In the Self’s Place

Notes

FOREWORD

1. This silent retranslation of Augustinian thought into the language of metaphysics when one translates from Latin to French never appears so clearly as in the case of the name of God, such as I analyze it in Chapter 7.

THE APORIA OF SAINT AUGUSTINE

1. Péguy seems to have commented on this passage literally: “But what is proper to confession, to which it is becoming evident I am inclined, is to show willingly invisible sites and to say above all what should be kept silent. On the other hand, it is certain that there is not reality, without confession, and that once one has tasted of the reality of confession, all other reality, every other attempt appears just literary. And even false, fake. Since so incomplete” (Victor-Marie, comte Hugo, ed. R. Burac, Œuvres en prose complètes [Paris, 1992], 3:165).

2. There are, of course, many others, including H. Arendt, Liebesbegriff bei Augustin: Versuch einer philosophischern Interpretation (Berlin, 1929) [Love and Saint Augustine (Chicago, 1996)]; H. Jonas, Augustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem (Göttingen, 1930); K. Jaspers, Augustinus (Munich, 1976) [Plato and Augustine, in The Great Philosophers, vol. 1 (San Diego, 1962)]; P. Ricoeur, Temps et récit, vols. 1 and 3 (Paris, 1983 and 1985) [Time and Narrative, vols. 1 and 3 (Chicago, 1984 and 1988)]; J. Derrida, Circumfession (Paris, 1991) [in Jacques Derrida: Circumfession (Chicago, 1993)]; J.-F. Lyotard, La confession d’Augustin (Paris, 1998) [The Confession of Augustine (Stanford, 2000)]. See also E. Stump and N. Kretz, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge, 2001); and G. B. Matthews, ed., The Augustinian Tradition (Berkeley, 1999).

3. E. Gilson, Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin (Paris, 1928), vii.

4. Confronting the mass of a corpus that surpasses by a large margin even that of Husserl and makes Saint Thomas appear to practice a form of shorthand, we should not, or rarely—as is ordinarily the case, for example, for many of the Greek Fathers and Saint Bernard—remove the supposedly apocryphal texts but add them: for example, the Sermons reattributed by F. Dolbeau (Augustin d’Hippone: Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique (Paris, 1996); and the Letters recovered by J. Divjak (Epistulae ex duobus codicibus nuper in lucem prolatae, in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum [hereafter CSEL], vol. 88 [Vienna, 1981]); then Letters 1*-29* (Paris, 1987).

5. See Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley, 19671, 20002).

6. See P. Courcelle, Recherches sur les “Confessiones” de saint Augustin (Paris, 19501, 19682); following P. Henry, La vision d’Ostie: Sa place dans la vie et l’œuvre d’Augustin (Paris, 1938); and, of course, the works of P. Hadot. Along the same lines, one should not neglect the new working tools provided by computer technology; see, e.g., R. H. Cooper, L. Ferrari, P. Ruddock, and J. R. Smith, Concordantia in libros XIII Confessionum S. Aurelii Augustini (based on the text of the Skutella edition, 1969) (Hildesheim, 1991); or G. Vigini, Le Confessioni di Sant’Augustino, vol. 3, Indice (Milan, 1994). But the edition of Confessions annotated by J. J. O’Donnell, whose commentary based on these automated results is now indispensable, does not escape the common problems of some debatable theological decisions in the more recent works; see Augustine: Confessions, 3 vols., text and commentary by J. J. O’Donnell (Oxford, 1992). The rule holds for St. Augustine, as for all other major authors, but no doubt even more in his case: nothing can dispense with digitized lexicology, but this decides nothing, except negatively.

7. I am following here the position of E. von Ivanka, Plato Christianus: Übernahme und Umgestaltung des Platonismus durch die Väter (Einsiedeln, 1964).

8. So long as one has not gone back from Saint Augustine’s conceptual argument to the exegesis of the biblical verse or verses that support it—in other words, so long as one has not gone back to the Enarrationes in Psalmos and the other scriptural commentaries—the interpretation lacks solid ground. This was demonstrated, through very different means but in an exceptionally clear way, by A.-M. Bonnardière (for example, Biblia augustiniana: Le livre de la Sagesse [Paris, 1960]; and, under his direction, Saint Augustin et la Bible [Paris, 1986]); and J.-L. Chrétien, Saint Augustin et les actes de parole (Paris, 2002).

9. An excellent confirmation a contrario of this is found in E. R. Dodds, “Augustine’s Confessions: A Study of Spiritual Maladjustment,” Hibbert Journal 26 (1927–28): 459–73, which is inexplicably reprinted in The Hunger of the Heart: Reflections on the “Confessiones” of Augustine, ed. D. Capps and J. E. Dittes (West Lafayette, IN, 1990). His unfailing intelligence, which is equaled only by the profound vulgarity of his interpretation, a vulgarity elevated by the thoroughly Oxonian offhandedness of this erudite Hellenist (from Birmingham), rehearses the vexing list of all the misreadings that are to be overcome—beginning with the assessment of this text as a moribund masterpiece; the text has, however, survived its reader. See a trenchant refutation by Paul J. Archambault, “Augustine’s Confessions: The Use and the Limits of Psychobiography,” in Collecteana Augustiniana: Augustine: “Second Founder of the Faith,” ed. J. C. Schnaubelt and F. Van Fleteren (New York, 1990), 83–99.

10. Lettre sur divers sujets concernant la religion et la métaphysique: Lettre IV, sur l’idée de l’infini et sur la liberté de Dieu de créer ou ne pas créer, in Œuvres, ed. J. Le Brun (Paris, 1997), 2:785. For once, Arnauld would have approved, who used to define Saint Augustine as “accerrimi vir ingenii, nec in Theologia modo, sed etiam in Philosophicis rebus plane mirandus” (a man of the sharpest intellect and a remarkable thinker, not only on theological matters but also on philosophical ones) (Œuvres de Descartes, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols. [Paris, 1983], VII, 197 [hereafter AT]; English trans. in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes 2:139).

11. See Chapter 2, §9 below.

12. K. Flasch, in his otherwise excellent collection, Was ist Zeit? Augustinus von Hippo: Das XI Buch der “Confessiones”: Historisch-philosophisch Studie. Text-Übersetzung-Kommentar (Frankfurt, 1993), provides the best example, which summarizes and discusses all the previous ones, including J.-T. Desanti, Réflexions sur le temps (Variations philosophiques I) (Paris, 1992); and F.-W. von Hermann, Augustinus und die phänomenologische Frage nach der Zeit (Frankfurt, 1992).

13. See, e.g., G. Wills, Saint Augustine’s Memory (New York, 2002).

14. A text privileged by Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen, vol. 1, §1, Werkausgabe (Frankfurt, 1984 [English trans., 2e]). See the critique of M. F. Burnyeat, “Wittgenstein and Augustine De Magistro,” in The Augustinian Tradition, ed. G. B. Matthews (Berkeley, 1999), 286–303. See also, more generally, B. D. Jackson, “The Theory of Signs in St. Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” Revue des études augustiniennes 15 (1969): 9–49.

15. See the Analecta Hebdomadae Augustinianae-Thomisticae (Turin-Rome, 1931) for all articles and p. 224 for the last citation.

16. De civitate Dei VIII, 1, 34, 230. See “Ipsi eis erant philosophi, hoc est amatores sapientiae . . . non secundum homines, sed secundum Deum” (There were among them the philosophers, that is to say those who love wisdom . . . not according to men, but according to God) (XVIII, 41, 36, 628). And “Obsecro te, non sit honestior philosophia Gentium quam nostra, Christiana, quae una est vera philosophia, quandoquidem studium vel amor sapientiae significatur hoc nomine” (I beg you, do not honor the philosophy of the pagans more than ours, Christian, which is the sole true philosophy, inasmuch as one intends by this name the study or love of wisdom) (Contra Julianum IV, 14, 72, PL 44, 774). See “una verissima philosophiae disciplina. Non enim est ista hujus mundi philosophia, quam sacra nostra meritissime detestantur, sed alterius intelligibilis” (a most true teaching of philosophy. Not of the philosophy of this world, that our holy mysteries rightly detest, but that of another intelligible world) (Contra academicos III, 19, 42, 4, 198). And “Nam ne quid, mater, ignores hoc graecum verbum, qui ‘philosophia’ nominateur, latine ‘amor sapientiae’ dicitur. Unde etiam divinae Scripturae, quas vehementer amplecteris, non omnino philosophos, sed philosophos hujusmundi evitandos atque irridendos esse praecipiunt” (To omit nothing, know, mother, that the Greek word that names “philosophy” is said in Latin “amor sapientiae” [love of wisdom]. From which it comes that the holy scriptures that you espouse so strongly, do not demand absolute avoidance and condemnation of the philosophers but only of the philosophers of this world) (De ordine I, 11, 32, 4, 356). This radical formulation will still be admitted for a long time after Augustine, by Abelard (“principibus hujus philosophiae christianae tam in veteri quam in novo populo studia sunt exorta” [Sermon 33, PL 178, 585]), as well as by Saint Bernard (“in christiana utique philosophia” [De consideratione III, 4, 15, PL 182, 767]); and this will be so at least until Erasmus.

17. F. Van Steenberghen, introduction to Bibliothèque augustinienne (Paris, 1949), 1:28–29 (my emphasis), but this is in fact against what he holds as common.

18. This passage, from De civitate Dei VIII, 1, 34, 230, echoes a definition of sapientia offered by Cicero: “Sapientia esse rerum divinarum et humanarum scientiam cognitionemque” (Tusculanes IV, 26, 57, ed. J. E. King [Cambridge, MA, (19271), 19968], 392); and “Illa autem sapientia, quae principem dixi, rerum est divinarum et humanarum scientia, in qua continetur deorum et hominum communitas et societas inter ipsos” (De officiis I, 43, 153, ed. W. Miller [Cambridge, MA, 19111, 197510], 156, or ibid., II, 2, 5, 172). The standard list was established by G. Madec, Saint Augustin et la philosophie (Paris, 1996), in particular Chapter 2, which, in what is essential, I am following.

19. On the contrasting senses of theology as metaphysica specialis in opposition to the theologia of Revelation see my own brief considerations in “Théo-logique,” in Encyclopédie philosophique, vol. 1, L’univers philosophiques (Paris, 1989); and in Jean-Luc Marion, Etant donné: Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation (Paris, 19961, 20053), 104 (English trans., 71); as well as Olivier Boulnois, Duns Scot: La rigueur de la charité (Paris, 1998), chap. 3. For a more encompassing history of the constitution of metaphysics in metaphysica generalis and metaphysica specialis (including theologia rationalis) see Jean-Luc Marion, On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism (Chicago, 1999), chap. 1; and the collection of J.-F. Courtine, Suarez et le système de la métaphysique (Paris, 1990), based on the works of H. Reiner, “Die Enstehung und ursprüngliche Bedeutung des Namens Metaphysik,” in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (1954); and E. Vollrath, “Die Gliederung der Metaphysik in eine Metaphysicis generalis und eine Metaphysica specialis,” in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (1962); then Die These der Metaphysik. Zur Gestalt der Metaphysik bei Aristoteles, Kant, und Hegel (Wuppertal, 1969). I broached the Heideggerian background of this question in my God Without Being (Chicago, 1991), chaps. 2 and 3.

20. Varro, Antiquitatem rerum humanarum et divinarum libri I–II, I, frags. 10, 14, 23, 28, and 29 (ed. A. G. Condemi (Bologna, 1965), 9, 10, 14, 16, and 17, reproducing De civitate Dei VIII, 1; VII, 6; VI, 5; and VI, 6). Even the formulation “[theologia] naturali, quae philosophorum est” (De civitate Dei VI, 8, 2, 34, 86) refers to the discourse on divinity based on nature, that is to say cosmology, such as Varro understands it and obviously does not in any way whatsoever anticipate metaphysica specialis (against what G. Madec leads us to believe in Saint Augustin et la philosophie [15]).

