BETWEEN AND BEYOND AUGUSTINE AND DESCARTES: MORE THAN A SOURCE OF THE SELF (original) (raw)

2001, Augustinian Studies 32:1 (2001): 65-88.

Every Neoplatonist can show that the thinking and willing subject must be self-constituted. No modern, conscious of the diversity and connection of its Western forms, will deny that this self-constitution is historical. Some may not have attended to the central role of Augustine in making the Hellenistic move to the subject a foundation of Latin Christian culture. His unrivaled domination of the formative years of Latin mediaeval intellectual life may not be deemed important for the subsequent developments in which there is wider interest. However, no one who regards Descartes as essential to the construction of the modern self can deny the positive role of Augustine in Descartes’ revolution. Despite the opposition of anti-Modern Christians, and of their postmodern heirs, to finding in Descartes a true successor of Augustine, my colleague Zbigniew Janowski has just published in a single year two books, Cartesian Theodicy. Descartes' Quest for Certitude and Index Augustino-Cartésien: Textes et Commentaire, proving the extent of this dependence even to Jean-Luc Marion. Janowski concludes that before 1630 Descartes had read De Doctrina Christiana, and the De Ordine and De Genesi ad Litteram before 1637. Before 1641 he had read De Immortalitate animae, De Quantitate animae, De Libero Arbitrio, De Trinitate, Confessiones, De Ciuitate Dei, Contra Academicos and De Vera religione. The themes essential to the Cartesian metaphysics as presented in the Meditations which derive from Augustine include the following: the end of philosophy, i.e. knowledge of God and soul, that mathematics is certain whether we are awake or asleep, the evil genius, the cogito, the definition of soul, the notion of extension, the example of the wax, Inspectio mentis, that I am a middle between being and nothing, the explanation of the origin of error, that in intellectual vision there is no error, that understanding judges between the data of the senses, the definition of eternal truths, that God creates by the action of his knowing, and Inneism. Janowski determines: “Whatever the final judgment about the true relationship between Augustinianism and Cartesianism, one can safely conclude that even if Cartesianism is not the most faithful interpretation of the thought of St. Augustine, it is certainly a legitimate one” The affiliation is profound, indeed: “Numerous passages that the Augustinians could recognize in the Meditations must have sounded to their ears as if the Saint himself was speaking.” Moreover, Janowski shows that by means of Augustine, Descartes is transforming the conception of the self inherited from the Scholastics. In consequence, we must not only praise Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, as many rightly have, for bringing the self to the fore within the Anglo-American philosophical world. In addition, we must recognise that his treatment of the Western self is remarkable in its scope. He has shown the need for a consideration which includes history (or which is, as he says, “analytical and chronological” ). Moreover, in showing us how the modern identity has been made, Taylor has reached back further than many would think necessary. As is required, he has put Augustine at the foundation of Cartesian modernity and of its account of the self. His assertion that “On the way from Plato to Descartes stands Augustine” is more than a chronological fact. It is a significantly true and necessary statement about our construction of ourselves. Nonetheless, Taylor’s sketch of the sources of the western self involves problems, problems which are at the center of many present philosophical, historical and theological treatments of the self. My difficulties are not with what Taylor has written, but rather with what he leaves out. We should not be surprised if in the twelve hundred years between the cogito of Augustine and that of Descartes, subjectivity found and made for itself other sources, shapes and structures. These also make the modern identity and, just as importantly, belong also to its necessary deconstruction. I propose here to trace, as briefly as it can be done, the way from Augustine to them.