference, that exhibits the condition of possibility of “spaces of times” (XI.27.36).97 The liturgical line that Augustine recites at the height of his time-investigation is, of course, ‘pious.’ But it remains a pious flourish since any pagan phrase—say, Virgil’s Arma virumque cano . . ., which Augustine recites in De Rhythmo II98—could replace Ambrose’s line without in the slightest affecting the sense, or the persuasiveness, of Augustine’s analysis. Ambrose’s hymn merely happens to be Augustine’s canticum notissimum in Confessions XI, for Virgil’s epic is his carmen notissimum in De Rhythmo III,99 and this changes nothing. Again: it is by no means the sense of Ambrose’s term, ‘creator’—within which, of course, the idea of ‘creature’ is contained100—that resolves Augustine’s timequestion, as his theological interpreters might hope. Rather, it is the ‘dilation’ 96 Aug. Conf. XI.30.40: . . . et intellegant te ante omnia tempora aeternum creatorem omnium temporum neque ulla tempora tibi esse coaeterna nec ullam creaturam, etiamsi est aliqua supra tempora. 97 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: carmina et versus et quemque sermonem motionumque dimensiones quaslibet et de spatiis temporum. 98 Cf. Aug. Rhyth. II.2.2: utrum dicam: “Arma virumque cano . . .”; II.2.2: sic enim pronuntiem: “Arma virumque cano . . .”; III.2.3: Attende ergo etiam in ista pervulgatissima: “Arma virumque cano . . .” 99 Cf. Aug. Rhyth. III.2.3: Attende ergo etiam in ista pervulgatissima: “Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris.” Et ne longum faciamus, quia carmen notissimum est, ab hoc versu usque ad quem volueris explora singulos . . .; Aug. Conf. XI.31.41: . . . sicut mihi unum canticum notissimum . . . 100 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.12.14: sed dico te, deus noster, omnis creaturae creatorem et, si . . . enim faciebat, quid nisi creaturam faciebat?

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that any uttered term or phrase illuminates, which leads Augustine past the purely philosophical analytics of present-time that he rehearses in Confessions XI.15 (see Appendix 1). What theological interpreters of time in Confessions X to XII must bear in mind is this: it is not of time but of eternity that Augustine says, “Love knows it” (caritas novit eam, VII.10.16). Augustine’s love, in itself— for his god, his holy writ, or his church—elucidates nothing when his question is that eminently Hellenic one, ‘What is time?’ Any interpellation of theologistic reasoning—as opposed to rhetoric—in Augustine’s time-investigation, is a diversion. For even Augustine’s appeal to a miraculous arrest of the sun, in the book of Joshua—which is invariably cited by the scholastics—is anticipated by a strictly philosophical caveat in the Soliloquies (see 5.3). But if the foregoing typology helps to situate Augustine relative to his latemodern interpreters, a further typology is needed to situate him relative to his predecessors in antiquity. For Augustine’s late-modern interpreters typically assume—and note well: this is an assumption—that his time-concept is ‘Platonic,’ but the evidence for this is lacking. 2.3

Confessions XI and Typologies of Time in Antiquity

While Augustine is a ‘Platonist,’ albeit a Latin Platonist101—i.e. originally and lastingly influenced by the Academic Platonism102 of Cicero—it cannot be assumed that his time-concept is ‘Platonic,’ for it is only in matters of sacred doctrine that he renounces the libertas philosophandi.103 Thus, it should be asked, in doxographic terms: Would Augustine’s time-concept have been perceived as ‘Platonic’ in antiquity? Or for that matter, as ‘metaphysical’?

101 It is worth recalling here that Plotinus’ translator, Marius Victorinus, also penned a commentary on Cicero’s De Inventione. For remarks on “le scepticisme de Victorinus,” stemming from Cicero: Bouton-Toubloulic 2012; Hadot 1971, 47–58. 102 As Augustine himself states with exemplary clarity in the first paragraph of his first surviving letter, at Aug. Epist. 1.1 (386/7)—which is to say, precisely in the months when, per his hyper-Plotinian interpreters, he is most freshly and absolutely under the influence “of Plato and of Plotinus” (illae Platonem, illae Plotinum), to use a much-touted phrase of his from Epist. 6.1 (387/8). 103 Cf. Aug. Civ. X.23: Liberis enim verbis loquuntur philosophi, nec in rebus ad intellegendum difficillimis offensionem religiosarum aurium pertimescunt. Nobis autem ad certam regulam loqui fas est, ne verborum licentia etiam de rebus, quae his significantur, impiam gignat opinionem; Conf. XII.24.33: ecce enim, deus meus, ego servus tuus.

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Plutarch’s Typology of Time-Concepts Question VIII of Plutarch’s Platonic Questions is concerned with time, and his typology of time-concepts—i.e. his doxography—is not elaborate.104 He seems to identify only three objectionable conceptions of time: (i) Time is “a measure or number of motion (μέτρον . . . κινήσεως καὶ ἀριθμὸν) according to antecedent and subsequent, as Aristotle said.” (ii) Time is “what in motion is quantitative (τὸ ἐν κινήσει ποσόν), as Speusippus said.” (iii) Time is the “extension of motion (διάστεμα κινήσεως) and nothing else, as some of the Stoics said, defining it by an accident and not comprehending its essence (οὐσίαν) and power (δύναμιν).”105 Plutarch is more impressed with Pindar than with Plato’s direct heirs— Speusippus in the Academy, and Aristotle at the Lyceum:106 No mean intuition (οὐ φαύλως ὑπονοῶν) seems to have been expressed by Pindar in the words, “The lord, the lofty, Time, who excels all the beatific gods.”107 And Plutarch approvingly relates a testimony in which Pythagoras, when he is asked “what time is” (τί χρόνος ἐστί), replies: “The soul of the heavens” (τὴν τοὐρανοῦ ψυχὴ).108 But what does all this indicate, and lead to?

104 Plutarch has a more intricate and, in some ways, more interesting discussion of ancient time-concepts—Stoic, and Epicurean—at Plut. Ad.Stoic. 41 (1081c) et pass. But again: my purpose here is strictly typological, and for this purpose, Plut. Plat.Q. VIII is the more useful text. 105 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007a–b). 106 Cf. Aug. Civ. VIII.12: . . . in tantum aliis praelati iudicio posterorum, ut, cum Aristoteles Platonis discipulus, vir excellentis ingenii et eloquio Platoni quidem impar, sed multos facile superans, cum sectam Peripateticam condidisset, quod deambulans disputare consueverat, plurimosque discipulos praeclara fama excellens vivo adhuc praeceptore in suam haeresim congregasset, post mortem vero Platonis Speusippus, sororis eius filius, et Xenocrates, dilectus eius discipulus, in scholam eius, quae Academia vocabatur, eidem successissent atque ob hoc et ipsi et eorum successores Academici appellarentur . . . 107 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007b). Pindar’s line, here, is: ἄνακτα τὸν πάντων ὑπερβάλλοντα χρόνον μακάρων. 108 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007b).

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In Platonic Questions VIII, the Stoics, Speusippus and Aristotle are alike faulted for identifying time with some “affection” (πάθος) or “accident” (συμβεβηκὸς) of “chance motion” (ἔτυχε κινήσεως).109 The identity of the proposed affection or accident of motion—be it number (per Aristotle), quantity (per Speusippus), or extension (per the Stoics)—is, in Plutarch’s eyes, irrelevant. It is rather the conditioning of time ‘from below’—i.e. from physi­ cal motion110—that Plutarch resists. Pindar and Pythagoras, to the contrary, condition time ‘from above.’ And again, the identity of this ‘lofty’ condition— be it Pindar’s ‘lord’ or Pythagoras’ ‘soul of heaven’—is inconsequential. What Plutarch lauds is not a notion, but a direction of causality; and this ‘direction’ of causality is, incontestably, a Platonic one. For without turning to the Timaeus, we can observe something of this ‘direction’ in book X of Plato’s Laws: All things that share in soul (ψυχῆς) change, since they possess within themselves (ἐν ἑαυτοῖς) the cause of change (μεταβολῆς αἰτίαν), and in changing they move according to the law and order of destiny (κατὰ τὴν τῆς εἱμαρμένης τάξιν καὶ νόμον).111 Plutarch remains faithful to this Platonic etiology of time. For Plutarch as for Plato: the cause of change is not in physical motion (‘from below’), but in the motion of soul (‘from above’). Thus, for Plutarch, ‘time’ is the “order-itself and symmetry”112 of the motion of an “ensouled (ἔμψυχος) totality of generated being”113—and foremost, of the ensouled heavens.114 It is as such spiritually ordered motion that ‘time’ (χρόνος) and ‘the totality of generated being’ (κόσμος) constitute “images of god” (εἰκόνες . . . τοῦ θεοῦ).115 And since Plutarch’s ‘time’—like Plato’s in the Timaeus—is “a mutive image of [god’s] eternity,”116 he carries the craze for imaging or imitating the divine to great lengths, writing: 109 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007b). 110 Cf. for instance, Arist. Gen.corr. 2.10 (336a): “[Physical] movement is prior to coming-to-be.” 111 Pl. Leg. X 904c. 112 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007c). 113 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007b). 114 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007d): “Thus time, since it is necessarily implicated and connected with the heaven, is not simply motion but, as has been said, orderly motion in that involves measure (κίνησις ἐν τάξει μέτρον) . . .” 115 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007c). 116 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.4 (1007d).

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The pins of sundials (τῶν ὡρολογίων γνώμονες) have also come to be instruments and measures of time, not by changing their position with the shadows, but rather by remaining fixed and imitating (μιμούμενοι) the earth’s occultation of the sun . . .117 With this much in view, we can determine a couple of things regarding Plutarch’s typology of time-concepts in antiquity. (i) For Plutarch, there are two essential types of time-concepts in antiquity: those that condition time ‘from below,’ and trace its origin to physical motion as such (e.g. Aristotle, Speusippus); and those that condition time ‘from above,’ and trace its origin to the motion of soul as such (e.g. Pythagoras, Plato). Recalling Kilwardby’s scholastic terminology, it is not difficult to categorize the first type of timeconcept as ‘physical,’ and the second—i.e. the Platonic—as ‘metaphysical.’ As a Platonist, then: Plutarch’s time-concept is metaphysical. Furthermore, (ii) for Plutarch, time—as the motion of the all-soul—is conditioned or produced ‘from above’ in imitation of that which is ‘above’ this all-soul, i.e. the very heights of divinity. The order and periodicity of time do not, for Plutarch, derive from and reflect the character of physical motion per se, but rather derive from and reflect the character of an all-soul’s intrinsic motion—and more remotely, of god’s eternity. Relative to Plutarch’s typology, it could thus be said that Augustine’s is by no means a ‘Platonic’ time-concept. For (i) Augustine holds that “the forms of [material] things give rise to times”;118 while (ii) Augustine never refers to the motion of soul, to the myth of an all-soul, or to the soul’s imitation of eternity in Confessions XI or XII. That is to say, according to Plutarch’s division of ancient time-concepts, Augustine’s is a ‘physical’ time-concept, and not—with the Platonists—a ‘metaphysical’ one. Sextus Empiricus’ Typology of Time-Concepts Sextus Empiricus presents a slightly more comprehensive typology of timeconcepts in Adversus Physicos II, and the reasons for this are not hard to surmise: as a sceptic, Sextus’ task is to undermine all the dogmatic time-concepts then current; and moreover, the sheer diversity of time-concepts tends to imply the impossibility of knowledge. (“As there is so much dissension regarding the essence of time, one can already infer . . .”)119 But my purpose here, importantly, is only to determine the contours of Sextus’ typology. This is 117 Plut. Plat.Q. VIII.3 (1006e). 118 Aug. Conf. XII.29.40: formae rerum exserunt tempora. 119 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.229.

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not the place to report on, and much less to discuss, how Sextus handles—or mishandles—the various time-concepts he relates. At the outset of Sextus’ time-investigation (περὶ χρόνου ζητεῖν), he introduces a twofold division: “the physicists” (φυσικοῖς) hold that the world is eternal; others, i.e. the Platonists, assert a creation of the world “at some point of time” (ἀπό τινος χρόνου).120 As regards the creation of the world—though not its creation ‘at some point of time’—there can be no doubt that Augustine is Platonic, or again, Platonic-Christian. The affirmation of creation is superabundantly clear in Confessions XI and XII, while in his City of God against the Pagans, Augustine expressly links this Christian doctrine to Platonic philosophy.121 It is not at all clear, however, that this opening division affects Sextus’ typology of time-concepts; and hereafter, in Adversus Physicos II, Augustine’s link to the Platonists is broken. In his intricate—and frankly, difficult—treatment of time, Sextus distinguishes (Α) a series of philosophical doctrines that proceed from a “concept” of time (ἀπὸ τῆς ἐννοίας), and (Β) a series of philosophical doctrines that propose an ‘‘essence” of time (ἀπὸ τῆς οὐσίας). Sextus sees three types of time-doctrines as proceeding from a concept: (Α/i)

(Α/ii)

A first type—Platonic and Stoic—identifies time with celestial motion,122 although superficially, it appears to identify time with universal motion (τοῦ κόσμου κίνησις).123 (This assimilation of ‘universal motion’ to ‘celestial motion’ can also be observed in Cicero and Varro.) A second type—Aristotelian124 and Stoic—identifies time with “ ‘the number of the prior and posterior in motion.’ ”125

120 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.169. 121 Cf. for instance, Aug. Civ. XII.13 (noting Augustine’s caveat, based in the late-antique reception-history of the Timaeus): Quod autem respondimus, cum de mundi origine quaestio verteretur, eis, qui nolunt credere non eum semper fuisse, sed esse coepisse, sicut etiam Plato apertissime confitetur, quamvis a nonnullis contra quam loquitur sensisse credatur . . . 122 That ‘universal motion’ is to be taken as ‘celestial motion,’ vid. Sext. Ad.Phys. II.175. 123 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.170–75. 124 But cf. Sext. Ad.Phys. II.176: “Aristotle declared that time is ‘the number of the prior and posterior in motion’ ”; II.228: “Plato—and as some say, Aristotle—declared that ‘time is the number of the prior and posterior in motion.’ ” 125 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.176–80.

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(Α/iii) A third type—Democritean and Epicurean—describes time as “ ‘a day-like and night-like phantasm (φάντασμα).’ ”126 Similarly, Sextus sees three types of time-doctrines as positing an essence of time: (Β/i)

A first type—reputedly Heraclitean127—holds that “time is a body (σῶμα εἶναι).”128 (Β/ii) A second type—that of “the Stoic philosophers”129—takes time to be an “incorporeal” (ἀσώματον) and “self-existent thing” (καθ᾿ αὑτό . . . πρᾶγμα).130 (Β/iii) A third type—ascribed to Epicurus131—depicts time as “incorporeal, but not,” Sextus interjects, “in the same sense as the Stoics.”132 For whereas the Stoics take time to be an incorporeal, self-existent thing,133 Epicurus holds that time is an incorporeal “ ‘symptom . . . accompanying days and nights and hours, affections and apathies, motions and rests.’ ”134 Now, this is not the place for finesse, so let it be rudely stated: of the three types of time-concept in series (Α), type (Α/iii) bears the closest resemblance to Augustine’s; while in series (Β), it is type (Β/iii) that most resembles Augustine’s. Augustine rejects type (Α/i)—a ‘Platonic’ doctrine—when he dis-identifies celestial motion and times in Confessions XI.23; and type (Β/ii)—a Stoic ­doctrine—when he states the dependence of times on a “variance of motion” in Confessions XII.11. (It is also the Stoics’ (Β/ii) position that Lucretius staves off in De Rerum Natura I, when he says: “Time has no existence in-itself. ” The Stoics’ καθ᾿ αὑτό is Lucretius’ per se.)135 Then, the only definite resemblances to be observed from Confessions XI and XII to Sextus’ typology are those with (Α/iii) and (Β/iii), i.e. with the Epicurean type of time-concept. For where Epicurus 126 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.181–88. 127 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.216: “Aenesidemus, ‘according to Heraclitus,’ stated . . .” 128 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.216–17. 129 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.218: ἀπὸ τῆς στοᾶς φιλόσοφοι. 130 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.218. 131 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.219: “Epicurus, as Demetrius the Laconian interprets him . . .” 132 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.227. 133 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.227. 134 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.219. 135 Lucr. Rer.nat. I.459: Tempus . . . per se non est.

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invokes a ‘phantasm’ (φάντασμα) in (Α/iii), Augustine invokes a sense-memorial ‘image’ (imago) in Confessions XI;136 while in Epistle 7 (387/8),137 Augustine identifies sense-memorial ‘images’ (imagines) as being the first and most veracious class of what the Greeks—and many Romans—call ‘phantasms’ (phantasias).138 Augustine’s imago in the time-investigation is, thus, a lexical equivalent of Epicurus’ φάντασμα. Moreover, where Epicurus has phantasms accompany ‘days and nights and hours, affections and apathies, motions and rests’ in (Β/iii), Augustine has images trace into days, nights and hours (XI.15, XI.28), and motions and rests (XI.24)—while he finally calls such images “affections” (XI.27),139 as I will establish in 11.2. Thus, relative to Sextus’ typology in Adversus Physicos II, it could be said that Augustine’s is not a ‘Platonic’ time-concept. Yet Sextus’ typology can take us beyond this negative judgement, which Plutarch’s had already afforded us. For it can now be inferred that Augustine’s time-concept is both a non-‘Platonic’ and an ‘Epicurean’ one. As the inverted commas here signal, such a­ ssignations— negative and positive alike—are only typological. They imply no great precision. But in doxographic terms, at least: Augustine’s time-concept reproduces none of the distinctively ‘Platonic’ descriptors, tendencies and doctrines; while it modulates—if it does not, with φάντασμα, simply translate140—the 136 In Conf. III and IX, however, Augustine refers to temporized sense-images of bodies as ‘phantasms.’ Cf. Aug. Conf. III.6.10: . . . phantasiae corporum, quae sunt; IX.10.25: si cui sileat tumultus carnis, sileant phantasiae terrae et aquarum et aeris . . . Cf. also Hrdlicka 1931, 63: “phantasia, a mental image, a sense-image produced by actual sense-impressions.” 137 Divjak (2002, 1029) dates Epistle 7 to 387/8. 138 Aug. Epist. 7.4: Omnes has imagines, quas ‘phantasias’ cum multis vocas, in tria genera commodissime ac verissime distribui video, quorum est unum sensis rebus impressum, alterum putatis, tertium ratis. primi generis exempla sunt, cum mihi tuam faciem vel Carthaginem vel familiarem quondam nostrum Verecundum et si quid aliud manentium vel mortuarum rerum, quas tamen vidi atque sensi, in se animus format. Note that at Epist. 3.2 (386)—which, like Epis. 7, is addressed to Nebridius—Augustine refers to Epicurus’ physical theory: . . . ubi est ista beata vita? ubi? ubinam? o si ipsa esset repellere atomos Epicuri! 139 Cf. also, for instance, Cic. Inv. II.58.176: “ ‘Affection’ is some change of things due to time” (‘Affectio’ est quaedam ex tempore . . . commutatio rerum). 140 Cf. Aug. Epist. 7.4: Omnes has imagines, quas ‘phantasias’ cum multis vocas . . .  Again note that at Epist. 3.2, Augustine refers to Epicurus’ atomic theory (. . . atomos Epicuri!), while Epist. 3.2–3 appear to be, in their entirety, a ‘Platonic’—yet aporetic— engagement with Epicurean physical theory. In Epist. 3.4, Augustine recollects the Epicurean doctrine of the mortality of the soul (quid si moritur animus?). Thus, Epicurus’ physical theories had by no means been lost sight of at the end of 386.

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‘Epicurean’ descriptors, tendency and doctrine. And whatever caveats might be introduced, this duplex conclusion has originated in a return to timeconcepts as they were reported and attributed in antiquity—while it also serves to clarify how Thomas Hobbes’s neo-Epicurean time-doctrine, in the 17th cen­ tury, appears to converge with Augustine’s in the Confessions (see Appendix 4). It is only now, with this preliminary suspicion—namely, that Augustine’s time-concept is not ‘Platonic,’ and is in generic terms ‘Epicurean’—that we should proceed. It must be said, however, that while it is demonstrable that Augustine’s time-question pertains to ‘physical’ philosophy; and while this assignation permits his time-concept to be ‘Epicurean’ in a typological sense; yet the specifically Epicurean or Lucretian source of his time-concept will not—and to my mind, cannot—be established. That Augustine’s time-concept is ‘Epicurean’ will thus remain a strictly provisional and typological conclusion, while a direct Epicurean influence on Augustine’s time-investigation will remain a suspicion. That question will not be pursued (but see 3.4), and will not affect the interpretation that I set out here. For regardless of his sources: Augustine’s time-question—like Aristotle’s— is physical; while his time-concept—like Epicurus’ and Lucretius’—is sensual.

Part one Anticipations and Clarifications

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Remarks on the Genre and Sources of Augustine’s Confessions Lyotard writes that Augustine “excels in the desire of philosophy (le désir de la philosophie), pagan or not; in the appetite to restore the diverse to the unity of the true through . . . logical articulation.” Nevertheless, he continues, “the Confessions are not of this vein.” Augustine’s confession is not “a treatise of philosophy in which the way would be traced through a conceptual discrimination between . . . the sensible/intelligible, soul/body.”1 I want to stress the sensitivity and perspicuity of this last statement. And as will become apparent, sensibile/intelligibile is a distinction that Augustine employs in book XII for the first time, in this precise terminology, in the Confessions,2 so it is useful to recall Lyotard’s caution here. Yet if the Confessions are not, like Augustine’s debut work,3 ‘a treatise of philosophy,’ or like his preordination works a dialogue, then what is the genre of the Confessions? 3.1

Preliminary Remarks on Genre

Very crudely: while Augustine anticipates the biographia literaria,4 he inaugurates the confessive genre. What is so singular in Confessions I to X is that Augustine’s narratio is delivered in a forensic mode of address that Cicero calls concessio,5 and more 1 Lyotard 2000, 48–49/1998, 71–72 (tr. mod.). 2 Aug. Conf. XII.5.5: non est intellegibilis forma . . . neque sensibilis; cf. C.Acad. III.17.37: Sat est enim ad id, quod volo, Platonem sensisse duos esse mundos, unum intellegibilem, in quo ipsa veritas habitaret, istum autem sensibilem, quem manifestum est nos visu tactuque sentire. 3 On Augustine’s De Pulchro et Apto, cf. Aug. Conf. IV.13.20–15.27; Testard 1958, I:49–70; and O’Donnell 1992, II:246–62, here 256: “It must be emphasized that the intentions of [Augustine] at the time he wrote the [De Pulchro et Apto] are beyond recapture: we only see the work as he presents it later.” 4 Stock (1996) is most perceptive in this regard. 5 Cic. Inv. II.31.94: Concessio est per quam non factum ipsum probatur ab reo, sed ut ignoscatur, id petitur. Quintilian’s remarks on confessio and concessio—which he links—at Quint. Inst.orat. IX.2.51, are also of interest.

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­specifically, deprecatio.6 Cicero writes this in the De Inventione,7 in a passage that Augustine would have lectured on as a rhetor: “Deprecatio is when the accused confesses (confitetur) that he has given offence (peccasse) . . . and still asks to be forgiven.”8 Cicero then immediately cautions: “This type (genus) of defence can only occur very rarely.”9 He later states why: This type (genus) of defence can hardly be recommended . . . because once the offence is conceded (concesso peccato) it is difficult to demand a pardon from the one whose duty it is to punish offences (qui peccatorum vindex esse debet).10 At the very close of book X, Augustine justifies his audacity in the Confessions—and it is precisely the audacity of guilt that is the differentia specifica of his new, confessive genre11—by appealing to the duplicity12 of his judge: Augustine’s divine judge is also a human-divine advocate.13 And 6

At Cic. Inv. II.31–36, Cicero reviews the subdivisions of concessio—namely, purgatio and deprecatio—at some length. Deprecatio is the more hopeless ‘defence,’ since in purgatio, “the intent (voluntas) of the accused is defended, but not his act (non factum ipsum)” (II.31.94); in deprecatio, “the accused confesses that he has given offense and has done so intentionally (et consulto peccasse reus se confitetur), and still asks to be forgiven” (I.11.15). 7 That Aug. 83 Quaest. 31 is nothing but an 85-line extract from Cic. Inv. II.53.159–55.167 is telling. Cf. Aug. Retr. I.26.32: Tricesima prima nec ipsa mea est sed Ciceronis . . .  Cf. also Marrou 1983, 50: “Les milieux scolaires du temps d’Augustin leur préfèrent le de Inventione [to Cic. Orat. and Or.], œuvre de jeunesse dont Cicéron rougissait, mais qui plaisait précisément parce qu’elle était moins personnelle, plus technique, plus conforme à ce qu’on attendait de la rhétorique.” 8 Cic. Inv. I.11.15: Deprecatio est cum et peccasse et consulto peccasse reus se confitetur et tamen ut ignoscatur postulat. Far more accurately, Conf. X oscillates between deprecatio and purgatio: the types of concessio that Cicero examines in the De Inventione, and that Augustine would have lectured on as a rhetor. 9 Cic. Inv. I.11.15: Deprecatio est cum et peccasse et consulto peccasse reus se confitetur et tamen ut ignoscatur postulat; quod genus perraro potest accidere. 10 Cic. Inv. II.34.104. 11 Cf. for instance, Aug. Conf. IV.3.4: bonum est enim confiteri tibi, domine, et dicere, “miserere mei: cura animam meam, quoniam peccavi tibi ” [≈ Psalms 41.4]. 12 Cf. Aug. Conf. IV.4.7: “. . . .at once the avenging god and the fount of mercies” (deus ultionum et fons misericordiarum simul). 13 Aug. Conf. X.43.68: . . . mediator ille dei et hominum, homo Christus Iesus, inter mortales peccatores et immortalem iustum apparuit, mortalis cum hominibus, iustus cum deo, ut . . . per iustitiam coniunctam deo evacuaret mortem iustificatorum impiorum, quam cum

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whatever pagan sources for Augustine’s new, confessive genre can be suggested—Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Seneca’s Oedipus, Virgil’s Aeneid, Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline (see 3.2), Cicero’s Academica (see 3.3), Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (see 3.4)—the peculiarity of Augustine’s numen, foremost in the figure of Christ, should not be lost sight of. It is originally the duplicity of Christ that permits deprecatio, a perilous rhetorical genus, to be worked up into a genre,14 albeit one that peaks—not, say, with the polished memoirs of Pope Pius II,15 which are modelled on Julius Caesar’s Commentaries—but rather with the self-absolved sinners, JeanJacques Rousseau and Jacques Casanova;16 or with Friedrich Nietzsche, in the

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illis voluit habere commune; X.43.69: merito mihi spes valida in illo est, quod sanabis omnes languores meos per eum qui sedet ad dexteram tuam et te interpellat pro nobis; alioquin desperarem. Cf. also II.7.15: diligam te, domine, et gratias agam et confitear nomini tuo, quoniam tanta dimisisti mihi mala et nefaria opera mea. gratiae tuae deputo et misericordiae tuae quod peccata mea tanquam glaciem solvisti. Cf. Aug. Conf. I.1.1: invocat te, domine, fides mea, quam dedisti mihi, quam inspirasti mihi per humanitatem filii tui, per ministerium praedicatoris tui; I.11.17: . . . iam curaret festinabunda ut sacramentis salutaribus initiarer et abluerer, te, domine Iesu, confitens in remissionem peccatorum, nisi statim recreatus essem; I.15.24: . . . et in eis vanis peccata delectationum mearum dimisisti mihi; II.7.15: quid retribuam domino quod recolit haec memoria mea et anima mea non metuit inde? diligam te, domine, et gratias agam et confitear nomini tuo, quoniam tanta dimisisti mihi mala et nefaria opera mea; etc. A.k.a. “Aeneas the poet,” cf. Pius Comm. I.11.6: Aeneam poetam. This ‘Aeneas’ is Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, enthroned as Pius II in 1458. Before this, as he charmingly puts it in his Commentaries: “I do not know whether anyone else has ever had the singular good fortune . . . to serve as secretary to two popes, one emperor, and an antipope (duos Romanos pontifices, unum imperatorem et unum antipapam).” Much has been written on Augustine and Rousseau’s Confessions, but nothing—to my knowledge—on Augustine and Casanova’s Histoire de ma vie jusqu’à l’an 1797. Casanova writes in a preface to one of his other books that the only thing that barred him from titling his Histoire, rather, Confessions, was that “un extravagant [sc. Rousseau] had sullied the glory of the title” (cit. Casanova 1902, I:xv–xvi). And this is how Casanova (1902, I:1–2) prefaces his Histoire (or Confessions): I am not an atheist, but a monotheist, and a Christian. My Christianity, however, is fortified by philosophy. . . . Despair kills, but . . . fervent prayer restores confidence and the power of action. . . . I have all my life been victim of my senses. I enjoyed going astray, knowing that I was astray. You must not, reader, set me down as an empty boaster, but as one who is making a full and general confession. Do not expect me to put on the airs of a penitent, or affect to blush . . .

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last weeks before his collapse;17 or with Augustine’s 20th-century avant-garde glossator,18 Miklós Szentkuthy.19 What follows the astonishing deprecatio of Confessions I to X is itself a work in distinct phases,20 in the long-established—and originally pagan21— 17

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Nietzsche’s frenetic—but perhaps, at places, ironic—Ecce Homo, written in October and November of 1888, arguably shows signs of his imminent collapse in January 1889. This work falls, in some sense, within the line of ‘confession’ that Augustine inaugurates, though it no less notably resembles—in purely formal terms—Augustine’s Recensions. Cf. Szentkuthy’s (1996) raucous but penetrating marginalia on Aug. Civ. and Aug. Trin., translated into French as En lisant Augustin. In 1939, with Hitler and Stalin in the ascendant, Szentkuthy (1996, 19) writes this: Augustine’s adolescence coincides with Julian’s apostasy. This is the grand European skin-game, opposing paganism and Christianism. . . . The one is reality, and the other is unreal. These are the so-called ‘coarse generalizations.’ So be it. I find the ‘precisions’ to be coarser, more sterile. . . . Paganism speaks of ‘the real’—this is what leaves us dissatisfied; Christianism speaks of the ‘trans-real’—and leaves us no less dissatisfied.  In point of fact: Augustine was seven when Julianus Augustus effected his brief ‘pagan’ reversal from Constantinople. And for Julian’s epithet (‘the apostate’), cf. Aug. C.Parm. I.12.19: apostata Iulianus, cui pax et unitas christiana nimium displiceret. For a spit-and-blood-flecked appropriation of Augustine’s conversion (“Augustine got up from the hetæras’ table the way a blackbird will suddenly fly out of a bush . . . I shall also get up that way one day”): Szentkuthy 2013, 179–82. And for the significance of Augustine’s practice of ‘confession’ in Szentkuthy’s œuvre: Szentkuthy 1999, 22–25, 522. But this is in no way intended to diminish the unity of the work. O’Donnell (1992, I:xli) cannot be gainsaid when he writes that “rhetorical and stylistic unity . . . [run] through the book like an electric current”; yet Augustine himself (Retr. II.6.1), as O’Donnell of course knows, treats the Conf. as formally bipartite. This formal division, then, does not imply any rhetorical or—necessarily—any structural disjunction. That is to say, the division I observe here does not render Conf. X–XIII or XI–XIII a mere ‘addendum,’ regardless of the dating that is adopted. For Augustine on the Greek de-mythologizer Euhemerus (via Ennius via Cicero) and the ingenuities of pagan commentary—also touching on χρόνος/tempus—vid. Aug. Cons. I.23.31–36, here 32–33: “Cicero the Academic . . . boldly recalled the sepulchres of the gods and committed the statement to writing” (Cicero Academicus . . . qui sepulchra deorum commemorare ausus est litterisque mandare). Pépin (1976, 371–72) is of course correct: “Le réponse d’Augustin [to Rome’s ‘civil’ and ‘fabulous’ theologies], comme celle de Tertullien, est franchement evhémériste: ‘L’explication la plus vraisemblable de tout cela (credibilior redditur ratio), c’est que les dieux ont été des hommes’ [Aug. Civ. VII.18].” It should also be recalled, here, that late-antique pagans produced rigorous, antiChristian commentaries on the Christians’ scriptures (Berchman 2005; Courcelle 1959), while late-antique Christians also produced ‘exegeses’ of pagan texts, such as Virg. Ecl. IV (Courcelle 1957).

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commentary genre: a speculative interpretation of Genesis 1.1–3,22 in books XI and XII; and an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1.1–2.2,23 in book XIII.24 In his Recensions, therefore, Augustine proposes this bipartite division of the work as a whole: Confessions I to X treat his person (de me scripti sunt), while Confessions XI to XIII treat holy writ (de scripturis sanctis).25 3.2 Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline: A Source for the Confessions? The simplicity of this division is admirable, and could suggest a secular,26 Latin source for the Confessions which has not—that I have seen27—been registered in the literature: Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline. Augustine’s praise for Sallust, from first to last, is lavish,28 and Harald Hagendahl computes that “among [the] Latin prosaists” cited by Augustine, “Sallust comes next to Cicero and Varro, or even before them, if the different size of the works is taken into consideration.”29 Hagendahl identifies a free quotation of Sallust’s War with Jugurtha in Confessions IV,30 while The 22 23 24

Vid. Pépin 1953; Solignac 1973, 153–55, 158–60; Van Riel 2007. Augustine refers back to this allegorical commentary, at Aug. Gen.litt. II.9.22. For the pagan, and later Christian, backcloth to Augustine’s allegorical commentary in Conf. XIII, vid. Pépin 1976, here 495–96: “Allégoristes chrétiens et allégoristes païens s’affrontent: Origène contre Celse, Porphyre contre Origène, Augustin contre Varron.” 25 Aug. Retr. II.6.1. 26 Cf. Aug. Civ. VI.2: “All the erudition that we call ‘secular,’ they [sc. the pagans] . . . call ‘free’ ” (omni eruditione, quam nos ‘saecularem,’ illi . . . ‘liberalem’ vocant). 27 Cf. for instance, Kotzé’s (2004, 66–85) survey of the literature on the Confessions’ antecedents, in which there is no mention of Sallust. 28 Hagendahl 1967, 636: “When Sallust is named for the first time in a Cassiciacum dialogue [at Aug. Beat. 31], he is called lectissimus pensator verborum. Admiration for his style is expressed, thirty years afterwards, in still stronger terms: he is Romanae linguae disertissimus [at Aug. Epist. 167.6, cf. Civ. VII.3], who leaves all others behind in eloquence.” Cf. also Marrou 1983, 19, 19 n. 5. 29 Hagendahl 1967, 631. 30 Hagendahl 1967, 647: “Sallust likes to make a show of general reflections on human life and morals, and Augustine does not disdain to make them his own. The much quoted maxim ‘omnia orta occidunt et aucta senescunt’ appears in letters dating from 412 and 415 and is hinted at in [Augustine’s] conf. and civ.” Cf. Sall. Jug. 2.3: omnia orta occidunt et aucta senescunt; Aug. Conf. IV.10.15 (in Hagendahl, test. 574a): quae oriuntur et occidunt et oriendo quasi esse incipiunt, et ­crescunt ut perficiantur, et perfecta senescunt et intereunt; Epist. 143.6 (in Hagendahl, test. 574b): sicut leges universitatis sinunt, per quas constitutum est, ut corpora orta occidant et aucta senescant.

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Conspiracy of Catiline is quoted more than once, verbatim, in Confessions II.31 Sallust’s Catiline serves,32 in effect, as a structuring element of Confes­sions II.33 And it is noteworthy that the second of these Catiline quotes in Confessions II is lifted from “the introductory chapters” of Sallust’s work.34 For according to Hagendahl, Augustine’s corpus contains twenty-eight identifiable extracts from those same pages, with the result that “no less than a quarter” of the Catiline’s introduction is transcribed in Augustine.35 The significance of that, for us, is this: The Conspiracy of Catiline is a bipartite work in which Sallust’s history (res gestae),36 i.e. the bulk of the Catiline, is preceded by a succinct narratio of Sallust’s passage from youth37 and the temptations of youth38 to a relatively dispassionate manhood.39 It is only because 31

Compare the following: (i) Sall. Catil. 16.3: ne per otium torpescerent manus aut animus, gratuito potius malus atque crudelis erat; Aug. Conf. II.5.11: nam et de quo dictum est, vaecordi et nimis crudeli homine, quod gratuito potius malus atque crudelis erat, praedicta est tamen causa: “ne per otium,” inquit, “torpesceret manus aut animus.” (ii) Sall. Catil. 5.7: Agitabatur magis magisque in dies animus ferox inopia rei familiaris et conscientia scelerum . . .; Aug. Conf. II.5.11: quaere id quoque, “cur ita?” ut scilicet illa exercitatione scelerum capta urbe honores, imperia, divitias adsequeretur et careret metu legum et difficultate rerum propter inopiam rei familiaris et conscientiam scelerum. nec ipse igitur Catilina amavit facinora sua, sed utique aliud cuius causa illa faciebat. 32 Courcelle (1971) demonstrates that Cicero’s Catiline is also present in Conf. II. 33 O’Donnell (1992, II:133–34) sees the import of this Sallustian reference in accurate, but unduly limited terms: “Why Catiline? And why the explicit quotation [of Sallust] repeatedly in [the] space of a few lines? He offered an entirely ‘pagan’ exemplum of evil, wicked among the wicked.” The same could be said of Hagendahl (1967, 646): “Catiline is represented as the very prototype of a scoundrel. Every kind of crime: homicide, parricide, sacrilege, can be justified, Augustine remarks [at] c. acad. III. 16, 36, by alleging the principle of the Academics that we have to follow what seems probable. ‘If anyone thinks that such arguments cannot be made to seem probably conclusive, let him read the speech of Catiline . . .’ ” 34 Hagendahl 1967, 637: “There are but few quotations [in Augustine’s corpus] from the narrative parts which represent the bulk of Sallust’s three works. Augustine’s interest was centred in the reflective thoughts to be found in the introductory chapters [to Sallust’s histories].” 35 Hagendahl 1967, 638: “The 28 quotations [in Augustine’s corpus from] the introduction to [Sallust’s] Catil. reproduce, word for word, no less than a quarter of the text.” 36 Sall. Catil. 3.2: . . . tamen in primis arduum videtur res gestas scribere; 4.2: res gestas populi Romani; etc. 37 Sall. Catil. 3.3: . . . ego adulescentulus. 38 Sall. Catil. 3.4: . . . inter tanta vitia imbecilla aetas ambitione corrupta tenebatur. 39 Sall. Catil. 4.1: . . . ubi animus ex multis miseriis atque periculis requievit.

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Sallust has ‘returned’ to his original calling, after a period of vain and vicious ambition,40 that he can be trusted—or indeed, can trust himself—to write a disinterested history.41 Now, because Augustine turns so frequently to the first pages of The Conspiracy of Catiline; because Augustine also quotes from these pages in Confessions II;42 and because—to my eyes—the Catiline’s preliminary narratio functions similarly to Augustine’s deprecatio in Confessions I to X: the possibility of direct influence should not be excluded. Regardless of influence, however, what we see in Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline is also what we see in Augustine’s Confessions, though the proportions are incomparable: the work of the man—for Sallust, a Roman history; for Augustine, a Platonic-Christian commentary (see 6.1)—is preceded by a narratio of temptation, delay and a ‘return’ from the toils of secular ambition.43 It is this narratio that pre-validates Sallust’s history, and Augustine’s commentary; yet this narratio can itself only be validated by Sallust’s history, by Augustine’s commentary. Or turned differently: for the Confessions as for the Catiline, the effect of the bipartite whole is to validate to the truth of its parts, and not the reverse. 3.3

Confessio Ignorantiae: Cicero and Augustine’s Confessions

In any event, Augustine’s Confessions are not conceived or forged ex nihilo.44 His text45 is charged by a hyperbolic tone he likely derives from Paul,46 and is made

40 Sall. Catil. 4.2: . . . a quo incepto studioque me ambitio mala detinuerat, eodem regressus statui. 41 Sall. Catil. 4.2: . . . a spe, metu, partibus rei publicae animus liber erat. 42 While Courcelle (1971) succinctly documents and reflects on the Catiline-Augustine parallels that structure Conf. II, he largely bypasses Sallust’s introduction to the Catil., and he at no point admits the question of a Sallust-Augustine parallel which may, in part, structure the Conf. 43 Cf. Sall. Catil. 3.5: . . . nihilo minus honoris cupido eadem qua ceteros fama atque invidia vexabat; Aug. Conf. VI.6.9: inhiabam honoribus, lucris, coniugio . . . patiebar in eis cupiditatibus amarissimas difficultates; etc. 44 Hrdlicka 1931, 8: “The Late vocabulary of the Confessions is ample proof that Augustine was thoroughly acquainted with all the most recent developments in the Latin language, in the secular sphere as well as in the religious.” 45 Cf. Burton 2007, 112–32, here 115: “The boundary between biblical citation and free composition [in Aug. Conf.] is often fluid.” 46 As Lyotard (2000, 82/1998, 107) observes: “From the exergue [sc. Conf. I.1.1] onward he discovers in Paul’s letter to the Romans the tone of anxiety.”

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dense by a use of antithesis47 that characterizes late-antique rhetoric48 and the Pauline epistles alike.49 What is most essential for us, however, is the fact that the Confessions are inflected, throughout, by the ­terminology50 and tone51 of Cicero’s Academic Platonism,52 and specifically, by the ­Socratic-Academic practice of confessio ignorantiae.53 For our purposes—and in Confessions X

47

Cf. Finaert 1939a, 101: “L’antithèse marque toute l’œuvre littéraire de saint Augustin. Sans remonter à Gorgias ni à la Bible, observons seulement que le jeune rhéteur la trouvait à toutes les pages de Cicéron et qu’il y voyait l’ornement obligé non seulement du grec et du latin, mais de toute litterature”; Mohrmann 1961a, 264: “En ce qui concerne la structure de la phrase [in the Confessions], il reprend le style antithétique et coupé de l’Asianisme, tout en l’enrichissant de certains éléments bibliques.” 48 Cf. Finaert 1939a, 101–12; Finaert 1939b, 35–36; Mohrmann 1961a, 257–61. 49 Aug. Civ. XI.18: ‘Antitheta’ enim quae appellantur in ornamentis elocutionis sunt decentissima, quae Latine ut appellentur ‘opposita,’ vel, quod expressius dicitur, ‘contraposita,’ non est apud nos huius vocabuli consuetudo, cum tamen eisdem ornamentis locutionis etiam sermo Latinus utatur, immo linguae omnium gentium. His antithetis et Paulus apostolus in secunda ad Corinthios epistula illum locum suaviter explicat, ubi dicit . . . “ut seductores et veraces; . . . quasi morientes, et ecce vivimus; . . . ut tristes, semper autem gaudentes . . .” [II Corinthians 6.7–10]. 50 Cf. Schieman 1938, 55: “As compared with his contemporaries, we may say that the influence of Cicero’s vocabulary on that of Saint Augustine was unusually great”; Hrdlicka 1931, 7: “With the exception of the Scriptures, the writings that seem to have influenced the vocabulary of the Confessions in the highest degree are those of Cicero, Vergil, and Apuleius.” 51 Finaert 1939a, 2: “Cicéron est son maître incontesté.” 52 For a deeper horizon within which Academic scepticism and a quasi-dogmatic Platonism interpenetrated: Tarrant 1985. And for Augustine’s self-avowed debt to the ‘Academics’ (Academicos), see his first surviving letter, Aug. Epist. 1, composed in 386/7 (per Divjak 2001, 1028)—i.e. precisely when Augustine is typically depicted as being abjectly under the influence “of Plato and of Plotinus” (illae Platonem, illae Plotinum), whose names he invokes, alongside Christ’s (illae . . . Christum), at Epist. 6.1 (387/8). 53 In Aug. Civ. VIII (cf. Cic. Tusc. V.3.7–9), Pythagoras is the first to identify himself as a ‘philosopher,’ i.e. a devotee or lover of wisdom (studiosum vel amatorem sapientiae, Civ. VIII.2), whereas it is Socrates who, with the “shrewdest urbanity” (acutissima urbanitate), adopts a method of “confessing his ignorance or concealing his knowledge” (vel confessa ignorantia sua vel dissimulata scientia, VIII.3). Augustine surely lifts this Socratic motif of ‘confessing ignorance’ from Cicero, and likely from Cic. Acad. I.12.44, where Socrates’ habitual “confession of ignorance” (confessionem ignorationis) is remarked. As I merely sketch out here: this is a mode of confession that can be traced up the Conf., and thus Augustine’s ‘confession’ as a mode of discourse— as a practice—is decisively inspired by this Socratic-Academic mode of ‘confession.’

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to XII—this mode of philosophical confessio is far more important than Augustine’s adaptation of forensic deprecatio (see 3.1). While Augustine’s first confession in the work (proprie dictum) is a deprecatio at Confessions I.5.6,54 it is followed by a repetitive, anti-Platonic confession of ignorance at Confessions I.6.7: “I do not know . . . I do not know” (nescio . . . nescio).55 Much later, in the eternity-meditation of Confessions XI, Augustine will state that it is methodologically imperative for him to confess, “I do not know what I do not know” (nescio quod nescio, XI.12.14),56 even when contending with enemies of the faith (see 3.4). Apart from a brief discussion in F.-W. von Herrmann’s Augustine and the Phenomenological Question of Time,57 it is rarely if ever noted that confessio ignorantiae is a distinct mode of confession in the Confessions;58 and von Herrmann makes no attempt to determine its source. Thus, in the present section, I will rapidly survey Augustine’s use of confessio ignorantiae in his time-investigation and elsewhere in the Confessions, and establish Cicero as its source. This mode of confession is variously phrased in Confessions XI, but perhaps most categorically when Augustine says this, regarding the essence of time: “I seek (quaero), father, I do not dogmatize, I do not assert (non adfirmo).”59 This sentence generalizes what is most certainly a philosophical mode of confession in Augustine’s time-investigation, and it is certainly not a mode of con­fession that Augustine takes over from the Neoplatonists (that is to say, from whatever of their texts Augustine had managed to obtain ante 400). Rather, Augustine’s negatived term in this declaration, adfirmare,60 is a technical

54

As at Aug. Conf. I.5.6: angusta est domus animae meae quo venias ad eam: dilatetur abs te. ruinosa est: refice eam. habet quae offendant oculos tuos: fateor et scio. 55 Aug. Conf. I.6.7: quid enim est quod volo dicere, domine, nisi quia nescio unde venerim huc, in istam dico vitam mortalem an mortem vitalem? nescio. 56 Aug. Conf. XI.12.14: . . . libentius enim responderim, “nescio quod nescio.” Cf. Cic. Acad. I.4.16: . . . haec esset una omnis sapientia, non arbitrari se scire quod nesciat. 57 Von Herrmann 2008, 30–31. 58 Cf. Aug. Serm. 117.3.5: . . . pia confessio ignorantiae magis, quam temeraria professio scientiae. 59 Aug. Conf. XI.17.22: quaero, pater, non adfirmo. 60 Cf. Aug. C.Acad. II.5.11: Et omnia incerta esse non dicebant solum verum etiam copiosissimis rationibus adfirmabant; III.4.10: . . . illi sapientem nihil scire adfirmarunt; III.11.25: . . . id me scire non impudenter affirmo; III.14.32: Nec isti quemquam non debere assentiri nisi rebus, quae non possunt percipi, affirmant; Mag. V.16: . . . id est illam sententiam, quae affirmari et negari potest.

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term in Cicero that serves to link the Socratic practice of confessio with the Academic or New Academic61 vein of Platonism. For Cicero, Socrates’ method is distilled in this phrase: “to assert (adfirmet) nothing.”62 And for Cicero, the duplex effect of Socrates’ resolve to “profess” (profiteri)63 or “assert” (adfirmare)64 nothing, is: (i) a Socratic “confession of ignorance” (confessionem ignorationis),65 and (ii) a Socratic-Academic resolve “to seek or enquire (quaeritur) into all things.”66

61 Cic. Acad. I.12.46: Hanc Academiam ‘novam’ appellant, quae mihi vetus videtur, siquidem Platonem ex illa vetere numeramus, cuius in libris nihil adfirmatur . . . Cf. Aug. Civ. VIII.4: . . . etiam ipsius Platonis de rebus magnis sententiae non facile perspici possint. 62 Cic. Acad. I.4.16: . . . ut nihil adfirmet ipse, refellat alios, nihil se scire dicat nisi id ipsum . . .; cf. I.4.17: . . . illam autem Socraticam dubitanter de omnibus rebus et nulla adfirmatione adhibita consuetudinem disserendi reliquerunt; Tusc. I.52.99: . . . sed suum illud, nihil ut adfirmet, tenet ad extremum. Cf. Aug. Civ. VIII.4: Quid autem in his vel de his singulis partibus Plato senserit . . . disserendo explicare et longum esse arbitror et temere adfirmandum esse non arbitror. Cum enim magistri sui Socratis, quem facit in suis voluminibus disputantem, notissimum morem dissimulandae scientiae vel opinionis suae servare adfectat . . . 63 Augustine also opposes ‘profession’ and ‘confession,’ at Aug. Conf. IV.16.31: sed sic eram nec erubesco, deus meus, confiteri tibi in me misericordias tuas et invocare te, qui non erubui tunc profiteri hominibus blasphemias meas et latrare adversum te. 64 Cic. Acad. I.12.45: . . . nihil oportere neque profiteri neque adfirmare quemquam neque adsensione approbare; cf. II.5.14: maiorem autem partem mihi quidem omnes isti videntur nimis etiam quaedam adfirmare, plusque profiteri se scire quam sciant; Tusc. II.9.17: Certa dicent ii, qui et percipi ea posse dicunt et se sapientes esse profitentur. 65 Cf. Cic. Acad. I.12.44: . . . sed earum rerum obscuritate quae ad confessionem ignorationis aduxerant Socratem et iam ante Socratem Democritum, Anaxagoram, Empedoclem, omnes paene veteres . . .; Aug. Civ. VIII.3: Socrates ergo, primus universam philosophiam ad corrigendos componendosque mores flexisse memoratur, cum ante illum omnes magis physicis, id est naturalibus, rebus perscrutandis operam maximam impenderent. . . . Constat eum tamen imperitorum stultitiam scire se aliquid opinantium etiam in ipsis moralibus quaestionibus, quo totum animum intendisse videbatur, vel confessa ignorantia sua vel dissimulata scientia lepore mirabili disserendi et acutissima urbanitate agitasse atque versasse. 66 Cic. Acad. I.12.46: . . . Platonem ex illa vetere numeramus, cuius in libris nihil adfirmatur et . . . de omnibus quaeritur, nihil certi dicitur.

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Augustine echoes (ii) when he writes, at Confessions XI.17.22: “I seek (quaero), father, I do not assert (adfirmo).”67 The echoes of (i) practically beat time in Confessions 14–29: “I confess (confiteor), o my god, I do not know (nescio)”;68 “I confess my ignorance” (confitebor imperitiam meam);69 “I confess (confiteor) to you, o lord, I still do not know what time is (ignorare me adhuc quid sit tempus).”70 It is Socrates via Cicero,71 and not Porphyry or Plotinus,72 that Augustine keeps faith with when, in this way, he pursues his time-question in the mode of a query, and when he punctuates that query with confessions of ignorance and admissions of uncertainty.73 And it is not a Neoplatonist, but the Academic Platonist, Cicero,74 who berates an Epicurean—in a passage that Augustine knew “from the very beginning of his literary activity”75—in this way: 67

Herzog (2002, 239) is also correct to notice a formal co-relation of laudare-invenirequaerere in the first paragraphs of the Confessions (quaerentes enim inveniunt eum et invenientes laudabunt eum, I.1.1); while of course, a similar quaerere-constellation structures the last paragraph of the Confessions (a te petatur, in te quaeratur, ad te pulsetur: sic, sic accipietur, sic invenietur, sic aperietur, XIII.38.53). To urge, as I do here, that the Ciceronian echo is distinct, and even dominant—particularly in Augustine’s time-investigation—is not to deny a range of other, peculiarly Christian echoes in the bishop’s polysemic quaerere. Cf. for instance, Aug. Civ. XIX.4: neque bonum nostrum iam videmus, unde oportet ut credendo quaeramus. 68 Aug. Conf. XI.18.23: confiteor, deus meus, nescio. 69 Aug. Conf. XI.22.28: exarsit animus meus nosse istuc implicatissimum aenigma. . . . noli claudere desiderio meo ista et usitata et abdita . . . et cui fructuosius confitebor imperitiam meam nisi tibi? 70 Aug. Conf. XI.25.32: et confiteor tibi, domine, ignorare me adhuc quid sit tempus, et rursus confiteor tibi, domine, scire me in tempore ista dicere . . . 71 Cf. Courcelle 1974, 11–38. 72 Cf. Courcelle 1974, 83–95. 73 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.23.30: video igitur tempus quandam esse distentionem. sed video? an videre mihi videor?; XI.25.32: quomodo igitur hoc scio, quando quid sit tempus nescio? an forte nescio quemadmodum dicam quod scio? ei mihi, qui nescio saltem quid nesciam!; XI.26.33: inde mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem; sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi. 74 Augustine describes Cicero as an Academic philosopher at, for instance, Aug. Cons. I.23.33: Cicero Academicus incertior quam poetae . . .; Civ. IV.30: Cicero . . . iste Academicus, qui omnia esse contendit incerta. 75 Hagendahl 1967, 517.

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How delightful it would be, Velleius, if you would confess (confiteri) not knowing what you do not know (nescire quod nescires), rather than uttering this drivel . . .76 This is the Latin philosophical backcloth against which Augustine then praises a Manichaean bishop, Faustus of Milevis,77 in Confessions V, when— after cataloguing Faustus’ shabby secular attainments (he knew “some of Cicero’s speeches,” i.e. not the philosophical dialogues;78 “a pathetic selection of Seneca’s books, several poets . . .”; and so on)79—Augustine recalls that Faustus nevertheless knew that he did not know these things (noverat . . . se ista non nosse), and was not ashamed to confess it (confiteri). . . . He was not altogether ignorant of his own ignorance (non . . . imperitus erat imperitiae suae).80 Even in a bishop who serves “the devil,”81 then, Augustine admits that the Socratic-Academic practice of confessio ignorantiae is virtuous.82 76 Cic. Nat.deor. I.30.84: Quam bellum erat, Vellei, confiteri potius nescire quod nescires, quam ista effutientem nauseare atque ipsum tibi displicere!; cf. Tusc. III.28.69: Quid? ex ceteris philosophis nonne optimus et gravissimus quisque confitetur multa se ignorare et multa sibi etiam atque etiam esse discenda? 77 Lieu 1985, 119: “Faustus of Milevis (now Mila) in Numidia . . . epitomised the combative and critical spirit of the Manichaeans. A convert from paganism . . . his reputation extended well beyond North Africa”; 137: “The empire-wide network of Manichaean cells stood Augustine in good stead when he arrived in Rome . . . [and] his acquaintance with Faustus . . . made sure of a warm reception from the co-religionists in the capital city. . . . When the chair of rhetoric at Milan fell vacant, [Augustine’s] Manichaean friends secured an interview for him with Q. Aurelius Symmachus, the prefect of the city who duly recommended him for the post.” 78 I have seen this import of Augustine’s phrasing (aliquas tullianas orationes, V.6.11) noted in the literature, but have not managed to re-locate the reference. 79 Aug. Conf. V.6.11: legerat aliquas tullianas orationes et paucissimos Senecae libros et nonnulla poetarum et suae sectae si qua volumina latine atque composite conscripta errant . . . 80 Aug. Conf. V.7.12: noverat enim se ista non nosse nec eum puduit confiteri. . . . non usquequaque imperitus erat imperitiae suae, et noluit se temere disputando in ea coartare unde nec exitus ei ullus nec facilis esset reditus: etiam hinc mihi amplius placuit. 81 Aug. Conf. V.3.3: venerat Carthaginem quidam manichaeorum episcopus, Faustus nomine, magnus laqueus diaboli, et multi implicabantur in eo per inlecebram suaviloquentiae. 82 As neither Testard (1958, II:25) nor Hagendahl (1967, 37) registers, Augustine’s praise of Faustus in Conf. V is a near-duplicate of a Ciceronian ‘confession’ in Tusc. I: (i) Cic. Tusc. I.25.60: nescio, nec me pudet, ut istos, fateri nescire quod nesciam. (ii) Aug. Conf. V.7.12: noverat enim se ista non nosse nec eum puduit confiteri.

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And as a Catholic bishop, Augustine sets his own, present-temporal ‘confession’ in Confessions X under the rubric of this modulation on Socrates’ practice: “I will confess therefore what I know of myself (quid de me sciam), and I will confess what I do not know of myself (quid de me nesciam).”83 In book XI it is this same, modulated form of confessio ignorantiae—namely, scio/nescio— that Augustine’s preliminary time-confession takes: “What . . . is time? If no one asks the question, I know (scio): if I wish to state what it is when asked, I do not know (nescio).”84 I will interpret this inaugural confession of Augustine’s time-investigation in Part III, but here, a brief clarification is in order. It is typically the first sentences of Plotinus, Enneads III.7,85 that are cited in the literature as an antecedent to—if not the source for—Augustine’s duplex time-confession (scio/nescio) in Confessions XI.14.17. We could add the similar first sentences of Aristotle, Physics IV,86 apropos of space. Yet there is a formal element that Aristotle and Plotinus have in common, and that Augustine breaks with: Physics IV and Enneads III.7 open with generalized observations; whereas Confessions XI.14, and Augustine’s time-investigation, opens with a confessive observation—‘I know . . . I do not know’—that signals a SocraticAcademic influence. This is a confessio ignorantiae. And setting Aristotle aside: Plotinus’ tractate on eternity and time commences with a generalized knowing/unknowing, apropos of time, and concludes with a Plotinian decision regarding the essence of time; Augustine’s time-investigation commences with a confessed knowing/unknowing, apropos of time, and concludes with no decision regarding the essence of time. To the end of Confessions XI—as Augustine’s late-antique excerpter, Eugippius, had already discerned87—the bishop of Hippo Regius enquires, he does not dogmatize (XI.17.22). 83 Aug. Conf. X.5.7: confitear ergo quid de me sciam, confitear et quid de me nesciam. 84 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. 85 Vid. Plot. Enn. III.7.1. 86 Vid. Arist. Phys. IV.1 (208a). 87 In the late 5th or early 6th century, Eugippius compresses Conf. XI.23.29–31.41 under this head, at Eug. Exc. VIII: “De Tempore, quod cum homo metiri videatur non tamen potest comprehendere quid sit tempus.” Dolbeau (2005, 201) reminds us that Eugippius’ Excerpta “constituent le plus volumineux—au moins jusqu’au xive siècle—des florilèges consacrés à l’évêque d’Hippone,” and that “ces Excerpta reposent sur une lecture directe et un dépouillement intelligent des textes originaux.” Alexanderson (2003, 100) underscores the Eugippius’ importance for improving the text of the Confessions: “Théoriquement, parmi les manuscrits des Confessions et des Extraits d’Eugippius dont on connaît les leçons, aucun ne doit être exclu. Dans la pratique, les manuscrits des éditions modernes contiennent probablement tout ce dont

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And finally, this slight emendation of the Quellenforschung bears heavily on the question of genre, since in Confessions XII, Augustine writes this— definitively, and categorically: These discourses would not be my confessions if I did not confess to you, “I do not know.” Non sunt hi sermones confessionum mearum si tibi non confiteor, “nescio.” (XII.30.41) In short: without Cicero’s Socrates, there could be no Confessions.88 3.4

Confessio Scientiae: Epicurus and Lucretius in Augustine’s Confessions

The foregoing is only a first gesture in terms of tracking the significance and range of confessio ignorantiae in Cicero and Augustine, but it establishes the connection and sets Confessions X to XII in a new—and of course, “so old”89— light. My intent in the present section is less to establish than to suggest that while the Confessions, as has long been recognized, contains structuring reminiscences of Virgil’s odyssean epic, the Aeneid;90 it likely also contains structuring reminiscences of Lucretius’ philosophical epic, the De Rerum Natura—and more generally, of Epicurean physics via Cicero. Before proceeding to Cicero’s ‘Epicurus’ and to Lucretius, however, it is advisable to offer some further remarks on Augustine’s concept of ‘confession.’

on a besoin pour la tradition directe. Le grand défaut est qu’on connaît mal la tradition d’Eugippius. Une meilleure connaissance de cette tradition est nécessaire pour une nouvelle édition des Confessions.” 88 Mugerauer (2007, I:295–328) completely misses this Socratic survival in Augustine. He is by no means alone in this, of course, but it is peculiarly damaging to his argument regarding “das Vergessen des sokratischen Nichtwissens” from Plotinus to the Protestant scholastics. 89 Aug. Conf. X.27.38: tam antiqua et tam nova. 90 Cf. Bennett 1988; Burton 2007, 48–62. Bennett (1988, 48 n. 3) cites Wolfgang Hübner, in 1981, referring to Conf. I–IX as the “odysseische Hälfte” of the work and to Conf. X as something like its “iliadische Hälfte.” As Bennett says, the second half of this construction is ‘hopeful.’

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In the 1950s, Christine Mohrmann identified three modes of confession in Augustine’s work: confession of praise (confessio laudis),91 confession of faith (confessio fidei), and confession of sin (confessio peccatis).92 She is followed in this by James O’Donnell,93 though more recently—and ill-advisedly—Volker Drecoll has sheared confessio fidei off of Mohrmann’s list.94 Whereas Drecoll wishes to reduce Augustine’s concept of ‘confession’ to confessio peccatis and confessio laudis, I have identified confessio ignorantiae as a distinct mode of confession that can now be appended to Mohrmann’s list, thereby doubling Drecoll’s. Of these four modes of confessio, it is only confessio ignorantiae that is essentially philosophical—which is to say, Hellenistic. Pagan antecedents for the other modes of confessio could be catalogued ad infinitum,95 though in his monumental Confessions commentary, O’Donnell—at least—has preferred to capture the scriptural resonances in Augustine’s confessions of praise, faith and sin. This is methodologically sound, since it is undoubtedly—and most visibly—Augustine’s post-ordination practice of scriptural exegesis that comes to distinguish his confessive prose at Hippo Regius from his dialectical prose at Cassiciacum, Milan, Rome and Thagaste.96 The eloquence of his god’s book and the signs of that new firmament97 suffuse Augustine’s Confessions,98 and

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Cf. Arts 1927, 9–10: “The dative is often found in the Confessions after confiteri in the sense of ‘give praise to God.’ This construction occurs frequently in the Scriptures and in Ecclesiastical writers in general.” Mohrmann 1961b, 280: “ . . . il triplice significato che confessio prende nel latino dei Cristiani, confessio laudis e peccati e fidei . . .” O’Donnell 1992, II:4: “Confiteri is a verb of speaking . . . God is ordinarily the addressee of this speech, but not exclusively . . . the effect may be that of praise (confessio laudis), self-blame (confessio peccatorum), or (least common in [Augustine] and the conf.) determined avowal (confessio fidei).” Drecoll 1999, 256: “Der Begriff confiteri hat demnach eine doppelte Funktion, die sich einerseits auf die eigene Schlechtigkeit [confessio peccatorum], andererseits auf Gottes Frömmigkeit herstellendes Handeln bezieht [confessio laudis].” Cf. for instance, Lucr. Rer.nat. II.1116–17: . . . donique ad extremum crescendi perfica finem | omnia perduxit rerum natura creatrix; Aug. Conf. I.10.16: domine deus, ordinator et creator rerum omnium naturalium. Vid. Finaert 1939a, esp. 39–56. Cf. Aug. Conf. XIII.18.23: haec nobiscum disputas sapientissime, deus noster, in libro tuo, firmamento tuo, ut discernamus omnia contemplatione mirabili, quamvis adhuc in signis et in temporibus et in diebus et in annis. Hrdlicka 1931, 7: “The Confessions are strongly permeated with Scriptural terminology. . . . It is remarkable that a man to whom the Scriptures had once seemed ‘unworthy to be compared to the stateliness of Tully’ (Conf. 3, 5, 9) should a few years later become so

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without the book of Psalms, in particular—it should be said—there would be no Confessions.99 Augustine’s scriptures, however, are not a decisive source for his confessio ignorantiae. This is, again, a philosophical mode of confession. But, Augustine is no sceptic, and I have already registered the fact that in Confessions X and XI he modulates the strict Socratic-Ciceronian mode of confessio ignorantiae, with the result that Augustine’s confessio ignorantiae not infrequently takes the duplex form, scio/nescio: ‘I know’/‘I do not know.’ Coupled with confessio ignorantiae, then, is a related but distinct mode of confession—or at least, of confessive rhetoric: confessio scientiae. And that this mode of confessive rhetoric—like confessio ignorantiae, unlike confessio fidei—is philosophical, can be inferred from the passage in Augustine’s eternity-meditation which I cited in the preceding section, where Augustine says that he prefers to confess, “I do not know what I do not know” (nescio quod nescio, XI.12.14). In this passage, Augustine is not primarily—as per Annemaré Kotzé— responding to a “Manichaean (and neo-Platonic) polemical question,”100 namely: “What did god make before he made heaven and earth?”101 This question is a ‘Manichaean polemical question,’ but only in a parasitic sense,102 and Augustine is cognizant of the fact that it is originally—or at least, most thoroughly imbued with their language as to recognize it as the most apt vehicle for the expression of his own ideas.” 99 Mohrmann 1961a, 261: “Dans ce livre des Confessions . . . saint Augustin est en tout premier lieu inspiré par les psaumes. Non seulement sa langue et son style sont d’une saveur psalmique, mais les citations des psaumes s’échelonnent à travers l’œuvre, depuis le début jusqu’à la fin, en déterminant et en marquant le cours de la pensée.” 100 Cf. Kotzé 2004, 225: “Augustine, it is important to note . . . introduces the first section of his . . . contemplation on time [sic] by reference to the Manichaean (and neo-Platonic) polemical question quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram? Moreover, the recapitulating closing section of book 11 (11.29.39–11.31.41) unmistakeably moves the focus back to the Manichaean reader . . .” 101 Aug. Conf. XI.12.14: quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram? Cf. an Epicurean’s wry remark on this post-Timaeus use of facere, at Cic. Nat.deor. I.8.19–20: “Plato [in the Timaeus] . . . represented the world as not merely having had an origin (non modo natum mundum), but as even being nearly hand-made (sed etiam manu paene factum).” 102 Meijering (1979, 40, 51), citing Aug. Gen.c.Man. I.2.3 (. . . dicunt: Si in principio aliquo temporis fecit deus coelum et terram, quid agebat antequam faceret coelum et terram?), registers the derivatively Manichaean provenance of this question, which he correctly refers back to Epicurus, and to Cic. Nat.deor. I.9.21.

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f­orcefully—a Ciceronian and Lucretian question103 with roots in Epicurean physical philosophy.104 Thus—a fact that has yet to be seriously reckoned with in the literature—Augustine’s repetition of this question in Confessions XI.10 and XI.12105 signals a presence of Epicurean physical doctrine at the heart of Confessions XI, and at the height of Augustine’s eternity-meditation. It is not Lucretius that Augustine seems to lift his Epicurean-style question from, however, since there is a dense, structuring, and conceptually decisive concentration of Ciceronian reminiscences in Augustine’s eternity-meditation, which merely culminate in that question.106

103 Cic. Nat.deor. I.8.20–9.22; Lucr. Rer.nat. V.156–94. And cf. Lucretius’ derisive anticipation of the phrase, creatio ex nihilo, at Lucr. Rer. nat. I.669: . . . e nilo fient quaecumque creantur . . . 104 Cf. Meijering 1979, 40, 51; Peters 1984, 62–67. Given Peters’ superb article on the philosophical—and specifically, Epicurean—origins of Augustine’s question in Conf. XI.10.12 and XI.12.14, it is perplexing that there is no mention of Conf. XI—or for that matter, of Peters’ research—in Michael Erler’s (2002) Augustinus-Lexikon article on “Epicurei, Epicurus.” 105 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.10.12: quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram?; XI.12.14: quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram? 106 Resemblances include, but are not limited to, the following: (i) Cic. Nat.deor. I.8.19: Quibus enim oculis animi intueri potuit vester Plato fabricam illam tanti operis . . .; Aug. Conf. XI.5.7: quomodo autem fecisti caelum et terram? . . . non enim sicut homo artifex . . . quam cernit in semet ipsa interno oculo . . . (ii) Cic. Nat.deor. I.8.19–20: quae molitio, quae ferramenta, qui vectes, quae machinae, qui ministri tanti muneris fuerunt? . . . requiro quae paulo ante, ministros machinas omnem totius operis dissignationem atque apparatum; Aug. Conf. XI.5.7: quomodo autem fecisti caelum et terram? et quae machina tam grandis operationis tuae? (iii) Cic. Nat.deor. I.8.19: quem ad modum autem oboedire et parere voluntati architecti aër ignis aqua terra potuerunt?; Aug. Conf. XI.5.7: quomodo fecisti, deus, caelum et terram? non utique in caelo neque in terra fecisti caelum et terram neque in aere aut in aquis, quoniam et haec pertinent ad caelum et terram. (iv) Cic. Nat.deor. I.8.19: quem ad modum autem oboedire et parere voluntati architecti aër ignis aqua terra potuerunt?; Aug. Conf. XI.6.8: creaturae motus expressit eam, serviens aeternae voluntati tuae ipse temporalis . . . (v) Cic. Nat.deor. I.8.20: . . . sed etiam manu paene factum; Aug. Conf. XI.5.7: nec manu tenebas aliquid unde faceres caelum et terram. (vi) Cic. Nat.deor. I.9.21–22: . . . cur mundi aedificatores repente exstiterint, innumerabilia saecla dormierint . . . Laboremne fugiebat?; Aug. Conf. XI.10.12: “quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram? si enim vacabat,” inquiunt,

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Cicero’s ‘Epicurus’ in Augustine’s Confessions It can judiciously be said that Augustine’s eternity-meditation in Confessions XI is, in toto, a tacit retort to Cicero’s Epicurean, Velleius, in book I of the De Natura Deorum. This is missed by Maurice Testard and Harald Hagendahl,107 and later, by E.P. Meijering.108 But consider, for instance, these l­exical-philosophical counterpoints in De Natura Deorum I and Confessions XI: Velleius—“What method of engineering was used [by Plato’s demiurge]? What instruments, what levers, what machines (quae machinae) were used? What agents carried out so vast an undertaking (tanti muneris)? . . . I repeat my previous questions, what were its agents and machines, how was the whole universal operation (machinas omnem totius operis) conceived and effected?” Augustine—“But how did you make heaven and earth [o god]? And what was the machine of your so-vast operation (quae machina tam grandis operationis tuae)?”109 Velleius—“Why did these deities suddenly awake into activity as worldarchitects (mundi aedificatores) after countless ages ­(innumerabilia “et non operabatur aliquid, cur non sic semper et deinceps, quemadmodum retro semper cessavit ab opere?” (vii) Cic. Nat.deor. I.9.21–22: . . . cur mundi aedificatores repente exstiterint, innumerabilia saecla dormierint . . .? . . . isto igitur tam inmenso spatio quaero, Balbe, cur Pronea vestra cessaverit; Aug. Conf. XI.13.15: . . . caeli et terrae artificem, ab opere tanto, antequam id faceres, per innumerabilia saecula cessasse miratur, evigilet atque attendat, quia falsa miratur. nam unde poterant innumerabilia saecula praeterire quae ipse non feceras, cum sis omnium saeculorum auctor et conditor? . . . cum ergo sis operator omnium temporum, si fuit aliquod tempus antequam faceres caelum et terram, cur dicitur quod ab opere cessabas? (viii) Cic. Nat.deor. I.9.21: . . . ne in cogitationem quidem cadit ut fuerit tempus aliquod nullum cum tempus esset; Aug. Conf. XI.13.15–16: . . . non enim erat tunc, ubi non erat tempus. . . . omnia tempora tu fecisti et ante omnia tempora tu es, nec aliquo tempore non erat tempus. (ix) Cic. Nat.deor. I.9.21: . . . ne in cogitationem quidem cadit ut fuerit tempus aliquod nullum cum tempus esset; Aug. Conf. XI.30.40: . . . non dicitur numquam ubi non est tempus. 107 Cf. Testard 1958, II:134; Hagendahl 1967, 752. 108 Cf. Meijering 1979, 40, 51, 54. 109 Cic. Nat.deor. I.8.19–20: quae molitio, quae ferramenta, qui vectes, quae machinae, qui ministri tanti muneris fuerunt? . . . requiro quae paulo ante, ministros machinas omnem totius operis dissignationem atque apparatum; Aug. Conf. XI.5.7: quomodo autem fecisti caelum et terram? et quae machina tam grandis operationis tuae?

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saecla) of sleep? . . . What I ask you [Stoics], therefore, is why did your Providence remain idle (cessaverit) through such a vast space of time?” Augustine—“But if anyone’s weightless sense roves over the images of past times, and he marvels that you, god almighty . . . architect of heaven and earth (caeli et terrae artificem), remained idle for countless ages (per innumerabilia saecula cessasse) and refrained from so vast a work, let him awake110 and consider that he marvels falsely. For how could countless ages (innumerabilia saecula) pass which you did not make, since you are the inaugurator and creator of all the ages? . . . When, therefore, you are he who produces all times, if there were any time before you made heaven and earth, why is it said that you remained idle (ab opere cessabas)?”111 Velleius—“It is inconceivable that there was ever a time when time did not exist ( fuerit tempus aliquod nullum cum tempus esset).” Augustine—“But there was no ‘then,’ when there was no time (non enim erat tunc, ubi non erat tempus). . . . And you [o god] are before all times, nor in any time was there no time (nec aliquo tempore non erat tempus). . . . Where there was no time, they cannot say ‘never’ (nec aliquo tempore non erat tempus).”112 The ramifications of this interface with Cicero’s Epicurean, in Confessions XI, cannot detain us, since it only affects Augustine’s eternity-meditation—not his investigation of time; but that there is such an interface seems to be incontrovertible. What is relevant for us, here, is rather the formality or analyticity of 110 This is of course directed at Velleius, who asks: ‘Why were the divine world-architects sleeping?’ Augustine says to him: ‘And why are you sleeping? It is you who must awake, and see . . .’ 111 Cic. Nat.deor. I.9.21–22: . . . cur mundi aedificatores repente exstiterint, innumerabilia saecla dormierint . . .? . . . isto igitur tam inmenso spatio quaero, Balbe, cur Pronea vestra cessaverit; Aug. Conf. XI.13.15: at si cuiusquam volatilis sensus vagatur per imagines retro temporum et te, deum omnipotentem . . . caeli et terrae artificem, ab opere tanto, antequam id faceres, per innumerabilia saecula cessasse miratur, evigilet atque attendat, quia falsa miratur. nam unde poterant innumerabilia saecula praeterire quae ipse non feceras, cum sis omnium saeculorum auctor et conditor? . . . cum ergo sis operator omnium temporum, si fuit aliquod tempus antequam faceres caelum et terram, cur dicitur quod ab opere cessabas? 112 Cic. Nat.deor. I.9.21: . . . ne in cogitationem quidem cadit ut fuerit tempus aliquod nullum cum tempus esset; Aug. Conf. XI.13.15–16: . . . non enim erat tunc, ubi non erat tempus. . . . omnia tempora tu fecisti et ante omnia tempora tu es, nec aliquo tempore non erat tempus; XI.30.40: . . . non dicitur numquam ubi non est tempus.

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Velleius’ final statement in this brief table: ‘It is inconceivable that there was ever a time when time did not exist’; and Augustine’s acceptance of it: ‘. . . nor in any time was there no time.’ It is this that returns us to confessio scientiae, and carries us forward to Lucretius. For before Augustine avers the analytic statement, “. . . in no time was there no time” (XI.13.16), he writes this: It would be useful to know whatever I . . . desire to know in the way I know that no creature was made before any creature was made.113 et utinam sic sciam quidquid . . . scire cupio, quemadmodum scio quod nulla fiebat creatura antequam fieret ulla creatura. (XI.12.14) Now, Augustine writes this immediately after he declines to “evade the force” (eludens . . . violentiam)114 of the Epicureans’ question—i.e. ‘What did god make before he made heaven and earth?’—by stooping to a brutal, braindead clerical joke then115 in currency: “Preparing hell-fire for those who gaze too high.”116 Augustine prefers to counter the Epicureans’ question with a duplex manoeuvre, rather than such abortive117 humour: (i) Augustine frankly confesses, in the Academic Platonist vein of confessio ignorantiae: “I do not know” (nescio, XI.12.14). (ii) Augustine then avers—with Cicero’s Epicurean, Velleius—in some vein of confessio scientiae: “I know (scio) that no creature was made before any creature was made” (XI.12.14). The second half of Augustine’s rejoinder is made, as I say, with Velleius— albeit in a qualified sense. It is Velleius, in De Natura Deorum I, who insists that ‘it is inconceivable that there was ever a time when time did not exist’; and Augustine concurs with this in Confessions XI, as in book XII of his City of God against the Pagans.118 Still, he ‘evades the force’ of Velleius’ proposition by 113 Cf. Aug. Conf. VI.4.6: “For I wanted to become no less certain of those things I did not see as I was that seven and three make ten.” 114 Cf. Hrdlicka 1931, 76: “eludere, to evade . . . to elude or parry an enemy’s blow.” 115 But not only then in currency: Peters (1984) shows that Luther and Calvin later resort to this bloody-minded quip. 116 Aug. Conf. XI.12.14: respondeo non illud quod quidam respondisse perhibetur, ioculariter eludens quaestionis violentiam: “alta,” inquit, “scrutantibus gehennas parabat.” . . . haec non respondeo. 117 Aug. Conf. XI.12.14: aliud est videre, aliud ridere. 118 Cf. Cic. Nat.deor. I.9.21: . . . ne in cogitationem quidem cadit ut fuerit tempus aliquod nullum cum tempus esset; Aug. Civ. XII.15: . . . erat ergo tempus, quandum nullum erat tem-

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declaring time a creature—and note well: this is done in defence of Augustine’s notion of eternity, not time—as a result of which, by saying ‘no creature was made before any creature was made’ (XI.12.14), Augustine is also saying ‘there was never a time when time did not exist’ (≈ XI.13.16).119 This type of formalistic, analytic or quasi-analytic asseveration may not comprise a mode of confession as such, since unlike with confessio ignorantiae, Augustine seems to prefer locutions120 such as “I boldly say” (audenter dico, XI.12.14)121 and “I unreservedly say” ( fidenter . . . dico scire me, XI.14.17)122 when he introduces it. Nevertheless, this is a mode of confessive rhetoric in Augustine, and it is one that can be profitably referred back to Lucretius. Lucretius’ Confessions in Augustine’s Confessions It should be noted—as to my awareness, it has not—that the language of ‘confession’ ( fateri, confiteri) appears more frequently in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura I and II than in Augustine’s Confessions I and II. The opening books of the Confessions include three appearances of fateri and nine of confiteri, totalling twelve references to ‘confession’;123 whereas the opening (and still lacunar) books of the De Rerum Natura include, on my reckoning, eleven ­appearances of fateri and five of confiteri, totalling sixteen references to ‘confession.’124 pus. Quis hoc stultissimus dixerit? . . . Erat tempus, quando nullum erat tempus, quis vel insipientissimus dixerit? Cf. also Sext. Ad.Phys. II.189: “It is absurd (ἄτοπον) to say . . . that there was once a time when time did not exist.” 119 Aug. Conf. XI.13.16: . . . nec aliquo tempore non erat tempus. This is made perfectly clear at Aug. Gen.litt. V.5.12: ante creaturam frustra tempora requiruntur, quasi possint inveniri ante tempora. 120 Arts 1927, 105: “Like all late Latin writers, Augustine very frequently uses direct statements after dico.” 121 Aug. Conf. XI.12.14: audenter dico, “antequam faceret deus caelum et terram, non faciebat aliquid.” 122 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: fidenter tamen dico scire me quod, si nihil praeteriret, non esset praeteritum tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil esset, non esset praesens tempus. 123 Aug. Conf. I.5.6: fateor et scio; I.6.9: et confiteri me tibi; I.6.10: confiteor tibi; I.7.12: et confiteri tibi; I.11.17: confitens in remissionem peccatorum; I.13.22: dum confiteor tibi; I.15.24: in confitendo tibi; I.19.30: et confiteor tibi; II.3.5: si cor confitens; II.7.15: et confitear nomini tuo . . . et omnia mihi dimissa esse fateor . . . recordantem et fatentem legit. 124 Lucr. Rer.nat. I.205: nil igitur fieri de nilo posse fatendumst; I.269–70: . . . tute necessest | confiteare esse in rebus nec posse videri; I.399: esse in rebus inane tamen fateare necessest; I.462–66: nec per se quemquam tempus sentire fatendumst | semotum ab rerum motu placidaque quiete. | . . . videndumst | ne forte haec per se cogant nos esse fateri; I.624–27: victus fateare necessest | esse ea quae nullis iam praedita partibus extent | et minima constent

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I have not rigorously computed such appearances in De Rerum Natura III to VI, but there can be no doubt that ‘confession’ is a structuring element in the Epicurean’s epic. A cursory review will suffice to establish this. Already at line 205 of his first book, Lucretius writes: “Therefore we must confess ( fatendumst) that nothing can possibly arise from nothing.”125 In book II, where Lucretius mounts his defence of “free will” (libera . . . voluntas)126 and the “will of the mind” (animique voluntate)127—a matter of grave concern to Augustine in Italy, and one that he resolves prior to his Platonic illumination in Milan128—Lucretius reprises his opening confession in this way: Thus you must confess ( fateare necessest) that the same [arbitrium]129 also exists in the seeds [of all bodies] . . . from which the power [of free will] is inborn in us, since we see that nothing can possibly arise from nothing.130 In De Rerum Natura III, it is the mortality of the soul131—a doctrine against which Augustine composed his post-baptismal work, De Immortalitate Animae, in Rome132—that Lucretius urges his epic’s addressee, Memmius, to confess: natura. quae quoniam sunt, | illa quoque esse tibi solida atque aeterna fatendum; I.825– 26: cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necessest | confiteare et re et sonitu distare sonanti; I.963–64: nunc extra summum quoniam nil esse fatendum, | non habet extremum, caret ergo fine modoque; I.973: alterutrum fatearis enim sumasque necessest; II.284: Quare in seminibus quoque idem fateare necessest; II.513–14: fateare necessest | materiem quoque finitis differre figuris; II.690–91: cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necesse est | confiteare alia ex aliis constare elementis; II.865–67: Nunc ea quae sentire videmus cumque necessest | ex insensilibus tamen omnia confiteare | principiis constare; II.1074–76: necesse est confiteare | esse alios aliis terrarum in partibus orbis | et varias hominum gentis et saecla ferarum; II.1084–86: quapropter caelum simile ratione fatendumst | terramque et solem lunam mare, cetera quae sunt, | non esse unica, sed numero magis innumerali. 125 Lucr. Rer.nat. I.205 126 Vid. Lucr. Rer.nat. II.251–62, here 255–56. 127 Vid. Lucr. Rer.nat. II.265–71, here 270. 128 Cf. Aug. Conf. VII.3.5: et intendebam ut cernerem quod audiebam, liberum voluntatis arbitrium causam esse ut male faceremus . . . tam sciebam me habere voluntatem quam me vivere. itaque cum aliquid vellem aut nollem, non alium quam me velle ac nolle certissimus eram. 129 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. II. 281–82: cuius ad arbitrium quoque copia materiai | cogitur . . . 130 Lucr. Rer.nat. II.284–87; cf. I.205: nil igitur fieri de nilo posse fatendumst; II.287: de nilo quoniam fieri nil posse videmus. 131 Cf. Aug. Util. 4.10. 132 But cf. rather, Aug. Mag. 13.41: . . . si quisquam Epicureis credens et mortalem animam putans, eas rationes quae de immortalitate eius a prudentioribus tractatae sunt, eloquatur, illo audiente qui spiritalia contueri potest . . .

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When the body (corpus) has perished, you must confess (necessest confiteare) that the soul (animam) has passed away, torn to pieces throughout the body.133 Book IV of De Rerum Natura then contains this appeal to Memmius to confess the corporeity of voice (vox),134 which is—needless to say—a question of signal importance in Confessions XI (see chapter 10): Every sound and voice (sonus et vox omnis) is heard when it has been insinuated into the ears and has struck with its body upon the sense (corpore sensum). For we must confess ( fatendumst) that voice and sound are also corporeal, since they can strike upon the sense (possunt inpellere sensus).135 And finally, in De Rerum Natura V, Epicurus’ physical eschatology is to be confessed: “So much the more must you . . . confess ( fateare necessest) a future destruction of earth and sea.”136 Many other passages could be adduced,137 but this much is clear: when Pierre Gassendi and Thomas Hobbes ‘confess’ time in the 1650s (see Appendices 3–4), demonstrably harking back to the time-‘confessions’ in De Rerum Natura I,138 the rhetoric of confession that they retrieve from Lucretius is by no means ­confined to his stanzas on time.139 To the contrary, Lucretius’ epic is shot through with the rhetoric of confession, and the De Rerum Natura in its entirety is a work which is designed to give rise to a catalogue of Epicurean confessions regarding ‘the nature of things.’ It is because of this that Lucretius’ rhetoric of confession often takes the tone of a second-person imperative, “you must confess” ( fateare necessest, necessest confiteare).140 This ‘you’ is the epic’s 133 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.798–99. 134 This is by no means a novel, or a peculiarly Epicurean doctrine. Cf. for instance, Arist. Aud. (800a): “All voices (φωνὰς) and in fact all sounds (ψόφους) arise either from bodies (σωμάτον) falling on bodies, or from air falling on bodies (πρὸς τὰ σώματα). . . . We all breathe the same air, but we emit different sounds owing to the difference of the organs involved, through which the breath (πνεῦμα) passes out to the region outside (πρὸς τὸν ἔξω τόπον).” 135 Lucr. Rer.nat. IV.524 –27. 136 Lucr. Rer.nat. V.343–44. 137 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. III.470, III.578–79, III.677, III.766–67, IV.216, V.376–77, etc. 138 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. I.459–68. 139 Lucr. Rer.nat. I.449–82. 140 As at Lucr. Rer.nat. I.825–26: necessest confiteare; II.513: fateare necessest; II.865–66: necessest . . . confiteare; III.470: fateare necessest; III.578: fateare necessest; III.677: fateare necessest; III.798–99: necessest confiteare; etc.

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non-Epicurean addressee, Memmius (likely the poet Catullus’ patron, Gaius Memmius).141 Of course, Augustine’s practice of confession—since his epic’s addressee is god (and the servi dei)—reverses this imperative from the outset of Confessions I: The house of my soul . . . is in ruins . . . I confess and I know . . . and I myself have no will to deceive myself. domus animae meae . . . ruinosa est . . . fateor et scio . . . et ego nolo fallere me ipsum. (I.5.6) It is Augustine who must confess, and he confesses because he has converted— first to the idea of philosophy,142 under the influence of Cicero,143 and later to a god and the regimen of a church. Lucretius similarly writes as one who has converted, yet he writes differently—namely, in the hope that Memmius will also convert, having felt the force of Epicurus’ certa ratio,144 and thereupon will confess Epicurus’ doctrines. If Lucretius’ confession-thematic in the De Rerum Natura is to have influenced Augustine’s practice of confession, then, it is likely via Lucretius’ stress on ‘confessing’ the deliverances of certa ratio, as in the type of confessio scientiae that Augustine lifts—albeit revised—from Velleius in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum I. But if it is as much the fact as the precise character of Lucretius’ confession-thematic that could suggest an influence on Augustine, there is nevertheless lexical and thematic evidence in the first pages of the Confessions that Augustine recollects and transects with a Lucretian confession in De Rerum Natura III. This is Lucretius, urging the ‘confession’ that Augustine could not make in Milan145—namely, that the soul is mortal—by way of urging a ‘confession’ that Augustine later opens his narratio with, in Hippo Regius: Moreover, if the nature of the soul is immortal and is insinuated into the body as we are born, why can we not also remember the age that has passed before, and why do we possess no memory-traces whatever of the 141 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. I.26, 42. 142 That Augustine’s ‘conversion’ in Conf. III is to the idea of philosophy, and not to philosophy, is borne out by any number of passages in Conf. VI and VIII—or for that matter, in Dam. Hist. 143 Vid. Aug. Conf. III.4.7; VIII.7.17. 144 Cf. for instance, Lucr. Rer.nat. II.95: . . . et certa ratione probatumst. 145 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. III.576–79; Aug. Conf. VI.16.26.

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things we have done? For if the power of the soul has been so greatly altered that it retains no memory of those things—that, I reckon, is a state not far removed from death. Therefore you must confess that the soul that was before has perished, and that the soul which is now has been created. Praeterea si inmortalis natura animai constat et in corpus nascentibus insinuatur, cur super anteactam aetatem meminisse nequimus nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus? nam si tanto operest animi mutata potestas, omnis ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum, non, ut opinor, id ab leto iam longiter errat; quapropter fateare necessest quae fuit ante interiisse et quae nunc est nunc esse creatam.146 However laborious, the only way to indicate the apparent precision and extent of parallels here is to set up—as with Velleius and Augustine—a sort of counterpoint of Lucretius’ text and Augustine’s, particularly since I have never seen these texts set in relation in the Augustine-literature: Lucretius—“Moreover, if the nature of the soul is immortal . . .”147 Augustine—“But what is it that I wish to say, o lord, if not that I do not know where I have come here from, into this—shall I call it a mortal life148 or a vital death?” (I.6.7).149 Lucretius—“And if the soul is insinuated into the body as we are born . . .”