21. This point was strongly emphasized by J. Ratzinger, among others, in “Vé-rité du christianisme?” in Christianisme. Héritages et destins, ed. C. Michon (Pa-ris, 2002), 306ff.

22. Let me mention, for posterity, that there is no dearth of “professional” theologians who grant only reluctantly the title of theologian (if only amateur) to Saint Augustine:

Consequently, the word that is appropriate to characterizing his work is less science or theology than “wisdom.” From the viewpoint of technique, Augustine was surpassed in the Middle Ages and still more in our times. But one cannot say as much of the religious sense, of this loving contemplation of the divine truth, of this wisdom, in a word, for which his work remains an inexhaustible source.

This simple remark allows us to answer an objection that one sometimes hears. After the systematizations elaborated by the great scholastics, is it not backwards to favor a reading of the Fathers, even if it is Saint Augustine? Their writings, so interesting for history, wouldn’t they be regressive for thought? . . . If the Fathers had for providential mission to establish faith on its revealed bases, the theologians had that of fixing its metaphysical bases and frames: speculative theology, direct inheritance of scholasticism, constitutes an immense progress over the ancient methods. It is necessary, however, to acknowledge in the latter a merit that scholasticism, in its very effort at necessary abstraction, was obliged to neglect a little bit: direct contact with life. (F. Cayré, introduction to Bibliothèque augustiniennes [Paris, 1949], 1:12–13 [my emphasis])

Each word would deserve a lengthy commentary, so marked is it by arrogance, blindness, and deep theological unintelligence.

23. Gilson, Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin, 9.

24. K. Jaspers: “Man sagt wohl, ob Augustinus Philosoph oder Theologe sei. Solche Scheidung gilt für uns nicht. Er ist noch beides in einem, eines nicht ohne das andere” (Augustinus, 63–64 [English trans., 101]).

25. Madec, Saint Augustin et la philosophie, 15.

26. Gilson, Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin, 41n2 (English trans., 9).

27. Martin Heidegger, Der Begriff der Zeit (1924), in Gesamtausgabe [hereafter GA] (Frankfurt, 1975–), 64:108.

CHAPTER 1

1. Commentaries on the Psalms 75, 14, PL 36, 965. This verse comes from Psalm 146:7, translated by the Vulgate “Canite Domino in confessione.” It is also interpreted by the Commentary on the First Epistle of John IV, 3, PL 35, 2006, but solely in the sense of confessio peccatorum.

2. Commentaries on the Psalms 144, 13, PL 37, 1878—with the anticipation of a more detailed demonstration in §4 below.

3. Sticking with the Vulgate, this citation combines Psalm 47:2: “Magnus Dominus et laudabilis nimis”; Psalm 95:4: “quia magnus Dominus et laudabilis nimis et magnitudinis ejus non est finis”; and Psalm 144:3: “Magnus Deus et laudabilis nimis.”

4. In other words the hermeneutic “as” depends on a more originary “as,” which will not however be qualified here as existential or phenomenological but spiritual—unless one supposes that phenomenology, in its depths, can itself become a matter of spirituality (this will be the wager of Chapter 3 below).

5. Commentaries on the Psalms 47, 2, PL 36, 533. See the confirmation that follows: “Quid est hoc? ‘Magnus Dominus et laudabilis valde, in civitate Dei nostri, in monte sancto ejus’; nec potest esse laus ejus, nisi in sanctis ejus. Nam qui male vivunt, non eum laudant; sed etsi praedicant lingua, blasphemunt vita” (What is this? “Great is the Lord and eminently worthy of praise, in the city of our God, on the holy mountain!” There cannot be praise for him, except among his saints. For whoever lives wickedly does not praise him; even if you preach him with your language, you blaspheme him by your life) (ibid., 10, PL 36, 540).

6. On this essential rule see below, Chapter 6, §41, p. 263.

7. Wittgenstein, Zettel, §717 (see Werkausgabe 8:443 [English trans., 124e (modified)]).

8. In this the Fathers, Greek as well as Latin, who write treatises De Trinitate (Cyprian, Hilary), De carne Christi (Tertullian), De mysteriis (Hilary, Ambrose), De sacramentis (Ambrose), περί ἀρχῶν (Origen), περί ἀγιõυ πνευμὰτος (Basil), περί ἀνθρωποσέως τõν Λόγõυ (Athanasius), etc., repeat, in a certain fashion, the theoretic posture of the Greek philosophers. This was not always the case, however, since the apostolic and even apologetic Fathers practiced either preaching (toward actual or potential believers) or apology (toward the pagans) and thus addressed themselves to (men, to be sure, more often than to God) more so than they spoke about (God). No doubt, in other places, Saint Augustine practiced the word about, but always and fundamentally starting from the word to, as should be proven sufficiently by the eminent role of the prayers, confessions, and invocations in all these apparently theoretic texts.

9. This predication also implies the primacy of the theoretical use of language over its pragmatic use, however more original and comprehensive, in conformity with the phenomenologically inevitable sway of Vorhandenheit over Zuhandenheit.

10. S. Poque points this out quite clearly: “The XIII books of the Confessions, we know, were not formally addressed by their author to possible and foreseeable readers, but to God alone. Now, since from the first to the thirteenth book, Augustine addresses himself to God, one will perhaps find some interest in seeing the terms of these invocations highlighted” (“L’invocation de Dieu dans les Confessions,” in Collecteana Augustiniana Mélanges T. J. van Bavel, ed. B. Bruning, M. Lamberigts, and J. van Houtem [Leuven, 1990], 927–35). Along the same lines J. J. Goux evokes an “absolute vocative”: “Augustine explicitly does not address me; he has turned his face toward the unknown. He speaks to someone and on behalf of someone that I do not see” (Tel Quel, 21 [Paris, 1965], 67–68). It has been noted that of the 453 paragraphs of the Confessiones, 381 include addresses to God and more than 500 invocations to God (in particular in books I and IX). This has not prevented some from seeing nothing: “Such a God Neoplatonism could not provide. Plotinus never gossiped with the One, as Augustine gossips in the Confessiones” (Dodds, “Augustine’s Confessions: A Study of Spiritual Maladjustment,” 471). Noting some obvious points would have made it possible to avoid the vulgarity of this supposedly British spirit: first, that praising and confessing are by no means gossip, except for one who does not practice them and has no idea what they mean; next, that one can by definition no more speak to the One than play music and dance before the god causa sui of metaphysics (Heidegger, Identität und Differenz, GA 11:77 [English trans., 72]).

11. Confessiones I, 1, 1, 13, 272. We find moreover exactly the same situation in the very last words of the Confessiones, which cite, in the form of praise, Matthew 7:8: “a te petatur, in te quaeratur, ad te pulsetur: sic, sic ‘accipietur, sic invenietur, sic aperietur’” (Let it be asked of you, let it be sought in you, let it be knocked for on your door: so, so [alone] “will it be received, found, opened”) (XIII, 38, 53, 14, 524; the Vulgate reads, “Omnis enim qui petit accipit, et qui quaerit invenit et pulsanti aperietur”). Even more: citation thus does what it says, since it manifests precisely the anteriority of the word of the invoked to that of the one invoking, who does nothing more than repeat it and ends up saying what he was seeking. In repeating the biblical text, the confessant proves the fact that it suffices to ask to find, to knock to make open—all was already there, already available. Again it was necessary that the latecomer perceive himself from the gift already given because given in advance—”Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova” (Late did I love you, beauty so ancient and so new) (X, 27, 38, 14, 208).

12. Commentaries on the Psalms 26, 2, 1, PL 36, 199. Another version of the same argument: “Ergo ‘In Deo laudabo sermones meos’; si ‘in Deo,’ quare ‘meos’? Et ‘in Deo,’ et ‘meos.’ ‘In Deo’ quia ab ipso; ‘meos’ quia accepi. Ipse voluit meos esse qui dedit, amando eum cujus sunt; quia ex illo mihi sunt, mei facti sunt” (Therefore “In God I will praise my words”; but if it is “in God,” why say “mine”? In fact, they are as much “in God” as “mine.” “In god” because they come from him; “mine” because I received them. He Himself, who gave them to me, wanted that they be mine, in loving him to whom they were given; because they came from him to me, they have become mine) (Commentaries on the Psalms 55, 7, PL 36, 651).

13. Confessiones I, 1, 1, 13, 274 (my emphasis). The entirety of this text should in fact be read as a commentary on the celebrated verse of Psalm 21:27, which it cites: “‘Quomodo autem invocabunt, in quem non crediderunt? Aut quomodo credunt sine praedicante’” (“How will they invoke him in whom they will not have believed? Or how will they believe without anybody who preaches to them, saying it to them in advance?”) (ibid.). Not only does this text say that every word that is sayable to God comes from the originary word said by God, but it says it by citing this very word, which says that every word that is mine (invoking, believing) is a citation (of he who pre-dicts or speaks in advance), such that what is said coincides absolutely with the means of saying it. One can compare this with Sermon 59, 1, 1: “Missi sunt ergo praedicatores, praedicaverunt Christum. Illis praedicantibus populi audierunt, audiendo crediderunt, credendo invocarunt. Quia ergo rectissime et verissime dictum est ‘Quomodo invocabunt, in quem non crediderunt,’ ideo prius didicistis eum invocare, in quem credidistis” (Some were sent who pre-dicted and preached Christ. These pre-dictors, speaking in advance, the people heard; having heard them, they believed; in believing, they invoked. Therefore because it was said truly and rightly: “How will they invoke he in whom they will not have believed?” you therefore first learned to invoke he in whom you believed) (PL 38, 387). Or De libero arbitrio II, 2, 6: “Nisi enim et aliud esset credere, aliud intelligere et primo credendum esset quod magnum et divinum intelligere cuperemus, frustra propheta dixisset ‘Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis.’ . . . Jam credentibus dicit ‘Quaerite et invenieritis,’ nam neque inventum dici potest quod incognitum creditur, neque quisquam inveniendo Deo fit idoneus, nisi ante crediderit quod est postea cogniturus” (For if believing and comprehending were not two different things, and if it was not necessary first to believe what we desire to comprehend of the great and the divine, the prophet would have said in vain: “If you do not believe, you will not understand” [Isaiah 7:9, according to the Septuagint]. . . . To the people who already believed, he says: “Ask and you will receive” [Matthew 7, 8], for one cannot call received what one believes without knowing it, any more than one can become apt to receive God, if one does not first believe what is then known) (BA 6, 216–18).

14. J.-F. Lyotard: “In true sacrifice, the confession gives back to him who first gave and gives forever” (on Confessions V, 1 [in Lyotard, The Confession of Augustine, 26]).

15. And if “the Psalmic text itself becomes . . . Augustinian text,” then “one could almost go so far as to say that the Confessions are an immense psalm seeded throughout with the theses of the rhetorician” (P. Cambronne, notes to his translation, in Les Confessions précédées de dialogues philosophiques, in Œuvres I [Paris, 1998], 1370). It is not a matter of theses, however, but of responses to the Psalms themselves, written to be sure by a rhetorician, but one who would think like a theologian. In other words, “Totus ergo textus psalmi est oratio” (The entire text of the psalm is therefore a prayer) (Commentaries on the Psalms 5, 18, PL 36, 89)—and reciprocally, every prayer could indeed come down to a reprise of a psalm or the Psalms.

16. Soliloquia I, 1, 1, BA 5, 24. To be sure, Saint Augustine makes no mistake about the question of the necessary mediations by which the word of the originary call comes over me: either by syllables or by private revelation or by another corporeal mode. But in all cases God spoke: “Quid ergo ex his omnibus factum sit, ad liquidum comprehendere non valeamus, verum tamen certissime tenamus et dixisse hoc Deum” (Of all these hypotheses we might not be able to say clearly which one is the case, but nevertheless let us hold it most certain that it is God who said this word) (De Genesi ad litteram IX, 2, 3, BA 49, 94).

