The Space of Time

Supplements to the Study of Time

VOLUME 6

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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, repro-duced 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

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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  xiList of Abbreviations  xiiNote on Citations  xvi

SyNopSiS: Dilation and the Question of Time  1

IntroductionTo Recover Augustine’s Time-Question  5

proem  7

1 Augustine and the Temporal intrigue  111.1 Against a Truncated Interpretation of Confessions XI  161.2 Preliminary Remarks on the Term ‘Sensualist’  191.3 Axiology and Temporality in Augustine’s Confessions  241.4 Time in Augustine’s Triplex Division of Philosophy   34

2 Augustine and the physical Question of Time  382.1 Time and Augustine’s Rerum Natura  402.2 Time in the Confessions: A Typology of the Received

Interpretations  442.3 Confessions XI and Typologies of Time in Antiquity  57

part IAnticipations and Clarifications  65

3 Remarks on the Genre and Sources of Augustine’s Confessions  673.1 Preliminary Remarks on Genre  673.2 Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline: A Source for the Confessions?  713.3 Confessio Ignorantiae: Cicero and Augustine’s Confessions  733.4 Confessio Scientiae: Epicurus and Lucretius in Augustine’s

Confessions  803.5 Confessions X to XII: Dialectics and Song  963.6 Concluding Remarks on Genre  99

viii Contents

4 Towards a Lexical Clarification of ‘Time’ (Conf. Xi.22–24)  1024.1 A Distribution of Augustine’s Time-Investigation

(Conf. XI.14–29)  1054.2 “We Say ‘Time,’ We Say ‘Times’ ” (Conf. XI.22–24)  1084.3 Towards Augustine’s “Power and Nature of Time” (Conf. X.6–7,

XI.23–24)  1135 Towards the Speculative Terrain of Confessions Xii

(Conf. Xi.30–31)  1175.1 Temporal Presence: Varieties of ‘Impresence’  1195.2 Temporal Dilation: A Preliminary Characterization  1265.3 Expectatio Is Never Praescientia (Conf. XI.31)  1315.4 A Discarnate Mind and a Dilation of the Senses (Conf. XI.31)  137

part IITime is illuminated by Timelessness  143

6 What is and is Not in Question in Confessions Xii  1456.1 Time and the Prophetic ‘Letter’  1466.2 How Timelessness Will Illuminate Time  149

7 Cohesion to God, inhesion of the Flesh: Augustine’s Caelum Intellectuale  1527.1 Axiology and Temporality Revisited  1547.2 Augustine’s Hyper-Heavenly (Caelum Caeli)  1577.3 Timelessness and the Root-Verb Haerere  1647.4 More on Augustine’s Root-Verb Haerere  166

8 Corpus et Anima: The Duplicity of Praesens from Confessions X  1718.1 “A Body and a Soul Are Present in Me” (Conf. X.6.9)  1748.2 The Sense of Anima, the Sense of Animus (Conf. X.7)  1758.3 “Cattle and Birds Possess Memory” (Conf. X.17)  1808.4 Excursus: Time Is in the Beasts  1848.5 The Root-Sense of Anima and Animus (Conf. X–XII)  193

9 physical Movement and Mutive Times: Augustine’s Materia Informis  1969.1 Informitas and Timelessness (Conf. XII.6)  1979.2 “Times are Produced by the Movements of Things”

(Conf. XII.8)  2009.3 The Register of ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII  2049.4 The Evidence for ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII  205

ixContents

9.5 Excursus on Logical Precedence (Conf. XII.29)  2109.6 Excursus on Sensual ‘Outness’ (Epist. 137)  214

part IIIA Sensualist interpretation of Confessions Xi  223

10 intimacy with the Flesh is intimacy with Time (Conf. Xi–Xii)  22510.1 “Words Begun and Ended, Sounding in Times” (Conf. XII.27)  22710.2 Familiaritas Carnis and Familiaritas Temporis (Conf. XI.14)  229