146 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.670–78. 147 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. III.775: “There are no dangers whatever for the immortal ” (non sunt inmortali ulla pericula); Lucr. Rer.nat. III.800–805: “Indeed, to yoke mortal with immortal (mortale aeterno iungere) and to suppose that they can be partners in sensation (consentire), and can act upon each other (et fungi mutual posse), is folly . . .” 148 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. III.867–89: . . . neque hilum | differre an nullo fuerit iam tempore natus, | mortalem vitam mors cum inmortalis ademit; Aug. Conf. I.6.7: . . . nescio unde venerim huc, in istam dico vitam mortalem an mortem vitalem? 149 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.670: Praeterea si inmortalis natura animai; Aug. Conf. I.6.7: quid enim est quod volo dicere, domine, nisi quia nescio unde venerim huc, in istam dico vitam mortalem an mortem vitalem? nescio.

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Augustine – “Therefore you, o lord my god, who gave life to the infant and a body . . . [also] insinuated all the drives of its soul . . .” (I.7.12).150 Lucretius—“Why can we not also remember the age that has passed before?” Augustine—“I do not know where I have come here from. . . . I do not know . . . for I myself cannot remember. . . . Tell me [o god] whether my infancy succeeded another age of mine . . . Was it that age I passed in my mother’s womb? . . . And what—o my god, my delight—was before that age? Was I anywhere, or anyone? . . . I confess to you, lord of heaven and earth, and give praise to you for my origins and infancy, which I cannot remember” (I.6.7–10).151 Lucretius—“And why do we possess no memory-traces whatever of the things we have done?” Augustine—“Therefore this age, o lord, which I have lived I cannot remember . . . inasmuch as, in the darkness of my forgetting, [my infancy] is like the time I passed in my mother’s womb. . . . Look, I will pass over that time—for what can I have to do with it, when I can recall no memory-traces whatever of it?” (I.7.12)152 Lucretius—“For if the power of the soul has been so greatly altered that it retains no memory of those things—that, I reckon, is a state not far removed from death.153 Therefore you must confess that the soul that was before has perished . . .” Augustine—“And look, my infancy has long since died yet I myself live. . . . Tell me [o god] whether my infancy succeeded another age of 150 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.671: constat et in corpus nascentibus insinuatur; Aug. Conf. I.7.12: tu itaque, domine deus meus, qui dedisti vitam infanti et corpus, quod ita, ut videmus, instruxisti sensibus, compegisti membris, figura decorasti proque eius universitate atque incolumitate omnes conatus animantis insinuasti, iubes me laudare te in istis et confiteri tibi. 151 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.672: cur super anteactam aetatem meminisse nequimus; Aug. Conf. I.6.7–10: nescio unde venerim huc . . . nescio . . . non enim ego memini. . . . dic mihi, utrum alicui iam aetati meae mortuae successerit infantia mea. an illa est quam egi intra viscera matris meae? . . . quid ante hanc etiam, dulcedo mea, deus meus? fuine alicubi aut aliquis? . . . confiteor tibi, domine caeli et terrae, laudem dicens tibi de primordiis et infantia mea, quae non memini. 152 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.673: nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus?; Aug. Conf. I.7.12: hanc ergo aetatem, domine, quam me vixisse non memini . . . quantum enim attinet ad oblivionis meae tenebras, par illi est quam vixi in matris utero. . . . sed ecce omitto illud tempus: et quid mihi iam cum eo est, cuius nulla vestigia recolo? 153 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. III.754–59, III.847–61.

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mine which had perished. . . . Therefore this age, o lord, which I have lived I cannot remember . . . [and] it vexes me to reckon it in this life of mine which I live in this world” (I.6.9, I.7.12).154 Lucretius—“Therefore you must confess that . . . the soul which is now has been created.” Augustine—“And man, some part of your creation, desires to praise you—man, who bears about with him his mortality. . . . You [o god] created man . . . Thus you, o lord my god, who gave life to the infant and a body which is such as we see, you have endowed it with senses, compacted it with limbs, beautified it with form . . . [and] insinuated all the drives of its soul—you command me to praise you for these things and to confess to you” (I.1.1, I.7.11–12).155 There is, certainly, some lexical mirroring to be observed here, and it is not without interest to mark the transitions, for instance: from Lucretius’ ‘nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus,’ to Augustine’s ‘et quid mihi iam cum eo est, cuius nulla vestigia recolo’;156 from Lucretius’ ‘in corpus nascentibus insinuatur’—where insinuare, be it noted, is a Lucretian technical term157—to Augustine’s ‘dedisti 154 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.674–78: nam si tanto operest animi mutata potestas, | omnis ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum, | non, ut opinor, id ab leto iam longiter errat; quapropter fateare necessest quae fuit ante | interiisse; Aug. Conf. I.6.9–7.12: et ecce infantia mea olim mortua est et ego vivo. . . . dic mihi, utrum alicui iam aetati meae mortuae successerit infantia mea. . . . hanc ergo aetatem, domine, quam me vixisse non memini . . . piget me adnumerare huic vitae meae quam vivo in hoc saeculo. 155 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.677–78: quapropter fateare necessest . . . | . . . quae nunc est nunc esse creatam; Aug. Conf. I.1.1: et laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae, et homo circumferens mortalitatem suam; I.7.11–12: et homo dicit haec, et misereris eius, quoniam tu fecisti eum . . . tu itaque, domine deus meus, qui dedisti vitam infanti et corpus, quod ita, ut videmus, instruxisti sensibus, compegisti membris, figura decorasti . . . [et] omnes conatus animantis insinuasti, iubes me laudare te in istis et confiteri tibi; XI.31.41: . . . tu, conditor universitatis, conditor animarum et corporum. 156 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.673; Aug. Conf. I.7.12. 157 Cf. for instance, Lucr. Rer.nat. III.688–89: nam neque tanto opere adnecti potuisse putandumst | corporibus nostras extrinsecus insinuatas; III.698–99: Quod si forte putas extrinsecus insinuatam | permanare animam nobis per membram solere . . .; III.722–24: quod si forte animas extrinsecus insinuari | vermibus et privas in corpora posse venire | credis . . .; III.738–39: nec tamen est utqui perfectis insinuentur | corporibus; III.776– 83: . . . inter se quae prima potissimaque insinuetur | . . . ut quae prima volans advenerit insinuetur . . .

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vitam infanti et corpus . . . atque incolumitate omnes conatus animantis insinuasti’;158 or from Lucretius’ ‘quapropter fateare necessest . . . quae nunc est nunc esse creatam,’ to Augustine’s ‘et homo dicit haec . . . quoniam tu fecisti eum . . . iubes me laudare te in istis et confiteri tibi.’159 Moreover, I have never seen it noted that Augustine’s expression “mortal life” (vitam mortalem, I.6.7) in his infancy meditation160 recollects Lucretius’ ­expression—“mortal life” (mortalem vitam)—at De Rerum Natura III.869.161 Yet what is most impressive is a parallel arc in the thematic material. These passages have numerous other elements in common, but at its most minimal, this is the common arc in De Rerum Natura III.670–678 and Confessions I.6– 7: Lucretius insists that nothing before this life-age is recollected, and that is Augustine’s opening confession; Lucretius infers from this that the soul is ‘created,’ and this Augustine ascribes to his god; Lucretius then urges the necessity of ‘confession’ upon Memmius, and Augustine—predictably—‘confesses’ to his god. My question, here, is not whether all of this establishes dependence— or better, an interface. But my suggestion is that the possibility of a decisive Lucretian echo in the first pages of Confessions I is credible. It is incomparably more credible than the influence of a doctrinaire ‘fall of souls’ myth that hyperPlotinian interpreters have insinuated into—or more accurately, fathered upon—those first pages of the Confessions. And it becomes all the more persuasive when we consider that Augustine appears to use the immediately preceding stanza of De Rerum Natura III162 in one of his Roman dialogues, De Quantitate Animae (387/8),163 including what is likely a reference to the Epicureans164—if not obliquely, to Lucretius.165 For 158 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.671; Aug. Conf. I.7.12. 159 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.677–78; Aug. Conf. I.7.11–12. 160 Cf. also Aug. Conf. V.8.14: . . . homines qui diligunt vitam mortuam. 161 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. III.867–89: . . . neque hilum | differre an nullo fuerit iam tempore natus, | mortalem vitam mors cum inmortalis ademit. 162 Namely, Lucr. Rer.nat. III.657–69, while I have here compared Lucr. Rer.nat. III.670–78 with Aug. Conf. I.6–7. 163 For dating this dialogue, cf. Zarb 1934, 31. 164 For Epicurus or the Epicureans—perhaps—cf. Aug. Quant.anim. 31.63: Sed quae illis discedentibus cum Alypio sermocinatus sum . . . ad dandam palmam iis, qui corpus esse animam dicunt, declinarem; Conf. VI.16.26: et disputabam cum amicis meis Alypio et Nebridio de finibus bonorum et malorum: Epicurum accepturum fuisse palmam in animo meo . . . 165 For Lucretius—perhaps—vid. Aug. Quant.anim. 31.63: . . . ad dandam palmam iis, qui corpus esse animam dicunt, declinarem. Quapropter te, ut possum, etiam atque etiam moneo, ne temere aut in libros aut in disputationes loquacissimorum hominum . . .

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before Lucretius urges the mortality of the soul from the soul’s oblivion of past life-ages, in De Rerum Natura III.670–678, he argues the corporeality and mortality of the soul from the sight of a snake (serpens) being hacked to pieces with a sword, in De Rerum Natura III.657–669. These grisly pieces seem to survive, for a brief time, “writhing separately while the wound is still fresh (recenti volnere), bespattering the earth with gore.”166 And in the De Quantitate Animae,167 Augustine similarly—if less colourfully—recalls having seen a worm (vermiculus) sliced up by a young man’s stilus. Like Lucretius’ snake, Augustine’s worm appeared to live—i.e. to be ensouled—in all its oozing parts, while its wounds were still fresh (vulnera recentia).168 In neither text is Lucretius named,169 and in neither text is Lucretius’ conclusion followed (if we accept that Augustine is using him). Yet in both texts, what appears to be a Lucretian phenomenon is taken over by Augustine; and in both texts, a Lucretian phenomenon appears to be taken over for the same reason: Augustine has verified it. In the De Quantitate Animae, Augustine has seen a worm—like Lucretius’ snake—cut apart, but with its parts still coiling. In the Confessions, Augustine repeatedly states that he himself—as Lucretius asserts—can access ‘no memory-traces whatever’ of a pre-natal state, or even of his infancy. This should suffice to establish the possibility—or indeed, the ­probability— of a pointed and distributed, structuring presence of Cicero’s ‘Epicurus’ and Lucretius in Augustine’s Confessions, and of Augustine’s willingness to absorb and modify distinctly Epicurean elements, particularly as regards physical philosophy. As stated in 2.3, it is not my intent to pursue the question of a direct Epicurean influence on Augustine’s time-concept; but if Augustine’s time-concept could be shown to be Epicurean in a direct sense, this influence would not be an isolated one.

166 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.657–69. 167 Aug. Quant.anim. 31.62–64. 168 Aug. Quant.anim. 31.62: ita omnes movebantur, ut nisi a nobis illud factum esset, et comparerent vulnera recentia, totidem illos separatim natos, ac sibi quemque vixisse crederemus. 169 Cf. Hagendahl 1967, 382: “There is no doubt that Augustine knew Lucretius and used him without intermediary. . . . Augustine never quotes a [full] line, but he hints, several times, unmistakably at the Epicurean poet.” Augustine only names Lucretius at Aug. Util. 4.10.

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Confessions X to XII: Dialectics and Song

Returning from sources to genre, however, Lyotard is correct: the Confessions are nothing like “a treatise of philosophy.”170 It is no less important, however, to stress Lyotard’s positive characterization of the Confessions: as song.171 Lyotard writes that Augustine “chants . . . in a recitative, a Sprechgesang,”172 and writes of when the soul “lets itself be swept along by song and the thousands-year-old . . . poetics of love, the blazon.”173 And a half-century before Lyotard writes this, Joseph Finaert similarly observes that “les Confessions recourent . . . à tous les jeux de sonorité: répétitions, refrains, allitérations, assonances.”174 Numerous passages from the Confessions could be adduced to justify such descriptions, but to limit ourselves to books X and XI: Augustine’s sero te amavi at X.27.38,175 and at a lower pitch the noli claudere desiderio meo at XI.22.28, reflect something of his lyricism. The former passage (X.27) attracts Lyotard’s attention from the first pages of The Confession of Augustine,176 and inspires his—limited and limiting—characterization of Augustine’s ‘dilation’ (distentio) in book XI as a “laxity, procrastination,” and thus, of the work-itself of confession as “delay” (le retard).177 Ricœur glosses the latter passage (XI.22) 170 Lyotard 2000, 49/1998, 72. 171 See in particular Lyotard’s sections titled “Praise” and “Psalmody” (2000, 83–86/1998, 109–12): “Throughout the thirteen books he lifts whole verses from the psalmist . . . a whole life astray comes with the psalmody to beat (battre) the holy meditation, wise argumentation, the upright narrative, to interrupt the clear string of thoughts and tie it to the other, the red and black fiber of flesh (la fibre rouge et noire de la chair). . . . The fabric of the Confessions is closely knitted, thread upon thread . . . sometimes with thought following the carnal rhythm (rythme charnel) of call and abandonment . . . and sometimes . . .  with the stilus passing into the firm hand of discourse that reasons.” And cf. Marramao (2007, 55), who writes of “the Lied that springs from Augustine’s soul” in the Conf., and suggests: “In Augustine’s scheme . . . self-awareness is grounded on rhythmic-temporal elements: music, with its durée réelle, offers a field of research to inner senses.” 172 Lyotard 2000, 3/1998, 19. 173 Lyotard 2000, 51–52/1998, 75. 174 Finaert 1939a, 91. 175 Bouissou (1961) versifies and analyzes this passage as being “un des meilleurs examples du lyrisme de saint Augustin dans les Confessions.” 176 Lyotard 2000, 2/1998, 17–18. 177 Lyotard 2000, 55–56/1998, 79–80 (tr. mod.): “This delay (ce retard) from which I suffer . . . [and] which I confess to you, which I attempt, writing my confession, to make up . . . this delay is but further drawn out (allonger) by the time of confession, of writing

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relative to a distinctly “hymnic aspect” in Confessions XI,178 of which he— incautiously—writes: “Speculation is inseparable . . . from the hymn.”179 Lyotard’s and Ricœur’s rhetoric of song or hymn is by no means extrinsic to the Confessions, and indeed—as they do not remark—it has particular relevance to Confessions XII. For having presented his analysis of Ambrose’s hymn, Deus creator omnium, in XI.27, and any memorized song in XI.28 (a trope he returns to in the final sentences of book XI),180 Augustine then calls Confessions XII a “canticle of praise (canticum laudis) for those things which [my heart] cannot dictate,” and numbers it among his “songs of love” to the lord.181 Immediately prior to calling Confessions XII a canticle of praise, however, Augustine insists: “But I desired to know, not to conjecture . . . the mutabilityand proclaiming”; 2000, 17/1998, 35–36: “The delay that throws the confessing I (le confessant) into despair is not due to a failure in its chronology; no, chronos, at once and in its entirety, consists in delay (retarde).” Derrida (2001, 32–33) offers a series of similar—enervated and enervating—reflections in his first essay in Veils, under that essay’s epigraph, “Sero te amavi”: A “so late, too late, sero” (life will have been so short), a delay I am complaining about . . . But to whom do I make this complaint? . . . Is it to god? Was it even to Christ that my poor old incorrigible Augustine finally addressed his “too late,” “so late” when he was speaking to beauty, sero te amavi . . . ? “So late have I loved thee, beauty so ancient and so new,” or rather, because it is already late, “late will I have loved thee . . .” A future perfect is wrapped up in the past, once ‘late’ means (as it always does, it’s a tautology) ‘so late’ and ‘too late.’ You were with me and I was not with you: Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! . . . Mecum eras, et tecum non eram. You were with me and I was not with you. 178 Ricœur 1984, 13. 179 Ricœur 1984, 26; cf. 234 n. 27: “we cannot consider the great prayer of [Conf. XI.]2.3 to be a mere rhetorical ornament. . . . It contains the melodic line that speculation, along with the hymn, will develop.” 180 Aug. Conf. XI.31.41: discussed in chapter 5. This is confirmed by the narrative/thematic motif of song in the Conf., for which: Burton 2007, 137–51. Song first figures positively at Conf. VIII.12.29 (cantu dicentis) in the garden in Milan. It rapidly reappears in book IX, with psalms and sacred songs appearing at Conf. IX.2.2, IX.4.8, IX.6.14–16 and IX.12.31; while sacred song is again discussed at X.33.50 (see chapter 7). But most importantly—and I have never seen this linked to, or interrogated relative to, a decisive passage in the time-investigation (XI.27.36)—Augustine refers to a silent ‘singing’ at Conf. X.8.13 in his discussion of sense-imaginal memoria. I discuss this in 13.5. In 9.1 it will also be seen how Augustine’s analysis of ‘song’ in Conf. XII helps to clarify the logical precedence of motus-mutatio to tempus. 181 Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: canticum laudis de his quae dictare non sufficit; XII.16.23: et cantem tibi amatoria.

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itself of mutable things.”182 This is not the love, or the praise, of an unreflective devotee. It suggests something of the specific love that initiated philosophy.183 Platonic–Socratic ἔρος,184 mediated to Augustine by Cicero’s lost protreptic,185 has become longing; Aristotelian θαῦμα has become laud.186 And this striving and counter-striving of Augustine’s longing and awe with his fierce will-toclarity, in book XII, is no less decisive in books X and XI. So Confessions X to XII, insofar as they constitute a song or a series of songs, are not less than a hybrid, late-antique species of philosophic song. Their “fusion of argument and hymn” is rarely a confusion,187 and throughout, Cf. Hrdlicka 1931, 69: “amatorium, a hymn of love: [Conf.] 12, 16, 23, cantem tibi amatoria;—an amatory song (Cypr., Isid.).” Cf. also O’Donnell (1992, III:322), at cantem tibi amatoria: At [Conf.] 7.17.23, “amantem memoriam” breathes a Platonic atmosphere. . . . At util. cred. 7.17 [Augustine] is aware of secular traditions of allegorical interpretation of indiscreet poetry, as of the “carmen amatorium” that Plato is said to have written to a boy named Alexis. On this last point, cf. Aug. Util. 6.13 and 7.16–17, where Augustine addresses the need for sympathetic and sophisticated interpreters of secular poetry and philosophy (as of the canonical scriptures). He ends with a passage on the allegorical sense of the Platonic love songs (libidinosas cantiunculas) for a boy-child, Alexis (Alexim puerum), with Augustine writing: cum sine ullo sacrilegio poeta uberrimus videri possit libidinosas cantiunculas edidisse . . . 182 Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: sed nosse cupiebam, non suspicari. 183 Aug. Conf. III.4.8. 184 Cf. Aug. Civ. VIII.8 on Plato: non dubitat hoc esse philosophari, amare deum, cuius natura sit incorporalis. 185 On Augustine’s first ‘conversion’ and Cicero’s Hortensius: Burton 2007, 95–99; Hagendahl 1967, 486–97; Stock 1996, 37–42; Testard 1958, I:11–49. Aug. Conf. III.4.7–8 intentionally signals the first tremor of Augustine’s ‘conversion’ or ‘reversion’ (redire ad te) in the narratio of Conf. I–IX, which is why he re-introduces Cicero’s text in the conversion narrative at VIII.7.17: lecto Ciceronis Hortensio, excitatus eram studio sapientiae. 186 Cf. Arist. Met. I.2 (982b): διὰ γὰρ τὸ θαυμάζειν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καὶ νῦν καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἤρξαντο φιλοσοφεῖν; but also Aug. Conf. X.35.54: inest animae per eosdem sensus corporis quaedam non se oblectandi in carne, sed experiendi per carnem vana et curiosa cupiditas nomine cognitionis; XII.21.30: ignorantia mater admirationis. Geroux (2008, 127) suggests that with Augustine—and in this he is “importantly distinct from Aristotle”—there emerges a “reconceptualization of mental wonder (thaumazein) as a kind of distress.” 187 Ricœur 1984, 6. Ricœur writes later that Augustine conjoins, “indivisibly, the praise of the psalmist with a type of speculation that is . . . Platonic and Neoplatonic” (1983, 23)—and I would stress, at the deepest stratum, Ciceronian.

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Augustine’s stilus traces up—as Lyotard has it—“the precarious, reciprocal balance of enigma and demonstration.”188 3.6

Concluding Remarks on Genre

One result of this—i.e. that Confessions X to XII are not ‘a treatise of philosophy,’ while they are yet philosophical—is that their form is freer, less methodical and accretive, than that of Augustine’s dialectical works.189 Augustine proceeds, here, by way of indication more often than by definition, even when a ‘definition’ is what he seeks. Augustine’s terminology in the Confessions is also less rigorously delimited within a given book—or indeed, within the Confessions as a whole—than in certain other of his works. And accordingly, the interpreter faces a couple of temptations during the work of reconstructing Augustine’s time-concepts in Confessions X to XII: first, to detect slipshod ‘contradictions’ from one book of the Confessions to the next; and second, to uncritically incorporate ­formulations from the breadth of Augustine’s corpus so as to fix the sense of his terms in the Confessions. I will argue, throughout, that those who have identified Augustine’s ‘contradictions’ in Confessions X to XII, apropos of time, are themselves slipshod; but I have also been wary of levelling off Augustine’s corpus,190 which appears to be a special temptation for his theological interpreters.191 Augustine’s later works, in particular, must be cited with caution;

188 Lyotard 2000, 50/1998, 73. 189 But cf. Stock 1996, 210: “A mixture of [dialectical] discussion and reminiscence is characteristic of many [of Augustine’s] works written between 386 and 401. We learn more about his everyday life at Cassiciacum from the ‘philosophical dialogues’ than from the brief account of Confessions 9.4.” 190 Cf. Aug. Epist. 143.3–4; Trin. III.pref.1–2. 191 For instance, Milbank (2008, 198 n. 60) and his set espouse “a hermeneutic assumption of coherence” across Augustine’s oeuvre. Augustine, to the contrary, insists that this assumption is “no good” (non bonam) and will involve his interpreters in a “futile endeavour” (frustra laboratis), since “the words I have spoken which I would, if I could, revoke, are not—as my dearest friends suppose—few or none, but perhaps even more than my detractors imagine” (non sicut quidam carissimi mei putant, nulla vel pauca, sed potius plura fortasse quam etiam maledici opinantur verba dixerim, quae mallem revocare, si possem, Epist. 143.3–4).

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and this includes works—e.g. the De Trinitate and De Genesi ad Litteram—that he began to compose around the time that he wrote Confessions X to XII.192 Despite the Confessions’ generic liberties, I maintain that an interpreter’s first recourse should be to the Confessions—as, for instance, I rely on Confessions X and XII for the sense of anima, animus and other fundamental terms in Confessions XI. Secondarily, to a work such as the Eighty-Three Questions—which we know was circulating as a sort of compendium of positions, with Augustine’s approval, in the years in which he wrote the Confessions.193 Thirdly, to works that predate the Confessions—and foremost, to his De Rhythmo194—but in light of the fact that Augustine commences his work of public ‘recension’ in Confessions IX.195 And lastly—most critically— interpreters can turn to Augustine’s later works. Thus far, then, in keeping with a hymnic-rhapsodic element in the Confessions: several warnings. But my basic intent in this section is not negative. In suggesting a new line of interpretation of the time-question in Confessions X to XII, a patient, heightened and sustained sensitivity to Augustine’s language will be necessary; and this is not only necessary, it proves to be elucidatory. For despite the relatively free hand Augustine has towards his conceptual terminology, particularly in the Confessions; and despite the glut of critical and philosophical literature on the Confessions over the last century and a half: Augustine makes a number of lexical decisions in Confessions X to XII which have not, to my knowledge, been previously remarked or seriously pursued, and which indicate a philosophical-terminological integrity of the question of ‘time’ in these books, and of Augustine’s position on it, even as they mark decisive shifts within that question. 192 Zarb (1934, 48–49, 53) dates Aug. Trin. to the years 399–419 and Gen.litt. to the years 401–14; Mutzenbecher (1984, xix) proposes 399–422 for Trin. and 401–16 for Gen.litt. 193 Aug. Retr. I.26. 194 Augustine’s De Rhythmo is commonly called De Musica, and this is not without reason: Augustine refers to his De Musica at, for instance, Aug. Retr. I.6: et De musica sex volumina; I.11.1: sex libros de musica scripsi, quorum ipse sextus maxime innotuit . . . Nevertheless, at Aug. Epist. 101.3, he states the actual character of the work, and his original intent: “I then wrote six books on rhythm alone, and proposed, I confess, to write, perhaps, six other books on song since I hoped to have the leisure, in future, to do so” (conscripsi de solo rhythmo sex libros, et de melo scribere alios forsitan sex, fateor, disponebam, cum mihi otium futurum sperabam). Augustine then remarks (c. 409) that his “ecclesiastical cares” (curarum ecclesiasticarum) had rendered it impossible for him to compose his projected six books, De Melo. Thus, the work that he wrote, and the work that survives, is Augustine’s De Rhythmo. 195 Aug. Conf. IX.4.7, IX.6.14.

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Thus, for instance: when Castoriadis posits a critical disjunction between Augustine’s concept of time as “a stretching of the mind” in book XI,196 and time as “produced by [the] mutation of forms” in book XII,197 I will reject this disjunction. And my reasons for this have nothing to do with ‘pious’ feelings towards Augustine.198 A perfectly impious researcher—such as I am— may suspect a failure of interpretation when it is a question of such a radical incongruence, with regard to such a driving question, in such a consummately executed text, within the space of several paragraphs (i.e. XI.28–XII.8).199 But this is, of course, only a suspicion. Every text has feet of clay, and the confessive discourse that Augustine initiates is in part devoted to this instability, as it is sung “in this continuing uncertainty of human knowledge” (in isto adhuc incerto humanae notitiae, XIII.14.15).200 Notwithstanding that, I reject the idea of a critical disjunction between time as dilation in Confessions XI and time as conditioned by physical motion in Confessions XII because—at least, initially—Augustine lexically signals a shift from his direct question of ‘time-itself’ (ipsum tempus), at the end of Confessions XI, to his indirect question of ‘times’ (tempora) in Confessions XII, where he elaborates his speculative conceptions of a caelum intellectuale and a materia informis. It is to this ‘time’/‘times’ distinction that I will first turn. 196 197 198 199

Castoriadis 1991, 44. Castoriadis 1991, 48. Cf. Aug. Annot. 8: genus piorum, id est christianorum. Yet even O’Donnell (1992, III:310) remarks at Conf. XII.8.8—rerum mutationibus fiunt tempora—that this phrase seems to “retreat slightly from the achievement of Bk. 11, the view that time exists as distension of consciousness.” 200 Aug. Conf. XIII.14.15: cum effundo . . . animam meam in voce exultationis et confessionis . . . in isto adhuc incerto humanae notitiae.

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Towards a Lexical Clarification of ‘Time’ (Conf. XI.22–24) Though time has concerned Augustine from the first words of Confessions XI,1 and indeed, from the first words of the Confessions,2 it is at XI.14 that he first asks: “What is time?”3 One of the decisive modulations in book XI, to which F.-W. von Herrmann is particularly attentive,4 is that of his time-question from the ‘what’ or essence (quid) to the ‘where’ or locus (ubi) of time. And this shift is adumbrated from very early in the time-investigation.5 Augustine already asks at XI.15.20: “Where is the time we call ‘long’?”6 I will argue that, and clarify why this is the basic articulation of his time-question, in Part III. Augustine’s time-question is most fundamentally a question of the condition of possibility of a space of time (spatium temporis), i.e. of dimensive time, and it is the question of time’s locus that leads him to ‘dilation.’ From his first, provisional insight into the locus of a space of time at Confessions XI.20.26,7 to the end of the time-investigation at XI.29.39, Augustine has been taken to locate time “in the soul” (in anima, XI.20.26), 1 Aug. Conf. XI.1.1: numquid, domine, cum tua sit aeternitas, ignoras quae tibi dico, aut ad tempus vides quod fit in tempore? 2 Thus Lyotard (1998, 56/2000, 36): “Subject of the confessive work, the first person author is . . . the work of time (l’œuvre du temps).” Apropos of which, cf. Aug. Conf. I.1.1: da mihi, domine, scire et intellegere utrum sit prius invocare te an laudare te, et scire te prius sit an invocare te; I.6.7: quid enim est quod volo dicere, domine, nisi quia nescio unde venerim huc, in istam dico vitam mortalem an mortem vitalem? nescio. et susceperunt me consolationes miserationum tuarum, sicut audivi a parentibus carnis meae, ex quo et in qua me formasti in tempore: non enim ego memini. 3 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: quid est enim tempus? 4 Von Herrmann 2008, 86–107, here 88: “It now becomes clear that the question ‘where’ contains the questions concerning the essence and existence of time. . . . The question of where inquires about the place in which time has its essence and existence.” 5 O’Daly 1981, 172: “His initial question is modified and re-formulated from the start. He notes [at Conf. XI.15.18] that we speak of long and short time periods . . . how can a time-period have length, and how do we know its length?” 6 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: ubi est ergo tempus quod longum dicamus? 7 Aug. Conf. XI.20 addresses the nominative plural of ‘time’ (tempora), and not the singular (tempus): there is a duplicity of ‘tempora’ in XI.20 and XI.27 that I disentagle in 13.2. But

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or no less frequently, “in the mind.”8 As Ricœur underscores, this is taken to mean “in the soul alone,”9 before he repeatedly sharpens this formulation from time being in the soul (âme) to time being in the mind (esprit).10 On this stilldominant interpretation, time in the Confessions is not located ‘in’ the space of physical movement and rest, and by extension time, for Augustine, is not ‘in the world.’11 Or stated differently: time is ‘in the soul’ (or mind), but the soul (or mind)—in whatever sense it may be ‘in the world’—is not ‘in time.’ And yet, from the first paragraphs of Confessions I, Augustine insists that he was conceived and came into this life “in time” (in tempore, I.6.7),12 and that his life is lived “in this world-age” (in hoc saeculo, I.7.12).13 In the first paragraphs of Confessions XI, Augustine similarly confesses that he lives “in time” (in tempore, XI.1.1) and ‘in the world.’14 At Confessions XI.24–25, still confessing his ignorance of what time is (quid sit tempus nescio, XI.25.32), he is yet certain that all bodies move “in time” (in tempore, XI.24.31), and that his time-investigation is itself proceeding “in time” (in tempore ista dicere, XI.25.32). And most acutely, in the last paragraph of the time-investigation, Augustine laments that he lives “in times” (in tempora, XI.29.39).15



here, note how the use of tempora in XI.20—where Augustine locates tempora ‘in the soul’—serves to heighten the difficult sense of his lament at XI.29 that he lives in tempora. 8 Most recently, Wilcoxen 2013, 2: “Time exists ‘in the mind’—that is, in memory, perception, and expectation (conf. 11.20.26).” 9 Ricœur 1983, 31/1984, 14: “dans l’âme seule.” 10 Cf. Ricœur 1983, 37: “Seul un esprit ainsi diversement tendu peut être distendu . . .”; 38: “C’est dans l’âme, donc à titre d’impression, que l’attente et la mémoire ont de l’extension. Mais l’impression n’est dans l’âme que pour autant que l’esprit agit, c’est-à-dire attend, fait attention et se souvient.” 11 Cf. Arist. Phys. IV.14 (223a): “The relation of time to the soul (ὁ χρόνος πρὸς τὴν ψυχήν) deserves investigation, as does the question of why we conceive of time as immanent in all things (ἐν παντὶ δοκεῖ εἶναι ὁ χρόνος), i.e. in earth and sea and sky.” 12 Aug. Conf. I.6.7: me formasti in tempore; cf. IX.13.37: introduxisti me in hanc vitam . . . in hac luce transitoria. 13 Aug. Conf. I.7.12: . . . huic vitae meae quam vivo in hoc saeculo. 14 Aug. Conf. XI.1.1: domine, cum tua sit aeternitas, ignoras quae tibi dico, aut ad tempus vides quod fit in tempore?; XI.2.4: . . . fecisti omnia, in quibus et me. 15 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: ego in tempora. The phrase in tempora has not appeared previously in the Conf., and is repeated only once: at Conf. XII.11.12, Augustine denies that the hyper-heavenly is “dilated in any times” (nec in tempora ulla distenditur). As I elaborate in Part II, the basic sense of Augustine’s phrase in tempora is in “this mutive world” (XII.8.8).

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This last statement must be stressed since, because of it, the possibility of Augustine’s incoherence with regard to time could be asserted without any reference to Confessions XII—as when Castoriadis, for instance, detects “a flagrant contradiction” in the transition from book XI to book XII (see 2.2).16 For limiting ourselves to Confessions XI for a moment: at XI.20.26, Augustine provisionally locates ‘times’ (tempora)—not ‘time’ (tempus)—“in the soul” and “in no other place” (in anima . . . et alibi ea non video); yet at XI.29.39 he explicitly confesses himself to be living “in times” (in tempora).17 When Augustine later asserts, in book XII, that “times are produced by the movements of things,”18 is he merely deepening the inner incoherency of his time-investigation in book XI? I have already stated that I reject a disjunction between Confessions XI and XII, and I also reject the incoherency of Confession XI. But what then? Is time in the soul only because the soul is in the world? Or when “we say ‘time’ and ‘time,’ ‘times’ and ‘times’ ” (dicimus tempus et tempus, tempora et tempora, XI.22.28), is there a distinction to be observed between Augustine’s words ‘time’ (tempus) and ‘times’ (tempora)? My interpretation answers both questions in the affirmative. In this chapter I will begin to address the second of these questions: Augustine’s stipulative distinction, in Confessions XI and XII (as anticipated in his De Rhythmo),19 between ‘time’ (tempus) and ‘times’ (tempora).20 This distinction is not only necessary to reconcile—or rather, to interpret—Augustine’s work on the time-question in Confessions XI and XII, but also—as we have just seen—to establish the integrity of book XI. And 16 Castoriadis 1991, 45. 17 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: sunt enim haec in anima tria quaedam et alibi ea non video, praesens de praeteritis memoria, praesens de praesentibus contuitus, praesens de futuris expectatio. si haec permittimur dicere, tria tempora video fateorque, tria sunt; XI.29.39: ego in tempora dissilui quorum ordinem nescio. 18 Aug. Conf. XII.8.8: rerum mutationibus fiunt tempora. I will later justify ‘movement’ as a primary sense of mutatio in Conf. XII: see chapter 9. 19 Cf. Aug. Rhyth. II.3.3: . . . ita in syllabis, qua scilicet a brevi ad longam progredimur, longam duplum temporis habere debere: ac per hoc si spatium quod brevis occupat, recte unum tempus vocatur; spatium item quod longa occupat, recte duo tempora nominari; II.4.4: . . . siquidem in ea simplum ad duplum collatum esse video, id est unum tempus brevis syllabae ad duo tempora longae syllabae. 20 Cf. also Aug. Civ. XII.16: si tempus non a caelo, verum et ante caelum fuit; non quidem in horis et diebus et mensibus et annis—nam istae dimensiones temporalium spatiorum, quae usitate ac proprie dicuntur ‘tempora’ . . . However—as I remark in note 35, below—a number of Augustine’s time-formulations in Aug. Civ. XII.16 appear to conflict with his time-concept in Conf. XI and XII.

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despite the hymnic-rhapsodic character of these books, which may at places result in terminological imprecisions (see 3.5–6), the received interpretive mis-directions have arisen from an insufficient sensitivity to the subtle oscillations (and consistencies) of Augustine’s language in books XI and XII. One decisive oscillation is that between ‘time’ (tempus) and ‘times’ (tempora).21 4.1

A Distribution of Augustine’s Time-Investigation (Conf. XI.14–29)

At the end of chapter 3, I suggested a shift in Confessions XI and XII from the question of ‘time’ (tempus) or ‘time-itself’ (ipsum tempus) in book XI to the question of ‘times’ (tempora) in book XII. But it could immediately—and properly—be objected that this description is quite crude. The Latin tempora (‘times’), which is merely the nominative plural of tempus (‘time’), is by no means reserved for Confessions XII. This plural and its several declensions can be traced up Augustine’s time-investigation in book XI, and this plural is of critical importance in his penultimate temporal analysis in book XI.22 Moreover, Augustine’s inaugural time-question at Confessions XI.14.17 sets ‘times,’ ‘time’ and ‘time-itself’ in seemingly indiscriminate relation: You [o god] had conditioned time-itself . . . [yet] if these endured, they would not be times.23 What then is time? ipsum tempus tu feceras . . . si permanerent, non essent tempora. quid est enim tempus? (XI.14.17)

21

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Schmidt (1985, 54–63) anticipates aspects of my interpretation, with his succinct identification of a “Zeit der Kreatur” (≈ Ulrich Duchrow’s ‘physikalische Zeit’) and a “personale Zeit” (≈ Duchrow’s ‘psychologische Zeit’) in Confessions XI–XIII, yet fails to relate this to Augustine’s lexical distinction: tempora, tempus. Tempora appears 8× in Conf. XI.27 alone, and 28× in the time-investigation proper (XI.14– 29). In Part III, I will revisit the sense of ‘tempora’ in XI.27 and a specific duplicity of the sense of ‘tempora’—and with it, of ‘praesens’—in XI.20 and XI.27. Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.13.15: nam unde poterant innumerabilia saecula praeterire quae ipse non feceras, cum sis omnium saeculorum auctor et conditor? aut quae tempora fuissent quae abs te condita non essent? aut quomodo praeterirent, si numquam fuissent? cum ergo sis operator omnium temporum, si fuit aliquod tempus antequam faceres caelum et terram, cur dicitur quod ab opere cessabas? idipsum enim tempus tu feceras, nec praeterire potuerunt tempora antequam faceres tempora. si autem ante caelum et terram nullum erat tempus, cur quaeritur quid tunc faciebas? non enim erat tunc, ubi non erat tempus.

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Or rather: What then of a putative distinction between tempus/ipsum tempus and tempus’ plural form, tempora? A preliminary approach to Confessions XI will be necessary simply to establish the validity of this distinction, without which all the time-statements in book XII would remain obscure. And this approach to book XI first hinges on identifying a heuristic structure for Augustine’s time-investigation.24 Von Herrmann describes a broad interpretive consensus in this way: The first part of Augustine’s time-investigation [sc. XI.14–20] puts the being or non-being of time in question, and as a rule, this has been seen in the Augustine literature. But now chapter 21, with which the second part begins, deals with the measurement of time, and throughout the following chapters [sc. XI.21–28] Augustine asks repeatedly how it is possible to measure time-spans (Zeitdauern). Thus, commentators on Augustine have taken this question concerning the measurement of time as their lead (Leitfaden) in the second part of the time-investigation.25 Von Herrmann contests aspects of this consensus, as will I. But here I want to suggest that this received distribution of the time-investigation—first phase: XI.14–20; second phase: XI.21–28—is imprecise. In Confessions XI, the investigation of ‘time’ is announced at XI.14.17 and concluded at XI.29.39,26 while the last paragraphs of the book (XI.30–31) reprise the total arc of book XI and prepare a shift to book XII (see chapter 5). But the first phase of Augustine’s enquiry comprises XI.15–22, while the second phase comprises XI.23–28. Within this second phase, there is a no less significant transition from XI.23–26, in which Augustine discusses temporal mensuration relative to the motion of the celestial bodies (solis et lunae ac siderum motus, XI.23.29), then any solitary body (corporis motus, XI.24.31), and then metricized enunciation (cum voces pronuntiando, XI.26.33); and 24

25 26

It is a common mistake to separate Conf. XI.29 from the time-investigation proper. Von Herrmann, for instance, follows Husserl in this regard. Cf. Von Herrmann 2008, 26: “Augustine’s investigation of time as time begins at Confessiones XI,14 and concludes with Confessiones XI,28.” Ricœur (1984, 22) accepts the same division, but unlike von Herrmann, Ricœur (1984, 25–30) later integrates Conf. XI.29–31 into a succinct discussion of time and eternity. Strangely, Heidegger (2012, 41) cites “[Conf.] XI.14–30” for the time-investigation. Von Herrmann 1992, 50/2008, 55 (tr. mod.). Jordan (1955, 401–402) takes Conf. XI.29—that “rushing and wonderful passage”—to be the peak, and not the denouement, of the time-investigation; O’Daly (1977) recognizes and develops the significance of the section.

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XI.27–28, in which he analyzes temporal mensuration relative to the voice of a body (vox corporis, XI.27.34), then syllabic time-quanta per se (simpla vel dupla vel quid aliud, XI.27.34), and finally intended time-quanta (donec ad propositum terminum perducatur, XI.27.36). Schematically, then, I suggest that the time-investigation in Confessions XI is distributed in this way:

XI.14 First phase XI.15–22 Second phase XI.23–28 XI.29

Inauguration of the time-question Acquisition of a trine-‘presence’ in anima XI.15–20: analytics and aporias of ‘presence’ XI.21–22: renewal of the time-question Motion and the possibility of mensuration XI.23–26: mensuration and motus-vox XI.27–28: mensuration and vox-intentio Climax and transition: distentio est vita mea

Recall that in Confessions XI.14 Augustine introduces, without apparent order or distinction, a series of terms: ‘times,’ ‘time’ and ‘time-itself’ (tempora, tempus, ipsum tempus). Then recall (from the beginning of this chapter) that it is at Confessions XI.20.26—where von Herrmann cuts off the first phase of the enquiry—that Augustine locates tempora ‘in the soul.’ And finally, recall that at Confessions XI.22.28—where I suggest the close of the first phase of the timeinvestigation—Augustine remarks that “we say ‘time’ and ‘time’ (tempus), ‘times’ and ‘times’ (tempora).”27 This last comment is deceptively banal, and its repetitions are deceptively rhetorical; and because of this, Augustine’s observation is generally overlooked.28 But the sentences that follow and refer back to it should alert us to its significance: We say these words and we hear these words, and we are understood and we understand. They are hyper-manifest and hyper-common—and again, they are endlessly obscure and their discovery is new. dicimus haec et audimus haec et intellegimur et intellegimus. manifestissima et usitatissima sunt, et eadem rursus nimis latent et nova est inventio eorum. (XI.22.28) 27 Aug. Conf. XI.22.28: dicimus tempus et tempus, tempora et tempora. 28 For instance: von Herrmann (2008, 112–15), perhaps because of his faulty division of book XI, does not remark much less interrogate this phrase in his interpretation of the section; Ricœur (1984, 13–14) elides the phrases I stress here, in his quotation from Conf. XI.22.28; O’Donnell (1992, III:285–87) provides no gloss.

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Augustine has criticized the use of the word ‘tempora’ specifically, in ordinary language, at XI.20.26, but it is with these sentences that Augustine closes the first phase of his time-investigation and initiates the second,29 at XI.22.28. Despite the vagueness of his gesture here towards the word ‘time’ (tempus) and its plural, ‘times’ (tempora), it yet suggests that the sense-character of these lexical forms may not be identical in Confessions XI. And the second phase of Augustine’s time-investigation confirms this. We will hold ourselves, at present, to a partial review of the first division (XI.23–26) of this second phase (XI.23–28) of the time-investigation. There is sufficient evidence in Confessions XI.23–24 for us to provisionally establish a distinction between Augustine’s deployment of ‘time’ and ‘times’ in Confessions XI, and thus to proceed towards Confessions XII (see chapter 5), in which ‘times’ will predominate over ‘time.’ Why this is so will become increasingly clear. 4.2

“We Say ‘Time,’ We Say ‘Times’ ” (Conf. XI.22–24)

It is in Confessions XI.23–26 that Augustine addresses several possible identifications of ‘time’ with physical movement, and note well: the question of identity is distinct from a question of dependency. Augustine opens Confessions XI.23.29 with a doctrine he has heard.30 This is what Alliez describes as the Platonic “thesis of the identification of time with the movement of the heavens,”31 though this thesis is no less 29





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As some confirmation of this, compare the following sentences from Conf. XI.14.17 (noting here the repetition, only, of tempus): quid autem familiarius et notius in loquendo commemoramus quam tempus? et intellegimus utique cum id loquimur, intellegimus etiam cum alio loquente id audimus. quid est ergo tempus? (XI.14.17) with Augustine’s later observation: dicimus haec et audimus haec et intellegimur et intellegimus. manifestissima et usitatissima sunt, et eadem rursus nimis latent et nova est inventio eorum. (XI.22.28) These sentences which close Conf. XI.22.28 are the most precise echo of XI.14.17 in the time-investigation, i.e. these sentences renew and re-inaugurate the time-question of XI.14.17 relative, hereafter, to a subtle (and stipulative) dis-identity of tempus and its plural form, tempora. Cf. O’Donnell 1992, III:287: “The strict sense of the text is that this theory was presented to [Augustine] viva voce by a learned contemporary. The way the scriptural text is brought in leaves open the possibility that the homo doctus was a real person known to [Augustine] from the Platonizing days in Milan—perhaps not unrelated to the homo immanissimo typho turgidus of [Conf.] 7.9.13.” Alliez 1996, 125/1991, 188.

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Aristotelian32 than Platonic. Yet Augustine does not address this doctrine relative to ‘time’ (tempus);33 it is rather, for him, a question of the identity of ‘times’ (tempora). Augustine writes this: I have heard . . . that the movement-itself of the sun, moon and stars are times, and I did not assent. For why should not ‘times’ rather be the movement of all bodies? audivi . . . quod solis et lunae ac siderum motus ipsa sint tempora, et non adnui. cur enim non potius omnium corporum motus sint ‘tempora’? (XI.23.29) Augustine reiterates his rejection of this celestial-movement thesis towards the end of XI.23.30, and this is the only other place in Confessions XI.23–25 where he employs tempora rather than tempus: Let no one therefore tell me that the movement of the heavenly bodies are ‘times.’ nemo ergo mihi dicat caelestium corporum motus esse ‘tempora.’ (XI.23.30) Augustine thus clearly rejects the identification of celestial movement-itself with ‘times’ (tempora) in Confessions XI;34 and in this regard there is no conflict, however superficial, between books XI and XII.35 In the passages in book XII 32

Cf. for instance, Arist. Gen.corr. 2.11 (338a–b). O’Donnell (1992, III:286) also alerts us to a Stoic tag in this paragraph—namely, communes notitias (XI.23.29)—on which, he writes: “a centerpiece of Stoic logic (attacked long before in a Platonic vein by Plutarch’s ‘de communibus notitiis,’ for example).” 33 Pace Lacey 1968, 231: “The motion of the heavenly bodies constitutes neither time nor the measure of time.” 34 Cf. for instance, Cic. Nat.deor. I.9.21: saecla nunc dico non ea quae dierum noctiumque numero annuis cursibus conficiuntur, nam fateor ea sine mundi conversione effici non potuisse; II.7.19: una totius caeli conversione. 35 There is, however, a conflict with what Augustine writes at Aug. Civ. XII.16, where he also specifically deploys the term ‘times’ (tempora): “And if time did not originate with the heavens, but indeed originated before the heavens—not, indeed, the time marked in hours and days and months and years, for these dimensions of temporal spaces, which are commonly and properly called ‘times,’ did manifestly begin with and from the motion of heavenly bodies, for which reason god said, when he appointed them: ‘Let these be for

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where Augustine insists on the production of ‘times’ by physical movement (see chapter 9), there is no identification of such movement with celestial movement. But more importantly, note what Augustine does not reject in Confessions XI.23.29–30. He refines (potius) and generalizes the celestial thesis,36 such that “the movement of all bodies” (omnium corporum motus)—hereafter referred to as motus omnis37—may constitute, and indeed, “be times” (esse tempora, XI.23.30). Unlike the celestial thesis—and this is overlooked in the ­literature38—Augustine here permits a refined thesis of terrestrial-celestial movement, or motus omnis, to produce tempora: Why should not times rather be the movement of all bodies? cur enim non potius omnium corporum motus sint tempora? (XI.23.29) It is precisely this generalized thesis, which identifies motus omnis with ‘times’—but never, as we will see, with ‘time’—that Augustine assumes in book XII and repeatedly affirms there. So times, in XI.23.29–30, may be produced by ‘the movement of all ­bodies.’ And Augustine’s motivation for not developing this thesis in Confessions

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signs and seasons, for days and for years’—if, I say, time originated in some other mutable motion, whose parts were one prior, the other succeeding and posterior, such as cannot possibly exist at one and the same time . . .” (At si tempus non a caelo, verum et ante caelum fuit; non quidem in horis et diebus et mensibus et annis—nam istae dimensiones temporalium spatiorum, quae usitate ac proprie dicuntur ‘tempora,’ manifestum est quod a motu siderum coeperint; unde et deus, cum haec institueret, dixit: “Et sint in signa et in tempora et in dies et in annos” [= Genesis 1.14], sed in aliquo mutabili motu, cuius aliud prius, aliud posterius praeterit, eo quod simul esse non possunt . . .). And that Augustine also—albeit aporetically—refers to angelic motion (angelicis motibus) as involving ‘times,’ at Civ. XII.16, suggests that the disjunctivist type of interpretation—wrongly espoused by Castoriadis et al. within the Conf. (see 2.2)—could rather be pursued from Aug. Conf. XI–XII to Aug. Civ. XII. Cf. Arts 1927, 64: “The actual meaning of potius is ‘rather,’ ‘preferably.’ It indicates one thing to be preferred, and the other to be replaced or excluded, e. g. Callistratus postulabat, ut potius amicitiam sequerentur Atticorum . . .” Cf. the phrase motus universi at Aug. Rhyth. VI.7.19: uniquique animanti in genere proprio, proportione universitatis, sensus locorum temporumque tributus est . . . ita sensus ejus actioni ejus congruat, quam proportione agit universi motus. But Callahan (1967, 86–87) remarks, in passing: “While he is dismissing this [celestial] definition of time . . . [Augustine] comes to realize that time has something to do with motion even if it does not depend on a particular motion.”

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XI.23—or indeed, in the time-investigation of Confessions XI—is stated very clearly in XI.23: I desire to know the power and nature of time, by which we measure the movements of [all] bodies. ego scire cupio vim naturamque temporis, quo metimur corporum motus. (XI.23.30) This question of the conditioning ‘power’ (vis) and ‘nature’ (natura)39 of tempus (→ dimensive time, temporal mensuration) is distinct, for Augustine, from the question of the generalized production of tempora (→ mutive times, blank succession). The fact that both of Augustine’s qualifying terms in this statement—vis and natura—appear nowhere else in Confessions XI immediately raises the question of their sense, and I will turn to that question momentarily (see 4.3). But first, it is necessary to recapitulate, here, and then to extend a lexical progression which first comes to clarity in Confessions XI.23–24. (i) At XI.20.26, Augustine reflects very specifically on a pre-reflective use of the word ‘times’ (tempora) in Latin. (ii) At XI.22.28, he pauses over the fact that late-antique Latin speakers “say ‘time’ and ‘time’ (tempus), ‘times’ and ‘times’ (tempora).” (iii) At XI.23.29, he rejects a strict identity of celestial motion and ‘times’ (tempora), asking: “Why should not times rather (potius) be the movement of all bodies?” (iv) At XI.23.30, as just quoted, he then declares: “I desire to know the power and nature of time (tempus), by which we measure the movements of [all] bodies.”

39

For the conjunction of these Latin terms, cf. for instance Cic. Or. 31.112: “Let us . . . discuss the power and nature (vim et naturam) of eloquence itself”; 32.115: “He [sc. the orator] should know first the power, nature (vim, naturam) and classes of words.” (But also, Cic. Inv. I.24.34: Naturam ipsam definire difficile est.) Or apropos of time—albeit in Greek—cf. Plut. Plat.quaest. VIII.4 (1007A–B): “It must be stated, then, that because of ignorance . . . [some] imagine time to be . . . the extension of motion (διάστημα κινήσεως) and nothing else, as did some of the Stoics, defining it by an accident and not comprehending its very essence and power (τὴν δ᾽ οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δύναμιν).”

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Where is it, then, that we find ourselves early on in the second phase of Augustine’s time-investigation? ‘Times’ are preferably to be identified with motus omnis, yet Augustine is not interested in ‘times’; rather, he is pursuing the question of ‘time.’ Thus, he proceeds to this crucial, terminological clarification which has never been developed in the literature: (v) At XI.24.31, Augustine again employs the preferential term, ‘rather’ (potius),40 but now to specify what he means by ‘time’: Since, then, the motion of any single body is distinct from that by which we measure how long such a motion lasts, who cannot see which of these is rather (potius) to be called ‘time’?41 cum itaque aliud sit motus corporis, aliud quo metimur quamdiu sit, quis non sentiat quid horum potius ‘tempus’ dicendum sit? Having closed the first phase of his inquiry with a vague—and, to us, superficially meaningless—repetition of the words ‘time’ and ‘times’ (XI.22.28), Augustine then opens the second phase of his time-investigation by establishing what is meant by ‘times’ (XI.23.29) and ‘time’ (XI.24.31) respectively, and proprie dicta. By ‘times’ (tempora), Augustine most fundamentally denotes a mutivity that is produced by and can be identified with “the movement of all bodies” (XI.23.29). By ‘time’ (tempus), Augustine restrictively denotes that dimension—that condition of possibility of a space of time—“by which we measure the movements of [all] bodies” (XI.23.30, XI.24.31). Registering this duplex terminological clarification is a sine qua non for interpreting the remainder of Augustine’s time-investigation, and strangely—to my knowledge—it has never been noted.42 Augustine refines the denotation of ‘times’ to a condition of mutivity that is produced by motus omnis 40

41 42

The word only appears 3× in Conf. XI, and its first appearance helps Augustine to close off the ‘prophetic’ digression, at XI.19.25: vel potius de futuris doces praesentia? If this brief excursus on ‘prophecy’ is bracketed, then Augustine’s use of potius is strictly limited to his clarification of the sense of ‘times’ (tempora) at XI.23.29, and then of ‘time’ (tempus) at XI.24.31. Cf. Plot. Enn. III.7.8: “. . . which would more correctly (ὀρθότερον) be called ‘time’.” However, cf. Jurgeleit 1988, 227–28.

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(potius . . . tempora, XI.23.29), and then refines the denotation of ‘time’ to a condition of possibility of the measure of such motus (potius tempus, XI.24.31). When Augustine pursues, hereafter, his question of ‘time,’ he is solely and stipulatively concerned with the condition of possibility of temporal mensuration—and that ‘the soul’ (anima-animus) is this condition of possibility, in Confessions XI, is a perfectly Aristotelian and Epicurean conclusion. The question of the condition of possibility of temporal succession—which is for Augustine, as for Lucretius, ‘the movement of all bodies’—is hereafter, for Augustine, a question of ‘times.’ 4.3 Towards Augustine’s “Power and Nature of Time” (Conf. X.6–7, XI.23–24) When Augustine writes at Confessions XI.23.30 that he desires to know “the power and nature of time,” this is not merely to prepare his lexical clarification of ‘time’ at XI.24.31. Rather, with this reference to ‘power’ (vis)43 and ‘nature’ (natura), Augustine is also foreshadowing the second division (XI.27–28) of the second phase (XI.23–28) of his time-investigation. Without clarifying what he evokes by these terms vis and natura, then, it also cannot be determined what he later means by anima-animus, and thus, by ‘time’—i.e. “that by which we measure how long [any] motion lasts” (XI.24.31). A very brief, schematic review of these terms will suffice to give them a definite lexical range: (α) The only appearance of the term ‘power’ (vis) in Confessions XI is at XI.23.30, apropos of ‘time.’ In Confessions X, at the first appearance of vis, it has this duplex sense: the soul (anima) is a ‘power’ (vis) that inheres in a body (corpus), suffusing it with life (vita); and that sensitizes a body (sensificare), so that it is a living flesh (caro).44 43

Cf. O’Daly 1985, 531–32: “In . . . treatises written in the same period as De libero arbitrio [Augustine] characteristically emphasizes the sensitive soul’s activity or ‘attention.’ In De quantitate animae he describes the power of the soul (vis animae) in sense-perception, which occurs through this attention (‘intendit se anima in tactum’). The same sensitive soul engages in other activities—of avoidance or appetition, association of impressions, habitual memory. This soul is common to animals and men [Aug. Quant.anim. 33.71].” 44 Aug. Conf. X.7.11: vim meam qua haereo corpori et vitaliter compagem eius repleo . . . est alia vis, non solum qua vivifico sed etiam qua sensifico carnem meam . . . istam vim meam . . . hanc habet equus et mulus: sentiunt enim etiam ipsi per corpus. I return to Conf. X.7.11 in chapters 7 and 8: it is an essential passage in the arc of the book.

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The second appearance of ‘power’ (vis) in Confessions X strongly identifies it, at once, with Augustine’s soul (animus), memory (memoria) and nature (natura).45 Of the fourteen times that ‘power’ (vis) appears in book X, it is exclusively linked to anima-animus as the life of a body (vita corporis), or to memory (memoria).46 (β) The only appearance of the term ‘nature’ (natura) in Confessions XI is at XI.23.30, apropos of ‘time.’ In Confessions X, the first and second appearances of natura identify it with bodies (corpora) as such, and with the soul (anima) as the life of a body (vita corporis).47 Of the five times that ‘nature’ (natura) appears in book X, it is exclusively linked to bodies as such (corpora), to anima-animus as the life of a body (vita corporis), or to memory (memoria).48 Augustine’s question of the “power and nature of time” in XI.23.30 is therefore lexically signalled as a question of the soul (anima-animus) as the life of a body (vita corporis), as activating the sense of the flesh (sensus carnis), and as possibilizing memory (memoria). Without having recourse to Confessions X—that is, within the horizon of the time-investigation itself—this decisive formulation of ‘time’ remains essentially indeterminate. Also note that Augustine’s desire to know the vis and natura of ‘time’ is by no means divorced from “the movement of bodies” (corporum motus, XI.23.30). 45 Aug. Conf. X.8.15: magna ista vis est memoriae, magna nimis, deus meus, penetrale amplum et infinitum. quis ad fundum eius pervenit? et vis est haec animi mei atque ad meam naturam pertinet. 46 Aug. Conf. X.13.20: per vim memoriae recordabor; X.14.21: affectiones quoque animi mei eadem memoria continet . . . sese habet vis memoriae; X.15.23: vi memoriae; X.16.25: memoriae meae vis; X.17.26: magna vis est memoriae, nescio quid horrendum, deus meus, profunda et infinita multiplicitas. et hoc animus est, et hoc ego ipse sum. quid ergo sum, deus meus? quae natura sum? varia, multimoda vita et immensa vehementer . . . tanta vis est memoriae, tanta vitae vis est in homine vivente mortaliter! . . . hanc vim meam quae memoria vocatur . . . istam vim meam quae memoria vocatur; X.40.65: in memoriae . . .  vis mea. 47 Aug. Conf. X.6.10: hoc dicit eorum natura. viden? moles est, minor in parte quam in toto. iam tu melior es, tibi dico, anima, quoniam tu vegetas molem corporis tui praebens ei vitam; X.8.12: transibo ergo et istam naturae meae . . . et venio in campos et lata praetoria memoriae. 48 Aug. Conf. X.8.15: magna ista vis est memoriae, magna nimis . . . quis ad fundum eius pervenit? et vis est haec animi mei atque ad meam naturam pertinet; X.17.26: quid ergo sum, deus meus? quae natura sum? varia, multimoda vita et immensa vehementer. ecce in memoriae meae; X.35.55: hinc ad perscrutanda naturae, quae praeter nos est.

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In Confessions XI.23–24, Augustine’s term ‘time’ (tempus) emerges, quite explicitly, as the ‘by-which’ of the mensuration of all corporeal motion.49 Thus, in Confessions XI.24.31, Augustine addresses a new time-question: that of the identification of ‘time’ (tempus) with “the movement of a [single] body” (motum corporis). Once again, note that this is not—as per Alliez—a question of dependency, but of identity;50 and note that Augustine’s plural, ‘times’ (tempora), is absent from the discussion in XI.24 (since he has shifted from the question of tempora in XI.23.29 to the question of tempus, in pursuit of the strong desire he has stated at XI.23.30): Do you [o lord] command me to agree with someone who says that time is the movement of a [single] body? You do not command this. For I hear [in the process of my reflection] that a body is never moved except in time: you have said it. But I do not hear that the movement-itself of a [single] body is time: you have not said it. . . . Therefore time is not the movement of a [single] body. iubes ut approbem, si quis dicat tempus esse motum corporis? non iubes. nam corpus nullum nisi in tempore moveri audio: tu dicis. ipsum autem corporis motum tempus esse non audio: non tu dicis. . . . non ergo tempus corporis motus. (XI.24.31) As with Confessions XI.23, it is necessary to delimit precisely what Augustine rejects here: there will be no identification of the ‘movement-itself of a [single] body’ with ‘time’ (tempus) in Confessions XI or XII. The movement of any discrete body in space is itself not the originary by which of temporal mensuration as such; and thus, in the wake of Augustine’s restrictive definition of ‘time’ (tempus) in the preceding paragraph—namely, as that “by which we measure the movements of bodies” (XI.23.30)—such movement is not itself ‘time’ (tempus). But Augustine’s resolute denial that motus corporis = tempus, in Confessions XI.24.31, in no way impinges on his generalized thesis in Confessions XI.23.29, according to which motus omnis = tempora. That ‘the movement of a single body’ (motus corporis) ≠ ‘the movement of all bodies’ 49

50

The other essential potius-formulation in Conf. XI appears at XI.24.31: cum itaque aliud sit motus corporis, aliud quo metimur quamdiu sit, quis non sentiat quid horum potius ‘tempus’ dicendum sit? It must be noted that the discussion in Conf. XI.24.31 of “the movement of a body” (motum corporis) is a drastically restricted one, relative to Augustine’s revised thesis in XI.23.29 regarding “the movement of all bodies” (omnium corporum motus).

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(motus omnis) is self-evident;51 and I have also tried to establish, here, the subtler point that Augustine’s ‘time’ (tempus) ≠ ‘times’ (tempora). Augustine’s ostinato-phrase in Confessions XI.27.36—“I measure times” (tempora metior)—will shore up this conceptual dis-identity, and this lexical distinction, in Part III. For at the end of his time-investigation, the ‘times’ (tempora) of motus omnis are by no means, simpliciter, the ‘by-which’ of originary temporal mensuration. That is to say, by Confessions XI.27–28, tempora are not at all the power (vis) and nature (natura) that measures motion—i.e. tempus—but rather “what-itself is measured” (ipsam metior, XI.27.36) in originary temporal mensuration.52 And while Confessions XI.27–28 are devoted to a proto-phenomenological (yet in certain regards, anti-phenomenological) analysis of this mensural power (i.e. ‘time’)53 and its problematic space (i.e. ‘times’); in Confessions XII, Augustine is much concerned, albeit indirectly, with the logical-primordial constitution of tempora: the condition of possibility of succession. It is because of this that Augustine returns, in book XII, to the motus omnis that he refers to—in passing—in Confessions XI.23.29: in book XII, he is concerned with mutive ‘times’ over dimensive ‘time.’ And it is because Augustine’s stipulative distinction in Confessions XI between ‘times’ (motus omnis → succession) and ‘time’ (distentio → dimension) has never been registered, that a ‘contradiction’ or a ‘retreat’ has been suggested, when Augustine writes in book XII: “Times (tempora) are produced by the movements of things” (XII.8.8). Far from being a contradiction, this is a repetition of book XI, where Augustine suggests that “times (tempora) [would] be the movement of all bodies” (XI.23.29). 51

52 53

Lacey (1968, 231) senses this—“Time is not definable as the motion of any body. . . . The passage of time is compatible with any specified body standing still (not necessarily with all bodies standing still)”—but still misses it: “It is this strand of thought . . . that I see as leading to absolute time. Time is distinct from any motion.” In Part III, I will clarify a difficult, duplex sense of ‘tempora’ in Conf. XI.20 and XI.27. And note: it is very clear in Conf. XI that dimensive time (i.e. spatium temporis) is the logical and phenomenal condition for temporal mensuration. Augustine is as concerned with identifying the condition for dimensive time as he is with originary temporal mensuration; it is this condition that he calls distentio.

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Towards the Speculative Terrain of Confessions XII (Conf. XI.30–31) In Confessions X and XI there is an intensive involution of the temporal and the ideal that is absent in book XII. Or rather, more precisely, this involution—as Lyotard has it, “what is relative is agitated by the absolute”1—is far less acute in Confessions XII, where Augustine’s speculative terrain will require a strenuous, periodic exclusion of all sense-affective categories: a discursive suspension of immanence. This (impossible) suspension is not only necessitated by Augustine’s desire to achieve the concept of a transcendent creature: the hyper-heavenly, or “intellectual heaven” (caelum intellectuale). Augustine insists on an even more difficult suspension of immanence in order to cognize a radically subtendent creature: the hyper-terrestrial, or “indeterminate matter” (materia informis). The initial speculative condition of Augustine’s transcendence and subtendence in Confessions XII is yet identical: the hyper-heavenly and the hyper-terrestrial are constitutively inexperienced. That is to say, the speculative pre-delineation of Augustine’s concepts is that the hyper-heavenly and the hyper-terrestrial are constitutively inapparent in this life.2 To conceive of Augustine’s hyper-heavenly or hyper-terrestrial as conceivably apparent is to fail to attain his concept—while to conceive of the hyper-heavenly or the hyper-terrestrial as inexistent is also to fail to attain his concept. Thus whereas, in Confessions XI, it is a question of reflectively clarifying the sense-appearance of temporal inexistences (i.e. ‘impresence’), in book XII it is a question of speculatively delineating several constitutively inexperienced and inapparent, timeless existents. Nevertheless, the terminological, conceptual and rhetorical linkages between Confessions XI and XII—of which the ‘time’/‘times’ distinction is 1 Lyotard 2000, 68/1998, 94. The latter half of Lyotard’s Confession of Augustine (2000, 37–57/1998, 59–81) and several of his “Notebook” and “Fragments” sections draw heavily on Conf. XII and XIII. 2 ‘In this life’ here refers, dis-symmetrically, to the hyper-heavenly and not to the hyperterrestrial; this distinction should be assumed hereafter. As will become clear, Augustine hopes to behold and inhabit the hyper-heavenly post mortem; there is no such possibility (or hope) with the hyper-terrestrial.

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only one—are strong.3 And this renders any interpretation that posits a disjunction here less credible prima facie. Part II will open my interpretation of book XII with the caelum intellectuale (see chapters 7 and 8), since it is there that Augustine reintroduces certain terms from his analyses of ipsum tempus in XI.27–28, and their reprise in XI.31. This redeployment in book XII of several ‘time’-expressions from the last sections of book XI serves to demonstrate that when Augustine insists on motus omnis as producing ‘times,’ in Confessions XII (see chapter 9), he has neither forgotten nor abandoned the results of his time-investigation in Confessions XI. On the contrary, when Augustine’s speculative procedure in book XII requires, for its precision, reviving his distentioterminology from book XI, he does so very carefully. And that Augustine also uses his distentio-terminology in Confession XI.31 should prepare us—as it prepares my interpretation—for the relevance of Confessions XI in interpreting book XII, and for adumbrations of book XII in book XI.4 The first adumbration to concern us occurs when Augustine lifts his gaze, at Confessions XI.30–31, from time towards a preter-temporal animus that he prefers to leave unnamed at the end of book XI. In book XII it will become the “hyper-heavenly” (caelum caeli, XII.2.2), which is perhaps a sublime creature, perhaps a “gorgeous phantasm”5 (Augustine does not decide the question here).6 But regardless, this is confessedly a creature of Augustine’s 3 Augustine’s echoic prose in the Conf. teems with and breeds inner-textual references. On his meta-interpretive context for this strategy: Conf. XII.26–28, XIII.24. 4 In Ricœur’s (1984, 25–30) discussion of Conf. XI.29–31, his only anticipation of Conf. XII is where he sees in XI.30–31 the “possibility” of “a temporal dimension peculiar to angelic beings.” This is manifestly not what Augustine asserts, however problematically, of the caelum intellectuale in book XII. My discussions in Part II will clarify. 5 Cf. Aug. Conf. III.6.10: phantasmata splendida; IV.7.12: non enim tu eras, sed vanum phantasma et error meus erat deus meus. Or again, perhaps, a gorgeous anti-phantasm. Cf. Aug. Vera rel. 10.18: phantasmata porro nihil sunt aliud quam de specie corporis corporeo sensu attracta figmenta: quae memoriae mandare ut accepta sunt, vel partiri, vel multiplicare, vel contrahere, vel distendere, vel ordinare, vel perturbare, vel quolibet modo figurare cogitando facillimum est. 6 Aug. Conf. XI.30.40: etiamsi est aliqua supra tempora; XI.31.41: si est . . .; XII.11.12: o beata, si qua ista est. Teske (1983, 90 n. 47) mistakenly writes on Augustine’s caveats at Conf. XI.30 and XII.11: “The hypothetical mode of expression is . . . more a matter of gently insinuating a Plotinian idea into the mind of an audience not entirely receptive to such intellectualizing than an expression of doubt upon Augustine’s part.” O’Connell (1989, 152) simply deflects the question. Unlike hyper-Plotinian interpreters of the Conf., whose ‘optic’ similarly constrains them to dismiss the first, philosophically vital confessio ignorantiae in the Conf., at Conf. I.6.7

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desire.7 And indeed, it is the allure of this creature that determines one inflection of distentio in Augustine’s resolution-cum-lament at Confessions XI.29.39: “My life is elongation” (distentio est vita mea). This elongation is, in part, a sign of Augustine’s desire to inhabit the hyper-heavenly, post mortem.8 Thus Lyotard: “The Confessions are written under the temporal sign of waiting. Waiting (l’attente) is the name of the consciousness of the future.”9 But this desirousness for a timeless heaven—and with Confessions XI.30–31 and throughout book XII, significantly, Augustine’s concept of the ‘timeless’ ceases to coincide with his concept of ‘eternity’—fails to extricate the Confessions from the question of time. As with ‘eternity’ in Confessions XI, so a negative operation on the concept of time in book XII is Augustine’s sole mode of access to his concepts of the ‘timeless.’ And as in book XI, where this initial, negative operation (XI.3–13) results in an intensification of his concept of time (XI.14–29), so in book XII: Augustine’s speculative delineation of a singularly intellectual, i.e. discarnate creature,10 in book XII results in a progressive (albeit negative) fixation on the sensuous (or more properly, duplicitous) essence of time in book XI. But first, it is advisable to pause in the last sections of book XI, as is rarely done,11 to observe the various ways in which Augustine revisits book XI in its entirety and prepares his speculative terrain in book XII. 5.1

Temporal Presence: Varieties of ‘Impresence’

In Confessions XI.30.40, Augustine reiterates his desire to remain, in his desire, stretched-out towards and stabilized by the cipher of an absolute future in which he will “flow-into,” be washed and immersed in, divine love.12

(cf. O’Connell 1989, 41–43), I stress Augustine’s sceptical restraint here. He clearly believes in the hyper-heavenly and longs attain it, yet he repeatedly writes: “this is the sense I have in the mean time” (hoc interim sentio, XII.13.16). 7 Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.15.21, XII.16.23. 8 Cf. Aug. Conf. VI.16.26: post mortem . . . animae vitam. 9 Lyotard 2000, 70/1998, 96. Cf. Schürmann 1993, 236: “Henceforth the wait defers pleasure . . . [and futurity] comes through the postponement of delight.” 10 Aug. Conf. XII.11.12: mentem puram; XII.13.16: caelum intellectuale. 11 Perhaps only by R.J. Teske (1983, 2008), who is the bête noir of the whole of chapter 5. 12 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39–30.40: donec in te confluam purgatus et liquidus igne amoris tui. et stabo atque solidabor in te; cf. VII.17.23: et mirabar quod iam te amabam, non pro te

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In hope, Augustine’s desire is a “restlessness [which] holds in advance its rest.”13 The liquid imagery here, which is not pronounced in book XI,14 reverses an image of spatial-temporal dispersion at XI.2.2, where Augustine speaks of a “flowing-out” of times (see 13.1).15 And as a sign of his desiderative stability or rectitude, still living in a violent flux of ‘times’ (ego in tempora dissilui, XI.29.39), Augustine here refuses to tolerate the impious questions he has tolerated (and insisted on addressing) in Confessions XI.10–13, and which he here repeats.16 The immediate relevance of this redux from the last several sections of his eternity-meditation (XI.3–13) is that Augustine advances, here, on his reasoning in Confessions XI.12–13.17 There, he proceeded by way of the separate, analytic assertions (for the Ciceronian-Epicurean provenance of which, see 3.4): (α) “No creature was produced before any creature was produced” = nulla fiebat creatura antequam fieret ulla creatura (XI.12.14), and (β) “Nor in any time was there no time” = nec aliquo tempore non erat tempus (XI.13.16).18 In Confessions XI.30.40, Augustine reprises (β),19 but not (α). Rather, he here insists on a new, synthetic assertion that underlies his time-questions in book XII:

phantasma, et non stabam frui deo meo; VIII.1.1: nec certior de te sed stabilior in te esse cupiebam. 13 Lyotard 2000, 70. Cf. Schürmann 1993, 265: “The will . . . institutes the [post-mortem] future and thus is temporalized as hope.” 14 Aquinas is right to trace the notion of a “flowing now” (nunc fluens) back to Boethius, and not Augustine, at Aq. S.Th. I, q. 10, a. 2: Dicit enim Boetius (lib. De Trinitate, cap. 4) quod nunc fluens facit tempus: nunc stans acit aeternitatem. 15 Aug. Conf. XI.2.2: nolo in aliud horae diffluant. 16 Cf. Augustine’s parallel manoeuvre at Conf. II.1.1: recordari volo transactas foeditates meas; II.10.18: . . . foeda est; nolo in eam intendere, nolo eam videre. 17 O’Donnell (1992, III:297) observes that the impious questions here are “repeated verbatim from [Conf.] 11.10.12 and 11.12.14,” but not that Augustine sharpens his response to those questions. 18 Cf. Aug. Civ. XII.15: erat ergo tempus, quandum nullum erat tempus. Quis hoc stultissimus dixerit? . . . Erat tempus, quando nullum erat tempus, quis vel insipientissimus dixerit? 19 Aug. Conf. XI.30.40: “Where there is no time they cannot say ‘never’ ” (non dicitur ‘numquam’ ubi non est tempus).

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(γ) “No time is possible without a creature” = nullum tempus esse posse sine creatura (XI.30.40).20 While with (γ) Augustine anticipates his investigation of the speculative conditions for time in book XII, he also anticipates a way in which (γ)—the most precise speculative formulation to come out of his eternity-meditation in book XI—will underlie his speculative problems in book XII. In the last sentence of Confessions XI.30.40, Augustine introduces—as I have noted—the indistinct idea of some creature that exists “beyond times” (aliqua supra tempora). This is a gesture towards the caelum intellectuale in book XII. Yet with his idea of the hyper-heavenly in book XII, which is negatively mirrored by his idea of indeterminate matter (materia informis)—i.e. of a sub-temporal creature—the category of ‘creature’ in (γ) ceases to serve Augustine as a sufficient condition for ‘time.’ Augustine’s speculative interpretation of Genesis 1.1–2 in Confessions XII posits a hyper-heavenly and a hyperterrestrial species of timeless creature.21 It is thus the very precision of (γ), in the penultimate section of Confessions XI, which will determine the acuteness of Augustine’s temporal-condition questions in book XII, namely: (i) Since the caelum intellectuale, a singularly intellectual creature,22 is preter-temporal—what is the intellectual condition for time? (ii) Since the materia informis, a singularly material creature,23 is preter-temporal—what is the corporeal condition for time? 20 Aug. Civ. XI.5: “There is no time before the world” (tempus nullum sit ante mundum). Cf. also Aug. Gen.litt. V.5.12: factae itaque creaturae motibus coeperunt currere tempora: unde ante creaturam frustra tempora requiruntur, quasi possint inveniri ante tempora. motus enim si nullus esset vel spiritalis vel corporalis creaturae, quo per praesens praeteritis futura succederent, nullum esset tempus omnino. 21 Aug. Conf. XII.12.15: duo reperio quae fecisti carentia temporibus. O’Connell (1989, 148) writes that “the highest and lowest ranks in the hierarchy of being are, in [Plotinus’] term, ‘impassible’—not subject to change—and, significantly, for reasons very like those Augustine gives [in Conf. XII]”; yet in Augustine’s exposition, neither the timeless hyper-terrestrial nor the timeless hyper-heavenly is ‘impassible.’ Augustine’s materia informis is conceived as a sheer capacity for determination, and thus for motus and tempora (ipsa capax est formarum omnium in quas mutantur res mutabiles, XII.6.6), while Augustine’s caelum intellectuale is repeatedly posited as mutable (mutabile tamen non mutatum, XII.12.15). Pace O’Connell (1989, 149), then, Augustine is by no means concerned with “immutables,” in a Plotinian sense, in Conf. XII. 22 Aug. Conf. XII.9.9: creatura est aliqua intellectualis; XII.15.20: intellectualis natura . . . mens rationalis et intellectualis; cf. Gen.lib.imp. 3.7: angeli et omnes intellectuales potestates. 23 Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: inter formam et nihil, nec formatum nec nihil, informe prope nihil.

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Unlike Augustine’s time-question in Confessions XI, this duplex question of temporal conditions is never articulated, as such, in book XII. Perhaps this accounts, in part, for the general neglect of book XII in philosophical interpretations of time in the Confessions. Yet it is this speculative terrain that Augustine begins to transition towards in Confessions XI.30–31. In Confessions XII.2–15, Augustine will strive—symmetrically and inversely—to demarcate his ‘intellectual heaven’ from a divine eternity (XII.9.9, XII.11.11), and to insulate his ‘indeterminate matter’ from an absolute nihility (XII.3.3, XII.6.6). Nevertheless, the decisive conceptual determinations of Augustine’s rarefied (and conceptually refractory) ‘creatures’ in book XII are—symmetrically and inversely—temporal. The hyper-heavenly will be repeatedly delineated as supra-temporal, just as the hyper-terrestrial will be sub-temporal. It is this process of a counter-temporal speculative determination of the hyper-heavenly and hyper-terrestrial, in Confessions XII; and the insufficiency of (γ) to provide Augustine—with its logical-axiological category of ‘creature,’ i.e. conditioned existence24—with the conditions for ‘time’ on the speculative terrain in book XII; that results in Augustine’s shift from the immanent time-question of Confessions XI.14–29, to his question of the speculative conditions of time in Confessions XII. This said, Augustine’s question of temporal and counter-temporal conditions in Confessions XII is only speculatively plural, i.e. (i) and (ii). The very strangeness of the terminology and split register of (i) and (ii), relative to formulations of the time-question in Confessions XI, indicates a philosophical distinction that obtains between books XI and XII. Unlike Augustine’s rationalizing exegesis in Confessions XII, his time-investigation in Confessions XI is not oriented to a sensible/intelligible divide, since time per se and in toto appears this side of the intelligible. Nevertheless, it is this ‘Platonic’ duplicity of the timequestion in book XII, which is required by Augustine’s new, anti-phenomenal concepts of a timeless, purely ‘intellectual’ creature (caelum intellectuale) and a timeless, purely ‘material’ creature (materia informis), that forces Augustine’s speculative question of temporal conditions to converge, in book XII— symmetrically and inversely—on the physical-mutive and sense-affective conditions of time that are indicated in Confessions XI.

24

I generally prefer the terms ‘facture’ or ‘condition,’ rather than ‘make’ or ‘create,’ to avoid the anthropomorphism that is associated with the last terms, and that Augustine (like Plotinus) takes his distance from in Conf. XI and XII. For the substitutability of these several terms, cf. Aug. Gen.litt. V.5.14: appellantur creata vel facta vel condita; V.14.31: sua natura, qua factum est ut conditio creaturaque sit.

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Whereas Augustine’s concept of indeterminate matter will not be introduced until Confessions XII.3.3, with a spatializing pressure on the question of temporal conditions in book XII, a certain sensualizing of Augustine’s timeanalyses in XI.27–28 is already apparent in XI.31.41,25 immediately following his second allusion in book XI to a hyper-heavenly creature. And it is primarily because of this sensualizing effect on distentio that Confessions XI.31.41 constitutes a structural parallel to, and unit with, Confessions XI.30.40.26 Just as Augustine recapitulates and refines his assertions in Confessions XI.12–13, the last sections of the eternity-meditation, in XI.30.40; so he recapitulates and refines his analyses in XI.27–28, the last sections of the time-investigation, in XI.31.41. And in this final section of Confessions XI, the temporal is logically and axiologically contrasted, for the first time in the book, to the eternal god and a preter-temporal mind. Augustine writes this: Surely if there is a mind27 of such vast knowledge and foreknowledge that it knows all past-things and all future-things as one song is well-known to me—that mind is very marvellous and reduces me to a shuddering silence! Because whatever is past and whatever is to come in future worldages is no more concealed from it than it was from me when singing that song—what and how much of it had been sung from its beginning, what and how much remained to the end. . . . [Yet for] one singing well-known songs or hearing a well-known song, his affections28 are varied and his senses dilated in expectation of future sounds and memoration of past sounds.

25 26 27

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Sensus here as specifically sensus carnis or sensus corporis derives from time-formulations in Conf. IV.10.15: see 5.4. In a similar way, Conf. X.40–41 reprise the memoria and temptatio divisions of book X, respectively. What follows determines the sense of animus in this passage as ‘mind’ for the first time in Conf. XI, yet this ‘mind’ is clearly not the anima-animus to which the time-question is addressed (videamus ergo, anima humana, XI.15.19; exarsit animus meus nosse istuc implicatissimum aenigma, XI.22.28; insiste, anime meus, et attende, XI.27.34) and relative to which it is explicated (in te, anime meus, tempora metior, XI.26.36). And in Conf. XII, the caelum caeli is referred to as creatura and mens, but never as anima or animus. Thus, the use of animus at Conf. XI.31 for the caelum caeli as ‘mind’ is transitional, and Augustine’s formulations in Conf. XI.31 confirm, rather than disconfirm, that anima-animus ≠ mens in the time-investigation proper (XI.14–29). Moreau (1955, 245) renders affectio as “état d’âme.”

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certe si est tam grandi scientia et praescientia pollens animus, cui cuncta praeterita et futura ita nota sint, sicut mihi unum canticum notissimum, nimium mirabilis est animus iste atque ad horrorem stupendus, quippe quem ita non lateat quidquid peractum et quidquid reliquum saeculorum est, quemadmodum me non latet cantantem illud canticum, quid et quantum eius abierit ab exordio, quid et quantum restet ad finem . . . sicut nota cantantis notumve canticum audientis expectatione vocum futurarum et memoria praeteritarum variatur affectus sensusque distenditur. (XI.31.41) The idea of this mind’s intention is horrific—and vaster, more vertiginous than Augustine could admit.29 A cascade of ‘world-ages’ would be subsumed, in its preter-temporal gaze, within that “total age”—as yet indefinite—in which “all the lives of men are parts.”30 (Augustine will later refer to this, totum tempus, as the “marvelous song of all things.”31) There is certainly an element of crude infinitizing here, which will be eliminated in Augustine’s concept of the caelum intellectuale in book XII. But it is important to observe that Augustine is not merely, and not essentially, contrasting the quantum of his recently analyzed temporal intentions—eight syllables (XI.27.35), a pre-quantified vocal sound (XI.27.36), a memorized canticle (XI.28.38)—with the inconceivable quantum of such a preter-temporal

29

Cf. for instance, Aug. Enarr. 104.6: “A thousand generations do not appear to signify anything eternal, since they involve an end; and yet they are still too numerous for this hypertemporal state. . . . For who would dare to say that this world-age should last for 15.000 years?” (mille vero generationes, nec aeternum videntur aliquid significare; quia utique finem habent, et ad ipsa temporalia nimis multae sunt. . . . quis enim audeat dicere quindecim annorum millibus hoc saeculum extendi?). On the age of the world, see his unfortunate remarks at Aug. Civ. XIII.10–11, 13. But prior to his conversion, significantly, Augustine countenanced “infinite spaces of times in the past” (infinita retro spatia temporum, VII.5.7) and “infinite tracts of space” (infinita spatia locorum, VII.14.20)—expressions that reflect Epicurean, and not Platonic, physical theory. 30 Aug. Conf. XI.28.38: toto saeculo . . . cuius partes sunt omnes vitae hominum. Cf. Conf. IV.10.15: “They are parts of things, which do not all exist at the same time but by disappearing and succeeding they all advance the totality of which they are parts” (partes sunt rerum, quae non sunt omnes simul, sed decedendo ac succedendo agunt omnes universum, cuius partes sunt). 31 Aug. Serm. 198.2: totum tempus; Orig.anim. V.13: hoc labentium rerum tamquam mirabili cantico.

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intention. In his repeated phrase “what and how much” (quid et quantum),32 a phrase that does not appear in Confessions XI.27–28, this mind’s sublimity derives more from a subtle accent on the quid than on the quantum. It is not the incalculable span, but the essential condition of such a mind that is alien. According to the ancient rhetorical schema that Augustine reprises in Confessions X,33 in which “there are three types (genera) of question: whether a thing is (an sit), what it is (quid sit), and how it is constituted (quale sit),”34 a subtle difference in the quid of this mind’s ‘intention’ in XI.31.41, and Augustine’s ‘intention’ in the time-investigation, indicates a radical difference in the qualis— roughly, its mode of constitution. Whereas, to this celestial mind “past-things and future-things” (praeterita et futura, XI.31.41) are disclosed simpliciter or (in Lyotard’s phrase) sans médiation,35 Augustine’s intentions are disclosed in and through the “memoration of past-things” (memoria praeteritorum) and the “expectation of future-things” (expectatio futurorum).36 That is, temporal intentio involves a certain, constitutive refraction in Augustine’s time-investigation. Or differently stated, whereas this celestial mind’s intellection of temporalia is immediate (nosse simul),37 Augustine’s analyses of temporal intentio cannot be resolved into ‘immediacy’ or ‘mediacy.’ Temporal presence (praesens ≈ ‘immediacy’) is co-constituted by temporal impresence (praesens de ≈ ‘mediacy’).38 A provisional characterization of distentio in Confessions XI is developed below specifically to clarify this subtle divide, which is introduced with Augustine’s preter-temporal animus in Confessions XI.31. This characterization is directed no less at Augustine’s ‘intellectual heaven’ in book XII than at his

32 Aug. Conf. XI.31.41: quid et quantum eius abierit ab exordio, quid et quantum restet ad finem . . .  33 Cf. for instance, Arist. Post. II.1 (89b). 34 Cf. Aug. Conf. X.10.17: tria genera esse quaestionum, an sit, quid sit, quale sit; Cic. Or. 14.45: quicquid est in controversia . . . in eo aut sitne aut quid sit aut quale sit quaeritur; Cic. Part. 18.62: . . . genera sunt tria: sit necne, quid sit, quale sit. 35 Lyotard 1998, 64. 36 Aug. Conf. XI.28.37: expectatio futurorum . . . memoria praeteritorum; cf. XI.31.41: expectatio futurarum et memoria praeteritarum. 37 Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.13.16: nosse simul sine ulla vicissitudine temporum. 38 Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.15.18: “The expectation of future things becomes sight when they have arrived, and this same sight becomes memory when they have passed by” (expectatio rerum venturarum fit contuitus, cum venerint, idemque contuitus fit memoria, cum praeterierint).

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notion of ‘time-itself’ in book XI.39 A more conclusive interpretation will be given in Part III. 5.2

Temporal Dilation: A Preliminary Characterization

Augustine’s distentio is a trine-presence in which what is not present in the strictest sense (praesens de praesentibus) is signaled by the distinct impresences of memory (praesens de praeteritis) and expectation (praesens de futuris).40 The presence-character of ‘presence,’ sensu stricto, is signaled by a constitutive tendency to pass into the impresence of memory, which is to say, by hypertransitivity.41 Transitivity inflects memory and expectation as well as sensation, while the transitivity of sensation is itself co-constituted by the impresences of memory and expectation. Thus the ‘modalities’ of temporal presence are not temporally divisible, partes extra partes, but rather temporal presence is trine. That is, temporal ‘presence’ is co-constituted by impresence as memoration, impresence as expectation, and by sense-affective impression—i.e. ‘presence’ in the purest sense—as a resistless tendency-to-impresence. Impresence has its varieties. The “presence of past-things”42 in a transparent recollection—as in Augustine’s recollection of a song in Confessions XI.28 (revisited in XI.31)—is not only phenomenally distinct from the “presence of future-things,” i.e. from the impresence of expectation.43 A transparent recollection (praesens de praeteritis) is also phenomenally distinct from the clouded or occluded recollection (which is still praesens de praeteritis) that gives rise to seeking in memory—and which Augustine discusses, aporetically, in Confessions X.16–20.44 Similarly, the ‘presence of future-things’ that is ana39

Contrast the following interpretation of Conf. XI.31 with that presented in Teske 1983, 80–92. 40 I use the neologism ‘impresence’ to describe the problematic praesens-characters of memoria as praesens de praeteritis, and expectatio as praesens de futuris, both for its echo of ‘impression,’ which links memoria and expectatio to sensus-contuitus as praesens de praesentibus, and since the Latinesque prefix ‘im-’ can at once carry the sense of the English prefixes ‘in-’ and ‘un-,’ for instance: ‘inmixed,’ ‘unmixed.’ ‘Impresence’ signifies a temporal experience of temporal inexistences on the analytics of praesens tempus in XI.15.18–20. This will be elaborated upon and clarified on my return to the time-investigation, in Part III. 41 Per Moreau 1955, 240: “un espace de temps mobile.” 42 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: praesens de praeteritis. 43 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: praesens de futuris. 44 Cf. O’Daly 1993, 36–39.