17. K. Kienzler, in “Der Aufbau der Confessiones des Augustinus im Spiegel der Bibelzitate,” Recherches augustiniennes 24 (1989), showed convincingly that the biblical citations not only ground Augustine’s speech but also secure the unity of all the books in one single whole; see also G. Knauer, Psalmenzitate in Augustinus Konfessionem (Göttingen, 1955).

18. See other examples of such a precedence of the call in terms of mercy: “‘Misericordia mea,’ quid est? Totum quidquid sum, de misericordia tua est. Sed promerui invocando te? Ut essem, quid feci? Ut essem, qui invocarem, quid egi? Si enim egi aliquid ut essem, jam eram antequam essem. Porro, si omnino nihil eram antequam essem, nihil te promerui ut essem” (“[God] my mercy,” what is that? [That means] all that I am, whatever it might be, it comes from your mercy. But did I not win a merit in advance by invoking you? But what did I do, to be? To be he who invokes you, what act did I do? For if I did some act, any act whatsoever, in order to be, I was before being. What is more, if I most absolutely was not before being, I merited nothing in advance of you in order to be) (Commentaries on the Psalms 58, 2, 11, PL 36, 713). Likewise: “Praecedit enim bona voluntas hominis multa Dei dona, sed non omnia: quae autem non praecedit ipsa, in eis est et ipsa, nam utrumque legitur in sanctis eloquiis, et ‘Misericordia ejus praeveniet me,’ et ‘Misericordia ejus subsequitur me.’ Nolentem praevenit et velit, volentem sequitur ne frustra velit” (The goodwill of man comes before many gifts of God, but not all, and among those that it does not precede is itself. For we read these two things in holy scriptures: “My mercy will precede you” [Psalm 22:6] and “His mercy will follow” [Psalm 22:6]. It precedes he who does not will and he wills; it follows he who wills and he does not will in vain) (Enchiridion IX, 32, BA 9, 162).

20. On this decisive point see the excellent observations of F. J. Crosson in his “Structure and Meaning in St. Augustine’s Confessions,” in The Augustinian Tradition, ed. G. B. Mathews, 27–38 (Berkeley, 1999). Crosson emphasizes that here par excellence Augustine is taken to task by the anterior word of God and verifies in his own case the general status of the confessio.

21. This “Nescio” corresponds exactly to that of the Soliloquia I, 1, 1, BA 5, 24. For the Soliloquia do not in any way unfold the solipsistic soliloquy of a mind speaking to itself (according to an almost universally common misreading), but strive to regain and reopen, starting from an ego encapsulated in itself, the space—first anonymous and undecided—of the call and response, of my word received and rendered to the Word. The Confessiones explore this restoration more deeply by grounding it on the resaying of the scriptures by my own word, then reappropriated to itself.

22. The fact that Saint Augustine here repeats the move of St. Anthony during his conversion, judging that what he read was said specifically about him (“tanquam sibi diceretur quod legebatur”), and that, just as significantly, Alypius, reading a little while later the following verse (Romans 14:1), would immediately take it as a call specifically for him: “‘Infirmum autem in fide recipite.’ Quod ille ad se retulit” (ibid.), far from diminishing the authenticity of the tale, reinforces it, by manifesting the permanence of the rules of the singular logic of confession, followed to the letter even in individual conversions.

23. On this point see the essential article by J. Ratzinger, “Originalität und Überlieferung in Augustinus Begriff der Confessio,” Revue des études augustiniennes 3 (1957): 375–92, whose results are taken up by A. Solignac in the introduction to the Confessiones (BA 13, 9ff.). See also the analysis of J.-L. Chrétien: “The word confessio refers to speech acts that are at once distinct and inseparable: confession of faith, confession of sins, confession of praise. But before describing them and thinking about them, it is important to measure the unique scope of confessio, which, in a sense, is not numbered among the other speech acts. . . . In effect, confession, before being a word of faith that could be distinguished from others and compared with others, forms the very opening of the dimension in which the words of faith become possible. . . . Confession is in effect nothing other than the human response to the call of God” (Chrétien, Saint Augustin et les actes de parole, 121–22).

24. Pseudo-Quintillian: “Ego . . . confessionem existimo qualemcumque contra se pronuntiationem. . . . Immo ea natura est nobis confessionis, ut possit videri demens qui de se confitetur. Furore impulsus est: alius ebrietate, alius errore, alius dolore, quidam quaestione. Nemo contra se dicit, nisi aliquo cogente” (Declamationes, 204, ed. C. Ritter [Leipzig, 1884], 122–234).

25. Cicero: “O patrem sapientem! Qui quod praemii solet esse in judicio reliquerit, quod turpitudinis in confessione, id per accusationem filii susceperit” (Opera, ed. J. G. Baiter and C. L. Kayer, vol. 4 [Leipzig, 1862], 330).

26. Tertullian: “Christiani vero quid tale consequuntur? Neminem pudet, neminem poenitet, nisi tantum pristinorum. Si denotatur, gloriatur; si trahitur, non subsistit. Si accusatur, non defendit; interrogatus, confitetur; damnatus gloriatur. Quod hoc malum est, in quo mali natura cessat? In quo ipsi etiam contra formam judicandorum malorum judicatis. Nam nocentes quidem perductos, si admissum negent, tormentis urgetis ad confessionem. Christianos vero sponte confessos tormentis comprimitis ad negationem” (Ad Nationes I, 1–2, PL 1, 630). Saint Augustine appears to remember this paradoxical argument: “Torqueantur christiani, donec negent quod christiani. Cum antea solerent confessi percuti, ad hoc postea torqueantur ut negarent; et cum omnis reus tamdiu torquebatur, quamdiu neget, christianorum confessio torquebatur, negatio dimittebat” (Whereas beforehand one struck them because of what they had confessed, later they were tortured on account of denying it; and as one tortures the guilty as long as he denies it, one used to torture the confession of Christians and relent upon their denegation) (Commentaries on the Psalms 90, 2, 2, PL 37, 1161).

27. Tertullian: “Is actus, qui magis graeco vocabulo exprimitur et frequentatur ἐξομολόγησις est, qua dilectum Domino nostrum confitemur, non quidem ut ignaro, sed quatenus satisfactio confessione disponetur, confessione poenitentia nascitur, poenitentia Deus mitigatur. Itaque ἐξομολόγησις prosternandi et humilificandi hominis disciplina est, conversationem injugens, misericordiae illicum” (De poenitentia IX, 2, PL 1, 1354).

28. For example in Matthew 11:25, Luke 10:21, Acts 19:18, and Romans 14:11 and 15:9, orchestrating among others 1 Timothy 6:12: “confessus es bonam confessionem (ἐξομολόγήσας τήν ϰαλήν όμολογίαν) coram multis testibus. Praecipio tibi coram Deo, qui vivificat omnia, et Christo Jesu, qui testimonium reddidit sub Pontio Pilato bonam confessionem (ϰαλήν ὁμολογίαν) ut serves mandatum sine macula irreprehensibile usque in adventum Domini nostri Jesu Christi.”

29. Following Matthew 3:6 or Mark 1:5 and John 5:16. Origen: “Confession ἐξομολόγησις means the act of giving thanks and praise. It even covers the confession of faults” (In Psalmos 135, 2, PG 12, 1653–55). And Saint Jerome, commenting on Psalm 34:18, “Confiteor tibi in ecclesia magna,” emphasizes that “confessioque in hoc loco non pro paenitentia, sed pro gloria et laude accipitur” (Letter 75—to Augustine, PL 24, 395).

30. Hilary of Poitiers, meditating “Confiteantur tibi populi, confiteantur tibi populi omne”: “Invenimus enim confessionem duplici ratione esse tractandam: esse unam confessionem peccatorum, ubi in deserto Iordanis confitebantur peccata sua; esse etiam laudationis Dei, ubi Dominus loquitur ad Patrem ‘Confiteor tibi Domine, Pater.’ Prima ergo illa et superior confessio peccatorum esse credenda est, maxime quae praedicationi propheticae atque apostolicae connectitur; sequens haec laudationis Dei intelligenda est populorum, deinde omnium, i.e. gentium” (In Psalmos, 66, 6, CSEL 22 [Vienna, 1891], 273ff.). See also his commentary on Psalm 6:6, “In inferno autem, quis confitebitur tibi?”: “Confessioque in hoc loco non pro paenitentia, sed pro gloria et laude accipitur” (In Isaiam prophetam 11, 39, PL 24, 409).

31. See also: “Multis autem jam locis sanctarum scripturarum insinuavimus confessionem etiam pro laude poni” (We suppose that in many passages of the scriptures confession is also used for praise) (Commentaries on the Psalms 78, 17, PL 36, 1020). Or else: “In aeternum laudabo te, quia diximus esse confessionem et in laudibus, non tantum in peccatis. Confiteor ergo modo quod tu fecisti in Deum, et confitiberis quid tibi fecerit Deus. Quid fecisti? Peccata. Quid Deus? Confitenti iniquitatem tuam dimitti peccata tua, ut ei postea laudes ipsius confidens in aeternum, non compungaris peccato” (I will praise you eternally because, we said, there is a confession in praises, not only in sins. Confess then only what you have done toward God and you are confessing what God did for you. What have you yourself done? Sins. And God [what has he done]? He has remitted your sins because you would confess your injustice, so that next you praise him eternally with perfect confidence instead of fighting against him with your sin) (Commentaries on the Psalms 29, 22, PL 36, 226). And also: “Confitemur ergo sive laudantes Deum, sive accusantes nos ipsos. Pia est utroque confessio, sive cum te reprehendis, qui non es sine peccato; sive cum illum laudis, qui non potest habere peccatum” (We confess therefore either by praising God or by accusing ourselves. Both confessions are pious, either when you rebuke yourself, you who are not without sin, or when you praise he who cannot have sin) (Sermon 67, 1, PL 38, 433). But Saint Augustine needs to highlight the duality of confessio all the more as his listeners, conforming to Latin usage, hear it most often as only the admission of sins and ignore the praise in it. There is no shortage of texts that denounce this one-sided view: “Sed prius commemoro vos confessionem in scripturis, cum confitemur Deo, duobus modis dici solere, vel peccatorum, vel laudis. Sed confessionem peccatorum omnes noverunt; laudis autem confessionem pauci advertunt. Nam ita nota est confessio peccatorum, ut in quocumque scripturarum loco auditum fuerit ‘Confitebor tibi Domine,’ aut ‘Confitebimur tibi,’ continuo ad pectus tunendum; usque adeo non solent homines intelligere confessionem esse nisi peccatorum” (But first I would remind you that confession is used in scriptures in two ways, confession of sins and confession of praise. But, if all know the confession of sins, few [among you] know the confession of praise. The confession of sins is so well known that when, in some corner of scriptures, we find “I will confess unto you Lord,” or “We will confess you” (Psalm 137:1) at once, owing to this ordinary comprehension, your hands are quick to strike your breast, so habituated are we to conceive confession as of sins” (Commentaries on the Psalms 137, 2, PL 37, 1174). Or: “Duobus autem modis confessio intelligitur, et in peccatis nostris et in laude Dei. In peccatis nostris nota est confessio, et ita nota omni populo, ut quando auditum fuerit nomen confessionis in lectione, sive in laude dicatur sive de peccatis dicatur, currant pugni ad pectus. Notum est ergo nomen confessionis de peccato; confessionem in laude quaeramus” (Confession is understood in two ways, of our sins, but also of the praise of God. Of our sins, we know confession well, it is even so well known by all the people that, when one hears in a reading the word confession, whether it concerns praise or sins, the hands rise to the breast. There we know the name of confession of sins, but it is the confession of praise that we seek) (Commentaries on the Psalms 141, 19, PL 37, 1844). Likewise: “Confessio enim non peccatorum tantum dicitur, sed et laudis; ne forte ubicumque auditis confessionem putetis jam non esse nisi peccati. Usque adeo enim hoc putatur, ut quando sonuerit de divinis eloquis, continuo sit consuetudo pectora tundere. Audi quia est laudis confessio” (Confession is said not only of sins but also of praise, and accordingly you should not think, each time that you hear confession, that it is only about sin. For we think this way to such a point, when we hear it in the words of God, we are in the habit of at once striking our breast. Listen, for there is also a confession of praise) (Commentaries on the Psalms 144, 13, PL 37, 1878). Or finally: “Confessio aut laudantis est, aut poenitenis. Sunt enim parum eruditi, qui cum audierint confessionem in scripturis, tanquam nisi peccatorum esse no possit, continuo tundunt pectora, velut jam moneantur confiteri peccata” (Confession bears either on praise or sins. They are familiar with just a small thing, those who upon hearing confession in the scriptures, as if it concerned only sins, at once strike their breast, as if they had been asked to confess their sins) (Sermon 29, 2, PL 38, 186).

