Amo, Ergo Cogito: Phenomenology's Non-Cartesian Augustinianism (original) (raw)
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BETWEEN AND BEYOND AUGUSTINE AND DESCARTES: MORE THAN A SOURCE OF THE SELF
Augustinian Studies 32:1 (2001): 65-88., 2001
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.
As is well known, Augustine begins his Confessions by doing something very unique: the first paragraph is directly addressed to God, which is to say, to the other of himself. This essay will lay out the beginning part of this text in a “phenomenological” manner, insofar as my reading of Augustine’s text tries to uncover the general experience of otherness that underlies Book One. Augustine’s opening reflections contain several ideas that my essay will discuss: [1] that they come in the form of an address, [2] that they focuses on the focus to the performative, and [3] how they introduce the self as well as Augustine’s reflections of the self as a response to the other. The first part of the essay deals with the performative dimension of book one, whereas the second part deals with the resulting responsive dimension of the text. However, the essay does not deal with the question of performance as it comes to the forefront in Book 11, namely in the form of the contrast between God’s word and human language; rather, the following considerations are restricted to considerations of the aforementioned problem of otherness that we discover in Book I and with what will be called “responsive life.”
Heidegger’s 1921 lecture course, “Augustine and Neo-Platonism,” shows the emergence of certain Augustinian elements in Heidegger’s account of the human being. In Book X of Augustine’s Confessions, Heidegger finds a rich account of the historicity and facticity of human existence. He interprets Augustinian molestia (facticity) by exhibiting the complex relation of curare (the fundamental character of factical life) and the three forms of tentatio (possibilities of falling). In this analysis, molestia appears as the how of the being of life. Heidegger also makes an important critique of what is Platonic in Augustine. Specifically, he rejects what he calls Augustine’s axiological interpretation of tentatio for a more existential one. Heidegger understands axiology to be a calculative preferring of one good over another in reference to a theoretical hierarchy of goods. We offer a defense of Augustine which focuses on the historical manner in which goods are disclosed in desire.
Augustine and Descartes: an Overlooked Chapter in the Story of Modern Origins
Modern Theology, 2003
With this, Charles Taylor summarizes a grand drama for which he is perhaps the most visible spokesman. The story is familiar. In it Augustine bequeaths to the Western consciousness notions of interiority and will which Descartes brings to term in what we have come to know very generally as "modern subjectivity". 2 This story has gained currency in recent years. Stephen Menn, for instance, has reinterpreted Descartes' Meditations as a "spiritual exercise" that mimics the "ascent" of Confessions VII, a judgement with which Wayne Hankey concurs. Zbignew Janowski's great task of demonstrating a definitive Augustinian influence on Descartes catalogues parallel texts and situates the Meditations within the concern of seventeenth century Augustinian "theodicy". Despite significant differences, Taylor's basic plot remains, which is all the more remarkable for the fact that it is held in common not only by many who share his humanistic optimism, but by many who oppose it. 3 For those of more Nietzschean inclinations, who recognize that Descartes' self-grounding subject ultimately leads to the annihilation of all that is not the subject, Augustine's "inner man" inevitably brings about the death of the very God whom he was invented to praise. 4 Augustine thus exemplifies the intrinsic nihilism of Christianity and hastens the processes which reduce the world to a receptacle for the impositions of the will. I intend to complicate this story by arguing that much of what is taken to be "Augustinian" in Descartes' cogito, especially in his treatment of the will,
Cura et Casus: Heidegger and Augustine on the Care of the Self
2006
In the context of the much-debated 'return of religion', this paper argues that Heidegger's concept of responsibility for oneself, including the idea of fallenness, owes itself chiefly to Augustine's discussion of sin and temptation. The crucial difference is that Heidegger conceives the process of an agent's singularization as taking place in confrontation with one's dying, the dying that opens up possibilities for action and understanding to an agent, rather than with the personal loving god of Augustine's Confessions. …is there not a least some Platonism in the Verfallen? Jacques Derrida, "Ousia and Gramm!" I Modern thought and life finds itself in the awkward position of drawing sustenance from sources it can neither endorse in their entirety nor shake off in the manner of a tabula rasa. Presumably, this is the situation of all thought. For the moderns, however, the conundrum takes on peculiar salience due to the claim to generate its resources-in particular for ethical life, in its widest sense-from out of itself, from non-traditional, secular sources. While the emphasis on selfgeneration has been criticized at least since Hegel's critique of Kant, a perceived, and muchdiscussed, return of religion to modern or postmodern culture has in recent years led to a renewed focus on the theological sources of the modern West. In a less hubristic stance with regard to 2 overdrawn Enlightenment hopes, the task in approaching this cultural phenomenon has become one of acknowledging a double debt to religion, especially Christianity: recognizing in it the origins of seminal, more or less secularized ideas without which our ethical life cannot be seen as what it is, such as the ideas of responsibility and universal equality, while perusing religion with regard to that which (still) remains-perhaps to our disadvantage, but at least explicatory in relation to the return of religion-unsecularized, unappropriated, and perhaps untranslatable. With regard to the first debt, the debate about the degree to which such translation has been successful, or completable at all, is far from over (from Carl Schmitt to Hans Blumenberg and Claude Lefort). However, recent years bear witness to a remarkable shift in emphasis toward the second issue. Philosophical, cultural, and religious thinkers, secularists, non-secularists, and those in-between-at times called, or denounced as, post-secularists-are broaching the question of that which, having its origins in religious thought and life, should or should not, could or could not be translated into the language of modern culture. It is remarkable in this context that even self-avowed secularists, who insist on such translation more than others, concede that the self-generation of modernity is hard to achieve, that the religious heritage still provides urgently needed resources that await their translation. Jürgen Habermas claims that, in the face of the possibility, provided by the recently discovered, and still to be discovered, tools of genetic engineering, of designing human beings so as to undermine their sense of autonomy, the Christian distinction between the creator and the created demands translation into the language of our postmetaphysical lifeworld (Habermas 2001). For Jean-Luc Nancy, that which remains to come of Christianity, that which philosophical concepts (those of, for instance, Hegel and Schelling) have determined as inaccessible, is represented by the ideas of love and faith-to be sure, belief or faith not in an epistemic sense (Nancy, Benvenuto, 2002).