11 Times and Time from Augustine’s Eternity-Meditation (Conf. Xi.3–13)  23411.1 Time, Times, and a Proto-Distentio (Conf. XI.11–13)  23611.2 Imago, Affectio and Distentio in the Confessions  23811.3 “Sense Roves” and “Sense Dilates” (Conf. XI.13, XI.31)  244

12 A preparation of Augustine’s Time-investigation (Conf. Xi.11–29)  24612.1 The Soul’s Capacity to Sense Time (Conf. XI.15–16)  24712.2 “A Long Time Cannot Become Long . . .” (Conf. XI.11)  24912.3 The Production of Times as a Condition for Time (Conf. XI.11,

XII.8)  25113 From a Sense of passing Time to a Dilation of the Senses

(Conf. Xi.14–29)  25413.1 Praesens Tempus and a Sense of Temporal Intervals

(Conf. XI.15–16)  25613.2 Times Are Not ‘Times’ and Presence Is Not ‘Presence’

(Conf. XI.20)  26413.3 “As I Just Said, We Measure Times as They Pass” (Conf. XI.21)  26913.4 Vagaries of Motion and the Introduction of Dilation

(Conf. XI.24–26)  27113.5 Sensation and Originary Temporal Mensuration

(Conf. XI.27–28)  27713.6 “The Verse Is Sensed by a Clear Sensation” (Conf. XI.27)  28513.7 “Something Remains Infixed in My Memory” (Conf. XI.27)  29713.8 “These Are ‘Times,’ or I Do Not Measure Times” (Conf. XI.27)  30013.9 “Songs and the Dimensions of Movements” (Conf. XI.27–28)  306

x Contents

ENVoi: Time Exceeds Us because Time is in Us  312

Appendices  3141 Remarks on Plotinus, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus and

Augustine  3142 Augustine and the Paris Condemnations of 1277  3203 Pierre Gassendi’s Metaphysical Confession of Time  3244 Thomas Hobbes’s Physical Confession of Time  328

Select Bibliography  334index  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 help-ful, 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, 2013D.D.

List of Abbreviations

Ael. Nat.anim. Aelian, De Natura AnimaliumAlb. Phys. Albertus Magnus, PhysicaAmb. Hymn. Ambrose of Milan, HymnaeAmm. R.gest. Ammianus Marcellinus, Res GestaeAnon. C.Phil. Anonymous 6th-century composite, Contra PhilosophosAq. S.Th. Thomas Aquinas, Summa TheologiaeAr. Rhyth. Aristoxenus, Elementa RhythmicaArist. Anim. Aristotle, De AnimaArist. Aud. Aristotle, De AudibilibusArist. Cat. Aristotle, CategoriaeArist. Gen.corr. Aristotle, De Generatione et CorruptioneArist. Mem. Aristotle, De Memoria et ReminiscentiaArist. Met. Aristotle, Metaphysica Arist. Phys. Aristotle, PhysicaArist. Poet. Aristotle, PoeticaArist. Post. Aristotle, Analytica PosterioraArist. Prob. Aristotle, ProblemataArist. Rhet. Aristotle, Rhetorica Arist. Sens. Aristotle, De Sensu et SensatoArist.Lat. Phys. Aristoteles Latinus, PhysicaArist.Lat. Rhet. Aristoteles Latinus, RhetoricaArr. Ind. Arrian, IndicaAug. 83 quaest. Augustine, De Diversis Quaestionibus Octoginta TribusAug. An.orig. Augustine, De Anima et eius Origine Aug. Annot. Augustine, Annotationes in IobAug. Beat. Augustine, De Beata VitaAug. C.Acad. Augustine, Contra AcademicosAug. C.Faust. Augustine, Contra FaustumAug. C.Parm. Augustine, Contra Epistulam Parminiani Aug. C.Petil. Augustine, Contra Litteras PetilianiAug. Civ. Augustine, De Civitate Dei contra Paganos Aug. Conf. Augustine, ConfessionesAug. Cons. Augustine, De Consensu Evangelistarum Aug. Div.daem. Augustine, De Divinatione DaemonumAug. Doctr. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana Aug. Enarr. Augustine, Enarrationes in PsalmosAug. Epist. Augustine, Epistulae

