The Space of Time

A Sensualist Interpretation of Time in Augustine, Confessions X to XII
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-90-04-26686-5
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 6, 16 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 243 mm, Gewicht: 712 g

Reihe: Supplements to the Study of Time

From Robert Grosseteste to Jean-François Lyotard, Augustine’s suggestion that time is a “dilation of the soul” (distentio animi) has been taken up as a seminal and controversial time-concept, yet in The Space of Time, David van Dusen argues that this ‘dilation’ has been fundamentally misinterpreted.
Time in Confessions XI is a dilation of the senses—in beasts, as in humans. And Augustine’s time-concept in Confessions XI is not Platonic—but in schematic terms, Epicurean.
Identifying new influences on the Confessions—from Aristoxenus to Lucretius—while keeping Augustine’s phenomenological interpreters in view, The Space of Time is a path-breaking work on Confessions X to XII and a ranging contribution to the history of the concept of time.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dusen, David van

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Antike Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Note on Citations

SYNOPSIS
Dilation and the Question of Time

INTRODUCTION
To Recover Augustine’s Time-Question

0 Proem

1 Augustine and the Temporal Intrigue
1.1 Against a Truncated Interpretation of Confessions XI
1.2 Preliminary Remarks on the Term ‘Sensualist’
1.3 Axiology and Temporality in Augustine’s Confessions
1.4 Time in Augustine’s Triplex Division of Philosophy

2 Augustine and the Physical Question of Time
2.1 Time and Augustine’s Rerum Natura
2.2 Time in the Confessions: A Typology of the Received Interpretations
2.3 Confessions XI and Typologies of Time in Antiquity

PART I
Anticipations and Clarifications

3 Remarks on the Genre and Sources of Augustine’s Confessions
3.1 Preliminary Remarks on Genre
3.2 Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline: A Source for the Confessions?
3.3 Confessio Ignorantiae: Cicero and Augustine’s Confessions
3.4 Confessio Scientiae: Epicurus and Lucretius in Augustine’s Confessions
3.5 Confessions X to XII: Dialectics and Song
3.6 Concluding Remarks on Genre

4 Towards a Lexical Clarification of ‘Time’ (Conf. XI.22–24)
4.1 A Distribution of Augustine’s Time-Investigation (Conf. XI.14–29)
4.2 “We Say ‘Time,’ We Say ‘Times’” (Conf. XI.22–24)
4.3 Towards Augustine’s “Power and Nature of Time” (Conf. X.6–7, XI.23–24)

5 Towards the Speculative Terrain of Confessions XII (Conf. XI.30–31)
5.1 Temporal Presence: Varieties of ‘Impresence’
5.2 Temporal Dilation: A Preliminary Characterization
5.3 Expectatio Is Never Praescientia (Conf. XI.31)
5.4 A Discarnate Mind and a Dilation of the Senses (Conf. XI.31)

PART II
Time Is Illuminated by Timelessness

6 What Is and Is Not in Question in Confessions XII
6.1 Time and the Prophetic ‘Letter’
6.2 How Timelessness Will Illuminate Time

7 Cohesion to God, Inhesion of the Flesh: Augustine’s Caelum Intellectuale
7.1 Axiology and Temporality Revisited
7.2 Augustine’s Hyper-Heavenly (Caelum Caeli)
7.3 Timelessness and the Root-Verb Haerere
7.4 More on Augustine’s Root-Verb Haerere

8 Corpus et Anima: The Duplicity of Praesens from Confessions X
8.1 “A Body and a Soul Are Present in Me” (Conf. X.6)
8.2 The Sense of Anima, the Sense of Animus (Conf. X.7)
8.3 “Cattle and Birds Possess Memory” (Conf. X.17)
8.4 Excursus: Time Is in the Beasts
8.5 The Root-Sense of Anima and Animus (Conf. X–XII)

9 Physical Movement and Mutive Times: Augustine’s Materia Informis
9.1 Informitas and Timelessness (Conf. XII.6)
9.2 “Times are Produced by the Movements of Things” (Conf. XII.8)
9.3 The Register of ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII
9.4 The Evidence for ‘Mutive Times’ in Confessions XII
9.5 Excursus on Logical Precedence (Conf. XII.29)
9.6 Excursus on Sensual ‘Outness’ (Epist. 137)

PART III
A Sensualist Interpretation of Confessions XI

10 Intimacy with the Flesh Is Intimacy with Time (Conf. XI–XII)
10.1 “Words Begun and Ended, Sounding in Times” (Conf. XII.27)
10.2 Familiaritas Carnis and Familiaritas Temporis (Conf. XI.14)

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

12 A Preparation of Augustine’s Time-Investigation (Conf. XI.11–29)
12.1 The Soul’s Capacity to Sense Time (Conf. XI.15–16)
12.2 “A Long Time Cannot Become Long.” (Conf. XI.11)
12.3 The Production of Times as a Condition for Time (Conf. XI.11, XII.8)

13 From a Sense of Passing Time to a Dilation of the Senses (Conf. XI.15–28)
13.1 Praesens Tempus and a Sense of Temporal Intervals (Conf. XI.15–16)
13.2 Times Are Not ‘Times’ and Presence Is Not ‘Presence’ (Conf. XI.20)
13.3 “As I Just Said, We Measure Times as They Pass” (Conf. XI.21)
13.4 Vagaries of Motion and the Introduction of Dilation (Conf. XI.24–26)
13.5 Sensation and Originary Temporal Mensuration (Conf. XI.27–28)
13.6 “The Verse Is Sensed by a Clear Sensation” (Conf. XI.27)
13.7 “Something Remains Infixed in My Memory” (Conf. XI.27)
13.8 “These Are ‘Times,’ or I Do Not Measure Times” (Conf. XI.27)
13.9 “Songs and the Dimensions of Movements” (Conf. XI.27–28)

ENVOI
Time Exceeds Us because Time Is in Us

Appendices
1. Remarks on Plotinus, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus and Augustine
2. Augustine and the Paris Condemnations of 1277
3. Pierre Gassendi’s Metaphysical Confession of Time
4. Thomas Hobbes’s Physical Confession of Time

Select Bibliography
Indices

Über Autor(innen)

David van Dusen, M.Phil. (Trinity Saint David), M.Phil. (Leuven), is a doctoral fellow of the De Wulf-Mansion Centre at the University of Leuven, and a former visiting research fellow of the Augustinianum in Rome.