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Time After Augustine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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The metaphysics of time, though almost always diverting, is rarely discomforting. I can wonder what time is, come up only with conundrums, and yet still feel intimately acquainted with time by way of my mundane experience. Familiarity in this case breeds contempt of metaphysics. If I were to pose the question of time as Augustine posed it, however, I would find no refuge in time's familiarity, for time's familiarity is part of what has come into question. My ordinary experience of time may not be of time after all. Facing such a possibility is discomforting, but it may also be the beginning of wisdom. In Augustine's hands, metaphysical questions turn back upon their owners. What I ask of time I ask of myself. The wisdom comes, if it comes at all, in coming to understand the demand knowledge of the world has made upon my self-knowledge. There is nothing worth knowing that does not in some way transform the knower. Augustine hints at the transformation called for in the knowledge of time. It is disturbingly profound.
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1 I know of two especially good examples, Jordan, Robert, ‘Time and Contingency in St. Augustine’, Review of Metaphysics 8 (1954–1955), 394–417Google Scholar and Cavadini, John, ‘Time and Ascent in Confessions XI’, in Collectanea Augustiniana 2: Presbyter Factus Sum (Peter Lang, 1993), 171–85, ed. Lienhard, Joseph T.Google Scholaret al. In different ways, Jordan and Cavadini argue that Augustine's valuation of eternity does not imply a devaluation of time. Indeed the problem of time lies in our having to acknowledge a time-bound life as a life God could value. Being resentfully mortal, we scarcely believe this possible. That at least is the interpretation of Augustine I take from them. Its deep influence on my own way of reading him will be evident later on.
2 A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945), p. 353.Google Scholar
3 Russell, , History, p. 355.Google Scholar See also his Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948), p. 212.Google Scholar
4 Conf. 11.14.17.
5 Philosophical Investigations, no. 89. For citations of Wittgenstein, I will be using the third edition of Anscombe's, G. E. M. translation (New York: Macmillan, 1958),Google Scholar referred to hereafter as PI.
6 PI, no. 90.
7 But see Shields, Philip R., Logic and Sin in the Writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar He finds a religious sense of sin in Wittgenstein's philosophical concern with violations of language. I find it there too, but it goes beyond my present concerns either to assess the elegant case Shields makes for his conclusion, or to advance a case of my own. In the main I invoke Wittgenstein to serve as foil for Augustine.
8 Kirwan, , Augustine (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), see especially pp. 182–6.Google Scholar
9 Kirwan, , Augustine, p. 185.Google Scholar
10 Conf. 11.14.17. Except where otherwise noted, I will be making use of Chadwick's, Henry translation of the Confessions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
11 Conf. 11.20.26.
12 Conf. 11.27.36. The bracketed words are my interpolation of what Augustine's Latin implies but does not explicitly state: Ergo aut ipsa sunt tempora, aut non tempora metior. Many translators, Chadwick included, have taken the ‘ipsa’ to refer back to ‘affectionem’, but if that were so, why the plural verb form, ‘sunt’? More likely the ‘ipsa’ (neuter plural) corresponds to an ellipsed ‘tempora’. My thanks to Andrew Keller, my colleague in classics, for help on this point of syntax.
13 Conf. 11.29.39.
14 See Conf. 10.16.24, where Augustine tries to understand what is remembered in a memory of forgetting.
15 Conf. 11.11.13.
16 Conf. 11.31.41.
17 In The Blue Book (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), pp. 26–7,Google Scholar Wittgenstein makes mention of Augustine's trouble with time and offers a partial diagnosis. The word ‘measure’ admits of more than one usage, and although we often speak of measuring a length of time, it does not follow that measuring time is just a special application of measuring a length. If Augustine is beside himself over the prospect of having to take the measure of what exists only in passing, he appears to have succumbed to a misleading analogy.
It is not clear to me whether Wittgenstein intended his remarks to hold as criticism of Augustine. But suppose he did. His criticism is not wrong, but it leaves open the crucial question of motive. What is so seductive about the analogy which robs time of its measurability?
18 I base the distinction between sensible and intelligible description on Augustine's distinction between sensible and intelligible perception. The latter is his most explicit debt to Platonism. See City of God 8.6.
19 Conf. 2.10.18. Here and above, my translation.
20 Conf. 2.5.10. Chadwick gives an elaborate translation of the term: ‘things which are at the bottom end of the scale of good’.
21 Conf. 11.29.39. My translation.
22 PI, no. 123.
23 PI, no. 133.
24 Earlier versions of this essay were presented before the Humanities Colloquium at Colgate University and the Department of Philosophy at Northern Arizona University. I have many to thank for help and encouragement, but I would like to give special recognition to Anne Freire, my colleague at Colgate who did most to shape my thinking about time, and to George Rudebusch and Dave Sherry, my hosts at NAU.
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