32. Heidegger said nothing other than this: “Augustine communicates all phenomena [by carrying himself] in the posture of the confiteri [to confess], standing within the task of searching and of having God (dass Augustin alle Phäno-mene mitteilt in der Haltung des confiteri, in der Aufgabe des Gott-Suchens und Gott-Habens stehend)” (Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, GA 60:283 [English trans., 214]). That is equivalent to “sine confessione tamen non simus” (we are never without confession) (Commentaries on the Psalms 29, 19, PL 36, 225; see p. 29 above).

34. One can only share the harsh diagnosis made by J. J. O’Donnell concerning the common rules for the nonreading of the Confessiones: choose to ignore all that does not matter to us; be indignant when what is said contradicts what does matter to us; pass over in silence as naive what we deem such; treat with condescension what we find interesting but overcome by our modernity (as with time and memory, for example); privilege what confirms our interpretive prejudices; etc. (O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, vol. 1, Introduction and Text, xix).

35. H.-I. Marrou: “Augustine composes poorly” (Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique [Paris, 19381, cited according to the edition of 19584], 61–67, 73–75, with, it is true, a retraction in 19492 [665–72]). Marrou was not alone, but was followed by, among others, H. U. von Balthasar in Augustinus. Bekenntnisse. Nachwort und Anmerkungen (Frankfurt, 1955), 213n1; M. Pellegrino, Le Confessioni di Sant’Augustino (Rome, 1956), 130; then by A. Solignac, who (supposing a chronological gap between books I through IX and X through XIII and even an early dissemination of the first) admits only “a unity more internal than logical” (Introduction à BA 13 [Paris, 1962], 20, 48, and 53); and by A. M. Kotzé, who considers the first books as an anti-Manichean propaedeutic (Augustine’s “Confessions”: Communicative Purpose and Audience [Leiden, 2004]). On the different arguments in favor of the unity of the Confessiones see the elaboration offered by F. Van Fleteren, in A. D. Fitzgerald, ed., Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, 1999).

36. This is insisted upon quite rightly by W. Stiedle, “Augustinus Confessiones als Buch,” in Romanitas-Christianitas: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Literatur der Römanischen Kaiserzeit. Johannes Staub zum 70. Geburtstag gewidmet, ed. G. Wirth (Berlin, 1982), 440, finding a strong argument for the unity of the entire Confessiones.

37. Is this conclusion invalidated by the absence of a confessio in books II, III, VI, and VII? Certainly not; indeed, to the contrary, these books in effect treat the periods of maximum distance from God, where precisely such a confessio of praise remains impossible, lacking the least confessio of repentance. For sin consists finally more in the negation (or lack of consciousness) of the fault than in the fault itself. And in the place of and instead of confessio, these books testify to an obsession with sin, indeed by sin. Thus in the opening of book II, 1, 1: “recordari volo transactas foeditates meas et carnales corruptiones animae meae” (I want to call back to mind the foul doings of my past and the carnal corruptions of my soul) (13, 332). Thus in book III, 1, 1: “Veni Carthaginem, et circumstrebat me undique sartago flagitiosorum amorum” (I came to Carthage and everywhere around me crackled the cauldron of shameful loves) (13, 362). As well as in VI, 1, 1: “Ambulabam per tenebras et lubricum, et quaerebam te foris a me et non inveniebam ‘Deum cordis mei’” (I was going through the shadows and across slippery terrain, and I was seeking you outside myself and not finding “the God of my heart”) (Psalm 72:26) (13, 514). Or finally VII, 1, 1: “et ibam in juventutem, quanto aetate major, tanto vanitate turpior” (I entered into adulthood, and the more I grew the more vile was I made by my emptiness) (13, 576). In all these cases confessio therefore does not mark an exception to its constitutive role but confirms it: it shines by its absence, which the sinner’s own blindness to himself alone forbids.

38. Here is a perfect example of a citation of a citation, as highlighted above (see §3).

39. It is achieved, moreover, by a barely modified citation from Matthew 7:7–8: “sic ‘sic accipietur, sic invenietur, sic aperitur’” (so, “so shall we receive, so shall we find, so shall the door open”) (14, 524). As with the first word of the Confessiones, the last consists in a citation of the words of God.

40. Here again there are some exceptions: four books conclude neither with a praise nor a confession. Yet one can in each case make some conjecture as to the reason for this absence. In book II Augustine finds himself in the “regio egestatis” (II, 10, 18, 13, 360), just as, in book III, he reaches the “depths of hell” (in profunda inferi) of Manicheanism, there where God had shown pity for someone who had not yet confessed, “nondum confitentem” (III, 6, 11, 13, 382). In book V, 10, 19, confession appears to be blocked by the skeptical principle that “de omnibus dubitandum est” (13, 498). Finally, how would confessio have been possible at the moment of the break with Adeodatus’s mother, an unjustified break of a communion, which for that matter leaves him a wreck (“cor ubi adhaerebat, concisum et vulneratum mihi erat et trahebat sanguinem” [VI, 15, 25, 13, 570])? These books are missing a final confession not through negligence or forgetting but because in each case Augustine finds himself in a situation of not being able to confess.

41. By arbitrarily choosing the criteria, as K. Grotz shows in Die Einheit der “Confessiones”: Warum bringt Augustinus in den letzten Büchern seiner “Confessiones” eine Auslegung der Genesis? (Tübinger, 1970), which suggests a good thirty or so hypotheses.

42. Retractiones II, 6: “Confessionum mearum libri tredecim et de malis et de bonis meis Deum, laudant justum et bonum, atque in eum excitant humanum intellectum et affectum. Interim, quod ad me adtinet, hoc in me egerunt, cum scriberentur, et agunt cum leguntur. Quid de illis alii sentient, ipsi viderint; multis tamen fratribus eos multum placuisse et placere scio. A primo usque ad decimum de me scripsi sunt, in tribus caeteris de Scripturis sanctis ab eo, quod scriptum est ‘In principio fecit Deus coelum et terram’ usque ad sabbam” (BA 12, 460). It should be noted that, of the only two repentings that the author admits, one, the most important, concerns the description of the pain provoked by the loss of a friend: this brilliant paradox (I fear my death because it would make my lost friend die a second time) sins because it does not reach the dignity and the seriousness of a true confession: “mihi quasi declamatio levis quam gravis confessio videtur” (ibid.). In short, the Confessiones would here be lacking a confession.

43. Based on the commentary of the Retractiones, G. Bardy concludes that, despite the distinction of parts he finds in the Confessiones, “this argument is far from being decisive and it remains more probable that the Confessiones constitute a collection redacted from one sole spring” (BA 12, 578). A reason for this probability must still be found.

44. The same opening by the same citation appears in I, 1, 1, 13, 272 and XI, 1, 1, 14, 270.

45. Confessiones, IV, 4, 9, 13, 422.

46. Confessiones, XIII, 22, 32, 14, 482.

47. “The highest unity of the Confessiones is in confession.” I can do nothing more than subscribe to this thesis from P. L. Landsberg, “La conversion de saint Augustin,” Supplément à la Vie spirituelle (1936): 33–34.

48. This phrase, if you really think about it, is equivalent to a blasphemy, without speaking of its pragmatic incoherence. In this sense Deleuze’s remark that in philosophy one never dialogues extends to theology.

49. G. Misch, all the while seeing the swerve from the third to the second person in order to speak to God, maintains, however, against all good sense, that it is an issue of an autobiography (Selbstbiographie): “In Augustine, there appears for the first time this cultural form known as autobiography, which will blossom in the 18th Century” (Geschichte der Autobiographie [Berne, 1907], 3:646, 641). This judgment has been authoritative. J.-M. Leblond follows it: “They [the Confessiones] obviously [?] contain an autobiography” (Les conversions de saint Augustin [Paris, 1950], 5); P. Courcelle, too, all the while seeing the difficulty: “Augustine deliberately [?] sacrificed the end of his autobiography so as to broach more quickly the more theological matters; he never found the leisure to finish this collection” (“Antécédents autobiographiques des Confessiones de saint Augustin,” Revue de philologie 31 (1957): 23–51; A. Solignac remains in the same straits: “Is this, properly speaking, an autobiography? Most certainly [?] Augustine narrates and wants to narrate his own life. But the question is already posed, does autobiography make up, in Antiquity at least, a sufficiently determined ‘genre’” (BA 13 [Paris, 1962], 44). One will not be surprised to hear the habitual smugness and triviality of E. R. Dodds: “I invite [the reader] to envisage this book, on the one hand, as the earliest example of a well-defined and very curious literary genre, the introspective autobiography; on the other, as the intimate record of a neurotic conflict. These two aspects are, of course, complementary” (“Augustine’s Confessions: A Study of Spiritual Maladjustment,” 460). As the one is false (no autobiography), the second could be too (but one would have to take oneself to be neurotic to decide). One should be surprised, too, to see that more genuine philosophers did not see the problem. For instance, Hannah Arendt: “Although the confession of his life had but little psychological significance for Augustine, it is nevertheless the case that he is the forefather of the modern autobiographical and psychological novel” (Le concept d’amour chez saint Augustine, p. 183). Would she simply be following the opinion of her Dissertationvater, K. Jaspers? “Augustine writes the first genuine autobiography and concludes his work with a retrospective glance” (Augustinus, 63 [English trans., 101 (modified)]).

50. “The Confessiones therefore is no autobiography, and not even a partial autobiography. It is the use of Augustine’s life and confession of faith in God as an illustration of his theory of man” (J. J. O’Meara, The Young Augustine [New York, 2001], 18).

51. The merit of having ventured the neologism falls to G. Lettieri: “l’autobio-grafia agostiniana é stata interpretata come eterobiografia” (L’altro Agostino: Ermeneutica e retorica dellà grazia della crisi alla metamorfosi del De doctrina Christiana,” [Brescia, 2001], 522 [my emphasis]).

52. Wittgenstein notes, in a closely related sense, that the truth of Geständnis, the confession of an admission, resides solely in its Wahrhaftigkeit, never in its description: “The criteria for the truth of the confession that I thought such-and-such are not the criteria for a description (Beschreibung) that conforms to the truth (wahrheitgemässen) of a process. And the importance of the true confession does not reside in its being a correct and certain report of a process. It resides rather in the special conclusions which can be drawn from a confession whose truth is guaranteed by the special criteria of truthfulness (Wahrhaftigkeit).” (Philosophische Untersuchungen, Part II, 1:466 [English trans., 189e (modified)]).

53. This precise use of affectus in XI, 1, 1 confirms literally, in advance, its role in the retrospective examination of the Retractiones II, 32: the Confessiones want to incite the movement toward God of whoever reads them, including their author. The stories and the arguments are submitted, like the literary seduction that they exert, to this radically theological goal.

54. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA, 1962), 101. See also “What Cannot Be Said: Apophasis and the Discourse of Love,” in Jean-Luc Marion, The Visible and the Revealed (New York, 2008), 101–18.