xiiiList of Abbreviations

Aug. Fid. Augustine, De Fide Rerum quae non Videntur Aug. Fid.simb. Augustine, De Fide et SimboloAug. Gen.c.Man. Augustine, De Genesi contra ManichaeosAug. Gen.lib.imp. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram imperfectus liberAug. Gen.litt. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram Aug. Gramm.reg. Augustine or Pseudo-Augustine, De GrammaticaAug. Imm.anim. Augustine, De Immortalitate AnimaeAug. Lib.arb. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio Aug. Mag. Augustine, De MagistroAug. Mor. Augustine, De Moribus EcclesiaeAug. Nat.bon. Augustine, De Natura BoniAug. Ord. Augustine, De OrdineAug. Orig.anim. Augustine, De Origine Animae Hominis = Epist. 166Aug. Quant.anim. Augustine, De Quantitate Animae Aug. Retr. Augustine, RetractationesAug. Rhyth. Augustine, De Rhythmo = De MusicaAug. Serm. Augustine, SermonesAug. 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 ReligioneAver.Lat. Phys. Averroes Latinus, De Physico Auditu . . .Bed. Temp. Bede, De Temporibus Boeth. In Cat. Boethius, In Categorias AristotelisCalc. Epist. Calcidius, Calcidii ad Osium EpistulaCan. Quaest. John the Canon, Quaestiones super . . . PhysicorumCens. D.nat. Censorinus, De Die Natali Cic. Acad. Cicero, AcademicaCic. Div. Cicero, De DivinationeCic. Fin. Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et MalorumCic. Inv. Cicero, De InventioneCic. Nat.deor. Cicero, De Natura DeorumCic. Off. Cicero, De OfficiisCic. Or. Cicero, OratorCic. Orat. Cicero, De OratoreCic. Part. Cicero, Partitiones OratoriaeCic. Rep. Cicero, De Re PublicaCic. Tusc. Cicero, Disputationes TusculanaeConc. Glos. William of Conches, Glosae in Timaeum

xiv List of Abbreviations

Dam. Hist. Damascius, Historia Philosophica Dant. Inf. Dante Alighieri, InfernoEpic. Epist. Epicurus, EpistulaeEug. Exc. Eugippius, Excerpta ex Operibus S. AugustiniGand. Quodl. Henry of Ghent, Quaestiones QuodlibetalesGross. In Phys. Robert Grosseteste, Commentarius in PhysicorumHarc. Q.Ord. Henry of Harclay, Quaestiones OrdinariaeHerac. Fr. Heraclitus, FragmentsHipp. Prog. Hippocrates, PrognosticonHom. Il. Homer, IliadHom. Od. Homer, OdysseyHon. Imag. Honorius of Autun, De Imagine Mundi Hon. Lum. Honorius of Autun, De Luminaribus EcclesiaeIsid. Etym. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive OriginumJer. Epist. Jerome, EpistulaeKil. Quaest. Robert Kilwardby, Quaestiones in . . . SententiarumKil. Temp. Robert Kilwardby, Tractatus de TemporeLong. Subl. Pseudo-Longinus, De SublimitateLuci. Auct. Lucian, Vitarum AuctioLucr. Rer.nat. Lucretius, De Rerum NaturaMacr. Sat. Macrobius, SaturnaliaMan. Astr. Manilius, AstronomicaMap Nug.cur. Walter Map, De Nugis CurialiumMar. Gramm. Marius Victorinus, Ars GrammaticaOv. Fas. Ovid, FastiPius Comm. Pope Pius II, Commentariorum Pii SecundiPl. Crat. Plato, CratylusPl. Ion Plato, IonPl. Leg. Plato, LegesPl. Ph. Plato, PhaedrusPl. Phil. Plato, PhilebusPl. Theaet. Plato, TheaetetusPl. Tim. Plato, TimaeusPlin. Hist.nat. Pliny the Elder, Historia NaturalisPlot. Enn. Plotinus, EnneadesPlut. Ad.Stoic. Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus StoicosPlut. Delph. Plutarch, De E apud DelphosPlut. Is.Os. Plutarch, De Iside et OsiridePlut. Plat.Q. Plutarch, Platonicae QuaestionesPoss. Vita Possidius, Vita Sancti Aurelii Augustini