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lyzed in Confessions XI.27–28 (and revisited in XI.31) is a specific modality of futural impresence. Such impresence in an enactive expectation (praesens de futuris), as in Augustine’s pre-iteration of a memorized song,45 is phenomenally distinct not only from recollection, but from a predictive expectation (which is still praesens de futuris), and which Augustine discusses in Confessions XI.18.24. It is by way of this last distinction, between enactive and predictive expectation,46 that the radical difference in qualis between Augustine’s temporal intentio in XI.28.37, and a preter-temporal mind’s praescientia in XI.31.41, will become clear. In Confessions XI.31.41, Augustine conjures “vast knowledge and foreknowledge” (grandi scientia et praescientia) in some sublime mind. While a difference is suggested between such a mind’s shiftless comprehension of ‘past-things and future-things’ simpliciter, and Augustine’s co-transitive ‘presence of past-things’ and ‘presence of future-things’ in his recitation of a song, the phrase “knowledge and foreknowledge” (scientia et praescientia) itself signals a break in the qualis or ‘mode of constitution’ of a terrestrial, sensetemporized animus and this cipher of a celestial, preter-temporized animus. (‘Preter-temporized’ because, we will recall, this animus is introduced as some creature “beyond times” (aliqua supra tempora), already in Confessions XI.30.40.) Apart from the scio/nescio dialectic that activates and punctuates the time-investigation in Confessions XI (see chapter 10), ‘knowledge’ (scientia) disappears from the book between Confessions XI.4.6 and XI.31.41. Neither enactive nor predictive expectation is praescientia in the timeinvestigation,47 and neither sensation nor memoration is scientia in the time-investigation. Why is this?48 Augustine confesses to god at Confessions XI.4.6, still in his exordium to the eternity-meditation: “Our knowledge (scientia nostra) is ignorance relative to your knowledge.”49 Our scientia is here characterized against the static and

45 Aug. Conf. XI.28.38: canticum quod novi. 46 Augustine remarks a parallel distinction in memoria at Aug. Lib.arb. III.4.11: “You remember your past acts, but all that you remember were not your acts” (quae fecisti meministi, nec tamen quae meministi omnia fecisti). 47 Cf. for instance Ov. Fas. I.537–8, where praescius signals ‘prophecy’: talibus ut dictis nostros descendit in annos, | substitit in medio praescia lingua sono. 48 Cf. Rist 1994, 73: “As an adherent of the Platonic notion that what ‘really is’ is eternal and unchanging, Augustine holds that there is something . . . unknowable about physical objects in so far as they are changing.” 49 Aug. Conf. XI.4.6: scientia nostra scientiae tuae comparata ignorantia est.

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absolute unicity of a divine eternity,50 but a previous reference to scientia in book XI suggests a more immanent sense of all temporal scientia as ‘ignorance.’ Augustine writes at Confessions XI.2.2: A long while now I have burned to meditate on your law [o god] and to confess, in it, my knowledge and my inexperience . . . until [my] weakness is consumed by [your] strength. olim inardesco meditari in lege tua et in ea tibi confiteri scientiam et imperitiam meam . . . quousque devoretur a fortitudine infirmitas. (XI.2.2) The ‘until’ (quousque) here parallels the ‘until’ (donec)51 of formulations in, for instance, Confessions I, X and XI;52 and in the Confessions, our ‘ignorance’ is fundamentally characterized as imperitia, ‘inexperience,’ until death annihilates the varieties of impresence and tendencies to impresence that co-constitute sense-temporal presence.53 The most acute formulation of a temporal ‘inexperience’ in the Confessions is perhaps this, which appears in a temptation-section of Confessions X: So I appear to myself—perhaps I am wrong! For it is also a lamentable darkness in which my capacity that is in me is unknown . . . and that which is in [my soul] is for the most part concealed unless experience discloses it—and no one should feel secure in this life.

50 Aug. Conf. XI.11.13: non . . . praeterire quicquam in aeterno, sed totum esse praesens; XII.7.7: tu, domine . . . non es alias aliud et alias aliter, sed idipsum et idipsum et idipsum. 51 Cf. Arts 1927, 60–61: “The adverb quousque ‘how long,’ ‘to what time,’ is not found often in Classical Latin. . . . In late Latin the word is used as a conjunction for dum or quoad, ‘so long as,’ ‘until’ ”; 101: “In Augustine donec in the sense of ‘until’ by far surpasses dum and quoad in frequency.” 52 Aug. Conf. I.1.1: inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te; X.5.7: et quod de me nescio, tamdiu nescio, donec fiant tenebrae meae sicut meridies in vultu tuo; XI.29.39: donec in te confluam purgatus et liquidus igne amoris tui. 53 Cf. Aug. Annot. 14: donec transeat ista mortalitas, et ad resurrectionem veniatur; Trin. IV.18.24 (cit. O’Donnell 1992, III:301–302): promittitur autem nobis vita aeterna per veritatem, a cuius perspicuitate rursus tantum distat fides nostra quantum ab aeternitate mortalitas. . . . cum fides nostra videndo fiet veritas, tunc mortalitatem nostram commutatam tenebit aeternitas.

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ita mihi videor; forsitan fallar! sunt enim et istae plangendae tenebrae in quibus me latet facultas mea quae in me est . . . et quod inest plerumque occultum est, nisi experientia manifestetur, et nemo securus esse debet in ista vita. (X.32.48)54 The insecurity that Augustine insists upon here, which is grounded—or rather, ungrounded—by a temporal inexperience of the self (sum) as self-present (ego), is futural. The self-obscurity or reflexive impresence that Augustine articulates in this passage is forged in and calibrated to his problematic of temptation, which is decisively futural.55 A certain, reflexive inexperience is a condition for the experience of temptation—as, incidentally, for indecision. But such inexperience, such reflexive impresence not only characterizes futurity, though in expectation our sense of inexperience (and thus ‘ignorance’) is most acute. Oblivion also effects a sort of inexperience within the ­immanent-infinite ‘space’ of memory;56 and more radically, memory is grounded—or rather, again, ungrounded—by an original inexperience of our life in utero and infancy.57 It is to this original inexperience that Augustine devotes the first sections of the Confessions, sections which he closes by saying: Thus this period of my life, o lord, of which I have no remembrance . . . it vexes me to number it as a period in this life that I live in this world-age, inasmuch as it is, in the darkness of my oblivion, like the months I passed in my mother’s womb . . . I recall no trace of it.

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Vid. Heidegger 1995, 216–17/2004, 160–61. Cf. Aug. Conf. X.5.7: ego vero quibus temptationibus resistere valem quibusve non valeam, nescio. Oblivion is only one sense in which preterity or ‘past time’ is yet imperfect. For instance, see Augustine’s remarks on the affectiones in recollection, at Conf. X.14. On which passage, Lyotard (2000, 30) writes: “The memory of a joy is not joyous, emotion is something actual, nothing is retained from it but the tasteless occurrence. That the affective quality is lost is at least not lost.” And similarly, Heidegger (1995, 186–87/2004, 136) remarks: “The manner in which the affections are had in the memoria is very different from the manner in which they are had in current experience (aktuellen Erfahren), ‘cum patitur eas’ . . . when I have them like this, I am not perturbed (‘perturbatur’) by their presence.” O’Daly (1993, 39–41) also links up, as I do here, “the recitation or singing of a known poem or hymn”—as at Conf. XI.28—with memoria and oblivio in book X and the infancymeditation in book I.

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hanc ergo aetatem, domine, quam me vixisse non memini . . . piget me adnumerare huic vitae meae quam vivo in hoc saeculo. quantum enim attinet ad oblivionis meae tenebras, par illi est quam vixi in matris utero . . . cuius nulla vestigia recolo. (I.6–7) Thus, the presence-character of past-things (praesens de praeteritis) originates, for us, in a lived ‘inexperience,’58 while oblivion later (and incessantly) inflects memory with new loci of lived ‘inexperience’;59 the presence-character of present-things (praesens de praesentibus) has in (or as) its depths a presentreflexive ‘inexperience’ of drives, of desires, that affect sensation itself;60 and ‘inexperience’ per se is the formal condition for the presence-character of future-things (praesens de futuris).61 Yet this transitive collocation of inexperiences and impresences conditions, for Augustine, not a phenomenal void or darkness, but temporal praesens and “this temporal light,”62 a praesens and a light which are yet not scientia as memoration, and certainly not praescientia as expectation.63 It is precisely the luminous co-presence of temporal impresences,64 and the acute experience of 58 Aug. Conf. I.6.10: eram enim et vivebam etiam tunc. 59 Aug. Conf. X.14.21: “When we forget a thing, we say ‘It did not enter my mind’ and ‘It slipped from my mind’ ” (cum obliviscimur, dicimus, ‘non fuit in animo’ et ‘elapsum est animo’). Thus Lyotard (2000, 17/1998, 35): “To go blank (avoir une absence) is what we say for a lapse of memory, but what falls out into the three temporal instances (ce qui se détriple en les instances temporelles) is the oblivion inherent to existence itself.” 60 Augustine links memorial and present-reflexive ‘inexperience’ at Aug. An.orig. IV.8.12: vide igitur quam multa non praeterita, sed praesentia de natura nostra, nec tantum quod ad corpus, verum etiam quod ad interiorem hominem pertinet ignoremus. 61 Cf. Aug. Fid. 8: Quia et praeterita quae iam non possunt videri, et futura quae adhuc non possunt videri, et praesentia quae nunc possunt videri, omnia futura errant cum praenuntiarentur, et nihil horum poterat tunc videri. 62 Aug. Conf. IX.8.17: hanc temporalem . . . lucem. The connection in this passage between ‘flesh’ and ‘temporal light’ should be remarked: Augustine writes that Monnica, his mother, “delivered me in her flesh so that I would be born into this temporal light” (me parturivit et carne, ut in hanc temporalem . . . lucem nascerer, IX.8.17). 63 Thus Lyotard (2000, 17/1998, 35), stressing the inversion of life/death valences he sees in the Conf.: “Time itself, the time of living (temps des créatures), the time he calls created, is . . . this permanent self-absence. . . . Past, present, future—as many modes of presence (modes de présence) in which the lack of presence (manque de présence) is projected.” 64 Cf. Heidegger (1995, 188/2004, 138) on the aporia of oblivio in Conf. X: “This beingabsent (Abwesendsein) is grasped—and indeed, enactmentally—as non-presence (Nichtdasein) . . . but for this, the being-absent has to be itself seen.”

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temporal inexperiences, that inspires and drives the question of time in the Confessions, because—to anticipate—the space of time is impresence. 5.3

Expectatio Is Never Praescientia (Conf. XI.31)

What then is the status of the “expectation of future-things” (expectatio futurorum, XI.28.37)65 in the time-investigation, when ‘inexperience’ is the formal condition for futurity?66 The enactive mode of expectatio that Augustine analyzes in Confessions XI.27–28 is cast into relief by his lament in XI.29.39: “I am torn apart in times whose succession I do not know (quorum ordinem nescio).”67 This radical opacity of future-things is articulated immediately after Augustine’s valorization of expectatio in XI.28.37–38, and this is because—to again anticipate—future-times are constituted by motus omnis. For Augustine, expectation promises an enactive mode of succession—the temporally prequantifiable recitation of a song, and so forth—yet it is a radically dependent mode of succession (see 13.5). It is thus by no means the form of succession, of which Augustine says here—in the last paragraph of the time-investigation— ‘I do not know’ (nescio); for in the first paragraph of the time-investigation he boldly states, ‘I know’ (scio), regarding this form of succession.68 It is rather the succession of ‘future-things’ of which he says, nescio. This dependency of expectatio in the time-investigation—and with it, the sense of praescientia in Confessions XI.31.41—is further clarified by Augustine’s analysis of expectatio in XI.18.23–24,69 where the presence-character of expectatio is duplex: (i) “I of course know this (scio), that we commonly premeditate (praemeditari) our future actions and that such premeditation is present, but that the act we premeditate is-not-yet because it is future.”70

65 Aug. Conf. XI.28.37: sed tamen iam est in animo expectatio futurorum. 66 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.18.24: futura ergo nondum sunt, et si nondum sunt, non sunt, et si non sunt, videri omnino non possunt. 67 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: ego in tempora dissilui quorum ordinem nescio. 68 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: fidenter tamen dico scire me quod, si nihil praeteriret, non esset praeteritum tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil esset, non esset praesens tempus. 69 And cf. Aug. Conf. X.8.13–14. 70 Aug. Conf. XI.18.23: illud sane scio, nos plerumque praemeditari futuras actiones nostras eamque praemeditationem esse praesentem, actionem autem quam praemeditamur nondum esse, quia futura est.

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(ii) “In whatever mode [our] arcane presentiment of future-things (arcana praesensio futurorum) may exist, nothing can be seen but what is. But what is now is not future, but present. Thus when they say that future-things are ‘seen,’ it is not the future-things, which are not yet—that is, which are future-things—but perhaps it is their causes or signs (causae vel signa) which are seen, and which already are. To those who already see [such causes or signs], then, they are not future-things but present-things, from which are predicted the future-things that are imaged in the soul (animo concepta).”71 The presence-character of expectation, here, is thus either (i) praemeditatio or (ii) praesensio (where Augustine may betray a Ciceronian influence).72 (i) Praemeditatio is a sense-imaginal or phantasmatic relation to what is not-yet, and may never be, (desideratively) enacted, and (ii) praesensio is a sense-imaginal or phantasmatic relation to what is not-yet, and may never be, (mutively) effected. 71 Aug. Conf. XI.18.24: quoquo modo se itaque habeat arcana praesensio futurorum, videri nisi quod est non potest. quod autem iam est, non futurum sed praesens est. cum ergo videri dicuntur futura, non ipsa quae nondum sunt, id est quae futura sunt, sed eorum causae vel signa forsitan videntur, quae iam sunt. ideo non futura sed praesentia sunt iam videntibus, ex quibus futura praedicantur animo concepta. Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.18.24: . . . ex quibus futura praedicantur animo concepta; XI.18.23: . . .  verba concepta ex imaginibus earum quae in animo velut vestigia per sensus praetereundo fixerunt. As I observe below, Augustine is still entangled in the ‘prophetic’ digression that commences in Conf. XI.17.22 and closes—resolutely—in XI.19.25. The passage on praesensio, and indeed, the word itself echoes with and is implicated in this momentary problematic: I yet suggest that the enactive/predictive expectatio that Augustine discusses here is not vitiated by this question of ‘prophecy.’ He insists on the praesens of what is ‘seen,’ for enactive and predictive expectatio—and this eliminates praescientia as a possibility for praemeditatio or praesensio in the time-investigation. 72 Neither Meijering (1979, 71) nor O’Donnell (1992, III:282) compares the below passages, yet the links are not only lexical but thematic: (i) Cic. Div. I.56.127: . . . reliquendum est homini, ut signis quibusdam consequentia declarantibus futura praesentiat. Non enim illa, quae futura sunt, subito existunt, sed . . . qui etsi causas ipsas non cernunt, signa tamen causarum et notas cernunt. (ii) Aug. Conf. XI.18.24: Quoquo modo se itaque habeat arcana praesensio futurorum, videri nisi quod est non potest. . . . cum ergo videri dicuntur futura, non ipsa quae nondum sunt, id est quae futura sunt, sed eorum causae vel signa forsitan videntur, quae iam sunt.

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These distinct modes of expectatio are alike imaginal, but their anticipationcharacters are not identical—and neither mode is characterized as praescientia. To the contrary: Augustine is, in Confessions XI.17.22–18.24, in the process of excluding the idea of a prophetic praescientia from the time-investigation (see XI.19.25). And here, (i) praemeditatio is not praescientia because our desires, wills and acts cannot be fore-seen,73 and (ii) praesensio is not praescientia because the contingencies of bodies per se cannot be fore-seen. That is to say, categorically: Nothing can be seen but what is; but what is now is not future, but present. videri nisi quod est non potest.74 quod autem iam est, non futurum sed praesens est. (XI.18.24) Thus, the very word praescientia in Confessions XI.31.41 subtly but sharply dissevers Augustine’s cipher of a preter-temporal animus from the animus in his time-investigation, for which neither enactive nor predictive expectatio is praescientia. In 13.5, I will clarify why Augustine’s mensural analyses in Confessions XI.27–28 are devoted to enactive expectatio.75 But predictive expectatio is no less relevant to Augustine’s time-concept as such, or to the interpretation of Confessions XI.31.41. And Augustine discusses predictive expectatio (≈

73

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Cf. Aug. Enarr. 38.19: “You know what you are today—what you will be tomorrow, you do not know . . . Wherever you turn, all is uncertain—only death is certain” (quid sis hodie, scis; quid futurus sis crastino, nescis. . . . quocumque te verteris, incerta omnia: sola mors certa). Cf. Arts 1927, 79: “In Classical Latin videri is generally used in the sense of ‘seem.’ Sometimes it is found in the sense of ‘to be seen,’ often so in Lucretius, occasionally in Cicero, Caesar, and Tacitus, but more often in late Latin. Videri appears frequently in the sense of ‘to be seen’ in the Confessions: neque enim potest videri id quod non est, Conf. 11, 17. sed eorum causae vel signa forsitan videntur, quae iam sunt, Conf. (11, 18) four times.” O’Daly (1981, 175–76) remarks that expectatio in Conf. XI.27–28 is enactive, but does not develop it: “Augustine’s examples here in [XI.]27.36 and 28.37–8 are limited to anticipation of pre-meditated utterances or known songs: presumably, however, he would say that we can likewise calculate the time of other future processes where anticipation is based on . . . similar processes [which] have occurred in our past experience.”

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p­ raesensio) in XI.18.24 by way of this exemplum: a sunrise.76 Not even this can be foreseen, sensu stricto, at first light.77 Again, ‘nothing can be seen but what is,’ and while the sun is, at first light—yet the sun’s rise is not-yet, at first light. It is not the sun that “is future,” but its rise that “is future” (non sol futurus . . . sed ortus eius, XI.18.24);78 that is to say, in this instance it is not the body, but its position that is futural, that is a ‘future-thing.’ (This is a distinction of no mean importance, since ‘time’—we will recall from 4.2—is that “by which we measure the movements of bodies” (XI.23.30).) Yet there is a skeptical implication here, which Augustine does not elaborate on in Confessions XI.18.24, and which echoes one of his earliest texts in an interesting way. This Cassiciacum text helps to clarify, at once, the philosophical provenance of Augustine’s exemplum of a sunrise in Confessions XI.18.24,79 his appeal to a miraculous occurrence in XI.23.30, and the contrast between sensual expectatio in XI.28.37 and insensate praescientia in XI.31.41. In Confessions XI.23.30, Augustine cites a divine suspension of the sun in its ‘circuit’ at the request of an Israelite: “The sun halted, but time went on” (sol stabat, sed tempus ibat, XI.23.30).80 This incident from Augustine’s scriptures, which serves—“if the rumour is true”81—to exclude our foreseeing a sunrise,82 is obliquely anticipated by a purely philosophical trope in the Soliloquies.83 76 Aug. Conf. XI.18.24: loquatur mihi aliquod exemplum tanta rerum numerositas. intueor auroram, oriturum solem praenuntio. 77 Cf. Cens. D.nat. 24 (in marg.): ante lucem, et sic diluculum, cum sole nondum orto iam lucet. 78 Aug. Conf. XI.18.24: quod intueor, praesens est, quod praenuntio, futurum. non sol futurus, qui iam est, sed ortus eius, qui nondum est. 79 Vid. Kahnert 2007. 80 Cf. the etymology of ‘solstice’ (solstitium) at Var. Ling. VI.2.8: “The solstitium,” Varro opines, is so-called “because on that day the ‘sun’ appears ‘to halt’ ” (solstitium, quod sol eo die sistere videbatur). There is also a suggestion of the sun ‘halting’ at Macr. Sat. I.17.61: “When the sun reaches its summer stopping-point (solstitium facit), marking the year’s longest day (longissimi diei) . . .” 81 Cf. Virg. Aen. III.551: si vera est fama; Aug. Conf. IV.6.11: si non fingitur. 82 Though in Conf. XI.23 it is made to serve, most immediately, to preclude an identification of celestial motion with tempora. 83 For the substitution of a sacred for a secular reference, note that the phrase canticum notissimum at Conf. XI.31.41 refers back to Ambrose’s hymn, Deus creator omnium (XI.27.35), or to any “memorized song” (canticum quod novi, XI.28.38); but it also echoes back to Augustine’s phrase, carmen notissimum, in reference to Virg. Aen. I.1, at Aug. Rhyth. III.2.3: Attende ergo etiam in ista pervulgatissima: Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris. Et ne longum faciamus, quia carmen notissimum est, ab hoc versu usque ad quem volueris explora singulos.

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Augustine opens his Soliloquies with a long hymn of praise84 in which it is god by whom the poles revolve, the stars fulfill their courses, the sun vivifies the day, the moon tempers the night . . . through the months . . . through the years by orderly successions . . . cycle after cycle by accomplished concurrences of the course of the sun, and through the mighty orbs of times, as the stars still recur to their first conjunctions, [so god] maintains, insofar as sensible matter permits it, the mighty constancy of things . . . the thronging course of circling world-ages! rotantur poli, cursus suos sidera peragunt, sol exercet diem, luna temperat noctem . . . per menses . . . per annos . . . et hiemis successionibus; per lustra, perfectione cursus solaris; per magnos orbes, recursu in ortus suos siderum, magnam rerum constantiam, quantum sensibilis materia patitur, temporum ordinibus replicationibusque custodit . . . frenisque circumeuntium saeculorum.85 Here the glory of ‘times’ is in their sublime order: succession manifests itself, in the heavens, as repetition. Yet within several paragraphs, Augustine problematizes our most quotidian premeditations and presentiments, as well as a late-antique science of the heavens he admired.86 Here in the Soliloquies, enactive and predictive expectatio are alike rejected as modalities of praescientia:

Hagendahl (1967, 714–16) addresses Augustine’s “hostility” to secular erudition in the Conf., and his use of poets (1967, 377–478), in some detail. Hagendahl (1967, 387) writes that “Cicero’s practice in the dialogues of introducing literal quotations from poetry first reappears in Seneca and then on a large scale in Lactantius, Jerome and Augustine. How bold and new this attitude was in Christian prose, will be seen if we [observe that] . . . no such quotations are to be found in Tertullian, Cyprian and Arnobius.” 84 Cf. Finaert 1939, 30: “Ses prédécesseurs, même païens, nous ont laissé des exemples de lyrisme dans leurs hymnes: Lucrèce fait sur ce ton l’éloge d’Épicure (III, 3, etc.); Apulée compose une invocation à Isis (Métam. 11, 25), dont un passage concernant l’ordre des corps célestes semble avoir inspiré un développment des Soliloques, mais le rhéteur converti met plus d’ampleur dans l’accumulation . . .”  85 Aug. Sol. I.1.4. 86 Cf. Aug. Conf. V.3–6: mente sua enim quaerunt ista et ingenio quod tu dedisti eis et multa invenerunt et praenuntiaverunt ante multos annos defectus luminarium solis et lunae, quo die, qua hora, quanta ex parte futuri essent, et non eos fefellit numerus. et ita factum est ut praenuntiaverunt, et scripserunt regulas indagatas, et leguntur hodie atque ex eis

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Aug. In view of the stars, what is less impressive than my supper? Nevertheless, I do not know what I will later have for supper, but it is not rash for me to profess that I know what sign [of the zodiac] the moon will be in. . . . Still, I do not know whether god or some obscure natural cause will suddenly alter the moon’s regular course—which, if it occurs, will render all my anticipations false. Ratio. And do you believe this could happen? Aug. I do not believe it—but I am seeking what I can know, not what I can believe. For all that we know we may perhaps validly be said to ‘believe’—yet we can’t be said to ‘know’ all that we believe. . . . For I have not spoken [in my opening hymn of] things I intellectively grasped, but rather things I have collected from various places and committed to memory and to which I yield as much faith as I can—but it is different to know. Aug. Nam in comparatione siderum, quid est mea coena vilius? et tamen cras quid sim coenaturus ignoro; quo autem signo luna futura sit, non impudenter me scire profiteer. . . . Ignoro autem utrum vel deus vel aliqua naturae occulta causa subito lunae ordinem cursumque commutet: quod si acciderit, totum illud quod praesumpseram, falsum erit. Ratio. Et credis hoc fieri posse? Aug. Non credo. Sed ego quid sciam quaero, non quid credam. Omne autem quod scimus, recte fortasse etiam credere dicimur; at non omne quod credimus, etiam scire. . . . Dixi enim non quae intellectu comprehendi, sed quae undecumque collecta memoriae mandavi, et quibus accommodavi quantam potui fidem: scire autem aliud est.87 Augustine refers here to a derangement of the lunar circuit,88 and in Confessions XI to a suspension of the solar circuit. Moreover, the contingency of ‘some obscure natural cause’ (aliqua naturae occulta causa) altering the sun’s circuit is not referred to in the Confessions. In the later text a canonical myth, unknown to Augustine when he composed the Soliloquies, serves ­ raenuntiatur quo anno et quo mense anni et quo die mensis et qua hora diei et quota p parte luminis sui defectura sit luna vel sol: et ita fiet ut praenuntiatur. 87 Aug. Sol. I.3.8–4.9. 88 This is a possibility that Seneca appears to reject, at Sen. Nat.quaest. VII.10.2: “The lunar orbit (lunaris . . . orbita), and the movements of the other bodies travelling above the moon (supra lunam), is invariable (irrevocabilis est).” The moon in its orbit, Seneca continues, never “hesitates or halts, nor does it give us any indication of an obstacle delaying it (nec dat ullam nobis suspicionem obiectae sibi morae).”

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to dis-identify celestial movement and ‘times,’ and (indirectly) to dis-identify predictive expectatio and praescientia.89 Yet in both texts, neither enactive expectatio (what I will have for supper, which song I will recite) nor predictive expectatio (whether orbits will proceed as calculated, that the sun will rise) is ­praescientia.90 Expectatio in the time-investigation is never praescientia, for nothing can be seen but what is praesens in the most rigorous sense of praesens tempus (see 13.1). To return, with this finding, to Confessions XI.31.41: Augustine here ascribes to some animus a scientia and praescientia of “whatever is past and whatever is to come in future world-ages” seemingly in the same manner (sicut) in which he has recollected and recited a song in the time-investigation. But the very unicity or immediacy of presence in this mind of ‘whatever is past and whatever is to come,’ and the characterization of this unicity as scientia, and even more as praescientia, suggest—and this is insisted on in Confessions XII—that this mind’s intention is not dilation, that is to say, is essentially extrinsic to the timeanalyses in Confessions XI.14–29. And in sum: what Augustine appears to conjure as a sublime, meta-temporal intention in Confessions XI.31.41 is neither temporal nor an intention. Intentio is, per definitionem, co-constituted by ‘impresence,’ and in such a sublime mind impresence has been (speculatively) negated. Most decisively, the inexperience that is the formal condition of futurity—in enactive and predictive expectation alike—is subtly negated in Confessions XI.31.41. While appearing to infinitize his analyses in Confessions XI.27–28, then, Augustine has rather initiated the process of counter-temporal speculation that he elaborates in book XII. 5.4

A Discarnate Mind and a Dilation of the Senses (Conf. XI.31)

Because Confessions XI.31.41 introduces the type of counter-temporal speculation that dominates in book XII, it should not be considered part of the timeinvestigation proper in book XI. Yet as I have previously indicated, it is because of Augustine’s speculative, counter-temporal gesture here that a ­ certain sensualizing of distentio is discernible in Confessions XI.31.41. Unlike god, as 89

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Here I take issue with the estimable Pierre Duhem (1965 VII:366/1985, 297 tr. mod.), who overreaches Augustine’s exemplum: “Saint Augustine . . . derived from the miracle of Joshua a reason to deny the whole Peripatetic theory of time (pour rejeter entièrement la théorie péripatéticienne du temps) and to deny that time has any existence outside our soul (pour nier que le temps existât hors de notre esprit).” What the enactive analyses in Conf. XI.27–28 seek to establish is not at all that expectatio is praescientia, but that distentio is capable of demarcating a veracious space of time.

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Augustine states here, but also unlike the sublime animus he has introduced in XI.30–31,91 for “one singing well-known songs or hearing a well-known song, his affections are varied and his senses dilated”—variatur affectus sensusque distenditur—“in expectation of future sounds and memoration of past sounds.”92 What is Augustine’s much-cited ‘distentio animi’ in this sentence? The distentio that has appeared, in all previous interpretations, to localize time ‘in the soul’—or on most interpretations, ‘in the mind’—is here introduced to the sensus of a vivified flesh. Distentio here is an ‘outness,’ a dilation of the senses.93 Thus, the last formulation of ‘distentio animi’ in Confessions XI delivers, very precisely, a ‘distentio sensuum.’94 And note the intimate linkage of this dilation of the senses to retention-memoria and protentionexpectatio—and thus to the vocative acts that concern Augustine in Confessions

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Here and hereafter I write in radical opposition to R.J. Teske on the ‘distentio sensuum’ in Conf. XI.31. Teske (1983, 91) suggests this: “In the context ‘sensus distenditur’ seems to refer to the awareness of ‘iste animus’ . . . Hence, this wondrous creaturely mind [sc. the caelum intellectuale], if there is such, is one whose sensory awareness is distended by memory of the past and expectation of the future.” This suggestion—as Parts I and II should demonstrate—is breathtakingly misdirected. For a similar constellation of variare-affectio-distentio, cf. Aug. Tract. 2.2: “Not only do bodies vary as to their qualities—by being born, by increasing, by weakening, by dying— but . . . souls themselves through the feelings of different wills are dilated and divided” (non solum corpora variari per qualitates, nascendo, crescendo, deficiendo, moriendo, sed . . . ipsas animas per affectum diversarum voluntatum distendi atque discindi). Pace a “very tentative hypothesis” of Teske’s (1983, 83–84) wherein the caelum intellectuale—to prevent Augustine’s time-concept in Conf. XI from becoming “utterly subjective”—is interpreted as a “world-soul with which individual souls are identical,” and thus: “when [Augustine] speaks of time as a distentio animi, as a distention of the mind-soul, he is . . . still thinking . . . of individual souls being one with the world-soul . . . If this hypothesis is correct”—which it is not—“then . . . time as a distention of mind-soul is ‘un temps des choses,’ an objective and not merely a subjective time.” I concur with Teske that Augustine’s distentio is ‘un temps de choses,’ but could not more strongly contest the drift of his other suggestions: they at once introduce into Conf. XI and XII much that is not there, and obscure all that is most illuminating in what is there. Thus all willed bodily movements have the same originary structure as the recitation of a (enunciatively pre-quantifiable) song in Conf. XI.27–28. As some indication of this, cf. for instance Aug. Gen.litt. VII.17.23–18.24: . . . vel sentiendi [≈ sensus-contuitus], vel movendi membra [≈ expectatio], vel motus corporis reminiscendi [≈ memoria]. This phrase—and indeed, these paragraphs as a whole—establish the sensualist conditions of enactive distentio outside of recitation. We see the same at any number of points, in Aug. Rhyth.

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XI.27–28.95 It is because of this dilation of the senses that one can transpose the impresence of protention-expectatio to retention-memoria; it is because of this dilation of the senses that the sense-imagistic ‘affections’ Augustine introduces in XI.27.35–36 possibilize veracious temporal mensuration.96 All references to distentio, memoria and expectatio in Confessions XI.14–29 should be interpreted, in part, in the light of this final, sensualized distentio in book XI. Thus, in future, it should be impossible to refer to temporal distentio in Augustine as solely a dilation ‘of the mind.’ Rather, as a dilation of the soul, the distentio of Confessions XI is manifestly (and incommutably) a dilation of the senses. That is, the originary ‘lapse’ or ‘space of time’ (mora temporis, spatium temporis) that Augustine investigates in Confessions XI is itself a quasi-spatialization of sensus,97 where sensus—here, as in City of God against the Pagans XI98—has a duplicitous valence with the present-temporal sensuous and the present-temporal intellective potencies of the soul, since temporal intellectus is, for Augustine, incommutably linked to temporizing sensus. It is thus with a ‘distentio sensuum’—and a concomitant variance of senseimagistic ‘affections’—that Augustine closes Confessions XI. But this seemingly revisionist formulation of his term distentio—i.e. ‘distentio sensuum’—has not only been anticipated by a sudden prominence of sensus in XI.27.35–3699 (and with it, of sense-imagistic affections). The ‘distentio sensuum’ of XI.31.41 is also anticipated by these sentences in Confessions IV: 95

Cf. Aug. Serm. 198.2: Vos certe cantavistis, et adhuc divini cantici sonus recens est in auribus vestris: “salva nos, domine deus noster.” 96 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: in te, inquam, tempora metior. affectionem quam res praetereuntes in te faciunt et, cum illae praeterierint, manet, ipsam metior praesentem, non ea quae praeterierunt ut fieret; ipsam metior, cum tempora metior. 97 This quasi-spatiality can be traced up Conf. X.8–27, of which O’Daly (1993, 155–56) writes: “All of [Augustine’s] metaphors are spatial, for a place that is ‘no place.’ ” The same could be said of the time-investigation, in which a spatium temporis is at issue. 98 Aug. Civ. XI.3: nam si ea sciri possunt testibus nobis, quae remota non sunt a sensibus nostris, sive interioribus sive etiam exterioribus (unde et praesentia nuncupantur, quod ita ea dicimus esse prae sensibus, sicut prae oculis quae praesto sunt oculis): profecto ea, quae remota sunt a sensibus nostris, quoniam nostro testimonio scire non possumus, de his alios testes requirimus eisque credimus, a quorum sensibus remota esse vel fuisse non credimus. sicut ergo de visibilibus, quae non vidimus, eis credimus, qui viderunt, atque ita de ceteris, quae ad suum quemque sensum corporis pertinent: ita de his, quae animo ac mente sentiuntur (quia et ipse rectissime dicitur sensus, unde et sententia vocabulum accepit), hoc est de invisibilibus quae a nostro sensu interiore remota sunt, his nos oportet credere. 99 Sensus-sentire appears 4× in Conf. XI.27.35, and only 5× in XI.14–26 (of 8× in XI.1–26).

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Times are not vacant or indifferent in their rolling successions through our senses: they effect singular operations in the soul. Look: times appeared and passed from day to day, and by appearing and passing they disseminated in me other hopes, and other memories. non vacant tempora nec otiose volvuntur per sensus nostros: faciunt in animo mira opera. ecce veniebant et praeteribant de die in diem, et veniendo et praetereundo inserebant mihi spes alias et alias memorias. (IV.8.13) Non vacant tempora: this is a basic observation. It verges on tautology: times effect changes.100 (Augustine simply writes in Confessions III: “Times are not alike . . . because they are times.”)101 Yet in the context of a sublime animus in Confessions XI.31.41, and against the backcloth of seven centuries of subjectivist interpretations of Augustine’s time-concept, it is not senseless to ask: Why are ‘times not vacant’? Why are ‘times not indifferent’? And why are there ‘times’? There is nothing in Confessions IV.8.13 that conflicts with, or cannot be discerned in, the time-investigation in book XI. The works (opera) of times are in the soul (in animo), and are not indifferent (nec otiose), because the transit from futurity to preterity is through our senses (per sensus nostros). The r­ evolutions of times work changes in us because things constitute these revolutions, and things are sensed. It is per sensus in Confessions IV.8.13—and in XI.31.41, through a ‘distentio sensuum’—that memory and hope (spes ≈ expectatio), as transitive impresences, illuminate the incessant dis-identity of praesens tempus and praesens tempus (i.e. succession). And it is per sensus that the distinct and transitive impresences of memory and hope are altered. For Augustine, there is no memoria divorced from sensus, and there is no spes-expectatio divorced from sensus. In Confessions XI.29.39, Augustine laments that he lives “in times” (in tempora); and in Confessions IV.8.13, “times (tempora) are not vacant” because times are sensed. Thus, with the introduction of a preter-temporal scientia and praescientia in the fantastical animus of Confessions XI.31.41, Augustine has subtly introduced 100 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. V.1276: “So rolling time alters the seasons of things . . .” (sic volvenda aetas commutat tempora rerum); Virg. Aen. III.415: “Such vast change can length of time effect . . .” (tantum aevi longinqua valet mutare vetustas). But cf. also Aug. Conf. VI.11.20: “Times [or ‘seasons’] passed and I delayed to convert to the lord . . .” (transibant tempora et tardabam converti ad dominum). 101 Aug. Conf. III.7.13: sed tempora . . . non pariter eunt; tempora enim sunt.

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an insensate animus, and with it, a discarnate scientia and praescientia at the last horizon of book XI. Yet because of this process, he has also sensualized the technical term distentio that he forged in the time-investigation. This recoil is decisive for my interpretation of Confessions XII. It is Augustine’s cipher of a discarnate mind (mens) that will lead us back, in Part II—quite rigorously— from a hyper-heavenly creature to the fundamental sense of anima-animus as the life of a body (vitam corporis, X.40.65) in Confessions X, and thereafter, in the time-investigation of Confessions XI. While axiologically and speculatively, the preter-temporal caelum intellectuale of book XII shares with the hyper-temporal anima humana of book XI a condition of original mutability—it is a creatura, it has originated102—what it shares with the divine aeternitas, in contradistinction to the anima humana, is its fleshlessness. In his ultimate description of distentio in Confessions XI, variatur affectus sensusque distenditur (XI.31.41), Augustine has anticipated not only the speculative condition of time which the caelum intellectuale will indirectly clarify in book XII—i.e. a dilation of the sensation of the flesh (sensu carnis, IV.10.15); but the speculative condition of time which the materia informis will indirectly clarify—i.e. a variance of affections (variatur affectus, XI.31.41) that is logically dependent upon a variance of motions in space (varietate motionum, XII.11.14). All such variance—and as a result, all dilation—is negated of god in XI.31.41, to whom Augustine lifts up this praise: Thus as you, in the commencement, knew heaven and earth without any variance in your knowledge, so consequently, in the commencement, you conditioned heaven and earth without any dilation of your act. sicut ergo nosti in principio caelum et terram sine varietate notitiae tuae, ita fecisti in principio caelum et terram sine distentione actionis tuae. (XI.31.41)103 In Part II, as we proceed through Confessions XII (with recourse to Confessions X), we will see the human soul’s inhesion or inherence in the flesh as a condition for dimensive time (tempus) that emerges relative to Augustine’s caelum 102 Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.15.19, where the hyper-heavenly “is not without origin, for it was factured” (non sine initio, facta est). 103 Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.15.18: deus . . . noster aeternus est. item quod mihi dicit in aurem interiorem, expectatio rerum venturarum fit contuitus, cum venerint, idemque contuitus fit memoria, cum praeterierint. omnis porro intentio quae ita variatur mutabilis est, et omne mutabile aeternum non est: deus autem noster aeternus est.

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caeli, and then see a variance of corporeal ‘forms’ and ‘motions’ as the condition of mutive times (tempora) that emerges relative to Augustine’s materia informis. Because this caelum intellectuale is discarnate, and—as Augustine stresses in book XII—devotes all its love to, and receives all its pleasure from, a static contemplation of the eternal god, this creature—and in this,104 it is identical to the eternal god—suffers no variance in its knowledge and no dilation of its act.105 104 This is the sense of Augustine’s difficult question at Conf. XII.15.22: “Is not this house of god indeed not co-eternal with god, and yet according to its own mode or measure eternal in the heavens?” (estne ista domus dei, non quidem deo coaeterna sed tamen secundum modum suum aeterna in caelis?). 105 Cf. for instance, Aug. Conf. XII.11.12 on the caelum intellectuale (nulla vice variatur nec in tempora ulla distenditur), which echoes the just-quoted formulation of god at Conf. XI.31.41 (sine varietate notitiae tuae . . . sine distentione actionis tuae).

Part two Time Is Illuminated by Timelessness

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What Is and Is Not in Question in Confessions XII “This vault of heaven which I see (video),” writes Augustine, is the luminous upper tract of a “corporeal totality”—namely, this “gorgeous world”1—which is “not in every place a totality.”2 But it is not the sky’s “vast body,”3 nor indeed the world, that concerns him when he takes up the figure of a caelum intellectuale.4 To the contrary, Augustine asks in the proem to Confessions XII: “Where is the heaven we do not perceive (non cernimus)?”5 The cernere that Augustine negatives here, apropos of the hyper-heavenly (‘the heaven we do not perceive’), is importantly broader than the videre that precedes it (‘this heaven which I see’). This videre denotes a single, determinate sense, namely vision;6 whereas Augustine’s negatived cernere indicates not only our constellation of carnal senses (vision, audition, taction, etc.)—praesens as sensus-contuitus—but the ‘inward’ senses of memorial ­discrimination 1 Aug. Conf. XII.4.4: speciosum mundum. But Augustine here, and generally in Conf. XII, intends a duplex sense of ‘gorgeous’ and ‘determinate’ or ‘intricate’ with speciosus, since the world originated from a materiality that lacked all determination or shape (sine specie feceras, XII.4.4) as well as all beauty. Solignac (1962, 598–99) also notes this bivalence. Cf. Conf. XII.2.2: hoc . . . totum corporeum . . . cepit speciem pulchram in novissimis, cuius fundus est terra nostra; XII.4.4: minus . . . speciosa sunt pro suo gradu infimo quam cetera superiora perlucida et luculenta omnia; XII.12.15: aqua speciosa et quidquid deinceps in constitutione huius mundi. And see, for instance, Sen. Nat.quaest. VII.24.3: “in this most-vast and most-beautiful body” (in hoc maximo et pulcherrimo corpore). 2 I.e., is partes extra partes. Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.2.2: hoc caelum quod video . . . hoc enim totum corporeum non ubique totum. 3 Aug. Conf. XII.2.2: magnum corpus. But also cf. Conf. XII.8.8: “this corporeal heaven is very marvelous” (valde . . . mirabile hoc caelum corporeum). 4 Cf. Pépin 1953, 217–20. 5 Aug. Conf. XII.2.2: ubi est caelum quod non cernimus? The following cernere-videre distinction is, I believe, valid; but admittedly, in his first clear reference to the caelum caeli in the Conf. (cf. O’Donnell 1992, II:402–403), Augustine uses the terms indistinctly. At Conf. VII.5.7, he writes of that “totality of creation . . . we can perceive” (universam creaturam . . . cernere possumus) and then of a “firmament of heaven, all the angels” (firmamentum caeli . . . et omnes angelos) that “we do not see” (non videmus). 6 Recall, here, Aug. Conf. XI.18.24: “Nothing can be seen (videri) but what is . . . present.”

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and imaginal expectation.7 I have previously referred to the problematic suspension of immanence that Augustine’s concept of the hyper-heavenly will require (see chapter 5); he introduces its difficulty, here, by referring to his new confessive desideratum8 as “I do not know what mode of heaven” (nescio quale caelum, XII.2.2).9 6.1

Time and the Prophetic ‘Letter’

Augustine appeals to scripture10 for his question in a way that he did not when he asked, ‘What is time?’ in Confessions XI. This is because, unlike time, he derives the justification for his cipher of a caelum intellectuale—i.e. his topic— from a phrase in the Psalms.11 Similarly, Augustine’s materia ­informis—or as he observes in another Genesis commentary, what “the Greeks call Chaos,”12 a concept that echoes back to Hesiod—is suggested to him by an abyssal image

7

Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.29.40: quis deinde sic acutum cernat animo, ut sine labore magno dinoscere valeat quomodo sit prior sonus quam cantus; X.11.18: quocirca invenimus nihil esse aliud discere ista quorum non per sensus haurimus imagines, sed sine imaginibus, sicuti sunt, per se ipsa intus cernimus. 8 As at Aug. Conf. XI.1–2 (affectum meum excito in te; vide . . . unde sit desiderium meum), the indigence of desire opens Conf. XII.1.1: “My heart, o lord, is highly anxious in this indigence of my life” (multa satagit cor meum, domine, in hac inopia vitae meae). 9 Cf. Aug. Serm. 319.3: in quod coelum coeli? quis comprehendit? 10 And, it should be recalled, to a vetus Latina translation of scripture—not the Septuagint, much less a Hebrew text. It is instructive to follow M. Alexandre’s (1988, 65–92) review of textual and exegetical modulations on Genesis 1.1–3, from the Septuagint to vetus Latina translations (and Jerome’s Vulgate), including a number of references to Augustine. 11 Aug. Conf. XII.2.2: “But where is that heaven of heavens, o lord, of which we hear in the words of the psalm, ‘The heaven of heavens are the lord’s, but the earth he has given to the children of men’? Where is the heaven we do not perceive, relative to which all this that we perceive is but ‘earth’?” (sed ubi est caelum caeli, domine, de quo audivimus in voce psalmi: “caelum caeli domino, terram autem dedit filiis hominum”? ubi est caelum quod non cernimus, cui ‘terra’ est hoc omne quod cernimus?). Similarly in Conf. XII.3.3, Augustine’s question of the materia informis—which, like the caelum intellectualis, has its Greco-Roman philosophical and poetic precedents— is directly occasioned by Genesis 1.2: “And surely this earth was invisible and formless” (et nimirum haec terra erat invisibilis et incomposita). 12 Aug. Gen.c.Man. I.5.9: Primo ergo materia facta est confusa et informis, unde omnia fierent quae distincta atque formata sunt, quod credo a Graecis χάος appellari.

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(or anti-image) in Genesis 1.13 Augustine is nevertheless unconcerned with the surface of his scriptures,14 his church’s “old writings,”15 and it is by way of a new analysis of the quasi-hermeneutical, essentially philosophical speculations16 in book XII—with recourse to book X—that Augustine’s sensualist time-concept in Confessions XI can be recovered in Part III. This is the basis of all that follows in Part II: Augustine’s concern in Confessions XII is with “what may be true with regard to the [original] conditioning of creatures,” and not with “what Moses . . . intended” in Genesis.17 This is a deep-cutting methodological caveat, and its effect is to marginalize— in book XII, as in books X and XI18—the prophetic-dogmatic ‘letter’ of Augustine’s scriptures. And recall: it is the bishop Faustus’ inability to suspend or subtlize (subtiliter explicare, V.7.12) the ‘letter’ of the Manichaeans’ scriptures in Carthage, that disabuses Augustine of the notion of Mani’s inspiration in Confessions V;19 while it is precisely a suspension of the ‘letter’ of Catholic 13 Aug. Conf. XII.3.3: et nimirum haec terra erat invisibilis et incomposita, et nescio qua profunditas abyssi, super quam non erat lux quia nulla species erat illi, unde iussisti ut scriberetur quod “tenebrae erant super abyssum.” 14 Aug. Conf. XII.10.10: credidi libris tuis, et verba eorum arcana valde; XII.14.17: mira profunditas eloquiorum tuorum, quorum ecce ante nos superficies. Cf. Solignac 1973, 158–59: “ ‘Audiam et intellegam quomodo in principio fecisti caelum et terram’ ([Conf.] XI, 3, 5) . . . ces deux verbs, à l’optatif, expriment toute la démarche dialectique de l’intellectus fidei. Augustin veut écouter l’Écriture et la comprendre. Le terme de la compréhension n’est pas cependant le texte mais la vérité qu’il exprime . . .” 15 Aug. Conf. VI.4.6: gaudebam etiam quod vetera scripta legis et prophetarum iam non illo oculo mihi legenda proponerentur quo antea videbantur absurda. 16 Cf. O’Donnell 1992, III:315, on Augustine’s caveat lector at Conf. XII.13.16, “this is the sense I have in the mean time” (hoc interim sentio); for which, cf. Conf. XI.17.22: “I seek . . . I do not assert” (quaero . . . non adfirmo). 17 Aug. Conf. XII.23.32: aliter enim quaerimus de creaturae conditione quid verum sit, aliter autem quid in his verbis Moyses . . . intellegere lectorem auditoremque voluerit. 18 Cf. Aug. Conf. X.20.29, apropos of Adam’s lapse and our reminiscence of a “life of bliss” (beata vita); XI.19.25, apropos of the prophets’ mode of foresight into “things which are future” (quae futura sunt). 19 Aug. Conf. V.7.12: . . . quae mihi eum, quod utique cupiebam, conlatis numerorum rationibus quas alibi ego legeram, utrum potius ita essent ut Manichaei libris continebantur, an certe vel par etiam inde ratio redderetur, subtiliter explicare posse iam non arbitrabar. The decisive contrast is between Faustus’ failure to subtlize (i.e. rationalize) the Manichaeans’ scriptures at Conf. V.7.12, and the commanding effect of Ambrose’s spiritual (i.e. philosophical) interpretation of the Catholics’ scriptures at Conf. V.14.24 (et pass.), though this is infrequently—if ever—noted in the literature. O’Donnell (1992, II:302–

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scripture that attracts Augustine to the Church in Milan, once he becomes an auditor of the bishop Ambrose.20 It is also this suspension of the prophetic ‘letter’ that helps to resolve— so I suggest—the vexed question of the unity of the Confessions. For in the Recensions, Augustine writes that Confessions I to X treat his person, his life, while Confessions XI to XIII treat holy writ (see 3.1–2).21 And so it is, in fact. And it is the technique of ‘spiritual’ or philosophical exegesis in books XI and XII, and ‘figural’ or allegorical exegesis in book XIII, that constitutes the link— and that perfects the arc—from Augustine’s concessions in books I to X, to his commentaries in books XI to XIII. For Augustine, philosophical exegesis is the noblest possible result of his baptism, in Confessions IX, at the hands of Ambrose;22 and then of his instalment, alluded to in Confessions X, as a dispenser of the sacred word and sacraments.23 Likewise, for Augustine—for whom ‘conversion’ is, per definitionem, a return to the static and effulgent, divine “commencement” (principium, XI.8.10)24—this work, the Confessions, that opens with his meditation on the immemorial primordia of a boy-child in Numidia, is perfected by his meditation on the immemorial primordia of all things.

303) is unconcerned with, or unaware of, this progression from Faustus’ (Manichaean) literalism to Ambrose’s (Catholic) allegorism; yet the Conf. hinge no less essentially upon this than upon the (long-overworked) Neoplatonic translations in Conf. VII. In short: if Ambrose had interpreted the Catholic scriptures with the same unstudied literalism as Faustus interpreted the Manichaean scriptures, there is no narrative reason whatever to imagine that Augustine would have submitted to a Catholic baptism and the rule of Ambrose’s church. 20 Cf. Aug. Conf. V.14.24; VI.4.6; VI.5.8. 21 Aug. Retr. II.6.1: A primo usque ad decimum de me scripsi sunt, in tribus ceteris de scripturis sanctis. 22 Cf. O’Donnell 1992, I:xxviii: “The central decision [Augustine] makes in the period narrated in the Confessions is, not to believe the doctrines of the Catholic Christians (that is important, but preliminary), but to present himself for cult initiation . . . His decision to seek that initiation, taken provisionally in August 386, [was] carried out on the night of 24–5 April 387 [i.e. with his baptism in Milan].” 23 Cf. Aug. Conf. IX.5.13–6.14; X.43.70; XI.2.2. 24 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.8.10: ipsum est verbum tuum, quod et principium est, quia et loquitur nobis. . . . et ideo principium, quia, nisi maneret cum erraremus, non esset quo rediremus. cum autem redimus ab errore, cognoscendo utique redimus; ut autem cognoscamus, docet nos, quia principium est et loquitur nobis.

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How Timelessness Will Illuminate Time

Augustine’s ‘spiritual’ exegesis in Confessions XI and XII is, as song (see 3.5), an instance of philosophical exegesis—i.e. ‘rational’ exegesis—that puts him in line with Platonic and Stoic interpreters of the pagan poets, with Philo Judaeus’ interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures,25 and so on.26 (Immanuel Kant will reactivate this mode of scriptural exegesis—much altered, of course—in his 1786 opuscule, “Conjectural Beginning of Human History.”)27 Thus, predictably, Augustine’s caelum intellectuale echoes Middle Platonic and Neoplatonic motifs,28 while his delineation of a materia informis echoes Aristotle and Cicero (inter alia),29 and likely also the Neoplatonists.30 All this notwithstanding, an introductory comment from Heidegger’s 1921 lecture-course on Confessions X serves well to introduce Part II, since I will, on the whole, exclude questions of philosophical influence from consideration: The Christianity into which Augustine emerges is already . . . permeated by what is Greek, and . . . what is Greek in Neo-Platonism has already been subjected to a ‘Hellenization’ and Orientalization, if not also—as seems very likely to me—to a Christianization. We want to gain access 25

26 27 28 29 30

Cf. Aug. C.Faust. XII.39 (cit. Runia 1993, 322): vidit hoc Philo quidam, vir liberaliter eruditissimus unus illorum, cuius eloquium Graeci Platoni aequare non dubitant, et conatus est aliqua interpretari non ad Christum intellegendum, in quem non crediderat . . . D.T. Runia (1993, 320–30; 1995, 1–7) concurs with Altaner, and argues that Augustine knew Philo in Latin translation, discrediting Courcelle’s counter-proposal, which puts Ambrose between Philo and Augustine. What is more, Runia (1993, 325–26) argues that the Philonic influence is particularly strong in Conf. XI–XIII: “In books 11–13 of the Confessions . . . Philonic themes are unquestionably brought forward. . . . This evidence proves beyond doubt that Augustine had read the first chapters of [Philo’s Quaestiones et Solutiones in Genesim], no doubt in the Old Latin translation. . . . The most significant debt that Augustine has to Philo in his interpretation of the creation account lies in the theory of the double creation, of which the theme of the caelum caeli is a special part.” For a compact table of interpretations of the ‘heaven and earth’ in Genesis 1.2, from Philo Judaeus to Augustine: Alexandre 1988, 75–76. Vid. Kant 2007. Cf. Pépin 1953; Van Riel 2007. Cf. for instance, Cic. Nat.deor. III.39.92. Duhem 1959, II:447: “La notion péripatéticienne de matière première, éternelle et nécessaire, profondément altérée par Plotin, a dépouillé, entre les mains de Saint Augustin, ses caractères essentiellement païens; elle a changé au point de ressembler à ce chaos, à ce bohou que Dieu, selon la Genèse, créa au commencement.”

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to sense-complexes (Sinnzusammenhängen) which are precisely covered over by such formulations of the problem.31 And the initial ‘sense-complex’ that concerns us in Part II, is this: how Augustine’s development of his concept of the caelum intellectuale, and specifically, how the (speculative) fleshlessness of this hyper-heavenly, derives from and elucidates the sensuous character of distentio animi in book XI. This involves and will lead us into the further questions: What is the duplicitous concept of praesens for what Lyotard aptly calls a “soul-flesh” (âme-chair) or “soul-body” (âme-corps) in Augustine’s Confessions?32 And how is this duplicity of praesens at the root of Augustine’s time-investigation in book XI? In clarifying these questions, we will turn repeatedly to Confessions X, taking another comment of Heidegger’s as a guide-word into ‘duplicity’ in the Confessions: Augustine’s notion of the in me or intus (‘within’) is not discarnate,33 i.e. is in no sense a proto-Cartesian res cogitans,34 and indeed, is not strictly a ‘within’ (intus).35 To establish this last point, I also provide a brief analysis of spatial distentio—an ‘outness’ of the ‘soul-flesh’ in Augustine’s Epistle 137—at the end 31

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Heidegger 1995, 171–72/2004, 123 (tr. mod.). For some indication, relative to Conf. XII, of the hybridization and confusion that Heidegger indicates here, cf. O’Donnell’s comment on Augustine’s phrase at Conf. XII.15.20, quod inluminat et quod inluminatur. O’Donnell (1992, III:319) writes this: [The formulation is] Plotinian ([cf. Enn.] 5.3.8.21–23, the One seen by the Nous, while [Gibb and Montgomery] think of Enn. 4.3.17.13–14, φῶς ἐκ φωτός,—which of course is also the exact wording of the Nicene Creed). Lyotard 2000, 9, 50/1998, 26, 74. Cf. Aug. Enarr. 37.8.11: Ubi ergo est totus homo, anima et caro est. Pace, for instance, Moreau 1955, 239: “La ‘mémoire’ est une puissance de l’âme admirable, parce qu’elle transcende et spiritualise l’espace, en conférant aux corps qu’ell connaît ou qu’elle imagine, une existence incorporelle; mais elle est une puissance de l’âme encore plus admirable, parce qu’elle transcende et spiritualise le temps et fait participer les images à sa durée intérieure.” Nevertheless, Moreau’s article is excellent. Heidegger (2004, 226) is correct: Augustine’s analytics of vita suggests a “structural complex” that radically differs from the Cartesian ego, and moreover, “Descartes blurred (verwässert) Augustine’s thoughts.” Apropos of ‘duplicity’: Augustine invariably insists on an axiological and ontological disidentity of corpus and anima-animus. It is this disidentity which leads him to criticize Tertullian’s use of the term dupliciter, at Aug. Gen.litt. X.25.41: item cum animae etiam colorem daret aerium ac lucidum [cf. Tert. Anim. 9.5], ventum est ad sensus quibus eam membratim quasi corpus instruere conatus est, et ait: “hic erit homo interior, alius exterior, dupliciter unus, habens et ille oculos et aures suas, quibus populus dominum audire et videre debuerat; habens et caeteros artus, per quos et in cogitationibus utitur, et in somnis fungitur.”

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of Part II (see 9.6). This Epistle makes clear that, for Augustine (c. 411),36 the sense of the phrase ‘in the soul’ in this life—which is so crucial in Confessions XI— is not only rendered determinate by a soul’s sensing ‘in the flesh.’ The phrase ‘in the soul’ also signifies a soul’s sensing ‘outside the flesh,’ yet in space. That is to say, spatial intentio constitutes a (Stoic-inspired)37 mode of ‘dilation of the senses.’ Having transitioned to an analysis of the flesh from the cipher of a fleshless (and thus timeless) heaven in chapters 7 and 8, in chapter 9 I will take up Augustine’s concept of materia informis and demonstrate that time in Confessions XII is incontrovertibly “dependent on physical movement.”38 This is where the ‘time’/ ‘times’ distinction established in chapter 4 is critical: Augustine’s statements concerning corporeal motus and mutatio in book XII invariably identify them as producing, not ‘time’ (tempus), but ‘times’ (tempora). All of Augustine’s statements in book XII regarding physical movement and time thus harmonize with his refined thesis, in Confessions XI.23.29, wherein ‘the movement of all bodies’ (motus omnis) = ‘times’ (tempora). The ‘time’/‘times’ distinction therefore permits a clear, if still provisional, reconciliation of Confessions XI and XII, while Augustine’s ‘times’-statements undermine the still-dominant, subjectivistic, late-modern interpretive tendency. It is perfectly evident in Confessions XII that without celestial-terrestrial motion, ‘times’ are inconceivable (no motus omnis = no tempora); and thus that time in the Confessions is ‘dependent on physical movement.’ The question then becomes, of course—and this can only be elucidated with any finality in Part III—what is the nature of time’s dependence on times, and thus, on ‘the movement of all bodies’ (motus omnis)? A brief excursus on a section towards the end of Confessions XII (see 9.5) goes some way towards clarifying, on a quasi-phenomenal register, the modality of this dependence.



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But whereas Augustine, under the influence of Milanese Neoplatonism, definitively rejects Tertullian’s Stoic-inflected, Christian materialism; ‘duplicity’ in the present work suggests, not an axiological or a formally ontological, but rather a proto-phenomenological aspect of Augustine’s reflection. While caro et anima are, for Augustine, material and immaterial respectively, nevertheless in praesens (in this life) they are involuted and irrecusably co-constitutive of a vita. Thus, in praesens—and as vita—caro and anima-animus are also invariably, in Augustine (to use Tertullian’s phrase) dupliciter unus, or (to use his own phrase) totus homo (vid. Aug. Enarr. 37.8.11). Divjak (2002, 1032) dates Epist. 137 to 411/12. Cf. Colish 1985, 170–77. Alliez 1996, 124/1991, 187.

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Cohesion to God, Inhesion of the Flesh: Augustine’s Caelum Intellectuale My concern in Confessions XII, as just stated, is not with Augustine’s sources, but rather with his speculations. I should yet return, quite briefly, to the question of axiology since my interpretation increasingly thematizes the flesh (caro)—which is, admittedly, not thematized in Confessions XII—and will later privilege Augustine’s epistle on the incarnation (see 9.6). It is obvious that Augustine—post-Milan, that is—valorizes the fleshless, the incorporeal. His deity, the “arch-substance,”1 is conceived as incorporeal; the hyper-heavenly in Confessions XII is also fleshless. And more concretely, humans’ corpus and anima are ontologically distinct—“the soul is soul, but the hand is body” (VIII.9.21)2—and axiologically unequal.3 Anima-animus “is the life of bodies,” while “the life of bodies is superior to . . . the bodies they vivify” (III.6.10).4 Nevertheless, my interpretation of time in the Confessions is sensualist: Augustine’s hyper-heavenly is timeless because it is discarnate, while temporal distentio is—as a ‘distentio animi’—a ‘distentio sensuum.’ A superficial interpretation of certain ascent-motifs in Confessions VII, IX and X could lead one to reject the tendency of this interpretation out of hand, since it is graded to the (praesentior but) axiologically inferior. Nevertheless, this interpretive ‘decline’ is necessary. For despite the recollections of mystico-logical ascent in Confessions VII and IX, and his pleasure in

1 Aug. Conf. VII.16.22: summa substantia. 2 Aug. Conf. VIII.9.21: imperat animus ut moveatur manus, et tanta est facilitas ut vix a servitio discernatur imperium: et animus animus est, manus autem corpus est. 3 Cf. Aug. Epist. 3.4: Unde constamus? ex animo et corpore. quid horum melius? videlicet animus. . . . animus igitur magis amandus quam corpus. sed in qua parte animi est ista veritas? in mente atque intellegentia. quid huic adversatur? sensus. 4 Aug. Conf. III.6.10: anima . . . vita est corporum (ideo melior vita corporum certiorque quam corpora); X.6.10: iam tu melior es, tibi dico, anima, quoniam tu vegetas molem corporis tui praebens ei vitam, quod nullum corpus praestat corpori; cf. X.20.29: vivit enim corpus meum de anima. Cf. Aug. Epist. 238.2 (cit. Sciacca 1956, 32): Et cum corpus et anima sit unus homo quamvis corpus et anima non sit unum . . .

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recalling the memoria-ascent in book X,5 it is not such ascent but a tenacity of the inferior in, and in the wake of,6 this procedure that drives Augustine and intensifies his questioning. Augustine reflects in impasse, in tension. And it is precisely this tenacity—a tenacity of the flesh in reflection—that subjectivizing and Neoplatonizing interpreters of time in the Confessions have alike covered up, despite the fact that the latter half of Confessions X is strictly devoted to this problematic. (As Lyotard insinuates,7 a man who has lived for the “pleasures of the bed” will not be deaf to the flesh.)8 But attentiveness to the flesh is also necessary because the flesh (caro) is not solely inferior in Augustine: his axiology, like his logico-mystical ascents, has flesh at its core.9 This axiology crystallizes in Confessions VII as a result of Augustine’s encounter with the libri Platonicorum in Milan. It is anticipated by a proto-Platonic constellation10 of the (speculative) virtues of incorruptibility, inviolability and immutability,11 and is activated by a specifically Neoplatonic 5 Aug. Conf. X.40.65: hoc me delectat, et ab actionibus necessitatis . . . ad istam voluptatem refugio . . . et aliquando intromittis me in affectum multum inusitatum introrsus, ad nescio quam dulcedinem. Augustine speaks of voluptas in Conf. X.40, but in the memoria-ascent itself? “I toil in myself, I have become to myself a hard soil!” (laboro in me ipso, factus sum mihi terra difficultatis, X.16.25). 6 Aug. Conf. X.40.65: sed recido in haec aerumnosis ponderibus et resorbeor solitis et teneor . . . sed multum teneor. This instantaneous regress has clear parallels in Conf. VII and IX. 7 Lyotard 2000, 14–15. 8 ‘Pleasures of the bed’ is Augustine’s phrase (voluptate cubilis, IV.7.12). And cf. VI.11.20: “I would be endlessly wretched if I had to forego the embraces of a woman” (me miserum fore nimis si feminae privarer amplexibus); VI.12.22: “I could not possibly live without a woman . . . without [that pleasure] my life . . . would have seemed to me not life but a torment” (caelibem vitam nullo modo posse . . . illud sine quo vita mea . . . non mihi vita sed poena videretur). And cf. Conf. X.30.41: “Yet there still live in my memory . . . the images of such things as my [sexual] habitus had fixed there . . . not only so as to arouse pleasure [in sleep] but even resulting in my consent to a likeness of the [sexual] act itself” (sed adhuc vivunt in memoria mea . . . talium rerum imagines, quas ibi consuetudo mea fixit . . . non solum usque ad delectationem sed etiam usque ad consensionem factumque simillimum)—the only place in book X where Augustine attributes life to sense-imaginal traces. 9 And for the place of the flesh in his eschatology: Foubert 1992. 10 Since Augustine stresses in Conf. VII that he held this trine-concept prior to his introduction to Neoplatonist texts; cf. Callahan 1967, 20–29. 11 Aug. Conf. VII.1.1: incorruptibilem et inviolabilem et incommutabilem . . . incorruptibile et inviolabile et incommutabile.

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concept of incorporeality: a god that is incorruptible, inviolable and immutable is necessarily incorporeal and discarnate.12 As a corollary: a human soul that conceptualizes this god is incorporeal. Yet this incorporeal soul (i.e. the anima humana of XI.15.19) is mutable, corruptible, and is not discarnate. As I have suggested, vita for Augustine is a ‘soul-flesh,’ is duplicitous: in this life, the soul is only vita insofar as it is a vita corporis.13 (The concrete sense of this, its validity, and its significance for elucidating temporal and spatial dilation in Augustine, will become clear in what follows.) But it is essential to observe, prior to interpreting sense-affective or sense-imaginal time by way of the timelessness of a ‘heaven,’ how this axiology is internally conflicted in a way that is alien—or so Augustine contends in Confessions VII—to Neoplatonic philosophy.14 7.1

Axiology and Temporality Revisited

Fleshlessness cannot, for Augustine, have a strictly positive axiological valence: “the devil” is fleshless.15 And similarly, the flesh cannot have a strictly negative valence: his incorrupt deity has been “made flesh.”16 Furthermore, ­immortality 12 Aug. Conf. VII.1, 3–5, 11–17. This rehearsed by one of Augustine’s 6th-century exerptors, Anon. C.Phil. III.1075–79 ≈ Aug. Civ. VII.19 (with ‘Augustine’ here rebuking ‘Varro’ in conversation): . . . has interpretationes tuas non referri ad deum verum, vivam, incorpoream incommutabilemque naturam, a quo vita in aeternam poscenda est; sed earum esse fines in rebus corporalibus, temporalibus, mutabilibus atque mortalibus. 13 Cf. Aug. Civ. XIII.9: in vita, quia inest anima corpori . . . quamdiu quippe anima in corpore est, non possumus negare viventem; XIII.11: quamdiu . . . est anima in corpore, maxime si etiam sensus adsit, procul dubio vivit homo, qui constat ex anima et corpore, ac per hoc adhuc ante mortem, non in morte esse dicendus est. 14 I am not concerned here—as indicated in chapter 6—with the subtlety or accuracy of Augustine’s polemics in Conf. VII. For recent contributions on the figure of the Λόγος/ Christ and the Trinity in Porphyry—and in Augustine’s use of Porphyry: Brisson 2011; Clark 2011; Kany 2007, 50–65. 15 Aug. Conf. X.42.67: “the devil . . . much allured proud flesh, in that he had no fleshly body” (diabolus . . . multum inlexit superbam carnem, quod carneo corpore ipse non esset). The reference to ‘proud flesh’ here is directed back at Neoplatonists: cf. the charges of superbia in Conf. VII.9 and VII.18–21, while at VII.21.27 Augustine refers to the devil as the philosophers’ sovereign or prince (principe suo). 16 At Conf. VII.18.24, the pious see “before their feet the divinity . . . taking on our ‘coats of skin’ ” (videntes ante pedes suos . . . divinitatem ex participatione tunicae pelliciae nostrae). And cf. for instance VII.9.14: “But I did not read [in the Neoplatonists] that ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’ ” (sed quia verbum caro factum est et habitavit

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(≈ timelessness)17 cannot have a solely positive charge for Augustine: because he is fleshless, the devil vaunts his immortality,18 whereas divinity has “appeared . . . mortal with men.”19 Temporality cannot have a solely negative charge: while Neoplatonists insulate the divine hypostases “before all times and above all times,”20 the incarnation manifests21 a hypostasis in “mutability of soul and mind (animae et mentis),” a numen that “in due time . . . died.”22 in nobis, non ibi legi); X.43.69: “We might assume that your Word was remote from union with humanity and despair . . . had he not been ‘made flesh and dwelt among us’ ” (potuimus putare verbum tuum remotum esse a coniunctione hominis et desperare . . . nisi caro fieret et habitaret in nobis). The incarnation is salient in Conf. VII, and the veracity of this thematic in Augustine’s retrospective critique of philosophy—a question, incidentally, that VII.19.25 validates— has been much discussed. 17 Aug. Conf. XII.11.11: tu aeternus es, solus habens immortalitatem, quoniam ex nulla specie motuve mutaris nec temporibus variatur voluntas tua, quia non est immortalis voluntas quae alia et alia est. The timelessness of the materia informis in Conf. XII confirms that timelessness could not have a strictly positive charge for Augustine. And cf. Suarez 1861, 924: “. . . si Deus creasset Angelum vel cœlum ab æterno, non esset in eo durationis principium, et nihilominus duratio ejus creata esset, et essentialiter differens ab æternitate . . . sic etiam dixit Augustinus, lib. 83 Quæstionum, 19, licet omne æternum sit immortale, non tamen omne immortale satis subtiliter æternum dici; quia etsi semper aliquid vivat, tamen si mutabilitatem patiatur, non proprie æternum appellatur.” 18 Aug. Conf. X.42.67: “He would appear to [share one thing] with god, and, not being clothed with the mortality of the flesh, would boast that he was immortal” (diabolus . . . videri vult habere cum deo, ut, quia carnis mortalitate non tegitur, pro immortali se ostentet). Cf. also, Enarr. 38.18: Ecce mortales estis, ecce carnem putrescentem portatis . . .  Superbus diabolus, tamquam angelus non habens carnem mortalem . . . 19 Aug. Conf. X.43.68: homo Christus Iesus . . . apparuit, mortalis cum hominibus; cf. Doctr. I.14.13: . . . per feminam natus, homo homines, mortalis mortales, morte mortuos liberavit. 20 Aug. Conf. VII.9.14: ante omnia tempora et supra omnia tempora incommutabiliter manet. Augustine sees this as laudable—the divine word is, for him, immutable—but radically incomplete. Cf. Doctr. I.13.12: ita “verbum dei” non commutatum, caro tamen factum est ut habitaret in nobis; Serm. 117.4.6: Itaque “verbum dei,” fratres carissimi, incorporaliter, inviolabiliter, incommutabiliter, sine temporali nativitate, natum tamen intellegamus a Deo; etc. 21 Aug. Serm. 203.1: ‘Epiphania’ graecae linguae vocabulo, latine ‘manifestatio’ dici potest; 204.1: Epiphaniam hodie celebramus, quod graeco vocabulo significatur ‘manifestatio’ . . . In illo quippe natus est homo ex homine matre, qui sine initio deus erat apud patrem; sed carni est manifestatus in carne . . . 22 Aug. Conf. VII.19.25: mutabilitatis animae et mentis; VII.9.14: secundum tempus . . . mortuus est.

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The Catholic myth of incarnation23 thus radically disrupts the surfaceclarity of Augustine’s Platonic axiology.24 Yet this axiological scandal25— that his ‘arch-substance’ drank, wept and died “in time,”26 was “wed to . . .  mortal flesh”27—permits Augustine, in reflection, and requires of him a certain “intimacy with the flesh”28 which is methodologically decisive.29 I could also observe that Augustine’s incarnate god figures in the last section of Confessions X, as in the eternity-meditation of Confessions XI,30 so that this axiology of caro is not at all far removed from Augustine’s treatment of time. Cf. Serm. 198.2: Iesus Christus dei filius, qui propter nos homo factus est; Serm. 160.3: stulte huius mundi philosophe . . . contemnis humilitatem, quia non intellegis maiestatem . . . in quem credamus? in Christum crucifixum. quod non vult audire superbia, hoc audiat sapientia. mandatum eius est, ut credamus in eum. in quem? in Christum crucifixum. 23 Cf. Cic. Nat.deor. III.18: “Are we then to hold these to be gods, the sons of mortal mothers (mortalibus nati matribus)?” 24 For this axiological surface-clarity, cf. O’Daly 1991, despite his hesitation: “I know of no specifically Christian (or purely Christian) influence on Augustine’s hierarchical schemes” (1991, 150). 25 Cf. Aug. Conf. V.10.20: talem itaque naturam eius nasci non posse de Maria virgine arbitrabar, nisi carni concerneretur. . . . metuebam itaque credere in carne natum, ne credere cogerer ex carne inquinatum. 26 Though Augustine confesses, in a passage of Conf. VII, his Photinian Christology in Milan, he rehearses there “what had come down in writing concerning” Jesus (his quae de illo scripta traderentur), i.e. in the Gospels: Jesus exemplified a derision of temporal things (contemnendorum temporalium), and yet “he ate and drank, slept, walked, rejoiced, was sad, preached” (manducavit et bibit, dormivit, ambulavit, exhilaratus est, contristatus est, sermocinatus est, VII.19.25). Varro, incidentally, lists “sitting, walking, talking” (sedetur, ambulatur, loquontur) as prime instances of things which “are said with some time-factor” (dicuntur cum tempore aliquot), in book VI of De Lingua Latina, “on times” (de temporibus), at Var. Ling. VI.1.1. And for the strong link from ‘eating and drinking’ to time and mortality, cf. Aug. Conf. X.31.43: reficimus enim cotidianas ruinas corporis edendo et bibendo; Enarr. 122.11: manducamus et bibimus: medicamenta ipsa sunt, quae nobis apponuntur. Fratres, si vultis videre qualis morbus nos habeat; qui ieiunat septem diebus, fame consumitur. For Augustine contra Porphyry on the incarnation: O’Meara 1958, 109. 27 Aug. Conf. IV.12.19: et descendit huc ipsa vita nostra, et tulit mortem nostram . . . processit ad nos, in ipsum primum virginalem uterum ubi ei nupsit humana creatura, caro mortalis. 28 Aug. Conf. XII.27.37: cogitant . . . ex familiaritate carnis. This phrase will reappear and figure large in chapter 10. 29 Cf. Aug. Enarr. 43.16: dominus in carne erat, et apparebat homo hominibus. qualis apparebat? iam dixi, homo hominibus. quid magnum apparebat? caro carni. 30 Cf. Aug. Conf. X.43.68–69, XI.8.10.

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Augustine’s Hyper-Heavenly (Caelum Caeli)

Regardless, in Confessions XII the axiology of timelessness is differently conflicted: the godlike timelessness of the caelum caeli is mirrored by the inert timelessness of the materia informis. The hyper-heavenly is posited sine ulla vicissitudine temporum, and the hyper-terrestrial is also posited sine ulla vicissitudine temporum (XII.13.16). And though here the mirroring is less precise, the fleshlessness of the hyper-heavenly is reflected in the formlessness of the hyperterrestrial (XII.12.15), which includes fleshlessness in its concept.31 On a formal register, this is why we could expect—as suggested in 5.1—that the speculative question of temporal conditions in book XII will converge, symmetrically and inversely, on the sense-affective conditions of ‘time.’ It is flesh—or more precisely, a ‘soul-flesh’—that formally mediates the base indifference of the hyper-terrestrial and the sublime indifference of the hyper-heavenly.32 And what is Augustine’s hyper-heavenly? The caelum intellectuale is posited as living,33 but is not characterized as a life (vita). The sublime animus of Confessions XI.31.41 is in Confessions XII explicitly mens, a “pure mind” (mentem puram, XII.11.12) that is never referred to as anima, animus or vita.34 But what does Augustine’s mens pura signify here? He later glosses the phrase thus: the hyper-heavenly is a “rational and 31 Aug. Conf. XII.3.3: priusquam istam informem materiam formares atque distingueres, non erat aliquid, non color, non figura, non corpus, non spiritus. The sense of figura here is broad, but that the term has specific links to a vivified body (= caro) cf. Conf. VII.1.1: figura corporis humani; I.7.12: tu itaque, domine deus meus, qui dedisti vitam infanti et corpus, quod ita, ut videmus, instruxisti sensibus, compegisti membris, figura decorasti proque eius universitate atque incolumitate omnes conatus animantis insinuasti. 32 And incidentally: it is not solely a human soul-flesh that mediates the base indifference of the hyper-terrestrial and the sublime indifference of the hyper-heavenly. Augustine concedes that the beasts also have time. I discuss this in chapter 8. 33 Implicitly in Conf. XII, explicitly in the proem of book XIII. Cf. Aug. Conf. XIII.2.3–3.4: erat iam qualiscumque vita . . . et quod utcumque vivit et quod beate vivit non deberet nisi gratiae tuae. 34 In book XII, animus-animans is used for living things generally, as at Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: numquid animus? numquid corpus? numquid species animi vel corporis?; XII.8.8: in suo fundo animantibus. Anima-animus is used for humans specifically, as at Conf. XII.3.3: docuisti hanc animam quae tibi confitetur; XII.6.6: foedas et horribiles formas perturbatis ordinibus volvebat animus; XII.11.13: unde intellegat anima, cuius peregrinatio longinqua facta est; XII.17.25: anima hominis et corpus; XII.25.34: aequo animo ferre deberem; XII.25.35: diligamus dominum deum nostrum ex toto corde, ex tota anima, ex tota mente nostra;

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intellectual mind” (mens rationalis et intellectualis, XII.15.20),35 and this is not a senseless accumulation of terms. To the contrary, its sense becomes clear when one recalls a sentence from Confessions XII.6.6 (to which I return in chapter 9), where Augustine writes: “So my mind (mens) ceased to question my spirit (spiritum), which was replete with the images of determinate bodies (plenum imaginibus formatorum corporum) . . .”36 This sentence suggests, not a (terminological) indistinction, but a co-immanence37 of sensus carnis and spiritus38 that inflects all of Augustine’s temporal, speculative intentions. Spiritus is suffused with, and mens is sustained, captivated, illuminated by sensus carnis and, here, by a swarm of memorial trace-images of (the forms of) sensed bodies. That is to say: the temporal mens that elaborates, in Confessions XII, its conception of the hyper-heavenly is not a “rational and intellectual mind.”39 While it is not senseless, Augustine’s phrase mens rationalis et intellectualis is yet a static accumulation of terms, since unicity is the speculative condition of this mens pura: “a pure mind” is “hyper-harmoniously one” ­(concordissime XII.29.40: quis deinde sic acutum cernat animo. (Also note a metaphorical use of animal at XII.27.37: in quibus adhuc parvulis animalibus . . .) The caelum caeli is referred to as creatura and mens—as at Conf. XII.9.9: creatura est . . . intellectualis; XII.15.20: mens rationalis—but never as anima or animus. 35 Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.9.9: creatura est aliqua intellectualis; IV.15.24: . . . inque illa unitate mens rationalis et natura veritatis ac summi boni mihi esse videbatur; IV.15.25: . . . si rationalis mens ipsa vitiosa est. Cf. also Aug. Gen.lib.imp. III.6.4: prima creatura intellectualis; III.7.1: angeli et omnes intellectuales potestates. 36 Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: cessavit mens mea interrogare hinc spiritum meum plenum imaginibus formatorum corporum. 37 Which, again, is not to say axiological co-eminence. 38 Because of this co-immanence of sensus-spiritus and mens, I will not refer to the hyperheavenly mens as ‘spiritual.’ However, for the hyper-heavenly as ‘spiritual,’ cf. Aug. Conf. XII.15.19: domus dei non terrena neque ulla caelesti mole corporea, sed spiritalis; XII.17.24: caeli nomine spiritalem vel intellectualem. And for the divine spiritus, cf. Verbeke 1945, 492–97; Aug. Conf. XII.11.12: sanctorum spirituum; XII.14.17: spiritus dei; XII.15.22: sancti spiritus. 39 Or more precisely, it cannot be—and will not be—so characterized in the context of Conf. XII. In his axiological schema at Aug. Serm. 43.4 (c. 400), for instance, Augustine says that we share “sensation with beasts and intellection with angels” (sentire cum bestiis, intellegere cum angelis). While this hierarchy is never, to my awareness, rejected outright or in toto, we will see a certain failure in Conf. X to distinguish human memoria (and thus, cogitatio) from that of the beasts, and a radical distinction in Conf. XII between human and angelic ‘intellection.’

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unam, XII.11.12).40 Purity is here rigourously identified with unicity, while unicity—as will become apparent—is the speculative condition for a “stability of peace” (stabilimento pacis, XII.11.12) that insulates the caelum intellectuale from mutatio, and thus from ‘times.’41 In its tranquillity, the hyper-heavenly is thus delineated as a mens that is never swayed by or deflected towards bodies: “Without any defection in passing-out-of-itself towards another (egrediendi in aliud), [it is] a pure mind, hyper-harmoniously one.”42 This last formulation must be contrasted, for its sense, with several sentences from Confessions X: Memory is a spacious power,43 o god, a sublime thing—I do not know what—a deep and infinite multiplicity. And this is my soul,44 and this I myself am. What then am I, o god? What nature am I? A various and multiplex life, and exceedingly vast . . . So intense is the power of memory! So intense the power of life in humans—whose life is mortal!

40 Aug. Conf. XII.11.12: mentem puram concordissime unam. 41 Aug. Conf. XII.11.12: mentem puram concordissime unam stabilimento pacis. 42 Aug. Conf. XII.11.12: sine ullo defectu egrediendi in aliud, mentem puram concordissime unam. The term egredior, which I here render ‘passing-out-of-itself,’ could simultaneously be rendered ‘passing-out-of-god.’ This will become clearer as I elaborate on the caelum intellectualis’s speculative haerere. And Augustine’s phrase, sine ullo defectu, also speculatively insulates Augustine’s heavenly creatures against the jeopardies of ‘temptation.’ Cf. Aug. C.Faust. XXII.28: angelica sublimis natura non peccat, quia ita particeps est legis aeternae, ut solus eam delectet deus, cuius voluntati sine ullo experimento temptationis obtemperat. 43 For the inflection of magnus here as ‘spacious,’ see the lines that immediately follow (ecce in memoriae meae campis et antris et cavernis innumerabilibus atque innumerabiliter plenis innumerabilium rerum generibus, X.17.26), where O’Daly (1993, 45) identifies a Ciceronian influence, and notes the parallel formulation at Conf. X.8.15 (magna ista vis est memoriae, magna nimis, deus meus, penetrale amplum et infinitum. quis ad fundum eius pervenit? . . . in memoria mea viderem, spatiis tam ingentibus quasi foris viderem). This spatial thematic in Augustine’s memoria-ascent is reprised and crystallized at Conf. X.24.35: ecce quantum spatiatus sum in memoria mea quaerens te, domine. 44 For animus as ‘soul’ here, rather than ‘mind’ (which has relevance to animus as ‘soul’ in Conf. XI.14–29), cf. later in this passage: “for even cattle and birds have memoria” (habent enim memoriam et pecora et aves, X.17.26). It is also significant that Augustine immediately proceeds—in the text extracted here—to identify animus with vita, not with mens.

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magna vis est memoriae, nescio quid horrendum, deus meus, profunda et infinita multiplicitas. et hoc animus est, et hoc ego ipse sum. quid ergo sum, deus meus? quae natura sum? varia, multimoda vita et immensa vehementer . . . tanta vis est memoriae, tanta vitae vis est in homine vivente mortaliter! (X.17.26) The timeless unicity of Augustine’s caelum intellectuale is essentially, and not incidentally, preceded in the Confessions by this radical, constitutively ramified temporality of a multimoda vita.45 (Recall the discussion of natura and vis, here linked to vita, in 4.3.) It is this vita—i.e. the ‘this life’ (hac vita) of Confessions XII.1.146—that delivers, and is reflected in, Augustine’s formulations of a hyperheavenly creature. And it is, saliently, the pleasure of ‘a life’ that is reflected in this mens pura. As a spectral formalization of temporal fruitio or delectatio, Augustine’s concept of the caelum intellectuale is achieved by a negation of the constitutive impresences of (spatial) intentio and (temporal) distentio: the sole mode of praesens that is proper to this mens is not sensus or contuitus (and thus distentio), but contemplatio.47 In its contemplation, as Lyotard writes, “knowing knowledge 45 46 47

Cf. Lyotard 1998, 51: “vie changeante, multiforme.” Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.1.1: multa satagit cor meum, domine, in hac inopia vitae meae. Contemplatio is a technical term in Conf. XII, and signifies (α) incorporeal and (β) intransitive scientia, i.e. nosse simul. For Augustine, contemplatio signifies the ideal elimination of spatial intentio and temporal distentio. Of the 10× contemplare-contemplatio appears in Conf. I–XII, 6× are in book XII, where it is exclusively ascribed to the caelum intellectuale; while the 2× the term appears in book XI subtly anticipate the caelum caeli (at XI.30–31), and starkly contrast temporal contuitus with preter-temporal contemplatio. Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.22.28, the last section—on my analysis—of the first phase of the time-investigation (see chapter 4): haec est spes mea, ad hanc vivo, ut contempler delectationem domini. ecce veteres posuisti dies meos et transeunt, et quomodo, nescio; and XI.29.39, the last section—on my analysis—of the time-investigation: . . . non in ea quae futura et transitura sunt, sed in ea quae ante sunt non distentus sed extentus, non secundum distentionem sed secundum intentionem . . . ubi audiam vocem laudis et contempler delectationem tuam nec venientem nec praetereuntem. Of the 2× where contemplatio is used in Conf. I–IX, one appears to be ironic (IV.14.23), though in the following section (IV.15.24), Augustine uses this irony to stress the incorporeality of contemplatio. The second instance prepares and confirms the special sense of contemplatio in book XII: at VII.20.26, Augustine fails to sustain a contemplatio of “[you, o god, who] are infinite, yet not diffused through finite or infinite spaces . . . and you [who] are always the same, with no distinct parts or varying movements” (infinitum esse nec tamen per locos finitos infinitosve diffundi . . . semper idem ipse esses, ex nulla parte nulloque motu alter aut aliter).

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unfolds as known knowledge,” and thus “exempt from becoming” (exempte du devenir),48 the hyper-heavenly’s intellection is a chaste voluptas.49 (Augustine’s ideal of sexual castitas-continentia is itself an ideal of unicity.)50 And it is necessary to stress that Augustine’s conceptualization of this delectatio or voluptas is achieved, i.e. derived. The negative or remotive procedure51 without which Augustine could not elaborate his concept of the caelum intellectuale is tacit in Confessions XII, but in book X—in a passage that is also highly relevant to the eternitymeditation in book XI—Augustine indicates a via remotionis from senseaffective presence which will result, in book XII, in his cipher of the hyperheavenly’s discarnate voluptas.52 It is very clear in this passage that the condition of sense-affective voluptas, which Augustine relies on to predelineate his concept of a discarnate voluptas, is duplex: (α) dissipation, separation, delimitation in space (locus); (β) transitivity, satiety, loss in time (tempus). This duplex condition of impresence—for it is this, impresence, that spatial intentio and temporal distentio co-constitute—without which the word ‘voluptas’ risks ceasing to signify,53 yet signals a radical imperfection of voluptas as praesens 48 49

Lyotard 2000, 42/1998, 65–66. Aug. Conf. XII.11.12: cuius voluptas tu solus es . . . domum tuam contemplantem delectationem tuam sine ullo defectu egrediendi in aliud, mentem puram concordissime unam; XII.9.9: creatura est aliqua intellectualis. quam . . . particeps tamen aeternitatis tuae, valde mutabilitatem suam prae dulcedine felicissimae contemplationis tuae cohibet. 50 Aug. Conf. X.29.40: per continentiam quippe conligimur et redigimur in unum, a quo in multa defluximus. And for a glimpse of the pagan backcloth of Augustine’s decision for celibacy in Conf. VI–VIII, cf. for instance—and though it post-dates Augustine by a century—Dam. Hist. 91b: “Pursuing philosophy but at the same time devoting his life to the pleasures below the belly (τὰς ὑπογαστρίους ἡδονάς), Hilarius [of Syria] was not accepted by Proclus as a disciple (διδασκάλου).” 51 I take ‘remotive’ and ‘via remotionis,’ throughout, from von Herrmann. Cf. von Herrmann 1992, 27/2008, 33 (tr. mod.): “Uncreated being is such that it can be conceived only at a distance (im denkenden Entfernen). . . . In Latin, removere means ‘to be distant,’ so that with Heidegger . . . we can term such a conceptual distance [in Augustine] as the remote way of conception (die remotive Betrachtungsweise).” 52 My stress falls on the per animam—the procedure indicated in what follows—and not on Augustine’s logico-mystical ‘ascents.’ Cf. Aug. Conf. X.7.11: per ipsam animam meam ascendam ad illum; X.17.26: ecce ego ascendens per animum meum ad te. 53 Cf. Cic. Fin. II.3.8: Omnes enim iucundum motum quo sensus hilaretur Graece ἡδονήν, Latine ‘voluptatem’ vocant; II.4.13: Huic verbo [sc. ‘voluptas’] omnes qui ubique sunt qui Latine sciunt duas res subiciunt, laetitiam in animo, commotionem suavem iucunditatis in corpore.