55. This comes from a cover letter to the Confessiones, which had just been completed: “Et si quid in me placuerit tibi, lauda ibi mecum quem laudari volui de me. . . . Sume inquam etiam libros, quos desiderasti, Confessionum mearum: ibi me inspice, ne me laudes ultra quam sum; ibi non aliis de me crede, sed mihi; ibi me attende et vide qui fuerim in me ipso per me ipsum. Et si quid in me placuerit tibi, laude ibi mecum quam laudari volui de me” (Epistula 231, 6, PL 33, 1025).

56. This explains the fact that the other, seen from the point of view of God, can appear different from, indeed contrary to, what one would expect from the point of view of the ego. Hence the apparently ill-intended description of Alypius as a thief (IV, 9, 14, 13, 548ff.), which he is not, or the reprimand for mourning a friend denounced as idolatry: “O dementiam nescientem diligere homines humaniter” (What madness it is that knows not how to love men humanly) (IV, 7, 1, 13, 426).

57. This third is named, in Husserl, the world, which guarantees intersubjectivity in and through the object constituted in common (it would therefore be better to speak of an interobjectivity). It becomes the group-in-fusion in Sartre, the flesh for Merleau-Ponty, life for Michel Henry. The same holds, in a sense, for Levinas, not only because the third, anonymous and indeterminate, appears straightaway, at the same time, and along with the face of the other, but because the other becomes this face only by annulling his empirical visibility to the benefit of the invisible and silent word (“Thou shalt not kill”). See my study “Le tiers ou la relève du duel,” in “Le tiers,” ed. M. M. Olivette, special issue, Archivio di filosofia 84, nos. 1–3 (2007).

58. The rapprochement of Saint Augustine, Montaigne, and Rousseau can be authorized at least by Chateaubriand: “Montaigne and Rousseau gave us their Confessions. The first mocked the good faith of his reader; the second displayed shameless turpitude in setting himself, even in the judgment of God, as the model of virtue. It is in the Confessions of Saint Augustine that we learn to see man as he is. The saint does not confess to the earth, but to the heavens; he hides nothing from he who sees all” (Génie du christianisme III, 4, 2, ed. M. Regard [Paris, 1978], 853). I will not broach the question here, in fact an essential one, of knowing if and how far the Mémoires d’outre-tombe are written not only into the literary tradition of the Confessiones (which can hardly be disputed) but, above all, into the model of confessio (something it would be unwise to exclude). It could be that Chateaubriand is more incomparably Augustinian than Montaigne and Rousseau, just like Descartes and Proust, for that matter.

59. Montaigne, Les essais, ed. P. Villey (Paris, 1965), 1:3 (English trans., 2).

60. “De l’expérience,” in Les essais 3:13.1112, 1113, 1114 (English trans., 854, 854, and 855–56). See also “Oh, how much am I obliged to God that it was his pleasure that I should receive all I have directly from his grace” (“De la vanité,” in ibid., 968 [English trans., 739], citing almost literally 1 Corinthians 4:7). On the citations and paraphrases of Saint Paul in the Essais see V. Carraud, “L’imaginer inimaginable: Le Dieu de Montaigne,” in Montaigne: Scepticisme, métaphysique, théologie, ed. V. Carraud and J.-L. Marion (Paris, 2004), 137–71, esp. 142ff.

61. “Du repentir,” in Les essais 3:2.806 and 816 (English trans., 610 [modified] and 620). See: “As for me, I may desire in a general way to be different; I may condemn and dislike my nature as a whole, and implore God to reform me completely and to pardon my natural weakness. But this I ought not to call repentance, it seems to me, any more than my displeasure at being neither an angel nor Cato” (813 [English trans., 617]). One could, however, temper this apparent refusal of repentance. First, no censure from Rome ever stigmatized this point (see J.-R. Armogathe and V. Carraud, “Les Essais de Montaigne dans les archives du Saint-Office,” in Papes, princes et savants dans l’Europe moderne: Mélanges à la mémoire de Bruno Neveu, ed. J.-L. Quentin and J.-C. Waquet [Paris, 2007], 79–96). Next, he does not refuse confessio peccatorum as such, seeing as it is clearly assumed, even with a reference to the Confessiones: “I confess myself in public, religiously and purely. Saint Augustine, Origen, and Hippocrates have published the errors of their opinions; I, besides, those of my conduct. I am hungry to make myself known, and I care not to how many, provided it be truly” (“Du repentir,” 5.846ff. [English trans., 643]). Finally, even the refusal of repentance seems to insist on the facticity of the faults, done without hope of cure (“The deed is done, from here on out” [ibid., 804]) but not on any regret for having committed them.

62. “Au lecteur,” in Les essais, 1:3 (English trans., 2).

63. “Du repentir,” 2.805 (English trans., 611 [modified]). See my interpretation of these texts in “Qui suis-je pour ne pas dire ego sum, ego existo?” in Carraud and Marion, Montaigne.

64. The rapprochement of Rousseau and Augustine is validated by, among others besides Chateaubriand, G. Gusdorf, La découverte de soi (Paris, 1948), 18–24; and P. Courcelle, Les “Confessions” de saint Augustin dans la tradition littéraire: Antécédents et postérité (Paris, 1963), 459ff., who remarks that Rousseau’s Confessions “are however the exact antithesis of those of Augustine,” owing to the complete absence of Christ and the praise of God, among other reasons. He refers to D. Nisard: “As much as the beginning of the Confessions of J. J. Rousseau leaves me suspicious of all that he will say, so the first words of the Confessions of Saint Augustine inspire me with confidence” (Histoire de la littérature française [Paris, 18776], 4:451).

65. Rousseau, Confessions, in Œuvres complètes, ed. B. Gagnebin and M. Raymond (Paris, 1959), 1:5 (English trans., 5). “Rousseau sees himself as God himself,” is the wise diagnosis of A. Harle, “Augustine and Rousseau: Narrative and Self-Knowledge in the Two Confessions,” in Mathews, The Augustinian Tradition, 265 (see also his The Modern Self in Rousseau’s “Confessions”: A Reply to Saint Augustine [Notre Dame, 1983]).

66. This must obviously be understood as “the host” not of “my fellows” but of “my un-fellows.”

67. Rousseau, Confessions—Rousseau supposes that God does only what he himself already does perfectly: know himself. In Augustinian terms this is a double mistake: first because the ego does not have access to itself, and next because God rightly does what he himself cannot do, know it and himself. See the excellent analyses by E. Dubreucq: “God or the reader are [in Rousseau] only witnesses of this unveiling,” while, for Saint Augustine, “the unveiling is not performed by the ‘I’ narrator for one of the addressees and in the presence of God, but by the divine ‘you’ in the act of this ‘I’ and in the presence of the third person of the addressee” (Le cœur et l’écriture chez saint Augustin: Enquête sur le rapport à soi dans les “Confessiones” [Lille, 2003], 215, 237).

68. “I am forming an undertaking which has no precedent, and the execution of which will have no imitator” (Rousseau, Œuvres complètes, 5 [English trans., 5]). About this demented declaration two things at least are certain: the undertaking has a precedent, even if it unhinges it (Saint Augustine), and it will have countless imitators (including Céline and the late Sartre).

CHAPTER 2

1. Soliloquia 1, 2, 7, BA 5, 36. Compare this to the definition of philosophy in terms of a “duplex quaestio: una de anima, altera de Deo. Prima efficit ut nosmetipsos noverimus, altera ut originem nostram”—(twofold question: one concerning the soul, the other about God. The first makes us know ourselves, the second our origin) (De ordine II, 18, 47, BA 4, 444).

2. Soliloquia II, I, 1, BA 5, 86. Saint Bernard will reverse the formula: “In hac nimirum duplici consideratione spiritualis viri meditatio tota versatur. Orans denique sanctus quidam ‘Deus, inquit, noverim te, noverim me.’ Brevis oratio, sed fidelis. Haec enim est vera philosophia et utraque cognitio prorsus necessario ad solutum: ex priore siquidem timor concipitur et humilitas, ex posteriore spes et caritas” (The entire meditation of a spiritual man is found to be contained in this assuredly twofold consideration. In the end it takes a saint to say: “Make me know you, make me know myself.” This prayer is brief but faithful. Such is the true philosophy, and these two knowledges are absolutely necessary for freed thought: and if the first makes us conceive of fear and humility, the other makes us conceive of hope and charity) (Sermo de divinis V, 5, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq and H. Rochais, vol. 6.1 [Rome, 1970], 104).

3. Discours de la méthode, AT VI, 32, 19 (English trans., 2:127 [modified]).

4. De civitate Dei XI, 26, BA 35, 114. The text continues: “Quia ergo sum si fallor, quo modo esse me fallor, quando certum est me esse, si fallor? Quia igitur essem qui fallerer, etiamsi fallerer, procul dubio in eo, quod me novi esse, non fallor” (Therefore, because I am if I am deceived, how could I be deceived about my being, as soon as it is certain that if I am deceived, I am? Consequently, because I was, I who was deceived, even if I was deceived, I would not be deceived since it is beyond doubt that I know that I am). Curiously, the first letter from Mersenne is lost to us, but Descartes attests to it in three letters in response: “Some time ago, you drew my attention to a passage from St. Augustine concerning my I am thinking therefore I exist, and I think you have asked me about it again since then. It is in the Book Eleven, Chapter 26 of De civitate Dei” (To Mersenne, December 1640, AT III, 247, 1–3 [English trans., 3:161]), referring to “the letter in which you quote the passage from St. Augustine” (To Mersenne, 19 October 1638, AT II, 435, 19–20 [English trans., 3:129]), namely the “passage from Saint Augustine” received 25 May 1637 (AT I, 376, 19–20). Even Gilson accepted the comparison: “No doubt we shall never know to what extent Descartes may have been influenced directly or indirectly by St. Augustine or the Augustinian tradition. Besides, it would be unwise to overlook the original elements in the Cartesian Cogito. But the similarity of the two doctrines is quite evident even to one who does not compare the texts in detail” (Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin, 55 [English trans., 43]). Even, or shouldn’t we say especially, to whoever does not go too deeply into an examination of the texts?

5. De libero arbitrio II, 3, 7, BA 6, 220. Cited by Arnauld, IVeme Objectiones (AT VII, 197, 23 and 198, 11), who comments: “V. C. [Descartes] idem pro totius suae philosophiae principio statuisse, quod statuit D. Augustinus, acerrimi vir ingenii, nec in Theologia modo, sed etiam in Philosophicis rebus plane mirandus” ([He] has laid down as the basis for his entire philosophy exactly the same principle as that laid down by St Augustine, a man of the sharpest intellect and a remarkable thinker, not only on theological topics but also on philosophical ones) (197, 26–27 [English trans., 2:139]).

6. De Trinitate X, 10, 16, BA 16, 150. This time the comparison no longer bears on the demonstration of the ego’s existence (in AT VII, 25, 5–13, which corresponds to De civitate Dei XI, 26) but on the definition of its essence (AT VII, 26, 24–28, 22), setting aside, too, the hypothesis that it is corpus, aer, or ignis (27, 19, 20, and 21). Arnauld comments: “Quae de mentis a corpore distinctione disseruisti, certa, clara, perspicua, divina mihi videntur, atque, ut veritate nihil antiquius, eadem fere a S. Augustino, toto pene libro X De Trin., sed maxime capitulo 10, luculenter esse disputat non sine magna voluptate percipi” (What you have shown concerning the distinction of the mind and body appears to me certain, clear, limpid, and divine, and as nothing is older than the truth, I found, not without great pleasure, that Saint Augustine discussed it in almost the same terms in almost the entirety of book X of De Trinitate, but above all in chap. 10) (To Descartes, 3 June 1648, AT V, 186, 9–13).