xvList of Abbreviations

Proc. Tim. Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum CommentariaProsp. Chron. Prosper of Aquitaine, Chronicon Quint. Inst.orat. Quintilian, Institutio OratoriaSall. Catil. Sallust, De Coniuratione Catilinae = Bellum CatilinaeSall. Jug. Sallust, Bellum IugurthinumScot. Q.Disp. Duns Scotus, Quaestiones DisputataeSen. Brev. Seneca, De Brevitate VitaeSen. Nat.quaest. Seneca, Naturales QuaestionesSext. Ad.Gramm. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus GrammaticosSext. Ad.Mus. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus MusicosSext. Ad.Phys. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus PhysicosSimpl. Anim. Pseudo-Simplicius, De Anima CommentariaSoph. El. Sophocles, ElectraStras. S.Ph. Nicolas of Strasbourg, Summa PhilosophiaeTemp. Coll. Stephen Tempier, Collectio Errorum . . . Ter. Met. Terentianus Maurus, De MetrisTert. Anim. Tertullian, De Testimonio Animae adversus GentesVar. Ling. Varro, De Lingua LatinaVirg. Aen. Virgil, AeneisVirg. Ecl. Virgil, EclogaeVirg. Georg. Virgil, GeorgicaVit. Quodl. James of Viterbo, Disputatio Tertia de Quolibet

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 work-manlike 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.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004�693�6_�0�

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 singu-larité 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, the-ater, baths, temples,” etc.

7 For a crisp survey of Augustine’s dates and environs: Drecoll 2007, 20–27, 36–49.

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.

3synopsis

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 tem-pus 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 intel-legitur adiuncta.

17 Aug. Epist. 197.2–3: χρόνους autem ipsa spatia temporum vocant . . . tempora ergo com-putare, 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 dimen-sio 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!”

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4 synopsis

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” (quan-dam . . . 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 time- investigation 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 philologi-cally 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 quinde-cim partibus, ut tanta mora quindecim partes oriantur, quantam tenet una hora. Quae partes singulae sexaginta minutas habere dicuntur. Minutas autem minutarum iam in con-stellationibus, 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 minuta-rum 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

∵

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Proem

Seven centuries before Augustine writes that there is “a presence of past-things, memory, a presence of present-things, observation, a presence of future- things, 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 conceiv-able 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 sen-tiendo 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 memo-ria. 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.

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8 proem

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 primi-tive 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 rapa-cious 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 praet-eritum 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.

9proem

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 loan-words”; 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 pearl-of-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.

10 proem

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 dis-course 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 prae-sens, 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 ‘soph-ism’ 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 pas-sage 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 mem-ory, 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.”

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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 identify 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 lec-ture 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.

12 chapter 1

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 hermeneu-tic claim that follows it, without conjunction or disjunction. In Confessions XI, ‘Augustine sketches out from below a libidinal-ontological constitution of tem-porality.’ 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 specula-tive 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

8 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 significa-tione, 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 along-side 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, dif-ficile 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 generali-ter definire difficile est—pars quaedam aeternitatis cum alicuius annui, menstrui, diurni, nocturnive spati certa significatione.