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(i.e. in hac vita). And it is this imperfection which, in deploying a temporized contuitus to limn the contours of a timeless contemplatio, Augustine seeks to speculatively eliminate in Confessions XII.54 He writes of god in Confessions X: I love you, o lord . . . but what is it that I love, when I love you? Not the beauty of bodies, not the splendour of time;55 nor the radiance of light . . . nor the charm of melodies . . . nor the fragrance of blossoms, unguents and spices; not manna and honey, not the limbs that carnal love embraces. I do not love these when I love my god. And yet I love some light, some voice, some fragrance and some food, some embrace when I love my god—a light, voice, fragrance, food and embrace of my “interior man”—where what irradiates my soul no space can delimit, where time does not drive-off what sounds, where there is a fragrance that no wind scatters, where there is a savor that indulgence does not lessen, and where that holds-close which satedness never disrupts—this is what I love, when I love my god. And what is this? domine, amo te . . . quid autem amo, cum te amo? non speciem corporis nec decus temporis, non candorem lucis . . . non dulces melodias cantilenarum . . . non florum et unguentorum et aromatum suaviolentiam, non manna et mella, non membra acceptabilia carnis amplexibus: non haec amo, cum amo deum meum, et tamen amo quandam lucem et quandam vocem et quendam odorem et quendam cibum et quendam amplexum, cum amo deum meum, lucem, vocem, odorem, cibum, amplexum interioris hominis mei, ubi fulget animae meae quod non capit locus, et ubi sonat quod non rapit tempus, et ubi olet quod non spargit flatus, et ubi sapit quod non minuit edacitas, et ubi haeret quod non divellit satietas. hoc est quod amo, cum deum meum amo. et quid est hoc? (X.6.8–9) Augustine will effectively return to his final question here, ‘And what is this?’ in his eternity-meditation (XI.3–13); and in Confessions XI, Augustine’s 54

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Yet this ‘imperfection’ is relative. Cf. for instance, Aug. Lib.arb. III.15.42: omnia temporalia, quae in hoc rerum ordine ita locata sunt, ut nisi deficiant, non possint praeteritis futura succedere, ut tota temporum in suo genere pulchritudo peragatur, absurdissime dicimus non debere deficere . . . qui enim dolet ea deficere, sermonem suum oportet attendat . . . si quis unam particulam diligat, nec eam velit caeteris deficiendo locum dare . . . mirabilis dementiae iudicabitur. Cf. for instance, Aug. Conf. II.2.3: et novissimarum rerum fugaces pulchritudines in usum verteret . . .

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h­ oc-quod-amo is eternity.56 There are also terminological and thematic foreechoes of the time-investigation (XI.14–29) in this passage. For instance, the phrase rapit tempus, here in book X, is echoed where Augustine first asserts that praesens tempus is inextended;57 and the situation of that phrase here— “where time does not drive-off what sounds” (ubi sonat quod non rapit tempus, X.6.8)—anticipates his proto-phenomenological analyses of vox corporis and the sonare in the last pages of book XI.58 The intimate linkage, and sensuous constitution (and destitution) of locus and tempus in Confessions X.6 are, thus, relevant to Confessions XI. The passage’s most immediate relevance, however, is to Augustine’s conceptual determination of the caelum intellectuale in book XII, for which the decisive phrase is this: “. . . where that holds-close (haeret) which satedness never disrupts” (X.6.8). The polysemous root-verb haerere becomes,59 in Confessions XII, a technical term.60 In book XII, inhaerere and cohaerere exclusively refer to the caelum intellectuale, invariably (and hyper-intimately) link the hyper-heavenly to god,61 and as a result, invariably signal its timelessness. On my interpretation—which in this regard is, I believe, new—this root-verb haerere is a crux for elucidating anima-animus and tempus in Confessions XI, 56

Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.2.4: exaudi desiderium meum. puto enim quod non sit de terra, non de auro et argento et lapidibus aut decoris vestibus aut honoribus et potestatibus aut voluptatibus carnis, neque de necessariis corpori et huic vitae peregrinationis nostrae . . . vide, deus meus, unde sit desiderium meum. In Conf. X the hoc-quod-amo—which is aeternitas in book XI and a caelum intellectuale in book XII—is interrogated by way of Augustine’s concept of beata vita. Thus, for instance, Conf. X.20.29: cum enim te, deum meum, quaero, vitam beatam quaero. 57 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: si quid intellegitur temporis, quod in nullas iam vel minutissimas momentorum partes dividi possit, id solum est quod ‘praesens’ dicatur; quod tamen ita raptim a futuro in praeteritum transvolat, ut nulla morula extendatur. . . . praesens autem nullum habet spatium. This is a decisive passage in the time-investigation, as will become clear in Part III. 58 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.26.33–27.36. 59 Cf. Arts 1927, 13: “Haerere (cleave, cling, be fixed)”; 14: “Cohaerere (cling together, cohere).” 60 Haerere and derivatives appear 35× in the Conf., of which 6× in Conf. X, 0× in Conf. XI, 7× in Conf. XII. 61 Aug. Conf. XII.9.9: inhaerendo tibi; XII.11.12: inhaerendo beatitudini tuae; XII.11.13: tibi cohaerendo; XII.15.19: cohaerentem deo; XII.15.21: tibi cohaerens; XII.15.22: inhaerere deo; XII.19.28: cohaeret formae incommutabili. And haerere is re-deployed for the caelum intellectuale in book XIII. Cf. Conf. XIII.3.4: non existendo sed intuendo inluminantem lucem eique cohaerendo; XIII.8.9: et inhaereret tibi omnis oboediens intellegentia caelestis civitatis tuae et requiesceret in spiritu tuo, qui superfertur incommutabiliter super omne mutabile.

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for recognizing contemplatio in book XII as a negative formalization of sensuscontuitus in book XI, and thus for delineating the timelessness of the caelum intellectuale.62 7.3

Timelessness and the Root-Verb Haerere

Below I give every appearance of the root-verb haerere in Confessions XII, which demonstrates the strong linkage between haerere and the hyperheavenly’s timelessness in the book: “And without any lapse from its primordial condition, cohering to you [o god], it surpasses all the revolving63 changes-of-times” = sine ullo lapsu ex quo facta est inhaerendo tibi excedit omnem volubilem vicissitudinem temporum (XII.9.9); “It is varied by no change nor dilated into any times . . . cohering to your blessedness [o lord]” = nulla vice variatur nec in tempora ulla distenditur . . . inhaerendo beatitudini tuae (XII.11.12); “[The hyper-heavenly] is not co-eternal with you [o god], yet by ceaselessly and tirelessly cohering to you it suffers no changes-of-times” = non sit tibi coaeterna, tamen indesinenter et indeficienter tibi cohaerendo nullam patitur vicissitudinem temporum (XII.11.13); “A certain sublime creature, cohering to god—the true and truly eternal [god]—with such a chaste love that . . . it does not detach from him nor flow-out into any variances and changes-of-times . . . but rests in a most-veracious contemplation of him-alone” = sublimem quandam esse creaturam tam casto amore cohaerentem deo vero et vere aeterno ut . . . in nullam tamen temporum varietatem et vicissitudinem ab illo se resolvat . . . sed in eius solius veracissima contemplatione requiescat (XII.15.19); “Not only do we discover no time before [the hyper-heavenly,] but we discover no time in it, since it is adapted always to behold your face [o lord] . . . Yet there is mutability-itself in it, from which it would 62

63

The subterranean or ‘destructive’ interpretation I lay out here, connecting the human haerere as vita corporis to the sublime haerere of the caelum intellectuale is anticipated by Augustine’s speculative procedure, relative to the divine trinity, at Conf. XIII.11.12, and later, in Aug. Trin. Cf. Hrdlicka 1931, 74: “volubilis, rolling, fleeting (of time) . . . perishable: [Conf.] 5, 7, 19, aliquod nutabile aut volubile bonum.”

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become dark and cold unless it cohered to you with a potent love” = non solum ante illam sed nec in illa invenimus tempus, quia est idonea faciem tuam semper videre . . . inest ei tamen ipsa mutabilitas, unde tenebresceret et frigesceret nisi amore grandi tibi cohaerens (XII.15.21); “[The hyper-heavenly], whose good is always to cohere to god, surpasses all dilation and all revolving space of times” = supergreditur . . . omnem distentionem et omne spatium aetatis volubile, cui semper inhaerere deo bonum est (XII.15.22); “That [sublime creature] which so coheres to the immutable form suffers no times and, though itself mutable, is not moved” = nulla tempora perpeti quod ita cohaeret formae incommutabili ut, quamvis sit mutabile, non mutetur (XII.19.28). Tabulated in this way the connection is obvious;64 the sense of this connection is not, however, obvious—and to my awareness, has never been investigated. Augustine posits an intransitive coherence of the caelum intellectuale to or with god. This unvarying (i.e. indifferent) intimacy with a divine immutability is characterized, as previously indicated, as (i) contemplatio and (ii) voluptas. In book XII, Augustine’s distentio-formulations of the timeinvestigation find an echo—the hyper-heavenly is not “dilated (distenditur) into any times” (XII.11.12); it “surpasses all dilation (distentionem)” (XII.15.22)— yet this is a strictly negative echo. The hyper-heavenly’s contemplatio is not contuitus, and thus, its delectatio is not distentio. (Recall the extended discussion of Confessions XI.31.41 in chapter 5.) The inexplicit justification for this negation in book XII is itself duplex, yet converges—I contend—on the flesh: (α) unlike human cogitatio, which is rooted in and incommutably directed towards the radical mutivity of contuitus (≈ senseperception), and thus is distentio—‘distentio sensuum’ as a ‘distentio animi’—the hyper-heavenly’s contemplatio is speculatively rooted in and immutably directed towards a senseless and static eternity; and

64

And cf. Aug. Conf. XIII.3.4: . . . non existendo sed intuendo inluminantem lucem eique cohaerendo, ut et quod utcumque vivit et quod beate vivit non deberet nisi gratiae tuae, conversa per commutationem meliorem ad id quod neque in melius neque in deterius mutari potest.

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(β) unlike human voluptas, which is originarily involved in and derived from the flesh (≈ sensation, acquisition),65 and thus has spatial intentio and temporal distentio as its co-conditions,66 the hyperheavenly’s rapture at the divine unicity is speculatively conceived as indifferent. In essence: the speculative haerere of the caelum intellectuale to Augustine’s deity, which results in its timelessness, is negatively derived from and mirrors a sub-phenomenal haerere of anima-animus to the flesh, which haerere (≈ vita) in Confessions X is the precondition for temporal distentio in Confessions XI. That is, the contemplatio and delectatio of the caelum intellectuale—its ‘cohesion’ to the deity—negatively formalize, by way of the procedure I have indicated in this chapter, the sense-affective constitution of spatial intention and temporal dilation by way of what I call an ‘inhesion of the flesh.’ For Augustine, it is this ‘inhesion of the flesh’ by a soul which possibilizes a sense-affective ‘dilation’ in spaces and times. But this, of course, must be demonstrated. 7.4

More on Augustine’s Root-Verb Haerere

It suffices to observe, initially, that a human, temporal haerere is oriented to god at Confessions X.6.8—the passage quoted above—and that this mysticological ‘clinging’ has precedents in Confessions I to IX.67 That is, the haerere which becomes a technical term in book XII, and is essentially linked to

65 Aug. Conf. I.6.7: nam tunc sugere noram et adquiescere delectationibus, flere autem offensiones carnis meae, nihil amplius. 66 Aug. Conf. I.6.8: et ecce paulatim sentiebam ubi essem, et voluntates meas volebam ostendere eis per quos implerentur, et non poteram, quia illae intus erant, foris autem illi, nec ullo suo sensu valebant introire in animam meam. 67 Augustine will gloss Conf. X.6.8 at X.17.26: ecce ego ascendens per animum meum ad te . . . volens te attingere unde attingi potes, et inhaerere tibi unde inhaereri tibi potest. Cf. also Conf. I.9.15: estne quisquam, domine, tam magnus animus, praegrandi affectu tibi cohaerens, estne, inquam, quisquam (facit enim hoc quaedam etiam stoliditas: est ergo), qui tibi pie cohaerendo ita sit affectus granditer; IV.12.18: redite, praevaricatores, ad cor et inhaerete illi qui fecit vos; IV.14.23: ecce ubi iacet anima infirma nondum haerens soliditati veritatis; V.4.7: et quasi nihil habens omnia possidet inhaerendo tibi; VI.6.9: nunc tibi inhaereat anima mea; VII.5.7: haerebat in corde meo in catholica ecclesia fides Christi; VII.11.17: mihi autem inhaerere deo bonum est.

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timelessness, has previously described a temporal ‘clinging’ of the heart to the cipher of eternity in this life, i.e. a converted desire (the extentio of Confessions XI.29–30).68 Variations of the haerere are also employed, in Confessions I to IX, to describe social bonds and intimacy.69 In Confessions VI, the term haerere describes Augustine’s sex-drive and sexual habitus,70 and significantly—recall the formulation at X.6.8: “where that holds-close (haeret) which satedness never disrupts”—his final separation from the mother of his son, Adeodatus: And she being torn from my side . . . my heart, where I was attached to her, was lacerated and wounded and shed blood. et avulsa a latere meo . . . cor, ubi adhaerebat, concisum et vulneratum mihi erat et trahebat sanguinem. (VI.15.25) To dismiss the significance of this haerere—this incident, this sense of ‘the heart’—in the Confessions would be a mistake.71 Prior to Confessions X.6.8 (the lyrical passage recently quoted), this sentence from Confessions VI is perhaps the clearest indication of the rudiment of a passional haerere in the Confessions.72 It is Augustine’s text—structurally, lexically, repeatedly73—and not a psychologistic interpretive tendency, that suggests a deep relatedness 68

Also post-mortem, cf. Aug. Conf. X.28.39: cum inhaesero tibi ex omni me, nusquam erit mihi dolor et labor, et viva erit vita mea tota plena te; XI.29.39: donec in te confluam purgatus et liquidus igne amoris tui. 69 Aug. Conf. II.3.8: ecce cum quibus comitibus iter agebam platearum Babyloniae . . . et in umbilico eius quo tenacius haererem, calcabat me inimicus invisibilis et seducebat me, quia ego seductilis eram; IV.3.5: quia enim factus ei eram familiarior et eius sermonibus . . . adsiduus et fixus inhaerebam; IV.4.7: amicitia . . . non est vera nisi cum eam tu agglutinas inter haerentes tibi caritate diffusa in cordibus nostris; VI.10.16: hunc ergo Romae inveneram, et adhaesit mihi fortissimo vinculo mecumque Mediolanium profectus est . . . talis ille tunc inhaerebat mihi mecumque nutabat in consilio; VIII.6.15: respondit ille adhaerere se socium tantae mercedis tantaeque militiae; IX.4.8: matre adhaerente nobis muliebri habitu, virili fide . . . materna caritate. 70 Aug. Conf. VI.12.22: . . . ita haerere visco illius voluptatis ut me adfirmarem . . . caelibem vitam nullo modo posse degere. 71 Cf., for instance, Virg. Aen. I.715–16: “With her eyes, with all her heart she clings to him” (haec oculis, haec pectore toto haeret). 72 The other relevant passage here is Aug. Conf. IV.12.18: ecce ubi est, ubi sapit veritas: intimus cordi est . . . redite, praevaricatores, ad cor et inhaerete illi qui fecit vos. 73 Cf. Aug. Conf. VIII.10.24: ita etiam cum aeternitas delectat superius et temporalis boni voluptas retentat inferius, eadem anima est non tota voluntate illud aut hoc volens et

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between Augustine’s ‘woman’ and ‘god,’ which could also (albeit distantly) be seen as a Platonic motif. However, the timeless haerere of the caelum intellectuale in Confessions XII, despite sexual-libidinal echoes,74 is constitutive: this haerere is its condition (conditionis suae, XII.15.20).75 And in this, the root-word haerere as a terminus technicus in book XII differs radically from its sense in Confessions I to IX, and indeed, in Confessions X.6.8. So what is the constitutive haerere in the Confessions that precedes, pre-delineates and renders (negatively) determinate the haerere in Confessions XII—thus elucidating, indirectly, ­sense-affective time in Confessions XI? Several sentences in Confessions X.33.49 provide an initial indication. In rehearsing the temptations that attend voluptates aurium in general—this is Cicero’s term of art, before it is Augustine’s76—and the voluptates aurium of liturgical song in particular,77 Augustine observes: ideo discerpitur gravi molestia, dum illud veritate praeponit, hoc familiaritate non ponit; VIII.11.27: narrant tibi delectationes, sed non sicut lex domini dei tui; etc. Cf. also the ascent-section in book VII, prior to Augustine’s renunciation of his sexual consuetudo, at Conf. VII.17.23: . . . et pondus hoc consuetudo carnalis . . . neque ullo modo dubitabam esse cui cohaererem, sed nondum me esse qui cohaererem . . . 74 Aug. Conf. XII.11.12: cuius voluptas tu solus es, teque perseverantissima castitate hauriens mutabilitatem suam nusquam et numquam exerit, et te sibi semper praesente, ad quem toto affectu se tenet; XII.15.19: tam casto amore cohaerentem deo vero et vere aeterno; XII.15.20: mens rationalis et intellectualis castae civitatis tuae, matris nostrae. And for Conf. XII.11.12, voluptas . . . solus, cf. Virg. Aen. III.660, where the monstrous Polyphemus’ “sole pleasure” (sola voluptas) is in his flocks of sheep. 75 Aug. Conf. XII.15.19–21: . . . creaturam tam casto amore cohaerentem deo . . . in eius solius veracissima contemplatione requiescat . . . sumpsit exordium, quamvis non temporis, quia nondum erat tempus, ipsius tamen conditionis suae . . . etsi non solum ante illam sed nec in illa invenimus tempus . . . amore grandi tibi cohaerens tamquam semper meridies luceret. 76 Cf. for instance, Cic. Or. 12.38: voluptatem aurium; 18.58: aurium voluptatem; 48.159: voluptati . . . aurium morigerari debet oratio; 60.203: aurium voluptate; 71.237: aurium voluptatem. For Augustine’s acquaintance with and use of Cic. Or.: Hagendahl 1967, 553–69; Testard 1958, I:189–92. Testard (1958, II:120) identifies 7 citations of the Or. in Aug. Doctr., but none in the Conf.; similarly, Hagendahl (1967, 554 n. 2) writes that Cic. Or. provides “the leading theme of Augustine’s exposition” in Doctr. IV, but sees no citations or testimonies in the Conf. Against Testard and Hagendahl, then, I would suggest that the entire motif of voluptates aurium in Conf. X is, in fact, derived from Cic. Or.; and thereby—as one could predict—relates back to Augustine’s years as a rhetor, and his withdrawal from the profession. Cf. Aug. Conf. IX.4.7: et venit dies quo etiam actu solverer a professione rhetorica . . .; etc. 77 Vid. Heidegger 1995, 217–18/2004, 161–62.

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The pleasures of the ear had more tenaciously . . . subjugated me, but you unbound and liberated me [o god]. Yet still in those sounds which your eloquence breathes life into, when they are sung with a sweet and welltempered voice,78 I confess, that at times I take delight in them79—yet not so as to cling to these sounds, for I can depart when I will. voluptates aurium tenacius me . . . subiugaverant, sed resolvisti et liberasti me. nunc in sonis quos animant eloquia tua cum suavi et artificiosa voce cantantur, fateor, aliquantulum adquiesco, non quidem ut haeream, sed ut surgam cum volo. (X.33.49) The haerere here is suggestive precisely because it is not constitutive: ‘I can depart when I will.’ Since the caelum intellectuale is explicitly conceived—for only in this is it distinct from the deity80—as mutable, it could, per Augustine’s exposition, ‘depart’ from its ageless contemplatio and shiftless voluptas. It is (speculatively) capable of a lapse into times but, for Augustine, it will not so lapse—it will never lapse.81 And yet, to trace out Augustine’s theologically motivated caveat here82 (i.e. the mutability of the hyper-heavenly as an originated existence): “There is mutability-itself in it, from which it would become dark and cold unless it cohered to you with a potent love” (XII.15.21). The imagery here is intentionally cadaverous;83 in a lapse from its timeless haerere, the caelum intellectuale would die. Its haerere is, while speculatively assured, speculatively passable. Despite initial appearances, however, this passable haerere is still constitutive: 78

Cf. Cic. Or. 27.55–28.58 on rhetorical ‘delivery’ as “some mode of bodily eloquence” (quasi corporis quaedam eloquentia), and on that wondrous “quality of the voice” (mira . . . natura vocis) whereby there exists, “even in speech, some type of singing” (in dicendo quidam cantus), culminating in this rhetorical maxim: “Let art (industria) follow the lead of nature (natura) in the pleasures of the ear (ad aurium voluptatem).” 79 At Cic. Orat. III.45.177 there is a strong link from “the pleasures of the ear” (aurium voluptatem) to the “motions” of auditors’ souls (animorum motum). 80 Aug. Conf. XII.15.19: nec tamen tibi coaeterna, quoniam non sine initio, facta est enim. 81 Armstrong’s (1954, 282) reference to “the unrealised possibility of its falling away” is insufficiently strong. Porro (1996, 82–83) is more perceptive: “Di fatto, la durata del caelum caeli è assolutamente stabile, sottratta anch’essa, al pari dell’eternità divina (ma solo in virtù di quest’ultima), alla mutabilità del tempo.” 82 Aug. Conf. XII.18.27: omnes quidem qui legimus nitimur hoc indagare atque comprehendere, quod voluit ille quem legimus. 83 Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.15.21: tenebresceret et frigesceret nisi amore grandi tibi cohaerens; X.36.59 (cit. Crouse 1981, 183): ut te perversa et distorta via imitanti tenebrosi frigidique servirent.

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it is not the (speculative) impossibility of its lapse, but the result of its lapse that renders this haerere constitutive. And this ‘constitutiveness’ is duplex: (α) a failure of this haerere would result in the ‘death’ of the hyperheavenly (tenebresceret et frigesceret, XII.15.21); and (β) such a failure would result in the end of its timelessness (sine ullo lapsu . . . excedit omnem volubilem vicissitudinem temporum, XII.9.9). In Confessions X there is a haerere which is similarly constitutive, but in this instance of ‘a life,’ of vita temporalis: (α) the cessation of this haerere is death; and (β) such a cessation is, necessarily, the end of a vita temporalis. And incidentally, with this originary haerere as with the (speculative) passibility of Augustine’s caelum intellectuale, there is also the possibility of a willed death—‘I can depart when I will’—which is suicide.84 It could thus be, at once, that the intelligibility of this sublime creature derives from a negative delineation of the conditions for sensibility, while the speculative condition for this creature’s timelessness would illuminate the sensual conditions for time.

84

Cf. for instance, Girard 1992, 110: “L’évocation du suicide revient constamment tout au long des œuvres antidonatistes [d’Augustin].”

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Corpus et Anima: The Duplicity of Praesens from Confessions X I opened chapter 3 with a sentence from Lyotard, to the effect that the Confessions do not promise a “conceptual discrimination between . . . the sensible/intelligible, soul/body.”1 And I praised this sentence. Yet it appears, prima facie, to betray a serious—if not a willful—ignorance of Augustine, and particularly of Confessions XII. This book explicitly discriminates according to the sensibile and the intelligibile, and this terminology is—as I have observed—first deployed in book XII.2 Furthermore, this axiological division—the (conditioned) limits of which are here marked by the materia informis and the caelum intellectuale— pervades the Confessions. This has not escaped Lyotard’s notice, but what he indicates here is that Augustine’s rigour—and the fecundity of his ‘confessive’ discourse in particular—derive in part from a willingness to insist upon the repeated problematization of this distinction in his process of reflection.3 And so it is here: a speculative haerere in Confessions XII which is conceived and elaborated strictly, obsessively on the order of the intelligibile,4 is driving us towards a sub-phenomenal haerere in Confessions X that eludes the s­ ensibile/ intelligibile divide. Without this prior haerere, I contend, neither the c­ aelum

1 Lyotard 2000, 49/1998, 72 (tr. mod.). 2 Aug. Conf. XII.5.5: non est intellegibilis forma . . . neque sensibilis; XII.20.29: intellegibilem atque sensibilem vel spiritalem corporalemque creaturam; XII.28.39: intellegibilis sensibilisque creatura; XII.29.40: universae, id est intellegibilis corporalisque, creaturae. 3 Cf. Schürmann 1993, 266–67: “Augustine pursued with equal vehemence both the flash of the suddenly occurring singular and [the] arrested presence [of eternity, of the intelligibile]. The sudden occurrence bursts in advance such arrests . . . [and thus] the hierarchizing disjunctions in Augustine . . . are only his penultimate word on the question of conditions. His final word adds to the exalted terms (heaven, truth, high, . . .) disparate and nevertheless ­co-originary terms: tender love, monstration, irruption, intervention, singularization . . . This is how Augustine remains faithful.” 4 Cf. Pépin 1953, 270: “Augustin connaît parfaitement l’usage respectif, dans la langue latine tardive, de intellectualis et de intellegibilis, dont il faut rapprocher celui de νοερός et de νοητός en grec, spécialement à l’époque hellénistique . . . intellectualis (ou νοερός) doit qualifier le sujet qui connaît, intellegibilis (ou νοητός) l’objet qui est connu.”

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intellectuale in book XII nor the anima humana in book XI5 can be properly interpreted, and the time-question and decisive time-concepts in the Confessions will necessarily, as a result, remain obscure. I have previously quoted the passage in Confessions X in which Augustine asks, “What nature am I?” (X.17.26). This question of nature is subtly echoed in book XII, where Augustine refers to the caelum caeli as a natura intellectualis.6 And later in book XII, the caelum caeli—that singular ‘nature’—is denominated a caelum intelligibile, in contradistinction to a totality of “corporeal nature” (omnis natura corporea) within which bodies are apprehended—by humans and beasts—through the “bodily senses” (corporeis sensibus nota, XII.21.30).7 The sensibile/intelligibile divide thus appears to be acute in Confessions XII. But, it could be asked, where is life (vita) on this split register of the sensibile/intelligibile? For Augustine is a ‘vita,’ in Confessions X, and vita is radically, vehemently spacious; and vita is not simplex. Augustine’s vita is certainly not a natura intellectualis; yet neither is it a natura corporalis.8 At Confessions XII.5.5, Augustine gestures towards ‘vita’ as a forma intellegibilis,9 and there is a formal, i.e. an ‘intelligible’ sense of ‘vita.’ Nevertheless, this ‘form’ is manifestly not Augustine’s vita immensa as memoria, nor his vita mea as ego sum, nor is it, precisely, hac vita as conditio—that is to say, the forma of vita is itself not a vita.10 And in a section of Confessions X that Augustine intentionally 5 Aug. Conf. XI.15.19: videamus ergo, anima humana, utrum praesens tempus possit esse longum. 6 Aug. Conf. XII.15.20: intellectualis natura. 7 Aug. Conf. XII.21.30: id est hoc totum . . . unde fieret caelum corporeum et terra corporea cum omnibus quae in eis sunt corporeis sensibus nota . . . id est hoc totum . . . unde fieret caelum intelligibile (quod alibi dicitur ‘caelum caeli’) et terra, scilicet omnis natura corporea.  Here Augustine is rehearsing various interpretations of the Hexaemeron he could accept, and though these interpretations diverge from his own in Conf. XII, the terminology does not.  And cf. Conf. XII.28.39: unde sensibilis moles ista corporea sinu grandi continens perspicuas promptasque naturas. 8 Aug. Conf. X.6.10: tibi dico, anima, quoniam tu vegetas molem corporis tui praebens ei vitam, quod nullum corpus praestat corpori. 9 Aug. Conf. XII.5.5: intellegibilis forma sicut vita, sicut iustitia; cf. Civ. VIII.6: quidquid est, vel corpus esse vel vitam, meliusque aliquid vitam esse quam corpus, speciemque corporis esse sensibilem, intellegibilem vitae. 10 Cf. Aug. Epist. 3.1: “. . . we say ‘human’ as it were, i.e. human when compared to that [idea of ] man which Plato knew, or we say—as it were—‘round’ or ‘square’ of things we see, though they differ radically from those [ideas] which are seen by the minds of very few” (. . . dicimus ‘hominem’ quasi hominem in comparatione hominis illius, quem Plato noverat,

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reverses in book XII, citing I Corinthians 13.12,11 Augustine’s vita is identified with—and by—an ineliminable resistance to the clarity that attends formalintelligible concepts such as eternity or, for that matter, the intelligible itself.12 It is thus not incidental that vita is obscured in Confessions XII. The vita immensa/vita cotidiana of book X,13 or the vita temporalis of book XI (which still opens Confessions XII.1.1), is glimpsed in rare and disjunct allusions to corpus/spiritus or corpus/animus in book XII.14 The salient exception to this, in book XII,15 which relates to the hyper-heavenly’s mutabilitas at the close of the last chapter, and leads in this chapter to a constitutive haerere in book X, is this aside: Since all things have been conditioned . . . out of nothing . . . there is in them all a certain mutability whether they remain in their [timeless] condition, as does the eternal house of god [sc. caelum intellectuale], or are mutive like the human soul and body. quia . . . ex nihilo cuncta facta sunt . . . et inest quaedam mutabilitas omnibus, sive maneant, sicut aeterna domus dei, sive mutentur, sicut anima hominis et corpus. (XII.17.25) While Augustine’s caelum intellectuale/natura intellectualis is formally or dogmatically ‘mutable,’ since it has originated, its condition is yet ‘eternal’: the hyper-heavenly is not mutive.16 As established in the last chapter, it is the aut quasi rotunda et quasi quadra ea, quae videmus, cum longe ab eis absint, quae paucorum animus videt). 11 Aug. Conf. X.5.7: et certe videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, nondum facie ad faciem; XII.13.16: . . . caelum intellectuale, ubi est intellectus nosse simul, non ex parte, non in aenigmate, non per speculum, sed ex toto, in manifestatione, facie ad faciem. 12 Specifically, here, as ‘inviolability.’ Cf. Aug. Conf. X.5.7: tamen est aliquid hominis quod nec ipse scit spiritus hominis qui in ipso est. . . . aliquid de te scio quod de me nescio. . . . et ideo . . . mihi sum praesentior quam tibi et tamen te novi nullo modo posse violari; X.2.2: domine, cuius oculis nuda est abyssus humanae conscientiae, quid occultum esset in me. 13 Aug. Conf. X.35.36: circumquaque cotidianam vitam nostram tam multa huius generis rerum circumstrepant. 14 Aug. Conf. XII.3.3: non corpus, non spiritus; XII.6.6: numquid animus? numquid corpus? numquid species animi vel corporis? 15 Prior to Conf. XII.29, which I review in 9.1.  Cf. here, Aug. Conf. XII.29.40: neque enim sonus est cantandi artifex, sed cantanti animae subiacet ex corpore, de quo cantum faciat. 16 Aug. Conf. XII.15.22: secundum modum suum ‘aeterna.’

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­hyper-heavenly’s haerere—its singular cohesion to god—that ‘restrains’ or ‘represses’ its mutability, i.e. that constitutes its timelessness. And I have stressed the Latin ‘inest’ in the above passage (‘. . . there is in them all . . .’) because, while the hyper-heavenly has mutabilitas ‘in it,’ Augustine also specifies that there is no tempus “in it” (nec in illa invenimus tempus, XII.15.21).17 By contrast, vita not only has mutabilitas ‘in it,’ but its “soul and body” (anima . . . et corpus, XII.17.25) are mutive—which is to say that, for Augustine, vita is situated “in times,”18 and that vita has time and mutivity “in it.”19 The haerere that constitutes this condition—i.e. temporality, mutivity, mortality—is weakly indicated, here in book XII, by the conjunctive in the phrase quoted above: “the human soul and body” (anima hominis et corpus, XII.17.25). In Confessions X, this conjunctive ‘et’ is interrogated relative to the phenomenon of the ‘within’ (intus)—and in one place, the conjunctive appears to be eliminated.20 Because of this ‘et,’ Augustine’s concept of the ‘within’ remains proto-phenomenological, and the sensibile/intelligibile divide is problematized. And it is finally this haerere in Confessions X, I suggest, that constitutes the possibility of the ‘locus’ of tempus in Confessions XI; and this ‘locus’—in beasts as in humans—is duplicitous. 8.1

“A Body and a Soul Are Present in Me” (Conf. X.6.9)

From Augustine’s distant indication of the ‘inness’ of mutabilitas in “the human soul and body” at Confessions XII.17, we should return to Confessions X.6 17 Aug. Conf. XII.15.21: non solum ante illam sed nec in illa invenimus tempus. 18 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: distentio est vita mea . . . ego in tempora. 19 Aug. Conf. XII.17.25: inest quaedam mutabilitas . . . sicut anima hominis et corpus.  Cf. Aug. Serm. 337.4–5: conquadramini, dolamini, in laboribus, in necessitatibus, in vigiliis, in negotiis . . . ut in aeterna vita velut compage societatis angelorum requiescere mereamini. Iste enim locus temporaliter aedificatus est, nec in aeternum durabit: sicut et ipsa nostra corpora . . . non sunt utique sempiterna, sed temporalia atque mortalia. Habitationem autem habemus ex deo, domum non manufactam, aeternam in coelis: ubi et ipsa nostra corpora conversione resurrectionis coelestia et sempiterna futura sunt. 20 Aug. Conf. X.30.41: et tantum valet imaginis inlusio in anima mea in carne mea, ut dormienti falsa visa persuadeant quod vigilanti vera non possunt.  O’Donnell (1992, III:209) remarks: “in anima mea in carne mea: CDG Maur. insert et between the two phrases, missing the point; the first phrase goes with ‘inlusio,’ the second with ‘valet.’ ” I suggest that ‘the point’ of this seeming omission could rather be, as the context (Conf. X.30.41–42) confirms, that in certain of his concrete analyses the axiological and quasi-phenomenal distinction caro-anima wholly disappears.

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(see 7.2). This is where Augustine anticipates his question, at X.17, ‘What nature am I?’ and after initially surveying his surroundings (omnibus his quae circumstant fores carnis meae, X.6.9), vainly seeking his god, he writes: I turned to myself and said to myself: “And you, who are you?” And I answered: “A human.” And look: a body and a soul are present in me, one outward, the other inward.21 direxi me ad me et dixi mihi, “tu quis es?” et respondi, “homo.” et ecce corpus et anima in me mihi praesto sunt, unum exterius et alterum interius. (X.6.9) It is Martin Heidegger who first fixed my attention on these sentences, with a stress on Augustine’s Latin, at ‘in me,’ that he does not explicate or return to in his 1921 lecture-course on Confessions X.22 The remainder of this chapter is devoted to what Heidegger and Augustine alike recognize as very difficult terrain—vita as constitutively ‘interior’ and ‘exterior.’ I will address this terrain by way of the sub-phenomenal haerere in Confessions X which is (negatively) reflected in the hyper-heavenly’s haerere in book XII, and which (indirectly) elucidates the duplicitous character of temporal distentio—for humans, and tacitly for beasts—in book XI. 8.2

The Sense of Anima, the Sense of Animus (Conf. X.7)

The memoria-ascent of Confessions X.8–27 is clearly relevant to the timeinvestigation in book XI, since memoria co-constitutes Augustine’s distentio animi.23 But in Confessions X.6–7, Augustine has not yet ‘come to’ memoria in his process of reflection.24 It is thus tempting to neglect the several paragraphs that lead him into his memoria-ascent, and to assume that it is strictly the 21

Remark the language: exterius-exterior and interius-interior are comparative forms. The phrase could thus be precisely translated, ‘one more-outer, the other more-inner,’ but this is a hopeless construction; it should not, however, be translated ‘one outside, the other inside.’ I have chosen ‘outward’ and ‘inward,’ both of which are appropriate lexically, to indicate this relativity—which is specifically one of directionality. 22 Heidegger 1995, 179–80/2004, 131: “ ‘Corpus et anima in me mihi praesto sunt.’ (Das ist nicht einfach eine objektive Charakteristik, eine ‘Synthese.’)” 23 Moreau (1955, 250) says of memoria, “elle est créatrice de durée.” 24 This occurs at Aug. Conf. X.8.12: et venio in campos et lata praetoria memoriae. Cf. Cic. Orat. III.31.124: . . . in hoc igitur tanto tam immensoque campo [sc. memoria].

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memorial intus or ‘within’ that is relevant to distentio in book XI. This is a ­mistake.25 For it is in Confessions X.6–7 that Augustine delimits his concept of anima-animus in Confessions X to XII, and unless this root-sense of animaanimus in book X is noted, there can be no serious interpretation of the ‘time’ that is distentio animi in book XI, or of the ‘timelessness’ of Augustine’s caelum intellectuale in book XII. But initially: What is the root-sense of ‘presence’ (praesens) in Confessions X? Augustine writes: “a body and a soul are present in me” (corpus et anima in me mihi praesto sunt, X.6.9). This ‘et’ in Confessions X.6.9 provides the precise inflection that should be heard in Augustine’s later reference to the mutivity of “the human soul and body” (anima hominis et corpus, XII.17.25). The locus of mutabilitas in Confessions XII, which is also the locus of trine-praesens in Confessions XI.20.26, is originarily and necessarily duplicitous: praesens intricates corpus-anima, and praesens intricates interior-exterior. The condition of possibility of the ‘in me’ in the Confessions is not, originarily or isolatedly, anima, but rather: corpus-anima.26 My body, Augustine writes here, is ‘in me.’ And despite the valorization of ‘interiority’ in a host of Augustineinterpretations, this ‘in me’ of Confessions X is not, originarily or isolatedly, interior, but rather: interior-exterior. An outness of the flesh is present ‘in me.’27 It is this originary (and constitutive) duplicity of praesens that Augustine will negate of the hyper-heavenly when he writes, in Confessions XII, that “without any defection in passing-out-of-itself . . . [it is] a pure mind, hyperharmoniously one”;28 it is this duplicity of praesens that Augustine will reproduce in Confessions X, once he ‘ascends’ into memoria; and it is this duplicity of praesens that Augustine will echo in Confessions XI, at the end of the time-investigation.29 In Confessions X to XII: presence defies u­ nicity.30 And it is this ‘defiance’—not at all, as Alliez suggests, a “defiance . . . of 25

Recall the prominence of vis and natura in Conf. X.6–7, which anticipates the vim naturamque temporis at XI.23: see chapter 4. 26 Cf. Aug. Mor. I.4.6 (cit. Courcelle 1974, 35): Quid ergo ‘hominem’ dicimus? Animam et corpus tanquam bigas vel Centaurum? 27 Cf. Isid. Etym. XI.1.6: Duplex est autem homo: interior et exterior. Interior homo anima, exterior homo corpus. 28 Aug. Conf. XII.11.12: sine ullo defectu egrediendi in aliud, mentem puram concordissime unam. 29 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: ecce distentio est vita mea. 30 Cf. Augustine’s fecund indication at Conf. XIII.11.12: dico autem haec tria: esse, nosse, velle. sum enim et scio et volo. sum sciens et volens, et scio esse me et velle, et volo esse et scire. in his igitur tribus quam sit inseparabilis vita et una vita et una mens et una essentia, quam denique inseparabilis distinctio et tamen distinctio, videat qui potest. certe coram se est; attendat in se et videat et dicat mihi.

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­physical movement”31—that activates Augustine’s question of self-praesens in Confessions X (in memory and temptation alike), and his question of praesens tempus in Confessions XI. Augustine’s sum (≈ vita) exceeds his ego,32 as temporal praesens (spatium temporis) exceeds praesens tempus (punctum temporis). The space of ‘life,’ like the space of time, is fissured: impresence is implicated in presence. Or as indicated in 7.2, apropos of pleasure (voluptas) in Confessions X: presence is constitutively imperfect. But how does Augustine refer, in Confessions X, to his root-conjunctive in the phrase, ‘corpus et anima,’ which signals the duplicity of the ‘in me’ and the duplicity of praesens? Augustine’s (sub-phenomenal) condition for this ‘et,’ which is itself the condition for praesens as such, in this life, is a haerere—a constitutive haerere, i.e. a haerere that constitutes the ‘life’ of humans and of beasts. Having very recently written of a mystico-logical homo interior which may, post mortem, cohere to god (at X.6.8), Augustine now writes of anima as a vita corporis that inheres in its flesh: But what is it that I love when I love my god? . . . By my soul-itself I will ascend to him. I will mount beyond the power by which I inhere in the body and suffuse its structure with life. Not by that power do I encounter my god, for then the horse and the mule, since they likewise sense through the body . . . might encounter him, since it is the same power by which their bodies also live. quid ergo amo, cum deum meum amo? . . . per ipsam animam meam ascendam ad illum. transibo vim meam qua haereo corpori et vitaliter compagem eius repleo. non ea vi reperio deum meum, nam reperiret et equus et mulus, sentiunt enim etiam ipsi per corpus . . . et est eadem vis qua vivunt etiam eorum corpora. (X.7.11) The axiology here not only threatens to distract, but to deceive. Augustine immediately ‘ascends’ from this vivifying power (haerere-replere) of the soul to a sensitizing power (vivificare-sensificare), still in Confessions X.7.11. He lexically marks this ‘ascent’ with a shift from anima to animus: anima vivifies, while animus sensitizes a corpus.33 (There is a similar transition in the 31 Alliez 1996, 124/1991, 187. 32 Cf. Aug. Conf. X.8.15: . . . nec ego ipse capio totum quod sum. 33 Aug. Conf. X.7.11: est alia vis, non solum qua vivifico sed etiam qua sensifico carnem meam . . . iubens oculo ut non audiat, et auri ut non videat, sed illi per quem videam, huic per quam audiam, et propria singillatim ceteris sensibus sedibus suis et officiis suis: quae diversa per eos ago unus ego animus.

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­time-investigation from anima to animus,34 which could appear to support rendering animus as ‘mind’ in Confessions XI. Most interpreters’ confusion of animus with intellectus-mens in the time-investigation is, nevertheless, just that: a confusion.) Augustine could perhaps seem to ‘ascend’ past the level of beasts with his shift from anima to animus,35 yet he immediately attributes this sensitizing power—and thus, animus—to beasts as well,36 since “they likewise sense through the body” (sentiunt enim etiam ipsi per corpus, X.7.11).37 Contrast this with the more precise and elaborate taxonomy we encounter at, for instance, Isid. Etym. XI.1.13: Dum ergo vivificat corpus, anima est: dum vult, animus est: dum scit, mens est: dum recolit, memoria est: dum rectum iudicat, ratio est: dum spirat, spiritus est: dum aliquid sensit, sensus est. 34 Anima at Conf. XI.15.19, XI.19.25, XI.20.26, XI.26.33, and XI.29.39. Animus at Conf. XI.17.22, XI.18.23–24 (4×), XI.22.28, XI.26.33, XI.27.34, XI.27.36, XI.28.38 (3×). Rather than a ‘transition,’ it is perhaps an increasing concentration; but in the timeinvestigation, as in Conf. X.7.11, the shift from anima to animus indicates no distancing from sensus. 35 Cf. Arts 1927, 4: “Augustine, in his Confessions, often seems to make no distinction at all in his use of anima and animus for the Christian conception of ‘soul.’ ” 36 This is important, since O’Daly (1987, 7)—who is cited by O’Donnell (1992, III:292) on this point, apropos of animus in Conf. XI—correctly writes that “Anima can refer to the soul of both animals and men. Anima, as well as animus, can apply without distinction of meaning to the human soul in general . . . Animus can, however, also mean ‘mind’.” O’Daly then, however (and with him, O’Donnell), mis-states that “Animus [in Augustine] . . . is not used with reference to the souls of non-rational beings.” (Cf. also O’Donnell 1992, II:259: “Animus is the human soul as opposed to the animal, a spiritual substance, source of intellectual and rational knowledge, but it is also the locus of memory and imagination.”) This holds true as a generalization (vid. Arts 1927, 4–5)—which is, of course, how O’Daly intends it to be taken. That Conf. X.7.11 marks an exception to this lexicalphilosophical rule nevertheless has consequences for any interpretation of Conf. XI. Since—as argued in 1.1—Augustine provides no definitions of anima or animus in Conf. XI; since—as elaborated in Part III—Augustine locates ‘time,’ alternately, ‘in the anima’ and as a ‘dilation of animus’; and since—as presented in 4.3—the constellation of animaanimus with vis, in Conf. X.7.11, is of utmost importance for establishing the sense of vis in a crucial time-statement in Conf. XI.23.20 (ego scire cupio vim naturamque temporis); it is worth insisting on Augustine’s distinctly ‘non-rational’ use of animus in the passage under discussion. Moerover, I could note that it is this ‘non-rational’ use of animus in Conf. X.7.11 that allows Augustine to proceed—without contradiction—to write in book X: (α) that memoria is a power of animus, and not anima (magna ista vis est memoriae . . . et vis est haec animi mei atque ad meam naturam pertinent, X.8.15; cf. cum in animo sit quidquid est in memoria, X.17.26); and (β) that “cattle and birds” also possess memoria (habent enim memoriam et pecora et aves, X.17.26). 37 Aug. Conf. X.7.11: transibo et istam vim meam, nam et hanc habet equus et mulus: sentiunt enim etiam ipsi per corpus.

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That beasts “live and move”38 by the presence of the same sensitizing power as Augustine (eadem vis, X.7.11)39 must be underscored. It should also be underscored that the lexical force of Augustine’s haerere is pronounced. Lucretius, a materialist, uses the same term to depict the vital congress of anima-animus with a human corpus, while it is similarly this congress which constitutes ‘a life’ in the De Rerum Natura. Lucretius writes: Therefore this nature [sc. anima-animus]40 is upheld by the whole body and is itself the preserver of the body and source of its vitality, for they cohere41 and fuse with common roots, and it is evident that this bond cannot be dissolved without death. Haec igitur natura tenetur corpore ab omni, ipsaque corporis est custos et causa salutis; nam communibus inter se radicibus haerent nec sine pernicie divelli posse videntur.42 The poet then observes that it is sensus, specifically, that is “set alight by the both”—i.e. anima-animus and corpus—in “our internal organs.”43 And thus, when Lucretius likens the body to a ‘vessel’ (vas) for the soul,44 in one

38

To perhaps echo Epimenides’ Cretica, by way of Paul the Apostle (Acts 17.28); cf. Sabatier 1743, III:560–61: “In ipſo . . . vivimus, & movemur.” Cf. also Aug. Civ. VIII.10: . . . et ubi Atheniensibus loquens, cum rem magnam de deo dixisset et quae a paucis possit intellegi, quod “in illo vivimus et movemur et sumus,” adiecit et ait: “Sicut et vestri quidam dixerunt.” 39 Aug. Conf. X.7.11: non ea vi reperio deum meum, nam reperiret et equus et mulus, quibus non est intellectus, et est eadem vis qua vivunt etiam eorum corpora. Cf. Aug. Quant.anim. 33.70–71. 40 As specified in the following sentence, Lucr. Rer.nat. III.329–30: sic animi atque animae naturam corpore toto | extrahere haud facile est, quin omnia dissoluantur. Here extrahere is a counter-concept to Lucretius’ haerere in III.323–26. 41 Cf. Aug. Civ. X.29: Corpus vero animae cohaerere, ut homo totus et plenus est, natura ipsa nostra teste cognoscimus. 42 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.323–26. 43 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.335–36: communibus inter eas conflatur utrimque | motibus accensus nobis per viscera sensus. 44 Courcelle 1974, 35: “Mais nous trouvions aussi mentionnée . . . en rapport avec cette notion de la personne humaine qui est l’âme, la doctrine selon laquelle le corps n’est qu’un récipient pour l’âme; Augustin, dans le De moribus, dit d’après Varron poculum; Cicéron . . . écrit [at Cic. Tusc. I.22.52]: ‘Corpus quidem vas est aut aliquod animi receptaculum.’ . . . Cette métaphore eut d’ailleurs une vogue considérable; elle apparaît tant

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aside,45 and later returns to this vessel-image, he expressly sets it in the light of his original haerere. Again, this is Lucretius: The body appears to be a vessel, as it were, for the soul [animus]46—or contrive whatever other image you like to intensify this congress, since the body coheres by such an intimate link to the soul. illius quasi quod vas esse videtur, sive aliud quid vis potius coniunctius ei fingere, quandoquidem conexu corpus adhaeret.47 Augustine is of course nothing like a Lucretian as regards the materiality and mortality of the soul, and so forth. But lexically, as Augustine’s use of haerere indicates, and as regards the vascular link of anima-animus and corpus in this life, and as constituting ‘a life’—for beasts, as for humans—Augustine’s rudiment in Confessions X.7.11 is identical to Lucretius’. In this life, soul and flesh are closer than dust on a man’s skin48 or sweat on a beast’s skin,49 closer than fire to its fuel50 or an oyster to its shell.51 And it is from this rudiment, this relation—this intervolution—that Augustine then ‘ascends’ into his vast inland of memoria in Confessions X.8.12. 8.3

“Cattle and Birds Possess Memory” (Conf. X.17)

From a quasi-bestial immediacy of praesens in sensus, in Confessions X.7.11, Augustine could seem to retreat, in X.8.12, to a peculiarly human interiority of

dans la tradition platonisante et aristotélisante que chez les Stoïciens, les Épicureans et les Chrétiens, et suscita toutes sortes de controverses.” 45 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.440: quippe etenim corpus, quod vas quasi constitit eius . . .  46 Most immediately, animus, at Lucr. Rer.nat. III.554; but cf. mens at III.548. 47 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.555–57. 48 Lucr. Rer.nat. III.381–82: nam neque pulveris interdum sentimus adhaesum | corpore. And cf. Lucretius’ use of haerere to describe honey, at Lucr. Rer.nat. III.193: haeret enim inter se. 49 Cf. Virg. Georg. III.443–44: . . . cum tonsis inlotus adhaesit sudor. 50 At Sen. Nat.quaest. VII.22.2, fire “clings to its fuel” (alimento suo haereret). 51 At Cic. Nat.deor. II.39.100, certain shellfish are described as “clinging in their shells to the rocks” (ad saxa nativis testis inhaerentium); and Cicero returns to the image—now metaphorically—at Cic. Acad. II.2.8 (ad saxum adhaerescunt).

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praesens (or quasi-praesentia),52 i.e. praesens in memory. That is to say, Augustine could seem to retreat from ‘the flesh,’ to a homo interior. This is the surface-logic of his ascents and the surface of his rhetoric, as we have just seen in Confessions X.7.11. But the vehemence of life and the duplicity of presence resist this logic, and at Confessions X.17.26—transitioning out of his most concrete and celebrated sections in the memory-ascent, into the aporias of the “life of bliss” (beata vita)—Augustine also attributes memory to beasts: So intense is the power of memory!53 So intense the power of life in humans—whose life is mortal! What am I to do now, o god my true life, my god? I shall mount beyond this power of mine that is called ‘memory,’ I will pass beyond it so that I may stretch-out towards you . . . Look: I am ascending through my soul towards you . . . I will also pass beyond this power of mine called ‘memory,’ intending to touch you where you can be touched and to cohere to you where it is possible to cohere to you. For cattle and birds possess memory,54 or they could not rediscover their resting-places and nests or the many other things they are accustomed to—nor indeed could they become accustomed to anything if not by memory. tanta vis est memoriae, tanta vitae vis est in homine vivente mortaliter! quid igitur agam, tu vera mea vita, deus meus? transibo et hanc vim meam quae ‘memoria’ vocatur, transibo eam ut pertendam ad te . . . ecce ego ascendens per animum meum ad te, qui desuper mihi manes, transibo et istam vim meam quae ‘memoria’ vocatur, volens te attingere unde attingi potes, et inhaerere tibi unde inhaereri tibi potest. habent enim 52

Cf. Aug. Conf. X.8.14: . . . et ipse contexo praeteritis atque ex his etiam futuras actiones et eventa et spes, et haec omnia rursus quasi praesentia meditor; X.8.15: . . . intus in memoria mea viderem, spatiis tam ingentibus quasi foris viderem. 53 Augustine uses the expression, magna vis est, for bestial memory in De Quantitate Animae, much as he says here of human memory, tanta vis est memoriae! Cf. Aug. Quant.anim. 28.54: Sed ille sensus ea quibus tales animae delectantur, accedente consuetudine cuius magna vis est, potest discernere; atque eo facilius, quod anima belluarum magis corpori affixa est, cuius illi sunt sensus quibus utitur ad victum voluptatemque, quam ex eodem illo corpore capit; Conf. X.17.26: tanta vis est memoriae, tanta vitae vis est in homine vivente mortaliter! 54 Augustine refers—not to ‘cattle and birds’—but to birds and goats (quoting Virgil), at Aug. Rhyth. I.4.8: nidos post annum revisunt hirundines, et de capellis verissime dictum est: “Atque ipsae memores redeunt in tecta” [Virg. Georg. III.316].

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memoriam et pecora et aves, alioquin non cubilia nidosve repeterent, non alia multa quibus adsuescunt; neque enim et adsuescere valerent ullis rebus nisi per memoriam. (X.17.26) The ego ascendens here recommences and repeats Augustine’s ‘ascent’ in X.7.11 past the vivifying power (haerere) of his anima, but the rhetoric of ascent here (as in X.7.11) tends to obscure the real state of his investigation. Augustine has analyzed the plateaux of human memory, has plunged ‘within,’ and yet—the beasts also have memory.55 This is only logical, of course. Since Augustine cedes animus to “the horse and the mule,” because “they sense . . . through the body” (X.7.11);56 and since Augustine (unlike Varro)57 identifies animus (and not mens) with memoria (X.14.21);58 it could be predicted that “cattle and birds” would “possess memory” (X.17.26). Augustine’s grounds for this assertion are empirical, however— and irrefragable. Beasts “could not rediscover their resting-places,” and so on, “if not by memory” (X.17.26). And though he does not make the inference himself in Confessions X.17.26, since he is strictly concerned with memory in this paragraph, the behaviours that Augustine cites as testimony to the beasts’ memory also testify to expectation: beasts could not seek ‘their resting-places,’59 and so on, ‘if not by expectation.’60 Thus, in Confessions X, the beasts possess anima, and exhibit sensus (X.7.11); because the beasts also possess animus (X.7.11), they exhibit memoria (X.17.26); and because beasts can seek their 55

Cf. for instance, Aug. Rhyth. I.4.8: puto te negare non posse, bestias habere memoriam . . . neque in sensu eam, neque in memoria (nam illud non est sine corpore, et utrumque etiam in bestia est). 56 Cf. Aug. Conf. X.6.9: ego interior cognovi haec, ego, ego animus per sensum corporis mei, interrogavi mundi molem . . .  57 Cf. Var. Ling. VI.44: Sic ‘reminisci,’ cu ea quae tenuit mens ac memoria, cogitando repetuntur. Hinc etiam ‘comminisci’ dictum, a ‘con’ et ‘mente,’ cum finguntur in mente quae non sunt . . . Ab eadem mente meminisse dictum et amens, qui a mente sua discedit; VI.49: ‘Meminisse’ a ‘memoria,’ cum id quod remanisit in mente rursus movetur. 58 Aug. Conf. X.14.21: animus sit etiam ipsa memoria . . . ipsam memoriam vocantes ‘animum.’ 59 Cf. Cic. Tusc. I.24.56: si nihil haberet animus hominis, nisi ut appeteret aut fugeret, id quoque esset ei commune cum bestiis. 60 This is laid out at Aug. Imm.anim. 3.3: Corpus autem non nisi secundum tempus movetur . . . quod sic agitur, et exspectatione opus est ut peragi, et memoria ut comprehendi queat quantum potest. Et exspectatio futurarum rerum est, praeteritarum vero memoria. At intentio ad agendum praesentis est temporis, per quod futurum in praeteritum transit, nec coepti motus corporis exspectari finis potest sine ulla memoria. Quomodo enim exspectatur ut desinat, quod aut coepisse excidit, aut omnino motum esse?

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f­ ormer ‘resting-places,’ they exhibit some power of expectatio. Note well: this is the full constellation of powers of ‘the soul’ (anima-animus) that gives rise to distentio—i.e. dimensive time—in Confessions XI. Augustine’s concessions in Confessions X.7 and X.17, that the beasts possess animus and memoria, are certainly incidental; but they are by no means minimal. To the contrary, they drastically alter the complexion of his timeinvestigation in Confessions XI. For now, when Augustine writes memoria in Confessions XI, no interpreter can take him to be referring to a capacity that is solely human. And now, when Augustine writes animus in Confessions XI— even, and most essentially, when he writes ‘distentio animi’—no interpreter can take him to be referring to a dilation that is solely human. Augustine is undoubtedly, in the first instance, referring to human memoria and the human animus; in the first instance—but not exclusively. And this is perhaps a prime instance of Augustine’s confessive genre itself misleading his interpreters. For it is Augustine’s genre, and not his philosophical commitments, which lead him—without further ado—to address himself to the human anima in the first paragraphs of his time-investigation (anima humana, XI.15.19), and then to the human animus in its last paragraphs (anime meus, XI.27.36). But what is this generic imperative to address the human anima-animus, even when what is observed in a human anima-animus could also be posited in a beast’s animaanimus? As when—for instance—Augustine writes in book XII that the “human soul and body” (anima hominis et corpus, XII.17.25) are mutive, when this is no less true of beasts? To clarify this, we should turn to one of Augustine’s Roman dialogues,61 the De Quantitate Animae (387/8),62 where Augustine cautions his interlocutor, Evodius,63 that his concluding disquisition ‘on the soul’ will be circumscribed by this post-conversion concern: Do not suppose that I will speak of all souls (de omni anima), but only of the human soul (tantum de humana), which should be our sole concern (solam curare debemus) if our concern is indeed with ourselves (nobismetipsis).64

61 Vid. Aug. Retr. I.8.1. 62 Zarb (1934, 31, 87) and Mutzenbecher (1984, XVII) both date the Quant.anim. to 387/8. 63 For Evodius, later the Catholic bishop of Uzali: Mandouze 1982, 366–73. 64 Aug. Quant.anim. 33.70: . . . ne me de omni anima dicturum putes, sed tantum de humana, quam solam curare debemus, si nobismetipsis curae sumus.

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Needless to say, this ‘concern with ourselves’—and specifically, with the soul— echoes Apollo’s injunction, “Know yourself” (Nosce te),65 which Cicero reinterprets, on one occasion, in this way: “Know your soul” (Nosce animum tuum).66 Augustine will decisively, if polemically, disavow this unconcern with the body in one of his late works,67 although ‘concern with our soul’ is certainly the vein in which Augustine writes his Confessions.68 But it is imperative to hear precisely what Augustine says in the De Quantitate Animae: “Do not suppose that I will speak (dicturum) of all souls . . .”69 This is a rhetorical, not a philosophical, decision that influences the last paragraphs of the De Quantitate Animae. And this is also—so I contend—a rhetorical decision, a generic limitation that affects Confessions XI. For in his time-­ investigation, Augustine does not speak of the souls of beasts. Nevertheless, when he writes that it is “given” to the “human soul” (anima humana) to “sense and measure intervals” of time (sentire moras atque metiri, XI.15.19),70 his silence is the sole indicator that it is only given to the human soul to ‘sense and measure intervals’ of time. Interpreters of Augustine’s time-concept in Confessions X to XII should not be misdirected by or satisfied with this silence in Confessions XI, since it is possible to reconstruct his admission that ‘time’— i.e. ‘distentio animi’—is manifested in beasts, as in humans. 8.4

Excursus: Time Is in the Beasts

We have seen that Augustine, in Confessions X—by ceding memory to beasts— has ceded to beasts a capacity to ‘sense intervals of time,’ and this is more forcefully stated in the De Quantitate Animae:

65 66

Cf. Aug. Conf. X.5.7: confitear ergo quid de me sciam, confitear et quid de me nesciam. Cf. Cic. Tusc. I.22.52: Cum igitur, Nosce te, dicit, hoc dicit: Nosce animum tuum; Aug. Sol. 1.7: Deum et animam scire cupio. 67 Cf. Aug. An.orig. IV.2.3: Natura certe tota hominis est spiritus, anima et corpus: quisquis ergo a natura humana corpus alienare vult, desipit. 68 Aristotle criticizes this trend in the first pages of his De Anima, at Arist. Anim. I.1 (402b): “At present (νῦν), speakers and inquirers about the soul seem to limit their inquiries to the human soul (ἀνθρωπίνης μόνης . . . ἐπισκοπεῖν).” 69 Aug. Quant.anim. 33.70: . . . ne me de omni anima dicturum putes, sed tantum de humana. 70 Aug. Conf. XI.15.19: anima humana . . . datum enim tibi est sentire moras atque metiri.

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This power of habituation is called ‘memory’ when separation [in space] and the lapse of time have not cut the soul’s link to things themselves. But no one denies that even in beasts the soul is capable of all these things. . . . quae consuetudinis vis etiam seiunctione rerum ipsarum atque intervallo temporis non discissa, ‘memoria’ vocatur. Sed haec rursus omnia posse animam etiam in bestiis nemo negat.71 In the same period72—but in one of his Thagaste dialogues, De Rhythmo (c. 388/9)73—Augustine appeals to Odysseus’ dog74 to establish the depth of bestial memory, though the proofs he could cite, he says, are legion (innumerabilia).75 A beast’s memory-traces, like Odysseus’ dog’s, can outlast decades of ‘separation and the lapse of time.’ Very well then, a beast can “sense intervals” of time; but can it “measure intervals” of time (sentire moras atque metiri, XI.15.19)? Or is this capacity for originary—i.e. non-formalized, premechanistic—temporal mensuration restricted to the anima humana? In the Confessions, Augustine has no interest in this question—thus his silence in Confessions XI. Nevertheless, he addresses it in the De Rhythmo, and

71 Aug. Quant.anim. 33.71. Augustine’s nemo negat here should be compared with Aug. Rhyth. I.4.8: puto te negare non posse, bestias habere memoriam; and contrasted with Cicero’s intellectivist formulations (ratio, mens), at Cic. Off. I.4.11: Inter hominem et beluam hoc maxime interest, quod haec tantum, quantum sensu movetur, ad id solum, quod adest quoque praesens est, se accommodat paulum admodum sentiens praeteritum et futurum; homo autem, quod rationis est particeps, per quam consequentia cernit . . . similitudines comparat rebusque praesentibus adiungit atque annectit futuras, facile totius vitae cursum videt . . .; Cic. Rep. IV.1: . . . ipsa mens ea, quae futura videt, praeterita meminit. 72 And in fact, even in the same dialogue, at Aug. Quant.anim. 26.50: Sciebat enim, ut opinor, dominum suum canis, quem post viginti annos recognovisse perhibetur, ut taceam de caeteris innumerabilibus. 73 Zarb (1934, 32–33, 87) suggests the date-range of 387–390, Mutzenbecher (1984, xvii) of 388–390. 74 Cf. Hom. Od. XVII.290–327, here 300–302: “There lay the hound Argos . . . yet even now, when he marked (ἐνόησεν) Odysseus standing near, he wagged his tail.” For Augustine’s acquaintance with and citations of Homer: Courcelle 1948, 153–54. 75 Aug. Rhyth. I.4.8: . . . nidos post annum revisunt hirundines, et de capellis verissime dictum est: “Atque ipsae memores redeunt in tecta” [Virg. Georg. III.316]. Et canis heroem dominum, iam suis hominibus oblitum recognovisse praedicatur. Et innumerabilia, si velimus, animadvertere possumus, quibus id quod dico manifestum est.

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in that text it is clear that beasts can measure intervals of time—and rhythmically. In De Rhythmo I, Augustine says to his protégé: Aug. – A song-bird appears to metricize its voice well76 . . . for its song is at once rhythmically numbered and pleasing. . . . Therefore tell me, I ask you: don’t they all appear to be like the song-bird, all those who sing well under the guidance of some sense, that is to say, who make their song in a rhythmical and pleasing way but who, if they were questioned about rhythm-numbers themselves, or the intervals of high and low pitches, could not respond? Prot. – I think they are most similar. Aug. – And what of those without such formal knowledge who choose to listen to songs? [Are they not also like the beasts?]77 For we see that elephants, bears, and many other types of beasts are moved by song, and birds are themselves charmed by their own voices . . . M. – Responde igitur, utrum tibi videatur bene modulari vocem luscinia . . . nam et numerosus est et suavissimus ille cantus . . . Dic mihi ergo, quaeso te; nonne tales tibi omnes videntur, qualis illa luscinia est, qui sensu quodam ducti bene canunt, hoc est numerose id faciunt ac suaviter, quamvis interrogati de ipsis numeris, vel de intervallis acutarum graviumque vocum, respondere non possint? D. – Simillimos eos puto. M. – Quid? ii qui illos sine ista scientia libenter audiunt; cum videamus elephantos, ursos, aliaque nonnulla genera bestiarum ad cantus moveri, avesque ipsas delectari suis vocibus . . .78 I will turn to the implications of this passage momentarily, but Augustine’s— perhaps, to us, unexpected—mention of elephants being responsive to song,79 is an occasion to glance at a couple of the reports circulating in late antiquity which bear on beasts’ capacities to sense and measure time-intervals. In book 76 Aug. Rhyth. I.2.2: Musica est scientia bene modulandi; I.4.5: Responde igitur, utrum tibi videatur bene modulari vocem luscinia verna parte anni . . . 77 In his translation of the work, R.C. Taliaferro follows the logic of this question over the letter, at Aug. Rhyth. I.4.5: “And what’s more, aren’t those who like to listen to them without this science to be compared to the beasts?” 78 Aug. Rhyth. I.4.5. 79 At Aug. Civ. VIII.15, elephants exemplify strength: Quis multum valendo leonibus et elephantis?

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VIII of Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis—a not-infrequently cited work in Augustine’s City of God against the Pagans80—Pliny recalls this: In the gladiatorial display that was provided by Germanicus Caesar, the elephants performed a sort of dance (saltantium modo). . . . It was a common thing (vulgare erat) to see them . . . sway through the steps of the Pyrrhic dance (lascivienti pyrriche conludere).81 All dance (saltatio) is a manifestation of rhythm, in the first pages of the De Rhythmo.82 That is to say, for Augustine, dance is a metric behaviour—and in 1st-century Rome, the elephants’ Pyrrhic was a common sight. Augustine seems to suggest—“When we see . . .” (videamus)83—that he had witnessed a similar display towards the end of the 4th century. But there is a still more striking passage in Arrian’s Indica, which has parallels in Aelian’s De Natura Animalium,84 and which fits more closely with Augustine’s comment: “We see elephants . . . moved by song (ad cantus moveri).”85 Arrian testifies, in his mimetic or piratic first-person voice: I myself have seen (εἶδον δὲ ἐγὼ) an elephant clanging cymbals, and others dancing in time. Two cymbals were fastened to this cymbalist’s (κυμβαλίζοντι) forelegs and one on his trunk, and he rhythmically (ἐν ῥυθμῷ) beat the cymbal on either leg, in turn, with his trunk. The elephant dancers (ὀρχεόμενοι) danced in a circle, and raising and bending

80

Hagendahl (1967, 670–73) disputes a number of ‘Pliny’ citations in Aug. Civ., and wants to limit Augustine’s readings to Plin. Hist.nat. VII. 81 Plin. Hist.nat. VIII.2.2. 82 Cf. Aug. Rhyth. I.3.4: . . . si quis suavissime canens, et pulchre saltans . . . ; I.13.27: Quid, si quispiam numerose plaudat, ita ut unus sonitus simplum, alter dumplum temporis teneat, quos iambos pedes vocant, eosque continuet atque contexat; alius autem ad eumdem sonum saltet, secundum ea scilicet tempora movens membra? nonne aut etiam dicas ipsum modulum temporum, id est quod simplum ad duplum spatia in motibus alternent, sive in illo plausu qui auditur, sive in illa saltatione quæ cernitur; aut saltem delecteris numerositate quam sentias, tametsi non possis numeros ejus dimensionis edicere? . . . illi qui hos numeros noverunt, sentiunt eos in plausu atque saltatione; VI.9.24: . . . et ‘sonantium’ nomen mutandum putem, quoniam si ‘corporales’ vocentur, manifestius significabunt etiam illos qui sunt in saltatione, et in cætero motu visibili. 83 Aug. Rhyth. I.4.5. 84 Cf. Ael. Nat.anim. II.11. 85 Aug. Rhyth. I.4.5.

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their forelegs in turn, also moved rhythmically (ἐν ῥυθμῷ) as the one with the cymbals led them on.86 Here in Arrian, beasts thrill to and produce rhythmic intervals—that is to say, sense and measure intervals of time. And this scene from the Indica, with its elephantine cymbalist and chorus, prepares us for the decisive ‘scene’ in De Rhythmo I. For having said that “many types of beasts are moved by song,”87 Augustine transitions to the spectacle of rational beasts88 being ‘moved by song,’ saying this to his protégé: Aug. – Why is it, do you think, that the ignorant multitude hisses off a third-rate flute-player but then applauds one who sings well? . . . For it isn’t possible to believe that the masses do this by the art of music, is it? Prot. – No. Aug. – What then? Prot. – I think it is done by nature, which gives a sense of hearing to all, by which such things are judged. Aug. – You are correct. M. – Unde fieri putas, ut imperita multitudo explodat saepe tibicinem nugatorios sonos efferentem; rursumque plaudat bene canenti? . . . Numquidnam id a vulgo per artem musicam fieri credendum est? D. – Non. M. – Quid igitur? D. – Natura id fieri puto, quae omnibus dedit sensum audiendi, quo ista iudicantur. M. – Recte putas.89 Since mimicry (imitatio) is a crucial concept in these first, fundamental pages of the De Rhythmo, it is worth interjecting here that Augustine and his protégé are alike mimicking the end of a paragraph in Cicero’s Orator, in the

86 Arr. Ind. 14.5–6. 87 Aug. Rhyth. I.3.4: nonnulla genera bestiarum ad cantus moveri. 88 Cf. Aug. Mag. 5.16: Si homo est, animal est; 8.24: . . . tota definitio diceretur, id est animal rationale mortale . . . 89 Aug. Rhyth. I.5.10.

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foregoing exchange.90 Maurice Testard91 and Harald Hagendahl92 have not factored this into their still-indispensable mid-century works, but when Augustine says to his protégé, ‘You are correct,’ he is himself in fact a protégé who is approving—while mimicking—Rome’s arch-orator, Cicero.93 But to continue: Aug. – You are correct. But now also consider this, whether the [thirdrate] flute-player is himself endowed with this sense. And if that is so, then he can, by following his own judgement, move his fingers when he blows into his flute, and can note and commit to memory what he decides sounds agreeable; and by repeating it he can accustom his fingers to being carried on without hesitation or error . . . led on and affirmed (as he is) by the nature we have spoken of. And so, when memory follows sense, and joints follow memory . . . this flute-player can sing as he wishes, the more admirably and pleasingly the more he excels in all those things which reason has just taught us we have in common with the beasts—namely, [i] an appetite for mimicry or imitation, [ii] sensation and [iii] memory. Do you have any objections to this? Prot. – I have none. But I already want to hear what sort of discipline this is [sc. musica] which, I now see, is so subtly laid claim to by a cognition that belongs to the lowest of beasts. 90

91 92 93

Cf. Cic. Or. 51.173: “Will they [the ‘modern’ rhetors] not yield to their own senses (suis sensibus)? Does it never appear to them that something in a sentence is lacking, or harsh, or mutilated, lame and redundant? In the case of poetry (in versu), the whole theatre will cry out (theatra tota exclamant) if the time-quantity of a single syllable is false (se fuit una syllaba aut brevior aut longior). Not that the multitude knows anything of metric feet, or has any grasp of the rules of rhythmic-intervals (nec vero multitudo pedes novit nec ullos numeros tenet); and when displeased they do not comprehend why or with what they are displeased (nec illud quod offendit aut cur aut in quo offendat ingellegit). And yet nature itself (ipsa natura) has implanted in our ears (in auribus nostris) the power of judging (iudicium) all length and brevity in sounds, as well as high and low pitches of the voice.” Cf. Testard 1958, II:138–39. Cf. Hagendahl 1967, 752–53. For it is in the protégé’s response here, which Augustine approves, that the lexical parallels are sharpest—though even here, the ‘recollection’ is more substantive than semantic: (i) Cic. Or. 51.173: . . . iudicium ipsa natura in auribus nostris collocavit. (ii) Aug. Rhyth. I.5.10: Natura id fieri puto, quae omnibus dedit sensum audiendi, quo ista iudicantur. In 13.6, I briefly document the Ciceronian provenance of iudicium sensus in the De Rhythmo, and no less briefly state its significance for Augustine’s time-investigation in Conf. XI.

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M. – Recte putas. Sed iam etiam illud vide, utrum et tibicen ipse hoc sensu praeditus sit. Quod si ita est, potest eius sequens iudicium movere digitos cum tibias inflaverit, et quod satis commode pro arbitrio sonuerit, id notare ac mandare memoriae, atque id repetendo consuefacere digitos eo ferri sine ulla trepidatione et errore . . . illa de qua dictum est ducente atque approbante natura. Itaque cum sensum memoria, et articuli memoriam sequuntur . . . canit cum vult tanto melius atque iucundius, quanto illis omnibus praestat quae superius ratio docuit cum bestiis nos habere communia, [i] appetitum scilicet imitandi, [ii] sensum atque [iii] memoriam. Numquid habes adversum ista quod dicas? D. – Ego vero nihil habeo. Iam audire cupio cuiusmodi sit illa disciplina, quam profecto a cognitione vilissimorum animorum94 video subtilissime vindicatam.95 Much could be said here that will not. Augustine is erecting an ars/imitatio opposition whose roots strike deep—to Aristotle’s Poetics,96 and Plato’s Ion.97 Augustine’s opposition is more Aristotelian than Platonic, and more Ciceronian than Aristotelian; but it is the upshot of this opposition, in the first pages of the De Rhythmo, that is important. When a late-antique flute-player, orator or

94

Note the genitive plural of animus here, referring to non-rational (bestial) and rational (human) souls. 95 Aug. Rhyth. I.5.10. 96 Cf. Arist. Poet. 4.1–7 (1448b): “Poetic composition seems to owe its origin to two particular causes, both natural (φυσικαί). From childhood humans have an instinct for imitation (μιμεῖσθαι σύμφυτον), and in this regard man differs from the other living things (τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων) since he is the most imitative (μιμητικώτατόν) . . . And then there is the pleasure humans take from all imitations. . . . We have then a natural-born (κατὰ φύσιν) instinct for imitation and for song and rhythm (καὶ τῆς ἁρμονίας καὶ τοῦ ῥυθμοῦ)—since the metres are manifestly parts or sections of rhythms (τὰ γὰρ μέτρα ὅτι μόρια τῶν ῥυθμῶν ἐστι φανερὸν)— and from these original instincts, very gradually humans developed them until they produced poetic composition.” 97 Cf. Pl. Ion, where the opposition is framed by “art and knowledge” (τέχνῃ καὶ ἐπιστήμῃ, 532c)—which are denied to the Homeric rhapsode Ion, much as Augustine denies ars and scientia to his ‘third-rate flute-player’ in the passages I have quoted—and Hellenic modes of ‘possession’ and ‘dispensation’: “I can tell you [says Socrates to Ion] . . . your cleverness in praising Homer comes not by art, but by divine dispensation (οὐ τέχνῃ ἀλλὰ θείᾳ μοίρᾳ)” (536d); “You are no artist (οὖν τεχνικὸς), but speak . . . without any systematic insight (τεχνικὸς), and by a divine dispensation which causes you to be possessed by Homer (θείᾳ μοίρᾳ κατεχόμενος ἐξ Ὁμήρου)” (542a).

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ecclesiastical cantor98 exhibits his human capacity to ‘sense and measure intervals’ of time (sings, etc.); and when the multitude in a late-antique theatre, law-court or Catholic basilica99 is then moved by the rhythmic quality of such an exhibition (dances, etc.): all of this is assigned to a mode of cognition (says the protégé) ‘that belongs to the lowest of beasts.’ All that this displays of the human anima-animus (says Augustine) is what ‘we have in common with the beasts’—namely, sensation (= contuitus), memory (= memoria), and an appetite for mimicry (≈ expectatio).100 That is to say, insofar as the Catholic liturgy in Thagaste or Hippo Regius is an affair of sense-affective time-rhythm as time-rhythm,101 it can be likened to elephants cutting steps in Rome or beating time in India—for there is nothing distinctly human in a sensual capacity to ‘sense and measure intervals’ of time. Neither anima nor animus, in Confessions X; nor memoria in Confessions X; nor metricizing or beating time in the De Rhythmo—such as is required to utter the phrase, Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm,102 for instance—is restricted to humans. And to press this to its proper limits, a further divagation is in order. For while Augustine stresses imitatio in beasts’ vocalizations generally, and refers to birds specifically in Confessions X, as in De Rhythmo I;103 and while Augustine 98

Cf. Aug. Conf. X.33.49–50: voluptates aurium tenacius me implicaverant et subiugaverant . . . nunc in sonis quos animant eloquia tua cum suavi et artificiosa voce cantantur, fateor, aliquantulum adquiesco . . . aliquando autem hanc ipsam fallaciam immoderatius cavens erro nimia severitate, sed valde interdum, ut melos omne cantilenarum suavium quibus daviticum psalterium frequentatur ab auribus meis removeri velim atque ipsius ecclesiae . . . tamen cum mihi accidit ut me amplius cantus quam res quae canitur moveat, poenaliter me peccare confiteor et tunc mallem non audire cantantem. 99 Cf. Aug. Conf. V.13.23: et veni Mediolanium ad Ambrosium episcopum, in optimis notum orbi terrae . . . et studiose audiebam disputantem in populo, non intentione qua debui, sed quasi explorans eius facundiam, utrum conveniret famae suae an maior minorve proflueret quam praedicabatur, et verbis eius suspendebar intentus, rerum autem incuriosus et contemptor adstabam. et delectabar suavitate sermonis, quamquam eruditioris. 100 Cf. Aug. Rhyth. I.5.10: cum bestiis nos habere communia, appetitum scilicet imitandi, sensum atque memoriam; Conf. XI.20.26: sunt enim haec in anima tria quaedam . . . praesens de praeteritis memoria, praesens de praesentibus contuitus, praesens de futuris expectatio. 101 It is crucial to note that already at Aug. Epist. 3.2, Augustine has a concept of “sensible number” (sensibilis numerus): “For what else is sensible number but the quantity of bodies or of parts of bodies?” (nam quid est aliud sensibilis numerus nisi corporeorum vel corporum quantitas?). 102 Diacritics here per O’Donnell 1992, III:293. 103 Aug. Conf. X.17.26: habent enim memoriam et pecora et aves; Rhyth. I.4.5: . . . avesque ipsas delectari suis vocibus.

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likens birdsong (aves cantant) to that of flutes (tibiis . . . cantatur)104 in the first lines of the De Magistro (c. 389),105 as in De Rhythmo I; Augustine never—that I can recall—refers to birds speaking. Indeed, he explicitly contrasts birdsong (cantus) with speech (locutio) in the De Magistro,106 even as he strongly links birdsong, in the same sentences, to a type of wordless human song107 that figures at the conclusion of Augustine’s time-investigation in Confessions XI.108 But if Augustine is silent on the matter, birds were nevertheless known to ‘speak’ in antiquity. If we turn back to Pliny’s Historia, for instance, we see the following—one of a number of such reports109 in book X: As I write this, there is in the city of Rome a crow that belongs to a Roman of equestrian rank and was brought from the south of Spain (Baetica). . . . It is able to imitate and enunciate110 a number of syntactically connected words (plura contexta verba exprimens), and it is rapidly acquiring more and more new words (alia atque alia crebro addiscens).111 And what is the significance of this crow, for us? In Confessions XI, it is not the sense but the utterance of those ‘syntactically connected words,’ Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm, that discloses, for Augustine, the condition of possibility of a space of time—namely, a ‘dilation’ of anima-animus. But if it is this temporally r­ egulated enunciation that discloses Augustine’s ‘distentio animi,’ then surely a mimetic 104 Aug. Mag. 1.1: Nam et tibiis et cithara cantatur, et aves cantant, et nos interdum sine verbis musicum aliquid sonamus . . . 105 Zarb (1934, 33, 87) gives 389, Mutzenbecher (1984, xvii) gives 388–390. 106 Aug. Mag. 1.1: Nam et tibiis et cithara cantatur, et aves cantant, et nos interdum sine verbis musicum aliquid sonamus, qui sonus ‘cantus’ dici potest, ‘locutio’ non potest. 107 Aug. Mag. 1.1: . . . et aves cantant, et nos interdum sine verbis musicum aliquid sonamus, qui sonus ‘cantus’ dici potest . . . 108 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: voluerit aliquis edere longuisculam vocem, et constituerit praemeditando quam longa futura sit, egit utique iste spatium temporis in silentio memoriaeque commendans coepit edere illam vocem quae sonat, donec ad propositum terminum perducatur. immo sonuit et sonabit; nam quod eius iam peractum est, utique sonuit, quod autem restat, sonabit atque ita peragitur, dum praesens intentio futurum in praeteritum traicit, deminutione futuri crescente praeterito, donec consumptione futuri sit totum praeteritum. 109 Cf. Plin. Hist.nat. X.58–59. 110 Exprimere denotes both ‘imitate’ and ‘enunciate,’ both of which are obviously pertinent here, but for ‘imitate,’ cf. Plin. Hist.nat. X.59, where other types of birds can “mimic human discourse” (sermonem imitantur humanum). 111 Plin. Hist.nat. X.60.

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enunciation of the same line—Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm—by Pliny’s crow should also exhibit a ‘distentio animi.’ (Augustine’s imaginal manipulation of the “image of a crow” (corvi . . . imago) in Epistle 7 could validate this—quite serious—conceit.)112 Without a dilation of this crow’s anima-animus, that is to say, it could not possibly enunciate Ambrose’s contexta verba. And an inversion of this hypothetical is no less illuminating—though again, it will not originate in Augustine’s corpus. Aristotle reports in his opuscule, De Audibilibus, that “we see . . . humans imitating (μιμουμένους) the voices of horses . . . song-birds, cranes, and nearly every other type of living thing.”113 Now, in Confessions XI, “if anyone (aliquis) decides to utter a slightly elongated sound (longuisculam vocem),”114 its condition of possibility is distentio animi. Thus, if this ‘slightly elongated sound,’ emitted by a human, should happen to be the mimicked cry of Aristotle’s crane, then its condition of possibility would still be distentio animi. But surely, if Augustine cannot emit the cry of a crane without a dilation of his soul, then a crane cannot emit its cry without a dilation of its soul. This is precisely the mode and level of inference which persuades Augustine that the beasts possess memory, and inhabit time. 8.5

The Root-Sense of Anima and Animus (Conf. X–XII)

But to return to Confessions X, and to conclude: Augustine has not, by interrogating memory, surpassed the (axiological) level of the vivifying power (haerere) of his soul, nor has he surpassed the duplicity of presence that this sub-phenomenal haerere conditions. Augustine’s ‘within’ is replete with temporalia and sensibilia: his intus is a quasi-foris. That is to say, his ‘within’ is by no means discarnate or even, strictly, ‘interior.’ Praesens for the confessive intus—as for the beasts—is interius-exterius; and praesens for this intus still ­intricates—as with the beasts—corpus-anima.

112 Cf. Aug. Epist. 7.3.6: “ ‘Whence comes our capacity to conceive of things we have never seen (quae non videmus, cogitemus)?’ From what—do you reckon—if not some additive and subtractive power of the soul (vim quondam minuendi et augendi animae)? . . . By means of this power, if the image of a crow, for instance—whose appearance is a common enough sight—is constituted as if it were being seen (ut verbi gratia corvi quasi ob oculos imago constituta, quae videlicet aspectibus nota est), it can be traduced, by subtracting some of its features and adding others, into nearly any image that has never been seen . . .” 113 Arist. Aud. (800a). 114 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: voluerit aliquis edere longuisculam vocem . . . 

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Is this a sign of failure, or a sign of rigour? And could this echo of Confessions X.7.11 (hanc habet equus et mulus) in X.17.26 (habent . . . memoriam et pecora et aves) signal Augustine’s recognition that the various powers of human memoria, including the peculiar recollection of formal-linguistic and mathematical concepts (X.9–13), are yet intricated in the soul as vita corporis?115 Augustine’s plangent review of his memory-ascent at Confessions X.24–25 appears to confirm this: it is not in memory, “the very seat of [his] soul” (ipsius animi mei sedem, X.25.36),116 that he can ‘touch’ or ‘cohere to’ god, because in memory “all these things are radically changed” (commutantur haec omnia, X.25.36).117 The anima humana, for Augustine, is incommutably mutive in Confessions X to XII because its constitutive haerere—the haerere that sustains it, like the beasts, as ‘a life’—is a hyper-intimate link to corpus and to the foris. And conversely, Augustine’s caelum intellectuale is incommutably restive118 in Confessions XII because its speculative haerere is a hyper-intimate link to deity. The speculative haerere that conditions contemplatio, in book XII, results in timelessness; the sub-phenomenal haerere that conditions contuitus, in book X, results in sensation119 and memorial sense-images,120 and in Confessions XI: tempus. This is why I stated that the axiology here threatens to deceive. Augustine rapidly proceeds ‘beyond’ that “power (vim meam) by which I inhere in the body (haereo corpori)” in Confessions X.7.11, due to its axiological identity (eadem vis) with the vital force in beasts. Yet there are several reasons to pause here: (i) It is this root-sense of anima-animus in Confessions X.7.11, i.e. as vita corporis, that clarifies why Augustine never refers—as I have remarked—to the caelum intellectuale in book XII as anima, animus or vita.121 115 Cf. Aug. Epist. 7.2.4–5. 116 Aug. Conf. X.25.36: et intravi ad ipsius animi mei sedem, quae illi est in memoria mea, quoniam sui quoque meminit animus, nec ibi tu eras. 117 Cf. perhaps, and solely for effect, Lucr. Rer.nat. V.830–31: omnia migrant, | omnia commutat natura et vertere cogit; Aug. Conf. X.25.36: et commutantur haec omnia, tu autem incommutabilis manes super omnia. 118 ‘Restive’ here in an older sense: ‘stationary.’ 119 Aug. Conf. X.7.11: . . . vis, non solum qua vivifico sed etiam qua sensifico carnem meam. 120 Aug. Conf. X.8.12: venio in campos et lata praetoria memoriae, ubi sunt thesauri innumerabilium imaginum de cuiuscemodi rebus sensis invectarum; X.8.13: . . . sed rerum sensarum imagines illic praesto sunt cogitationi reminiscenti eas; etc. 121 Recall that in Conf. X.7.11, Augustine constellates animus—and not only anima—with vita corporis and sensus carnis, and thus, with memoria.

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(ii) It is this root-sense of anima-animus in Confessions X.7.11, i.e. as vita corporis, that (negatively) clarifies the speculative haerere of the caelum intellectuale in book XII—and thus its timelessness— as I have argued. (iii) It is this root-sense of anima-animus in Confessions X.7.11, i.e. as vita corporis, that initiates and permeates Augustine’s memoryinvestigation in book X, an investigation that has clear relevance for the locus of trine-presence and the site of dilation in book XI (no memory = no dilation). And finally: (iv) It is this root-sense of anima-animus in Confessions X.7.11, i.e. as vita corporis, that introduces Augustine’s constellation of the terms anima, vis and natura in book X: a decisive constellation for the sense of distentio in the time-investigation in book XI, as signalled by Augustine’s statement, “I desire to know the power and nature of time, by which we measure the movements of bodies” (ego scire cupio vim naturamque temporis, quo metimur corporum motus, XI.23.30). Points (i)–(iii) in the preceding list have been addressed in Part II, while I introduced point (iv) in Part I, specifying that vis and natura only appear in Confessions XI at XI.23.30 (see chapter 4). It is point (iv) that promises to finally elucidate how the sense of anima-animus in Confessions X.7.11—as vita corporis, as suffusing a body and activating sensus carnis—is the crux of temporal distentio in Confessions XI. It is also anima-animus as a vita corporis that will finally clarify the ‘time’/‘times’ distinction that was introduced in Part I, and the logical dependence of ‘time’ upon motus omnis. But first, it is necessary to shift from the subtly linked questions of vita corporis/temporalis and a timeless hyper-heavenly, to Augustine’s concept of a timeless materia informis in Confessions XII, and to the conditions for ‘mutive times’—note well: ‘times’ (tempora), not ‘time’ (tempus)—that will emerge from this concept.

chapter 9

Physical Movement and Mutive Times: Augustine’s Materia Informis “I desire to know the power and nature of time, by-which we measure the movements of bodies.”1 This sentence, with which I closed the preceding chapter and to which I will return, signals—as I observed in chapter 4—a shift within the time-investigation in Confessions XI. Having rejected a specific identity of ‘times’ (tempora) with the celestial revolutions in XI.23.29, yet having also suggested a thesis in which motus omnis constitutes ‘times’ (tempora), Augustine then sharpens his question: hereafter, his question of ‘time’ (tempus) is a question of that “by-which we measure the movements of [all] bodies” (XI.23.30). As Augustine specifies in XI.24.31,2 it is solely this ‘by-which’ of temporal mensuration that provides the most originary sense of his word ‘time’ (tempus), and this ‘by-which’ he comes to describe as a ‘dilation’ (distentio). The preceding chapters sought to identify the speculative condition for the timelessness of the caelum intellectuale in Confessions XII, and in so doing, to clarify a sub-phenomenal condition for ‘time’ (i.e. dilation)—for beasts as for humans—in Confessions XI. Augustine’s natura intellectualis is timeless because it is fleshless; sensual contuitus and the duplicity of praesens that characterizes it are rather the condition of a vita temporalis. In short: ‘no sensation = no dilation = no time (tempus).’ But sensus carnis (i.e. anima-animus as vita corporis) is not the sole condition of time in the Confessions, as we will see after briefly reconstructing Augustine’s concept of “indeterminate matter” (materia informis) in Confessions XII, which is also timeless. If the haerere is Augustine’s intellectual condition for (dimensive) time—and thus, remotively, for the timelessness of the hyper-heavenly—what is his corporeal condition for (mutive) times? Unlike the fleshlessness of the caelum intellectuale, which is never explicitly stated in Confessions XII (and which thus required the analysis of subterranean links between books X and XII), Augustine repeatedly articulates (i) the absolute indeterminacy of his materia informis, and (ii) the speculative conditions 1 Aug. Conf. XI.23.30: ego scire cupio vim naturamque temporis, quo metimur corporum motus. 2 Aug. Conf. XI.24.31: cum itaque aliud sit motus corporis, aliud quo metimur quamdiu sit, quis non sentiat quid horum potius tempus dicendum sit?