7. The Search for Truth, AT X, 523, 24–25, or in a bit more developed form: “Quando quidem itaque dubitare te negare nequis, et e contrario certum est te dubitare, et quidem adeo certum, ut de eo dubitare non possis: verum etiam est te, qui dubitas, esse, hocque ita etiam verum est, ut non magis de eo dubitare possis. / Assentior hic equidem tibi, quia, si non essem, non possem dubitare. / Es igitur, et te esse scis, et hoc exinde, quia dubitas, scis” (You cannot deny that you have such doubts; rather it is certain that you have them, so certain in fact that you cannot doubt your doubting. Therefore it is also true that you who are doubting exist; this is so true that you can no longer have any doubts about it. / I quite agree with you on that point, because if I did not exist, I would not be able to doubt. / You exist, therefore, and you know that you exist, and you know this just because you are doubting) (ibid., 515, 15–22 [English trans., 2:409–10]).

8. De Trinitate X, 10, 14, 16, 148.

9. To Mesland, 2 May 1644: “I am grateful to you for pointing out the places in St. Augustine which can be used to give authority to my views. Some other friends of mine had already done so, and I am pleased that my thoughts agree with those of such a great and holy man. For I am not the kind of person who wants his views to appear novel; on the contrary, I make my views conform with those of others so far as truth permits me” (AT IV, 113, 12–21 [English trans., 3:232]). Yet in the IVeme Responsiones (AT VII, 219, 6–10) Descartes prefers not to argue on the basis of this authority so as to let rationes meae present themselves by themselves. Concerning this unsolvable issue, see the classic works of G. Rodis-Lewis, “Augustinisme et cartésianisme” (Etudes augustiniennes [1955], included in L’anthropologie cartésienne [Paris, 1990]); H. Gouhier, Cartésianisme et augustinisme au XVIeme siècle (Paris, 1978); and despite some gaps, Z. Janowski, Index augustino-cartésien: Texts et commentaire (Paris, 2000) (with a good recounting of the history of the problem), included in and developed as Augustinian-Cartesian Index: Texts and Commentary (South Bend, IN, 2004).

10. De vita beata II, 7, BA 4, 232.

11. De Trinitate XV, 12, 21, 16, 478. See “Si dubitat, vivit” and the surrounding context, De Trinitate X, 10, 14, 16, 148. See also: “Imo nescire se dicunt, quod nescire non possunt. Neque enim quisquam sinitur nescire se vivere: quandoquidem si non vivit, non potest aliquid vel nescire; quoniam non solum scire, verum etiam nescire viventis est” (They [sc. certain philosophers] say they do not know what they cannot not know. For it is not permitted to anybody not to know that he lives—since if he did not live, he could not even not know something; that is, it is not only knowing but also not knowing that requires a living) (Enchiridion VII, 20, BA 9, 142).

12. De vita beata II, 7, BA 4, 232. And: “Vivit enim corpus meum de anima mea et vivit anima mea de te. Quomodo quaero vitam beatam? Quia non est mihi” (My body lives from my soul and my soul lives from you. How do I ask for the good life? For it is not mine) (Confessiones X, 20, 29, 14, 192).

13. One should refer, on this major point, to the powerful analysis of Michel Henry: “No livings are possible except within Life.” Accordingly, “the ego comes into itself only in the coming into self of absolute Life and in the process of its eternal self-generation.” Life therefore is not in possession of itself but receives itself as a gift: “this gift is that of Life—the extraordinary gift through which a person who by himself would be nothing (particularly not any self) instead, comes into himself in life, . . . thus as a living and as a Self” (Michel Henry, C’est moi la vérité: Pour une philosophie du christianisme [Paris, 1996], 139, 190, 178 [English trans., 109, 150, 141]).

14. To Colvius, 14 December 1640, AT III, 247, 1–248, 11 (English trans., 3:159). He concludes: “In itself it is such a simple and natural thing to infer that one exists from the fact that one is doubting that it could have occurred to any writer. But I am very glad to find myself in agreement with St. Augustine, if only to hush the little minds who have tried to find fault with the principle” (248, 1–7 [English trans., ibid.]). Elsewhere Descartes emphasizes that the banality of the principle (“hoc tritum: Cogito, ergo sum”) should not hide its power since “ex his et Dei existentiam et reliqua multa demontrarim” (VI Objectiones, AT VII, 551, 9–12). See also the remark that Saint Augustine “does not seem to use it in the same way as I do” (To Mersenne, 25 May 1630, AT I, 376, 20–21).

15. For example, AT VII, 51, 15–52, 9; and AT VII, 56, 26–57, 25. I tried to lay out this paradox in Questions cartésiennes II, Chapter 1, §6 (Paris, 1996 [English trans., 23ff.]).

16. Meditationes V and VI, respectively AT VII, 71, 7; and AT VII, 78, 25 (English trans., 49 and 54).

17. Preface to the French edition of Principles of Philosophy, AT IX-2, 10 (English trans., 1:184). Pascal, who obviously saw the difference, here takes Descartes’s side (as almost always in philosophical matters), insisting on the “difference . . . between writing a word by chance without making a longer and more extended reflection on it, and perceiving in this word an admirable series of conclusions, which prove the distinction between material and spiritual natures, and making of it a firm and sustained principle of a complete metaphysical system, as Descartes has pretended to do” (De l’art de persuader, in Œuvres complètes, ed. L. Lafuma [Paris, 1963], 358 [English trans., 414]). On this complex position assumed by Pascal, in a sense opposed to Saint Augustine and siding with Descartes, see V. Carraud, “Le véritable auteur du cogito: Traits d’anti-augustinisme,” in Pascal: Des connaissances naturelles à l’étude de l’homme II, 1 [Paris, 2007], 65ff.

18. “Le quinzième centenaire de la mort de saint Augustin (28 août 430),” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, no. 4 (1930); repr. in Dialogue avec les philosophes (Paris, 1966), 165.

19. Phänomenologie des religiosen Lebens, GA 60:298 [English trans., 226], insisting, of course, on the relation of the mens to the Trinity in De Trinitate XI.

20. De Trinitate XI, 3, 6, BA 16, 174. Varro’s formulation, “Cogitare a cogitando dictum: mens plura in unum cogit, unde eligere possit” (De lingua latina, ed. P. Flobert [Paris, 1985], 22), also finds an echo in Confessiones X, 11, 18: “cogitando quasi colligere” (14, 172). See Confessiones VII, 1, 1, 13, 576; De Trinitate X, 5, 7, 16, 134 and XIV, 6, 8, 16, 364.

21. De Trinitate X, 10, 16, 16, 150. That esse remains, at bottom, in the case of the mens, understood on the basis of life and not substantia obviously does not forbid it from intervening explicitly in the argument.

22. Descartes, Principia philosophia I, §7, AT VIII, 7 (English trans., 1:195).

23. Descartes, Meditatio II, AT VII, 25, 12 (English trans., 2:17). On the primacy of this formulation, which leaves out precisely the cogitatio, in what is always called, a bit hastily, “the cogito,” see my studies in Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes II, §16 (Paris 19811, 19912), 370ff.; and Questions cartésiennes II I, 1, §§3–4, 12ff. (English trans., 8ff.).

24. Descartes, Meditatio II, AT VII, 27, 30 (English trans., 2:18 [modified]). The complete text, “Novi me existere; quaero quis sim ego ille quem novi,” indicates that from here on out, it is a matter of determining the essence of the ego, after having secured its existence (and, in fact, the res cogitans and the explication of its modes will follow, 28, 20–23). We should also take note of the ille (as in 25, 14: “quisnam ego ille, qui jam necessario sum,” and in 49, 13–14: “ego ille, qui jam sum,” which should be translated “this I, that I am,” as Luynes once does in AT IX-1, 21, 41: “I seek what I am, me whom I recognized to be”) being used to designate the ego (instead of the more expected ego ipse, myself, as in VII, 51, 22ff.).

25. Leibniz, Systéme nouveau de la communication des substances, ed. Gerhardt, Philosophische Schriften IV, 473 and 482. On this point see my study “The Egological Deduction of Substance,” in Marion, On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism, chap. 3, §13.

26. The citation comes from Job 7:1, but the Vulgate reads “Militia est vita hominis super terram.” The addition of “sine interstitio” comes from Saint Augustine, confirming the interpretation that Heidegger gives to this verse: tentatio defines the existential condition of Dasein (see below, Chapter 4, §23).

27. And here it is reason itself that is put into question: “Ubi est ratio, qua talibus suggestionibus resistit vigilans et, si res ipsae ingerantur, inconcussus manet?” (Where then is reason found, by which it [ego . . . sum] resists such suggestions when it is awake such that it remains unshakable when the very same things come upon it) (Confessiones X, 30, 14, 214). For Descartes, ratio does not vary because it is but one with the univocal power of the cogitatio, such that the esse of the ego sum remains unchangeable and the same, whether I am dreaming or awake (see my essay “Does Thought Dream?” in Jean-Luc Marion, Cartesian Questions [Chicago, 1999]). For Augustine, who never imagines an ego reduced without remainder to the existing cogitatio but considers the entire humana vita, the ego (mens), all the while continuing to be even in dreams because it continues to think, undergoes, from the point of view of sexual temptation (in fact the facticity of a Stimmung), considerable factic variation. The cogitatio manifests, in its very permanence, not only that I am always, but especially that I am no longer myself, that I am altered in an other myself, who is no longer the ego.

28. On this distance of self from self see Heidegger’s analysis, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, §13b, GA 60:212ff. (English trans., 157ff.). This separation of ourselves from ourselves (our word, our speech), which distinguishes us from God, also makes possible, derivatively, the separation of communication with the other: “Inter animum autem nostrum et verba nostra, quibus eundem animum extendere conamur, plurimum distat. . . . Quid enim aliud molimur, nisi animum ipsum nostrum, si fieri potest, cognoscendum et percipiendum animo auditoris inferre, uti nobis quidem ipsi maneamus nec recedeamus a nobis, et tamen tale judicium quo fiat in altero nostra notitia proferamus?” (Between our mind and the words we speak, by which we try to reach out of our mind, resides a great distance. . . . For what else are we trying to do if not to transport, as far as possible, our own mind to the mind of the listener so as to make him know and perceive it in such a way that, all the while remaining in us and without our having to leave ourselves, we still issue a judgment so that the other knows something of us?) (De fide et symbolo III, 4, 1, BA 9, 26).

29. Confessiones VIII, 9, 21, BA 14, 50. As we will see in Chapter 4, the impossibility for the will to will itself constitutes the essential and founding result of the impossibility of converting oneself. From this ordeal stems the scission of myself, divided by its powerlessness to master what is most intimate to it, the will—whose shifting sands modern metaphysics, since at least Descartes (AT VII, 57, 15–58, 14), has stood firm about erecting into a final foundation.

30. See Confessiones IX, 7, 15, 16, 98.

31. Confessiones X, 33, 50, 14, 230. One finds elsewhere the criticism of those who sing loudly in church all the while going in the same spirit to the circus, the market, and live it up (Commentaries on the Psalms 30, 3, 10; and Commentaries on the Psalms 48, 2, 10, PL 36, respectively 240 and 563).

32. The translation should not only avoid becoming a platitude (rendering quaestio by problem, which some do) but take advantage of the difficulty in rendering factus sum so as to insist on the pure facticity of this situation.

33. It is regrettable that this linguistic commodity, which disseminates a fundamental misreading, finds disciples even among the best intentioned commentators. Cartesians of the seventeenth century left a large inheritance, from P. de Labriolle (in BA 5, 402), J.-F. Thonnard (BA 6, 517–18), and J. Agaësse (BA 16, 681) to M.-A. Vannier, “Les anticipations du cogito chez saint Augustin,” in San Augustín: Homenaje al Profesor Jaime García Álvarez en su 65 aniversario, ed. R. Lazcano (Madrid, 1957); G. B. Mathews, Thought’s Ego in Augustine and Descartes (Ithaca, 1992); or E. Bermon, Le cogito dans la pensée de saint Augustin (Paris, 2001).