13augustine and the temporal intrigue

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 con-ductus, 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 writ-ing.” 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; voca-tur 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 insta-bile 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 sem-per 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.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=*kro%2Fnos&la=greek&can=*kro%2Fnos0&prior=habethttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=enim&la=la&can=enim1&prior=*kro/noshttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=dicitur&la=la&can=dicitur0&prior=enimhttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=qui&la=la&can=qui2&prior=diciturhttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=est&la=la&can=est2&prior=quihttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=idem&la=la&can=idem0&prior=esthttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=id&la=la&can=id2&prior=xro/noshttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=est&la=la&can=est3&prior=idhttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=spatium&la=la&can=spatium0&prior=esthttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=temporis&la=la&can=temporis0&prior=spatium

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And when Proclus recalls that “the most eminent theurgists”17 had rever-enced 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 image20nor hypostasis21 of Augustine’s ‘eternity,’22 and accordingly, the word itself—aeternitas—disappears after the first sentences of Augustine’s time- investigation 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 eter-nity, 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 depar-ture from Plotinus. If in earlier writings he sees time as an ‘image’ or ‘vestige’ of eter-nity . . . 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 eter-nity-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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elaborated 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, method-ologically, ‘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 tem-porality’ 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 indissev-erably ‘libidinal constitution of temporality.’ That is to say, the sense-affective rôles of desire (desiderium), concern (cura), lust (libido) and indigence (indi-gentia) 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 sensa-tion 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 crea-ture 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 fin-

ishes 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 mis-cited) ‘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 phe-nomenological 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 ‘dila-

tion,’ 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 spe-ratae 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 him-self 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-ren-ders 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 intel-lect. 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 nota-bly 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 essen-tially 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 ‘dis-tentio 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 pres-ent, 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,

Cf. von Herrmann 1992, 120: “die distentio der Zeit die distentio des zeitverstehenden Geistes ist.”

33 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’est-à-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.”

34 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.’

35 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.

36 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 hyper-transitive 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 free-standing 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 ter-minus 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 . . . pug-

nare 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 insinu-ate 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?)

45 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.”

46 Cf. Corradini 1997, 32: “Anima ist hier als Bewußtsein zu verstehen.”47 For ‘sensualist’ in the vulgar sense, cf. for instance, Sen. Brev. 12.7: Audio quendam ex deli-

catis . . .; Cic. Fin. II.7.21–22: Idque si ita dicit, non esse reprendendos luxuriosos si sapien-tes sint . . . Sed tamen nonne reprenderes, Epicure, luxuriosos . . . Unum nescio, quomodo possit, si luxuriosus sit, finitas cupiditates habere.

48 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 con-suetudinem humanam dediscere), cum ex balneo inter manus elatus et in sella positus 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 opin-ion 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 rec-ollection. . . . [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 praet-erita et futura. . . . [Et] ut iis bonis erigimur quae expectamus, sic laetamur iis quae

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=zh%3Dn&la=greek&can=zh%3Dn0&prior=logi/zesqaihttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=de%5C&la=greek&can=de%5C1&prior=zh=nhttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=ou%29k&la=greek&can=ou%29k0&prior=de\http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=a%29nqrw%2Fpou&la=greek&can=a%29nqrw%2Fpou0&prior=ou)khttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=bi%2Fon&la=greek&can=bi%2Fon0&prior=a)nqrw/pou

21augustine and the temporal intrigue

(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 primi-tive, 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 con-quers 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, ‘sen-sualist.’ Or rather, a single tercet can be lifted from book I of Lucretius’ broad-backed 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 writ-

ten. 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 philosophy as ‘confession’; and though Augustine is only named several times in the work, an atten-tive 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 para-graph. . . . 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.”

23augustine and the temporal intrigue

Tempus . . . per se non est,61 sed rebus ab ipsisconsequitur 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 ‘sensual-ist,’ 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 fatendumstsemotum ab rerum motu placidatque quiete.65

Rather, as I will lay out in Part II, Augustine’s idea of a discarnate, hyper-heavenly mind in Confessions XII—namely, a “heaven of heaven” (cae-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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bodies’—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 ques-tion 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 anno-rum, Conf. 4, 15; . . . per spatia locorum, Conf. 7, 1; . . . nugae nugarum, Conf. 8, 11; . . . abys-sus 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 incor-poreal (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 (be