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for this material’s timelessness (and thereby, obliquely, for ‘times’) in book XII. The most significant aspect of this condition can be stated, for the purposes of the present exposition, as ‘no motus omnis = no tempora.’ This formula captures the logical dependence of tempus upon motus that Alliez and Castoriadis deny in Confessions XI. Yet neither Alliez nor Castoriadis contests that this dependence is stated in Confessions XII, though only disjunctivists—such as Castoriadis—take this into consideration (see 2.3).3 Indeed, it is precisely the clarity of this condition in Confessions XII that provokes the question of a critical disjunction between Augustine’s time-statements in books XI and XII—a question to which the present work is, in part, devoted. Let us recall Castoriadis’ verdict: Augustine contradicts himself openly and naively. . . . Time here [in Confessions XII] has ceased to be just the distentio animi [of book XI], the stretching of my mind; it is that in which the forms vertuntur, are changing into one another, and it is produced by this mutation of forms, strictly dependent on it.4 Pace Castoriadis, it is not ‘time’ but ‘times’ which are ‘produced by [a] mutation of forms’ in Confessions XII (as in XI.23.29); and pace Castoriadis, there is no ‘contradiction’ to be observed here. But to begin: What is Augustine’s concept of the materia informis? 9.1

Informitas and Timelessness (Conf. XII.6)

In chapters 7 and 8, I sought to demonstrate that, and how—albeit tacitly—a similar remotive or reductive procedure on time that issues (as von Herrmann suggests)5 in Augustine’s conception of eternity in Confessions XI, also operates on sense-temporal presence and pleasure to issue in his conception of the caelum intellectuale in book XII. The difficulty of this hyper-heavenly is, as I have observed, that it is conceived as living but not as a life. 3 Alliez (1996, 273 n. 148) dismisses the force of Augustine’s statements in Conf. XII for obscure, putatively methodological reasons. 4 Castoriadis 1991, 48. 5 Cf. von Herrmann 1992, 49/2008, 54: “Augustine acquired a concept of eternity as a ‘standing present’ [note that this is, in fact, Boethius’ formula] with reference to the phenomenal understanding of time via remotionis (in remotiver Vorgehensweise)”; 1992, 39/2008, 44: “Only in the actual moment of a conceptual stimulus from the nature of time does even a partial enlightenment concerning eternity come about.”

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With the concept of a materia informis, Augustine’s reductive procedure is explicitly stated in Confessions XII.6.6, but the difficulty is distinct: here it is not a question of conceptualizing the human, duplicitous anima-corpus according to a sublime and totally speculative haerere (i.e. not a haerere of anima-animus to corpus and foris, but of a discarnate mens to deus). Here it is a question of conceptualizing a materiality so abyssal that it lacks all determination. Whereas Augustine’s hyper-heavenly is a natura intellectualis—however problematic this cipher has proved—his hyper-terrestrial is a still more severely disnatured creature. However spectral a reflection of sensus-contuitus the hyper-heavenly’s contemplatio may be, it is yet a reflection of human intellect and pleasure. The abyss of the hyper-terrestrial promises no such reflection. Here is “neither colour, nor shape, nor body, nor spirit” (non color, non figura, non corpus, non spiritus, XII.3.3). Here, “when cogitatio seeks what sensus may touch upon” (cum in ea quaerit cogitatio quid sensus attingat, XII.5.5),6 it encounters a nihil. Augustine’s hyper-terrestrial thus evades the sensibile/intelligibile distinction that appears to govern Confessions XII, but not (as with praesens) by a constitutive duplicity. This is a materiality that is sub-corporeal, and thus is no more ‘sensible’ than it is ‘intelligible’ (XII.5.5). While it is the unicity of the caelum intellectuale that speculatively secures it a quasi-divine timelessness, it is also a unicity of the materia informis that speculatively delineates, for it, a nihilistic timelessness.7 This unicity is sheer indeterminacy (informitas). Augustine’s hyper-terrestrial is a sea or a deep of counter-disclosure (XII.4.4, XII.6.6).8 Axio­logically, it is Augustine’s basest unicity; yet in this unicity it still resembles—the word is necessarily imprecise—his god and the hyper-heavenly.9

6 Aug. Conf. XII.5.5: cum in ea quaerit cogitatio quid sensus attingat. 7 ‘Nihilistic’ in the sense of a perilous, conceptual verging on or tending towards nihility. Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: quiddam inter formam et nihil, nec formatum nec nihil, informe prope nihil; XII.7.7: prope nihil . . . quo inferius nihil esset; XII.8.8: prope nihil erat, quoniam adhuc omnino informe erat; etc. 8 Thus Augustine contrasts it with the deepest abysses of our oceans, which yet have varieties of light, at Conf. XII.8.8: ista quippe abyssus aquarum iam visibilium etiam in profundis suis habet speciei suae lucem utcumque sensibilem piscibus et repentibus in suo fundo animantibus. illud autem totum prope nihil erat, quoniam adhuc omnino informe erat. 9 While in Conf. XII.7.7, Augustine stresses a hyper-dissimilarity of the materia informis to god (tanto a te longius, quanto dissimilius) and to the caelum intellectuale (duo quaedam, unum prope te, alterum prope nihil, unum quo superior tu esses, alterum quo inferius nihil esset), this very triplex schematism, which can be traced up Conf. XII.2–22, indicates a certain, formal linkage (and ‘resemblance’) which is, precisely, unicity—and thus, timelessness.

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Augustine confesses his reflective impotence with regard to this base materiality, when vera ratio urges him, futilely, to “utterly strip away all [imaginal] remainders of all [sensible] forms” in the process of reflection, so as to cognize pure informitas.10 This is because, as I observed in chapter 7, Augustine’s spiritus is replete with sensuous and quasi-sensuous traces, relics, fabrications.11 Human cogitatio in this life, however deranged, is incommutably linked (by its constitutive haerere) to sensus-contuitus. Thus, in Confessions XII.6.6 Augustine shifts his gaze, as it were, from the speculative concept of informitas or constitutive inapparence,12 to a quasi-phenomenal concept of mutabilitas. Recall here the conjunctive ‘et’ that I stressed in chapter 8, where Augustine remarks that “there is in all [creatures] a certain mutabilitas,” and that all mutive things “are moved, like the human soul and body.”13 Whereas Augustine addresses himself to the human anima-animus when his question is time, in Confessions XI; and while here in book XII, since ‘the human soul and body’ are mutive, he could address the question of ipsa mutabilitas to soul or body, indifferently; Augustine yet selects corpus, in Confessions XII.6.6, to elucidate his question of ipsa mutabilitas. The significance of this decision will become increasingly clear. Augustine writes this: I fixed my intention on bodies-themselves and gazed deeper into their mutability, by-which they cease to be what they were and begin to be what they were not, and this same transit from determination to determination I suspected as occurring through something formless, and not through There is a similar resemblance of the beasts and sublime angels—which are alike incapa­ble of ‘sin,’ on the register of the lex aeterna—at Aug. C.Faust. XXII.28: bestialis enim natura non peccat, quia nihil facit contra aeternam legem, cui sic subdita est, ut eius particeps esse non possit. rursus angelica sublimis natura non peccat, quia ita particeps est legis aeternae, ut solus eam delectet deus, cuius voluntati sine ullo experimento temptationis obtemperat. 10 Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: omnis formae qualescumque reliquias omnino detraherem. Cf. Augustine’s reliquias formae here and Lucr. Rer.Nat. IV.87: sunt igitur iam formarum vestigia certa. 11 Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: spiritum meum plenum imaginibus formatorum corporum. 12 Augustine recognizes his failure to cognize informitas with the phrase, si appararet, in the following sentence—and thus my phrase ‘constitutive inapparence,’ here; Conf. XII.6.6: foedas et horribiles formas perturbatis ordinibus volvebat animus, sed formas tamen, et informe appellabam non quod careret forma, sed quod talem haberet ut, si appareret, insolitum et incongruum aversaretur sensus meus et conturbaretur infirmitas hominis. 13 Aug. Conf. XII.17.25: inest quaedam mutabilitas omnibus . . . sive mutentur, sicut anima hominis et corpus mutentur.

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sheer nihility. . . . And what is this? Is it soul? Is it body? Is it any determination of soul or body? If it were possible to say “nothing something” and “is is not,” this is what I would say. intendi in ipsa corpora eorumque mutabilitatem altius inspexi, qua desinunt esse quod fuerant et incipiunt esse quod non erant, eundemque transitum de forma in formam per informe quiddam fieri suspicatus sum, non per omnino nihil . . . et haec quid est? numquid animus? numquid corpus? numquid species animi vel corporis? si dici posset “nihil aliquid” et “est non est,” hoc eam dicerem. (XII.6.6) The significance of this passage, for our present purposes, is not in what it says regarding mutabilitas, but rather in what Augustine’s aporetic question of ipsa mutabilitas clarifies regarding mutatio, a term and a concept that Augustine only directly takes up in this passage, and in the eternity-meditation of Confessions XI.14 9.2

“Times are Produced by the Movements of Things” (Conf. XII.8)

Augustine’s formulation here, “they cease to be what they were and begin to be what they were not” (XII.6.6), echoes a formulation at Confessions XI.4.6 where “what it is to mutate and vary,” is this: “There is in [a thing] something that was not there before.”15 Similarly, in his De Natura Boni (c. 399),16 Augustine writes: “All mutation renders non-existent that which was.”17 However blunt these formulations of mutatio,18 they suggest a decisive continuity and discontinuity in Confessions XI and XII, namely:

14

But cf. Aug. Conf. IV.10.15: quae oriuntur et occidunt et oriendo quasi esse incipiunt, et crescunt ut perficiantur, et perfecta senescunt et intereunt: et non omnia senescunt, et omnia intereunt . . . sic est modus eorum. 15 Aug. Conf. XI.4.6: est in eo quicquam quod ante non erat: quod est mutari atque variari. Von Herrmann (1992, 26–27/2008, 32–33) glosses this passage: “Change and variation are in fact the phenomenal character of heaven and earth . . . All that is subject to change and variation is such, that what it previously was it is not, and what it will no longer be in the future it now is.” 16 Zarb (1934, 45, 87) dates this opuscule to 399; Mutzenbecher (1984, xix) to 398. 17 Aug. Nat.bon. 19: omnis . . . mutatio facit non esse quod erat. 18 But cf. Aug. Conf. XI.7.9: in quantum quidque non est quod erat et est quod non erat, in tantum moritur et oritur.

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Augustine’s mutatio is the condition of sheer transitivity or mutivity (≈ succession), a condition that he signals with the terms ‘times’ (­tempora), ‘varies’ (variare)19 and ‘alters’ (vertere),20 and in Confessions XII, with a new phrase, ‘change of times’ (vicis temporum/vicissitudo temporum); Augustine’s distentio is the condition of a transitive durativity (≈ dimension), a condition that he comes to denote in Confessions XI, and denotes in book XII, with the terms ‘time’ (tempus), ‘time-itself’ (ipsum tempus) and ‘dilation’ (distentio), and with the phrases ‘long time’ (longum tempus) and ‘space of time’ (spatium temporis). It is for this reason that Augustine fixes his gaze on “bodies-themselves” (ipsa corpora) when he introduces the question of ipsa mutabilitas in Confessions XII.6.6: dilation (distentio) or a space of time (spatium temporis) is the originary temporal phenomenon of a soul-flesh, of vita; whereas alterations (mutatio) or changes of times (vices temporum) designate the originary temporal condition of bodies as such. Of course, alteration and the changes of times are co-originary to the phenomenality of the soul-flesh, of vita temporalis—but as dimension, as dilation. This is why I have previously argued that for Augustine, (α) the structural articulation of distentio as trine-praesens is not partes extra partes (see 5.2), and (β) that not only self-praesens but temporal praesens is duplicitous (see chapter 8). For a vita temporalis, apprehension of And particularly, Aug. Tract. 38.10: quidquid enim mutari potest, mutatum non est quod erat: si non est quod erat, mors quaedam ibi facta est; peremptum est aliquid ibi quod erat, et non est. nigredo mortua est in capite albescentis senis, pulchritudo mortua est in corpore fessi et incurvi senis, mortuae sunt vires in corpore languentis, mortua est statio in corpore ambulantis, mortua est ambulatio in corpore stantis, mortua est ambulatio et statio in corpore iacentis, mortua est locutio in lingua tacentis: quidquid mutatur et est quod non erat, video ibi quamdam vitam in eo quod est, et mortem in eo quod fuit. denique de mortuo cum dicitur: “ubi est homo ille?” respondetur: “fuit.” 19 Cf. Cic. Fin. II.3.10: ‘Varietas’ enim Latinum verbum est, idque proprie quidem in disparibus coloribus dicitur, sed transfertur in multa disparia. 20 Augustine links mutare and variare 2× (Conf. XI.4.6: mutantur enim atque variantur . . . quod est mutari atque variari) of the 3× that that he deploys mutare-mutatio in Conf. XI. The other appearance of mutatio, which I briefly discuss in Part III, is at Conf. XI.7.9: alioquin iam tempus et mutatio et non vera aeternitas nec vera immortalitas. Of the 14× that Augustine uses mutare in Conf. XII it is directly linked 4× to variare, while variare is linked 7× to tempora (XII.8.8, XII.11.11, XII.11.12, XII.11.14, XII.15.18, XII.15.19) and 1× to mutabilitas (omnis porro intentio quae ita variatur mutabilis est, XII.15.18). Vertere appears 4× in Conf. XII (and 0× in Conf. XI), linked 1× to variare, 3× to mutare, and 4× to tempora (XII.8.8, XII.11.14, XII.19.28, XII.29.40).

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the traceless and punctiform—or as I prefer it, punctile—praesens,21 or of the pure alteration that (speculatively) characterizes mutatio, is impossible, even though vita is essentially and incommutably mutive.22 Augustine’s turn to corpora reflects this. But what then is the fundamental sense of the term mutatio in Confessions XII, for our purposes in the present chapter? I will utilize the compound term motus-mutatio in what follows, though the term mutatio is importantly broader than physical movement—and indeed, though the term motus is broader than physical movement23—because mutatio as such, in Confessions XI and XII, explicitly contains this sense: “whether of motion or of rest” (vel motionis vel stationis mutaretur, XII.12.15).24 This distinction—and inclusion—of the ‘motion’ and ‘rest’ of discrete bodies within the comprehensive, uninterrupted and seemingly indiscriminate mutatio of motus omnis is of critical importance for elucidating the relation of ‘times’ (tempora) to ‘time’ (tempus) in books XI and XII. In Confessions XI.24.31, where Augustine concludes that “time is not the movement of a [single] body” (non ergo tempus corporis motus), he concludes this on the grounds that the ‘motion’ and ‘rest’ of discrete bodies is susceptible to measure, which is to say, to ‘time.’25 And he concludes this immediately after having proposed, in Confessions XI.23.29, that it is “the movement of all bodies” that produces ‘times.’26 In Confessions XII, it is still “the commutations of [physical] movement and forms” (commutationes motionum atque formarum, XII.12.15) that produce ‘times’; and here, as in book XI, Augustine’s categorical motus-mutatio (i.e. motus omnis) is not threatened by the phenomenon of ‘rest.’ Rather, Augustine’s motus omnis—i.e. his speculative condition for the production of ‘times’—includes the ‘rest’ of discrete bodies. Mutatio is Augustine’s condition of alteration and succession, “whether of motion or of rest” (XII.12.15).

21 22

Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: praesens autem nullum habet spatium. Which is why praesens has only a formal-logical or preter-phenomenal unicity in Conf. XI.15, and the time-investigation as a whole. For Augustine, temporal praesens is phenomenally trine, and as trine is co-constituted by the sense of passing time that I will trace up the time-investigation in Part III; see chapter 13. 23 For instance, Aug. Conf. IV.14.22: grande profundum est ipse homo, cuius etiam capillos tu, domine, numeratos habes et non minuuntur in te: et tamen capilli eius magis numerabiles quam affectus eius et motus cordis eius. Cf. also the six species of ‘motion’ at Arist. Cat. 14 (15a–b). 24 Aug. Conf. XII.12.15: vel motionis vel stationis mutaretur. 25 Aug. Conf. XI.24.31: et varie corpus aliquando movetur, aliquando stat, non solum motum eius sed etiam statum tempore metimur et dicimus, “tantum stetit, quantum motum est.” 26 Aug. Conf. XI.23.29: cur enim non potius omnium corporum motus sint ‘tempora’?

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Yet neither the word tempus nor its plural form tempora—nor, significantly, Augustine’s new phrase vicis temporum/vicissitudo temporum—appears in Confessions XII.1–7, where he is largely concerned with a primal informitas and ipsa mutabilitas. As constitutively inapparent, the materia informis is tacitly timeless. It is not until Confessions XII.8.8 that Augustine writes: Of this invisible and indeterminate earth . . . you [o god] have conditioned all these things of which this mutive world consists and does not consist, in which mutivity-itself appears,27 in which times can be felt and enumerated: because times are produced by the movements of things.28 de qua terra invisibili et incomposita . . . faceres haec omnia quibus iste mutabilis mundus constat et non constat, in quo ipsa mutabilitas apparet, in qua sentiri et dinumerari possunt tempora, quia rerum mutationibus fiunt tempora. (XII.8.8) This is Augustine’s fiat lux in Confessions XII, and the ‘light’ that is here announced is a “temporal light.”29 More precisely, it is the light of times. 27

The strict rendering here of ipsa mutabilitas and mutabilis mundus would be ‘mutabilityitself’ and ‘mutable world’ respectively. Nevertheless, Augustine is at pains throughout Conf. XII to distinguish ‘mutability’ from ‘mutivity’—i.e. a speculative capacity, as creatura, for alteration-succession from a condition of alteration-succession. This should be abundantly clear from my interpretation thus far, though I only introduce the terms ‘mutive’/’mutivity’ in this chapter. Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: mutabilitas [= mutability] enim rerum mutabilium ipsa capax est formarum omnium in quas mutantur [= mutivity] res mutabiles; XII.12.15: mutabile [= mutable] tamen non mutatum [= mutive]; etc. It is precisely because of this distinction between mutability and mutivity that I here and hereafter use the terms ‘mutivity’ and ‘mutive.’ In the context of a mutable yet not mutive species of ‘matter,’ and a mutable yet not mutive mode of ‘heaven,’ Augustine also speaks of this mutable and mutive ‘world,’ in which time appears. It is thus most essential here, and relative to tempora, to hear the condition of mutivity that is announced in Conf. XII.8.8. 28 While the lexical-philosophical sense of mutatio, as just noted, is importantly broader than ‘movement,’ the original sense of the root-verb mutare is ‘to move, move away,’ and at several places in Conf. XI and XII—particularly since Augustine, as in this passage, repeatedly links mutare with vertere and variare in a way that could appear to be mere flourish (XI.4.6; XII.6.6, XII.11.14, XII.15.21, XII.19.28)—hearing ‘movement’ in mutatio not only sharpens the formulation in question, but harmonizes with Augustine’s temporastatements on the whole in Conf. XII. Again: mutatio explicitly contains the sense of motus in the passages under consideration in this chapter. 29 Aug. Conf. IX.8.17: hanc temporalem . . . lucem.

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Augustine’s repetition here of ‘times’ (tempora . . . tempora) is not incidental, and is persistent in Confessions XII. It is not tempus that is ‘produced,’ simpliciter, ‘by the movements of things’—it is tempora. It is not tempus that can be ‘felt and enumerated’—it is tempora.30 This aligns precisely with his generalized thesis of motus omnis in XI.23.29, and with the ‘proper’ sense of tempora in XI.27.36. Moreover, it is not in a “transcendent subjectivity of the homo interior”31 that ‘mutivity-itself appears’ in Confessions XII.8.8, but rather in “this mutive world” (iste mutabilis mundus . . . in quo . . . in qua). Still, Augustine posits no “cosmological interpretation” of tempora,32 in Alliez’s sense, since the wheeling succession of motus-mutatio here unfounds time as precisely, symmetrically and incessantly as it ‘founds’ it: “this mutive world consists and does not consist (constat et non-constat)” (XII.8.8). This ceaseless displacement of praesens tempus is, indeed, the most basic speculative function and phenomenal condition of mutatio in Confessions XI and XII. To adapt a phrase of Lyotard’s, Augustine’s rerum mutationibus is the “uncanny anchoring” of time in the Confessions.33 9.3

The Register of ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII

Our concern in this chapter is not directly with ‘time,’ however, but with ‘times.’ Augustine severally restates the dependence of ‘times’ on motus-mutatio and indeed, the identity of ‘times’ (not ‘time’) with motus-mutatio and its interrelated conditions, in Confessions XII—and never with the aporetic tone that inflects his formulations of distentio in Confessions XI.34 These statements, which I will quote momentarily, could be summarized in this way: alteration (mutatio/varietas) and succession (ordo) are the logical conditions of any ‘change of times’ (vicis temporum/vicissitudo temporum); a logical condition for alteration-succession is physical movement (motus),35 30

Cf. Virg. Aen. VI.690–91: sic equidem ducebam animo rebarque futurum, | tempora dinumerans, nec me mea cura fefellit; Aug. Conf. XII.8.8: in qua sentiri et dinumerari possunt tempora. 31 Alliez 1996, 108/1991, 167. 32 Alliez 1996, 129. 33 Lyotard 2000, 73. 34 Aug. Conf. XI.23.31: video igitur tempus quandam esse distentionem. sed video? an videre mihi videor?; XI.26.33: inde mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem; sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi. 35 Recall: this is the motus omnis of Conf. XI.23.29, and not the corporis motus of XI.24.31.

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while corporeal determination (species/forma)36 is a logical condition for any such movement or indeed, rest; and finally, a logical condition for corporeal determination is materiality per se (materia/materies).37 A conception of what I call ‘mutive times’ thus emerges: tempora are co-constituted as alteration (mutatio/varietas) and as succession (ordo); the most immediate condition for alteration is physical movement or rest (motus/status),38 while the remoter (logical) conditions for motus (and thus alteration, and thus ‘times’) are corporeal determination (species) and matter as such (materies). In Confessions XII, Augustine is as concerned with mutatio/varietas, ordo and species/forma as co-conditions for time as he is with motus, given that his concern is with an absolutely indeterminate matter (materia informis). In this context, physical movement (and rest) is neither the sole nor the most immediate condition for the emergence of ‘times’ (tempora). But since Alliez and Ricœur, for instance, insist on the irrelativity of Augustine’s tempora (which they do not distinguish from tempus) to motus in Confessions XI, and as a result must accept (with Castoriadis) a critical disjunction of books XI and XII, it is motus that remains a driving question: Alliez’s and Ricœur’s subjectivizing interpretations of Augustine hinge on the putative irrelativity of ‘time’ to “physical movement” (mouvement physique).39 The next section will establish the incontestable, logical dependence of tempora upon motus omnis in Confessions XII, while Part III will finally elucidate the sense in which tempus (as distentio) is dependent upon tempora, and thus, upon physical movement. 9.4

The Evidence for ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII

The sole sentence in Confessions XII in which Augustine immediately links generalized motus (rather than mutatio)40 to tempora is at XII.11.14: “Without

36 37

38 39 40

In the context of the materia informis, and thus of the tempora-formulations I list below, species and forma refer to corporeal determination. O’Donnell (1992, III:324–25) comments on materia/materies: “The two forms occur about equally often in conf. . . . and seem interchangeable in substance (modified by informis: materia, 13×, materies, 7×) . . . There are various late etymological attempts to find a distinction, but there is no such distinction in [Augustine’s] usage.” This condition is, intriguingly, no less clearly stated in Conf. XI.11.13 than in book XII: see chapter 11. Alliez 1991, 187/1996, 124. Here I limit myself to the term motus specifically, which Augustine deploys (over mutatio) in the time-investigation in Conf. XI.

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variance of motions (varietate motionum) there are no times (tempora), and there is no variance where there is no determination (species).”41 Augustine’s basic contention here—the motivation for which is obvious, in the setting of Confessions XII—is this: ‘no determination = no succession (tempora.)’ Since the decisive conceptual determination of his materia informis is its absolute corporeal indetermination, i.e. lack of species, he hereby (speculatively) establishes the timelessness of his indeterminate matter. But that motus is a logical condition for tempora—i.e. ‘no motion = no times (tempora)’—is unequivocally stated here, and this condition is reflected throughout Confessions XII. It is this logical condition for ‘times’ that announces what I will call Augustine’s concept of ‘mutive times.’ Yet how are we to situate this concept of ‘mutive times,’ which Augustine delineates in Confessions XII, but does not elaborate? In Confessions XII, he insinuates this concept through substitutions in and variations on his terminology in Confessions XI, but never states his ‘mutive times’ as a distinct concept. Before proceeding through Confessions XII, then, we can glance back at Augustine’s time-problematic in book XI. The aporia of tempus in Confessions XI is, reductively, that temporal presence manifestly is and is-not a space of time (XI.15–16), i.e. time is and is-not dimensive. (Echoes here of the ‘est non est’ of mutivity-itself, in Confessions XII.6.6, and the ‘constat non constat’ of this mutive world, at XII.8.8, are far from superficial.) Augustine comes to identify the ‘is’ of dimensive time—i.e. the space of time—as a ‘dilation’; but the ‘is-not’ of dimensive time—i.e. that present-time is inextended and instantaneously passing—is itself the acute condition that brings ‘dilation,’ the condition of possibility of such a space of time, to light in Confessions XI. For Augustine, “our intention lasts” (attentio perdurat) only because “present-time has no dimension, no space” (praesens tempus carere spatio, XI.28.37).42 The question of my ‘mutive times’ or Augustine’s ‘changes of times’ (vices temporum) in book XII could thus be stated as: Why the co-originary ‘is-not’ of the space of time (spatium temporis)? Or: Why is present-time (praesens tempus) instantaneously passing? What is it that attentio ‘outlasts’ in even the minutest space of time? Or even: Why is it that “no time (tempus) is present all-at-once”?43

41 Aug. Conf. XI.11.14: sine varietate motionum non sunt tempora, et nulla varietas ubi nulla species. 42 Aug. Conf. XI.28.37: “And who denies that present-time has no space, because it passes away at the same instant? But yet our intention lasts . . .” (et quis negat praesens tempus carere spatio, quia in puncto praeterit? sed tamen perdurat attentio). 43 Aug. Conf. XI.11.13: nullum . . . tempus totum esse praesens.

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It is with these questions in view that we can catalogue Augustine’s statements in Confessions XII regarding the production of ‘times’: “Times are produced by the movements of things when their determinations are varied and altered” = rerum mutationibus fiunt tempora dum variantur et vertuntur species (XII.8.8);44 “For where there is no determination, no succession, nothing appears and nothing passes away—and where this is not, surely there are no ‘days’45 nor any change of spaces of times” = ubi enim nulla species, nullus ordo, nec venit quicquam nec praeterit, et ubi hoc non fit, non sunt utique ‘dies’ nec vicissitudo spatiorum temporalium (XII.9.9);46 “Who . . . would tell me that, with all determination being diminished and annihilated, if only that ‘indeterminacy’ remained by-which things are moved and altered from determination to determination, that that could cause changes of times? But this is utterly impossible: because without variance of motions there are no times, and there is no variance where there is no determination” = quis . . . dicet mihi quod, deminuta atque consumpta omni specie, si sola remaneat ‘informitas’ per quam de specie in speciem res mutabatur et vertebatur, possit exhibere vices temporum? omnino enim non potest, quia sine varietate motionum non sunt tempora, et nulla varietas ubi nulla species (XII.11.14); “[This] visible and interconnected earth, and these gorgeous waters,47 and whatever else there is in the constitution of this world . . . such

44

O’Donnell (1992, III:304) remarks on species in Conf. XII: “The denotation of species/forma differs from imago as the external fact of ‘shape’ differs from its internal correlative in the mind ([Conf.] 7.1.2, ‘per quales enim formas ire solent oculi mei, per tales imagines ibat cor meum’)”; and he justly cautions against insisting on a “Plotinian ancestry (and not merely cousinage)” for the term. I have previously commented on the polysemousness of species in Conf. XII, but suggest that ‘determination’ clarifies its primary sense in the context of Augustine’s “invisible and indeterminate earth” (terra invisibilis et incomposita, XII.4.4, XII.9.9, etc.). 45 Despite the immediate context of ‘days’ in the Hexaemeron, this formulation also has relevance for the discussions of ‘days’ at Conf. XI.15.18–20, XI.23.29–30. 46 ‘Succession’ or ‘series’ are lexically valid renderings for ordo, and ‘succession’ is most precise, I believe, in the context of Conf. XI–XII. Von Herrmann (1992, 32) sees this in his chapter on Augustine’s eternity-meditation in Conf. XI: “. . . ex ordine, after the order of time (nach der Ordnung der Zeit), succession as the fundamental character of time (des Nacheinander als des Grundcharakters der Zeit).” 47 And ‘determinate’: I have previously remarked the duplex sense of speciosus in Conf. XII.

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things are such that in them changes of times occur through the successive48 alterations of movements and forms” = terra visibilis atque composita et aqua speciosa et quidquid deinceps in constitutione huius mundi . . . talia sunt ut in eis agantur vicissitudines temporum propter ordinatas commutationes motionum atque formarum (XII.12.15); “The invisible and indeterminate earth [sc. the hyper-terrestrial, is necessarily conceptualized] without any change of times, which ‘change’ is typically said of ‘now this [determination], now that,’ because where there is no determination there is no ‘this and that’ ” = invisibilem atque incompositam terram sine ulla vicissitudine temporum, quae solet habere ‘modo hoc et modo illud,’ quia ubi nulla species, nusquam est ‘hoc et illud’ (XII.13.16); “That material was formless, [and] where . . . there was no form there was no succession . . . but where there was no succession there could be no change of times” = erat informis materies, ubi . . . nullam formam nullus ordo erat . . . ubi autem nullus ordo erat, nulla esse vicissitudo temporum poterat (XII.15.22); “It is impossible for that indeterminacy that verges on nihility to have changes of times” = informitatem, quae prope nihil est, vices temporum habere non posse (XII.19.28). I previously anticipated a ‘spatializing pressure’ of the materia informis, paralleled by a ‘sensualizing effect’ of the caelum intellectuale, on the conditions for time in the Confessions (see 5.1). This spatializing of ‘time’ (tempus)—which to reiterate, Augustine exclusively articulates in terms of ‘times’ (tempora)— should be evident from the foregoing catalogue. But it is essential that ‘spatiality’ here refers not at all to ‘dilation’ as a space of time (spatium temporis). To the contrary, Augustine’s conditions for ‘mutive times’ in Confessions XII all (indirectly) relate to the conditioning of present-time as inextended, i.e. to ‘times’ as having no space, as hyper-transitivity.49 Augustine’s mutatio, in effect—which is logically dependent upon physical movement (motus 48 But ordinatus also has the definite sense here of divinely ‘ordained.’ Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.2.3: tuus est dies et tua est nox; ad nutum tuum momenta transvolant. Thus Watts closes this sentence, in his 17th-century translation: “. . . they are of such a nature that the successive changes of times may take place in them, by reason of their appointed alterations of motions and of forms.” 49 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: si quid intellegitur temporis, quod in nullas iam vel minutissimas momentorum partes dividi possit, id solum est quod praesens dicatur; quod tamen ita raptim a futuro in praeteritum transvolat, ut nulla morula extendatur.

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omnis)—is an irrecusable counter-concept to his ‘space of time’ (spatium temporis), while it is also his fundamental condition for ‘times’ (tempora). As a condition for tempora, in Confessions XII, it is spatial and corporeal alteration (motus-mutatio) which conditions the resistless phenomenality of ‘changes of times’ (vices temporum). Thus, the ‘times’ in the foregoing catalogue by no means signify ‘time,’ in Confessions XI, but rather the co-originary ‘is-not’ to the ‘is’ of any space of time, in Confessions XI. Thus, it is the ‘mutive times’ of Confessions XII which provoke the reflective problem of the space of time in Confessions XI, without in any way contradicting, or conflicting with, Augustine’s problematic or findings in that book. Yet while Augustine’s concept of ‘mutive times’ is counter-subjectivizing, so to say, it is also not objectivizing. For recall Augustine’s decisive formulation at XII.8.8: “This mutive world consists and does not consist, in-which mutivityitself appears (apparet), in-which times can be felt and enumerated: because times are produced by the movements of things.” A vita temporalis—as ‘soulflesh,’ as corpus-anima—is of course originarily (α) in-this mutive world, i.e. in the world in-which mutivity appears; is (β) the in-which of this mutabilitas apparet; is (γ) the natura-vis by-which times are ‘felt and enumerated’; but also, is (δ) itself a mutive-thing (corpus et anima) by-which times, in their dependence upon motus omnis, are co-conditioned (rerum mutationibus fiunt tempora, XII.8.8). And finally, remark again that in this passage in which tempus and its singular declensions do not appear—namely, Confessions XII.8.8—Augustine specifies that “in [this mutive world] tempora can be felt and enumerated.” His phrasing here—in qua sentiri et dinumerari possunt tempora—echoes several formulations in Confessions XI.50 (It also recalls Aristotle’s preference for enumeration: see 13.6.) It is the task of Part III to return to Confessions XI with this newly acquired concept of ‘mutive times’ in Confessions XII, and trace up the inner connections and distinctions of tempus and tempora—and specifically, the duplex dependence of ‘time’ on (α) sensus carnis and (β) motus omnis—in Augustine’s time-investigation. ‘Times,’ on the contrary, have a simplex dependence upon—and indeed, are identified with—motus omnis. It is precisely this simplex dependence and identity that distinguishes ‘times’ from ‘time,’

50 Aug. Conf. XI.15.19: anima humana . . . datum enim tibi est sentire moras atque metiri; XI.16.21: sentimus intervalla temporum et comparamus sibimet et dicimus alia longiora et alia breviora . . . praetereuntia metimur tempora cum sentiendo metimur . . . sentiri et metiri potest; XI.27.35: ita est quantum sentitur sensu manifesto. quantum sensus manifestus est, brevi syllaba longam metior eamque sentio habere bis tantum.

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and ‘changes of times’ from a ‘space of time,’ in Confessions XI as in Confessions XII. Prior to this return, however, it will be useful to glance, in a pair of excursuses, at Confessions XII.29 and Augustine’s Epistle 137. The first of these texts provides some indication of the difficult mode of logical dependence of tempus upon motus in the Confessions. And while Epistle 137 (c. 411) was composed a decade or so after Confessions X to XII,51 and addresses an importantly different, dogmatically inspired set of questions, this epistle yet illuminates and elaborates—I suggest—a radical duplicity of anima as the vita corporis which is intimated in Confessions X and XI and which, on our return to it, should be discerned in the time-investigation, in Part III. It is here that Augustine posits a spatial ‘outness’ of sensus that parallels the temporal ‘outness’ of sensus—i.e. distentio animi—in Confessions XI. 9.5

Excursus on Logical Precedence (Conf. XII.29)

Augustine’s problem in Confessions XII.29.40 has plagued and inspired him since Confessions I.4.4,52 and most acutely since the eternity-meditation of book XI.53 It is that “all past and future times [o god] are over-towered by your immutable remaining,”54 and yet, “in the commencement [you] made” a world.55 To clarify this and related problems in book XII, Augustine ­differentiates several modes of precedence which are sketched in Aristotle’s Categories— 51 Divjak (2002, 1032) dates Epist. 137 to 411/12. 52 Aug. Conf. I.4.4: quid es ergo, deus meus? . . . stabilis et incomprehensibilis, immutabilis mutans omnia, numquam novus numquam vetus . . . semper agens semper quietus . . . opera mutas nec mutas consilium; XII.29.40: namque rara visio est et nimis ardua conspicere, domine, aeternitatem tuam incommutabiliter mutabilia facientem ac per hoc priorem. 53 Aug. Conf. XI.3–13; cf. XI.7.9: verbo tibi coaeterno simul et sempiterne dicis omnia quae dicis, et fit quidquid dicis ut fiat. nec aliter quam dicendo facis, nec tamen simul et sempiterna fiunt omnia quae dicendo facis; XI.9.11: in hoc principio, deus, fecisti caelum et terram in verbo tuo . . . miro modo dicens et miro modo faciens. quis comprehendet? quis enarrabit? . . . et inhorresco et inardesco: inhorresco, in quantum dissimilis ei sum, inardesco, in quantum similis ei sum. This is the deepest problem in Conf. XII.29; space will not permit an elaboration of the ‘interlocutors’ that situate this section of book XII. 54 Aug. Conf. XII.28.38: stabili permansione cuncta praeterita et futura tempora superari. 55 Aug. XII.29.40: “in principio fecit.” Cf. Alexandre 1988, 72: “Le verbe utilisé par les LXX est ici ποιεῖν (vielles latines: ‘fecit,’ Vulg.: ‘creavit’).”

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from which work, presumably, Augustine lifts them—and elaborated upon in Aristotle’s Metaphysics.56 (For the significance of this echo of the Categories: see 13.6.) Here in Confessions XII, Augustine finds it necessary to differentiate What precedes by eternity, what by time, what by choice, what by origin: [i] by eternity, as god precedes all things; [ii] by time, as flower precedes fruit; [iii] by choice, as fruit precedes flower; [iv] by origin, as sound precedes song. Of these four [modes of precedence], the first and last . . . are very difficult to apprehend, [but] the two middle [modes] present no difficulties. quid praecedat aeternitate, quid tempore, quid electione, quid origine: aeternitate, sicut deus omnia; tempore, sicut flos fructum; electione, sicut fructus florem; origine, sicut sonus cantum. in his quattuor primum et ultimum . . . difficillime intelleguntur, duo media facillime. (XII.29.40) Reverently eliminating (i) from consideration, Augustine proceeds to analyze the concrete instance (exemplum) he has pre-selected for (iv)—precedence ‘by origin’—namely, the precedence of sound (sonus) to song (cantus). 56 Arist. Cat. 12 (14a–b); cf. Met. V.11 (1018b–1019a), IX.8 (1049b–1051a). At Oxford, circa 1310, Henry of Harclay links Aristotle’s distinctions of ‘priority’ in Metaphysics IX.8 to Augustine’s in Confessions XII.29, at Harc. Q.Ord. XII.4–6: Et ista distinctio potest haberi a Philosopho [sc. Aristotle] 9 Metaphysicae . . . Unde quod materia sit prior origine forma et simul tempore habetur ab Augustino in fine primi Super Genesim [Aug. Gen.litt. I.15] et 12 Confessionum et 13 [Aug. Conf. 13.33.48] sub hiis eisdem verbis . . .  Note that a half-century earlier—“shortly after 1256” (Silva 2012, 6)—Robert Kilwardby, also at Oxford, cites Augustine’s modes of ‘priority’ without referring back to Aristotle, at Kil. Quaest. II: Sed prioritatis sunt quatuor modi secundum Augustinum lib. Confessionum XII, scilicet aeternitatis, originis, electionis et temporis; IV: Augustinus lib. XII Confessionum cap. 28 [sic] distinguit ‘prius’ quadrupliciter, scilicet aeternitate ut Deus omnibus, origine ut sonus cantu, tempore sicut flos fructu, electione sicut fructus flore. I am grateful to Henry of Harclay—an early Chancellor of the University of Oxford— for directing me to Metaphysics IX; and to Mareike Hauer—a colleague at Louvain—for alerting me to the relevant discussions in Categories 12 and Metaphysics V. Neither Solignac (1962, 611–12) nor O’Donnell (1992, III:339) registers the Aristotelian source, or sources, for this passage in Conf. XII.

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But the materia informis is still at issue in Confessions XII.29.40, and Augustine’s analysis of sonus/cantus is linked throughout to the materia/forma register that figures in his earlier ‘times’-formulations in book XII. Because of this, the last ‘times’-formulation in Confessions XII appears at the close of this section: The forms of [material] things give rise to times—but that [sc. materia informis] was formless, yet now it is observed in times simul with [such] forms. formae rerum exserunt tempora, illa autem erat informis iamque in temporibus simul animadvertitur. (XII.29.40) That tempora (not tempus) and its declension are used here should require no comment. It is rather this simul, which I leave untranslated, that is the crux of Augustine’s mode of precedence ‘by origin,’ and indirectly, of the logical dependence of tempus upon tempora—and thus, of tempus upon motus omnis, species and materia (or materies). Let me clarify, though space will not permit the subtle interpretation of Augustine’s sonus/cantus instance that it deserves, particularly in light of his sonus/cantus analyses in Confessions XI.27–28. In the conception of ‘mutive times’ set out in the preceding sections, tempora are logically constituted by (and identified with) motus omnis, while the remoter conditions for motus (and thus motus omnis, and thus tempora) are species/forma and, ultimately, materia/materies. In the sentence I have just quoted, Augustine elides—as several times previously in Confessions XII— motus as a condition of ‘times,’ though this condition is nevertheless included in his statement. Here it is (the motus-mutatio of) ‘the forms of material things’ which give rise to tempora. And in ‘times,’ there is an absolute temporal indistinction between our perception or observation of form ( forma) and of matter (materia/materies). As co-conditions for ‘perception’ (contuitus) and ‘times’ (tempora) alike, determinate matter is never perceived absolutely stripped of form. (As we have seen: absolutely amorphous or indeterminate matter is constitutively inapparent.) In Confessions XII.29.40, Augustine holds that matter is sensed simul with form, and that form is sensed simul with matter. Throughout XII.29.40, Augustine insists on the dependence of form (species/forma) upon matter (materia/materies), yet the temporal dependence of form upon matter is indemonstrable. Mode (ii) of precedence—i.e. “by time (tempore), as flower precedes fruit” (XII.29.40)—is ineffectual here,

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since the precedence of matter to form is never observed as a temporal precedence.57 Moreover—and recall certain of my previous comments on axiology— mode (iii) of precedence—“by choice (electione), as fruit precedes flower” (XII.29.40)—threatens to mislead, and Augustine addresses this, here in Confessions XII.29. Song (cantus) is superior to sound (sonus) precisely, he writes, as form is superior to matter.58 This could tempt Augustine to deny that song is dependent upon sound; but here, song is nevertheless dependent upon sound—not ‘by time’ or ‘by choice,’ but rather, ‘by origin.’ This is because song is “formed sound” ( formatus sonus), and while ‘unformed’ sound can exist, song cannot exist without sound.59 Thus, Augustine argues, cantus is not formed “so that” sonus may exist, but rather sonus is formed—“out of the singer’s body and subject to their intention” (animae subiacet ex corpore)60 is the formula here—“so that” cantus may exist.61 On Augustine’s analysis in this passage, as song is (logically) dependent upon sound ‘by origin,’ so form is logically dependent upon matter—while ‘times’ (tempora), he reiterates here, are logically dependent upon “the forms of things” ( formae rerum, XII.29.40). My suggestion is this: that precisely the mode of precedence that Augustine gestures towards here—which is, as he admits, a difficult one (difficillime intelleguntur, XII.29.40)—helps to illuminate his time-concept in Confessions XI and XII and the ‘time’/‘times’ distinction without which it cannot be clarified. In, or as, the illocalizable simul of present-time, there is manifestly no temporal precedence of ‘times’ (← materia, motus omnis, mutatio) to ‘time’ (← memoria, contuitus, expectatio). 57 Aug. Conf. XII.29.40: sic est prior materies quam id quod ex ea fit, non ea prior quia ipsa efficit . . . nec prior intervallo temporis. . . . nec tempore prior: simul enim cum cantu editur. And cf. Aug. Gen.litt. I.15.29. 58 Aug. Conf. XII.29.40: et ideo cantus in sono suo vertitur, qui sonus eius materies eius est. idem quippe formatur, ut cantus sit. et ideo, sicut dicebam, prior materies sonandi quam forma cantandi. . . . nec prior electione: non enim potior sonus quam cantus, quandoquidem cantus est non tantum sonus verum etiam speciosus sonus. Cf. Isid. Etym. III.19.1: sonum, quae materies cantilenarum est. 59 Aug. Conf. XII.29.40: cantus est formatus sonus et esse utique aliquid non formatum potest, formari autem quod non est non potest. 60 Aug. Conf. XII.29.40: cantanti animae subiacet ex corpore, de quo cantum faciat. Cf. Isid. Etym. III.20.1: Prima divisio Musicae, quae harmonica dicitur, id est, modulatio vocis . . . Haec ex animo et corpore motum facit, et ex motu sonum, ex quo colligitur Musica, quae in homine vox appellatur. 61 Aug. Conf. XII.29.40: non cantus formatur ut sonus sit, sed sonus formatur ut cantus sit.

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As with form and matter, so with ‘time’ and ‘times’: as co-conditions for presence as such, they are necessarily sensed simul, or rather, that sense necessarily is the simul. And furthermore, should time (tempus) be conceptualized—as yet, very crudely—as the ‘form’ of times (tempora), or a space of time (spatium temporis) as the ‘form’ of changes of times (vices temporum), there would clearly be no axiological precedence of ‘times’ (← materia, motus omnis, mutatio) to ‘time’ (← memoria, contuitus, expectatio). To the contrary: time would be superior to times, or a space of time to changes of times, precisely as form is superior to matter in Confessions XII.29.40. Yet Augustine insists here, as in the ‘times’-formulations I surveyed in 9.3, that times are logically dependent upon physical movement and corporeal determination respectively, while the latter are logically dependent upon matter per se. That is to say, Augustine adheres to a logic of precedence over a logic of ‘perfection.’ And while Alliez decries every “temptation” to inscribe “time [in Augustine] as dependent on physical movement,”62 it would appear—to the contrary—that Augustine resists an axiological temptation not to inscribe time as logically dependent upon motus, species and materies. It is clear that he repeatedly inscribes tempora, in Confessions XII, as dependent upon motus, species, materies—and the inner connection of tempus and tempora will be taken up in Part III. 9.6

Excursus on Sensual ‘Outness’ (Epist. 137) What does it mean to say that time is in the soul? . . .  As long as we do not have an adequate concept of the soul . . .  it remains difficult to say what ‘time is in the soul’ means. Nothing is gained by saying that time is subjective. — M. Heidegger 63

Heidegger’s question in 1927 still rings out—‘What does it mean to say that time is in the soul?’—and I make no pretence to resolve it. It has rung out since Aristotle formulated his time-question, rigorously and aporetically, in Physics IV.64 But in this brief excursus I intend to follow a line of enquiry that Heidegger re-initiates here—that of recovering ‘an adequate concept of the soul’—and 62 63 64

Alliez 1996, 124/1991, 187. Heidegger 1982, 237, and cf. 256: “The assignment of time to the soul . . . occurs in Aristotle and then in a much more emphatic sense in Augustine.” Cf. Aug. Phys. IV.14 (223a).

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which I pursued towards anima-animus as vita corporis in chapter 8. That is, prior to returning to the time-question in Confessions XI, I will ask this: If time is ‘in the soul,’ for Augustine, then where is the soul?65 In Epistle 137, Augustine problematizes the locus of the soul in a radical manner, though his immediate concern is with divine incarnation, rather than the ontological status of sensus or tempus. The axiological scandal I glanced at in chapter 7 here provokes difficult, but immanentist and proto-phenomenological formulations.66 And these formulations, though they surpass—in extremity and focus—anything in the Confessions, yet develop certain axiologically inflected phrases in the Confessions which, in this epistle, are cut loose from the rhetoric of depravity that accompanies them in his earlier work. I have discussed the duplicitous phenomenality of the ‘in me’ in Confessions X.7.11, which derives from a constitutive haerere of anima to corpus in this life (see chapters 7 and 8). This haerere is a sub-phenomenal inhesion of the flesh that Augustine radicalizes and purports to phenomenalize in Epistle 137. “The human person,” he writes here, “is an intermixture (mixtura) of soul and body . . . [and] we experience this in ourselves (hoc in nobis ipsis experimur).”67 This is a statement of ontological duplicity that verges on—and risks confusion with—a unicity.68 As he elaborates on this ‘intermixture’ in Epistle 137,69 Augustine articulates, however problematically, a duplicity of the soul’s locus that effects what I will call a sensual ‘outness’ in space.70 This outness is 65

Cf. Sen. Nat.quaest. VII.25.1–2: “All will confess (omnes fatebuntur) that we have a soul . . . but what soul is (quid . . . sit animus) . . . no one can explain to you any more than where it is (ubi sit).” 66 Cf. Aug. Epist. 137.2.8–9, where Augustine rehearses this scandal: the verbum dei took on “a human body” (corpus humanum) and “sensed all the affections of humanity” (omnes humanos sentit affectus). 67 Aug. Epist. 137.3.11: persona hominis mixtura est animae et corporis . . . hoc in nobis ipsis experimur. 68 Cf. Augustine’s use of mixtura here and Lucretius’ use of the same term at Lucr. Rer.nat. III.266–81: “heat and air and the unseen force of wind intermixed produce a single nature (mixta creant unam naturam) . . . and there is nothing in our body (in corpore nostro) that is more-interior than this nature (haec natura), which is itself the soul of the entire soul (anima est animae).” 69 E. Fortin (1954; 1959, 119–23) situates Augustine’s discussion of the soul in Epist. 137 relative to Neoplatonism—most notably, to Porphyry—and argues that Augustine reprises here “une doctrine spécifiquement néoplatonicienne des rapports de l’âme et du corps” (1954, 372). Given the ‘specifically’ Stoic elements of this letter and a series of Ciceronian quotes and allusions in it, Fortin’s position is untenable. 70 Thomas Aquinas later detects a threat, in Aug. Epist. 137, that this ‘outness’ could imply a sort of omnipresence of the soul (anima est ubique)—a position that Aquinas, of course,

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­ eaningless without Augustine’s proto-phenomenological (yet axiologically m inflected) distinction, which can be traced up the Confessions, between intus and foris.71 I have previously referred to this distinction without providing much analysis. Crudely put, intus in the Confessions can be characterized as a within of the flesh—i.e. the originary locus (a localizing locus)72 of sensations, desires, wills and memories; while foris in the Confessions can be characterized as a space of the senses—i.e. the co-originary surround of sensed-things, intentions, acts and obstructions.73 I have already indicated how Augustine’s intus, in Confessions X, phenomenalizes as a quasi-foris, i.e. the duplicity of praesens reproduces itself for Augustine’s ‘within.’ Moreover, the duplicity of praesens also reproduces itself for the ‘without.’ Augustine restates this strikingly in Confessions III, VII and X—always to condemn his past, and always in the context of the visible.74 by no means attributes to Augustine. Cf. Aq. S.Th. I, q. 8, art. 4, obj. 6: “As Augustine also says [at Epist. 137.2], ‘wherever the soul sees it senses, and it lives wherever it senses, and it exists wherever it lives.’ But the soul, in a sense, sees everywhere, for it progressively sees the whole arc of heaven (anima videt quasi ubique, quia successive videt etiam totum caelum). Therefore, the soul is everywhere (anima est ubique).” 71 Aug. Conf. I.6.7: intus et foris. 72 This is the sense of Augustine’s first description of the intus-foris distinction, at Conf. I.6.8: et ecce paulatim sentiebam ubi essem . . .  73 Aug. Conf. I.6.8: et ecce paulatim sentiebam ubi essem, et voluntates meas volebam ostendere eis per quos implerentur, et non poteram, quia illae intus erant, foris autem illi, nec ullo suo sensu valebant introire in animam meam. itaque iactabam membra et voces, signa similia voluntatibus meis, pauca quae poteram, qualia poteram. III.7.14: et feriebant undique ista oculos meos, et non videbam. VII.7.11: ante te erat desiderium meum . . . intus enim erat. IX.4.10: nec iam bona mea foris erant nec oculis carneis.  X.6.9: omnibus his quae circumstant fores carnis meae; X.9.16: sic est in memoria mea ut non retenta imagine rem foris reliquerim, aut sonuerit et praeterierit sicut vox impressa per aures vestigio quo recoleretur, quasi sonaret cum iam non sonaret, aut sicut odor, dum transit et vanescit in ventos, olfactum afficit, unde traicit in memoriam imaginem sui quam reminiscendo repetamus; X.40.65: lustravi mundum foris sensu quo potui, et attendi vitam corporis mei de me sensusque ipsos meos.  XI.5.7: tu fabro corpus, tu animum membris imperitantem fecisti, tu materiam unde facit aliquid, tu ingenium quo artem capiat et videat intus quid faciat foris, tu sensum corporis quo interprete traiciat ab animo ad materiam id quod facit et renuntiet animo quid factum sit; XI.8.10: sic in evangelio per carnem ait, et hoc insonuit foris auribus hominum. 74 Cf. Aug. Conf. III.6.11: . . . quae me seduxit, quia invenit foris habitantem in oculo carnis meae; VII.7.11: . . . et lumen oculorum meorum non erat mecum; X.27.38: et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam, et in ista formosa quae fecisti deformis inruebam.

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In book III, he writes that he was “living outside (foris habitantem), in the eye of [his] flesh.”75 In Confessions X, where I have stressed the duplicity of praesens, Augustine repeats a formulation that he first introduced in book VII: ego autem foris, “but I was outside.”76 In Confessions VII, the intus that constitutes this ‘outside’ is a locus of Augustine’s desire (desiderium meum . . . intus enim erat, VII.7.11); while in book X, the intus that constitutes this ‘outside’ is the locus of his god (intus eras, X.27.38). This is curious: ego autem foris. ‘But I was outside’—outside my flesh, outside my desire, outside my god? In Epistle 137 this formulation is rendered more determinate and freed of the preterite for which it is reserved in the Confessions. In 411/12, Augustine writes this: extra carnem nostram vivimus, “we live outside our flesh.”77 And what could this signify? He admits the seeming “absurdity” (absurditate) of the formulation, while yet suggesting its validity.78 The difficulty of the phrase is heightened still further by the fact that Augustine states, several sentences previously, that the soul “lives in the flesh” (vivit autem in carne), and that the soul “lives nowhere else than in its flesh” (nonnisi in carne sua vivit).79 And lastly, on a seemingly different register, Augustine refers to “the whole fivefold system of the nerves” (sensus omnes quinaria distributione) which ramify and sensitize the flesh from, “as it were, a centre in the brain,”80 and then to the heart which 75 Aug. Conf. III.6.11: quae me seduxit, quia invenit foris habitantem in oculo carnis meae. While the most natural rendering of foris habitantem is perhaps ‘dwelling outside,’ ‘living’ is also a primary lexical sense of habitare, and this accents a fore-echo in the Conf. of Epist. 137.2.5 (extra carnem nostram vivimus), where vivere can only be rendered as ‘living.’ 76 Cf. Aug. Conf. VII.7.11: et ante te erat desiderium meum, et lumen oculorum meorum non erat mecum. intus enim erat, ego autem foris, nec in loco illud. at ego intendebam in ea quae locis continentur, et non ibi inveniebam locum ad requiescendum; X.27.38: et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam, et in ista formosa quae fecisti deformis inruebam. 77 Aug. Epist. 137.2.5. 78 Aug. Epist. 137.2.6: haec omnia mira sunt; nihil horum affirmari sine quadam velut absurditate potest: et de sensu loquimur morticino. 79 Aug. Epist. 137.2.5. 80 O’Daly 1987, 80–81: “Augustine accepted that it is the sensory nerves which transmit stimuli, and that they transmit these to the brain, to which they are attached and where they originate. Fine, pipe-like passages (tenues fistulae) lead from the central part of the brain to the outer surface of the body and the various sense-organs: in the case of touch, especially fine channels (tenuissimi . . . rivuli) run through the cervical and spinal marrow to all parts of the body (Gn. litt. 7.13.30). . . . Augustine is precise concerning which part of the brain is the source and terminus of sensation: it is the foremost of the three ventricles in

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suffuses “vital motion through the whole body (per corporis cuncta).”81 So this ‘outness’ of the soul is not intended as word-mysticism, but what is the sense of this phrase, ‘we live outside our flesh (extra carnem)’? Augustine introduces his reflection with a strict and distinct set of axio­logical determinations. All bodies (corpora)—even the air,82 and “light-itself” (ipsa lux)83—swell, distend or occupy space (occupet spatium . . . locum sic impleat) and are partes extra partes, while the nature of soul (anima) is ­different.84 Augustine thus intends to “draw the mind away from the senses” (sevocare mentem a sensibus), i.e. to estrange cogitatio from sensuous c­ onsuetudo.85 This estrangement is necessary, says Augustine (quoting Cicero),86 not to meditate upon god, but to interrogate sensus carnis (ipsos ergo corporis sensus) in a peculiar but immanentist fashion.87 To reflect upon or intend sensus qua sensus is itself a strange and ascetic procedure, and involves some type of protophenomenological ‘reduction’ that consuetudo resists.88 In Epistle 137.2 and Confessions X.7.11, Augustine’s initial reflections on anima as vita corporis are identical: anima vivifies corpus, and it is this inhesion of the flesh that activates sensus. There is no sensus without vita, and anima is the vita of a corpus; thus, the duplex condition of sensus is, precisely: animacorpus (Lyotard’s ‘soul-flesh’). “The bodily senses (corporis sensus),” Augustine

the cerebrum. The other two function as the seat of memory and the source of the motor nerves (Gn. litt. 7.18.24).” 81 Aug. Epist. 137.2.8: quasi centro cerebri, sensus omnes quinaria distributione . . . corde, membro tam exiguo, vitalem motum per corporis cuncta. 82 Cf. Aug. Conf. VII.1.2: . . . sicut autem luci solis non obsisteret aeris corpus. 83 Apropos the extramissive ‘side’ of Augustine’s theory of vision, Colish (1985, 174) writes that “a visual ray (acies, radius) . . . mixes with the pure air and traverses the distance between eye and object. The ray itself, Augustine acknowledges, is material: Et certe iste corporeae lucis est radius, emicans ex oculis nostris (‘And certainly this ray emitted from our eyes is a ray of corporeal light’).” Colish’s reference here is Aug. Gen.litt. IV.34.54. 84 Aug. Epist. 137.2.4. 85 Aug. Epist. 137.2.5: . . . sevocare mentem a sensibus, et cogitationem a consuetudine abducere. ipsos ergo corporis sensus aliquanto insuetius, et vigilantius perscrutetur. 86 As Testard (1958, II:107) first noticed: (i) Cic. Tusc. I.16.38: Magni autem est ingenii sevocare mentem a sensibus et cogitationem ab consuetudine abducere. (ii) Aug. Epist. 137.2.5: Magni quippe ingenii est, ut ait quidam, sevocare mentem a sensibus, et cogitationem a consuetudine abducere. 87 Aug. Epist. 137.2.5: . . . sevocare mentem a sensibus, et cogitationem a consuetudine abducere. ipsos ergo corporis sensus aliquanto insuetius, et vigilantius perscrutetur. 88 Cf. O’Daly 1987, 83: “For Augustine, the senses are, in general, not reflexive (lib. arb. 2.9).”

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writes in this epistle, “cannot exist in the absence of body or soul.”89 He also appears to treat it as strictly analytic that anima, insofar as it is involved in a vita temporalis, is also a vita corporis.90 Augustine then proceeds: It is clearly impossible for a man to sense unless he lives, but he lives in the flesh before death dissolves this [soul-flesh]. How then does his soul, which lives nowhere else than in his flesh, sense things that are outside his flesh? certe sentire homo non potest, nisi vivat; vivit autem in carne, antequam morte utrumque dirimatur. quomodo igitur anima quae sunt extra carnem suam sentit, quae nonnisi in carne sua vivit? (Epist. 137.2.5) A preliminary answer to our question here, ‘Where is the soul?’ is manifestly and unequivocally—‘in the flesh’ (in carne). Precisely this locus is, for Augustine, the sub-phenomenal condition for vita as such (= haerere), and the flesh simply is for him the locus of sensus. A soulless-flesh is a senseless flesh— a corpse; a soul-flesh is a sensitive flesh—‘a life.’ And as the locus of the soul in this life is manifestly ‘in the flesh,’ so—presumably—the locus of what is ‘in the soul,’ in this life, is also ‘in the flesh.’ In the present context, then—if ‘time is in the soul,’ then it appears to follow that ‘time is in the flesh.’ But to appreciate the subtlety of Augustine’s question, ‘How do I sense outside my flesh?’ it is imperative to recall his references to heart, brain and nervature. Augustine is neither foreclosing nor seeking a physiological resolution to, or description of, his question regarding sensus. He is reflecting on sensation. And immediately, the terrain of sensus is seen to be diverse. Though it is possible to doubt whether olfaction is solely conditioned by contact, taction and gustation manifestly are,91 and thus: “Whatever we taste and touch, we sense nowhere 89 Aug. Epist. 137.2.5: sunt certe quinque partiti corporis sensus, qui nec sine corpore, nec sine anima esse possunt. Cf. Aug. Rhyth. I.4.8: puto te negare non posse, bestias habere memoriam . . . neque in sensu eam, neque in memoria (nam illud non est sine corpore, et utrumque etiam in bestia est); Lucr. Rer.nat. III.333–34: nec sibi quaeque sine alterius vi posse videtur | corporis atque animi seorsum sentire postestas. 90 Aug. Epist. 137.2.5: neque sentire est nisi viventis, quod ab anima est corpora . . . certe sentire homo non potest, nisi vivat; vivit autem in carne, antequam morte utrumque dirimatur. 91 It should be noted that olfaction also occupies a central (μέσον)—and equivocal— position in Aristotle’s schematism of the senses, at Arist. Sens. 5 (445a). While vision and audition, for Aristotle, are distinguished as modes of sensation “through a medium”

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but in our flesh (non alibi quam in carne nostra sentimus).”92 Augustine’s initial localization of the soul as living ‘in the flesh’ (in carne) is not problematized by these modalities of sensation. It is rather with vision and audition—the senses, observe, which figure in the Confessions’ time-­investigation93—that sensus begins to problematize the locus of the soul.94 Here the problematic of sensation (as with time) becomes one of duplicitous presence, or more precisely, of ‘impresence.’ Augustine opens Confessions XI.27.34 in this way: “The voice of a body (vox corporis) begins to sound, and sounds, and still sounds, and now it ceases— and already there is silence and that voice is past and is no longer a voice.”95 It is this hyper-minimal phenomenon—a transitive presence of vox corporis to sensus corporis—which leads Augustine, through several ensuing analyses, to formulate a ‘dilation’ of animus that is originarily a ‘dilation’ of sensus (see chapter 13). And in Epistle 137, Augustine writes this: Consider hearing, in which sense spreads-itself-out in some way from the flesh. How is it that we say, ‘There is noise outside,’ unless we sense where there is noise? Here also, therefore, we live outside our flesh. Or can we sense where we are not living—when sense is impossible without life? attende et auditum. nam et ipse se foras quodammodo diffundit a carne. unde enim dicimus, ‘foris sonat,’ nisi ibi sentiamus ubi sonat? ergo et illic extra carnem nostram vivimus. an sentire possumus et ubi non vivimus, cum sensus sine vita esse non possit?96

(τῶν δι᾿ ἄλλου αἰσθητικῶν), and for Augustine, suggest an ‘outness’ of sensation (sentit autem etiam praeter carnem suam, Aug. Epist. 137.2.6): Aristotle is doubtless a source of Epist. 137, whatever intermediaries may be suggested. 92 Aug. Epist. 137.2.6: caeteri tres sensus apud seipsos sentiunt, quamvis de olfactu utcumque possit dubitari. de gustu autem atque tactu nulla controversia est, quod ea quae gustamus et tangimus, non alibi quam in carne nostra sentimus. proinde isti tres sensus ab hac consideratione semoveantur. 93 Namely, vision in Conf. XI.24, audition in XI.26–28. Cf. Aug. Quant.anim. 32.68: Cum autem locus et tempus sit, quibus omnia quae sentiuntur occupantur, vel potius quae occupant; quod oculis sentimus, per locum; quod auribus, per tempus dividitur. 94 Aug. Epist. 137.2.6: visus auditusque afferunt mirabilem quaestionem. 95 Aug. Conf. XI.27.34: puta vox corporis incipit sonare et sonat et adhuc sonat, et ecce desinit, iamque silentium est, et vox illa praeterita est et non est iam vox. 96 Aug. Epist. 137.2.5.

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The phenomenon here is also hyper-minimal—a noise in the streets, through the walls, at the door. (“A voice like a boy-child’s or girl-child’s, I do not know, coming from a neighbouring house . . .”)97 And what this phenomenon suggests, to Augustine, is an ‘outness’ of sensus: what is present to the ear, in hearing, is impresence. But Augustine proceeds to caution his correspondent: it is not that the ear or the eye is not “as it were, a vessel or instrument” (quasi vasis atque organis) of sensus.98 This can be effortlessly, endlessly confirmed: Light impinges on the eyes of the sighted and the blind—but this is present for the sighted and absent, in fact, for the blind.99 So also voice impinges on the ears of those with hearing and also those who are deaf— but it is disclosed for the hearing and undisclosed for the deaf. lux adest oculis et videntis, et caeci: sed videnti adest praesens, caeco vero absens. adest et vox audientibus auribus, adest etiam surdis: sed illis patet, istas latet.100 Yet when I hear—where is it that I am? Or more specifically, where is it that I am living when I hear? It is the latter question that leads Augustine into a series of apparently sophistical oppositions—and then into aporia.101 97 Aug. Conf. VIII.12.29: ecce audio vocem de vicina domo cum cantu dicentis et crebro repetentis, quasi pueri an puellae, nescio: “tolle lege, tolle lege.” For de vicina domo, cf. Courcelle 1968, 299: “Et le fameux ‘Tolle, lege’? Selon que l’on adopte la leçon commune: ‘de uicina domo,’ ou la leçon du seul manuscrit précarolingien, le Sessorianus: ‘de diuina domo,’ l’on sera porté à considérer qu’il s’agit d’une voix exté­ riure, humaine, ou d’une voix intérieure, d’origine divine.” Adopting Courcelle’s pre-­ Carolingian variant would of course render this incident in Conf. VIII irrelevant in the present context; but there is, in my estimation, every reason to regard de diuina domo as a ‘pious’ revision—i.e. a corruption—of Augustine’s text. 98 Aug. Epist. 137.2.5. 99 Augustine uses the eye of a corpse to very similar effect, at Aug. Quant.anim. 30.60: et tamen talia pati oculus posset etiam in exanimo corpore, quamvis deesset anima, quam passio non lateret; illud autem quod pati non potest oculus, nisi adsit anima, id est quod videndo patitur, hoc solum ibi patitur, ubi non est? 100 Aug. Epist. 137.2.7. 101 Aug. Epist. 137.2.6: visus auditusque afferunt mirabilem quaestionem; aut quomodo anima sentiat ubi non vivit, aut quomodo vivat ubi non est. neque enim nisi in carne sua est; sentit autem etiam praeter carnem suam. ibi quippe sentit ubi videt; quia et videre sentire est: ibi sentit ubi audit; quia et audire, sentire est. aut ergo et ibi vivit, ac per hoc

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Still, Augustine’s ‘finding’ in Epistle 137 is this: while the constitutive haerere of anima as vita corporis clearly localizes the soul ‘in the flesh’ (in carne), and while several divisions of sensus (recall the sensificare at Confessions X.7.11) delimit caro by the modality of contact, yet vision and audition suggest an outness of sensus in space, which is to say, suggest that the soul also lives ‘outside the flesh’ (extra carnem). The locus of sensus is duplicitous, and Augustine (aporetically) formulates this duplicity—as with his ‘distentio animi’—not as an interiorization of the foris but rather as the exteriorization of the intus.102 Anima as sensus phenomenalizes in and extra the limits of the flesh. Anima is constitutively localized in the flesh (in this life), but with certain divisions of sensus, Augustine insists that anima must also be localized outside the flesh (in this life). That is to say, when I hear—Augustine’s very question at Confessions XI.27.34—I am living where I hear what I hear. Or such is the suggestion in Epistle 137. When I hear, sensation “diffuses itself in some way from the flesh”: ipse se foras quodammodo diffundit a carne.103 And we will now turn for the last time to Confessions XI, in the last sentences of which Augustine writes that, for one who sings, “his affections are varied and his senses dilated”: variatur affectus sensusque distenditur (XI.31.41). etiam et ibi est; aut sentit et ubi non vivit; aut vivit et ubi non est. haec omnia mira sunt; nihil horum affirmari sine quadam velut absurditate potest. 102 Cf. Aug. Imm.anim. 3.4: Potest enim in hac intentione simul et memoriam praeteritorum et expectationem futurorum habere, quae omnia sine vita esse non possunt. 103 Cf. Aug. Conf. VII.1.2 on corpus—but not, here, intentio—as necessarily being “spread out in some space, whether diffused or massed together or swelling or having some such qualities or at least capable of having them” (per aliquanta spatia tenderetur vel diffunderetur vel conglobaretur vel tumeret vel tale aliquid caperet aut capere posset). And the same term, diffundere, that Augustine gives to sensus in Ep. 137, Lucretius selects for a soul pouring out of the body in death—like “mist and smoke”—at Lucr. Rer. nat. III.436–38: crede animam quoque diffundi multoque perire | ocius et citius dissolvi in corpora prima; and cf. the repetition at III.538–39: ut diximus ante, | dilaniata foras dispargitur, interit ergo.

PART three A Sensualist Interpretation of Confessions XI

∵ To each living thing in its own species (unicuique animanti in genere proprio), in its proportion to the totality, is given a sense of positions and times (sensus locorum temporumque), so that just as its body is determined in proportion to the totality of body (universi corporis), whose part it is; and its age is determined in proportion to the totality of age (universi saeculi), whose part it is; so its sense (sensus) harmonizes with its act in proportion to the totality of motion (universi motus), whose part it is. Augustine, De Rhythmo VI.7

In all the movements of things (in omnibus rerum motibus), the potencies of number are most easily analyzed by way of voices (in vocibus). Augustine, Epistle 101.3

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Intimacy with the Flesh Is Intimacy with Time (Conf. XI–XII) Confessions XI.3–13 are an eternity-meditation, several aspects of which were provisionally clarified in 3.4 and 5.1. In what follows, as previously, the formal concept (and desiderative cipher) of eternity is not itself at issue or in question. Yet in undertaking a sensualist interpretation of Augustine’s timeinvestigation in Confessions XI, it will be necessary to look first to his eternitymeditation. For despite the essential methodological independence of Augustine’s time-investigation in Confessions XI.14–29, his time-question is yet prepared by several decisive formulations in the eternity-meditation. And no less decisively: so is the ‘time’/‘times’ distinction that only emerges as a distinct question in the second phase of the time-investigation, after Augustine observes that “we say ‘time’ and ‘time’, ‘times’ and ‘times’ ” (dicimus tempus et tempus, tempora et tempora, XI.22.28). In the distribution of the time-investigation I sketched in 4.1, it is clear that the second division of the second phase of the time-investigation—i.e. its conclusion, in which Augustine’s analyses of temporal mensuration deliver a distentio—unfolds relative to the phenomenon of vox corporis, “the voice of a body” (XI.27.34). Augustine’s specific characterization of this vox is rarely foregrounded in philosophical interpretations of the Confessions,1 but that this vox is a vox corporis is by no means incidental. The vox corporis of the timeinvestigation has been previously characterized as a vox temporalis in Augustine’s eternity-meditation, at Confessions XI.6.8,2 where vox tempo­ralis is essentially—not incidentally—conditioned by corporeity (creatura

1 For instance, von Herrmann (1992, 32–34/2008, 37–39) and Ricœur (1983, 44/1984, 24) gloss Conf. XI.6.8, yet gloss over corporeity and motus as a clear, duplex condition for vox temporalis; they also fail to see a connection to vox corporis in Conf. XI.27.34. 2 Vox temporalis is my composite term. Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.6.8: . . . haec verba temporaliter sonantia . . . erat iam creatura corporalis . . . cuius motibus temporalibus temporaliter vox illa percurreret. . . . id certe sine transitoria voce feceras, unde transitoriam vocem faceres, qua diceres ut fieret caelum et terra.

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corporalis), “temporal movements” (motibus temporalibus), and thus, by transitivity (≈ percursatio).3 Vox is intimately linked—previously in the Confessions,4 and thematically in Augustine’s corpus5—to the phenomenality of time. For Augustine, speech is a privileged instance of hyper-transitivity, as well as of a specific, manifest accretiveness—namely, syntax—that illuminates distentio.6 It would thus be a mistake to refer the vox-analyses in Augustine’s time-investigation solely, or even primarily, back to the eternity-meditation in Confessions XI or its hermeneutic occasion, namely, Genesis 1.3.7 That being said, vox first emerges in the eternity-meditation (at XI.5.7), and is salient in it (at XI.6–9), because in Genesis,8 as in the sublime proem to the Gospel of John,9 it is a divine utterance or word that creates heaven and earth in the principium. Augustine’s repeated delineation of this utterance or word as eternal—or indeed, as eternity (at XI.8.10)—is not my concern. But the remotive procedure that is necessary to achieve this concept requires Augustine, since eternity is meditated upon in Confessions XI.6–9 as utterance, to characterize temporal utterance per se, i.e. vox temporalis. It is these characterizations that cannot be ignored in our approach to the time-investigation. To indicate yet again the deep continuities that obtain between Confessions XI and XII, however, I will open with several sentences from the end of book XII which echo— and will lead us into—the rhetoric and thematics of book XI.

3 Percursatio from percurreret at Aug. Conf. XI.6.8: cuius motibus temporalibus temporaliter vox illa percurreret. 4 Cf. for instance, Aug. Conf. IV.11.17: nam et quod loquimur per eundem sensum carnis audis, et non vis utique stare syllabas sed transvolare, ut aliae veniant et totum audias. ita semper omnia, quibus unum aliquid constat (et non sunt omnia simul ea quibus constat): plus delectant omnia quam singula, si possint sentiri omnia. 5 Gersh (1996, 35–38) provides a number of references that span Augustine’s corpus. 6 Cf. for instance, Aug. Conf. IV.10.15; Gen.litt. VI.3.4; Lib.arb. III.15.42. 7 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.5.7: ergo dixisti et facta sunt atque in verbo tuo fecisti ea. 8 Of course, cf. Long. Subl. 9.9 (182v). 9 Aug. Conf. XI.3.5 ≈ Genesis 1.1: audiam et intellegam quomodo in principio fecisti caelum et terram; XI.5.7 ≈ Psalms 33.9, 6: ergo dixisti et facta sunt atque in verbo tuo fecisti ea. For Johannine echoes, cf. Conf. XI.7.9 ≈ John 1.1: verbum, deum apud te deum; VII.9.13 = John 1.1–3: in principio erat verbum et verbum erat apud deum et deus erat verbum. hoc erat in principio apud deum. omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil.

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“Words Begun and Ended, Sounding in Times” (Conf. XII.27)

In Confessions XII.27 Augustine reflects, as a bishop of Hippo Regius10 and a preacher ad plebem, on the spiritual infantilism11 of those who could not hear the incorporeal unicity of eternity in the “hyper-colloquial mode of speech” used in scripture.12 Referring to these simple believers, Augustine says: When they hear, “god said: Let it be made, and it was made” [Genesis 1.3], they think of words begun and ended, sounding in times and passing away, after the departure of which that came into existence which was comman­ ded to exist—and whatever else of the sort they may imagine out of intimacy with the flesh . . . by which they hold and take it as certain that god made all the natures which . . . their senses observe surrounding them. cum audiunt, “dixit deus: fiat illud, et factum est illud,” cogitant verba coepta et finita, sonantia temporibus atque transeuntia, post quorum transitum statim existere quod iussum est ut existeret, et si quid forte aliud hoc modo ex familiaritate carnis opinantur . . . qua certum habeant et teneant deum fecisse omnes naturas quas eorum sensus . . . circumspicit. (XII.27.37) “They think . . . out of intimacy with the flesh” (cogitant . . . ex familiaritate carnis); the description is, of course, barbed. Yet it is not this cognition-from10

When Augustine composed the Conf. he was not the sole bishop of Hippo Regius, but a recently installed Caecilianist or Catholic bishop (catholicus episcopus). “Hippo boasted rival Christian churches. Donatists and Catholics lived cheek by jowl here” (Merdinger 1997, 68). Donatists still held highly influential bishoprics across North Africa in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, and Proculeianus was the Donatist bishop of Hippo Regius, circa 400 (cf. Aug. Epist. 33–35; Lepelley 2001, 350–51; Mandouze 1982, 924–26). Thus, Possidius’ vita specifies that Augustine was ordained “in the catholic church in Hippo” (in ecclesia Hipponiensi catholica, Poss. Vita 4.1); refers to Augustine’s later dealings with Donatist, Manichaean and Arian bishops (Poss. Vita 6.2, 9.1, 17.7); and recalls that the ecclesia catholica in Africa was less numerous than the Donatist church for much of Augustine’s episcopacy (rebaptizante Donati parte maiore multitudine Afrorum, Poss. Vita 7.2). 11 Aug. Conf. XII.27.37: parvulis animalibus. 12 Aug. Conf. XII.27.37: humillimo genere verborum; cf. VI.5.8: verbis apertissimis et humillimo genere loquendi. Augustine despised this ineloquence in his youth: Conf. III.5.9.

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carnal-intimacy which itself signals the infantilism, when Augustine writes that most of his auditors ‘think of words begun and ended, sounding in times and passing away.’ For the Latin here, at Confessions XII.27.37— [i] verba coepta et finita, [ii] sonantia temporibus atque transeuntia, [iii] post quorum transitum statim existere, —unmistakeably echoes13 Augustine’s own characterization of vox temporalis in the eternity-meditation, at Confessions XI.6.8: [i] vox acta atque transacta est, coepta et finita. [ii] sonuerunt syllabae atque transierunt, [iii] secunda post primam, tertia post secundam atque inde ex ordine. In the eternity-meditation itself Augustine, therefore, cognizes ‘out of intimacy with the flesh’ in his reflection on temporal utterances. The infantilism that Augustine criticizes in Confessions XII.27.37 consists, not at all in an imperfect apprehension of basic temporal phenomena—indeed, his rhetorical transposition here suggests that this apprehension is very precise—but rather in an incapacity to seek to cognize divine utterance via remotionis.14 To cognize ‘out of intimacy with the flesh’ is the originary cognition for proceeding towards any formal concept of eternity—yet this originary mode of cognition, i.e. intimacy with our sense-temporal condition, must then be remotively manipulated. That is, intellected according to the mode of ‘precedence by eternity’ that Augustine refers to in Confessions XII.29.40 (see 9.5). Initially, then: we must be alert to signals of Augustine’s ‘intimacy with the flesh’ in the eternity-meditation of Confessions XI, as in the timeinvestigation that follows.

13 14

This is not only a definite echo but the sole such echo in books XI and XII (though the phrase coepta et finita at Conf. XI.6.8 perhaps inflects gesta atque finita at Conf. XI.23.30). Cf. Aug. Enarr. 121.5: Iam ergo, fraters, quisquis erigit aciem mentis, quisquis deponit caliginem carnis, quisquis mundat oculum cordis, elevet, et videat idipsum. Quid est idipsum? . . . Fratres, si potestis, intellegite idipsum. Nam et ego quidquid aliud dixero, non dico idipsum. Conemur tamen quibusdam vicinitatibus verborum et significationum perducere infirmitatem mentis ad cogitandum idipsum. Quid est idipsum? Quod semper eodem modo est; quod non modo aliud, et modo aliud est. Quid est ergo idipsum, nisi, quod est? Quid est quod est? Quod aeternum est.

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Familiaritas Carnis and Familiaritas Temporis (Conf. XI.14)

It is suggestive how Augustine concludes the sentence in Confessions XI.6.8 that he basically reproduces in XII.27.37. Here, the voice in question is that “voice out of a cloud” (vox de nube) that pronounces over Jesus, at Matthew 17.5: “This is my beloved son.”15 Augustine says of this voice (and it is a more elegant formulation in the original than in translation): But that voice was [i] uttered and uttered-through,16 begun and ended. The syllables sounded and passed-away, [ii] the second after the first, the third after the second and so on in succession, until the last after the rest, and silence after the last. From which [iii] it is eminently clear that the motion of a creature expressed this utterance. illa enim vox acta atque transacta est, coepta et finita. sonuerunt syllabae atque transierunt, secunda post primam, tertia post secundam atque inde ex ordine,17 donec ultima post ceteras silentiumque post ultimam. unde claret atque eminet quod creaturae motus expressit eam. (XI.6.8) Augustine indicates a series of co-originary temporal phenomena here: (i) temporal delimitation as a passing: transitivity; (ii) transitivity as an order: succession;18 and (iii) physical motus19 as an ‘eminently clear’ condition for transitivity and succession.20

15 Aug. Conf. XI.6.8: sed quomodo dixisti? numquid illo modo quo facta est vox de nube dicens, “hic est filius meus dilectus”? 16 Von Herrmann (1992, 32/2008, 37) has here: “The word has moved itself (acta est) and has moved beyond itself (transacta est).” 17 The definite sense of ex ordine here as ‘in succession’ not only influences the rendering of ordo as ‘succession’ in Conf. XII, but harmonizes with the only previous appearance of the phrase in book XI, at XI.2.2 (et si sufficio haec enuntiare ex ordine, caro mihi valent stillae temporum), and fixes the sense of Augustine’s otherwise obscure lament at the end of XI.29.39 (ego in tempora dissilui quorum ordinem nescio). 18 Von Herrmann (1992, 32–33/2008, 37–38) incisively formulates (α) and (β), but (γ)— predictably—goes unremarked in his strictly phenomenological interpretation. 19 ‘Physical’ here for motus creaturae since Augustine proceeds to render creatura determinate in this way in the same paragraph and regard, at Conf. XI.6.8: creatura corporalis . . . cuius motibus temporalibus temporaliter vox illa percurreret. 20 Cf. Arist. Sens. 6 (447a): “Sound is held to be something that is borne upon movement (φερομένου τινὸς κίνησις).”

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As demonstrated in 10.1, Augustine repeats (i) and (ii) from this series—i.e. the phenomena ‘from which it is eminently clear that the motion of a creature expressed this utterance’—when he characterizes cognition ‘out of intimacy with the flesh’ at Confessions XII.27.37. It is thus (indirectly) assured that he regards (iii) as implicated in this ‘intimacy with the flesh’: physical motus is originarily implicated in and manifest as a condition for transitivity and succession.21 The question of a ‘dependence’ of transitivity/succession upon physical motus is thus not, for Augustine, an originary question. This dependence is itself an originary temporal phenomenon—which is not to say an ‘idea.’22 Cognition out of intimacy with the flesh (ex familiaritate carnis, XII.27.37) involves—as we have seen in chapter 9, with informitas and ipsa mutabilitas23—a constitutive resistance to the imperatives of vera ratio. This resistance is nevertheless a sign of our constitutive intimacy with the conditions of appearance, which intimacy consists, for Augustine, in the soul’s inhesion of the flesh (see chapter 7). This should suffice to indicate that it is this resistance to cognizing eternity (or formlessness, etc.)—namely, the familiaritas carnis—which also provides Augustine with his initial temporal characterizations in the eternity-­meditation of Confessions XI, and by which, remotively, he achieves a formal concept of eternity. This constitutive resistance to the cognition of eternity is itself, and at once, a constitutive clarity, i.e. a certain originary cognition of time. As intimate with the flesh, we are intimate with time. This is why Augustine employs 21

It could well be argued that (γ) in Conf. XI.6.8 finds its echo in XII.27.37 in the phrase “all the natures which . . . their senses observe surrounding them” (omnes naturas quas eorum sensus . . . circumspicit). 22 Cf. Aug. Gen.lib.imp. III.8.3: An in temporibus istis dictus est ut essent luminaria, quae tempora homines intervallis morarum in corporis motione metiuntur? Haec enim tempora, si nullus motus corporum esset, nulla essent: et ipsa sunt hominibus manifestiora. And note—since this is not always noted—that in the following sentences, where Augustine introduces a notion of ‘time’ in discarnate, angelic minds prior to motus omnis, this is a highly speculative notion and a question, not a position he takes, at Gen.lib.imp. III.8.4: quarendum est utrum praeter motum corporum possit esse in motu incorporeae creaturae, veluti est anima vel ipsa mens: quae utique in cogitationibus movetur et in ipso motu aliud habet prius, aliud posterius, quod sine intervallo temporis intellegi non potest. Quod si accipimus . . .  23 Aug. Conf. XII.6.6: ista materia [informis] . . . cum speciebus innumeris et variis cogitabam et ideo non eam cogitabam. foedas et horribiles formas perturbatis ordinibus volvebat animus, sed formas tamen, et . . . si appareret, insolitum et incongruum aversaretur sensus meus . . . verum autem illud quod cogitabam non privatione omnis formae sed comparatione formosiorum erat informe, et suadebat vera ratio ut omnis formae qualescumque reliquias omnino detraherem, si vellem prorsus informe cogitare et non poteram.

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the same terminology in Confessions XI.14.17 ( familiarius) and in Confessions XII.27.37 (familiaritas)24—the only appearances of these closely related terms in Confessions XI and XII,25 respectively. It is with this ‘intimacy,’ then, that Augustine inaugurates his time-investigation: Who can express time in words or grasp it in thought? But what do we more commonly and more intimately keep in mind when we are speaking, than time? quis hoc ad verbum de illo proferendum vel cogitatione comprehenderit? quid autem familiarius et notius in loquendo commemoramus quam tempus? (XI.14.17) This set of questions should serve as a preliminary indication that, while intimacy with the flesh is the precondition for Augustine’s initial t­ ime-formulations in Confessions XI, this intimacy will not itself resolve his time-question. To the contrary: in Confessions XI with tempus—as in Epistle 137, with sensus (see 9.6)—a certain ‘estrangement’ from our familiaritas carnis is necessary to conceptualize, not only aeternitas, but the duplicitous constitution of tempus.26 Indeed, I would suggest that it is this that gives sense to the scio/nescio dialectic that activates Augustine’s time-investigation. For he proceeds, in this much-quoted27 passage:

24

‘Intimacy’ and ‘intimately’ are primary lexical senses for familiaritas and familiarius respectively. 25 Cf. the strong association of tempus-familiaritas at Aug. Conf. VIII.10.24: ita etiam cum aeternitas delectat superius et temporalis boni voluptas retentat inferius, eadem anima est non tota voluntate illud aut hoc volens et ideo discerpitur gravi molestia, dum illud veritate praeponit, hoc familiaritate non ponit. 26 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: in te, anime meus, tempora metior. noli mihi obstrepere, quod est; noli tibi obstrepere turbis affectionum tuarum. in te, inquam, tempora metior. affectionem quam res praetereuntes in te faciunt. 27 For a scholastic citation, vid. Gand. Quodl. III, q. 11, fol. 63r: Et eſt intētio Auguſtini ut dictum eſt . . . xi.confeſſionum . . . Quid eſt ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quęrat: ſcio. Si quęrenti explicare velim, neſcio. Much later, the original of Augustine’s confession can be lifted from Pierre Gassendi’s Syntagma Philosophicum, vid. Gassendi 1658, I:220: “Profectò verò haud abs re in ore eſt omnium, quod D. habet Auguſtinus, Si nemo, inquit, ex me quærat, quid sit Tempus, scio; si quærenti explicare velim, nescio.”

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We definitely understand when we speak of time, and we also understand when we hear others speak of it. What then is time? If no one asks the question, I know: if I wish to explicate what it is when asked, I do not know. intellegimus utique cum id loquimur, intellegimus etiam cum alio loquente id audimus. quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. (XI.14.17) Similarly, Augustine’s confession appears in mangled Latin in Gottfried Klinger’s 1678 letter to Leibniz, vid. Leibniz 1972, 439 (no. 193): “Augustinus, nach dem er lange speculirt hatte, was doch die Zeit sen, sagt zwar, si non cogito scio, si cogito, nescio.” Kant renders it in transparent German in his 1764 essay, Inquiry concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality. Vid. Kant 1968, 283–84/ 2003, 256–57: “In metaphysics I have a concept which is already given to me (der mir schon gegeben worden), although it is a confused one (verworren). My task is to search for the distinct, complete and determinate concept. How them am I to begin? Augustine said: ‘I know perfectly well what time is, but if someone asks me what it is I do not know’ (Ich weiß wohl, was die Zeit sei, aber wenn mich jemand frägt, weiß ichs nicht). Here many operations have to be performed in unfolding obscure ideas (viel handlungen der Entwicklung dunkler Ideen), in comparing them with each other, in subordinating them to each other and in limiting them by each other. I would go so far as to say that, although much that is true and penetrating (Wahres und Scharssinniges) has been said about time, nevertheless no real definition of time-itself has ever been given (die Realerklärung derselben niemals gegeben worden). As far as the nominal definition (die Namenerklärung) is concerned, it is of little or no use to us, for even without it the word is understood well enough not to be misused. If we had as many correct definitions (richtige Definitionen) of time as appear in books under that title, with what certainty could inferences be made and conclusions derived! But experience teaches the opposite.” In a neo-Kantian milieu, circa 1900, Franz Brentano alludes to it on the first page of a manuscript on “time and time-consciousness”; and for Brentano—as for Augustine—it is still “time-itself (die Zeit selbst) which is primarily in need of conceptual clarification” (Brentano 1976, 18/1988, 13). Vid. Brentano 1976, 60/1988, 49: “What is time? There is no other name that is more familiar to us (der uns geläufiger), and none that is at the same time so obscure (der zugleich uns dunkler wäre). Whenever we use it in speech, no difficulty accrues to our understanding (Verständnis) and we are also able to say—readily and reliably—whether or not a particular determination is temporal. And yet many will hesitate to answer our question and will perhaps in the end admit, like Augustine in a celebrated passage (einer berühmten Stelle) of his Confessions, that they do not know what time is.” Husserl, one of Brentano’s protégés, then quotes the Latin in his 1905 lectures on “internal time-consciousness.” Vid. Husserl 1966, 3: “Noch heute mag man mit Augustinus sagen: si nemo ex me quaerat, scio, si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.”