34. De ordine I, 1, 3, BA 16, 128. See also “quasi possit mens in mente non esse?” (as if the mind could not be in the mind?) (X, 4, 16, 16, 132); “quid tam menti adest, quam ipsa mens?” (what could be more present to the mind than itself?) (X, 7, 10, 16, 140); “Quid enim tam in mente quam mens est?” (For what is as much in the mind as the mind itself?) (X, 8, 11, 16, 142).

35. If, in Levinas’s terms, “consciousness is a rupture of the anonymous vigilance of the there is” (Le temps et l’autre [19471; Paris, 19914], 31 [English trans., 51]), then there would be no Augustinian consciousness, at least in the sense of self-consciousness.

36. I say provisional, since this same passage from 1 Corinthians 2:11–12 will be interpreted, this time correctly, in Confessiones XIII, 31, 46, 14, 512, but in such a way as to reinforce the thesis of the unknowability of the human essence (see below, Chapter 6, §40, p. 259–260). The first level of interpretation is found again elsewhere in De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, 51, 4 (BA 10, 138) and especially in the Commentary on the Gospel of John 32, 5:

Animus enim cujusque proprius est spiritus ejus: de quo dicit Paulus apostolus “Quis enim scit hominum quae sunt hominis, nisi spiritus hominis, qui in ipso est?” Deinde adjunxit “Sic et quae Dei sunt, nemo scit, nisi spiritus Dei.” Nostra nemo scit, nisi spiritus noster. Non enim novi quid cogitas, aut tu quid cogito: ipsa sunt propria nostra, quae interius cogitamus; et cogitationum uniuscujusque hominis, ipsius spiritus testis est. “Sic et ea quae Dei sunt, nemo scit, nisi spiritus Dei.” Nos cum spiritu nostro, Deum cum suo: ita tamen ut Deus cum Spiritu suo sciat etiam quid agatur in nobis, nos autem sine ejus Spiritu scire non possumus quid agatur in Deo. Deus autem scit in nobis et quod ipsi nescimus in nobis.

The spirit of each is to him his own. In this regard the apostle Paul writes: “Who among men knows the things of man, except the spirit of man which is in him?” And adds: “Thus, nobody knows the things of God, except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11). What is ours, nobody knows it, except our own spirit. For I do not know what you are thinking, nor you what I am thinking. The things that we think within are proper to us, and the sole witness of the thoughts of each man is his own spirit. “Thus nobody knows the things of God, except the Spirit of God.” We know ours by our spirit, God his own by his Spirit—but in such a way that God knows also by his own Spirit what happens in us but we cannot know without his Spirit what happens in him. But God knows in ourselves what we ourselves do not know about it. (PL 35, 1644).

Only the final phrase retains something of the forced interpretation of Confessiones X, 5, 7, while the rest of the commentary respects the obviated reading reestablished in XIII, 31, 46.

37. Confessiones X, 14, 21 and X, 16, 25, BA 14, 178 and 184. See “ipsam memoriam vocantes animum” (we call mind the memory itself) (X, 14, 21, BA 14, 178). About memory J.-F. Lyotard says rightly that “memory is the mind itself” (La confession d’Augustin, 70 [English trans., 46–47]).

38. Confessiones X, 8, 12, 14, 162. See Heidegger: “the memoria is certainly nothing outside consciousness but is consciousness itself” (Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, GA 60:186 [English trans., 136]). And R. Teske: “In memory Augustine also encounters himself and recalls himself (“Augustine’s Philosophy of Memory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. E. Stump and N. Kretz, 151).

39. De Trinitate XIV, 6, 8 and 7, 9, BA 16, 364 and 366.

40. Aristotle, On Memory and Remembering 1.449b27. Saint Augustine sometimes admits this context: “Haec igitur memoria quaecumque de motibus animi tenet, qui adversus passiones corporis acti sunt, ϕαντασίαι vocantur; nec invenio quid eas latine malim vocare” (All that this memory retains of the movements of the mind that it accomplished counter to the passions of the body are called, in Greek, ϕαντασίαι, and I can find in Latin no better term) (De musica VI, 11, 32, BA 7, 428).

41. As the res cogitans comprises and permits all its modes. But for Descartes memoria is not directly part of the modi cogitandi; rigorously speaking, it is only part of it indirectly, by the intermediary of the imaginans quoque (AT VII, 28, 22), or imaginans etiam (34, 20), according to the Aristotelian model.

42. This reconstituted list (no doubt not exhaustive) could be compared to the list drawn up by Husserl of all that is included in givenness (Gegebenheit) inasmuch as givenness in thought (Die Idee der phänomenologie, Husserliana 2:74 [English trans., 59]).

43. De ordine II, 2, 7, BA 4, 372 and 370. As G. P. O’Daly showed (“Memory in Plotinus and Two Early Texts of St. Augustine,” Studia Patristica 15 (Berlin, 1984) against K. Winkler (“La théorie augustinienne de la mémoire à son point de départ,”) Augustinus Magister (Paris, 1954), 1:511–19, Saint Augustine here criticizes the position of Plotinus (Enneads 4.3.25), held in the dialogue by the character of Licentius.

44. De Trinitate XIV, 11, 14, BA 16, 386. Sometimes memoria even bears first of all on the present, more than on the past: “Primum ergo videndum est non nos semper rerum praetereuntium meminisse, sed plerumque manentium; . . . posse dici earum etiam rerum, quae nondum interierunt memoriam” (It must be seen before all else that we do not always remind ourselves of things that are past, but the majority of the time of those that remain; . . . one can speak of memory even of things that are not yet past) (Letter 7, 1, 1, PL 33, 68). By “those [things] that remain” he means, for example, Carthage (still standing despite it all), in opposition to Patrice (deceased); but one can even more understand every present moment of thought, presupposed by every other worldly being thought.

45. This was seen quite clearly by E. Gilson: “The Platonic recollection of the past gives way to that Augustinian memory of the present.” And “association with the past ceases to be an essential characteristic of the memory. Since the soul remembers everything present to it even though unaware of it, we can say that there is a memory of the present which is even far more vast than the memory of the past” (Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin, 100, 137 [English trans., 75, 102]). In fact, this excess of memory even intervenes, we saw, from before the question of the present, with the investigation into the thought of self. As for saying that Saint Augustine wants “to extend memory beyond the limits of psychology to metaphysics” (ibid., 139 [English trans., 103]), although the intention is admirable, the phrasing is unfortunate. The limits of psychology result directly from metaphysics, which sets them. And to extend memoria thus to the present (and to the future), without limiting it to the past, implies contesting the autonomy of the present by imposing on it an exterior and anterior condition of possibility.

46. De musica VI, 8, 21, BA 7, 404. See: “Ita ratio invenit tam localia quam temporalia spatia infinitam divisionem recipere; et idcirco nullius syllabae cum initio finis auditur. In audienda itaque vel brevissima syllaba, nisi memoria nos adjuvet, ut eo momento temporis, quo jam non initium, sed finis syllabae sonat, maneat ille motus in animo, qui factus est cum initium ipsum sonuit; nihil nos audisse possumus dicere” (Thus, reason has discovered that all the spaces, local as much as temporal, admit an infinitesimal division and therefore that one does not hear the end of any syllable with its beginning. That is, in hearing even the shortest of syllables, we could not say we heard anything if at the moment of time when there no longer sounded the beginning but the end of the syllable, memory did not help us to keep in mind the movement that was produced when the beginning sounded) (ibid., 7, 402).

47. Confessiones X, 16, 24, 14, 184 and 182. The same analysis continues in ibid., X, 20, 29, 194, which distinguishes between the forgetting of what one still retains in the mind, the forgetting that has forgotten what it lost but knows that it has lost something, and the forgetting that is totally forgetful, even of itself. A. Solignac finds the problems “exceedingly subtle” and reproaches Augustine for “contriving to materialize forgetting, to consider it as a thing” (BA 16, 563ff.). Let us note, however, that not only did Heidegger recognize that “the characteristic of forgetting is that it forgets itself. It is implicit in the ecstatic nature of forgetting that it not only forgets the forgotten but forgets the forgetting itself” (Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, §20, GA 24:411 [English trans., 290]), but also that it could be, in contrast, that here Saint Augustine extricates himself in advance from the dichotomy between material memory (involuntary) and intellectual memory (voluntary)—a dichotomy that in Descartes, for example (but also many others), makes the very concept of memory disappear by rendering unintelligible its facticity and its ambivalence (to remember and not to remember) and therefore the contingency of the mens.

48. P. Agaësse suggests “something of a preconscious awareness, or at least a non-reflective one” (BA 16, 606), but E. Gilson has no hesitations about the word: “the only modern psychological terms equivalent to Augustinian memoria are ‘unconscious’ or ‘subconscious’” (Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin, 194 [English trans., 299n110]). L. Cilleruelo attributes to memoria a content that is “oscuro, implicito, impreso, arcano, habitual, inconsciente” (“La ‘memoria Dei’ segun San Augustin,” Augustinus Magister, 1:5. See “¿Por qué ‘memoria Dei’?” Revue des études augustiniennes 10 (1964); and “Pro memoria Dei,” Revue des études augustiniennes 12 (1966). See the reservations of G. Madec in Revue des études augustiniennes 9 (1963); then Madec, Saint Augustin et la philosophie, 87ff.

49. Conscientia does not appear in the Meditationes, but it does in the IIIeme Responsiones: “Sunt deinde alii actus, quos vocamus cogitativos, ut intelligere, velle, imaginari, sentire, etc., qui omnes sub ratione communi cogitationis, sive perceptionis, sive conscientiae conveniunt” (AT VII, 176, 16–19, but especially conscius in the IIeme Responsiones, AT VII, 160, 8, 14, etc.). See also Principia philosophiae I, §9: “Cogitationis nomine, intelligo illa omnia, quae nobis consciis in nobis fiunt, quatenus eorum in nobis conscientia est” (AT VIII-1, 7) and originally in French: “as for the principle by which I claim to know that the idea I have of something non redditur a me inadaequata per abstractionem intellectus, I derive this principle purely from my own thought or awareness” (To Gibieuf, 19 January 1642, AT III, 474, 9–12 [English trans., 3:201 (modified)]). The traditional claim to attribute the invention of the French conscience to Coste’s translation of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2:28 (still maintained by E. Balibar, “L’invention européene de la conscience,” in John Locke: Identité et différence [Paris, 1998]), should be revisited (see the reformulation by G. Olivo in Descartes et l’essence de la vérité [Paris, 2005], 320n2, following G. Rodis-Lewis, Le problème de l’inconscient et le cartésianisme [Paris, 1950], 39; and G. Rodis-Lewis, L’œuvre de Descartes [Paris, 1970], 240).

50. According to the excellent phrasing of Lyotard, La confession d’Augustin, 53 (English trans., 33).

51. Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (The Hague, 1974), 49, 33, 48, 112, 13, 157 (English trans., 38, 26, 38, 88, 11 [modified], 122). This does not, by the way, contradict Heidegger: “This forgetting is not nothing, nor is it just a failure to remember; it is rather a ‘positive’ ecstatical mode of one’s having been” (Sein und Zeit, §68, 339 [English trans., 388]).

52. Heidegger, Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, §20, GA 24:411 (English trans., 290).

53. On this transcendence by the crossing of all things, including the self, see:

Cogita corpus: mortale est, terrenum est, fragile est, corruptibile est; abjice! Sed forte caro temporalis est? . . . Transi et ipsa [sc. corpora]! Et quomodo, inquies, transeo caelestia corpora, quando ambulo in terra? Non carne transis, sed mente. Abjice et ipsa! . . . Sine dubio melior est animus quo ista omnia cogitasti, quam ista omnia quae cogitasti. Animus ergo spiritus est, non corpus: transi et ipsum. . . . Magna ergo res est animus. Sed quomodo dico, est? Transi et ipsum; quia et ipse animus mutabilis est, quamvis melior sit omni corpore. . . . Transi ergo et animum tuum! Effunde super te animam tuam ut contingas Deum.