This paper is shows that the concept of love of Augustine can be re-appropriated, in line with the scientific and philosophical enterprise found in Teilhard de Chardin and Peter Kropotkin. This paper argues that if the concept of love of Augustine is stretched and placed within the weltanschauung of Teilhard and Kropotkin such concept of love can have significant effects to the paradigm of evolutionary thought. To do this the researcher used the scientific phenomenological approach of Teilhard and analyzed the concept of love within the limits of the concept of evolution found in Kropotkin and Teilhard himself. This method extract philosophical conclusions from scientific data, which means the data is the meaning giving body in the whole philosophical investigation of the matter at hand. Such an endeavor produced the following results. (I) Augustine’s concept of love can be applied to human evolution inasmuch as the sociological dimensions of this concept reflects that of Kropotkin’s concept of the mutual aid, and (II) this concept of love can be integrated within the Teilhardian paradigm but it is limited within the evolutionary development of man powered by love and not the aspect where humans are partners of lower organisms in the evolutionary development of the whole fauna and flora of the world. The researcher first established that there is a seminal theory of evolution found in Augustine. This was found in the work The Literal Interpretation of Genesis. Here Augustine argues that different beings in different eras of the world appeared due to the fact that God has already provided a seminal reason for beings to exist. Which means, creatures appear in a specific timeline of the world due to the fact that God has already implanted in them the potential to appear on that specific time frame. We then argue that this work shows to us that Augustine can be considered as a quasi-evolutionists, still we lack some necessary elements in such book thus we moved to the concept of love as grounds for creating the thesis of this work. On the first point the researcher argues that the scientific analysis provided by Kropotkin in his work Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, gives light to the idea of community of Augustine, wherein this community can be construed as natural due to the fact that love is a divinely given attribute of humans, thus a natural property in the psyche of humans. Kropotkin argues that the intellectual and moral development of human kind can be attributed to the creation of the community, and community, as it is found today, is basically not artificial but is an evolutionary attribute. This attribute allows beings in community to have a better chance of survival as compared to those who live in isolation. This is because of the fact that the community is not simply an juxtaposition of persons but are individuals who innately possess the psychological mindset of communal survival through the employment of mutual aid. Still, to further this statement we use the definition of society by Augustine wherein this mutual aid can only be possible in a community bound by love. Wherein these loves seeks the realization of potentials of each member of the society and thus move towards the perfection of society as a whole. On the second point, we argue that for Augustine, love is not an emotional impulse but rather, it is an energy that seeks the development of humankind. For us, to create this conclusion we cite different statements made by Augustine particularly the one found in the The City of God, where Augustine claim that love is a social glue that binds one person to another. To extend this further we employed the philosophical perspective of Teilhard where he states that love is a congenital property of the universe fully manifested in the consciousness of humans and that this love is the power of collective movement of diverse human personhood. In conclusion, the researcher claims that Augustine could not be considered as an evolutionist because that will be an error of anachronism. Rather, the researcher claims that the concept of love of Augustine can be considered as a meaning giving theoretical framework in explaining the theory of evolution.
Figuring the Porous Self: Augustine and the Phenomenology of Temporality
Modern Theology, 2013
The first person who sensed profoundly the enormous difficulties inherent in this analysis, and who struggled with it almost to despair, was Augustine. Even today, anyone occupied with the problem of time must still study . . . the Confessions thoroughly. 1 -Edmund Husserl
This dissertation will be a study of the influence of the Christian tradition of caritas in the philosophy and the subsequent hermeneutic of Saint Augustine of Hippo and will seek to establish the value of Augustine’s hermeneutic of caritas within contemporary philosophical scholarship. The shift in the Western philosophical tradition during the Enlightenment period resulted in a solid break from authority-based hermeneutics of theology to the autonomy of the mind of modern philosophy. The result was a greater emphasis on the literal meaning of a text through method over the spiritual meaning, or application of the greater meaning, in Christian living. This study will explore whether contemporary philosophical hermeneutics can cohere with Augustine’s embrace of caritas in his epistemology and subsequent hermeneutic. The unique aspect of Augustine’s hermeneutic is that caritas is a product of understanding while at the same time is the method, or means, by which caritas is produced. Therefore, Christian epistemology, as echoed in Augustine’s hermeneutic of caritas, is a uniquely valuable contribution to the academic discipline of philosophy. This dissertation will propose that the benefits of Augustine’s caritas as the a priori spirit of the biblical text, and the proper application of that spirit in scholarship, should be the epistemological focus of hermeneutics rather than the emphasis on method prevalent from Spinoza to Dilthey. Augustine’s caritas may prove beneficial as a renewed harmony for theological and philosophical hermeneutics.
The Augustinian Human On Augustine’s Vision of the Human Being as it evolved throughout his polemics
On Augustine’s Vision of the Human Being as it evolved through his polemics, 2024
This is a thesis on the topic of Saint Augustine of Hippo's vision of the human being as it developed and evolved throughout his polemics against the Pelagians and Manichees. It explores his views on the person of Adam, the first few chapters of Genesis, and happiness, and it explores his arguments on free will, free choice, and original sin.