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When I cognize within and out of intimacy-with-the-flesh, I am perfectly intimate-with-time; that is to say, I ceaselessly cognize ex familiaritate t­ emporis. Augustine’s cogito itself is such a familiaritas temporis. (See, for instance, Confessions X.11.18, where Augustine’s cogito is highly temporized.) And it is because of this constitutive, co-originary intimacy—namely, familiaritas carnis as a familiaritas temporis—that we all understand what ‘time’ is when we hear it spoken of, and when we speak of it. It is also because of this intimacy that I immediately recognize myself in Augustine’s scio: I also know what time is. But it is a different thing to cognize ex familiaritate temporis—which is to say, “in time,”28 pre-reflectively—and to “grasp time in thought” (cogitatione comprehenderit, XI.14.17). We could recall, here, Augustine’s shock in Confessions X: “I myself cannot grasp all I am” (nec ego ipse capio totum quod sum, X.8.15). It is a similar ego capio/ego sum fissure that introduces a nescio into, and alongside, Augustine’s scio at Confessions XI.14.17: in our familiaritas carnis, a familiaritas temporis is ours. A self-estrangement that occurs with the time-question yet requires, if this question is to be pursued, an insistence upon this estrangement of the ego capio (→ nescio) from the ego sum (→ scio).29 To the ‘I am’ (ego sum), in this life, belongs an originary ‘intimacy with time’ (familiaritas temporis), which is to say, an ‘I know’ (scio) apropos of time. But this is not to say that a reflective control of tempus—an ‘I grasp’ (ego capio)—pertains to the ego’s constitu­tive ‘intimacy with time’ (apropos of ipsum tempus), or indeed, to its constitutive ‘intimacy with the flesh’ (apropos of sensus carnis). 28 Aug. Conf. XI.1.1: vides quod fit in tempore? cur ergo tibi tot rerum narrationes digero?; XI.25.32: scire me in tempore ista dicere, et diu me iam loqui de tempore, atque ipsum diu non esse diu nisi mora temporis. quomodo igitur hoc scio, quando quid sit tempus nescio? 29 For ego sum here, cf. Aug. Conf. X.3.4: auris eorum non est ad cor meum, ubi ego sum quicumque sum; X.16.25: ego sum qui memini, ego animus.

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Times and Time from Augustine’s Eternity-Meditation (Conf. XI.3–13) Augustine anticipates his time-question subtly but very precisely in his eternity-meditation, and the specific character of this anticipation has not, to my awareness, previously been observed. Moreover, it is anticipated in terms of the ‘time’/‘times’ distinction he evokes in Confessions XI.22, establishes in XI.23–24 (see chapter 4), and adheres to thereafter—as we have seen, in Confessions XII no less than in book XI. It is also in the eternity-meditation that Augustine foregrounds the phenomenality of mutatio, which resurfaces in book XII (see chapter 9). In Confessions XI.4.6, Augustine announces mutatio as the originary and manifest condition of all temporal existence,1 as indeed, it is the originary condition of all manifest existence (at XII.8.8). As succession, and as variation, mutatio testifies to a vertiginous order of precedence.2 Mutive existence is preceded existence; preceded existence is originated existence; originated existence is conditioned existence (sumus, quia facta sumus, XI.4.6). For Augustine, the phenomenality of mutatio—again recall that he commences his confession, ex familiaritate carnis, with the oblivion that shrouds his life in utero and his infancy (at I.6–7)3—is implicated in ontology: all mutive existence has its prius in its inexistence. And for Augustine, the clamorous phenomenality of mutatio,4 while it is a clear-manifestness (evidentia),5 is not solely or originarily phenomenal: the phenomenality of mutatio in Confessions XI is originarily and manifestly 1 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.7.9: quoniam in quantum quidque non est quod erat et est quod non erat, in tantum moritur et oritur; XI.8.10: omne quod esse incipit et esse desinit. 2 Aug. Conf. XI.4.6: est in eo quicquam quod ante non erat: quod est mutari atque variari . . . non ergo eramus antequam essemus, ut fieri possemus a nobis. 3 This oblivion is co-conditioned by ‘flesh’ and ‘time,’ from the outset. Vid. Aug. Conf. I.6.7: . . . nescio unde venerim huc, in istam dico vitam mortalem an mortem vitalem? nescio. et susceperunt me consolationes miserationum tuarum, sicut audivi a parentibus carnis meae, ex quo et in qua me formasti in tempore: non enim ego memini. 4 Aug. Conf. XI.4.6: ecce sunt caelum et terra! clamant quod facta sint; mutantur enim atque variantur. . . . clamant etiam quod se ipsa non fecerint. 5 Cf. Hrdlicka 1931, 69: “evidentia, appearance: [Conf.] 11, 4, 6, vox dicentium est ipsa evidentia;—perspicuity, clearness (rhet.) (Cic., Quint.).”

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corporeal.6 Augustine’s “heaven and earth” (caelum et terra) are bodies, and the phenomenality of their mutivity is (again, ex familiaritate carnis) conditioned by their various corporeal determinations and the vast order of corporeal mutatio whose phenomenal (and logical) condition is motus omnis.7 For Augustine, the prius of motus is corpus, and motus is the prius of mutatio. This is indicated in Confessions XI.6.8, where Augustine passes from the analysis of vox temporalis that have I already quoted (see 10.2)—which he strongly links to motus—to a reprise of the same analysis in the same paragraph. Augustine is still concerned with the divine, eternal prius as an utterance: If then [o lord] you spoke sounding and passing words to produce heaven and earth . . . there was already a corporeal creature before heaven and earth by whose temporal motions that temporal voice passed-in-succession. si ergo verbis sonantibus et praetereuntibus dixisti, ut fieret caelum et terra . . . erat iam creatura corporalis ante caelum et terram, cuius motibus temporalibus temporaliter vox illa percurreret. (XI.6.8) Here Augustine’s vox temporalis or vox transitoria,8 precisely like sonus in Confessions XII.29.40 (see 9.5), has corporeity (materies/species) and motion (motus) as its phenomenal and logical conditions.9 That this condition for vox temporalis is phenomenal as well as logical is indicated at Confessions XI.8.10, where Augustine represents Jesus in the gospels as speaking “through the flesh (per carnem), and this speech sounded out (insonuit foris) in the ears of men.”10 Thus, again: corporeity and motus are conditions of vox, of sonus, in books XI and XII of the Confessions. And in XI.6.8, apropos of the phenomenality of vox,

6

There is no question of bracketing mutive or “Objective time” in Conf. XI, as at Husserl 1971, 21–29. 7 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.23.29: omnium corporum motus; XII.8.8: rerum mutationibus; XII.11.14: varietate motionum; etc. 8 Aug. Conf. XI.6.8: transitoria voce . . . transitoriam vocem. 9 Cf. Aug. Tract. 37.4: verbum quod est apud te, ut transeat ad me, sonum quasi vehiculum quaerit. assumit ergo sonum, imponit se quodammodo in vehiculum, transcurrit aerem, venit ad me, nec recedit a te. sonus autem ut veniret ad me, recessit a te, nec perstitit apud me. 10 Aug. Conf. XI.8.10: in evangelio per carnem ait, et hoc insonuit foris auribus hominum; cf. XI.3.5: praeberem aures corporis mei sonis erumpentibus ex ore eius, et si hebraea voce loqueretur, frustra pulsaret sensum meum.

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Augustine uses motus temporalis and motus creaturae—where creatura is, moreover, expressly a creatura corporalis—as substitutable phrases.11 In the first paragraphs of Confessions XI, then: physical movement is temporal movement, and vice versa. This is not an insignificant gain, but the very substitutability of Augustine’s phrases is opaque: What is the relation of physical movement to temporal movement? And is there a dependence to be observed here? 11.1

Time, Times, and a Proto-Distentio (Conf. XI.11–13)

Augustine’s problematic of tempus and tempora, which leads into his timeinvestigation and can be traced up it, is first indicated (sotto voce) at Confessions XI.7.9. Here, Augustine remarks that the counter-condition to eternity is “time and mutivity”: tempus et mutatio.12 In Confessions XI, as in book XII, motus is a condition for mutatio, mutatio is a condition for tempora (mutive times), while vita—in “this mutive world” (iste mutabilis mundis, XII.8.8), and thus, “in times” (in tempora, XI.29.39)—is the decisive condition for tempus (dimensive time). Though it is not evident here, in Augustine’s phrase ‘tempus et mutatio’ it is mutatio (≈ tempora) that precedes tempus—“by origin,” not “by time” (XII.29.40)—and thus, it is time that depends upon mutivity and times (← motus omnis). The reverse, for Augustine, cannot be said. This is adumbrated in Confessions XI.11.13, where Augustine laments that some are not yet ravished by the splendour of eternity and are still incapable of comparing the incomparable,13 and where he gestures at once towards the fundamental character of his time-question (at XI.15–16) and towards his conclusion of the time-investigation (at XI.27–28). This set of anticipations has been overlooked in the literature.14 But as at Confessions XII.29.40, in which the familiaritas carnis is deplored for its resistance to Augustine’s concept of eternity—even as that familiaritas reproduces time-formulations from 11 Aug. Conf. XI.6.8: unde claret atque eminet quod creaturae motus expressit eam . . . erat iam creatura corporalis . . . cuius motibus temporalibus temporaliter vox illa percurreret. 12 Aug. Conf. XI.7.9: neque enim finitur quod dicebatur et dicitur aliud, ut possint dici omnia, sed simul ac sempiterne omnia; alioquin iam tempus et mutatio et non vera aeternitas. 13 Aug. Conf. XI.11.13: et paululum rapiat splendorem semper stantis aeternitatis, et comparet cum temporibus numquam stantibus, et videat esse incomparabilem. 14 For instance: von Herrmann 1992, 40–47; but cf. Schmidt 1985, 41–47.

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book XI—so here, it is imperative to identify the object and delimit the force of Augustine’s polemics. For in Confessions XI.11.13, this ‘intimacy with the flesh’ anticipates Augustine’s time-investigation, yet impedes his eternitymeditation. It is likely because of the polemical edge of this paragraph15 that the significance of XI.11.13 has been missed. The ostensive purpose of this paragraph in Confessions XI is to seduce us away from conceiving eternity as an extensive, rather than a remotive, stimulus from time.16 Thus, Augustine’s characterizations of temporalia and temporal phenomena—including his first adumbrations here of temporal ‘dilation’ (distentio)—are negative in tone. But this does not mean that they are incorrect. Indeed, Augustine’s negative characterization of a p ­ roto-distentio, here in XI.11.13, is less severe than his characterization of distentio itself in XI.29.39, the climax of the time-investigation. And it is the climax of Augustine’s eternitymeditation that occurs here, with this formula: Nothing at all passes in eternity, but all is presence and present all-atonce. non . . . praeterire quicquam in aeterno, sed totum esse praesens. (XI.11.13)17 Augustine then fixes the originary sense of this statement by way of this anterior and antithetical, triple-characterization of ‘times’ in (α), and ‘time’ in (β) and (γ): (α) “Times never stand” = temporibus numquam stantibus; (β) “No time is present all-at-once” = nullum . . . tempus totum esse praesens;18 and

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Augustine presents it as a lament, and this tone—i.e. lamentation cum polemic—is echoed in Conf. XI.30.40, where he reprises the eternity-meditation. 16 I owe much to von Herrmann here, who is excellent in this regard; cf. von Herrmann 1992, 23–40/2008, 28–51. Simplicius also puts the extensive/remotive contrast with exemplary clarity (exc. Sambursky and Pines 1987, 68–69): “If we speak of the everlastingly flowing time, we mean ‘everlasting’ (τὸ ἀεὶ) not in the sense of an infinite reality (ἄπειρον) existing at once, but in the sense of something tending towards infinity (ἄπειρον). . . . For the ‘everlasting’ (τὸ ἀεὶ) has two meanings, either being whole at once, as eternity (τὸ αἰώνιον), or having its being in becoming through never ending time (τὸν ἀνέκλειπτον χρόνον).” 17 The fulminous phrase totum esse praesens invites and deserves successive renderings. 18 Ricœur 1984, 25: “Negativity reaches its highest pitch here.”

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(γ) “A long time cannot become long except out of a multitude of motions, still passing-on, which cannot be elongated all-at-once” = longum tempus, nisi ex multis praetereuntibus motibus qui simul extendi non possunt, longum non fieri (XI.11.13). It is this same, triple-characterization of ‘times’ and ‘time’ that is reflected in, and sharpened by, Augustine’s depictions of “one” (cuiusquam) who conceptualizes his deity ‘out of intimacy with the flesh’: (δ) “Their heart flicks between the past and future movements of things” = in praeteritis et futuris rerum motibus cor eorum volitat (XI.11.13);19 (ε) “[Their] weightless sense roves over the images of past times” = volatilis sensus vagatur per imagines retro temporum (XI.13.15).20 Once these last descriptions, (δ)–(ε), are set against the “tumultuous changes” that rend Augustine’s “inmost viscera” as long as he is living “in times” (XI.29.39);21 and then against the ‘distentio sensuum’ that he evokes in the last sentences of the book (XI.31.41);22 it is not difficult to detect fore-echoes of his temporal distentio, and indeed, of a ‘distentio sensuum,’ at the height of his eternity-meditation. The occasion that (δ) and (ε) afford us to reconstruct something of dimensive time from the eternity-meditation should not be passed by. 11.2

Imago, Affectio and Distentio in the Confessions

Augustine’s use of ‘heart’ (cor) in (δ) and ‘sense’ (sensus) in (ε) accord with his choice of viscera at Confessions XI.29.39 and sensus at XI.31.41 respectively, 19

Cf. Aug. Conf. VII.1.2: per quales enim formas ire solent oculi mei, per tales imagines ibat cor meum. 20 Cf. Aug. Conf. IV.15.27: volvens apud me corporalia figmenta obstrepentia cordis mei auribus, quas intendebam. And more specifically, cf. also Conf. XI.13.15: . . . volatilis sensus; V.12.22: certe tamen turpes sunt tales et fornicantur abs te amando volatica ludibria temporum et lucrum luteum, quod cum apprehenditur manum inquinat, et amplectendo mundum fugientem. 21 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: ego in tempora dissilui quorum ordinem nescio, et tumultuosis varietatibus dilaniantur cogitationes meae, intima viscera animae meae. 22 Aug. Conf. XI.31.41: sicut nota cantantis notumve canticum audientis expectatione vocum futurarum et memoria praeteritarum variatur affectus sensusque distenditur . . . 

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while ‘heart’ also echoes sharply off of Augustine’s first use of ‘dilation’ in the Confessions: What . . . if [several, irreconcilable prospects] all lure us equally and all at once, in a single point of time?23 Will not several diverse ‘wills’ dilate and divide up24 the heart of man, while we deliberate over which we would most prefer to lay hold of? quid si . . . pariter delectent omnia simulque uno tempore, nonne diversae ‘voluntates’ distendunt cor hominis, dum deliberatur quid potissimum arripiamus? (VIII.10.24) It is important that the several desiderata—and thus, the several ‘wills’— envisioned in this sentence from book VIII converge upon and are co-present in “a single point of time” (in unum articulum temporis, VIII.10.24), and that this is what occasions Augustine’s only use of distendere-distentio in the Confessions, outside of the time-investigation in book XI.25 It is also suggestive that these several desiderata—and their corresponding ‘wills’—are temporally irreconcilable, with Augustine specifying that they cannot all be effected or laid-hold of simultaneously or “at once” (simul agi nequeunt, VIII.10.24). The structural affinity of this passional-volitional distentio in Confessions VIII to Augustine’s temporal distentio in book XI is pronounced. In the timeinvestigation of Confessions XI, it is of course a co-presence of ‘times’ within ‘a single point of time’—i.e. a variegated co-presence of past, present and future things within a single and punctile praesens tempus (at XI.20.26)— that constitutes temporal distentio. And moreover, temporal distentio is marked by a co-presence, ‘in a single point of time,’ of ‘times’ which are temporally irreconcilable. The “presence of past things” in memory, the “presence of present things” in observation, and the “presence of future things” in expectation (XI.20.26) are co-present, in temporal distentio, as ‘presences’ which cannot all 23

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I am rendering Augustine’s expression here, viz. uno tempore, in light of his stronger wording several sentences previously, in a strictly parallel formulation, at Aug. Conf. VIII.10.24: si omnia concurrant in unum articulum temporis pariterque cupiantur omnia quae simul agi nequeunt . . .  The sense of ‘division’ here is shored up in the following sentence, at Aug. Conf. VIII.10.24: et omnes bonae sunt et certant secum, donec eligatur unum quo feratur tota voluntas una, quae in plures dividebatur. O’Donnell (1992, III:289) notes that this is the only appearance of distendere-distentio in the Conf. outside of the time-investigation in book XI, and that here “at [Conf.] 8.10.24 . . .  its adverse qualities are evident.”

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be effected or laid-hold of ‘at once’ and in the most crystalline sense of presence. Were it otherwise—i.e. were ‘past things,’ ‘present things’ and ‘future things’ not temporally irreconcilable as modes of presence—then this ­co-presence, and therefore distentio, “would by no means be time, but eternity” (XI.14.17).26 As Augustine writes in Confessions III, “Times are not alike . . .  because they are times” (III.7.13).27 It is also notable that Augustine’s use of distendere-distentio in Confessions VIII refers, not to ‘the mind’ (mens) but to ‘the heart’ (cor),28 and as distentio is a spatial and spatializing descriptor,29 this accords nicely with what Augustine says in the Enarrationes in Psalmos (ante 395)30: “Affection (affectio) is the space (locus) of the soul.”31 This term affectio first appears in the timeinvestigation (and indeed, in Confessions XI) at the very crest of Augustine’s reflection, where ‘dilation’ is an expanse of “affections that passing-things produce” in the soul (affectionem quam res praetereuntes in [animo] faciunt, XI.27.36).32 In (δ), at Confessions XI.11.13, affectio is surely, albeit tacitly included when Augustine anticipates this later formulation, writing of a “heart” that “flicks between the past and future movements of things” (in praeteritis et futuris rerum motibus cor eorum volitat, XI.11.13). And importantly, before we come to “the movements of all bodies” (XI.23.29) or to “passing-things” (XI.27.36) in the time-investigation, it is “the past and future movements of things” (XI.11.13), in the eternity-meditation, which dilate ‘the heart.’ It will also become significant—and we will establish here, in light of the ‘heart’ in (δ)— that the term ‘affection’ (affectio) appears to be simply substituted, in Confessions XI.27.36, for the prior term ‘image’ (imago),33 which Augustine introduces into the time-investigation at XI.18.23.

26 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: . . .  non iam esset tempus, sed aeternitas. 27 Aug. Conf. III.7.13: sed tempora . . . non pariter eunt; tempora enim sunt. 28 Hrdlicka sees Augustine’s use of ‘heart’ in the Conf. as an extension of ‘soul.’ Cf. Hrdlicka 1931, 69: “cor, the soul, anima.” 29 Cf. Aug. Conf. VII.1.2: . . .  per aliquanta spatia tenderetur vel diffunderetur vel conglobaretur vel tumeret . . .  per quales enim formas ire solent oculi mei, per tales imagines ibat cor meum. 30 Cf. Zarb 1948, 5–26, here 16: “. . . igitur iure concludere posse credimus hanc primam Enarrationum collectionem [sc. Enarr. 1–32] conscriptam fuisse ante annum 395.” 31 Aug. Enarr. 6.9: Nam locis corpora continentur, animo autem locus est affectio sua. 32 Though sense and context differ, cf. Cic. Inv. II.176: ‘Affectio’ est quaedam ex tempore . . .  commutatio rerum. 33 Schmidt (1985, 33) recognizes, but does not pursue this: “Ohne die Erinnerung, d. h. ohne die ‘imagines’ in der Seele und die ‘affectio’ (conf. 11, 27, 36), welche die Ereignisse als sich

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There can be no real objection to this idea of the substitutability of imago and affectio in the time-investigation,34 since Augustine’s description of affectiones at Confessions XI.27.35–36 is a close doublet of his description of imagines at XI.18.23. Moreover, because imagines are introduced in the eternity-meditation, with Augustine’s proto-distentio in (ε); because this substitutability of imagines and affectiones is not developed in the literature on Confessions XI; and because affectiones are evoked as a conditio sine qua non of distentio, it is reasonable to take (ε)— which is again, “[their] weightless sense roves over the images (per imagines) of past times” (XI.13.15)—as the occasion to establish this point. In the time-investigation, this is how Augustine introduces sense-‘images’: (i) “When past things are veraciously narrated, they are brought out of memory (ex memoria)—not the things themselves, which have passed by (non res ipsae quae praeterierunt)—but (ii) “words conceived from the images (ex imaginibus) of these things, (iii) “which the things have impressed or infixed ( fixerunt) in the soul (in animo), as traces, by passing through the senses (per sensus praetereundo).” (XI.18.23) And this is how he later introduces ‘affections’ in the time-investigation: (i) “It is not the things themselves, which no-longer-are (non ergo ipsas quae iam non sunt), that I measure, but something that remains infixed in my memory (aliquid in memoria mea . . . quod infixum manet) . . .  (ii) “the affections (affectionem) (iii) “that passing things condition (res praetereuntes . . . faciunt) [in the soul] when the things themselves have passed by (praeterierint).” (XI.27.35–36)35

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ereignende in der Seele hinterlassen, wäre Zeitmessung nicht möglich und Ausdehnung der Seele nicht vorstellbar.” This is so despite the fact that imago and affectio are sharply—if problematically— distinguished at, for instance, Aug. Conf. X.15.23. Cf. for instance, Simpl. Anim. 273.1 (431b2–5): “As Aristotle often said and will say again, it is not sensible things themselves (οὐκὶ αὐτὰ τὰ αἰσθητά) but their forms (εἴδη) that come to be present in sensation and imagination: in the former as sense-objects (αἰσθητὰ), in the latter as image-objects (φαντάσματα).”

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Augustine’s reference to ‘infixion’ in the soul is limited, in Confessions XI,36 to the foregoing sentences: the first concerning the infixion ( fixerunt) of ‘images,’ an operation which is accomplished “through the senses” (per sensus, XI.18.23); the second concerning the infixion (infixum) of ‘affections,’ in a set of paragraphs in which sensus is also prominent (XI.27.35–36). This terminological parallel, with ‘infixion,’ signals a link from sense-impressed ‘images’ at Confessions XI.18.23 to sense-produced ‘affections’ at XI.27.35–36. And incidentally, we could recall here that Aristotle also substitutes ‘image’ (φάντασμα, τύποσ) for ‘affection’ (πάθος)37 in his treatise on memory in “living things which have a sense of time (χρόνου αἰσθάνεται).”38 But if this infixion of images per sensus at Confessions XI.18.23 anticipates the infixion of affections (implicitly, per sensus) at XI.27.35–36, we should also recall (from 5.4) that this imagistic infixion, per sensus, at XI.18.23 has been anticipated by a crucial sentence in Confessions IV: Times are not vacant or indifferent in their rolling successions through our senses: they effect singular operations in the soul.39 non vacant tempora nec otiose volvuntur per sensus nostros: faciunt in animo mira opera. (IV.8.13) And what is more, there is a very strong indication, from Confessions X, that the mira opera Augustine refers to in book IV are very precisely sense-impressed ‘images.’ For in Confessions X, it is a trebly mira operatio by which ‘images’ are infixed in the soul:40 36

Augustine uses this term only once in Conf. X, and suggestively, it is to describe his most vivid and tenacious memorial images (rerum imagines)—namely, those ‘infixed’ (fixit) in him by his pre-conversion sexual habitus. Vid. Aug. Conf. X.30.41: sed adhuc vivunt in memoria mea, de qua multa locutus sum, talium rerum imagines, quas ibi consuetudo mea fixit, et occursantur mihi vigilanti quidem carentes viribus, in somnis autem non solum usque ad delectationem sed etiam usque ad consensionem factumque simillimum. 37 Arist. Mem. I (450a): “[When] we cognize time . . .  the [memorial] image (φάντασμα) is an affection of the common sense-faculty (τῆς κοινῆς αἰσθήσεως πάθος). . . . [And that] affection (πάθος), the lasting state of which we call memory . . . [results from] a sort of likeness (τύπον) of the sensation.” 38 Arist. Mem. I (449b). 39 Cf. Aug. Conf. IV.8.13: tempora . . . faciunt in animo mira opera; XI.27.36: in te, [anime meus], tempora metior. affectionem quam res praetereuntes in te faciunt. 40 Cf. Aug. Conf. X.8.13: quae quomodo fabricatae sint, quis dicit, cum appareat quibus sensibus raptae sint interiusque reconditae?

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For it is not the things themselves that are introduced into memory, but only their images [which] are taken up with such singular rapidity and laid down, as it were, in singular chambers, and then singularly brought up41 when we recollect them.42 istae quippe res non intromittuntur ad eam [sc. memoriam], sed earum solae imagines mira celeritate capiuntur et miris tamquam cellis reponuntur et mirabiliter recordando proferuntur. (X.9.16) And while there is no express reference to sensus in this rapid characterization of the mira operatio by which images are laid down in memory, in Confessions X.9, this is only because such a reference would be superfluous. In the preceding section of Confessions X, where Augustine first introduces the words imago and memoria in that book, he twice repeats that imaginal memory is preconstituted by sensus.43 And in the Confessions—as already in Augustine’s pre-episcopal Epistle 744—a memorial ‘image’ is simply understood to have been originally “imported by the senses.”45

41

Cf. Aug. Conf. X.9.16: et mirabiliter recordando proferuntur; XI.18.23: ex memoria proferuntur non res ipsae quae praeterierunt. 42 Expressions such as the mira at Aug. Conf. IV.8.13, or the quick-march through mira, miris and mirabiliter at X.9.16, of course typically and primarily carry a sense of the ‘wondrous,’ ‘marvelous,’ ‘stunning’ or ‘incomprehensible.’ Nevertheless, ‘singular’ is included within the lexical range of related terms such as mirificus, mirandus and mirabiliter—the last of which, Augustine uses at X.9.16 (et mirabiliter recordando). I have selected ‘singular’ for these passages since praesens tempus is ‘singular,’ in its necessary and formal distinction from past and future times; and since the ‘singular rapidity’ with which images are ‘laid up’ in memory, at X.9.16, is manifestly linked to praesens tempus. 43 Aug. Conf. X.8.12: transibo ergo et istam naturae meae, gradibus ascendens ad eum qui fecit me, et venio in campos et lata praetoria memoriae, ubi sunt thesauri innumerabilium imaginum de cuiuscemodi rebus sensis invectarum. ibi reconditum est quidquid etiam cogitamus, vel augendo vel minuendo vel utcumque variando ea quae sensus attigerit, et si quid aliud commendatum et repositum est quod nondum absorbuit et sepelivit oblivio. 44 Cf. Aug. Epist. 7.4–5: Omnes has imagines, quas ‘phantasias’ cum multis vocas, in tria genera commodissime ac verissime distribui video, quorum est unum sensis rebus impressum . . . quas tamen vidi atque sensi, in se animus format. . . . In hac tota imaginum silva credo tibi non videri primum illud genus ad animam, priusquam inhaereat sensibus, pertinere; neque hinc diutius disserendum. 45 Cf. for instance, Aug. Conf. X.9.16: . . . sic est in memoria mea ut . . . retenta imagine rem foris reliquerim, aut sonuerit et praeterierit sicut vox impressa per aures vestigio quo recoleretur.

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“Sense Roves” and “Sense Dilates” (Conf. XI.13, XI.31)

This returns us to (ε), which includes the first appearance of the term imago in Confessions XI, when Augustine—still within his eternity-meditation—depicts one whose “sense roves over the images of past times” (sensus vagatur per imagines retro temporum, XI.13.15). Now, we have seen in 5.4 that ‘times are not indifferent,’ in Confessions IV, because they revolve ‘through our senses’; and we have seen in 11.2, that in Confessions X and XI alike,46 it is simply axiomatic that imaginal memory—i.e. ‘the images of past times’ in (ε)—devolves from sensus. A memorial image— or, towards the end of the time-investigation, a memorial affection—is ‘infixed’ in the soul by means of sensus. But there is an expression in (ε) whose magnitude cannot be overstated, and whose magnitude has never been noted: “sense roves” (sensus vagatur, XI.13.15). It is this expression that essentially prepares, and elucidates, Augustine’s parallel expression in the last sentences of the time-investigation: “sense dilates,” or “the senses are dilated” (sensus distenditur, XI.31.41). Precisely this is the crux of ‘distentio sensuum’ in Confessions XI: that with sensus vagatur at XI.13.15, as with sensus distenditur at XI.31.41,47 Augustine not only countenances but relies upon—lets his time-concept arise from—a denotation of sensus that is originarily and decisively, yet not absolutely, identified with praesens tempus. It is sensus in the strict, present-temporal sense— i.e. as contuitus, as possibilizing a ‘presence of present things’—that memorial images and affections depend from. Nevertheless, for Augustine, it is precisely memory’s dependence upon sensus which permits—indeed, constrains—him to speak of sensus’ access to memorial images, i.e. to a ‘presence of past things.’ Again, Augustine says: “sense roves over the images of past times” (XI.13.15); which is already to say: “sense dilates” (XI.31.41). And if the sensus vagatur in (ε) is taken to be a sharper formulation than, but a parallel formulation to, Augustine’s cor volitat in (δ)—where a “heart flicks between the past and future movements of things” (XI.11.13)—then within the eternity-meditation itself, sensus’ access to ‘a presence of future things,’ i.e. in expectation, is also assured. (This is later suggested by Augustine’s use of praesensio in the time46 Aug. Conf. X.8.12: . . . innumerabilium imaginum de cuiuscemodi rebus sensis invectarum; XI.18.23: . . . imaginibus earum quae in animo velut vestigia per sensus praetereundo fixerunt. 47 For the construction alone—sensus vagatur, sensus distenditur—cf. for instance, Cic. Fin. II.3.8: Omnes enim iucundum motum quo sensus hilaretur Graece ἡδονήν, Latine ‘voluptatem’ vocant.

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investigation: see 5.4.) That such access is imaginal, is anticipated in (ε): “sense roves by, through and over images” (XI.13.15); and that such images are originarily dependent upon, and articulated by, motus omnis, is anticipated in (δ): sense dilates “between the past and future movements of things” (XI.11.13). In effect, the sensualist, duplex time-concept that is elaborated in Augustine’s time-investigation—in which motus omnis produces mutive times (tempora), and a ‘distentio sensuum’ constitutes dimensive time (tempus)— can be reconstructed, in nuce, from his eternity-meditation, where a protodistentio is already depicted. Nevertheless, Augustine’s triple-characterization of tempora/tempus in (α)–(γ) will prove to be no less essential than his protodistentio in (δ)–(ε) for interpreting the time-investigation. And rather than explicate (α)–(γ) in the context of the eternity-meditation, I will now turn to the time-investigation, which will be interpreted with periodic reference back to these significant and neglected sentences in Augustine’s eternity-meditation, at Confessions XI.11.13: (α) “Times (temporibus) never stand.” (β) “No time (tempus) is present all-at-once.” (γ) “A long time (longum tempus) cannot become long except out of a multitude of motions, still passing-on (ex multis praetereuntibus motibus), which cannot be elongated (extendi) all-at-once.”

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A Preparation of Augustine’s Time-Investigation (Conf. XI.11–29) Augustine’s time-question in Confessions XI.14–29 can be stated in a way that is acute, but not complex: How is it that temporal presence is dimensive (spatium temporis) when present-time has no space (punctum temporis)?1 It is hyper-transitivity that comes to be signalled by the term tempora in Confessions XI, while dimensivity comes to be signalled by the term tempus. But in the wake of this manoeuvre in Confessions XI.23–24 (see 4.2), Augustine’s question, Quid est tempus? ceases to address the logical and ontological condition for hyper-transitivity (tempora), which condition for him—as for Lucretius—is not celestial movement, but rather motus omnis. Augustine’s time-question becomes, thereafter, the question of (a hyper-transitive) durativity, i.e. tempus becomes that “by-which we measure the movements of bodies” (XI.24.31). This is not because motus is eliminated from Augustine’s enquiry, or repressed; and it cannot be eliminated or repressed. To the contrary: as the manifest condition for ‘times’ (tempora), motus omnis remains a manifest condition for ‘time’ (tempus) or ‘the space of time’ (spatium temporis). Yet ‘time’ as conditioned solely by motus omnis—i.e. ‘times’ (tempora)—only yields us present-time: temporal presence as a pure, hyperpunctile, inextended transitivity; the presence of a sensation which is denuded of memory and expectation; a presence which, as shorn of impresence, has no ‘space.’2 Such a contraction of the notion of ‘time’ reduces it to a blind and 1 Cf. Fortlage 1836, 13: “In tempore historico praesentia nullo spatio tenditur, et est ulla extensione minor, dum sumitur tanquam praesentia pura, carens omni praeterito et futuro . . . In tempore vivo praesentia est supra omnem extensionem et est ulla extensione major, dum sumitur tanquam praesentia pura, carens omni praeterito et futuro.” Cf. also Damascius’ question in the 6th-century Dubitationes et Solutiones (exc. Sambursky and Pines 1987, 86–91): “If time is an extension (διάστημα), how could the unextended (τὸ ἀδιάστατον) constitute it?” Unlike Augustine, Damascius resolves his question by positing an “extension of time” (διάστημα . . . τοῦ χρόνου) in present-time. Time is “not composed of indivisible parts (μερῶν ἀμερῶν),” he writes, “but of discrete and extended (διαστατῶν) parts.” Accordingly, present-time is redefined: “The Now (τὸ νῦν) is a temporal extension (διάστημα) and time consists of such extensions.” 2 Cf. Lyotard 1998, 97–98/2000, 72: “Chronology reduced to itself is pure . . . appearance and disappearance, passing away. The past is what is no longer, the future is what is not yet,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004269316_015

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untrackable succession, to a strictly incalculable fugitivity;3 and this, Augustine insists, is not the originary sense of ‘time’; and thus, already in his eternitymeditation, “no ‘time’ (tempus) is present all-at-once” (XI.11.13).4 It is precisely impresence—the vexing dis-identity of temporal praesens and praesens tempus—that comes to light in sensus, anima-animus and distentio (and which also provides the light in which Augustine’s time-question is asked). The pristine but inextended, hyper-transitive praesens of praesens tempus comes to be called ‘times’ (tempora), and ‘times’ remain the phenomenological condition for ‘time’ (tempus) in Augustine’s time-investigation. As durativity is dependent upon hyper-transitivity, as dimensive time is dependent upon mutive times: so tempus is dependent upon tempora—and there­with, upon motus omnis. Still, the word ‘tempus’ comes to be reserved for the dimensive impresence of temporal presence: this is refractive praesens as memoria-­contuitus-expectatio; this is praesens as a ‘dimension’ (dimensio) or ‘quantum’ (quantum) or ‘space’ (spatium) of time; or in a word, ‘tempus’ is temporal presence as ‘dilation’ (distentio). 12.1

The Soul’s Capacity to Sense Time (Conf. XI.15–16)

Augustine variously signals the basic conditions for a space of time in the timeinvestigation, referring first to a capacity to sense time, and then to a sensation. The soul’s capacity “to sense” (sentire)5 time is first characterized as opening up a mora, in Confessions XI.15.19—a ‘span’ or ‘lapse of time,’ an ‘interval,’6 can

and the now has no other being than the becoming past of the future. The chase after the future through the past that drives and troubles (anime et agite) the Confessions is only possible if, in the evanescence of these times, something withholds (quelque chose se tient).” 3 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: si quid intellegitur temporis, quod in nullas iam vel minutissimas momentorum partes dividi possit, id solum est quod praesens dicatur; quod tamen ita raptim a futuro in praeteritum transvolat, ut nulla morula extendatur. 4 Aug. Conf. XI.11.13: nullum . . . tempus totum esse praesens. 5 Aug. Conf. XI.15.19: sentire moras. 6 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: morula extendatur; XI.23.29: morulis; XI.23.30: mora (3×); XI.25.32: mora temporis; XI.27.34: mora extenduntur. O’Donnell (1992, III:279) cites Aug. Serm. 187.2.2 (verbum dei . . . quod nec locis concluditur, nec temporibus tenditur, nec morulis brevibus longisque variatur, nec vocibus texitur, nec silentio terminator) and Aug. Civ. X.15 (persona ipsius dei . . . visibiliter appareret et syllabatim per transitorias temporum morulas humanae linguae vocibus loqueretur) for morula at Conf. XI.15.20.

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be sensed. Then in XI.16.21, Augustine’s “we sense” (sentimus)7 refers to an intervallum—a ‘distance’ or ‘intermediate space,’ an ‘interval’ of time.8 I stress that this duplex introduction of ‘time’ is sensuous, and that ‘time’ is originarily indeterminate; for despite the prominence of temporal mensuration in the time-investigation, a space of time is not originarily quantified. Prior even to introducing the term mora at XI.15.19—which is constituted as and by sensus and which, though immediately linked to mensuration, is yet distinct from and precedes mensuration (sentire moras atque metiri, XI.15.19)—Augustine introduces the space of time as “long and short” (longum tempus et breve tempus, XI.15.18). (I say ‘introduces,’ but the phrase longum tempus is not introduced here: see 12.2.) That a ‘long time’ is necessarily comparative is already indicated at Confessions XI.16.21, where the problem of a transition from a sensuous longum to an achieved temporal quantum is raised: and as soon as this problem surfaces, Augustine refers to the Latin “quantitative metrics” that much later intrigue Nietzsche,9 and that remain 7 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: sentimus intervalla temporum. It is this sentimus intervalla that must be heard when Augustine later writes, at Conf. XI.27.36: quid cum metimur silentia, et dicimus illud silentium tantum tenuisse temporis quantum illa vox tenuit, nonne cogitationem tendimus ad mensuram vocis, quasi sonaret, ut aliquid de intervallis silentiorum in spatio temporis renuntiare possimus? The precondition and originary sense of the ‘cogitationem tendimus . . . intervallis’ in Conf. XI.27.36 is with the ‘sentimus intervalla’ in XI.16.21, which Augustine immediately and intimately links with mensuration, in XI.16.21: sentimus intervalla temporum et comparamus sibimet et dicimus alia longiora et alia breviora. metimur etiam quanto sit longius aut brevius illud tempus quam illud . . . sed praetereuntia metimur tempora cum sentiendo metimur. 8 Aug. Conf. XI.27.34: ipsum quippe intervallum; XI.27.36: intervallis. 9 Cf. Nietzsche 1989, 1993; Porter 2000, 127–66. Porter’s treatment is excellent, but he does not mention Augustine. There are highly suggestive references to Augustine in Nietzsche’s early “Zur Theorie der quantitirenden Rhythmik,” while Nietzsche (1969, 235) writes much later to Carl Fuchs, in the winter of 1884/5: “Read, I ask you, a book that few people know—St. Augustine’s De musica—to see how people in those days understood and enjoyed Horace’s meters, how they heard them ‘beat time,’ where they put the pauses, and so on (arsis and thesis are mere signs for the beats).” The ‘philological’ Nietzsche of the quantitative rhythm/metrics notebooks promises to illuminate Conf. XI.26–28 in ways that have yet to be realized. This is Porter (2000, 135): “Takt, which covers ‘time,’ ‘measure,’ or ‘beat’ [in Nietzsche’s notebooks], derives from the Latin tangere, ‘to touch,’ and Nietzsche never loses sight of this sensuous connotation either. Nor did the ancient musicologists . . .” In this vein: I have previously remarked a prominence of sensus and affectio in Conf. XI.27.35–36. Relative to quantitative metrics and song, however, Augustine’s manoeuvre should not be unexpected. Cf. for instance, Aug. Rhyth. VI.2.3: ut autem breviore tempore

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the privileged instance of temporal mensuration in the time-investigation (see 13.6).10 It is in Confessions XI.24 that Augustine most clearly insists on the indeterminacy of a longum tempus—the originary phenomenon of any space of time: If I gaze a while [at a moving body,] all I can say is that the time is long, but not how long it may be [once that body will have come to rest], because when we say ‘how long’ we speak by [definite] comparison,11 for instance: “This is as long as that,” or “This is twice as long as that.” si diu video, tantummodo longum tempus esse renuntio, non autem quantum sit, quia et quantum cum dicimus, conlatione dicimus, velut: “tantum hoc, quantum illud” aut: “duplum hoc ad illud.” (XI.24.31) That conlatio or comparatio is the condition for originary temporal mensuration is not insignificant: in contradistinction to spatial mensuration,12 the peculiar condition of temporal mensuration is that neither of the comparanda can be ‘present’ in the sense of present-time as sensation (XI.27.34–35). It is impresence as the condition for temporal mensuration which finally illuminates ‘dilation’ (distentio), and Augustine anticipates this elucidatory rôle as early as Confessions XI.16.21. Yet this rôle of mensuration originates in the phenomenality of, and signals the condition of possibility for—longum tempus. 12.2

“A Long Time Cannot Become Long . . .” (Conf. XI.11)

Longum tempus and relevant derivatives of longus appear sixty-four times in Confessions XI.14–29, and twenty-seven times in XI.26–28 alone; while spatium temporis or related, temporal senses of ‘space’ appear thirty-four times in

sentiatur cum celerius, quam cum tardius promitur, non interest aliquid nisi quamdiu aures tangantur sono. affectio ergo haec aurium cum tanguntur sono, nullo modo talis est ac si non tangantur; and later, Isid. Etym. III.17.1: musica movet affectus, provocat in diversum habitum sensus. 10 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: sentimus intervalla temporum et comparamus sibimet et dicimus alia longiora et alia breviora. metimur etiam quanto sit longius aut brevius illud tempus quam illud, et respondemus duplum esse hoc vel triplum, illud autem simplum aut tantum hoc esse quantum illud. 11 ‘Definite’ here per Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: dico aut indefinite, “longius est hoc tempus quam illud” aut etiam definite, “duplum est hoc ad illud.” 12 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: eo modo loca metimur, non tempora.

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Augustine’s time-investigation,13 and nineteen times in Confessions XI.26–28 alone. Augustine’s distentio is most fundamentally a precondition for, and a sense of, longum tempus or any spatium temporis.14 Yet the appearance of the phrase longum tempus at Confessions XI.15 is not the first in book XI—for recall (from 11.1): A long time cannot become long except out of a multitude of motions, still passing-on, which cannot be elongated all-at-once. longum tempus, nisi ex multis praetereuntibus motibus qui simul extendi non possunt, longum non fieri. (XI.11.13)15 Unless this sentence is heard when Augustine opens Confessions XI.15.18 with his first concrete observation—“and yet we say ‘a long time’ ”16—any interpretation of the time-investigation will be misdirected from the first word. And similarly, this sentence from the eternity-meditation, in XI.11.13, must be heard when Augustine closes the time-investigation, harking back to his analytics of praesens tempus in XI.15.18–20:17

13

Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.2.3: tuus est dies et tua est nox; ad nutum tuum momenta transvolant. largire inde spatium meditationibus nostris in abdita legis tuae, neque adversus pulsantes claudas eam. 14 This despite Augustine’s problematization of this mode of speaking in Conf. XI.15, which he intentionally reprises and refines in XI.28. The salience of the question of longinquitas in the time-investigation belies its introduction, in XI.15, solely as a misdirected mode of speaking. 15 With motibus qui, O’Donnell (1992, III:275) prefers Knöll (and the codices) to Verheijen, who inserts morulis as a conjectural substitute for motibus, “in order to read quae [i.e. morulis, quae] in the next line.” (Unlike Verheijen’s morulis, his quae has some support in the manuscript tradition.) I would observe that motibus here follows on logically from Augustine’s rerum motibus earlier in this paragraph (praeteritis et futuris rerum motibus, XI.11.13), and from a thematic of motus earlier in the eternity-meditation (creaturae motus expressit eam . . . motibus temporalibus, XI.6.8); whereas mora-morula are no less logically introduced in the time-investigation, at XI.15.19 (sentire moras atque metiri) and XI.15.20 (ut nulla morula extendatur). 16 Aug. Conf. XI.15.18: et tamen dicimus longum tempus. 17 Aug. Conf. XI.15.18: praeteritum enim iam non est et futurum nondum est. non itaque dicamus, “longum est,” sed dicamus de praeterito, “longum fuit,” et de futuro, “longum erit.”

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Who denies that present-time lacks space, because it instantly passes-by? But yet an intention18 lasts through which that which may be present may proceed to become absent. Future-time, which is-not, is not therefore long—but ‘a long future’ is a long expectation of the future. Nor is pasttime, which is-not, long—but ‘a long past’ is a long memory of the past. quis negat praesens tempus carere spatio, quia in puncto praeterit? sed tamen perdurat attentio, per quam pergat abesse quod aderit. non igitur longum tempus futurum, quod non est, sed longum futurum longa expectatio futuri est, neque longum praeteritum tempus, quod non est, sed longum praeteritum longa memoria praeteriti est. (XI.28.37) This climactic formulation of the time-investigation at XI.28.37 is not a retreat from Augustine’s time-characterization in the eternity-meditation, at XI.11.13, where ‘a long time cannot become long except out of a multitude of motions.’ Rather, his ‘long expectation of the future’ and ‘long memory of the past’ represent an advance. But it is first necessary to elucidate a condition for this advance. 12.3

The Production of Times as a Condition for Time (Conf. XI.11, XII.8)

Augustine’s formulation of longum tempus in Confessions XI.11.13 is precisely worded. He states a positive condition for longum tempus—i.e. “a multitude of motions” (multis . . . motibus)—negatively: without “a multitude of motions,” he writes, longum tempus “cannot become long.” I have previously stressed a distinction, in my remarks on Confessions XI.23 (see 4.2–3), between questions of dependency and questions of identity. This distinction is a sine qua non for tracing out Augustine’s ‘times’/‘time’ distinction in Confessions XI and XII, and in XI.23.29, Augustine’s denial and his deferral alike occur on the register of identity: “Let no one therefore tell me that the movements of the heavenly bodies are times (esse tempora)—for why should not times rather be (sint tempora) the movements of all bodies?” Here the identity of celestial motus and ‘times’ is unflinchingly denied, while the question of the identity of motus omnis and ‘times’ is implied, if deferred. (This latter identity is yet assumed in Confessions XI, and repeatedly affirmed in Confessions 18

Cf. von Herrmann 1992, 134/2008, 138–39: “What Augustine now terms adtendere means the same thing as praesens intentio in Chapter 27. Adtendere and intendere mean ‘selfdirection to’ (das Sichrichten auf) . . .”

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XII.) Similarly, in Confessions XI.11.13, a dependency/identity distinction must be observed: here it is not the identity of ‘a multitude of motions’ with longum tempus that is asserted, but merely the dependency of longum tempus upon ‘a multitude of motions.’ That is to say, here in the eternity-meditation, ‘no motus = no longum tempus’; yet Augustine’s formulation by no means implies that ‘motus = longum tempus,’ or that ‘no longum tempus = no motus.’ An explicit condition for the originary phenomenon of the time-investigation, namely longum tempus, is thus—motus. Or more precisely, “a multitude of motions” (multis . . . motibus). And more precisely yet, “a multitude of motions still passing-on” (multis praetereuntibus motibus, XI.11.13).19 And it is Augustine’s deployment of praeterire in this last phrase, and not the appearance of motus itself, which decisively anticipates his time-investigation and will lead us back to it (see chapter 13). For if longum tempus is immediately characterized as the sensation of a mora or intervallum, a ‘lapse’ or ‘space’ of time, in the time-investigation; we will see that it is no less immediately characterized as a sense of time passing. Prior to proceeding through the timeinvestigation, however, there is one further preparatory observation to be made regarding Augustine’s ex multis motibus-longum tempus formulation in Confessions XI.11.13. ‘A multitude of motions’ is not here identified with longum tempus, while it is yet a condition for longum tempus. The crucial term here is the (passive) present infinitive, fieri, in the phrase I have as “cannot become long”: longum non fieri (XI.11.13). The negative formulation of this statement which links ‘a multitude of motions’ to ‘time’ in XI.11.13 is not only decisive for the sense of longum tempus in Augustine’s time-investigation, but for the integrity of his time-question in Confessions XI and XII. Tempus here—‘time,’ not ‘times’— without ‘a multitude of motions,’ “cannot become long” (longum non fieri, XI.11.13); while in book XII, Augustine redeploys (the active) fieri to assert ‘a multitude of motions’ as the positive and simplex condition for ‘times’ (tempora): “The movements of things produce times” (rerum mutationibus fiunt tempora, XII.8.8). There is nothing in the time-investigation to contradict this—to the contrary, Augustine’s use of and statements concerning tempora in the time-investigation confirm this. But this simplex assertion of motus omnis as a condition for tempora, in Confessions XII.8.8, would contradict the results of the time-investigation were it stated of tempus, since motus omnis is not a simplex condition of tempus, which is duplicitous. Without ‘a multitude

19 Aug. Conf. XI.11.13: . . . longum tempus, nisi ex multis praetereuntibus motibus qui simul extendi non possunt, longum non fieri.

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of motions’ (motus omnis → tempora) and ‘a dilation of the soul’ (← sensus carnis ← tempora ← motus omnis), ‘times’ cannot become ‘time’ (tempus). Thus, the significance of Augustine’s negative formulation of the multis motibus-longum tempus condition in Confessions XI.11.13 is not only that he observes and subtly enacts a dependency/identity distinction, but that ‘a multitude of motions’ as one condition for longum tempus is not asserted as a simplex condition. Motus omnis or “the movement of all bodies” (omnium corporum motus, XI.23.30) is a simplex condition for ‘times’ in Confessions XI and XII; and motus omnis is one condition for ‘time’ in books XI and XII; but motus omnis is never a simplex condition for ‘time’ in the Confessions—not in Augustine’s eternity-mediation (XI.3–13), nor in his time-investigation (XI.14– 29), nor indeed, in his speculative delineations of timelessness in book XII (see Part II).

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From a Sense of Passing Time to a Dilation of the Senses (Conf. XI.14–29) It is impossible here to give an exhaustive interpretation of Augustine’s timeinvestigation in light of, and relative to, all of the findings presented in Parts I and II. Thus, I will take the sense (sensus) of passing time (tempus praeteriens) as my lead in Confessions XI.14–29. Foregrounding this sense of passing time will not only serve to demonstrate that, and elucidate how, distentio in Augustine’s time-investigation is senseaffective or ‘sensualist,’ i.e. duplicitous and conditioned by motus omnis. That is to say, this sense of passing time does not only serve my purposes here. For the sense of passing time is also what drives Augustine to, and provides him with, what is perhaps the most succinct articulation of his time-question: “In what space, then, do we measure passing time?” (XI.21.27).1 Furthermore, this sensus is also a distinct—and neglected—structuring element of the time-investigation in Confessions XI.2 Augustine introduces a sense of passing time in XI.16.21,3 immediately following his phenomeno-logical “restriction” (contractio) of the “space” (spatium)4 of present-time to a punctile, illocalizable, hyper-transitive instant

1 Aug. Conf. XI.21.27: in quo ergo spatio metimur tempus praeteriens? 2 O’Donnell (1992, III:280, 285, 292) is strangely laconic on this. 3 But cf. Aug. Conf. XI.6.8: “haec longe infra me sunt nec sunt, quia fugiunt et praetereunt; verbum autem dei mei supra me manet in aeternum.” si ergo verbis sonantibus et praetereuntibus dixisti, ut fieret caelum et terra, atque ita fecisti caelum et terram, erat iam creatura corporalis ante caelum et terram, cuius motibus temporalibus temporaliter vox illa percurreret; XI.11.13: longum tempus, nisi ex multis praetereuntibus motibus qui simul extendi non possunt, longum non fieri; XI.13.15: aut quomodo praeterirent, si numquam fuissent? . . . idipsum enim tempus tu feceras, nec praeterire potuerunt tempora antequam faceres tempora; XI.15.18: nondum enim praeterierat ut non esset, et ideo erat quod longum esse posset; postea vero quam praeteriit, simul et longum esse destitit quod esse destitit. 4 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: ecce praesens tempus, quod solum inveniebamus longum appellandum, vix ad unius diei spatium contractum est. Augustine proceeds in this section to ‘restrict’ praesens tempus from day to hour, hour to “fugitive particles” (fugitivis particulis), and logically to a strictly indivisible, hyper-transitive point.

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in XI.15.20—a restriction that he never retreats from.5 (Incidentally, Augustine has anticipated this ‘restriction’ in XI.11.13 with the phrase, “times never stand”; the numquam here is absolute.)6 And “it is impossible,” Augustine now confesses, “for present-time to be long (longum . . . non posse)” (XI.15.20).7 Thus, having situated ‘passing’ (transit), and not ‘presence’ (praesens),8 at the vertex of his non-aporetic, anti-Eleatic formalization of ‘time’ in XI.14.17;9 and having restricted this ‘passing’ to the most-infinitesimal (minutissimas) flick of an ictus in XI.15.18–20;10 it is a sense of passing time that not only serves, in XI.16.21, as Augustine’s first resolution to his time-question—which is, recall, that temporal presence is spacious while present-time has no space—but that is also introduced as an originary condition for the phenomenon of temporal mensuration.11 Later, in XI.21.27, where Augustine recapitulates his question in the first phase of the time-investigation (see 4.1), he explicitly refers back to this sense of passing time: “As I just said.”12 Then again, in the last sentence of XI.26.33, where he initiates the last division of the time-investigation, Augustine directs us back to this sense of passing time, writing: “So I have said.”13 5

Augustine reprises this at Conf. XI.28.37, in the question I quoted above: “Who denies that praesens tempus lacks space, because it instantly passes-by?” (quis negat praesens tempus carere spatio, quia in puncto praeterit?). 6 Aug. Conf. XI.11.13: temporibus numquam stantibus. 7 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: praesens tempus longum se esse non posse. 8 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: praesens, ut tempus sit, ideo fit, quia in praeteritum transit. 9 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: fidenter tamen dico scire me quod, si nihil praeteriret, non esset praeteritum tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil esset, non esset praesens tempus. . . . praesens autem si semper esset praesens nec in praeteritum transiret, non iam esset tempus, sed aeternitas. si ergo praesens, ut tempus sit, ideo fit, quia in praeteritum transit, quomodo et hoc esse dicimus, cui causa, ut sit, illa est, quia non erit, ut scilicet non vere dicamus tempus esse, nisi quia tendit non esse? 10 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: . . . ita raptim a futuro in praeteritum transvolat, ut nulla morula extendatur. Cf. Suarez 1861, 956: “Sic Seneca, libro 6 Natural. quæst., fere in ultimis verbis: Fluit (inquit) tempus et avidissimos sui deserit, nec quod futurum est, meum est, nec quod fuit. In puncto fugientis temporis pendeo. Et D. Augustinus, 11 Confess., cap. 15: Si quid intelligitur temporis, quod in nullas jam vel in minutissimas momentorum partes dividi possit, id solum est quod præsens dicatur, quod tamen ita raptim a futuro in præteritum transvolat . . .” 11 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: praetereuntia metimur tempora cum sentiendo metimur . . . cum ergo praeterit tempus, sentiri et metiri potest. 12 Aug. Conf. XI.21.27: dixi ergo paulo ante quod “praetereuntia tempora metimur” . . . quocirca, ut dicebam, “praetereuntia metimur tempora.” 13 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: quid ergo metior? an praetereuntia tempora, non praeterita? sic enim dixeram.

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While there is significant continuity and repetition in the time-investigation, no other element is insistently foregrounded in this way.14 It is the sense of passing time that Augustine himself presents as a leitfaden, and taking it as our lead will afford a clarity and brevity that are called for—though the terrain is still formidable. And to present it for the last time—the basic aporia of tempus, for Augustine, is this: “It is impossible for present-time to be long. And yet . . . we sense intervals of times.”15 An originary and irrecusable sensation conflicts with a reflective—and rigorous—analytics of tempus as praesens tempus. We sense as long (temporal praesens, ‘intervals of times’) that which cannot be long (praesens tempus). 13.1

Praesens Tempus and a Sense of Temporal Intervals (Conf. XI.15–16)

In the first sentences of Confessions XI, as in De Rhythmo I,16 Augustine alludes to the most precise instrument for mechanized time-division in antiquity: the water-clock, or clepsydra.17

14

And recalling that Augustine may have dictated the Conf., and that its mode of publication certainly involved its being sounded-out to auditors by lectors, these references to ‘saying’ address the original hearers of the Conf. in a direct way. (That such expressions are commonplace in Latin literature does not alter this fact.) This sounding-out of Augustine’s text should also be held in mind at Conf. XI.27.35 when the line Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm is introduced and analyzed, and sensus is foregrounded. Despite the variability of enunciation that Augustine addresses in Conf. XI.26.33, the opening line of XI.27.35 was temporally quantifiable for his hearers, and this act of hearing the line would have disclosed—in a way that silent reading obscures—the transitivity (and thus impresence) that Augustine stresses in that section: the ‘dĕūs’ is past (i.e. is in memoria) before Ambrose’s ‘ōmnĭūm’ is heard (i.e. is in contuitus). Augustine speaks this line, Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm, to a notarius or notarii, and hears himself speak this line as he composes the last sections of the time-investigation, while his original auditors hear this line being enunciated by a lector, while Augustine elaborates ‘distentio animi’ as a ‘distentio sensuum.’ 15 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20–16.21: praesens tempus longum se esse non posse. et tamen, domine, sentimus intervalla temporum. 16 Aug. Rhyth. I.13.27: . . . utrum si quisquam mora unius horæ currat, et alius deinceps duarum, possis non inspecto horologio vel clepsydra, vel aliqua hujuscemodi temporum notatione sentire illos duos motus, quod unus simplus, alius duplus sit. 17 To my awareness, no philosophical interpretation of Conf. XI has developed this allusion to water-clocks at Conf. XI.2.2, and no interpretation has linked this allusion to Augustine’s analysis of praesens tempus in XI.15.18–20.

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Anaxagoras and Empedocles already refer to a crude clepsydra18—then little more than a “pail-shaped vessel with flat heavy bottom, high slightly flaring sides, and simple thickened rim”19—that was refined, over several centuries,20 to mark mechanized hours by means of a finely controlled flow of water. References to the clepsydra appear—for instance—in Plato’s Theaetetus,21 Aristotle’s Poetics22 and Problems,23 and Cicero’s De Natura Deorum.24 And centuries later, Augustine’s hours are still signaled and sub-divided by “drops of time” (stillae temporum, XI.2.2), while the hour remains his basic unit of mechanistic time-division.25 Augustine also remarks in Confessions XI.15.20 that a day is “comprised of twenty-four hours: night-hours and day-hours.”26 This is 18 For Anaxagoras: Arist. Prob. 16.8 (914b); for Empedocles: Furley 1957. And according to G. Dohrn-van Rossum (2003, 457–58), an Egyptian clepsydra-type instrument antedates Anaxagoras and Empedocles by nearly a millennium: “Instrument[s] for measuring time based on water flowing from a container have been found in Egypt, the oldest one being from the period of Amenophis (1392–1355 bc). . . . No devices of this type are preserved from Mesopotamia.” 19 Young 1939, 274. 20 Pasco-Pranger 2010, 74: “Various means were devised during the Hellenistic period to regulate the flow of the water to improve accuracy.” 21 Pl. Theaet. 172c–173b, 201a–b. And since Plato’s references to the clepsydra typically occur in the context of Athenian law-courts (and thus, of forensic rhetoric), cf. Dohrn-van Rossum 2003, 462: “From the 5th cent. this simple device with a narrow outlet is repeatedly mentioned in the context of limiting court speeches (first in Aristophanes, Acharnenses 693). . . . Speech limitations ‘according to water’ . . . remained part of trial procedure until late antiquity.” 22 Cf. Arist. Poet. 7.11 (1451a): “. . . the agonic performance [of tragedies] would have been regulated by the water-clock (πρὸς κλεψύδρας), as it is said they once did in other days.” 23 There is a sustained discussion, with descriptions, at Arist. Prob. 16.8 (914b–915a). 24 Cic. Nat.deor. II.34.87: . . . cum solarium vel descriptum vel ex aqua contemplere, intellegere horas arte non casu. 25 Aug. Conf. XI.2.2: caro mihi valent stillae temporum . . . et nolo in aliud horae diffluant quas invenio liberas. O’Donnell (1992, III:256) cites Aug. Epist. 110.5 (paucissimae guttae temporis stillantur) and Epist. 261.1 (pauculae temporum stillae). 26 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: unus dies . . . nocturnis enim et diurnis horis omnibus viginti quattuor expletur. O’Donnell (1992, III:279) does not gloss this phrase. Cf. Cens. D.nat. 23 (in marg.): qui a media nocte ad proximam mediam noctem in his horis quattuor et viginti nascuntur eundem diem habent natalem. in horas xii diem divisum esse noctemque in totidem vulgo notum est: sed hoc credo Romae post reperta solaria observatum; Macr. Sat. I.21.13: . . . horae viginti quattuor quibus dies noxque conficitur.

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perfectly banal, but still, it may signal a difference between Aristotle’s Physics and Augustine’s Confessions, since the water-clock was the first technic to punctuate mechanistic hours at night.27 From what I have been able to determine, at least,28 Aristotle had no mechanistic ‘night-hours’ (nocturnis horis).29 27

Irby-Massie 2010, 73: “The nocturnal inadequacy of sundials stimulated the development of water clocks (clepsydra) to measure constant lengths of time.” Pliny surveys time-division (horarum observatione) in Roman antiquity, at Plin. Hist. nat. VII.86–87: “Scipio Nasica . . . was the first to use a water-clock to mark the equal hourly divisions of night as well as day. He dedicated this clock . . . in 159 bc” (tunc scipio nasica collega laenati primus aqua divisit horas aeque noctium ac dierum idque horologium sub tecto dicavit anno urbis dxcv). Cf. also Cens. D.nat. 23 (in marg.): deinde aliquanto post P. Cornelius Nasica censor ex aqua fecit horarium, quod et ipsum ex consuetudine noscendi a sole horas solarium coeptum vocari. horarum nomen non minus annos trecentos Romae ignoratum esse credibile est: nam xii tabulis nusquam nominatas horas invenies, ut in aliis postea legibus, sed ante meridiem, eo videlicet quod partes diei bifariam tum divisi meridies discernebat. alii diem quadripertito, sed et noctem similiter dividebant. idque consuetudo testatur militaris, ubi dicitur vigilia prima, item secunda et tertia et quarta; Var. Ling. VI.5: ‘Solarium’ dictum id, in quo horae in sole inspiciebantur, quod Cornelius in Basilica Aemilia et Fulvia inumbravit. And as a curiosity, Dam. Hist. 74d: “The cat marks (διακρίνει) the passing of the twelve hours (τὰς δώδεκα ὥρας) by urinating in each one, both day and night, without exception, in the manner of a time-keeping instrument (νύκτας καὶ ἡμέρας οὐροῦσα καθ᾿ ἑκαστην ἀεί, δίκην ὀργάνου τινὸς ὡρογνωμονοῦσα).” 28 Irby-Massie 2010, 72: “The Greeks devised various horologia (sundials and water clocks) to measure the passage of time. Fundamental units are determined by astral data: according to the geocentric perspective accepted in antiquity, a day (twenty-four hours) was one revolution of the sun around the earth; a month, one revolution of the moon around the earth; a year, a full circuit of the sun through the zodiac. Poets incorporated astral references to mark seasons of the year or time of night. . . . Phaenomena, by Aratus (fl. 250 bce), fulsomely describes how to estimate the passage of time by observing the moon, sun, and constellations.” 29 Astronomical ‘night-hours,’ however, first emerge with the Babylonians and the Egyptians. Dohrn-van Rossum (2003, 459) reports that “a star clock that indicated the hours of the night by the crossing of the meridian by the decan stars was already found in the Egyptian Old Kingdom (2nd half of the 3rd millenium bc). In Mesopotamia time measurement during the night using the . . . culminating stars was known since at least the 1st half of the 1st millenium bc.” Fowden (1986, 67) suggests that the Egyptian ‘decan’ system for reckoning night-hours lives on in late-antique Hermetism: “Some form of time-keeping was essential to the . . . functioning of the temples. Coffin lids and the ceilings of Ramesside tombs reveal crude efforts to divide the night into ‘hours’ on the basis of observations which will presumably have supplied the material of the astronomical Thoth-literature attested

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Augustine has mechanistic ‘night-hours,’ yet his hours as such appear to be mechanistically indivisible—at least, in terms of any significant precision. This can be inferred from Confessions XI.15.19–20, where he contends that present-time is, sensu stricto, inextended and hyper-transitive. Having appealed to a mechanistic time-division of ‘twenty-four hours’ to identify a ‘day,’30 such time-divisions then disappear. Augustine does not exclude them—they are not yet commonplace. Having restricted the ­present-time of a century to a year,31 year to month,32 month to day,33 day to by . . . Clement of Alexandria. Especially characteristic was the system whereby (in its fully-developed Hellenistic form) the zodiacal belt was divided into thirty-six 10° ­segments, or ‘decans.’ And the use of this decanal system . . . does impart an air of Egyptianism to the astrological texts of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.” 30 The mechanistic invariability of these twenty-four hours would have emerged with the refined, post-Aristotelian clepsydra; but the division itself is pre-mechanistic. Thus IrbyMassie (2010, 72), at least, on the Greeks’ time-divisions: “Days, beginning at sunset, were divided into twelve equal hours of darkness and twelve of light: daylight hours lasted from forty-five to seventy-five (modern) minutes, depending upon season . . . Time of day was estimated trigonomically by means of a gnomon (a pole or horizontal pointer) whose shadow changed in length and position according to the sun’s position. . . . Crude estimates from shadow tables were used until the third century bce when mathematical theory advanced sufficiently for drawing accurate hour-lines that radiated from a point on spherical, conical, or plane surfaces.” 31 Note that Varro regards the ‘century’ as a space of time, at Var. Ling. VI.11: “A seclum ‘century’ was what they called the space of one hundred years (spatium annorum centum).” And by ‘year,’ Augustine refers to a julian year, of which A.E. Samuel (1972, 155) writes: “The calendar which Julius Caesar instituted in 46 B.C. abandoned the old Roman Calendar completely to start afresh with a calendar of 365¼ days, a period long known by the astronomers to approximate the [solar] year.” 32 Motus determines Varro’s etymologies of annus and mensis, at Var. Ling. VI.10: “As the year is named from the motion of the sun (ab sole), so the month is named from the motion of the moon (a lunae motu).” But cf. Samuel 1972, 159–60: “Despite the fact that [the pre-julian, ordinary Roman year’s] 355 days is close to a lunar year, and although the sources seem to impute a lunar character of some sort to the [pre-julian Roman] months, in the historical and even prehistorical period of the Roman calendar, there was no attempt to keep the months to any phase of the moon.” 33 Cf. Samuel 1972, 154: “The Roman calendar of the historical period had 12 months: Januarius, Februarius, Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis (= Julius), Sextilis (= Augustus), September, October, November, December”; and 167–68: “The Roman calendar originally had only ten months. This was the view of Censorinus, citing Junius Gracchus, Fulvius Nobilior, Varro, and Suetonius . . . [while] Macrobius also subscribed to the position of a ten month year, as did Solinus, and other writers. . . . It would also seem likely that one may trust

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hour34 at XI.15.19–20,35 Augustine then writes: “And that hour-itself is drivenon in fugitive particles.”36 These ‘fugitive particles’ are significantly indeterminate: Augustine uses no term for them because no commonplace, mechanistic metric yet obtains within the hour. For Augustine, a quotidian ‘hour’ is not the traditions of a [primitive Roman] calendar of 304 days . . . [while] the ancient sources seem to reflect a tradition that the introduction of the 12 month calendar came at the same time as the [pre-julian] expansion of the calendar year to 355 days.” In this, the Romans lagged far behind the Sumerians and Babylonians. Vid. Robson 2004, 55: “Temple records from the [Sumerian] city of Uruk in the late 4th millennium BCE are already witness to a 360-day year of 12 30-day months, and this remained the accounting norm throughough the 3rd millennium and beyond.” Also note that Augustine omits the seven-day week here. Salzman (1990, 13) suggests that “the inclusion of a seven-day hebdomadal cycle in the Calendar of 354”—which was prepared for a wealthy Christian convert in Rome, in Augustine’s natal year—“does not have any peculiarly Christian meaning; seven-day weekly cycles came to Rome via an interest in astrology as early as the first century B.C.” Samuel (1972, 18), however, writes: “Weeks are not part of the Graeco-Roman calendaric tradition . . . and there is no doubt that the tradition of the week finds its origin in Hebrew practice. . . . As the week became known in the Western Mediterranean it had no direct effect on the operation of calendars, but in the common usage there grew up the practice of naming the days of the week after planets. This is attested as early as the end of the first century B.C. by Tibullus’ reference (I, 3, 18) to ‘Saturniae sacram . . . diem,’ and first century inscriptions at Pompeii list ‘the days of the gods.’ By the third century [A.D.] the planetary week was broadly known, as we learn from Dio Cassius (XXXVII, 18), who, while correctly telling us that the ancient Greeks did not know of it, misinforms us that the Egyptians invented it. While the Hebrew practice of simply numbering the days persisted in the Greek East and entered the practice of the Greek Church, the planetary days persisted in Western Europe.” 34 Macrobius still associates ‘hours’ with the sun, at Macr. Sat. I.21.13: apud [Aegyptios] Apollo, quid est sol, Horus vocatur, ex quo et horae viginti quattuor quibus dies noxque conficitur nomen acceperunt et quattuor tempora quibus annuus orbis impletur ὧραι vocantur. Cf. Isid. Etym. V.39.2: ‘Hora’ Graecum est nomen, et tamen Latinum sonat. 35 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: ad unius diei spatium contractum est. 36 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: ipsa una hora fugitivis particulis agitur. One use of the word particulae, by Quintilian, helps to anticipate Augustine’s choice of syllabae when he returns to the question of minima temporalia in the last sections of the time-investigation. Vid. Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.69: “And just as these [semantic] particles (hae particulae) of an [enunciated] ‘period’ are grave or vigorous, slow or rapid, languid or the reverse, so also the [enunciated] ‘periods’ which they go to form will be severe or luxuriant, compact or loose.” It should be noted, however, that Quintilian’s particulae in this sentence refer to short groupings of words—phrases or clauses—within a given ‘period,’ i.e. within a “single thought” (unum sensum) that should be conveyed within a single “breath” (unum spiritum).

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comprised of sixty ‘particles,’37 which are in turn comprised of sixty ‘particles,’ and so on.38 Rather, Augustine’s ‘fugitive particles’ remain numerically indeterminate in his analytics of praesens tempus because they remain mechanistically indeterminate when he writes the Confessions. Nevertheless, substituting a light-year for Augustine’s ‘year’ or a nanosecond for his ‘particle’ would not vitiate his analytics of praesens tempus—nor indeed, the time-investigation that follows. (Citing Empedocles, Aristotle already says “all time is divisible” in a passage on the speed of light.)39 To the contrary, Augustine proceeds from the mechanistically indeterminate ‘particles’ that comprise his mechanized ‘hours,’ to assert: If any [particle] of time is conceived which it is impossible to divide into even the hyper-minutest fraction of a instant, this alone is what could be called ‘present’—yet that [hyper-indivisible particle] flicks with such imperceptible speed from future to past that it cannot extend into any interval [of time]; for if it were extended it would be divisible into past and future, but the present has no space. si quid intellegitur temporis, quod in nullas iam vel minutissimas momentorum partes dividi possit, id solum est quod praesens dicatur; quod tamen ita raptim a futuro in praeteritum transvolat, ut nulla morula extendatur. nam si extenditur, dividitur in praeteritum et futurum; praesens autem nullum habet spatium. (XI.15.20) Though Augustine’s analytics of praesens echoes with Aristotle’s Physics IV (see Appendix 1), Augustine does not insist here on the infinite divisibility of

37

Cf. Pasco-Pranger 2010, 73–74: “The period between sunrise and sunset was divided into twelve equal hours, as was the period of night, so that a summer daytime hour was significantly longer than a winter one; the length of hours was also affected by latitude. An hour might thus be as short as forty-five minutes by our reckoning or as long as seventyfive. . . . The ‘hours’ [typically] reckoned were still the unequal hours of Roman civil life.” 38 However, cf. Aug. 83 Quaest. 45.2: Augustine is acquainted astronomical sixty-minute hours and sixty-second minutes. Cf. also Isid. Etym. V.39.1: Momentum est minimum atque angustissimum tempus, a motu siderum dictum. 39 Arist. Sens. 6 (446a–b): “Empedocles for instance states that the light from the sun (ἡλίου φῶς) reaches a mid-point (μεταξὺ) before it reaches vision or the earth . . . but all time is divisible (ὁ δὲ χρόνος πᾶς διαιρετός), so that an interval existed during which the light was not yet seen, but the ray was still moving in the intermediate space.”

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time. He does not posit a continuum, sensu stricto.40 Rather, Augustine suggests: (i) that any temporal ‘particle’ that could be subdivided—sensually, mechanistically or speculatively—is not present-time in the strictest sense; (ii) that any temporal ‘particle’ that could not be subdivided—sensually, mechanistically or speculatively—would be present-time in the strictest sense, but would per definitionem have no ‘space,’41 i.e. would be punctile;42 and (iii) that the corollary of our sensus of time as mora, intervallum or spatium is temporal divisibility, while the condition of present-time, in the strictest sense, is indivisibility, i.e. absolute transitivity. Thus, for Augustine, our originary sensus of mora (divisibility of praesens) conflicts with a phenomeno-logical analytics of praesens tempus (indivisibility of praesens). Augustine’s first real advance, and his first provisional finding—having articulated this analytics of praesens tempus—is the identification of a co-­ originary sensus with the sensus of temporal mora or ‘intervals.’ The analytics of present-time in Confessions XI.15.18–20 yields no interval, no space; this analytics yields hyper-transitivity—a punctile, illocalizable passing. Thus, in Confessions XI.16.21, Augustine observes that co-originary with our sense of mora or intervalla, which conflicts with the analytics of praesens tempus, is a sense of precisely—passing. “When time is passing it can be sensed.”43 40

Cf. O’Daly 1981, 172: “Augustine and the Stoics assume that time is an infinitely divisible continuum. Augustine’s language in [Conf. XI.]15.20 seems momentarily to suggest the alternative possibility of a minimal present time which is indivisible, a ‘time-atom’ . . . but he immediately undermines this possibility by remarking that the present cannot be extended (nam si extenditur, dividitur in praeteritum et futurum: praesens autem nullum habet spatium). An indivisible minimum time is, however, necessarily extended, and so cannot constitute a present. . . . Elsewhere, as in De musica VI.8.21, Augustine unequivocally asserts that time, like space, can be divided infinitely by our reason.” 41 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: nulla morula extendatur . . . nullum habet spatium. 42 Cf. Arist. Sens. 7 (447a): “There is a further difficulty (ἀπορία) with regard to sensation, whether it is possible to sense (αἰσθάνεσθαι) two things in one and the same indivisible point of time (ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ καὶ ἀτόμῷ χρόνῷ)”; 7 (447b): “. . . a single indivisible point of time” (ἄτομον χρόνον μίαν); 7 (448b): “. . . by ‘at once’ (ἅμα), I mean in a time which is one and indivisible (ἑνι καὶ ἀτόμῷ χρόνῷ)”; etc. 43 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: cum . . . praeterit tempus, sentiri . . . potest.

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Augustine’s hope in identifying this sensus—a sense of passing time—is duplex: (i) it may resolve the aporetic dis-identity of temporal praesens as interval and praesens tempus as point; and (ii) it may prove to be the condition for our achievement of temporal mensuration, since “we sense intervals-of-times and compare them” (XI.16.21).44 Whereas our sense of temporal intervals or spaces is irrecusable, it is yet— as previously discussed (see 12.1)—originarily indeterminate. Temporal mensuration is a concrete achievement—and it is absurd to suggest that “it is possible to measure what is not” (XI.16.21).45 Per the analytics of praesens tempus, temporal intervals have no existence as praesens tempus—and thus, temporal intervals cannot themselves be measured. (The condition for a temporal mora, intervallum or spatium is, per Augustine’s analytics of praesens tempus, that it can be divided into past and future; while the precise condition for praesens tempus in that analytics is that it cannot be divided into past and future: thus it is punctile, has no space.)46 But co-originary with our sense of temporal intervals is our sense of passing time, and perhaps it is this sense that gives rise to ‘intervals.’ Perhaps it is also this sense which permits of temporal comparatio and mensuration: Thus when time is passing it can be sensed and measured, but when it has passed, since it is-not, it cannot [be sensed or measured]. cum ergo praeterit tempus, sentiri et metiri potest, cum autem praeterierit, quoniam non est, non potest. (XI.16.21) It is this suggestion that Augustine recalls in Confessions XI.21.27 and XI.26.33—namely, that our sense of passing-itself may constitute the mora or intervallum that permits us to measure intervals of time, and the movements of bodies. But the ‘when’ (cum) in his phrase, “when time is passing” (cum . . . praeterit tempus, XI.16.21), signals its inevitable difficulty: what is-not 44 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: sentimus intervalla temporum et comparamus. 45 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: praeterita vero, quae iam non sunt, aut futura, quae nondum sunt, quis metiri potest, nisi forte audebit quis dicere metiri posse quod non est? 46 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: quod in nullas iam vel minutissimas momentorum partes dividi possit, id solum est quod praesens dicatur.

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cannot be sensed (as contuitus) or measured (as praesens tempus), and this ‘when’ of passing time is, as present-time—i.e. as constituted by motus omnis— inextended. The very condition that produces the sense of passing time—i.e. motus omnis—precludes that the ‘when’ of what is sensed as passing could have extent, could evade Augustine’s analytics of praesens tempus. 13.2

Times Are Not ‘Times’ and Presence Is Not ‘Presence’ (Conf. XI.20)

The most proper sense of ‘times’ in the Confessions, as I have been at pains to demonstrate, is that of ‘time’ insofar as it is produced by, and is to be identified with, motus omnis. ‘Times’ are thus the acute successions of present-time which, relative to Augustine’s ‘time’ (intervalla temporum, spatium temporis): (i) are necessarily hyper-singular, as punctile—“no ‘time’ is present allat-once” (XI.11.13),47 whereas the analytic definition of present-time is that it is, as indivisible, incalculably ‘present all-at-once’; and (ii) are necessarily hyper-plural—“a ‘long time’ cannot become long except out of a multitude of motions” (XI.11.13),48 i.e. a multitude of present-times. It is this difficult co-relation that determines an improper sense of ‘times’ in Confessions XI.20.26 and XI.27.36—and with it, an improper sense of ‘presence.’ The improper sense of ‘times’ and ‘presence’ in XI.20.26 and XI.27.36 has not been previously addressed because it is restricted to these sections. It is this sense of ‘times’ and ‘presence’ that I have denoted, throughout, with the neologism ‘impresence.’ That this sense is improper is indicated in XI.20.26, and if this indication is overlooked the interpretation will be flawed. But it is necessary to observe, before proceeding, that the improper senses of ‘times’ and ‘presence’: (α) surface in the sections of the time-investigation which initially (XI.20.26–21.27) and finally (XI.27.36) evince ‘dilation’ (distentio), i.e. the condition of possibility of temporal impresence or a space of time; and

47 Aug. Conf. XI.11.13: nullum . . . tempus totum esse praesens. 48 Aug. Conf. XI.11.13: . . . longum tempus, nisi ex multis praetereuntibus motibus qui simul extendi non possunt, longum non fieri.

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(β) indicate, in a duplicity of usage of the terms ‘presence’ and ‘times,’ the originary duplicity of praesens and of tempus as such in the Confessions, i.e. the ‘improper’ senses of ‘times’ and ‘presence’ are themselves originary, since impresence is originarily implicated in presence. Augustine opens Confessions XI.20.26 with a strong statement that derives from his analytics of praesens tempus in XI.15.18–20: “But what is now clearly apparent is this—neither future things nor past things are.”49 Only the presence of present-time is, and present-time lacks dimension or space. It is thus incorrect to say (nec proprie dicitur), as per custom (consuetudo),50 and as per Augustine (or Pseudo-Augustine) in De Grammatica51: “There are three times—past, present and future.”52 Why? Because ‘times,’ as the hyperplural condition for any ‘long time’ or space of time, never exist but as the hyper-singularity of a punctile present-time. There is thus—the grammatical impossibility of the phrase is suggestive—only one ‘times,’53 namely, 49 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: quod autem nunc liquet et claret, nec futura sunt nec praeterita. 50 Pace Kotzé (2004, 222), who suggests that “book 11 as a whole targets a Manichaean audience familiar with a dogma that stressed the three moments in time,” Conf. XI.20.26 ‘targets’ a commonplace in the rhetorical handbooks, as Augustine himself states in Conf. XI, at XI.17.22: . . . esse tria tempora, sicut pueri didicimus puerosque docuimus, praeteritum, praesens, et futurum. Augustine says the same of odd and even numbers, at Aug. Rhyth. I.12.20: illud nonne ab ineunte pueritia didicimus, omnem numerum aut parem esse, aut imparem? For the rhetorical commonplace of ‘times,’ cf. for instance, Cic. Part. 11.37: In temporibus autem praesentia [et] praeterita [et]  futura cernuntur. Kotzé (2004, 222) cites O’Donnell for her unfounded suggestion, and O’Donnell (1992, III:252) indeed—though far less dogmatically, far less reductionistically—gives some credence to the idea of a “possibility that [Augustine’s] ‘Past, Present, and Future’ (see [Conf.] XI.20.26)” have to do with a “Manichean . . . battle between light and darkness in past, present, and future.” I have pursued O’Donnell’s citations of Augustine’s Contra Felicem and Contra Faustum, in defence of this ‘possibility,’ and see nothing that bears on Augustine’s question of praesens in Conf. XI.20.26. 51 Cf. Aug. Gramm.reg. III.6: . . . hic autem modus sine definition personarum est et habet solet tempus finitum, praesens, praeteritum et futurum; III.14: . . . per tempora autem, id est per praesentia, praeterita vel futura. 52 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: nec proprie dicitur, “tempora sunt tria, praeteritum, praesens, et futurum.” 53 There is a curious example that is relevant to my para-grammatical phrase, ‘one times,’ in Augustine’s (or Pseudo-Augustine’s) De Grammatica: Regulae, in which utrumque tempus is preferred to Virgil’s utraque tempora.

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present-time. Or stated differently: it is only the strictest sense of praesens as praesens tempus that validates Augustine’s assertion, “neither future-things nor past-things are” (XI.20.26); and it is only the strictest linkage of times (‘one times’) to the hyper-singularity of a punctile praesens tempus that validates his objection, “nor is it proper to say, ‘There are three times—past, present and future’” (XI.20.26). Yet Augustine then proceeds to suggest a possible and proper manner of speaking of ‘times’ which refracts the hyper-singularity of a present-time: But perhaps it is proper to say, “There are three times—a presence of past things, a presence of present things, a presence of future things.” For these three are somehow in the soul, and I do not see them elsewhere—a presence of past things, memory, a presence of present things, observation, a presence of future things, expectation. sed fortasse proprie diceretur, “tempora sunt tria, praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris.” sunt enim haec in anima tria quaedam et alibi ea non video, praesens de praeteritis memoria, praesens de praesentibus contuitus, praesens de futuris expectatio. (XI.20.26) It is imperative for the conflict in XI.20.26, and the shift, to be felt: “Nor is it proper to say, ‘There are three times’ . . . but perhaps it is proper to say, ‘There are three times.’ ”54 This is how Augustine alerts us to the fact that, in Confessions XI.14–29, times are not ‘times’ and presence is not ‘presence.’ Vid. Aug. Gramm.reg. 2.13: Inde addita in compositione ‘que’ syllaba facit ‘uterque’ et significat ambos, sed tamen singulari sono est et significatione duali. Nam, cum dixit Virgilius “constitit in digitos extemplo arrectus uterque” [Virg. Aen. V.426], duo significati sunt, cum dixit ‘uterque’; cum autem dixit ‘arrectus,’ voluit expectare pluralitatem, ut sit plural in ‘utrique.’ Sed hoc interest, quia ‘uterque,’ licet duo significet, tamen solos duo; ‘utrique’ autem duo significat, sed ut in singulis multi sint: si dicam ‘utrique exercitus,’ duo significo, sed in singulis turbam intellegi volo. Haec quidem distincta sunt, sed iterum auctoritate confusa sunt. Nam, cum ait Virgilius “super utraque quassat tempora” [Virg. Aen. V.855–56], confudit: dicere enim debuit ‘super utrumque tempus’; loquebatur enim de duobus temporibus tantum, cui utrique tempori sufficiebat accusativo, ut diceret ‘utrumque quassat tempus.’ For the significance of Augustine’s confirmed grammatical treatises, the Ars (pro fratrum mediocritate) breviata and De Dialectica, vid. Luhtala 2005, 138–50. 54 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: nec proprie dicitur, “tempora sunt tria, praeteritum, praesens, et futurum,” sed fortasse proprie diceretur, “tempora sunt tria, praesens de praeteritis, praesens

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Only present-time is. This is the deliverance of Augustine’s rigorous analytic of presence in Confessions XI.15.18–20, which he repeats as “clearly apparent” (liquet et claret, XI.20.26) in the first sentence of this short paragraph, Confessions XI.20.26, and which he relies upon in rejecting the commonplace, inherited mode of speaking about ‘three times.’ And past things and future things are not because they are not present—they are not co-present as present-time, and they are not co-present as a presence of present things. And yet—there is a ‘presence’ of past things and future things.55 That is to say, there is a ‘presence’ of things that are not, that are not ‘present.’ This ‘presence’ of things that are not—as memory, as expectation—is distinct from the presence of present-time (as sensation); while this triplicity of ‘times’ in the soul is distinct from a triplicity of ‘times’ that common usage refers to and that— Augustine insists—are not. For these ‘times’ in the soul are not indifferently ‘present’ (praesens tempus), but rather memoria-praeteritum tempus and expectatio-futurum tempus are distinct modalities of a duplex ‘presence-of ’ (praesens de) things which are impresent, things which are not present as ‘present things.’56 This improper deployment of ‘presence’ and ‘times’—in my terminology: ‘impresence’—is characterized in XI.20.26 as a trine-‘presence’; increasingly, it comes to be characterized as a ‘dilation’ (distentio).57 Distentio is a radicalization of the trine-presence in XI.20.26. Trine-presence in Confessions XI.20.26 is “in the soul,” whereas dilation in XI.26.33 is “of the soul.”58 It is thus a specific, ‘improper’ sense of ‘presence’—and with it, of ‘times’— that is not improper to speak of, which is why Augustine writes, in the teeth of his immediately preceding statement: “Perhaps it is proper to say . . .”59 It is necessary to identify what is and is not the propriety of Augustine’s new, ‘improper’ sense of ‘presence’—and with it, of ‘times’—in the timeinvestigation. And the praesens tempus of Augustine’s analytic of presence, in de praesentibus, praesens de futuris.” At Arist. Mem. I (449b), Aristotle writes that it is “in the present-time” or “within the now” (ἐν τῷ νῦν) that “sensation (αἴσθησις) refers to what is present: hope (ἐλπίς) to what is future: memory (μνήμη) to what is past,” and that without such refraction, there can be no “sense of time” (χρόνου αἰσθάνεται). 56 Or rather, as he specifies here—the ‘future’ and the ‘past’ are not: praesens tempus/ contuitus is, but lacks space. 57 First, in the last sentences of Conf. XI.23.30: video igitur tempus quandam esse distentionem. 58 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: inde mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem; sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi. 59 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: nec proprie dicitur . . . sed fortasse proprie diceretur.

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Confessions XI.15.18–20, is the presence of contuitus, of sensation in the strictest sense—i.e. the praesens tempus that is constituted by motus omnis is also the praesens tempus of contuitus. This is manifestly a proper sense of the word ‘presence,’ which is why Augustine writes of quasi-praesentia, for instance, in the memory sections of Confessions X.60 Similar Latin indicators could have clarified the time-investigation in book XI significantly; yet Augustine signals the constitutive linkage of praesens tempus and sensus here in his peculiar, hypertrophic phrase, praesens de praesentibus = contuitus. In this sense, the sense of contuitus, there is not a triplicity of ‘times.’ Only present-time is, and conversely, only what is is “that which may be called ‘present’ ” (id solum est quod ‘praesens’ dicatur, XI.15.20). This is why Augustine never retreats—in XI.20.26,61 or at the end of the time-investigation, in XI.28.3762—from his assertion that present-time lacks space, and that past things and future things are not, are inexistent. Still, this originary sense of presence—i.e. presence as present-time, presence as sensation—is co-originarily inflected with and constituted by the presence of what is not sensation: a duplex ‘presence’ within present-time of what is not present-time.63 (Again: presence defies unicity.) And indeed, it is only this originary duplicity of presence—a ‘power’ (vis) by-which to compare what is (as contuitus, as praesens tempus) with what is-not (as memoria, as expectatio)—which initially permits Augustine’s elaboration of the restrictive sense of ‘presence’ to an inextended, hyper-transitive present-time (XI.15.18–20). That is, ‘presence’ as present-time and ‘a presence of present things’ at once is and is-not the most proper sense of ‘presence,’ since without impresence, this restricted sense of ‘presence’ could not be delimited. Yet our leitfaden here is contuitus, and as a ‘presence of present things,’ it is contuitus that is assigned a privileged and incommutable—but as a result, hyper-transitive—link to praesens tempus as produced by motus omnis. A certain attenuation or rarefaction of Augustine’s language is in evidence as 60

Cf. Aug. Conf. X.8.14: . . . et ipse contexo praeteritis atque ex his etiam futuras actiones et eventa et spes, et haec omnia rursus quasi praesentia meditor. The word quasi appears 17× in Conf. X.8–27. 61 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: quod autem nunc liquet et claret, nec futura sunt nec praeterita. 62 Aug. Conf. XI.28.37: quis igitur negat futura nondum esse? . . . et quis negat praeterita iam non esse? . . . et quis negat praesens tempus carere spatio, quia in puncto praeterit? 63 Cf. Arist. Mem. I (450b): “When one engages his memory, this affection (πάθος) is what he considers and senses (θεωρεῖ . . . καὶ αἴσθάνεται). How, then, does one remember what is not present (τὸ μὴ παρὸν)? For this would imply that one can also ‘see’ and ‘hear’ what is not present (τὸ μὴ παρὸν). But surely in a sense this can and does take place.”

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the time-investigation progresses—the sensus of XI.16.21 is characterized as contuitus in XI.20.26,64 and becomes attentio in XI.28.3765—until Augustine’s parting formulation in XI.31.41: variatur affectus sensusque distenditur. This rhetorical ‘ascent’ is by no means axiologically determined or ‘subjectivizing,’ however. To the contrary, it is determined by Augustine’s heightening concern with the (‘objectivizing’) achievement of rendering an originarily indeterminate sensus of a time-interval into a determinate temporal quantum—i.e. temporal mensuration. And in this ascent, as Augustine’s rhetorical ‘lapse’ to viscera in XI.29.39 and sensus-affectio in XI.31.41 demonstrates, the vital—i.e. sensual—constitution of temporal presence and temporal impresence are never abandoned. The anima-animus in which a trine-‘presence’ (i.e. impresence) is acquired, in Confessions XI.20.26, is still constituted as anima-corpus. This temporized ‘soul’ is still a ‘soul-flesh.’ The constitutive haerere of Confessions X.7.11, that is to say, is still the subphenomenal condition of praesens tempus in sensus or in contuitus or in ­attentio—and no less, of ‘impresence,’ i.e. of sense-imaginal praesens-de in memoria and in expectatio. And it is because of this that Augustine’s rudiment for temporal intention and temporal mensuration alike, in Confessions XI.27.34, is sensation (see 13.5). 13.3

“As I Just Said, We Measure Times as They Pass” (Conf. XI.21)

“As I just said,” Augustine proceeds, “we measure times as they pass.”66 Here the term tempora immediately reverts to its ‘proper’ sense—i.e. here ‘times’ signify mutive times, ‘times’ as produced by motus omnis, ‘times’ as presenttime—while contuitus reverts, with Augustine’s backwards glance at his

64

On which, cf. O’Donnell 1992, III:284–85. This gloss is illuminating, but the references O’Donnell provides tend to constellate Augustine’s contuitus, here, with uses of the term—elsewhere in his corpus—to describe contemplatio, and not—as here—to the ‘presence of present things’ in sensation. My interpretation rather orients the sense of contuitus to Augustine’s sentimus at XI.16.21, and ultimately, to his affectus sensusque at XI.31.41. 65 Aug. Conf. XI.28.37: expectat et attendit et meminit, ut id quod expectat per id quod attendit transeat in id quod meminerit. 66 Aug. Conf. XI.21.27: dixi ergo paulo ante quod praetereuntia tempora metimur.

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earlier formulation, in Confessions XI.16.21, to sensus: “When time is passing it can be sensed and measured.”67 Yet the issue of the time “when we measure” (cum metimur) at XI.27.36 is still on the horizon, because the term presence has also reverted to its ‘proper’ sense—i.e. as hyper-transitivity, as constituted by motus omnis. As in XI.16.21, so here, it is impossible to measure what is-not, and yet present-time, the hyper-contracted presence of contuitus, is inextended—and thus cannot be measured.68 Augustine, therefore, re-secures his time-question: In what space, then, do we measure passing time? in quo ergo spatio metimur tempus praeteriens? (XI.21.27) There is no need to belabour the significance of this question, but it is precisely a constitutive vinculation of sensation with present-time that is driving Augustine to articulate a co-origineity of impresence within ­sense-temporal ‘presence,’ i.e. to identify time—that “by-which we measure”69—with the condition of possibility of a space of time. For temporal mensuration is still, on reflection, impossible—but it is actual: “I know,” says Augustine, “because I measure.”70 Augustine’s time-question is never: Do I measure ‘times’? And his question is never: Do I measure ‘presence’? Nor indeed are his questions here: Is praesens tempus produced by motus omnis? Is praesens tempus, as produced by motus omnis, inextended? Is praesens tempus disclosed as, in, and to contuitus? Or: Is praesens tempus, as restricted to and disclosed in contuitus, sensu stricto, immeasurable? Augustine’s response to all such questions is—yes; whence, very precisely, his aporia, and his decisive time-question: ‘In what space (spatio) do we measure passing time (tempus praeteriens)?’ 67 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: cum ergo praeterit tempus, sentiri et metiri potest; cf. XI.21.27: quocirca, ut dicebam, “praetereuntia metimur tempora.” 68 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: praeterita vero, quae iam non sunt, aut futura, quae nondum sunt, quis metiri potest, nisi forte audebit quis dicere metiri posse quod non est?; XI.21.27: in quo ergo spatio metimur tempus praeteriens? utrum in futuro, unde praeterit? sed quod nondum est, non metimur. an in praesenti, qua praeterit? sed nullum spatium non metimur. an in praeterito, quo praeterit? sed quod iam non est, non metimur. 69 Aug. Conf. XI.23.30: ego scire cupio vim naturamque temporis, quo metimur corporum motus. 70 Aug. Conf. XI.21.27: praetereuntia metimur tempora, et si quis mihi dicat, “unde scis?,” respondeam, scio quia metimur, nec metiri quae non sunt possumus, et non sunt praeterita vel futura.

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Vagaries of Motion and the Introduction of Dilation (Conf. XI.24–26)

“I measure—and I do not know what I measure.”71 The quid (or praesens) of temporal mensuration is not, however, the movement-itself of any specific body. This is established in Confessions XI.24.31: “The movement of a [given] body is one thing, and it is another by-which we measure how long this movement is.”72 In XI.24.31, Augustine specifies that the word ‘tempus’ should be reserved for this by-which, rather than assigned to the motus he analyzes. This repeats and finalizes his stated desire in XI.23.30, which I have quoted several times: “I desire to know the power and nature of time, by-which we measure the movements of [all] bodies.”73 There is a duplex restriction in evidence in XI.24.31 that should be remarked, but will not be re-elaborated here (see 4.2–3): the question of ‘motus’ in XI.24.31 has been restricted from the totalized motus omnis of XI.23.29, to a singularized motus corporis; and ‘corpus,’ accordingly, has been restricted from the omnia corpora of XI.23.29.74 To eliminate the suggestion that any determinate movement of any single body is ‘time’ (ipsum . . . corporis motum tempus esse, XI.24.31), it suffices to observe that any determinate ‘rest’ (status) of any single body can also be measured: “Thus ‘time’ is not the movement of a [single] body” (XI.24.31). The motus or the status of any given body, celestial or terrestrial, occurs in time and is itself measured by and against—what, if not time-itself?75 It is in Confessions XI.26.33 that the expression ‘time-itself’ (ipsum tempus) surfaces for the first time since the first sentence of Augustine’s timeinvestigation.76 Ipsum tempus is the ‘by-which’ for measuring the movements of all bodies, yet Augustine states in XI.24.31 and XI.26.33 that tempus is also the ‘in-which’ of the movements of all bodies.77 And decisively for the sections

71 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: metior et quid metiar nescio. 72 Aug. Conf. XI.24.31: cum itaque aliud sit motus corporis, aliud quo metimur quamdiu sit, quis non sentiat quid horum potius tempus dicendum sit? 73 Aug. Conf. XI.23.30: ego scire cupio vim naturamque temporis, quo metimur corporum motus. 74 Aug. Conf. XI.23.39: cur enim non potius omnium corporum motus sint tempora? 75 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: metior motum corporis tempore: item ipsum tempus nonne metior? an vero corporis motum metirer, quamdiu sit et quamdiu hinc illuc perveniat, nisi tempus in quo movetur metirer? ipsum ergo tempus unde metior? 76 Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: nullo ergo tempore non feceras aliquid, quia ipsum tempus tu feceras. 77 Aug. Conf. XI.24.31: nam corpus nullum nisi in tempore moveri audio.

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that follow, Augustine also states in XI.25.32 that tempus is the ‘in-which’ of speech: I know that I speak these things in time, and that I have already long spoken of time, and also that this ‘long’ itself is not long if not for a lapse or space of time. scire me in tempore ista dicere, et diu me iam loqui de tempore, atque ipsum diu non esse diu nisi mora temporis. (XI.25.32) Tempus is here the condition of Augustine’s time-question, and a mora ­temporis—that originary sensation which contravenes Augustine’s analytics of praesens tempus—is a condition of his time-question: ‘no mora temporis = no longum tempus.’ But note the negative articulation of this condition: we observed the same in Confessions XI.11.13, in which ‘no motus = no longum tempus’ (see 12.3). Here, a new and distinct condition for longum tempus is stated: a “ ‘long’ [time] is not long except by a lapse or space of time (mora temporis)” (XI.25.32). Augustine’s duplex, positive condition for longum tempus is thus, since ‘no motus = no longum tempus’ (XI.11.13), and since ‘no mora temporis = no longum tempus’ (XI.25.32): (i) the motion of all bodies (motus omnis) and (ii) a space of time (mora temporis). The motion of all bodies is precisely, however, the simplex condition for times on the analytics of present-time—i.e. for hyper-transitivity, for succession. The longus of a ‘long time’ cannot be longus without the motion of all bodies (motus omnis); yet the longus also cannot be longus without a lapse or space of time (mora temporis); and finally, the longus cannot be determined as a temporal quantum without a lapse or space of time (mora temporis). Hypertransitivity as praesens tempus has been identified with sensus-contuitus (praesens de praesentibus, XI.20.26); and yet durativity as the mora temporis is also linked with sensus.78 As the life of a body and a conditio sine qua non of sensation, ‘the soul’ is thus itself a locus of: (α) a sense of praesens tempus—i.e. of that which is, in time; (β) a sense of this praesens in its most pungent sense, the praesens de praesentibus incoming-from, and shading into, impresence—i.e. a sense of passing time;79 and 78 Aug. Conf. XI.15.19: datum . . . tibi est sentire moras atque metiri; XI.16.21: sentimus intervalla temporum. 79 Again, Aug. Conf. X.16.21: sed praetereuntia metimur tempora cum sentiendo metimur.

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(γ) a sense of impresence as constituting a mora temporis—i.e. a space of time. This triplex ‘sense’ of the soul (anima-animus) involves a conflict, and with it a stress, the constitutive stress,80 that should be heard in all the inflections of Augustine’s term distentio—as a ‘dilation’ or a being ‘afflicted,’ as ‘distracted’ and ‘divided.’81 The relative tranquillity of trine-presence in the soul, in Confessions XI.20.26 (where the sense of passing time is not mentioned), is first called a ‘distentio’ in the last sentences of XI.23.30,82 and Augustine reintroduces this term in the last sentences of XI.26.33.83 The elaboration of this vivid descriptor, ‘distentio,’ does not climax in XI.28.37 with Augustine’s observation that “intention lasts” (attentio perdurat), but rather in XI.29.39 with: “My life is dilation, my life is division!”84 It is precisely because it is the soul that constitutes a space of time— spatium, not punctum—that the soul, as the condition of possibility of temporal mensuration or division, is itself originarily divided in time. And the most illuminating display of this duplicity, for Augustine—that the soul, as condition of possibility of temporal division, is itself divided in time—is provided, for him, by human speech. As any body moves in tempore, so I—ego, ego animus85—I also speak in tempore. Augustine makes this connection clear, since it is first in Confessions XI.24.31 that he insists that a body moves in tempore—which he repeats in XI.26.3386—while in XI.25.32, he confesses: “I know that I say these things in time,” and that this—namely, his confession itself—could not be “long if not

80 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: . . . et nos multos, in multis per multa . . . ; Bochet 2004, 309: “Nous sommes multiples . . . La multiplicité ici évoquée tient certes à la pluralité des hommes, mais elle est aussi en chaucun de nous, en raison de notre condition corporelle et temporelle. Le temps est en effet ‘distension’ . . . [et] la distension constitutive du temps engendre un ‘éparpillement’ et un ‘déchirement’ douloureux de l’âme humaine.” 81 Cf. Hrdlicka 1931, 82: “distentio, a distraction: [Conf.] 11, 29, 39, ecce distentio est vita mea. . . . In Itala Eccles. 3, 10 and 5, 13, and in Vulg. Eccles. 8, 16, this word [distentio] renders περισπασμός (in Eccles. 3, 10 and 5, 13 the Vulgate has afflictio).” 82 Aug. Conf. XI.23.30: video igitur tempus quandam esse distentionem. 83 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem. 84 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: distentio est vita mea . . . et tumultuosis varietatibus dilaniantur cogitationes meae. 85 Aug. Conf. X.6.9: ego, ego animus per sensum corporis mei, interrogavi mundi molem. 86 Aug. Conf. XI.24.31: nam corpus nullum nisi in tempore moveri; XI.26.33: an vero corporis motum metirer . . . nisi tempus in quo movetur metirer?

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for a lapse or space of time.”87 Thus, though human speech—like the motion of any body—proceeds in tempore, could it nevertheless be such speech that is the originary ‘by-which’ of temporal mensuration? Is speech itself the ‘space’ in which “we measure passing time” (XI.21.27)?88 In Confessions XI.26.33, Augustine shifts his investigation—still seeking the by-which of any determinate temporal quantum, which is also to say that “by-which we measure the movement of [all] bodies” (XI.23.30)—to the mode of temporally regulated enunciation that he inherited as a speaker of late-antique Latin89 and perfected as poet and rhetor.90 Quintilian writes: “It is impossible for us to speak without using the short and long syllables from which metric proportions are produced”;91 and thus Augustine later says to his protégé in the De Rhythmo: “Even if you do not know which syllables are to be kept short, which prolonged, we can nevertheless overlook this ignorance of yours since it suffices that you . . . have noticed that some syllables are shorter, others longer.”92 87 Aug. Conf. XI.25.32: scire me in tempore ista dicere, et diu me iam loqui de tempore, atque ipsum diu non esse diu nisi mora temporis. 88 Aug. Conf. XI.21.27: in quo ergo spatio metimur tempus praeteriens? 89 At Conf. I.18.29, for instance, Augustine cedes that the late-antique distribution of long and short syllables is purely conventional (pacta . . . syllabarum), i.e. “received from prior speakers” of the Latin language (accepta a prioribus locutoribus) and subject to change. 90 Aug. Conf. III.7.14: “I composed poems, and it was not permitted for me to place any foot wherever I liked, but different kinds in different metres and never in any given verse the same foot in all places alike. The art itself by-which I composed poems did not have different principles in different places, but comprised all at once and in one” (et cantabam carmina et non mihi licebat ponere pedem quemlibet ubilibet, sed in alio atque alio metro aliter atque aliter et in uno aliquo versu non omnibus locis eundem pedem. et ars ipsa qua canebam non habebat aliud alibi, sed omnia simul). The amorous lyricism of Conf. III.1.1 suggests that Augustine, like Donne, might have left a mark with his love-poems no less than his sermons, had such pre-conversion carmina survived. For ‘Donne’s Augustine’: Ettenhuber 2011, esp. 117–35. 91 Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.61: neque enim loqui possumus nisi syllabis brevibus ac longis, ex quibus pedes fiunt. Cf. Cic. Or. 56.189: “All [rhythms] may occur in prose (orationem), as can be inferred from the fact that we often utter verses unintentionally when delivering a speech (versus saepe in oratione per imprudentiam dicimus) . . . [and] it is nearly impossible to avoid senarii and Hipponacteans, since the greater part of our speech consists of iambs (magnam enim partem ex iambis nostra constat oratio).” Cf. also Pseudo-Longinus’ caution against foot-tapping prose-rhythms, at Long. Subl. 41 (204v). 92 Aug. Rhyth. II.2.2: . . . etiam si nescis quae syllaba corripienda, quae producenda sit; possumus tamen non impediri hac ignorantia tua, satisque habere, quod te animadvertisse dixisti alias syllabas correptiores, alias productiores.

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Having first alluded to the “time-rhythm”93 of quantitative enunciation in Confessions XI.16.21, while introducing the sense of passing time,94 Augustine appeals thereafter to the simplex, duplex and triplex time-values associated with Latin syllables;95 but this thematic comes to clear prominence here in XI.26.33,96 in parallel to and as a subset of the measure of ‘the movements of all bodies.’97 Does such quantitative enunciation of Latin ‘short’ and ‘long’ syllables—or of metricized, Latin lines—itself grasp (comprehendere) a determinate metric of time-itself? Is quantitative enunciation itself a veracious temporal measure (certa mensura temporis)?98 That is to say, does speech itself track motus omnis with the constitutive fidelity that contuitus tracks praesens tempus? For it is only thus that a mora temporis as the originary but indeterminate phenomenon of sensus becomes a veracious temporal quantum—and “I know,” says Augustine, “that I measure time.”99 It does not. And its failure is banal. I can rush a ‘longer line’ and drag out a ‘shorter line’ to pervert or reverse their temporal values. That is to say, the same syllable, line or song (ita carmen, ita pes, ita syllaba) can be manipulated as

93

Cf. Nietzsche’s letter to Carl Fuchs in August 1888, at Nietzsche 1969, 309: “Our rhythm is a means of expressing emotion; ancient rhythm—time rhythm—has the opposite task of mastering emotion and eliminating it to a certain extent . . . time symmetry was felt to be a kind of oil upon the waters. Rhythm to the ancient mind is, morally and esthetically, the reins which are put on passion.” 94 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: metimur etiam quanto sit longius aut brevius illud tempus quam illud, et respondemus duplum esse hoc vel triplum, illud autem simplum aut tantum hoc esse quantum illud. 95 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.21.27: dixi ergo paulo ante quod praetereuntia tempora metimur, ut possimus dicere duplum esse hoc temporis ad illud simplum . . . neque enim dicimus simpla et dupla et tripla et aequalia, et si quid hoc modo in tempore dicimus nisi spatia temporum; XI.22.28: “duplum temporis habet haec syllaba ad illam simplam brevem”; XI.23.30: . . . et utrumque tempus comparantes diceremus illud simplum, hoc duplum, etiamsi aliquando illo simplo, aliquando isto duplo sol ab oriente usque orientem circuiret. 96 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: sic enim videmur spatio brevis syllabae metiri spatium longae syllabae atque id duplum dicere. 97 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.22.28: “duplum temporis habet haec syllaba ad illam simplam brevem”; XI.24.31: nam si et varie corpus aliquando movetur, aliquando stat, non solum motum eius sed etiam statum tempore metimur et dicimus, “tantum stetit, quantum motum est” aut, “duplo vel triplo stetit ad id quod motum est” et si quid aliud nostra dimensio sive comprehenderit sive existimaverit, ut dici solet plus minus. 98 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.24.31: . . . sive comprehenderit sive existimaverit; XI.26.33: . . . sed neque ita comprehenditur certa mensura temporis. 99 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: tempus metior, scio.

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regards its space of time (spatio temporis).100 Or as Augustine remarks in De Rhythmo, I can manipulate the space of time that is occupied (plus temporis occupare) by a metricized line,101 even if I maintain its metrical proportions,102 and thus the formal distribution of the line—or what he calls there its “law of times” (temporum legi).103 The rigour of the late-antique enunciative ictus thus fails, in the vagary of the act, to grasp the certa mensura for any temporal quantum. Quantitative enunciation in tempore, no less than the determinate motus/status of any solitary body (or subset of bodies) in tempore, fails to track the hyper-transitivity of praesens tempus (= tempora, motus omnis)104 as a space of time (= tempus, spatium temporis)105 with anything like a constitutive fidelity. “From-which it seems to me,” says Augustine, “that ‘time’ is nothing else but a dilation” (XI.26.33). And again: “From-which it seems to me . . .” This ‘from-which,’ this single adverb inde, is the crux of Augustine’s timeinvestigation, and it does not issue from an arbitrament of the human animaanimus over tempus,106 nor does it introduce a temporal “idealism” in

100 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: sed neque ita comprehenditur certa mensura temporis, quandoquidem fieri potest ut ampliore spatio temporis personet versus brevior, si productius pronuntietur, quam longior, si correptius. ita carmen, ita pes, ita syllaba. 101 Aug. Rhyth. VI.7.17: M.—Quid? sonus ille qui correptioribus et quasi fugacioribus syllabis editur, num potest plus temporis occupare quam sonat? D.—Qui potest? 102 Cicero makes the opposite point—namely, that metric lines can vary in internal proportions, number of syllables, and so forth, yet occupy the same space of time—at Cic. Or. 54.215: Nam et creticus, qui est e longa et brevi et longa, et eius aequalis paean, qui spatio pars est, syllaba longior . . . ; cf. 54.217: . . . sed spatio pars, non syllabis. 103 Aug. Rhyth. VI.7.17: M.—. . . cum aliquanto correptius sive productius, dum serviam temporum legi qua simplo ad duplum pedes conveniunt, versum pronuntio, num offendo ulla fraude iudicium sensus tui? D.—Non omnino. For Augustine’s expression, temporum legi, here, cf. Ter. Met. 1632–33: Namque metrum certique pedes numerusque coercent, | dimensa rhythmum continet lex temporum. 104 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: eo modo loca metimur, non tempora. 105 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: . . . spatio brevis syllabae metiri spatium longae syllabae atque id duplum dicere. ita metimur spatia carminum spatiis versuum et spatia versuum spatiis pedum et spatia pedum spatiis syllabarum et spatia longarum spatiis brevium . . . sed neque ita comprehenditur certa mensura temporis, quandoquidem fieri potest ut ampliore spatio temporis personet versus brevior, si productius pronuntietur, quam longior, si correptius. 106 Pace von Herrmann 1992, 119/2008, 124 (tr. mod.): “The experience of the self, that I am the one who can arbitrarily extend enunciated syllables, words, or verses [as in Conf. XI.26], affords the insight that the extension of time is a self-extension of the mind (die Dehnung der Zeit das Sicherstrecken des Geistes).”

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Confessions XI.107 It is precisely the reverse. It is because the celestial revolutions in Confessions XI.23108 fail to grasp a veracious measure (certa mensura) of time-itself (ipsum tempus); and because the movements of solitary bodies in XI.24 fail to grasp a veracious measure of time-itself; and because the vagaries of late-antique speech-acts in XI.26 fail to grasp a veracious measure of timeitself; it is from all this that Augustine then writes: . . . it seems to me that time is nothing else but a dilation—but of what, I do not know, and would be shocked if it is not the soul-itself . . . That I measure time, I know. But I do not measure the future, because it is-notyet—and I do not measure present-time, because it extends into no space of time—nor do I measure the past, because it no-longer-is. Thus—what do I measure? Is it times passing—not past? So I have said. inde mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem; sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi. . . . tempus metior, scio; sed non metior futurum, quia nondum est, non metior praesens, quia nullo spatio tenditur, non metior praeteritum, quia iam non est. quid ergo metior? an praetereuntia tempora, non praeterita? sic enim dixeram. (XI.26.33) Here again—the analytics of present-time (XI.15.18–20); and here again—the sense of passing time (XI.16.21). 13.5

Sensation and Originary Temporal Mensuration (Conf. XI.27–28) In what way does αἴσθησις grasp the πρῶτος χρόνος? — F. Nietzsche 109

It is essential to observe: Augustine’s ‘dilation’ (distentio) will simultaneously illuminate the most ‘subjective’ appearances of time, i.e. tempus as a 107 Pace O’Donnell 1992, III:292: “The present passage marks the most original feature of [Augustine’s] theory, what might be called its ‘idealism’: locating time in consciousness.” 108 Recall the discussion of the proem to Aug. Sol. in 5.3. 109 Cit. Porter 2000, 137 (tr. mod.). Porter (2000, 137–38) writes: “[Nietzsche] means the constituent parts of ancient rhythm and thus the whole phenomenon of rhythm . . . That is the guiding question of Nietzsche’s inquiry, as it was for the ancient rhythmicians.” And if Nietzsche’s (Aristoxenan) αἴσθησις and πρῶτος χρόνος are replaced by Augustine’s sensus and spatium temporis, this is also—I suggest—at the back of Augustine’s time-question in Conf. XI.27– 28: In what way does sensus grasp a spatium temporis?

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­sense-affective, indeterminate longum tempus or mora temporis (→ vagaries of durée), and the most ‘objective’ appearances of time, i.e. tempus as a senseaffective, determinate quantum or spatium temporis (→ temporal technics). Yet it is not, immediately, the question of the possibility of longum tempus that drives Augustine to formulate ‘dilation’—though the question of this possibility is, as argued above, at the root of his time-investigation. Rather, it is immediately the question of the possibility of a quantum of tempus—which is to say, of a veracious ‘space of time,’ of a temporal inexistence (on the analytics of praesens tempus-contuitus) which yet tracks and illuminates the hypertransitive ‘times’ of motus omnis-contuitus—that issues in Augustine’s articulation of distentio.110 As the originary condition for any sense of indeterminate intervals of time (sentimus intervalla temporum, XI.16.21) and for any intention of determinate spaces of time (spatiis temporum, quantum illud ad illud sit, XI.27.36)—i.e. as the condition of possibility of that comparatio or conlatio of temporal impresences or inexistences (on the analytics of praesens tempus-contuitus) without which ‘times’ cannot be rendered determinate in any sense—distentio is not articulated as a negation of technics of time-division, such as the water-clock that Augustine alludes to in Confessions XI.2.2, or of the astronomical and mechanized time-divisions that he incorporates in XI.15.20 (e.g. ‘year,’ ‘twentyfour hours’). To the contrary: as the originary condition of possibility of the veracious constitution of any longum tempus out of “a multitude of motions” (XI.11.13); as the originary locus of any veracious measure of time (certa mensura temporis, XI.26.33) which remains, in contuitus, constitutively linked to the hyper-transitivity of praesens tempus and motus omnis: Augustine’s ‘dilation’ is a precondition for the emergence of temporal technics and those astronomical and mechanistic time-divisions which track the ‘times’ constituted by motus omnis indefinitely towards the imperceptible, hyper-instantaneous ‘times’ or particles of time (minutissimas momentorum) that Augustine gestures towards in XI.15.20. It is also imperative to note that it is relative to the phenomenon of the constitution of a veracious space of time, which is at once the acquisition of a certa mensura of time-itself (in animo . . . per sensus, XI.18.23),111 that Augustine proceeds, in Confessions XI.27–28, with his proto-phenomenological analyses

110 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: nonne tibi confitetur anima mea confessione veridica metiri me tempora? . . . metior motum corporis tempore: item ipsum tempus nonne metior? 111 Aug. Conf. XI.18.23: imaginibus . . . quae in animo velut vestigia per sensus praetereundo fixerunt.

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of hearing “the voice of a body” (vox corporis, XI.27.34),112 and of reciting verses he has committed to memory. That is to say, the ‘phenomenology’ of time that is beautifully elaborated in Confessions XI.27–28 is manifestly not a ‘pure phenomenology’ of tempus,113 and it is manifestly not presented as an exhaustive ‘phenomenology’ of tempus. This is evident in the drastic shifts in tonality from Confessions XI.27–28 to XI.29. This is evident in the contrasts between the ‘phenomenology’ articulated here, and Augustine’s immanentist analyses of the “time-itself” (ipso tempore, X.3.4) of his confession in Confessions X,114 first as memory and then as incessant temptation (sine ullo interstitio, X.28.39).115 Or again, this is evident in the contrasts between Confessions XI’s dispassionate ‘phenomenology’ of time, and the ‘phenomenologies’ of abject time in the wake of a death in Confessions IV, or during Augustine’s indecisions in Confessions VI and VIII. But most decisively, Augustine’s proto-phenomenological analyses in Confessions XI.27–28: (i) strictly and resolutely seek to illuminate the condition of possibility of the originary constitution of a certa mensura of ipsum tempus, which Augustine fails to acquire in Confessions XI.23–26, and which he comes to identify with a veracious, sensualist spatium temporis in ‘dilation’; and (ii) differ in certain respects from his ‘phenomenology’ of predictive expectation in XI.18.24, in the instance of a sunrise (see 5.3), though predictive expectation, no less than enactive expectation, could serve to exhibit Augustine’s ‘dilation.’ It should also be noted that in Confessions XI.18.24, Augustine explicitly refers to his analysis of predictive expectation—as with, for instance, his analysis of cantus in Confessions XII.29 (see 9.5)—as an exemplum. Augustine also indicates his use of an exemplum in Confessions XI.23.29 (in a phrase that seems to recollect one of Lucretius’ couplets in De Rerum Natura II),116 in his discussion 112 Cf. Mar. Gramm. 2.1: ‘Vox’ est aer ictus auditu percipibilis, quantum in ipso est. 113 Ricœur (1984, 83) observes this: “There is . . . no pure phenomenology of time in Augustine.” 114 Aug. Conf. X.3.4: ecce in ipso tempore confessionum mearum. 115 Aug. Conf. X.28.39: numquid non temptatio est vita humana super terram sine ullo interstitio? 116 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.23.29: dona hominibus videre in parvo communes notitias rerum parvarum atque magnarum; Lucr. Rer.nat. II.123–24: dumtaxat rerum magnarum parva potest res | exemplare dare et vestigia notitiai.

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of celestial movement and ‘times.’117 It is crucial to recognize that the protophenomenological analyses in Confessions XI.27–28 are also exempli, and are exempli that explicitly address—not the sense-affective constitution of a longum tempus as such—but specifically the originary (i.e. pre-mechanistic) constitution of a veracious temporal quantum. (And Augustine establishes the fact that originary mensuration is pre-mechanistic mensuration—i.e. mensuration without recourse to “a sundial or a water-clock” (horologio vel clepsydra)—in De Rhythmo I.)118 In Augustine’s analyses of this originary mode of ‘constitution,’ the sense-affective or sense-imaginal condition of possibility of any ‘lapse of time’ (mora temporis) or ‘long time’ (longum tempus) or ‘space of time’ (spatium temporis) is also—but only indirectly—characterized. This is because Augustine’s exempli are specifically calibrated to the dilational constitution of a temporal quantum—i.e. to ‘grasping’ and ‘enacting’ a certa mensura that discrete physical movements (while conditioning, within the totality of motus omnis), and that speech (while manifesting, within the totality of motus omnis), failed to provide him. Yet it is, recall—“so I have said” (XI.26.33)—the sense of passing time that leads Augustine into his much-cited exempli in Confessions XI.27–28. And though the privileged ‘dilational’ procedures here—the constitution of a certa mensura in metric recitation (or silence), i.e. in premeditated and pre-quantified repetition—are rarefied, still Augustine’s leitfaden of sensus—i.e. of contuitus, of a praesens de praesentibus that is co-constituted by motus omnis—is by no means lost sight of. The decisive inadequacy of the sense of passing time to itself (as ‘pure’ presence) constitute a space of time, however—and thus, more acutely, a veracious temporal quantum—is precisely its constitutive link to ‘presence’ in the hyper-transitive sense of present-time. That is to say, Augustine’s dilational problem of sensus in the most restrictive sense of contuitus is precisely the reflective problem of tempora as constituted by motus omnis: “Times never stand” (XI.11.13).119

117 Aug. Conf. XI.18.24: loquatur mihi aliquod exemplum tanta rerum numerositas; XI.23.29: an vero, si cessarent caeli lumina . . . cum haec diceremus, non et nos in tempore loqueremur aut essent in verbis nostris aliae longae syllabae, aliae breves, nisi quia illae longiore tempore sonuissent, istae breviore? deus, dona hominibus videre in parvo communes notitias rerum parvarum atque magnarum. 118 Aug. Rhyth. I.13.27: . . . utrum si quisquam mora unius horæ currat, et alius deinceps duarum, possis non inspecto horologio vel clepsydra, vel aliqua hujuscemodi temporum notatione sentire illos duos motus, quod unus simplus, alius duplus sit. 119 Aug. Conf. XI.11.13: temporibus numquam stantibus.

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In Confessions XI.27.34, this ‘times’-formulation from XI.11.13 is reprised in Augustine’s analysis of hearing the voice of a body (vox corporis)—Husserl’s preferred analysis in the Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness,120 incidentally, though in those lectures corporeity is ‘reduced’ or methodologically deferred as a condition of the phenomenality of any tone (Ton). And to give some indication of how Augustine’s proto-phenomenological operations on vox are also, in this decisive regard, anti-phenomological, it suffices to adduce a post-Confessions epistle in which he refers back to his early dialogue, De Rhythmo (c. 388/9).121 In Epistle 101 (c. 408/9),122 Augustine observes that “in all the movements of things (omnibus rerum motibus)”—we will of course recall his formulation of motus omnis, at Confessions XI.23.29123—“the potencies of number are most easily analyzed by way of voices (in vocibus).”124 This sentence cannot, of course, be superimposed on the last paragraphs of Augustine’s time-investigation, in which—for instance—there is no trace of ‘the potencies of number’ per se. But the analytical transparency of vox in Epistle 101, relative to ‘all the movements of things,’ is pertinent. It alerts us to the fact that vox corporis has been selected as, and serves as, a privileged instance of ‘the movements of things’ in Confessions XI, so that Augustine can write offhandedly in XI.28.36 that “we traverse songs and verses . . . and the dimensions of movements in thought, and report on spaces of times.”125 For as 120 Husserl 1971, 33–34: “Every tone itself has a temporal extension: with the actual sounding I hear it as now. With its continued sounding, however, it has an ever new now, and the tone actually preceding is changing into something past. . . . It begins and stops, and the whole unity of its duration, the unity of the whole process in which it begins and ends, ‘proceeds’ to the end in the ever more distant past.” 121 Zarb (1934, 87) dates Aug. Rhyth. to 387–390; Mutzenbecher (1984, xvii) to 388/90. 122 Cf. Marrou 1983, 580–83: “Les deux éditions du livre vie du De Musica.” 123 Aug. Conf. XI.23.29: cur enim non potius omnium corporum motus sint tempora? 124 Aug. Epist. 101.3: in omnibus rerum motibus, quid numeri valeant, facilius consideratur in vocibus. 125 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: peragimus cogitando carmina et versus . . . motionumque dimensiones quaslibet et de spatiis temporum . . . renuntiamus; cf. IV.16.30 (cit. Burton 2007, 78): quidquid de arte loquendi et disserendi, quidquid de dimensionibus figurarum et de musicis et de numeris . . .; X.12.19: continet memoria numerorum dimensionumque rationes et leges innumerabiles; XI.24.31: et si quid aliud nostra dimensio sive comprehenderit sive existimaverit, ut dici solet plus minus . . .  Cf. also Burton’s (2007, 78–79) remarks on dimensio and numerus in the Confessions, which he takes to be linked to geometria and arithmetica respectively. As the preceding references suggest, however—and the repetition of dimensio in Conf. XI, with a clear reference to temporal mensuration—this link is not exclusive. It is not only the

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we have seen in chapters 10 and 11, vox in Confessions XI is not originarily regarded as a ‘phenomenon,’ but rather as a species of physical movement. It is in light of this that we can return to Augustine as he turns, towards the end of Confessions XI, to the temporal appearance of vox: The voice of a body begins to sound and sounds and still sounds, and now it ceases—and already there is silence, and that voice is past and is no longer a voice. It was future before it sounded and could not be measured, because as-yet-it-was-not—and now it cannot be measured, because it-no-longer-is. Thus, then when it was sounding it could be measured, because there was [still] then what-could-be-measured [viz. ­praesens]. But even then it did not stand still, for it was going and passingaway. vox corporis incipit sonare et sonat et adhuc sonat, et ecce desinit, iamque silentium est, et vox illa praeterita est et non est iam vox. futura erat antequam sonaret, et non poterat metiri quia nondum erat, et nunc non potest quia iam non est. tunc ergo poterat cum sonabat, quia tunc erat quae metiri posset. sed et tunc non stabat; ibat enim et praeteribat. (XI.27.34) As suggested with motus omnis in Confessions XII.8.8, so with sensus at the end of book XI: motus omnis and the sense-affective link to motus omnis, in praesens tempus, ‘condition’ time-itself yet do not ‘found’ time-itself. Distentio depends upon sensus carnis as contuitus, and thereby, is originarily and incommutably linked to motus omnis. But this ‘objectivizing,’ constitutive link to motus omnis proves an “uncanny anchoring.”126 The curse of the privileged presence of the presence of present things is the curse of present-time as such: sensation ‘proper,’ and presence ‘proper,’ and times ‘proper,’ never stand. The sense of passing time—introduced at XI.16.21 and reprised at XI.21.27 and XI.26.33—has led Augustine into the ‘dilation’-analyses in XI.27–28. This sensus is Augustine’s first and last hope for constituting a mora temporis and a veracious spatium temporis on the order of praesens, sensu stricto (i.e. praesens space of figures (geometria), but also the space of time, that is susceptible to measure, in the Confessions. 126 Lyotard 2000, 73. Cf. Verbeke’s (1958, 79) sentences on “la splendeur instable du monde corporel” in Augustine.

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as contuitus, praesens as praesens tempus). But in XI.27.34 this hope collapses. Augustine’s immanentist analytic of vox temporalis as praesens, in this section, reproduces and heightens his analytics of praesens tempus in XI.15.18–20: not only is the condition of praesens tempus hyper-transitivity, but the condition of (originary) temporal mensuration (as comparatio/conlatio) is temporal impresence. That is to say, the sense of passing time (tempus praeteriens) fails, in this paragraph, to constitute a space of time (spatium temporis), and thus, the possibility of a rigorous temporal measure (certa mensura temporis), because (α) despite Augustine’s desperate gesture here—“while passing the sound was extending into some space of time (spatium temporis)” (XI.27.34)127—vox corporis nevertheless succumbs to the analytics of praesens tempus; and (β) despite Augustine’s naïve128 (and surely anticipatory) suggestion, on introducing the sense of passing time, that “we sense (sentimus) intervals of times and we compare them with-themselves” (XI.16.21),129 he here demonstrates that the duplex condition of originary temporal mensuration (comparatio/conlatio) is impresence. Since “times never stand” (XI.11.13), not only is it impossible to measure a temporal presence (as present-time) ‘with-itself’; and not only is it impossible to measure a temporal presence (as present-time) with another temporal presence; and not only is it impossible to measure one temporal presence (as present-time) against a temporal impresence. Rather, the wholly unforgiving result of originary temporal mensuration, relative to the analytics of praesens tempus and the sounding of a vox corporis in Confessions XI.27.34, is this: only a past (and thus impresent) sound can be measured, and it can only be measured against a past (and thus impresent) sound. A spectral procedure—to measure impresence against impresence! Yet termination is the precondition for temporal determination (in the mode of originary temporal

127 Aug. Conf. XI.27.34: . . . praeteriens enim tendebatur in aliquod spatium temporis quo metiri posset, quoniam praesens nullum habet spatium. 128 And Aug. Rhyth. II.3.3 places it beyond all doubt, that this is a feigned naïvety: Num igitur potest sibi una syllaba comparari? Nam omnem comparationem, nisi tu aliud putes, singularitas fugit. 129 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: sentimus intervalla temporum et comparamus sibimet.

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comparatio), and “when [a voice] has ended”—that is, can be measured—“itno-longer-is”—that is, cannot be measured as presence.130 The sense of passing time is not, because of this, denied as an originary sensation; and the sense of passing time is not, because of this, eliminated from the temporal analyses which follow; and the sense of passing time is not, because of this, rejected as (possibly) constituting, simpliciter, the originary sensation of indeterminate ‘intervals of times’ (intervalla temporum). Yet in the last sentence of XI.27.34, the sense of passing time (tempus praeteriens) is declared powerless—precisely because of its exclusive link to present-time— to constitute a certa mensura of time, and a veracious space of time: Thus we measure neither future times nor past times nor present times nor passing times—and yet we measure times. nec futura ergo nec praeterita nec praesentia nec praetereuntia tempora metimur, et metimur tamen tempora. (XI.27.34) In this last sentence of XI.27.34, the ‘improper’—yet co-originary—sense of ‘times’ and ‘presence’ that surfaced in XI.20.26 resurfaces, though this ‘improper’ sense is not yet decisive. Rather, in Confessions XI.27.35, it is initially sensus that is prominent. The veracity of temporal mensuration that distentio achieves here and illuminates is linked to and depends upon sensus’ tracking the hyper-transitivity of praesens tempus (← motus omnis), but it also depends upon sensus’ veracious ‘infixion’ (infigere) of praesens tempus (as tempus praeteriens) in the imaginal ‘impresence’ of memoria. The condition for this ‘infixion’ is of course not intellectus or mens, but anima-animus as vita corporis (see 11.2). Distentio is assigned to the animus in the sense of animus that denotes a sub-phenomenal haerere to the body for humans and beasts (see 8.2), and in the sense that gives rise to memoria (as a quasi-foris) for humans and beasts (see 8.3). As Augustine writes in De Rhythmo VI: “To each living thing (animanti) . . . is given a sense of

130 Aug. Conf. XI.27.34: cum autem finita fuerit, iam non erit. Augustine appends this new finding to his previous analytics of praesens tempus, in Conf. XI.27.34: et metimur tamen tempora, nec ea quae nondum sunt [= futurum tempus], nec ea quae iam non sunt [= praeteritum tempus], nec ea quae nulla mora extenduntur [= praesens tempus], nec ea quae terminos non habent [= tempus praeteriens].

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positions and times (sensus locorum temporumque).”131 Distentio is merely the term Augustine selects to designate a ‘sense of times’ in the human animus. 13.6

“The Verse Is Sensed by a Clear Sensation” (Conf. XI.27)

Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm.132 Augustine is an old hand at quantitative analysis, and compared to the array of secular verse he deconstructs and reconstructs in books I to V of De Rhythmo,133 this line, which he also analyzes in De Rhythmo VI, is simple.134 The simplicity of Ambrose’s metre increases its usefulness, however: this foot produces a highly regular effect on what Cicero calls “the ear’s measure” (aurium mensura).135

131 Cf. Aug. Rhyth. VI.7: “To each living thing in its own species (unicuique animanti in genere proprio), in its proportion to the totality, is given a sense of positions and times (sensus locorum temporumque), so that . . . its age is determined in proportion to the totality of age (universi saeculi), whose part it is”; Arist. Gen.corr. 2.10 (336b): “The time-spans, i.e. the lives (καὶ οἱ χρόνοι καὶ οἱ βίοι) of each (ἑκάστων) kind of living thing have a number, and are thereby distinguished. For there is an order for everything (πάντων γάρ ἐστι τάξις), and every life and time-span is measured by a period (καὶ πᾶς βίος καὶ χρόνος μετρεῖται περιόδῳ), though this is not the same for all: some are measured by a shorter (ἐλάττονι), some by a longer (πλείονι) period.” 132 Diacritics here per O’Donnell 1992, III:293. Cf. Aug. Conf. IX.6.14: munera tua tibi confiteor, domine deus meus, creator omnium; IX.12.32: recordatus sum veridicos versus Ambrosii tui. tu es enim, deus, creator omnium; X.34.52: cum autem et de ipsa laudare te norunt, deus creator omnium, adsumunt eam in hymno tuo. 133 Cf. Marrou 1983, 580–81: “les vers cités en exemple par les livres II–V [of Aug. Rhyth.] sont empruntés à des auteurs classiques païens, Catulle, Horace, Virgile, ou au manuel scolaire de Terentianus le Maure; le seul exemple utilisé par le livre VI est un vers de saint Ambrose . . . Deus Creator omnium.” 134 Aug. Rhyth. VI.2.2: deus creator omnium, istos quatuor iambos quibus constat, et tempora duodecim ubinam esse arbitreris, id est, in sono tantum qui auditur, an etiam in sensu audientis qui ad aures pertinet, an in actu etiam pronuntiantis, an quia notus versus est, in memoria quoque nostra hos numeros esse fatendum est? 135 Cic. Orat. III.47.183: . . . aurium mensura, quod est acrius iudicium et certius; cf. Part. 6.18: Numeros [i.e. rhythmic quantities and periods] aures ipsae metiuntur . . . Cf. also Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.116: Optime autem de illa iudicant aures, quae plena sentiunt et parum expleta desiderant . . . ; IX.4.118: Iam vero spatia ipsa, quae in hace quidem parte plurimum valent, quod possunt nisi aurium habere iudicium?

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But regardless, here—as in his analytics of praesens tempus—it is not the complexity of the metric that determines the validity of Augustine’s reflection. Thus, he proceeds: This verse of eight syllables alternates between short and long syllables . . . I recite them and report on them and so it is, insofar as the verse is sensed by a clear sensation. Insofar as the sensation is clear, I measure the long syllables by the short and I sense that the long is twice as long as the short.136 versus iste octo syllabarum brevibus et longis alternat syllabis . . . pronuntio et renuntio, et ita est quantum sentitur sensu manifesto. quantum sensus manifestus est, brevi syllaba longam metior eamque sentio habere bis tantum. (XI.27.35)137 This is no ‘idealist’ procedure, and this is no strictly ‘phenomenological’ procedure: the constitution of a veracious measure of time-itself commences, here, with sensus. While the definite quantum of a space of time may not be phenomenally originary—it is preceded, recall, in Confessions XI.15–16 by the indeterminate sensation of a ‘lapse’ or ‘interval of time’—yet the quantum in originary temporal mensuration is originarily disclosed to sensus. Augustine will not retreat from this finding, and in this finding, he is preceded, not by Plotinus’ esoteric tractate on eternity and time, but by a ‘sensualist’ commonplace in the rhetorical treatises of Cicero—indeed, by a commonplace that originates, at the very latest, with Aristotle’s protégé, Aristoxenus.138 A rapid glance at this ‘sensualist’ notion of originary temporal mensuration in antiquity—i.e. of the opinion that rudimentary time-intervals are disclosed to sensus—should suffice to establish the provenance of Augustine’s manouevres in Confessions XI.27.35. For while interpretations of time in Confessions XI typically refer us to the unidentified, Latinized libri Platonicorum that Augustine had on hand in Milan in Confessions VII; Augustine also recounts, in Confessions IV, his impressions of a Latin translation of Aristotle’s Categories that he obtained in Carthage in 136 Note that Augustine simplifies the syllabic time-quanta here: Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.84; Mar. Gramm. 5.1–26. Also, I am very grateful to Gerard O’Daly and Ann Douglas Enghauser for advising me on the translation of these sentences. 137 Cf. Isid. Etym. I.16.1–2, I.17.1, I.18.4. 138 Aristoxenus’ connexion to Aristotle is remarked at, for instance, Cic. Tusc. I.18.41.

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374 or 375.139 Significantly, this fixes the Categories140 as the only Aristotelian work that we can be certain Augustine analyzed and discussed.141 (We will recall, from 9.5, that Augustine appears to make use of the Categories— apropos of time—at the end of Confessions XII.) And no less significantly, in the Categories—like Augustine in Confessions XI, but unlike Plotinus in Enneads III.7—Aristotle links quantitative enunciation to temporal mensuration and indeed, to his time-concept as such.142 It is therefore from this Aristotelian text, and then by way of Aristoxenus’ Elementa Rhythmica (which Augustine may well have seen excerpted),143 that we can arrive at Cicero (with whose rhetorical treatises, “it goes without saying,” Augustine was thoroughly acquainted),144 and finally, at Quintilian (with whose Institutio Oratoria it is “not unlikely” Augustine was acquainted).145

139 Aug. Conf. IV.16.28: et quid mihi proderat quod annos natus ferme viginti, cum in manus meas venissent aristotelica quaedam, quas appellant decem categorias (quarum nomine, cum eas rhetor Carthaginiensis, magister meus, buccis typho crepantibus commemoraret et alii qui docti habebantur, tamquam in nescio quid magnum et divinum suspensus inhiabam), legi eas solus et intellexi? 140 Or possibly—I am sceptical—the Paraphrasis Themistiana. Cf. Carter 2011, 317 n. 52: “The possibility that Augustine had on hand Marius Victorinus’s complete translation of Aristotle’s [Categories] cannot be . . . ruled out. [It has nevertheless been claimed] that the text used by Augustine is identical to the received Paraphrasis Themistiana (PseudoAugustini Categoriae decem), which may be reliably traced back to either a paraphrase of Aristotle’s work penned by one of Themistius’ circle, or possibly a certain Albinus, mentioned by Boethius in his commentaries on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione.” 141 Aug. Conf. IV.16.28: quas cum contulissem cum eis qui se dicebant vix eas magistris eruditissimis, non loquentibus tantum sed multa in pulvere depingentibus, intellexisse, nihil inde aliud mihi dicere potuerunt quam ego solus apud me ipsum legens cognoveram. 142 This is missed by Stock (1996, 234), for instance: “[Augustine’s] arguments concerning time can be compared with those of Aristotle’s Physics 4.1–14 [sic], Plotinus’ Enneads 3.7 (45), and Stoic views; however, there is no parallel in earlier discussions for his combination of the everyday experience of time with the temporal relations of speaking.” As I will briefly demonstrate here, there is a ‘parallel in earlier discussions for [Augustine’s] combination of the everyday experience of time with the temporal relations of speaking’: one that dates back to Aristotle’s Categories. 143 At very least, Augustine would have been alerted to Aristoxenus’ importance by Cic. Tusc. I.10.19–20, I.18.41, etc. 144 Hagendahl 1967, 553. 145 Hagendahl 1967, 676: “The question of whether he knew Quintilian [still results in] . . . a non liquet. . . . It seems to me to be not unlikely that he had some reminiscences of the institutio oratoria.”

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Aristotle’s Categories In Aristotle’s Categories, as in his Physics, time is continuous.146 Aristotle states this several ways in the Categories, but perhaps most forcefully in this way: “Present-time (νῦν χρόνος) is continuously linked (συνάπτει) to past and futuretime.”147 This continuity is conceived in the Categories—as in Confessions XI— as a hyper-transitivity: “For no part of time (χρόνου μορίων) endures or remains (ὑπομένει).”148 Yet temporal continuity and hyper-transitivity, per se, by no means provide Aristotle with a sufficient condition for originary temporal mensuration. For that, temporal discontinuity and dimension are also required, and in the Categories, temporal discontinuity is provided, indifferently, by number (ἀριθμός) and by speech (λόγος).149 Whereas Aristotle deploys number in Physics IV, in the Categories he selects speech. And the hyper-transitivity of Aristotle’s χρόνος, of course, also obtains for his discontinuous λόγος: “For none of the parts (μορίων) of speech endures or remains (ὑπομένει); pronounce them, and they are gone.”150 This notwithstanding, it is temporally regulated enunciation that Aristotle adduces as a privileged instance of the discontinuity and primitive durativity that possibilize originary temporal mensuration, with Aristotle writing: Speech is a manifest, a disclosed quantum or expanse [of time] (ποσόν ἐστιν ὁ λόγος, φανερόν), inasmuch as it is being measured (καταμετρεῖται) in long and short syllables . . . whose parts (μόρια) are not continuously linked (συνάπτει) by a common boundary.151

146 Arist. Cat. VI (4b): “Of quantities that are continuous (συνεχὲς) [we may here instance] line, superficies and body, to which time and place (χρόνος καὶ τόπος) may be added.” Cf. Boeth. In Cat. II: Continuo vera, ut linea, superficies, corpus. Amplius autem et præter hæc est tempus et locus. 147 Arist. Cat. VI (5a). Cf. Boeth. In Cat. II: præsens enim tempus et præteritum et futurum copulat. 148 Arist. Cat. VI (5a). Cf. Boeth. In Cat. II: Sed neque illæ quæ temporis sunt, non enim permanent particulæ temporis, quod autem non est permanens . . .  149 Arist. Cat. VI (4b): “Thus number is discontinuous, and the same may be said about speech.” Cf. Boeth. In Cat. II: Quapropter numerus quidem discretorum est, similiter autem et oratio discretorum est. 150 Arist. Cat. VI (5a). Cf. Boeth. In Cat. II: Sed et oratio similiter, non enim permanent particulæ ejus, sed et dictum est et non amplius sumi hoc . . . 151 Arist. Cat. VI (4b).

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Now, it is likely that Augustine examined this passage of the Categories in the late 4th century, in Latin translation, before he wrote Confessions XI at the turn of the 5th century. And how might this Aristotelian passage have appeared in Augustine’s unidentifiable152 Latin copy of the Categories?153 A rough idea can perhaps be gathered from Boethius’ early 6th-century Categories commentary, in which Boethius translates the above sentences in this way: Quod autem oratio [i] quantitas sit manifestum est, [ii] mensuratur enim [iii] syllaba brevi et longa . . . ad nullum enim communem terminum particulæ ejus copulantur.154 Boethius’ Latin Categories preserves for us, here, a (post-Augustinian) timeformulation which is close, lexically, to Augustine’s in Confessions XI: [i] quantum sensus manifestus est, [iii] brevi syllaba longam [ii] metior eamque sentio habere bis tantum. (XI.27.35) The resemblances are suggestive, albeit associative. When we range Aristotle’s (post-Augustinian) Latin clause, ‘quantitas sit manifestum est,’ beside Augustine’s pivotal phrase, ‘quantum sensus manifestus est,’ however, we notice that Augustine’s sensus remains unstated in Aristotle’s Categories. And it is for this disclosive condition—Augustine’s sensus, Aristotle’s αἴσθησις— that we can turn from Aristotle to his protégé, Aristoxenus.

152 Cf. Minio-Paluello 1945, 65–68; O’Donnell 1992, II:265. 153 It is neither my intent nor my desire here to affect, much less decide, the question of whether Augustine had access to a Latin translation of Aristotle’s Categories (possibly Varro’s, possibly Marius Victorinus’) or rather to a paraphrase (possibly the Paraphrasis Themistiana); and in any event, that question could not be decided by Boethius’ 6th-century translation of the Categories. Nevertheless, since that question is as yet undecided; since neither Varro’s nor Marius Victorinus’ (reported) translations of Aristotle’s Categories is still extant; since the Paraphrasis Themistiana yields no particularly illuminating parallels to Augustine’s timeinvestigation in Conf. XI; and since—to my awareness—there has been no recourse to Boethius’ translation of Aristotle’s Categories to help clarify the sense and provenance of Augustine’s time-investigation: the ‘rough idea’ I present, here, of a (credible) relevance of Aristotle’s Latinized Categories to Augustine’s Confessions XI, seems justified. 154 Boeth. In Cat. II.

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Aristoxenus’ Elementa Rhythmica Aristoxenus opens book II of his Elementa Rhythmica by stating that “rhythm is concerned with times (τοὺς χρόνους) and the sensation (αἴσθησιν) of times.”155 As Augustine appeals to simplex, duplex and triplex ‘times’ in Confessions XI156 to establish a primitive metric of temporal quanta—a metric that is not so much as alluded to in Plotinus, Enneads III.7—so Aristoxenus assigns “the term ‘primary (πρῶτος) time-length’ ” to a “time-length that cannot be further subdivided,” then “‘diseme’ (δίσημος) to that which measures twice as long,” and so on.157 And what fixes a limit to Aristoxenus’ primary time-length? It is a “time-length which is too short to contain even . . . two syllables (μήτε δύο ξυλλαβαί).”158 (Augustine appears to invoke to this Aristoxenan definition in De Rhythmo II.)159 And how is this corpuscular time-length ‘disclosed’? 155 Ar. Rhyth. II.2. 156 Aug. Conf. XI.16.21: metimur etiam quanto sit longius aut brevius illud tempus quam illud, et respondemus duplum esse hoc vel triplum, illud autem simplum aut tantum hoc esse quantum illud; XI.21.27: neque enim dicimus simpla et dupla et tripla et aequalia, et si quid hoc modo in tempore dicimus nisi spatia temporum; XI.24.31: nam si et varie corpus aliquando movetur, aliquando stat, non solum motum eius sed etiam statum tempore metimur et dicimus . . . “duplo vel triplo stetit ad id quod motum est” et si quid aliud nostra dimensio sive comprehenderit sive existimaverit, ut dici solet plus minus. 157 Ar. Rhyth. II.10. Cf. Aug. Rhyth. II.3.3: . . . ita in syllabis, qua scilicet a brevi ad longam progredimur, longam duplum temporis habere debere: ac per hoc si spatium quod brevis occupat, recte unum tempus vocatur; spatium item quod longa occupat, recte duo tempora nominari. 158 Cf. Cens. Frag. XI: [unum] tempus est syllabae spatium, huius elementum brevis syllaba. 159 Aug. Rhyth. II.3.3: Non absurde igitur hoc in tempore quasi minimum spatii, quod brevis obtinet syllaba, unum tempus veteres [Aristoxenus?] vocaverunt. In the notes to his translation of Augustine’s De Musica (i.e. De Rhythmo), R.C. Taliaferro is less hesitant: “This [Rhyth. II.3.3] refers to the doctrine of the prótos chrónos, or primary time, of Aristoxenus.” Apropos of the temporal ‘minimum’ in Rhyth. II, cf. Aug. Rhyth. II.1.1: Age iam, saltem illud eloquere, utrum tu ipse per te numquam animadverteris in locutione nostra alias syllabas raptim et minime diu, alias autem productius et diutius enuntiari; II.3.3: Rursus hoc vide, quamlibet syllabam brevem minimeque diu pronuntiatam, et mox ut eruperit desinentem, occupare tamen in tempore aliquid spatii, et habere quamdam morulam suam. For other references to ‘the ancients’ in Rhyth. II, cf. Aug. Rhyth. II.4.4: Atqui scias, veteres pedem nuncupasse talem collationem sonorum; II.7.14: . . . nam si auctoritatem solam intueamur, is erit versus, quem versum dici voluit Asclepiades nescio qui, aut Archilochus, poetae scilicet veteres, aut Sappho poetria, et caeteri; II.11.21: Atqui scias veteres miscendos iudicasse istos pedes, et horum mixtione versus compositos con-

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What Aristoxenus simply calls “one time” (ἑνὸς χρόνου),160 and Marius Victorinus161 and Augustine still call “one time” (unum tempus),162 is—per Aristoxenus—“one of the appearances (φαινομένοων) that presents itself very readily to our senses (αἰσθήσει),” particularly when observing “movements of the voice (φονὴ κινεῖται) in speaking or singing, and of the body in its gestures (σῶμα σημαῖνόν).”163 Or again: “Sensation or sense-perception (αἴσθησις) will recognize this time-length.”164 Thus, Aristoxenan ‘rhythm’ is a science by which we “make [time-lengths] perceptible to the senses” (γνόριμον ποιοῦμεν τῇ αἰσθήσει),165 while Aristoxenus— like Quintilian and Augustine166—holds that “the same [principle] clearly obtains for syllables (ξυλλαβῶν) and for bodily signals.”167 And hereby, didisse . . . Quid ergo dubitamus consentire veteribus non eorum auctoritate, sed ipsa iam ratione victi . . .? 160 Ar. Rhyth. II.18. 161 Mar. Gramm. 5.26: In brevi syllaba tempus est unum, quia nihil morarum illic vox facit. In longa autem duo sunt, quia bis tantum quantum in brevi eadem vox detinetur. 162 With Augustine, perhaps, citing Aristoxenus on just this point: see again, Aug. Rhyth. II.3.3: Non absurde igitur hoc in tempore quasi minimum spatii, quod brevis obtinet syllaba, unum tempus veteres vocaverunt. Cf. also, Aug. Rhyth. II.3.3: . . . ita in syllabis, qua scilicet a brevi ad longam progredimur, longam duplum temporis habere debere: ac per hoc si spatium quod brevis occupat, recte unum tempus vocatur; spatium item quod longa occupat, recte duo tempora nominari; II.4.4: . . . siquidem in ea simplum ad duplum collatum esse video, id est unum tempus brevis syllabae ad duo tempora longae syllabae; II.4.5: . . . nam cum syllabae hunc modum acceperint, ut brevis unum tempus, longa duo habeat, cumque syllaba omnis aut brevis aut longa sit; etc. 163 Ar. Rhyth. II.11. 164 Ar. Rhyth. II.12. 165 Ar. Rhyth. II.16. 166 Cf. Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.139: Atqui corporis quoque motui sunt sua quaedam tempora et ad signandos pedes non minus saltationi quam modulationibus adhibetur musica ratio numerorum; Aug. Rhyth. I.13.27: Quid, si quispiam numerose plaudat, ita ut unus sonitus simplum, alter dumplum temporis teneat, quos iambos pedes vocant, eosque continuet atque contexat; alius autem ad eumdem sonum saltet, secundum ea scilicet tempora movens membra? nonne aut etiam dicas ipsum modulum temporum, id est quod simplum ad duplum spatia in motibus alternent, sive in illo plausu qui auditur, sive in illa saltatione quæ cernitur; aut saltem delecteris numerositate quam sentias, tametsi non possis numeros ejus dimensionis edicere? . . . illi qui hos numeros noverunt, sentiunt eos in plausu atque saltatione; VI.9.24: . . . et ‘sonantium’ nomen mutandum putem, quoniam si ‘corporales’ vocentur, manifestius significabunt etiam illos qui sunt in saltatione, et in cætero motu visibili. 167 Ar. Rhyth. II.11.

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I suggest, Aristoxenus identifies αἴσθησις—i.e. sensus—as the disclosive condition for Aristotle’s ‘manifest quantum or expanse’ of enunciative time in the Categories. Cicero’s Orator, etc. Cicero takes over this sensualist, Aristoxenan condition of primitive timelengths in his Latin rhetorical treatises. For instance, in those pages of the Orator that treat “the numbering and measuring of syllables,”168 Cicero at first indiscriminately assigns “some natural capacity for measuring all sounds (vocum omnium mensionem)” to the ear-itself or to the soul (aures ipsae . . . vel animus).169 It is because of this natural capacity that our auris/animus “judges (iudicat) . . . longer and shorter syllables,” “expects” (exspectat) the finish of a metrical period,170 and “senses” (sentit) when a metre has been interrupted or distorted.171 And whatever precise inflection Cicero’s animus may have in these pages, it is certainly not reason (ratio), since he specifies that primitive time-metrics are “not recognized by reason (ratione), but by nature and sensation (natura atque sensu).”172 (In De Rhythmo IV—as in De Rhythmo I: see 8.4—Augustine seems to recollect and approve this clarification in the Orator.)173 Cicero can thus later subsume auris and animus under the single term, sensus. “It is sensation (sensus),” he writes, that “judges” (iudicat) primitive time-intervals.174

168 Cic. Or. 43.147: . . . de syllabis propemodum dinumerandis et demetiendis loquemur. 169 Cic. Or. 53.177: . . . cum animos hominum aurisque pepulisset . . . Aures ipsae enim vel animus aurium nuntio naturalem quandam in se continet vocum omnium mensionem. Itaque et longiora et breviora iudicat et perfecta ac moderata semper exspectat . . .  170 Cf. Aug. Rhyth. IV.2.3: Non enim frustra sensus offenditur, cum omnium syllabarum nullo interposito silentio tempora singula exspectat . . .  171 Cic. Or. 53.178: Itaque et longiora et breviora iudicat et perfecta ac moderata semper exspectat; mutila sentit quaedam et quasi decurtata . . .  172 Cic. Or. 55.183: Neque enim ipse versus ratione est cognitus, sed natura atque sensu, quem dimensa ratio docuit quid acciderit; cf. 41.173: et tamen omnium longitudinem et brevitatem in sonis sicut acutarum graviumque vocum iudicium ipsa natura in auribus nostris collacavit; 60.203: quorum modum notat ars, sed aures ipsae tacito eum sensu sine arte definiunt. 173 Cf. Aug. Rhyth. IV.16.30: Ita enim naturali et communi sensu judicarent, quid disciplinæ norma præscriberet; VI.2.3: Idipsum ergo quidquid est, quo aut annuimus aut abhorremus, non ratione sed natura, cum aliquid sonat, ipsius sensus numerum voco. 174 Cic. Or. 55.183: Iudicat enim sensus; in quo est inicum quod accidit non agnoscere, si cur id accidat reperire nequeamus; cf. 56.187: . . . intervallorum longorum et brevium.

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Similarly, in his De Rhythmo, Augustine appeals more than once to the “judgement of sense” (iudicium sensus) of his protégé,175 and assigns the term ‘sensual’ (sensuales) to the highest genus of time-number which is not immortal, i.e. which is not apprehended by reason,176 in the specific instance of one singing Ambrose’s hymn, Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm.177 Augustine’s ‘sensual’ timenumbers, at De Rhythmo VI.9.23–24, have until this point in the dialogue been called ‘judicial’ time-numbers. He here determines, however, that they are ‘mortal’—and thus, ‘sensual.’ Under his sensual time-numbers, Augustine ranks corporeal, perceptual, memorial and processual time-numbers— i.e. the time-numbers of physical motus, of present-temporal sensus, of retentive memoria, and of protentive expectatio.178 The entire procedure of enunciating the temporally pre-regulated line, Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm, is thus— And in light of the fact that Augustine disputes Cicero’s De Finibus with Alypius and Nebridius in Milan, and cites the work at Conf. VI.16.26 (et disputabam cum amicis meis Alypio et Nebridio de finibus bonorum et malorum), compare: (i) Cic. Fin. II.36: quid iudicant [or: iudicat] sensus? dulce amarum, leve asperum, prope longe, stare movere, quadratum rotundum. (ii) Aug. Quant.anim. 33.71: Intendit se anima in tactum, et eo calida, frigida, aspera, lenia, dura, mollia, levia, gravia sentit atque discernit. Deinde innumerabiles differentias saporum, odorum, sonorum, formarum, gustando, olfaciendo, audiendo videndoque diiudicat. Atque in iis omnibus ea quae secundum naturam sui coporis sunt, adsciscit atque appetit; reiicit fugitque contraria. Removet se ab his sensibus certo intervallo temporum, et eorum motus quasi per quasdam ferias reparans, imagines rerum quas per eos hausit, secum catervatim et multipliciter versat, et hoc totum est somnus et somnia. 175 Aug. Rhyth. II.12.22: Verumtamen et in iis quatuor requiro iudicium sensus tui; VI.7.17: . . . versum pronuntio, num offendo ulla fraude iudicium sensus tui? Cf. Rhyth. II.12.23: Nam pro omni pede sex temporum, omnem pedem sex temporum poni posse, ita sensu interrogato iudices licet . . . Contexe igitur ista omnia atque ­pronuntia, vel me potius pronuntiante accipe, quo ad iudicandum liberior sensus vacet; IV.16.30: Ita enim naturali et communi sensu iudicarent, quid disciplinae norma praescriberet. Cf. Also Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.61: . . . aures continuam vocem secutae ductaeque velut prono decurrentis orationis flumine tum magis iudicant, cum ille impetus stetit et intuendi tempus dedit. 176 Aug. Rhyth. VI.9.24: Jam nunc, si placet, illi qui nobis subrepserant ad principatum obtinendum, sensuales nominentur, et judicialium nomen, quoniam est honoratius . . . 177 Aug. Rhyth. VI.9.23: Sed ego puto cum ille a nobis propositus versus canitur: “Deus creator omnium” . . . 178 Aug. Rhyth. VI.9.23: Sed ego puto cum ille a nobis propositus versus canitur: “Deus creator omnium”; nos eum et occursoribus illis numeris audire, et recordabilibus recognoscere, et progressoribus pronuntiare, et his judicialibus delectari, et nescio quibus aliis aestimare . . .

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in Augustine’s De Rhythmo VI, at least—a ‘sensual’ procedure. (Incidentally, this is in line with his allusion to numerus sensibilis, as opposed to numerus intellegibilis—i.e. ‘immortal number’—in Epistle 3,179 which Augustine wrote in 386.)180 And since retention-memoria and protention-expectatio are express In Rhyth. VI.9.24, Augustine revises this list in several, crucial ways: (α) he places (his re-named) ‘corporeal’ time-numbers (corporales) below the ‘perceptual’ time-numbers (occursoribus) of VI.9.23; (β) he re-designates the ‘judicial’ time-numbers (iudicialibus) of VI.9.23 as ‘sensual’ time-numbers (sensuales); and (γ) he designates the “I do not know what other” time-numbers (nescio quibus aliis) of VI.9.23 as ‘judicial’ time-numbers (iudicialium). Thus, per Aug. Rhyth. VI.9.23–24, the quantitative enunciation of Ambrose’s line— revisited in Conf. XI.17.35—necessarily involves these five, and only these five, modes of time-number: (i) corporeal time-numbers: the numerosity intrinsic to physical motus; (ii) perceptual time-numbers: the singularity intrinsic to praesens tempus in sensus; (iii) memorial time-numbers: the retentive contintuity (memoria as recordatio) necessary to utter any syllable, however short, much less a metric line (cf. Aug. Rhyth. VI.8.21); (iv) processual time-numbers: the protentive capacity (expectatio) necessary to utter any syllable, much less a metrically pre-distributed line; (v) sensual time-numbers: the sense-affective capacity to take pleasure or ‘offense’ in the distribution of time-intervals (quod fit in delectatione convenientiæ, et offensione absurditatis talium motionum sive affectionum, Aug. Rhyth. VI.9.24). All of this, Augustine stipulates, is ‘sensual.’ It is only a formal-metaphysical aestimatio of the pleasure (or offence) that is taken in time-intervals—in a word, ‘axiological’ timeanalysis—that is attributed to ‘reason’ here (et aliud est æstimare utrum recte an secus ista delectent, quod fit ratiocinando, Aug. Rhyth. VI.9.24). The remainder of Rhyth. VI is, in large part, devoted to precisely such an ‘axiological’ time-analysis. But it is Augustine’s sensualist time-analysis—which culminates in his Rhyth., as in his Conf., with Ambrose’s verse—that has been elaborated in books I to V of the Rhyth., and indeed, in the first half of book VI. 179 Aug. Epist. 3.2 is a very pertinent passage, in which Augustine contrasts “sensible number” (sensibilis numerus), by which he means the spatial—or, for us here, the temporal— “quantity of bodies or of parts of bodies” (sensibilis numerus [est] corporeorum vel corporum quantitas)—and “intelligible number” (numerus intellegibilis), which (so Augustine suggests, crediting the idea to Alypius) is susceptible to a positive, but not a negative infinity; whereas ‘sensible number’ is susceptible to a negative, but not a positive infinity. It is less the precise difference of numerus intellegibilis and numerus sensibilis in Epist. 3, than the fact of this difference that is of interest to us, since this is the crucial distinction in Aug. Rhyth. VI. 180 Divjak 2002, 1028.

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conditions of possibility of this ‘sensual’ enunciative procedure,181 it is no great liberty to claim a ‘distentio sensuum,’ and a ‘sensualist’ time-concept, for the De Rhythmo. Nor is it any great liberty to suggest that it is an Aristoxenan-Ciceronian182 iudicium sensus—possibly traceable to Augustine’s exposure, in Carthage, to Aristotle’s Latin Categories—that he relies on when he returns, in Confessions XI.27.35, to Ambrose’s short verse, Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm,183 and concludes: “I confidently report that, insofar as trust can be placed in a practiced sense (quantum exercitato sensu fiditur),184 this syllable is simplex, that duplex, in terms of the space of time (in spatio scilicet temporis).”185 These primitive— and impresent—‘spaces of time’ are here, as in De Rhythmo VI, ‘sensual.’ That is to say, the hyper-minimal—and impresent—‘spaces of time’ in Latin quantitative enunciation are disclosed to sensus, “insofar as the sensation is clear” (quantum sensus manifestus est, XI.27.35). Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria On the question of Augustine’s exposure to Quintilian, Harald Hagendahl “abides by a non liquet,” though it remains “not unlikely that he had some reminiscences of the Institutio Oratoria.”186 With the question of direct influence mooted, the rôle of sensus in Quintilian is in any case indicative of the Latin rhetorical culture within which Augustine was formed.

181 Already at Aug. Imm.anim. 3.3. 182 Which is not to say that contradictory—or superficially contradictory—passages on sensus and iudicium, in Cicero and Augustine, could not be adduced. Cf. for instance, Cic. Tusc. I.20.46: Quid? quod eadem mente res dissimillimas comprehendimus, ut colorem, saporem, calorem, odorem, sonum? quae numquam quinque nuntiis animus cognosceret, nisi ad eum omnia referrentur et is omnium iudex solus esset. 183 Aug. Conf. XI.27.35: “deus creator omnium”: versus iste octo syllabarum brevibus et longis alternat syllabis . . .  184 Cf. exercitatus sensus here and stilus exercitatus at Cic. Or. 44.150: “A practiced stilus (stilus exercitatus) will nevertheless readily find the [desirable] method of composition. For as the eye looks ahead in reading so in speaking the soul will foresee what is to follow (ut in legendi oculus sic animus in dicendo prospiciet quid sequatur), so that the linking of your final syllables (extremorum verborum) with your initial ones may not cause harsh or ‘gaping’ sounds (voces).” 185 Aug. Conf. XI.27.35: . . . fidenterque respondeo, quantum exercitato sensu fiditur, illam simplam esse, illam duplam, in spatio scilicet temporis. 186 Hagendahl 1967, 676.

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Quintilian addresses rhythm in book IX of the Institutio Oratoria, and he appeals—like Cicero—to “the ear’s measure” (aurium mensura),187 as well as to “the judgement of the ear” (aurium . . . iudicium),188 to determine the ‘space’ of syllabic and periodic time-intervals: No one would doubt that poetry has its origins in some natural impulse (impetu), and was generated by the ear’s measure (aurium mensura) and . . . by the observation of spaces of time (spatiorum observatione).189 Regarding the laws of rhythmic intervals, of course, it is not sensus that can judge—for Cicero, Quintilian, or Augustine. But regarding primitive time-intervals themselves, says Quintilian: The finest judge of those is the ear (optime . . . de illa iudicant aures), which senses (sentient) a fullness or lack of rhythm. . . . And moreover, with regard to such spaces of time themselves (spatia ipsa)—which are of such importance where rhythm is concerned—what could render judgement if not the ear (quod possunt nisi aurium habere iudicium)? Thus, for Quintilian,190 as for Cicero and Augustine,191 versification originates in sensus, not ratio. Moreover, Quintilian accedes that there are rhythmic matters that ratio cannot elucidate, but sensus can dictate: Perhaps I cannot offer a reason (rationem), yet I sense (sentiam) that this is better (melius). . . . Therefore, such questions must be referred back to sensation (ad sensum . . . referenda sunt).192 In Confessions XI.27.35, this is precisely what we witness: the time-rhythm of Ambrose’s verse is ‘referred back,’ by Augustine, ‘to sensation’ (ad sensum), precisely because time-rhythm originates in sensation.

187 Cf. Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.114: aurium mensura; Cic. Orat. III.47.183: aurium mensura. 188 Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.118: aurium . . . iudicium. 189 Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.114. 190 Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.114. 191 Cf. Cic. Or. 41.173, 55.183, 60.203; Aug. Rhyth. IV.16.30, VI.2.3. 192 Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.114.

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“Something Remains Infixed in My Memory” (Conf. XI.27)

It is astonishing that the rhetorico-philosophical provenance of Augustine’s repeated (if slightly varied) phrase, ‘sensus manifestus est,’ in this cresting paragraph of the time-investigation, has not been registered in the literature. But regardless of influences, Augustine here—momentarily—relies on the sense of passing time to itself constitute a space of time. That is to say, this sensus is not immediately subjected to the corrosive analytics of praesens tempus. The reprieve is nevertheless very brief, since Augustine proceeds: “I measure a long syllable by a short syllable,” and [a syllable’s] determination is its termination—thus what is it that I measure? . . . Both have sounded, both have vanished, have passed-into-thepast and no-longer-are—and still I measure . . . nor could I do this unless they had terminated and become determinate. So it is not the syllables themselves (which no-longer-are) that I measure, but something that remains infixed in my memory. eius autem finitio praeteritio est: quid ergo est quod metior? . . . ambae sonuerunt, avolaverunt, praeterierunt, iam non sunt. et ego metior . . . neque hoc possum, nisi quia praeterierunt et finitae sunt. non ergo ipsas quae iam non sunt, sed aliquid in memoria mea metior, quod infixum manet. (XI.27.35) Unlike the infinite cabinets of memoria that Augustine describes in Confessions X or the grotesqueries of phantasia that he glimpses in Confessions XII,193 here memoria is neither Augustine’s “insane refuge” nor his “fondement du temps,” as Éric Alliez asserts.194

193 Aug. Conf. X.8.15: haec omnia, cum dicerem, non ea videbam oculis, nec tamen dicerem, nisi montes et fluctus et flumina et sidera quae vidi et oceanum quem credidi intus in memoria mea viderem, spatiis tam ingentibus quasi foris viderem. nec ea tamen videndo absorbui quando vidi oculis, nec ipsa sunt apud me sed imagines eorum, et novi quid ex quo sensu corporis impressum sit mihi; XII.6.6: foedas et horribiles formas perturbatis ordinibus volvebat animus. 194 Alliez 1996, 135/1991, 199: “. . . the insane refuge of a Memory that lets itself be thought [in Augustine] as the foundation of time ( fondement du temps).”

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Rather, here in the culmination of the time-investigation, Augustine’s memory is introduced as a veracious perdurance of sensation.195 This is not, in Aristotle’s terminology, memoria as ‘recollection’ (ἀνάμνησις) but as ‘memory’ (μνήμη);196 or in Husserl’s terminology, this is not memoria as ‘recollection’ but as ‘retention.’197 In De Rhythmo VI, Augustine himself characterizes a mode of sense-dilated memory, i.e. “when a sound beats on our ears” even while “memory presents, as it were, the recent traces (recentia . . . vestigia)” of this very sound.198 Here, Augustine contrasts revocatio199 with what he calls recordatio: It is a different thing [than revocatio], I suggest, whereby we sense that the present motion of the soul has already existed at some time, that is, to recognize the recent movements of an act we are in the midst of when we ‘remember,’ which movements are certainly more vivid [than less-recent memory traces]. . . . Such a perception is recognition, and ‘retention.’ Est etiam aliud unde nos sentire arbitror praesentem motum animi aliquando iam fuisse, quod est recognoscere, dum recentes motus eius actionis in qua sumus cum recordamur, qui certe vivaciores sunt . . . et talis agnitio, recognitio est et recordatio.200 Recordatio is, here, a ‘presence of past things’ that—note well—we sense (nos sentire). And this sensual rudiment of ‘retention’ is articulated in De Rhythmo VI.8.22, while it is in the following paragraph—De Rhythmo VI.9.23—that Augustine writes: “And when that verse, Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm, is sung . . .”201 Clearly, it is memory as retention—i.e. as a sense of recent-past things202— that prepares Augustine’s Ambrose-citation in De Rhythmo VI. And similarly, in Confessions XI.27.35, when the Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm is enunciated, sensus 195 Cf. again, Aug. Serm. 198.2: Vos certe cantavistis, et adhuc divini cantici sonus recens est in auribus vestris: “salva nos, domine deus noster.” 196 Cf. Arist. Mem. I (449b–450b), II (451a–452a). 197 Cf. Husserl 1971, 50–59. 198 Aug. Rhyth. VI.8.21: cum . . . aures pulsat sonus; VI.8.22: . . . quasi recentia eorum fugientium vestigia offert memoria. 199 Cf. for instance, Cic. Tusc. I.1: . . . ea studia, quae retenta animo, remissa temporibus, longo intervallo intermissa revocavi . . . 200 Aug. Rhyth. VI.8.22. 201 Aug. Rhyth. VI.9.23: . . . cum ille a nobis propositus versus canitur: “Deus creator omnium.” 202 Augustine’s recordatio, here, should be contrasted with Cicero’s assimilation of recordatio to Platonic ἀνάμνησις at Cic. Tusc. I.24.57–58: . . . quam quidem Plato recordationem esse vult superioris vitae . . . ex quo effici vult Socrates ut discere nihil aliud sit nisi recordari.

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remains the crux. Memory is certainly invoked, but it is a mode of memory— i.e. recordatio or retention—in which the decisive sense of presence is still the presence of present things, with its constitutive link to the sensual mutivity of present-time (i.e. the sense of time passing), and with its hyper-transitive infixion of ‘recent’ sense-images ‘in the soul.’203 Augustine’s certa mensura of ipsum tempus is here: (α) sought in distentio only out of the repeated failure of motus qua motus to evade the analytics of praesens tempus, and (β) sought in memoria only out of the failure of the sense of passing time to itself evade that analytics. Memory is not posited, here, but accepted; and it is accepted in the specific mode of recordatio, i.e. of a perdurance of sensation. The constitution of a space of time on the order of present-time as sensation is impossible—and with it, the constitution of a veracious temporal quantum on the order of praesens tempus is forsaken. Yet memory in this paragraph and expectation in the following paragraph co-constitute a proper temporal ‘presence’ as ‘impresence’ (on the analytics of praesens tempus) precisely because of their fidelity to sensation (as the presence of present things). Memory serves as a lead into the possibility of a veracious space of time precisely because memory dilates sensation. The disclosedness to sensus of a temporal quantum (on the order of passing time) ‘remains infixed’ in memory. As this ‘infixion’ recedes further (on the order of present-time) into preterity, and yet retains its veracious link (on the order of passing time) to sensus— and thus to motus omnis—‘the soul’ is dilated. But ‘the soul’ is dilated, in this exemplum, as sensus. For it is not of a simplex or a duplex syllable, but of Ambrose’s verse of eight syllables,204 that Augustine says: “Insofar as it is sensed by a clear sensation (sentitur sensu manifesto) . . .” (XI.27.35). Since a short When Augustine refers to Platonic ἀνάμνησις at Epist. 7.1.2, he uses both recordatio and revocatio, but it is recordatio which signals the present calling-to-mind, whereas revocatio is the calling-to-mind of what was beheld in a distant past: nonnulli calumniantur adversus Socraticum illud nobilissimum inventum, quod adseritur non nobis ea, quae discimus, veluti nova inseri, sed in memoriam recordatione revocari . . . 203 Cf. Arist. Mem. I (450a): “Now, we must cognize (γνωρίζειν) magnitude and motion as we cognize time, and the [memorial] image (φάντασμα) is an affection of the common sensefaculty (τῆς κοινῆς αἰσθήσεως πάθος). Thus it is clear that the cognition (γνῶσίς) of these things [viz. time, motion, magnitude] belongs to the primary sense-faculty (τῷ πρώτῳ αἰσθητικῷ).” 204 I owe this clarification to Gerard O’Daly.

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syllable is a simplex enunciative ‘time,’205 the verse Dĕūs crĕātŏr ōmnĭūm is comprised of twelve simplex ‘times.’206 Distentio is, of course, the condition of possibility of such hyper-minimal ‘times’ constituting spaces of time,207 as of this verse constituting a space of time—and yet the space of syllables and of verse are sensed. Clearly, this is a ‘distentio sensuum.’ Therefore, distentio is by no means a derangement or disseverment of memoria from sensus, or of sensus from motus omnis. On the contrary, it is memory’s link to sensation and its tracking of past infixations (as presenttime), relative to the hyper-transitive presence of sensation, which dilates the human anima-animus. This dilation of sensus—i.e. of anima-animus as vita corporis—is originarily an indeterminate mora temporis and becomes, in mensuration, a quantum or dimension or space of time. 13.8

“These Are ‘Times,’ or I Do Not Measure Times” (Conf. XI.27)

It is the very intensity of memory’s link to sensation (in ‘retention’) that threatens to obscure the ‘impresence’ that co-constitutes distentio, and to obscure Augustine’s finding that the temporal comparanda within the utterance and quantification of the very word ‘dĕūs’ are not, in the strictest sense, present. That is, they are not in sensation as the presence of present things, nor are they in presence as present-time.208 In enunciating the word ‘dĕūs,’ the syllable ‘dĕ’ is itself constituted by the sense of passing time,209 and is in memory— 205 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.21.27: dixi ergo paulo ante quod praetereuntia tempora metimur, ut possimus dicere duplum esse hoc temporis ad illud simplum, aut tantum hoc quantum illud, et si quid aliud de partibus temporum possumus renuntiare metiendo. 206 Aug. Conf. XI.27.35: “deus creator omnium”: versus iste octo syllabarum brevibus et longis alternat syllabis. quattuor itaque breves (prima, tertia, quinta, septima) simplae sunt ad quattuor longas (secundam, quartam, sextam, octavam). hae singulae ad illas singulas duplum habent temporis. 207 Aug. Conf. XI.27.35: et ego metior fidenterque respondeo, quantum exercitato sensu fiditur, illam simplam esse, illam duplam, in spatio scilicet temporis. 208 Cf. Aug. Rhyth. VI.8.21: Quamlibet enim brevis syllaba, cum et incipiat, et desinat, alio tempore initium eius, et alio finis sonat. Tenditur ergo et ipsa quantulocumque temporis intervallo, et ab initio suo per medium suum tendit ad finem. 209 Cf. for instance, Aug. Imm.anim. 3.3: . . . neque enim valet quavis ope agatur, aut perfecte unum esse, quod in partes secari potest, aut ullum est sine partibus corpus, aut sine morarum intervallo tempus, aut vero vel brevissima syllaba enuntietur, cuius non tunc finem audias, cum iam non audis initium. Porro quod sic agitur, et exspectatione opus est ut peragi, et memoria ut comprehendi queat quantum potest; Rhyth. VI.8.21: Quamlibet

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as ‘distentio sensuum’—prior to the enunciation of the ‘ūs.’210 (In the De Quantitate Animae, incidentally, Augustine selects the word ‘Lucifer,’ not ‘deus,’ to exhibit temporal ‘dilation’ (per tempus distendebatur).)211 And to measure the antecedent syllable against the subsequent, they must alike be in memory—as ‘distentio sensuum.’ Temporal comparanda in originary mensuration are necessarily impresent, are necessarily ‘presence’ on the order of a presence of past things and not on the order of present-time, or a presence of present things. The immediacy and incessancy of the sense of passing time—and it is this, precisely, that Augustine must ‘estrange’ himself from here, in reflection—suggest that in originary ­temporal mensuration I measure the res ipsa of sensus and thus the ‘times’ of motus omnis. But I do not: In you, o my soul, I measure times. Do not obstruct me—that is, do not obstruct me with your hosts of affections. In you, I say, I measure times: the affections that things produce in you [= sensus] remain [= memoria] when the things have passed by. This-itself I measure as ‘presence,’ not the things-themselves which have passed by giving rise to these affections, but this-itself [‘impresence’] I measure [as ‘presence’] when I measure times. Thus either these [sense-images or sense-affections] are ‘times,’ or I do not measure times. enim brevis syllaba, cum et incipiat, et desinat, alio tempore initium eius, et alio finis sonat. Tenditur ergo et ipsa quantulocumque temporis intervallo, et ab initio suo per medium suum tendit ad finem. . . . nullius syllabae cum initio finis auditur. In audienda itaque vel brevissima syllaba, nisi memoria nos adiuvet, ut eo momento temporis quo iam non initium, sed finis syllabae sonat, maneat ille motus in animo, qui factus est cum initium ipsum sonuit; nihil nos audisse possumus dicere. 210 Cf. Aug. Enarr. 38.7: Cum dicis ipsum ‘est,’ certe una syllaba est, et momentum unum est, et tres litteras syllaba habet: in ipso ictu ad secundam huius verbi litteram non pervenis, nisi prima finita fuerit; tertia non sonabit, nisi cum et secunda transierit; Tract. 1.8: Ecce verbum dico, cum dico: ‘deus.’ Quam breve est quod dixi, quatuor litteras, et duas syllabas! Numquidnam hoc totum est deus, quatuor litterae, et duae syllabae? . . . quaecumque dicuntur et transeunt, soni sunt, litterae sunt, syllabae sunt. Hoc verbum transit, quod sonat: quod autem significavit sonus, et in cogitante est qui dixit, et in intellegente est qui audivit, manet hoc transeuntibus sonis. 211 Aug. Quant.anim. 32.68: . . . maiorem temporis moram tenet, cum ‘Lucifer’ dicitur, quam si ‘Luci’ tantummodo diceretur. Quare si hoc significatione vivit in ea diminutione temporis, quae diviso illo sono facta est, cum eadem significatio divisa non sit (non enim ipsa per tempus distendebatur, sed sonus). . . . illa significatio non distenta per tempus, omnes tamen nominis litteras suas moras ac tempora possidentes, velut animaverat atque compleverat.

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in te, anime meus, tempora metior. noli mihi obstrepere, quod est; noli tibi obstrepere turbis affectionum tuarum. in te, inquam, tempora metior. affectionem quam res praetereuntes in te faciunt et, cum illae praeterierint, manet, ipsam metior praesentem, non ea quae praeterierunt ut fieret; ipsam metior, cum tempora metior. ergo aut ipsa sunt ‘tempora,’ aut non tempora metior. (XI.27.36) It is this apostrophe to the soul,212 in which Augustine distills, elides and alludes to all his preceding distinctions and findings, while insisting precisely on the impresence of the comparanda in temporal mensuration,213 that misdirects subjectivizing interpretations and could appear to invite them. The fundamental difficulty of this passage is that in Confessions XI.27.36 Augustine reintroduces the terminological duplicities that more explicitly surfaced in XI.20.26 (see 13.2): (i) a duplicity of ‘presence’ as a punctile, hyper-transitive present-time, and as a constitutively trine, dimensive presence-of; and (ii) a duplicity of ‘times’ as the hyper-transitive ‘times’ which are strictly conditioned by and identified with motus omnis, and as the trine, refractive ‘times’ which are not times on the order of present-time, but on the order of presence-of. The latter duplicity is most acute in the final sentence of the passage just quoted—“thus either these [sense-affections] are ‘times,’ or I do not measure times” (XI.27.36)—yet both duplicities can be traced up this apostrophe as a whole. In seeking the certa mensura of ipsum tempus, the times that Augustine seeks to measure are indisputably the times of motus omnis. It is the failure of a violable celestial motus (XI.23.30),214 the occasional motus/status of bodies (XI.24.31), and the variable enunciation of a text (XI.26.33) to ‘grasp’ such times that drives the second phase of the time-investigation (i.e. XI.23–28). And it is of these times that Augustine will write, shortly after the present apostrophe: 212 O’Donnell 1992, III:279: “apostrophes to the soul.” 213 Cf. a much less rigorous, ‘nostalgic’ sense of temporal comparatio at Lucr. Rer.nat. II.1166–67: et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert | praeteritis . . .  214 Pace for instance, Cic. Nat.deor. II.5.15: . . . tantis motionibus tantisque vicissitudinibus, tam multarum rerum atque tantarum ordinibus, in quibus nihil umquam inmensa et infinita vetustas mentita sit . . . 

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Times are produced by the movements of things. rerum mutationibus fiunt tempora. (XII.8.8) These ‘times’ are times on the order of hyper-transitivity, of praesens tempus, of motus omnis. These ‘times’ are also times on the order of sensation, or the presence of present things. Observe here: The affections that things produce in you [o my soul] remain when the things have passed by. affectionem quam res praetereuntes in te faciunt et, cum illae praeterierint, manet. (XI.27.36) The fieri of ‘the movements of things’ in Confessions XII.8.8 (→ tempora) parallels the facere of ‘the movements of things’ that condition sense-affections (← tempora) in XI.27.36.215 This is the ontological sense of the ‘times’ that Augustine seeks to measure, and which he measures: “In you, o my soul, I measure times” (XI.27.36). Yet the mensuration of times on the order of presence as present-time—i.e. as a presence of present things—is impossible. And thus, “when I measure times . . . either [sense-affections] are ‘times,’ or I do not measure times” (XI.27.36). This is by no means Augustine’s assertion of an identity of the refractive ‘times’ of distentio with the mutive times of motus omnis. It is rather a strictly simultaneous dis-identity of ‘times’ that is indicated by the word ‘when’ (cum) in the sentence: “This-itself I measure, when (cum) I measure times” (XI.27.36).216 Augustine here asserts a dis-identity of the mutive times of motus omnis-contuitus and the refractive ‘times’ of a spatium temporis-distentio animi. It is this dis-identity that memory tracks and reflects, and it is memory that Augustine here insists upon. But while asserting this dis-identity as the condition for temporal mensuration (because present-time yields no mensuration), Augustine simultaneously asserts the veracity of dilational ‘times’ (as impresence) in tracking hyper-transitive times (as present-time). This disidentity of present-time and temporal ‘presence’ (“this-itself I measure as 215 It is thus praesens de praeteritis as dilational memoria that here provisionally, and positively, completes the negative fieri-formulation in Conf. XI.11.13: longum tempus, nisi ex multis praetereuntibus motibus qui simul extendi non possunt, longum non fieri. 216 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: ipsam metior, cum tempora metior. ergo aut ipsa sunt ‘tempora,’ aut non tempora metior.

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‘presence’ ”),217 and this dis-identity of successive times and refractive ‘times’ (“either these are ‘times,’ or I do not measure times”),218 illuminates a constitutive and originary duplicity of the terms ‘presence’ and ‘times’ in the timeinvestigation, because dilational mensuration is veracious: “I measure times . . .  I measure times . . . I measure times” (XI.27.36).219 Distentio is an ‘outness,’ a ‘dilation’ precisely because, in its constitutive link to present-time (in the strictest denotation of sensus, as praesens de praesentibus), it tracks and localizes the hyper-transitive, punctile, mutive times of motus omnis—a condition for veracious temporal mensuration. Yet distentio is an ‘outness,’ a ‘dilation’ precisely because it also refracts the ­hyper-transitive, punctile, mutive times of motus omnis into the dimensive, triplex ‘times’ of ‘impresence’—a condition for veracious temporal mensuration. Animaanimus as vis and natura (i.e. as vita corporis) ignites not only sensus as a presence of present things (← praesens tempus, tempora), but sensus as a presence of recent-past things (→ spatium temporis, ‘tempora’).220 This refraction, as condition for the duration of any longum tempus, is an originary condition for dimensive time as ‘hyper-subjective’; and this refraction, as condition for the spaciousness of any space of time as a determinate temporal quantum, is an originary condition for dimensive time as ‘hyperobjective.’ And it is this originary duplicity of time that conditions the scio/ nescio dialectic of Augustine’s time-question in Confessions XI.14.17, and that shadows the time-investigation as a whole: time is “hyper-manifest and hyper-banal—and again,” it is “endlessly obscure.”221 As ‘distentio animi’—as ‘distentio sensuum’—time is at once and essentially hyper-intimate and hyperextimate. “Look! You have made my days old and they pass away,” Augustine confesses, “but I do not know how!”222 Tempus as ‘distentio sensuum’ is the originary condition for the passivity-mortality of the sum (I live ‘in time,’ 217 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: ipsam metior praesentem. 218 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: ergo aut ipsa sunt ‘tempora,’ aut non tempora metior. 219 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: in te, anime meus, tempora metior . . . in te, inquam, tempora metior . . . ipsam metior, cum tempora metior. 220 Cf. Aug. Conf. X.7–17. 221 Aug. Conf. XI.22.28: manifestissima et usitatissima sunt, et eadem rursus nimis latent et nova est inventio eorum. Cf. the noli claudere at Conf. XI.22.28 (noli claudere . . . noli claudere desiderio meo ista et usitata et abdita) and the noli obstrepere at XI.27.36 (noli mihi obstrepere . . . noli tibi obstrepere turbis affectionum tuarum). 222 Aug. Conf. XI.22.28: ecce veteres posuisti dies meos et transeunt, et quomodo, nescio. Cf. Psalms 38.6: ecce veteres posuisti dies meos et substantia mea tamquam nihil ante te; verumtamen universa vanitas, omnis homo vivens. (Cit. O’Donnell 1992, III:287.)

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I speak ‘in time’: I age), as for the potency of the enactive-numerative ego (‘I measure times’: I delimit, I enact)—that is, for the ineliminable duplicity of Augustine’s sum/ego (‘I myself cannot grasp all I am’).223 And in Confessions XI.27.36 and XI.28.38, the last exempli of the time-investigation, it is the enactive-numerative ego that is valorized and held in view. Yet the passivity-mortality of the sum is still adumbrated here, and will resurface with a wild lament in XI.29.39. For the enactive-numerative ego, which is dependent upon the passive-mortal sum and its constitutive implication in the tempora of motus omnis, itself illuminates the sense-affective condition of the sum as ‘mortal.’ That is to say, the triplex, dilational ‘presence’ of memoria-contuitus-expectatio which possibilizes veracious temporal mensuration (as enaction) in Confessions XI.27–28 also possibilizes a fore-presence of death, as ‘impresence,’ in Confessions XI.29.224 My death, which for the enactive-numerative ego is not presence (on the order of present-time) as not yet, and which for the sum—very precisely— never-will-be presence (on the order of present-time),225 is yet a constitutive fore-presence for the dilated ‘soul’ of Confessions XI.27–28. This is because distentio is co-constituted by—not only sensation and memory—but expectation. A sense-affective condition for the mensuration of ipsum tempus as a And cf. Aug. Enarr. 38.10: quomodo hic sum, quamdiu hic sum, quamdiu in hoc saeculo sum, quamdiu carnem mortalem porto, quamdiu tentatio vita humana est super terram, quamdiu inter scandala suspiro, quamdiu timeo ne cadam qui sto, quamdiu mihi incerta sunt et mala mea et bona mea, “universa vanitas omnis homo vivens.” 223 Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.28.38: . . . per tempora et locos pulchras mutationes faciant aut patiantur. 224 Aug. Conf. XI.29.39: donec in te confluam purgatus et liquidus igne amoris tui. 225 Cf. Augustine’s discussion of a sophistical denial of death because the point of death— and in this, as he remarks, death precisely parallels praesens tempus—cannot be identified, at Aug. Civ. XIII.11: quamdiu quippe est anima in corpore, maxime si etiam sensus adsit, procul dubio vivit homo, qui constat ex anima et corpore, ac per hoc adhuc ante mortem, non in morte esse dicendus est; cum vero anima abscesserit omnemque abstulerit corporis sensum, iam post mortem mortuusque perhibetur. perit igitur inter utrumque, quo moriens vel in morte sit; quoniam si adhuc vivit, ante mortem est; si vivere destitit, iam post mortem est. numquam ergo moriens, id est in morte, esse comprehenditur. ita etiam in transcursu temporum quaeritur praesens, nec invenitur, quia sine ullo spatio est, per quod transitur ex futuro in praeteritum.  Yet death, like time, is ineliminable by the analytics of presence, for “death is real and so harassing that no locution can express it and no sophism can evade it” ([nunc] non solum est, verum etiam tam molesta est, ut nec ulla explicari locutione possit nec ulla ratione vitari, Civ. XIII.11).

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­determinate quantum—“its determination is its termination” (XI.27.35)226— is also a condition for the ‘determination’ of my life. And a sense-affective condition for the enaction of ipsum tempus as a determinate quantum—“there is already in the soul the expectation of future-things” (XI.28.37)227—is at once a condition for the anticipation of my death. Augustine intimates this link at the close of Confessions XI.28.38: “The same holds [for recitation and] for the totality of a human life.”228 But how does expectation emerge in Confessions XI.27–28? 13.9

“Songs and the Dimensions of Movements” (Conf. XI.27–28)

When Augustine shifts from passive mensuration and sense-memory to enactive mensuration and sense-expectation in XI.27.36—and with this shift, refers not to the line from Ambrose’s hymn, but indifferently to “songs or verses or any discourses”229—it is imperative recall that any memorized line would have been temporally pre-quantifiable in late-antique Latin.230 (Says Quintilian: “Rhythm pervades the whole body of prose—so to speak—through 226 Aug. Conf. XI.27.35: eius . . . finitio praeteritio est. 227 Aug. Conf. XI.28.37: quis igitur negat futura nondum esse? sed tamen iam est in animo expectatio futurorum. 228 Aug. Conf. XI.28.38: hoc in tota vita hominis, cuius partes sunt omnes actiones hominis. 229 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: carmina et versus et quemque sermonem. 230 This said, however, Augustine’s appeal to a “practiced sense” in determining the spaces of enunciative time must be borne in mind (respondeo, quantum exercitato sensu fiditur, illam simplam esse, illam duplam, in spatio scilicet temporis, XI.27.35). Augustine underscores the importance of this in 408/9, at Epist. 101.3: Five books of [my De Rhythmo] are all but unintelligible (difficillime quippe intelleguntur) unless you have a lector on hand who can . . . enunciatively mark the spaces of time that the syllables should occupy (pronuntiando ita sonare morulas syllabarum), so that their distinctive measures may be expressed and sped to the ear’s sense (sensumque aurium feriant), and most importantly, because in some places measured intervals of silence (silentiorum dimensa intervalla) are involved, which can of course by no means be sensed (omnino sentiri nequeunt) unless the lector informs the hearer of them. While in Epist. 3, written in 386, he admits—off-handedly and light-heartedly, to his friend Nebridius—that he is himself unsure whether the penultimate syllable in a number of declensions is to be pronounced long or short, at Epist. 3.5: ‘fugitum,’ ‘cupitum,’ ‘sapitum’ . . . item tria utrum paenultima longa et inflexa, aut gravi brevique pronuntianda sint . . . nescio.

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all its extent.”)231 Such pre-quantification of an enunciated line illuminates a constitutive triplicity of dilation that the sense-memorial quantification in XI.27.35 did not. Enactive mensuration links futural impresence to memorial impresence through the sense of passing time, and it is this procedure which ­demonstrates—so Augustine suggests—that the ‘times’ of dilational impresence can track and prevene the times of sensus, or contuitus, or attentio. But what is the link of expectation to sensation? A passage from Confessions X can help to elucidate it. In Confessions X.8.13, as Augustine reflects on sense-imaginal memory, he introduces a thing/image (res/imago) distinction that he will reintroduce in XI.27.35 to lead into his analyses of expectation. He first writes this in book X: The things-themselves do not enter memory, but the images of sensedthings are present in memory for thought to recollect them. And who can say precisely how these sense-images are constituted? nec ipsa tamen intrant, sed rerum sensarum imagines illic praesto sunt cogitationi reminiscenti eas. quae quomodo fabricatae sint, quis dicit? (X.8.13)232 This helps to identify the sense that cogitatio has in Confessions XI.27.36,233 where—as in Confessions X.8.13—cogitatio is intimately ­associated with senseimages, and thus, with sensus. But this passage from book X is also relevant, here, because Augustine proceeds to observe:

231 Quint. Inst.orat. IX.4.61: Et in omni quidem corpore totoque (ut ita dixerim) tractu numerus insertus est. And on the metrical qualities of the Confessions’ prose, vid. Borromeo Carroll 1940, here 80: “The prose of the Confessions is from a metrical point of view on a higher plane than the prose of the [late-antique] ametrical writers, while at the same time it does not deserve to be regarded as metrical in the marked sense in which Arnobius, Symmachus, and Ammianus Marcellinus are metrical”; and 81: “In the Confessions of St. Augustine there is at least some effort made toward establishing that harmony between ictus and accent which was to prepare the way for the ultimate triumph of accentual clausulae.” 232 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.27.35: non ergo ipsas quae iam non sunt, sed aliquid in memoria mea metior, quod infixum manet. 233 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: . . . nonne cogitationem tendimus ad mensuram vocis, quasi sonaret . . . nam et voce atque ore cessante peragimus cogitando carmina et versus . . . 

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And though my tongue is at rest and my throat is silent—yet I can ‘sing’ as much as I will.234 et quiescente lingua ac silente gutture canto quantum volo. (X.8.13) This progression in Confessions X precisely anticipates Augustine’s progression from a res/imago distinction in the last sentence of XI.27.35 to enactive mensuration in XI.27.36—which illuminates a ‘space’ of dilational impresence that is sensually preceded and quasi-sensually elaborated. For he writes in book XI: What when we measure silence—and say that this silence has lasted as long as that [bodily] voice lasted? Do we not extend our thought to measure the [bodily] voice as if it sounded so that we can report something about the intervals of silence in a [determinate] space of time? For when our voice and lips are still, we traverse songs and verses . . . and the dimensions of movements in thought and report on spaces of times— how-much this [song or motion] will be relative to that [song or motion]— no-differently than if we sounded-out [a song] in speech [or observed a motion in space]. And if a person decides to utter a slightly elongated sound and premeditatively constitutes how-long this future-sound should be, this person has certainly gone through this [pre-decided] space of time in silence and—committing it to memory—begins to utter the sound, and it sounds out until it is prolonged to the [temporal] limit that was pre-decided for it. Yes—it has sounded-out and it will sound-out. For the [fraction] of it that is traversed has definitely sounded and the [fraction] of it that remains will sound—and so this [space of time] is traversed—as long as this person’s present-intention transposes future[-protention] into ­past[-retention], with past[-retention] increasing by a diminishment of future[-protention] until, by consuming the future, the total[-intention] is past. 234 Aug. Conf. X.8.13: et quiescente lingua ac silente gutture canto quantum volo, imaginesque illae colorum, quae nihilo minus ibi sunt, non se interponunt neque interrumpunt, cum thesaurus alius retractatur qui influxit ab auribus. ita cetera quae per sensus ceteros ingesta atque congesta sunt recordor prout libet, et auram liliorum discerno a violis nihil olfaciens, et mel defrito, lene aspero, nihil tum gustando neque contrectando sed reminiscendo antepono.

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quid cum metimur silentia, et dicimus illud silentium tantum tenuisse temporis quantum illa vox tenuit, nonne cogitationem tendimus ad mensuram vocis, quasi sonaret, ut aliquid de intervallis silentiorum in spatio temporis renuntiare possimus? nam et voce atque ore cessante peragimus cogitando carmina . . . motionumque dimensiones quaslibet et de spatiis temporum, quantum illud ad illud sit, renuntiamus non aliter ac si ea sonando diceremus. voluerit aliquis edere longuisculam vocem, et constituerit praemeditando quam longa futura sit, egit utique iste spatium temporis in silentio memoriaeque commendans coepit edere illam vocem quae sonat, donec ad propositum terminum perducatur. immo sonuit et sonabit; nam quod eius iam peractum est, utique sonuit, quod autem restat, sonabit atque ita peragitur, dum praesens intentio futurum in praeteritum traicit, deminutione futuri crescente praeterito, donec consumptione futuri sit totum praeteritum. (XI.27.36) To this extent, in Augustine, a “conquest of time” has been given to the human soul.235 As vita corporis, the soul inherits and exhibits a sensual and quasi-sensual expansiveness and purposiveness that Augustine here calls intentio or attentio.236 To intentio it is given—despite its constitutive link to present-time—a transitive, sense-imaginal or sense-affective spaciousness which, as ‘impresence,’ veraciously produces a duration that can ‘conquer’ present-time precisely, and invariably, by subjecting its space and relinquishing its ‘impresence’—at every point, in merciless succession—to the exhaustive regime of present-time. Intention ‘conquers’ sensation by passing-through

235 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.15.19: anima humana . . . datum enim tibi est sentire moras atque metiri; and the subtitle of Alliez 1991: Récits de la conquête du temps. 236 That intentio hinges upon sensus-contuitus and is directed at things in all its phases is perhaps most clearly stated at Aug. Conf. XII.15.18: “The expectation of future things becomes sight when they have arrived, and this same sight becomes memory when they have passed by. . . . All intention which is thus altered is mutable” (expectatio rerum venturarum fit contuitus, cum venerint, idemque contuitus fit memoria, cum praeterierint. omnis . . . intentio quae ita variatur mutabilis est . . .). Cf. O’Daly 1977, 271: “Intentio or attentio [is] a vis animae [which is] essential to perception, [and] is stressed by Augustine in early treatises and persists into the later De trinitate. . . . In discussing our awareness of duration in Conf. 11,28,38 he will use the related concept of attentio.”

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sensation;237 attention ‘conquers’ present-time by pre-subjecting itself to present-time. A pyrrhic victory—and yet a victory. The logic of precedence in distentio, which is not to say the phenomenality of distentio, is this: sensation prevenes memory, memory prevenes expectation; but then expectation prevenes sensation, and sensation newly prevenes memory. It is this specific precedence of expectation to sensation, and the veracity of this expectation as it passes-through sensation, which indicates for Augustine that the certa mensura of ipsum tempus is originarily grasped by a ‘dilation of the senses’—and not by solitary motus (XI.24.31), etc. The ‘times’ of intentio—preceded by sensation, veraciously infixed in sense-imaginal memory, quasi-sensually elaborated in expectation—here prevene the successive times of a determinate motus, here as actio. A vocalization which is quasi-constituted (as sensus) in silence sounds out on the air. (Augustine observes in De Trinitate,238 as in Confessions X.8.13, that syllables are temporally quantifiable in silence as in speech. This is decisive here.)239 Dilational or dimensive ‘times’ are successively and incessantly reconstituted per carnem and in carne as ­hyper-transitive times—from sense-imaginal expectatio to sensual attentio to sense-imaginal memoria—until an enacted and exhausted intentio lays new memory-traces against the memory-traces of its prior expectatio. All this is a dilation of sensus. And on condition of its pre-subjugation to the order of present-time, it is this dilation which grasps—originarily—the times of motus omnis as a space of time. Sensation prevenes memory and memory prevenes expectation; this is the initial logic of Augustine’s exposition here. But the glory of distentio is also this: in dilation, expectation can prevene sensation, and in such enactment, it is impresence that prevenes present-time. This is hardly a ‘conquest’ or even ‘autonomy,’ and this is not a ‘subjectivation’ of time: but this is an outness, and with it, a pre-potency of the human soul. This is the acquisition of a transitive237 Cf. for instance, Aug. Quant.anim. 33.71: Intendit se anima in tactum, et eo calida, frigida, aspera, lenia, dura, mollia, levia, gravia sentit atque discernit. Deinde innumerabiles differentias saporum, odorum, sonorum, formarum, gustando, olfaciendo, audiendo videndoque diiudicat. Atque in iis omnibus ea quae secundum naturam sui coporis sunt, adsciscit atque appetit; reiicit fugitque contraria. Removet se ab his sensibus certo intervallo temporum, et eorum motus quasi per quasdam ferias reparans, imagines rerum quas per eos hausit, secum catervatim et multipliciter versat, et hoc totum est somnus et somnia. 238 Cf. Aug. Conf. XII.15.18: expectatio rerum venturarum fit contuitus, cum venerint, idemque contuitus fit memoria, cum praeterierint. 239 Cf. Aug. Trin. IX.10.15 (cit. Stock 2010, 4): verba . . . spatia temporum syllabis tenent sive pronuntientur sive cogitentur.

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dimensive space of time; and the human soul hereby—kissing the rod of transitivity, having a foretaste of its death—demonstrates a power (vis) to track and affect the corporeal order that produces times. For observe: “We traverse songs and verses . . . and the dimensions of movements (motionumque dimensiones) in thought” (XI.27.36). For Augustine, distentio is itself a vis, itself a mutive force. Subjected (as natura) to the inrush of presence, the indigence of succession and the intimate-extimate disquiet of motus omnis, it has yet been given to the anima humana (as vis)—which is still, constitutively denied praescientia (see 5.3)240—to posit the temporal quantum of a past-motus as the temporal quantum of a future-motus. And thus, while dilation is not a precondition for motus omnis, dilation is yet valorized as the precondition for any dimensio or temporal quantum of motus—and thus, as that “by which we measure the movements of [all] bodies” (XI.23.30). Yet again: the space of time of any vita is itself, originarily and incommutably, fated to comprise a finite and preterite dimensio, since “the same holds [for recitation and] for the totality of a human life” (XI.28.38). It is only as distentio that motus omnis appears. It is only as distentio that a presence of past-things endures. And it is only as distentio that a presence of future-things is traversed, transposed, diminished and exhausted in a prevenience of sense-imaginal or sense-affective impresence. In Confessions X to XII, distentio is the originary condition for indeterminate lapses of time and for determinate spaces of time. It is distentio that grasps the certa mensura of ipsum tempus. But the originary and incommutable dependence of memory and expectation upon sensation, of impresence upon presence, of time upon succession, of succession upon the motion of all bodies flashes out at the very height of the time-investigation in this phrase: “. . . until, by consuming the future, the totality is past” (XI.27.36).241 240 Aug. Conf. XI.28.37: quis igitur negat futura nondum esse? sed tamen iam est in animo expectatio futurorum. 241 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: . . . donec consumptione futuri sit totum praeteritum.

ENVOI: Time Exceeds Us because Time Is in Us “Until (donec),” says Augustine, “by consuming the future (consumptione futuri), the total intention is past” (XI.27.36).1 The lexical senses of consumere include ‘to annihilate, to destroy,’2 and Augustine re-deploys the word successively in Confessions XI.28.37–38: But how is that future, which is-not-yet, diminished and consumed?3 . . .  The life of this action of mine is dilated in memory . . . and in expectation . . . until the total expectation is consumed when the totality of that act is ended and passed-into memory. And as it is with this song [I recite] . . . so it is with the life of a man. sed quomodo minuitur aut consumitur futurum, quod nondum est? . . . distenditur vita huius actionis meae in memoriam . . . et in expectationem . . . donec tota expectatio consumatur . . . et quod in toto cantico . . . hoc in tota vita hominis. (XI.28.37–38) Mortality is inscribed in the phenomenality and ontology of Augustine’s distentio,4 with expectation silencing his analytics of present-time only in this 1 Aug. Conf. XI.27.36: donec consumptione futuri sit totum praeteritum. Cf. Arist. Phys. IV.13 (222b): “All change is in its nature a ‘passing away’ . . . for change is per se a ‘passing away’ ” (Μεταβολὲ δὲ πᾶσα φύσει ἐκστατικόν . . . ἐκστατικόν γὰρ ἡ μεταβολὲ καθ᾿ αὑτὴν). 2 Cf. Aug. Conf. IX.4.10: . . . nec volebam multiplicari terrenis bonis, devorans tempora et devoratus temporibus; Cic. Nat.deor. II.25.64: consumit aetas temporum spatia annisque praeteritis insaturabiliter expletur; Lucr. Rer.nat. I.232–33: omnia enim debet, mortali corpore quae sunt, | infinita aetas consumpse anteacta diesque; Man. Astr. III.514–15: . . . quo Sol effulserit, annus, | annua quod lustrans consumit tempora mundum; Sall. Jug. 98.2: . . . iamque dies consumptus erat; Sen. Brev. 17.2: . . . et intra exiguum tempus consumpturus illos quibus centesimum annum timebat; etc. 3 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.28.37: sed quomodo minuitur aut consumitur futurum, quod nondum est?; XII.11.14: quis . . . dicet mihi quod, deminuta atque consumpta omni specie, si sola remaneat ‘informitas’ per quam de specie in speciem res mutabatur et vertebatur, possit exhibere vices temporum? 4 Cf. for instance, Aug. Conf. I.6.9: et ecce infantia mea olim mortua est et ego vivo; IV.10.15: decedendo ac succedendo agunt omnes universum, cuius partes sunt; X.31.43: reficimus enim cotidianas ruinas corporis edendo et bibendo; Gen.litt. IV.1.1: in infimis rebus pulchritudinem temporalem, per ordinatas vices quorumque mutabilium cessionibus successionibusque peragitur, sicut manifestum est in rebus terrenis atque mortalibus; Enarr. 38.19: Natus es; certum

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way: ‘that which is-not-yet’ can be diminished because expectation is being consumed. The impresence of expectation deflects the inexistence of futurity, which was established in Confessions XI.14–15 and is re-introduced in XI.28, by itself illuminating its diminishment and its future inexistence. The time-concept in Confessions X to XII is not, as I have sought to demonstrate, ‘idealistic’ or ‘subjectivistic.’ It is originarily, incessantly, fatally irreducible to a cogitative ‘ego’ or ‘subject,’ to a pure ‘perceiver’—or indeed, to ‘a life.’ Times are worldly (motus omnis); time is fleshly (distentio animi). Yet the timequestion, for Augustine, is also never less than the question of a life—and thus, of a death. He subtly insinuates this in Confessions XI.27–28 with his sudden and stoccato repetition of consumere, consumptio, as he elaborates the ‘objectivizing’ rigour of the numerative-enactive ego.5 Consumere—‘to exhaust’: consummare—‘to perfect.’6 In an echo between expectatio consumatur and expectatio consummatur—‘expectation is exhausted,’ ‘expectation is perfected’7—the motif of temporal duplicity that initiates the Confessions and activates the time-investigation perhaps comes to perfection. “Our heart is restless,” so Augustine confessed, “until all our expectation is consumed.”8 est quia morieris: et in hoc ipso quia mors ipsa certa est, dies mortis incertus est . . . et sola multum cavetur, quae nullo modo devitatur; 47.13: violentiam mortis vitare non potest, qui mortalis natus est. Cf. also Girard 1992, 51: “. . . si le terme mortalitas peut parfois désigner le fait de devoir mourir, ce n’est pas l’événement ponctuel de la séparation du corps et de l’âme qui est visé, mais la présence de la corruption tout au long de la vie.” 5 Consumere/consumptio only appears 3× in Conf. XI, at XI.27.36, XI.28.37, XI.28.38. 6 This Latin echo can still be heard in the lines of a very young Wilfred Owen (1963, 15), circa 1911: “Consummation is Consumption | We cannot consummate our bliss and not consume.” 7 A 1608 Venetian edition of Henry of Ghent’s Quodlibeta prints expectatio consummatur for expectatio consumatur when Henry quotes Conf. XI.28.38, at Quodl. III, q. 11, fol. 103v: “Utrum tempus poſſit eſſe sine anima.” Other instances of this typographic oscillation could doubtless be found, though neither Knöll nor Verheijen lists consummatur as a variant in the manuscript tradition. 8 Aug. Conf. I.1.1: inquietum est cor nostrum donec . . .; XI.28.38: . . . donec tota expectatio consumatur; cf. IX.10.26: “fili, quantum ad me attinet, nulla re iam delector in hac vita. quid hic faciam adhuc et cur hic sim, nescio, iam consumpta spe huius saeculi . . .”

Appendices Appendix 1 Remarks on Plotinus, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus and Augustine It should be recalled that the short-hand phrase distentio animi is not Augustine’s. Rather, distentio animi is a reckless compression of this sentence in Confessions XI: It seems to me that time is nothing else but a dilation—but of what, I do not know, and would be shocked if it is not the soul-itself. . . . mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem; sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi. (XI.26.33) Antecedents to Augustine’s distentio . . . animi in the literature are typically limited to the expression διάστασις . . . ζωῆς in Plotinus’ Enneads III.7, where Plotinus speculatively produces the “form and nature” of time1 from a hyper-static eternity.2 This is Plotinus: As Soul (ψυχή) presents one act, and a different act to itself—and then a new and different act in ordered succession—it produces (ἐγγέννα) succession along with its activity. . . . Thus the extension of Life (διάστασις . . . ζωῆς) involves time.3



Augustine’s distentio animi and Plotinus’ διάστασις ζωῆς

This is not the place to review or engage the sizeable literature that traces Augustine’s time-investigation back to Plotinus’ tractate on time-eternity.4 Rather, I limit myself to several observations that weaken the basis of that literature:

1 Plot. Enn. III.7.11: “. . . we shall produce time (γεννήσομεν δὲ χρόνον) by means of the form and nature (λόγῳ καὶ φύσει) of what comes after.” 2 Plot. Enn. III.7.11: “Eternity is restive Life (αἰών ἐστι ζωὴ ἐν στάσει), indifferent and self-identical.” 3 Plot. Enn. III.7.11. 4 Cf. E.A. Schmidt’s (1985, 47–54) contrast of Plot. Enn. III.7 and Aug. Conf. XI, which I only obtained after this appendix had been written.

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(i) Gerard O’Daly’s methodological caution in the 1970s still stands: Augustine’s distentio “need not be a translated term.”5 (ii) If Augustine’s distentio is translated, there is still little reason to assume a specifically Plotinian source. Distentio is conceptually related to the Greek terms διάστασις and διάστημα— and these terms are commonplace in Stoic, Pyrrhonian and Neoplatonic discussions of time and space.6 Thus, Plutarch reports that certain Stoics held time to be the “extension (διάστεμα) of motion and nothing else.”7 Sextus Empiricus reports that other Stoics defined time as the “extension (διάστημα) of the motion of the cosmos.”8 And Damascius still asks in his 6th-century Dubitationes et Solutiones: “If time is an extension (διάστημα), how could the unextended constitute it?”9 As this indicates, Augustine’s distentio could translate—for instance— the Stoics’ διάστημα, no less than Plotinus’ διάστασις. (iii) If Augustine’s distentio . . . animi is a translation of Plotinus’ διάστασις . . . ζωῆς, then it is a free translation. Dominic O’Meara reminds us that “Marius Victorinus’ Latin translation of the Enneads”—which is perhaps the translation, or more likely a partial translation of the Enneads, that Augustine had on hand in 386—“seems not to have survived into the early medieval period.”10 Marsilio Ficino’s 1492 translation of the Enneads is thus the first surviving Latin edition of Plotinus’ work, and Ficino Latinizes the phrase διάστασις . . . ζωῆς with distantia . . . vitae.11 Since vitae—not Augustine’s animi—is the natural translation here, I know of no reason to con5 6

O’Daly 1977, 265–66. The Greek διάστασις and διάστημα pertain indifferently to time and space—or perhaps, originally and primarily to space; and it is the same with Augustine’s distentio. Cf. for instance, Aug. Quant.anim. 14.23: . . . in spatium distendunt; 15.26: Deinde, si per spatium sui corporis anima distenditur, quomodo nullius quantitatis est?; Cons. I.23.31: aetherem quippe non spiritum, sed corpus esse dicunt sublime, quo caelum super aerem distenditur. 7 Plut. Plat.quaest. VIII.4 (1007a–b). 8 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.170. 9 Unlike Augustine, Damascius resolves this question by positing an “extension of time” (διάστημα . . . τοῦ χρόνου) in present-time. Time is “not composed of indivisible parts (μερῶν ἀμερῶν),” writes Damascius, “but of discrete and extended (διαστατῶν) parts.” Accordingly, present-time is redefined: “The Now (τὸ νῦν) is a temporal extension (διάστημα) and time consists of such extensions” (exc. in Sambursky and Pines 1987, 86–91). 10 O’Meara 1992, 57. 11 Ficino 1559, 176.

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APPENDICES jecture that Marius Victorinus would have Latinized Plotinus’ ζωῆς with animi, rather than vitae. (iv) If Augustine’s animi is yet a translation of Plotinus’ ζωῆς, then Augustine’s animus-concept in Confessions XI is a free variation on Plotinus’ ζωήconcept in Enneads III.7. Augustine detects a chronogenic power in the terrestrial souls of humans and beasts (see 8.2–3), whereas Plotinus posits a cosmogonic power in a hyperelevated all-soul. (v) And finally: if Augustine’s distentio . . . animi is a variation on Plotinus’ διάστασις . . . ζωῆς, then it is a free variation on Plotinus’ penultimate time-concept. For unlike Augustine, whose time-investigation concludes with a (nondogmatic) distentio, Plotinus’ tractate presses beyond his (dogmatic) notion of διάστασις (in Enneads III.7.11) to the hyper-exalted cause of this διάστασις (in Enneads III.7.13). And this cause of διάστασις—i.e. the cosmogonic “essenceitself” (οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ) of time12—is not ‘the extension of Life,’ but rather “the movement of Soul” (τῆς ψυχῆς κίνησιν).13 Plotinus states this three times in Enneads III.7.13: time-itself is the movement of the all-soul.14 Yet just as there is no reference to a Plotinian ‘all-soul’ in Confessions XI (see 2.2), so also there is no echo—however faint, however corrupt—of soul’s ‘movement’ in ConfessionsXI.

In short: if Augustine takes over Plotinus’ διάστασις . . . ζωῆς in Confessions XI, he takes it with a high hand.



Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus and Augustine’s Analytics of Present-Time

If the literature on the sources of Augustine’s distentio animi is less than convincing, the literature on the sources of his time-question is lacking. And as regards his timequestion, Augustine’s hyper-Plotinian interpreters have nothing to offer. This is because Augustine opens his time-investigation in Confessions XI.14–15 with an aporia of temporal inexistence that Plotinus simply ignores. This aporia is unmentioned in Enneads III.7, whereas it introduces Aristotle’s time-investigation—as it will

12 Plot. Enn. III.7.13. 13 Plot. Enn. III.7.13. 14 Plot. Enn. III.7.13: τῆς ψυχῆς κίνησιν . . . τῆς ψυχῆς κίνησιν . . . κίνησιν τῆς ψυχῆς

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later introduce Augustine’s.15 This is Aristotle, in the proem to his pages on time in Physics IV: Some of time-itself is past and no longer exists (οὐκ ἔστι), the rest is future and does not yet exist (οὔπω ἔστιν) . . . and it is impossible to conceive of that which is composed of inexistents as having a share in being.16 Aristotle then conjoins—like Augustine,17 unlike Plotinus—this inexistence of pasttime and future-time with present-time’s peculiar mode of ‘presence,’ namely, transit. “Time strikes us,” says Aristotle, “as being a passing-on (κίνησις) and a changing (μεταβολή).”18 Regardless of its direct or indirect transmission, it is this coupling of the aporia of temporal inexistence with the Ur-phenomenon of present-temporal transit that Augustine inherits. That is to say, in formal terms, it is Aristotle—not Plotinus—who provides Augustine with the structure and crux of his time-question in Confessions XI. And Aristotle’s aporia of temporal inexistence is later re-elaborated by Sextus Empiricus19 in Adversus Physicos II,20 relative to the Epicurean doctrine of time as “a day-like and night-like phantasm.”21 This is of interest not only because Augustine’s time-concept appears to resemble Epicurus’ (see 2.3); and not only because Epicurus— like Plotinus—ignores the aporia of temporal inexistence; but also because Sextus Empiricus’ re-deployment of Aristotle’s aporia seems to anticipate Augustine’s analytics of present-time in Confessions XI.15.19–20. I, at least, have seen no other text that so methodically pre-delineates Augustine’s “restriction” (contractio) of the “space”

15

Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: duo ergo illa tempora, praeteritum et futurum, quomodo sunt, quando et praeteritum iam non est et futurum nondum est?; XI.15.18: sed quo pacto longum est aut breve, quod non est? praeteritum enim iam non est et futurum nondum est. non itaque dicamus, “longum est,” sed dicamus de praeterito, “longum fuit,” et de futuro, “longum erit.” 16 Arist. Phys. IV.10 (217b–218a). 17 Cf. Aug. Conf. XI.14.17: si ergo praesens, ut tempus sit, ideo fit, quia in praeteritum transit . . .  18 Arist. Phys. IV.10 (218b). 19 For Aristotle as a forerunner to, and source for, the Greek sceptics: Long 1981. 20 Cf. Sext. Ad.Phys. II.192: “Time is held to be composed of inexistents (ἀνυπάρκτων)—of the past which no longer exists, and of the future which does not yet exist—and therefore, time in inexistent (ἀνύπαρκτος).” Cf. also the parallel passages at Sext. Ad.Phys. II.197; Ad.Mus. 49; Ad.Gramm. 6.64–65. 21 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.181.

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(spatium)22 of a day—with a day being “comprised,” writes Augustine, “of twenty-four hours: night-hours and day-hours”23—to a single hour; and then from a single hour to a swarm of hyper-transitive “fugitive particles” (fugitivis particulis).24 This is Sextus: If day and night are shown to be unreal (ἀνυπόστατος), it follows that Epicurus’ “day-like phantasm” is also unreal (ἀνυπόστατον). For ‘day’ in its stricter conception consists of twelve hours (δωδεκάωρος) . . . and appears to be unreal once we examine it. For when the first hour exists, the other eleven do not yet exist; and when most of its hours are inexistent, ‘day’ will not exist. And again: when the second hour is present the first no longer exists and the other ten do not yet exist, so that in this case also—since most of its hours are inexistent—‘day’ will not exist. This always holds: if a single hour exists but ‘day’ is not a single hour, then no day will exist. Nor, in fact, does a single hour exist. For an ‘hour’ is conceived by way of an extension (κατὰ πλάτος γὰρ νοεῖται) and is itself comprised of a number of parts (ἐκ πλειόνων τε καὶ αὐτη συνέστηκε μοιρῶν): some are not yet existent and others no longer existent, so that what is compounded of them is unreal. But if neither an hour nor a day nor a night (by way of analogy) exists, then time will not be Epicurus’ “day-like” or “night-like phantasm.”25 This passage26 merits a sustained comparison—which it will not receive here— with Confessions XI.15.19–20. The parallels are on the surface, though perhaps not superficial; while the question—perhaps irresolvable—of possible channels by which Sextus’ analysis could have reached Augustine has, to my awareness, never been pursued. (Augustine repeats in Confessions V and VI that he read many philosophers’ works prior to 386,27 and inclined towards the Academics;28 in Confessions VII, he is 22 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: ecce praesens tempus, quod solum inveniebamus longum appellandum, vix ad unius diei spatium contractum est. 23 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: unus dies . . . nocturnis enim et diurnis horis omnibus viginti quattuor expletur. 24 Aug. Conf. XI.15.20: et ipsa una hora fugitivis particulis agitur. 25 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.181–84. 26 Alongside the very similar analysis at Sext. Ad.Phys. II.238–43. 27 Aug. Conf. V.3.3: et quoniam multa philosophorum legeram memoriaeque mandata retinebam . . .; VI.5.7: . . . tam multa quae legeram inter se confligentium philosophorum . . .  28 Aug. Conf. V.10.19: etenim suborta est etiam mihi cogitatio, prudentiores illos ceteris fuisse philosophos quos academicos appellant, quod de omnibus dubitandum esse censuerant . . .; V.14.25: itaque academicorum more, sicut existimantur, dubitans de omnibus atque inter omnia fluctuans . . .; VI.11.18: o magni viri academici! nihil ad agendam vitam certi comprehendi potest.

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merely presented with some Platonic texts.29 The Augustine-literature has tended to ignore the implications of these self-reports.) Nor are Sextus’ fore-echoes of Confessions XI limited to his analytics of presenttime. For instance: Augustine, in passing, contrasts temporal mensuration with spatial mensuration in terms of cubits at Confessions XI.26.33.30 Plotinus also refers to the cubit, in passing, at Enneads III.7.9.31 But it is Sextus’ analysis of the cubit in Adversus Physicos II32—and not Plotinus’—that anticipates Augustine’s analysis in Confessions XI.26.33. This is Sextus: The cubit (πῆχυς) is measured by the palm of a hand, and the palm is a part of the cubit (πήχεως μέρος), while the palm is measured by the finger, and the finger is a part of the palm. So then, if time is divisible, it ought to be measured by some part of itself (τινος αὐτου μέρους). But it is impossible for the other times to be measured by the present. For if the present-time measures the past, then this present-time will be in the past, and being in the past it will no longer be present but past . . .33 It is not my question here whether Augustine might have seen Sextus’ analysis of the cubit and present-time—reported, excerpted or paraphrased—before he wrote Confessions XI. But the fact remains that Sextus’ analysis is rooted in an aporia of temporal inexistence that we encounter in Aristotle,34 and later in Augustine—but not in Plotinus. It is also the case that Sextus’ use of the cubit—but not Plotinus’—anti­cipates Augustine’s in Confessions XI.26.33. Nor is the placement of Augustine’s glance at the cubit insignificant, since it occurs in a paragraph that culminates in these words: From-which it seems to me (inde mihi visum est) that time is nothing else but a dilation—but of what, I do not know, and would be shocked if it is not the soulitself. (XI.26.33)

29 Aug. Conf. VII.9.13: procurasti mihi per quendam hominem immanissimo typho turgidum quosdam platonicorum libros ex graeca lingua in latinam versos, et ibi legi . . .  30 Aug. Conf. XI.26.33: an tempore breviore metimur longius sicut spatio cubiti spatium transtri? 31 Plot. Enn. III.7.9: “If [time] is a continuous measure, then it will be a measure because it consists of a certain space (ποσόν)—like a length of one cubit (οἷον τὸ πηχυαῖον μέγεθος)”; cf. III.7.11: “ . . .as if one said that what is measured by a cubit (πήχεως) was ‘the length,’ without saying what length was in-itself . . . ” 32 Cf. a parallel passage at Sext. Ad.Gramm. 6.64–65. 33 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.194–95. 34 Again: Aristotle as a source for the sceptics, including Sextus Empiricus, vid. Long 1981.

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Appendix 2 Augustine and the Paris Condemnations of 1277 Apropos of my remark that there is a scholastic precedent for “reprobating” Augustine’s time-concept (see chapter 2): the reference, here, is to Stephen Tempier’s index of 219 reprobated articles—“la plus grave condamnation du moyen âge”35—which was drawn up by a cabal of neo-Augustinians in Paris, including Henry of Ghent,36 and issued on 7 March 1277. The crucial article, for us, is variously numbered 20037 or 86;38 But regardless, this is the article in which Tempier, as bishop of Paris, damns the notion That the aevum and time have no being outside the soul, but solely in apprehension. Quod evum et tempus nichil sunt in re, sed solum in apprehensione.39 Now, the precise sense of the expression in re in this article is difficult to ascertain or to convey. There is nevertheless ample textual support for taking in re to simply mean extra animam, since 13th-century treatments of ‘time’ repeatedly use these phrases in complementary and parallel, if not indistinguishable ways, and not infrequently, with reference to Augustine. This is what we see, for instance, in Albertus Magnus’ Physics commentary: Augustinus etiam disputans, an tempus sit in anima, quaerit, si tempus extra animam, ubi sit. Praeteritum enim cum non sit, nusquam est in rerum natura; futurum etiam cum nondum sit, non habet esse in rerum natura; ergo si tempus est in rerum natura extra animam, hoc erit praesens.40 Or in Kilwardby’s Tractatus de Tempore: Videtur quod tempus non sit de entibus extra animam . . . posuit Augustinus quod tempus non sit nisi in anima . . . tempus secundum ipsum est quedam distentio non alicuius existentis extra animam . . .41

35 Van Steenberghen 1966, 483. 36 Hissette 1977, 7. 37 Duhem 1959, VII:311. 38 Hissette 1977, 152. 39 Cf. Temp. Coll. cap. 12, fol. 18v; Porro 1987, 208 n. 3 (my translation). 40 Alb. Phys. IV, tr. 3, cap. 3. 41 Kil. Temp. 1–4.

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Or again, in one of Henry of Ghent’s Quaestiones Quodlibetales: Revera necesse est ponere instans sive praesens esse in natura rei extra animam, si transitum vel translationem aliquam ponamus extra animam . . . Et si concedatur nunc instans esse in re extra animam [etc.] . . . Nec plus possunt concludere persuasiones Augustini ad probandum tempus non esse in rebus sed solum in anima.42 Thus, Tempier’s article can be taken to condemn the position that ‘time has no being outside the soul, but solely in apprehension.’ This article is still being circulated at the close of the 15th century. It is reproduced in a 1490 Cologne incunable (from which I have quoted it) that contains Tempier’s Paris condemnations and Kilwardby’s Oxford condemnations; and it is cited in a 1481 Venetian incunable containing John the Canon’s Quaestiones super Octo Libros Physicorum. Now, Canon’s Quaestiones were arguably penned in the first decades of the 14th century, but may in fact date to the mid-15th century. In any event, Canon is still being published in 1481, and he writes that the opinion of a prominent Franciscan master, Peter Auriol (d. 1322), is manifestly false, inasmuch as it says that time has its existence from the soul. This proposition . . . is [also present in] an article that was excommunicated at Paris by the bishop of Paris and by the whole University. They stated that it was erroneous to hold that the aevum and time have their sole existence in the apprehension of the soul.43 Pierre Duhem assumes a heavy influence of Confessions XI on Peter Auriol’s account of time,44 which Canon rejects here; and Duhem also takes Tempier’s ‘time’-article to have struck at Confessions XI.45 Roland Hissette, however, has briefly documented that the positive doctrine in Tempier’s article—i.e. tempus solum est in apprehensione— can be detected in a range of 13th-century sources,46 including Thomas Aquinas47 and Siger of Brabant.48 Aquinas and Siger alike reference Aristotle—not Augustine—when 42 Gand. Quodl. III, q. 11 (cit. Porro 1996, 6). 43 Cf. Can. Quaest. IV, q. 6, fol. 72v; Duhem 1959, VII:317. 44 Duhem 1959, VII:370. 45 Duhem 1959, VII:367–68. 46 Hissette 1977, 153–54. 47 Cf. Aq. S.Th. I, q. 1, art. 1, resp. 48 For Siger’s treatment of time, consult the references provided at Van Steenberghen 1977, 334.

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they use Tempier’s condemned term, apprehensio. Thus, it is provisionally an Aristotelian and Averroistic discourse of time ‘in the soul’—i.e. in apprehensione— that appears to be circulating in 13th-century scholastic circles, and that Tempier excommunicates. And this could of course be predicted, since it is the rise of neoPeripateticism in Paris that occasions Tempier’s condemnations. It is with reason, then, that Hissette concludes: “Cette insistence sur l’apprehensio a sans doute éveillé l’inquiétude d’un censeur: il a cru que certains maîtres contestaient le caractère réel de la durée des créatures.”49 And this is very interesting, since there is no distinctly Augustinian resonance in the term apprehensio, apropos of time. To the contrary, it is preeminently god—i.e. eternity—that may be ‘apprehended’ in the Confessions (already at I.5.5); though the word has a corporeal-legal sense when Augustine’s friend Alypius is ‘apprehended’ by a mob (at VI.9.14–15), and though a mood can also seize or ‘apprehend’ Augustine (as at X.8.15). Most significantly, in the last sentences of his time-investigation (at XI.29.39), apprehensio signals Augustine’s faith in the mediation of eternity by Christ, and in a post-temporal future in which the human contemplation of god will be perfected. Apprehensio here denotes the possibility of a mode of intellection that is unembittered by loss (i.e. time) and unencumbered by massy and opaque (i.e. mortal) flesh. Augustine’s apprehensio in Confessions XI.29 signifies, at once, a divine intellection of time from eternity; a devout but ceaselessly distracted contemplation of eternity in time; and finally, the hope of a purified, stabilized and finalized, human intellection of eternity after time: intentio exalted, intentio lifted out over time. But it does not denote the ‘time’ that is distentio. Augustine’s term apprehensio is, rather, directly opposed to his sense-temporal term, distentio, in Confessions XI; which makes the scholastic term apprehensio—as condemned by Tempier—a counter-concept to Augustine’s late-antique distentio. Since the scholastics frequently associate Augustine with Aristotle and Averroes, and regard him as holding a restrictive notion of time ‘in the soul,’50 this by no means disproves Duhem’s hypothesis that Augustine is included in Tempier’s article on time—and thus, that Augustine is tacitly reprobated on this point. For we will recall that Henry of Ghent had a hand in drafting Tempier’s articles, while he clearly takes Augustine’s time-concept to be restrictive (though note the absence of apprehensio here): Ecce plane quid de proposita quaestione sensit Augustinus, videlicet quod [tempus] non esset nisi in anima.51 49 Hissette 1977, 154. 50 Cf. for instance, Stras. S.Ph. II, tr. 9. 51 Gand. Quodl. III, q. 11.

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Rather, what I would like to suggest is that the ‘Augustine’ Tempier excommunicates is a 13th-century ‘Augustine’ in so far as he is assimilated to the intellectivism (see 2.5) of Aristotle’s Physics and Averroes’ Physics commentaries. For it is not Augustine, but Aristotle and his Cordovan commentator who specify that ‘the soul’ in which time is actualized is the intellective soul—whence Tempier’s intellective term, apprehensio. This is Aristotle: And if nothing can enumerate but the soul, i.e. the intellective soul (ψυχῆς νοῦς), it is impossible that time should exist if the soul did not . . .52 Si autem nichil aliud aptum natum est quam anima numerare et anima intellectus, inpossibile est esse tempus anima non sit . . .53 And this is the scholastics’ Averroes:  . . . cum ſit declaratum quod, cum numerans non fuerit, non erit numerus: & eſt impoſſibile aliquid aliud numerare pręter animam. & de anima intellectus: manifeſtum eſt quod, ſi anima [intellectus] non fuerit, non erit numerus: &, cum numerus non fuerit, non erit tempus.54 And finally, again, Averroes: Dicamus igitur ad hoc, quod extra mentem non eſt niſi motus, & tempus non ſit, nisi quando mens dividit motum in prius, & poſterius: & hæc eſt intentio numeri motus, id est motum eſſe numeratus . . .55 If Augustine had not been misinterpreted in this Aristotelian-Averroistic vein, then his time-concept would not have been ‘excommunicated’ by Stephen Tempier in 1277. Or said differently: my impious, sensualist interpretation of Confessions XI sets the bishop of Hippo Regius out of reach of the bishop of Paris’s article on time.

52 Arist. Phys. IV.14 (223a). 53 Arist.Lat. Phys. IV.14. 54 Aver.Lat. Phys. IV, 131d–e (my transcription). 55 Aver.Lat. Phys. IV, 109c (my transcription).

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Appendix 3 Pierre Gassendi’s Metaphysical Confession of Time It is curious, in light of the scholastic reception of Confessions XI (see chapter 2), to glance at a 17th-century treatment of time that opens with Augustine’s confession: “If no one asks me what time is, I know; if I wish to state what it is when asked, I do not know.”56 It is Pierre Gassendi—a front-wave neo-Epicurean57—who quotes this in the first paragraph of his commandingly erudite discussion of time and eternity,58 which is located in Section I (“De Rebus Naturæ universè”) of Part II (“Physicæ”) of the Syntagma Philosophicum, first published in 1658. For Gassendi, as for the scholastics, the question of time pertains to the rebus naturae,59 although in this, he is following Epicurus and Lucretius, Aristotle and Augustine—not Albertus Magnus. Gassendi’s placement of his chapter “Quid Tempus ſit” is nevertheless, perhaps, the only aspect of it that harmonizes with Epicurus60 or Lucretius, Aristotle or Augustine—though they all figure in the nine folio pages he devotes to time and eternity. It is no shock that Gassendi rejects Aristotle’s “celebrated definition” of time as “the number of motion according to the prior and posterior”61 in Physics IV: he had announced his decision to break with the Peripatetics on time62 a quarter-century before the Syntagma went to press.63 That Gassendi also shows no deference to Augustine in Confessions XI is hardly a scandal: as we have seen, there is scholastic precedent for rejecting Augustine’s time-concept. What could not be predicted, perhaps, is this: 56

Gassendi 1658, I:220: “Profectò verò haud abs re in ore eſt omnium, quod D. habet Auguſtinus, Si nemo, inquit, ex me quærat, quid sit Tempus, scio; si quærenti explicare velim, nescio [Aug. Conf. XI.14.17].” For a scholastic citation, vid. Gand. Quodl. III, q. 11: Quid eſt ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quęrat: ſcio. Si quęrenti explicare velim, neſcio. 57 Vid. Lolordo 2007, 20–24. 58 Gassendi 1658, I:220: “Caput VII. Quid Tempus ſit, & quod illius ab Æternitate diſcrimen.” 59 This is clear from Gassendi’s text, although the Syntagma was “never finished,” and was “put together after Gassendi’s death by [Samuel] Sorbière and [Henri-Louis Habert de] Montmor” (Lolordo 2007, 20). 60 Cf. also Gassendi’s précis of Epicurus on time in the Syntagma Philosophiae Epicuri, at Gassendi 1684, 275–77: “Caput XVI. De eis Qualitatibus, quæ habentur rerum Eventa; ac præſertim de Tempore.” 61 Gassendi 1658, I:221: “Ariſtotelis difinitio celebris eſt, quâ eſſe Tempus voluit, . . . Numerum motus . . . secundùm prius, & posterius.” 62 For a review of several “Renaissance critiques of Aristotle’s theory of time”: Hutton 1977. 63 Lolordo 2007, 106: “In a letter to Peiresc on 28 April 1631 that was printed as a preface to the Exercitationes, Gassendi wrote that he planned to reinstate the space of the ancients and dispense with Aristotelian place . . . and treat time ‘differently’ from Aristotle.”

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(i)

that Gassendi, Epicurus’ foremost Catholic apologist, displays no partiality whatever for Epicurus’ time-doctrine; (ii) that by rejecting Epicurus’ time-doctrine, Gassendi also rejects—and in interesting ways, reverses—Augustine’s time-concept; and (iii) that while Gassendi distances himself markedly from Epicurus and Augustine on time, he nevertheless introduces one of his decisive propositions on time with the—perhaps, seemingly Augustinist—expression: “It must be confessed ” ( fatendum).64 This nest of issues deserves serious investigation, though here I can only address the last: What is the source of Gassendi’s decision ‘to confess’ ( fateri) one element of his time-doctrine in the Syntagma?65 Gassendi’s source could in fact be Augustine, since—as we have seen—Gassendi opens his chapter with a sentence from Confessions XI; since—while Augustine greatly prefers confiteri to fateri—he nevertheless selects fateri for his first ‘confession’ in Confessions I,66 with fateri appearing in nine of the Confessions’ thirteen books;67 and since—crucially—fateri appears in Confessions XI.20.26, where Augustine first articulates a co-presence of memoria, contuitus and expectatio in the soul.68 Gassendi’s choice of fateri in the Syntagma’s time-discussion could, then, plausibly derive from the Confessions, and specifically, from Confessions XI. However, it does not. For Gassendi uses the gerundive for his ‘confession,’ which fateri never takes in the

64

Gassendi 1658, I:223: “Fatendum nihil eſſe reverâ permanenter, niſi permanens; at eſſe reverâ quoque ſuo modo, hoc eſt ſucceſſivè, quod eſt ſucceſſivum.” 65 I have seen no scholastic appropriate the language of ‘confession’ in this way. Cf. for instance, Alb. Phys. IV, tr. 3, c. 2–4; Gand. Quodl. III, q. 11; Gross. In Phys. IV; Harc. Q.Ord. XVIII; Kil. Temp. q. 1–16; Scot. Q.Disp. XVIII–XIX; Stras. S.Ph. tr. IX; Vit. Quodl. XII. 66 Aug. Conf. I.5.6: habet quae offendant oculos tuos: fateor et scio; I.6.9: an inrides me ista quaerentem teque de hoc quod novi laudari a me iubes et confiteri me tibi? 67 Aug. Conf. II.7.15: . . . et omnia mihi dimissa esse fateor; V.10.20: . . . cogerer finitum fateri; VII.3.5: . . . qua me non iniuste plecti te iustum cogitans cito fatebar; VII.19.25: ego autem aliquanto posterius didicisse me fateor; VIII.10.23: aut enim fatebuntur quod nolunt; IX.4.12: expavi, fateor, domine meus deus meus; X.20.29: audimus nomen hoc et omnes rem ipsam nos appetere fatemur; X.33.49: . . . fateor, aliquantulum adquiesco; X.37.61: sed auget, fateor, non solum, sed et vituperatio minuit; XII.22.31: ita fatemur minus bonum esse quod factum est creabile atque formabile, sed tamen bonum; XII.30.41: sed omnes quos in eis verbis vera cernere ac dicere fateor. 68 Aug. Conf. XI.20.26: si haec permittimur dicere, tria tempora video fateorque, tria sunt.

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Confessions;69 whereas fateri takes the gerundive form, fatendumst,70 in a Lucretian line that Gassendi quotes one folio page before he writes his own, anti-Lucretian ‘confession’: fatendum. This is Lucretius, in Gassendi’s typography: Nec per se quemquam tempus sentire fatendum’st Semotum ab rerum motu placidáque quiete.71 Which can be rendered: Nor should we confess that anyone senses time in-itself or far-removed from the motion and untroubled rest of bodies.72 It is because of this Lucretian couplet (which is quoted in chapter 1) and not at all because of Augustine, that Gassendi ‘confesses’ time in the Syntagma.73 And Gassendi’s is a singular time-confession. He heeds neither Lucretius’ admonition, as just quoted;74 nor the objections of Augustine, Gregory Nazianzen and John Damascene;75 nor the

69 70

Cf. Arts 1927, 114–19. Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. I.377: receptumst; I.465: videndumst; II.94: probatumst; II.1052: putandumst; etc. 71 Gassendi 1658, I:222 = Lucr. Rer.nat. I.462–63. Cf. Gassendi 1658, I:222 = Lucr. Rer.nat. I.465–66: . . . videndum’st | Ne fortè hæc per se cogant nos esse fateri . . .  72 Cf. Munro 1920, II:11: “And we must admit that no one feels time by itself abstracted from the motion and calm rest of things.” 73 Gassendi 1658, I:223: Fatendum nihil eſſe reverâ permanenter, nisi permanens; at eſſe reverâ quoque ſuo modo, hoc eſt ſucceſſivè, quod eſt ſucceſſivum. 74 Gassendi 1658, I:222: . . . Ac talis eſt quidem Epicuri ſententia. Videntur porrò Stoïci meliùs, quàm ipſe Epicurus ſenſiſſe, quod per se esse intelligatur, non tale quod accidat rebus, eo ſenſu, ut Tempus non foret, ſi res non eſſent, quæ eo durarent, aut niſi etiam noſtra mens durare ipſas cogitaret . . .  75 Gassendi 1658, I:227: Obiiciuntur rursùs Patres aliqui, uti Auguſtinus, Nazianzenus, Damaſcenus, qui fuiſſe negent Tempus ante Mundum . . .  Apropos of Gassendi’s linkage of ‘Auguſtinus . . . Damaſcenus’: in his 1597 Metaphysical Disputations, Francisco Suarez calibrates Augustine’s 5th-century Latin distentio to the 8th-century, Latinized protensio in John Damascene. Vid. Suarez 1861, 955: . . . ita videtur locutus Augustinus dicto capite 23, lib. 11 Confess. . . . Video igitur tempus quamdam esse distensionem; et Damascenus, libro 2, cap. 1, mentionem facit illius successionis imaginariæ, quam vocat, velut temporalem motum, ac spatium, quod (ait) una protenditur cum rebus æternis. Unde fit etiam protendi cum reali tempore.

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strictures of Plato and Aristotle;76 but rather concludes that time is in no sense “dependent from motion or subsequent to it.”77 Gassendi’s ‘time’ in the Syntagma is a pretermundane, absolute, space-like,78 “bodiless extension” in which it is yet possible “to designate past, present, future.”79 What is of prime importance is this, however: in articulating his proto-Newtonian time-concept, Gassendi has no complaints regarding Augustine’s ‘metaphysical’ treatment of time. To the contrary, it is quite evident that Gassendi regards Augustine’s time-concept—like Aristotle’s, like Epicurus’ and Lucretius’—as being unduly, indefensibly physical. (This is because, per Augustine: “The forms of [material] things give rise to times.”)80 Moreover, Gassendi seems to regard the Stoics’ and Plotinus’ timeconcepts—neither of which directly informed 13th-century disputes over time—with the least disfavour.81 That is to say, in propounding his arch-metaphysical timeconcept—for recall, Gassendi’s time is a “bodiless extension” (Extenſio incorporea)82— Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucretius and Augustine (inter alia) are forgone, whereas the Stoics and Plotinus are advanced upon.

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Gassendi 1658, I:227: Tametſi dici quoque poteſt, priores illos negaſſe ſolùm fuiſſe ante Mundum eìuſmodi Tempus, quod Plato, & Ariſtoteles deſcribunt, ut quidpiam à motu dependens. 77 Gassendi 1658, I:225: Atque ex his tandem non videtur Tempus eſſe aliquid à motu dependens, aut illo poſterius; ſed motu ſolùm indicari, ut menſuratum à menſura. Cf. Bernardino Telesio’s similar formulation in book I of his 1565 work, De Rerum Natura (cit. and tr. Hutton 1977, 354, 354 n. 47): “Time in no way depends on motion, but, as has been said, it exists by itself, and what characteristics it has, it has of itself, and none from motion” (Nihil enim a motu cum pendeat tempus per se, ut dictum est existat, quas habet condiciones, a se ipso habet omnes, a motu nullam prorsus). 78 Gassendi 1658, I:220: ut datur incorporeum Spatium . . . ſic dari videtur incorporea quædam . . . à corporibus independens Duratio . . . Ut enim illud Spatium, præterquàm quod Locus eſt Mundi partiúmque eius omnium . . . ita hæc Duratio, præterquàm quod Tempus eſt Mundi, rerúmque omnium in eo exſtantium, & diffuſa fuiſſe abſque ullo prinicipio ante Mundum concipitur, & diffundenda abſque ullo fine intelligitur, deſtructo etiam Mundo. 79 Gassendi 1658, I:220: . . . Duratio iam valeat deſcribi, Extenſio incorporea, fluens, in qua ſic præteritum, præſens, futurum deſignare liceat, ut rei cuiuſque eſſe Tempus poſſit. 80 Aug. Conf. XII.29.40: formae rerum exserunt tempora. 81 Gassendi 1658, I:222: Videntur porrò Stoïci meliùs, quàm ipſe Epicurus ſenſiſſe . . .; 224: Qua occaſione Plotinus Peripateticos reprehendit . . .  82 Gassendi 1658, I:220.

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Appendix 4 Thomas Hobbes’s Physical Confession of Time If the neo-Epicurean Gassendi rarefies the Stoics and Plotinus on time (see Appendix 3), his friend83 Thomas Hobbes revises Aristotle,84 Epicurus and Lucretius in “De Loco et Tempore,” the chapter that introduces Hobbes’s “Philosophia Prima” in the De Corpore, published in 1655 (when Gassendi was on his deathbed).85 Unlike Gassendi, Hobbes makes no reference to Epicurus, Lucretius or Augustine on time; Aristotle’s is the only name here.86 Unlike Gassendi, Hobbes articulates a time-doctrine that closely resembles Augustine’s.87 But like Gassendi’s “Quid Tempus ſit,” Hobbes’s “De Loco et Tempore” pivots on some notion of ‘confession,’ for which Hobbes uses Augustine’s preferred term: confiteri. This is Hobbes—in his translation, and his Latin: For seeing all men confess a year to be time, and yet do not think a year to be the accident or affection of any body, they must needs confess it to be, not in the things without us, but only in the thought of the mind. So when they speak of the times of their predecessors, they do not think after their predecessors are gone, that their times can be any where else than in the memory of those that remember them.88 Nam quum confiteantur annum, esse tempus, et tamen annum alicujus corporis accidens aut affectum, aut modum esse non putent, necesse est ut confiteantur esse eum, non in ipsis rebus, sed in animi cogitatione, reperiendum; quumque de majorum suorum temporibus loquuntur, an existimant, extinctis majoribus suis, tempora eorum alibi esse posse, quam in memoria recordantium?89 We could of course range Hobbes’s last statement, which isolates past times ‘in the memory of those that remember them,’ beside these sentences from Confessions XI: 83 84

85

86 87 88 89

Lolordo 2007, 10: “Gassendi apparently became friends with Hobbes during his time in Paris in the 1640s, although the two had met previously.” Hobbes 1839b, 94: “ . . .without receding much from common opinion, or from Aristotle’s definition”; 95: “ . . .which agrees with this definition of Aristotle, time is the number of motion according to former and latter.” Lolordo 2007, 10: “Samuel Sorbière, a disciple of both Gassendi and Hobbes in turn, tells us that when Gassendi was given a copy of De corpore on his deathbed, he greeted it with a kiss.” Cf. Hobbes 1839a, 83–84; 1839b, 94–95. The word doctrina does not appear in Aug. Conf. XI, but is the first word in Hobbes’s “De Loco et Tempore.” Vid. Hobbes 1839a, 81: “Doctrinæ naturalis exordium . . . ” Hobbes 1839b, 94. Hobbes 1839a, 83–84.

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Who denies that past things are now inexistent? But nevertheless, there is still in the soul the memory of things past. . . . Nor is time past, which is inexistent, ‘long’; but a long past is ‘a long memory of the past.’ quis negat praeterita iam non esse? sed tamen adhuc est in animo memoria praeteritorum. . . . neque ‘longum’ praeteritum tempus, quod non est, sed longum praeteritum ‘longa memoria praeteriti’ est. (XI.28.37) Yet Augustine is not Hobbes’s source here. Rather, Hobbes is demonstrably reworking a passage from book I of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura that Gassendi quotes in extenso,90 though Gassendi then—unlike Hobbes—takes his distance. Alluding to the rape of Helen and the sack of Troy,91 Lucretius urges us in this passage to “see to it that they do not force us to confess (fateri) that these things ‘are’ inthemselves (per se . . . esse)” (Hobbes has ‘in the things without us’), since “those generations of men” (Hobbes’s ‘predecessors’), “of whom these things were accidents (eventa), have now been irrevocably swept away by past ages.”92 Lucretius does not make the point himself here (as he will in De Rerum Natura III),93 but his lines testify to the fact that all that remains of Helen and the walls of Troy is memory (as when Augustine recollects Virgil’s ‘Troy’ at Confessions I.13. and I.17).94 ‘In-themselves’ or per se,95 Helen and that city are simply—to use Hobbes’s word—gone. 90

Gassendi 1658, I:222: Denique Tyndaridem raptam, bellόque subactas | Troiugenas genteis cùm dicent esse videndum’st | Ne fortè hæc per se cogant nos esse fateri, | Quando ea sæcla hominum, quorum hæc eventa fuêre, | Irrevocabilis abstulerit iam præterita ætas. | Namque aliud rebus . . .  91 Cf. Arist. Phys. IV.13 (222a): “[We say,] ‘He has come now,’ if he came today. But we do not speak in the same way of the Trojan War or Deucalion’s flood (ὁ κατακλυσμὸς) . . . ” 92 Lucr. Rer.nat. I.464–68: Denique Tyndaridem raptam belloque subactas | Troiiugenas gentis cum dicent ‘esse,’ videndumst | ne forte haec per se cogant nos esse fateri, | quando ea saecla hominum, quorum haec eventa fuerunt, | irrevocabilis abstulerit iam praeterita aetas. 93 Cf. Lucr. Rer.nat. III.819–69. 94 Aug. Conf. I.13.22: . . . et dulcissimum spectaculum vanitatis, equus ligneus plenus armatis et Troiae incendium atque ipsius umbra Creusae; I.17.27 (cit. Courcelle 1984, I:28 n. 84): . . . ut dicerem verba Iunonis irascentis et dolentis quod non posset Italia Teucrorum avertere regem [≈ Virg. Aen. I.38]. Cf. Aug. Rhyth. II.2.2: sic enim pronuntiem, “Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris” [= Virg. Aen. I.1]; etc. 95 Arts 1927, 25: “Such prepositional phrases as per se are uncommon in Cicero and Caesar, but very frequent in Livy. These phrases have their origin in popular speech. The fact that such expressions were taken over into the Romance languages is sufficient proof of this. Examples of the expression per se in St. Augustine’s Confessions are as follows: per se ipsa intus cernimus, Conf. 10, 11. num et ipsa per ­imaginem suam sibi adest ac non per se

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With Hobbes, then—as with Gassendi—it is because of Lucretius, not Augustine, that time is to be ‘confessed.’ Yet it is precisely the Lucretian provenance of Hobbes’s time-doctrine—though he also has recourse, as stated, to Aristotle96—that is so suggestive. For it is as a neo-Epicurean (sensu lato) that Hobbes writes, in the mid17th century: A moved body leaves a phantasm of its motion [in the soul], namely, an idea of that body passing out of one space into another by continual succession. And this idea, or phantasm, is that, which . . . I call Time.97 Corpus motum motus sui phantasma in animo relinquit, nimirum ideam corporis, nunc per hoc, nunc per aliud spatium continua successione transeuntis. Est autem talis idea sive phantasma, id quod . . . appello tempus.98 And it is as a Platonist (sensu lato) that Augustine writes in his Confessions, in the first decade of the 5th century: When past things are veraciously narrated, they are brought out of memory— not the things themselves, which have passed by (praeterierunt)—but words conceived (concepta) from the images of these things, which the things have infixed in the soul as traces, by passing through the senses (in animo velut vestigia per sensus praetereundo fixerunt). (XI.18.23) Or again, this is Augustine: It is not the things themselves, which are now inexistent, that I measure, but something that remains infixed in my memory . . . the affections that passing things produce in [the soul] (affectionem quam res praetereuntes in [animo] faciunt) and that, when the things themselves have passed by (cum illae praeterierint), remain . . . This is what I measure (ipsam metior) when I measure times. (XI.27.35–36)

96

97 98

ipsam, Conf. 10, 15. per se ipsam sibi praesto est ipsa memoria, Conf. 10, 16. si per se ipsam praesto esset oblivio, Conf. 10, 16.” Hobbes 1839b, 95: “Wherefore a complete definition of time is such as this, time is the phantasm of before and after in motion; which agrees with this definition of Aristotle, time is the number of motion according to former and latter; for that numbering is an act of the mind; and therefore it is all one to say, time is the number of motion according to former and latter; and time is a phantasm of motion numbered.” Hobbes 1839b, 94. Hobbes 1839a, 83.

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What is it, precisely, that separates the late-antique Platonist from the early-modern materialist? Or when Hobbes writes the following, later in the De Corpore, what term or relation is it that is inassimilable to time in Confessions XI? Time is, by the definition of it, a phantasm, that is, a conception of motion . . . [and] there can be no conception of motion, without conceiving past and future time.99 Est enim tempus, ex definitione, phantasma, id est, conceptus motus . . . [et] motum non concipi sine conceptu præteriti tum futuri.100 Hobbes is clear that sensus is that “by which a phantasm is made” (ex quo oritur phantasma),101 and recall that for Augustine, in Confessions XI.18.23, it is “by passing through the senses” (per sensus praetereundo) that images arise in the soul. Thus, if Hobbes’s tempus is ‘a phantasm, that is, a conception of motion’; and if ‘there can be no conception of motion, without conceiving past and future time’; then what is this triplex condition of time, in the De Corpore, but Augustine’s “presence of past-things, memory, presence of present-things, observation, presence of future-things, expectation” (XI.20.26)? It is not my intention to resolve these questions, or to imply that Hobbes’s timedoctrine in the De Corpore is a mere doublet of Augustine’s time-concept in the Confessions. But the affinities are distinct, and cannot—this is the crux—be traced back to Augustine’s text, any more than Hobbes’s repeated use of confiteri can be traced to the Confessions. Hobbes’s ‘confession’ in “De Loco et Tempore,” like Gassendi’s in “Quid Tempus ſit,” is Lucretian. And when Hobbes writes— What then can days, months, and years, be, but the names of . . . computations made in our mind? Time therefore is a phantasm, but a phantasm of motion.102 Ubi igitur est dies, mensis, vel annus, nisi sint hæc nomina computationum in animo factarum? Est igitur tempus phantasma; sed phantasma motus.103

99 Hobbes 1839b, 110, 111. 100 Hobbes 1839a, 97, 98. 101 Cf. Hobbes 1839b, 396: “The motion of the organ, by which a phantasm is made, is not commonly called sense, unless the object be present. And the phantasm remaining after the object is removed or past by, is called . . . in Latin imaginatio . . . [and in] Greek Φαντασία”; 1839a, 322–33: “Solet . . . motus organi, ex quo oritur phantasma, non nisi præsente objecto, sensio appellari: remoto autem sive prætervecto objecto, manente tamen phantasmate . . . Latinis imaginatio . . . [et] phantasia Græcorum.” 102 Hobbes 1839b, 94–95. 103 Hobbes 1839a, 84.

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—his inspiration is unquestionably Epicurean. For as Sextus Empiricus reports in Adversus Physicos II, a text that Hobbes was likely introduced to in Paris in the 1630s,104 by the Mersenne circle: There is ascribed to the physicists (φυσικοὺς) Epicurus and Democritus a conception of time (χρόνου νόησις) such as this, “Time is a day-like and night-like phantasm” (χρόνος ἐστιν ἡμεροειδὲς καὶ νυκτοειδὲς φάντασμα).105 Epicurus is a physicist, here, and the Epicurean ‘conception of time’ is a physical timeconcept—as Epicurus himself states in the letter to Herodotus, where time is subsumed under physical theory (περὶ φύσεως θεωρίας).106 For Epicurus, phantasmatic time is physical time, and vice versa. Hobbes, similarly, sees no diremption of his neo-Epicurean, phantasmatic time from physical and indeed mechanistic time, since he proceeds in this way: Time therefore is a phantasm, but a phantasm of motion, for if we would know by what moments time passes away, we make use of some motion or other, as of the sun, of a clock, of the drops in a water-clock107 . . . there being no other means by which we may take notice of any time at all.108 Est igitur tempus phantasma; sed phantasma motus; cum enim, quibus momentis tempus labatur, cognoscere volumus, adhibemus motum aliquem, ut solis, vel automati, aut clepsydræ . . . alio autem modo tempus nullum apparet.109 That Augustine also alludes to a ‘water-clock’ (clepsydra) in Confessions XI (see 13.1) suggests that he no more than Hobbes conceives time ‘in the soul’ as a derangement or

104 Hamilton 2012, 219. 105 Sext. Ad.Phys. II.181. 106 Epic. Epist. I.35. 107 Hobbes renders his Latin here, ut solis, vel automati, aut clepsydræ, into English as “of the sun, of a clock, of the sand in an hour-glass.” It would of course be churlish to take issue with Hobbes’s English translation. Nevertheless, lexically at least—and perhaps, technically—his Latin clepsydra refers to a much-refined form of ‘water-clock’ that Empedocles and Plato already refer to (see 13.1). And it certainly seems from Gassendi’s reference to the clepsydra, in his chapter on time in the Syntagma, that a ‘water-clock’ is still intended. Vid. Gassendi 1658, I:225: “ . . .imò & poſſent interim fluxu clepſydræ, aut alterius machinæ horariæ diſtingui.” 108 Hobbes 1839b, 94–95. 109 Hobbes 1839a, 84.

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a negation of physical, indeed mechanistic time—for mechanistic time is, of course, a result of, in Hobbes’s phrase, ‘computations made in our mind.’ It is with this association, the reference to a ‘water-clock’ in Hobbes and Augustine— as in Gassendi, incidentally110—that I will close a frankly associative 17th-century set of appendices, since it is precisely a series of associations that Gassendi and Hobbes help to disrupt. For they alike ‘confess’ time, but in a post-Renaissance, Lucretian vein. Hobbes is a representative of 17th-century materialistic physics, yet it is his time-doctrine in the De Corpore that echoes Augustine’s distentio animi. And Gassendi, unlike the scholastics, has access to Plotinus’ Enneads, yet it is clear that to Gassendi, Augustine represents—with Aristotle, Epicurus and Lucretius (inter alia)—a ‘physical’ time-concept. It is Gassendi, whose sympathies appear to lie with the Stoics and Plotinus, who advances a ‘metaphysical’ conception of time in the Syntagma Philosophicum. And finally, it is instructive that Gassendi, Epicurus’ preeminent 17thcentury apologist, rejects Epicurus’ time-doctrine tout court; whereas Hobbes, who at times subjects Epicurean physical theory to harsh criticism, revives Epicurus’ phantasmatic account of time. This is called libertas philosophandi. And as I have said (see chapter 2), it is only in matters of sacred doctrine that Augustine renounces his libertas philosophandi. For this—and other reasons—it cannot be assumed that Augustine’s time-concept is ‘Platonic.’ Its strange affinities with Hobbes’s 17th-century time-concept, for instance, suggest that Augustine’s is an ‘Epicurean’-type time-concept (see 2.3).

110 Gassendi 1658, I:225: “ . . . imò & poſſent interim fluxu clepſydræ, aut alterius machinæ horariæ diſtingui.”

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Index Adeodatus (Augustine’s son) 165 Aelian 185 Albertus Magnus 36–37, 42–43, 318, 322 Alliez, E. 45–46, 48, 51, 106–107, 113, 149, 174–75, 195, 202–203, 212, 295 Alypius (Augustine’s friend) 290 n. 174, 292 n. 179, 320 Ambrose of Milan 17, 54, 95, 132 n. 83, 145–46, 145 n. 19, 147 n. 25, 191, 254 n. 14, 283, 283 n. 133, 291–97, 304 Ammianus Marcellinus 1 n. 1, 1 n. 4, 305 n. 231 Aristoxenus 275 n. 109, 284–85, 288–90 Aristotle 2 n. 9, 3 nn. 14–15, 5–6, 8 n. 22, 16 n. 40, 36–38, 42–44, 50, 56–57, 59 n. 124, 62, 77, 87 n. 134, 101 n. 11, 106–107, 123 n. 33, 147, 182 n. 68, 188, 191, 209, 212 n. 63, 217 n. 91, 227 n. 20, 239 n. 35, 240, 255–56, 259, 260 n. 42, 266 n. 63, 283 n. 131, 284–87, 296, 297 n. 203, 310 n. 1, 314–17, 319–21, 322, 325–26, 328 n. 96 Arrian 185–86 Augustinus (Donatist bishop) 1 n. 2 Averroes 36 n. 6, 37, 37 n. 8, 320 Bede 2 n. 8 Boethius 43 n. 42, 118 n. 14, 285 n. 140, 287 Brentano, F. 229 n. 27 Calcidius 11 Carthage 1 n. 6, 53, 145, 284–85, 293 Casanova, J. 67 Castoriadis, C. 47–49, 51, 99, 102, 149, 195, 203 Chrétien, J.-L. 14 n. 30 Cicero 3, 3 n. 16, 5 n. 2, 10, 16 n. 41, 18 n. 51, 22 n. 70, 24 n. 82, 28, 35, 37, 42, 50, 55, 59, 61 n. 139, 65–68, 70 n. 32, 71–78, 80 nn. 101–102, 81–85, 88, 93, 96, 123 n. 34, 130 n. 72, 147, 154 n. 23, 166, 178 n. 51, 182, 183 n. 71, 186–87, 213 n. 69, 216, 255, 263 n. 50, 272 n. 91, 274 n. 102, 283, 284, 285, 290–94, 296 n. 202 Clocks see Star-clocks; Sundials; Water-clocks

Colish, M.L. 4 n. 27, 17 n. 45, 149 n. 37, 216 n. 83 Courcelle, P. 3 n. 17, 33 n. 126, 68 n. 21, 70 n. 32, 71 n. 42, 75 nn. 71–72, 147 n. 25, 177 n. 44, 183 n. 74, 219 n. 97 Damascius 159 n. 50, 244 n. 1, 256 n. 27, 313 Derrida, J. 10, 94 n. 177 Drecoll, V.H. 1 n. 7, 79 Duchrow, U. 52 n. 90, 103 n. 21 Duhem, P. 36 n. 6, 135 n. 89, 147 n. 30, 319–21 Duns Scotus 323 n. 65 ‘Duplicity’ 148 n. 35 Empedocles 8 n. 24, 255, 259, 259 n. 39, 330 n. 107 Ennius  68 n. 21 Epicureans  8 n. 21, 18 n. 51, 19–21, 22 n. 70, 56 n. 104, 60–62, 75–76, 80–93, 122 n. 29, 315, 322–31 Epicurus 8 n. 24, 19, 19 n. 55, 20 n. 60, 38, 60–62, 78, 80 n. 102, 81 n. 104, 88, 315 Eugippius 4, 52 n. 92, 77 Euhemerus  68 n. 21 Faustus (Manichaean bishop) 53, 76, 145–46 Ficino, M. 37, 313 Finaert, J. 72 n. 47, 72 n. 51, 94, 133 n. 84 Flasch, K. 36 nn. 5–6, 45 n. 51, 49 n. 75, 52 n. 89, 52 n. 90 Fortin, E. 213 n. 69 Fortlage, C. 43–44, 244 n. 1 Gassendi, P. 10 n. 10, 23 n. 39, 38, 87, 229 n. 27, 322–25 Hagendahl, H. 21 n. 64, 28 n. 108, 69–70, 75 n. 75, 76 n. 82, 82, 132 n. 83, 166 n. 76, 185 n. 80, 187, 285 nn. 144–45, 293 Heidegger, M. 3 n. 20, 9, 28 n. 101, 44, 104 n. 24, 127 n. 56, 128 n. 64, 147–48, 159 n. 51, 173, 212–13 Helen 327

index

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Henry of Ghent 42–43, 44 n. 45, 229 n. 27, 311 n. 7, 318–21 Henry of Harclay 209 n. 56, 323 n. 65 Heraclitus 3 n. 19, 7 n. 12, 60 n. 127 Hervet, G. 37–38 Hippocrates  6 Hippo Regius 1, 2 n. 8, 19, 79, 189, 225, 321 Hobbes, T. 6 n. 5, 45 n. 50, 62, 87, 326–31 Hombert, P.-M. 19 n. 57 Homer  2 n. 11, 3 n. 19, 6, 183, 183 n. 74, 188 n. 97 Honorius of Autun 2 n. 8 Husserl, E. 9, 104 n. 24, 229 n. 27, 233 n. 6, 279, 296

Manichaeans 53, 76, 80–81, 145, 225 n. 10, 263 n. 50 Marion, J.-L. 12 n. 23, 48, 52 Marius Victorinus  55 n. 101, 285 n. 140, 287 n. 153, 289, 313–14 Marrou, H.-I. 35 n. 142, 66 n. 7, 279 n. 122, 283 n. 133 Meijering, E.P. 28 n. 108, 80 n. 102, 81 n. 104, 82, 130 n. 72 Milan 1, 19, 20, 76 n. 77, 79, 86, 88, 95 n. 180, 146, 151, 154 n. 26, 284 Mohrmann, C. 72 nn. 47–48, 79, 80 n. 99 Monnica (Augustine’s mother) 32 n. 124, 33–34, 128 n. 62, 311 n. 8

‘Impresence’ 28, 115, 117, 124–29, 135, 137, 159, 175, 244–45, 247, 254 n. 14, 262–63 Isidore of Seville 3 n. 17, 174 n. 27, 175 n. 33, 211 n. 58, 211 n. 60, 246 n. 9, 259 n. 38, 284 n. 137

Nebridius (Augustine’s friend) 61 n. 138, 290 n. 174, 304 n. 230 Nicolas of Strasbourg 37 n. 8, 320 n. 50, 323 n. 65 Nietzsche, F. 20, 25–26, 67–68, 246, 273 n. 93, 275

Jeck, U.R. 36 n. 6, 43 n. 37 Jerome 26 n. 42, 132 n. 83 Jordan, R. 15 n. 33, 35 n. 141, 46 n. 59, 47 n. 65, 48 n. 72, 104 n. 26 Julian the Apostate 2 n. 8, 68 n. 18 Jurgeleit, R. 48 n. 74, 110 n. 42 Kant, I. 9 n. 5, 43 n. 42, 147, 229 n. 27 Kotzé, A. 69 n. 27, 80–81, 263 n. 50 Lampey, E. 3 n. 20 Leibniz, G.W. 229 n. 27 Longinus 224 n. 8, 272 n. 91 Lucian 3 n. 19 ‘Lucifer’ 30 n. 116, 299 Lucretius 2 n. 11, 8 n. 21, 20–22, 37, 39–40, 60, 62, 67, 78, 79 n. 95, 80–81, 85–93, 111, 133 n. 84, 138 n. 100, 177–78, 192 n. 117, 197 n. 10, 213 n. 68, 217 n. 89, 220 n. 103, 244, 277, 277 n. 116, 300 n. 213, 310 n. 2, 322–31 Lyotard, J.-F. 4, 9–17, 25, 34 n. 137, 65, 71 n. 46, 94–97, 100 n. 2, 115, 117, 123, 127 n. 56, 128 n. 59, 148, 151, 158–59, 169, 202, 244 n. 2 Macrobius 3 n. 18, 6 n. 8, 11, 11 n. 12, 132 n. 80, 255 n. 26, 257 n. 33, 258 n. 34 Madec, G. 16, 34 n. 138, 51–55

O’Connell, R.J. 116 n. 6, 119 n. 21 O’Daly, G.J.P. 12 n. 22, 17 n. 45, 100 n. 4, 104 n. 26, 111 n. 43, 137 n. 97, 157 n. 43, 176 n. 36, 215 n. 80, 260 n. 40, 313 O’Donnell, J.J. 12 n. 20, 19 n. 57, 26 n. 92, 28 n. 107, 70 n. 33, 79, 99 n. 199, 107 n. 32, 130 n. 72, 146 n. 22, 148 n. 31, 176 n. 36, 203 n. 37, 237 n. 25, 248 n. 15, 252 n. 2, 255 n. 25, 263 n. 50, 267 n. 64, 275 n. 107 Odysseus 2 n. 11, 183 Ovid 2 n. 12, 125 n. 47 Panofsky, E. 11 n. 12 Parmenides 8 Patricius (Augustine’s father) 1 n. 2, 32 n. 124 Pépin, J. 11 n. 12, 51 n. 86, 68 n. 21, 69 n. 24, 143 n. 4, 147 n. 28, 169 n. 4 Peter Auriol 319 Philo Judaeus 23 n. 76, 147 Pindar 12 n. 17, 56–57 Pius II 67 Plato 18 n. 51, 20 n. 59, 22 n. 70, 35 nn. 139–40, 50, 50 n. 80, 55 n. 102, 56–58, 59 n. 121, 59 n. 124, 74 nn. 61–62, 80 n. 101, 82, 95 n. 181, 96 n. 184, 170 n. 10, 188, 255, 296 n. 202, 325 Pliny the Elder  185, 190–91, 256 n. 27

358 Plotinus 12 n. 22, 37, 50–51, 55 nn. 101–102, 72 n. 52, 75, 77, 92, 110 n. 41, 116 n. 6, 119 n. 21, 120 n. 24, 205 n. 44, 284–85, 288, 312–17, 325, 326, 331 Plutarch 2 n. 11, 3 n. 19, 11 n. 12, 56–58, 61, 107 n. 32, 313 Porro, P. 36 n. 6, 167 n. 81 Possidius 225 n. 10 Proclus 12, 159 n. 50 Proculeianus (Donatist bishop) 225 n. 10 Prosper of Aquitaine  2 n. 8 Pythagoras 8 n. 24, 56–58, 72 n. 53 Quintilian 65 n. 5, 258 n. 36, 272, 283 n. 135, 284 n. 136, 285, 289, 291 n. 175, 293–94, 304–305 Ricœur, P. 9 n. 3, 10, 14–15, 44, 46–47, 51, 52 nn. 89–90, 94–95, 96 n. 187, 101, 104 n. 24, 105 n. 28, 116 n. 4, 203, 223 n. 1, 235 n. 18, 277 n. 113, 321 Robert Grosseteste  36 n. 7, 52 n. 92, 323 n. 65 Robert Kilwardby 36–37, 42–45, 48, 58, 209 n. 56, 318–19 Rousseau, J.-J. 67 Runia, D.T.  23 n. 76, 147 n. 25 Sallust 24 n. 81, 67, 69–71, 310 n. 2 Sarapis 6 n. 8 Schürmann, R. 10, 117 n. 9, 118 n. 13, 169 n. 3 Seneca 14 n. 30, 17–19, 33–34, 67, 76, 134 n. 88, 143 n. 1, 178 n. 50, 213 n. 65, 253 n. 10, 310 n. 2 Sextus Empiricus 8, 37–38, 43 n. 42, 50, 58–61, 313, 314–17 Simplicius 235 n. 16, 239 n. 35 Sophocles 12 n. 17 ‘Soul-body’ or ‘Soul-flesh’ 148, 218–19 Speed of light 259 Speusippus 56–58 Star-clocks 4, 256 n. 29, 259 n. 38

index Stephen Tempier  318–21 Stock, B. 65 n. 4, 96 n. 185, 97 n. 189, 285 n. 142 Stoics 4 n. 28, 17 n. 45, 19 n. 55, 20 n. 60, 50, 56–57, 59–60, 83, 107 n. 32, 147, 149, 213 n. 69, 260 n. 40, 285 n. 142, 313, 325, 326, 331 Suarez, F. 49 n. 74, 153 n. 17, 253 n. 10, 324 n. 75 Sundials 58, 254 n. 16, 256 nn. 27–28, 278 Szentkuthy, M. 68 Terentianus Maurus 274 n. 103, 283 n. 133 Tertullian 68 n. 21, 132 n. 83, 148 n. 35 Teske, R.J. 49–51, 52, 116 n. 6, 117 n. 11, 124 n. 39, 136 n. 91, 136 n. 93 Testard, M. 28 n. 108, 65 n. 3, 76 n. 82, 82, 166 n. 76, 187, 216 n. 86 Thagaste 1, 79, 183, 189 Thomas Aquinas 36 n. 2, 118 n. 14, 213 n. 70, 319–20 Trifogli, C. 36 n. 6, 43 n. 37 Troy 2 n. 9, 54 n. 99, 132 n. 83, 327 Van Riel, G. 69 n. 22, 147 n. 28 Varro 59, 69, 132 n. 80, 152 n. 12, 154 n. 26, 180, 257 nn. 31–32, 287 n. 153 Verbeke, G. 156 n. 38, 280 n. 126 Virgil 6 n. 5, 6 n. 8, 21 n. 61, 54, 67, 68 n. 21, 78, 132 n. 81, 132 n. 83, 178 n. 49, 179 n. 54, 183 n. 75, 202 n. 30, 263 n. 53 Von Herrmann, F.-W. 9 n. 2, 10, 14–15, 73, 100, 104–105, 159 n. 51, 195, 198 n. 15, 205 n. 46, 223 n. 1, 227 n. 16, 227 n. 18, 235 n. 16, 249 n. 18, 274 n. 106 Walter Map 36 n. 7 Water-clocks  254, 255 n. 22, 256, 276, 278, 330, 330 n. 107, 331 William of Conches 10 n. 10 Wittgenstein, L. 44 Zarb, S.M. 19 n. 57, 41 n. 27, 238 n. 30