Think of the body: it is mortal, earthly, fragile; it is corruptible. Reject it! But perhaps it is a temporal flesh? . . . Cross through even these bodies! And how, you will ask, do I cross through the celestial bodies, I who walk on earth? Not with your flesh, but with the mind you cross through. Reject also these [celestial] bodies! No doubt, the mind by which you thought of all these things is better than all the things that you thought. The mind, that is, is spiritual and not the body: cross through also the body! . . . The mind is a great thing. But is, I ask, in what way? Cross through it too. Because even the mind remains mutable, even though it is better than any body whatsoever. . . . Cross through even your mind! Stretch out your soul over your head so as to touch God. (Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John XX, 12, PL 35, 1562–63)

54. De Trinitate XIII, 4, 7, BA 16, 282. The loss of the Hortensius has made it such that the authority on which Saint Augustine here rests is known to us only by its citation (become Fragment 28 in J. C. von Orelli, M. T. Ciceronis opera quae supersunt omnia [Zurich, 1861], 4:982). Of course, Cicero formulated this principle in other texts: Contra academicos I, 5, 21–26, 22 (Loeb ed., 19:430ff.); De natura deorum I, 20, 53; and Tusculanes V, 10, 28 (see M. Testard, Saint Augustin et Cicéron [Paris, 1958], esp. 1:19–39; and M.-P. Folet, “Cicero, Augustine and the Philosophical Roots of the Cassiciacum Dialogues,” Revue des études augustiniennes 45 [1999]: 51–77). Seneca had followed: “Vivere, Gallio frater, omnes beate volunt, sed ad pervidendum, quid sit quod beatam vitam efficiat, caligant” (De vita beata I). The theme obviously goes back also to Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.1.1094a1 (Πᾶσα τέχνη ϰαὶ πᾶσα μέθοδος, ὁμοίως δὲ πρᾶξίς τε ϰαί προαίρεσις ἀγαθοῦ τινός ἐϕίεται δoϰεῖ). See on this tradition R. Holte, Béatitude et sagesse: Saint Augustin et le problème de la fin de l’homme dans la philosophie ancienne (Paris, 1962), esp. chaps. 17 and 18. To such a point that philosophy itself is redefined as exclusively the search for blessedness: “Quando quidem nulla est homini causa philosophandi nisi ut beatus sit; quod autem beatum facit, ipse est finis boni; nulla est igitur causa philosophandi, nisi finis boni: quamobrem quae nullum boni finem secatur, nulla philosophiae secta dicenda est” (Man has in effect no other reason to philosophize, except to be happy. Now, what makes us happy is itself the end of the good. Consequently there is no other reason to philosophize except the end of the good, and this is why one should not call it a philosophical school if it does not seek the end of the good) (De civitate Dei XIX, 1, BA 37, 48).

55. Republic 6.509b.

56. De Trinitate XIII, 20, 25, 16, 338. In effect, the desire (impossible to realize) for immortality results, as desire for the means, from the desire (this one absolutely inevitable) for the end, beatitude—accordingly, the pain of failing at immortality attests again, indirectly and by default, the principial character of the quest for beatitude: “Cum ergo beati esse omnes homines velint, si vere volunt, profecto et esse immortales volunt: aliter enim beati esse non possent. Denique et de immortalitate interrogati, sicut et de beatitudine, omnes eam se velle respondent. Sed qualiscumque beatitudo, quae potius vocetur quam sit, in hac vita quaeritur, imo vero fingitur, dum immortalitas desperatur, sine qua beatitudo esse non potest” (Since all men want to be happy, if they truly want it, they want also to be immortal; for otherwise they could not be happy. Finally, if they are also asked about immortality, as [they are asked] about beatitude, they all will respond that they want it too. But they seek in this life some small version of beatitude, or rather forge an illusion of it, while they despair of attaining immortality, lacking which they could not have beatitude either) (De Trinitate XIII, 8, 11, 16, 294).

57. Sermon 306, 2 and 3, PL 38, 1401.

58. “Ita vellent beati esse: quod eos velle certissimum est” (that they want to be happy, as it is very certain that they want it) (Confessiones X, 20, 29, 14, 194). See: “si interrogari [homines] possent, utrum beati esse vellent, sine ulla dubitatione velle responderent” (if one could ask men if they want to be happy, they would respond without any doubt that they do want it) (ibid., 196). And: “Quid est hoc? Si quaeratur a duobus, utrum militare velint, fieri possit, ut alter eorum velle se, alter nolle respondeat; si autem quaeretur, utrum esse beati velint, uterque se statim sine ulla dubitatione dicat optare” (How does it happen that if you ask two men whether or not they want to serve in the army, it can happen that one responds he wants to while the other does not want to; but if you ask them if they want to be happy, both will say without any doubt that they do wish for it) (ibid., X, 21, 31, 14, 198).

59. On this Cartesian term, as rare as it is famous, see “minimum quid invenero quod certum sit et inconcussum” and “ut ita tandem praecise remaneat illud tantum quod certum sit et inconcussum” (AT VII, 24, 12 and 25, 23). It appears already in De libero arbitrio II, 2, 5: “Deum esse. Etiam hoc non contemplando, sed credendo inconcussum teneo” (God is. Even without contemplating this, it is something that I hold by faith as unshakable) (BA 6, 214). In contrast, what is lacking in the ordeal of temptation is precisely the inconcussus in me (see Confessiones X, 30, 41, 14, 214).

60. Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John XXIII, 5, PL 35, 1585. See: “Ut enim homo se diligere nosset, constitutus est ei finis, quo referret omnia quae ageret, ut beatus esset; non enim qui se diligit aliud vult esse quam beatus. Hic autem finis est adhaerere Deo” (So that man might know how to love himself, an end has been established for him to which is referred all that he would do to be happy [for whoever loves himself wants nothing other than to be happy]. This end is to cleave to God) (De civitate Dei X, 3, 34, 436).

61. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.1.980a1. One could, by contrast, say that the Nicomachean Ethics, in postulating that Πᾶσα τέχνη ϰαί πᾶσα μέθοδος, ὁμοίως δὲ πρᾶξίς τε ϰαί προαίρεσις ἀξαθοῦ τινός ἐϕίεται δoϰεῖ (Every art, every project, as well as every action and every intention, seems to desire some good [1.1.1094a1]), already presupposed what in fact constitutes the difficulty: if these postures intend a good and even desire it, how are the theoretic and desire articulated together in them? Does desire bear on knowing or on what knowing makes known to us? And if it bears on both, does it do so in the same sense?

62. Pascal, Pensées, §148 (Œuvres complètes, 519 [English trans., 74]).

63. Sermon 34, 2, PL 38, 210.

64. De Genesi ad litteram VIII, 26, 48, BA 49, 82. We thus encounter again what this forced commentary of 1 Corinthians 2:11 wanted to demonstrate: “Plus noverat artifex quid esset in opere suo, quam ipsum opus quid esset in semetipso. Creator hominis noverat quid esset in homine, quod ipse creatus homo non noverat. . . . Homo ergo nesciebat quid esset in se, sed Creator hominis noverat quid esset in homine” (The artist knew what was found in his work better than this work knew what was found in it. The creator of man knew what was found in man, something man himself did not know. . . . And therefore man did not know what was in him, but the creator of man knew what was in man) (Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John X, 2, PL 35, 1475).

65. See: “Lux non est absens, sed vos absentes estis a luce. Caecus in sole prae-sentem habet solum, sed absens est ipse soli” (It is not the light that is absent but you who have absented yourselves from the light. In the presence of the sun the blind man truly does have the sun, but it is he who has absented himself from the sun) (Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John III, 5, PL 35, 1398). The unbelievers are sometimes defined by their lateness, by being outdated, by their conservatism: “ecce pleni sunt vetustatis, qui nobis dicunt” (here they are, full of their decrepitude, which they speak to us) (Confessiones XI, 10, 12, 14, 290). Courcelle has insisted on this lateness with regard to God (see Recherches sur les “Confessiones” de saint Augustin, 441ff.).

66. “Tibi laus, tibi gloria, fons misericordiarum! Ego fiebam miserior et tu propinquior. Aderat jam jamque dextera tua” (Praise to you, to your glory, source of mercies! Me, I became more unhappy, but you, more close. Already, already, it was there, your right hand) (Confessiones VI, 16, 26, 13, 570).

67. Rimbaud, Lettre à Izambard, 13 May 1871, in Œuvres complètes, ed. A. Adam (Paris, 1972), 249 (English trans., 371 [modified]); and Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, §63, 311, 11 (English trans., 359 [modified]) (referring to “Das Dasein ist zwar on-tisch nicht nur nahe oder gar das nächste—wir sind es sogar selbst. Trotzdem oder gerade deshalb ist es ontologisch des Fernste” (Ontically, of course, Das-ein is not only close to us—even that which is closest: we are it, each of us, we are ourselves. In spite of this, or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is farthest) (§5, 15, 25–27 [English trans., 36]). Chance is not at play, but an obvious necessity in the fact that it is in order to comment on “Factus sum mihi terra difficultatis” that Heidegger specifies “Das ontische Nächste und Be-kannste ist das ontologische Fernste” (That which is ontically closest and well-known is ontologically the farthest) (ibid., §9, pp. 43, 37; see also §5, 15, 25–27; and Wegmarken, GA 9:333, 343, 344). The entire question resides in knowing if the closest should first be called ontic and if (even in this case) its enigmatic anonymity can be overcome ontologically or if the aporia of the self does not call for an other instance besides the ontological difference, however one understands it. J. J. O’Donnell refers to, besides Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, Preface, §1 (see O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 3:180). Kant, Hegel, Freud, and some others are likewise appropriate, for what is important is not the distance but its horizon.

68. De vera religione XXXIX, 72, BA 8, 130, cited at the very end of the Cartesianische Meditationen, §64, Husserliana 1:183. See another version of the same argument: “Quare vis loqui, audire non vis? Semper foras exis, intro redire detractas. Qui enim te docet intus est; quando tu doces, tanquam foras exis ad eos qui foris sunt. Ab interiore enim audimus veritatem et ad eos qui foris a nostro corde sunt, loquimur. . . . Non ergo amemus magis exteriora, sed interiora: de interioribus gaudeamus; in exterioribus autem necessitatem habemus, non voluntatem” (Why do you want to speak and not to listen? You always go out, and chafe at returning inside. Now he who teaches you is found inside. When it is you who are teaching, you go so to speak outside toward those who are there. . . . Let us not love the exterior but rather the interior: let us rejoice and enjoy the interior; let us place in the outside only what necessity and not our will imposes on us) (Commentaries on the Psalms 139, 15, PL 37, 1560).

69. De vera religione XXXIX, 72, BA 8, 130. The entire text should be at issue, from which Husserl abstracts this short citation. In fact, Saint Augustine here maintains what is his constant doctrine: “Ille autem, qui consulitur, docet, qui in interiore homine habitare dictus est Christus, i.e. incommutabilis Dei virtus atque sempiterna Sapientia” (He whom we consult teaches, he who is said to dwell in the inner man, Christ, that is to say the immutable strength of God and his eternal wisdom) (De Magistro XI, 38, BA 6, 102).

CHAPTER 3

1. De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum I, 25, 47, BA 1, 206ff. Or: “Haec est autem vera dilectio, ut inhaerentes veritati juste vivemus” (For this is true love, to live in justice, being attached to the truth) (De Trinitate VIII, 7, 10, 16, 58). Or else: “Quisquis igitur ad summum modum per veritatem venerit, beatus est. Hoc est animo Deum habere, id est Deo frui” (Whoever came by way of the truth to the highest mode is happy. This, for the soul, is to have God, to enjoy God) (De vita beata IV, 35, 4, 282).

2. Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, GA 60:201 (English trans., 148).

3. Ibid., 192–94 (English trans., 141–42 [modified]). The abbreviated formulation is indeed found in the manuscript: “Griechisch . . . ‘katholisch.’” It is necessary, of course, to respect the ambiguity: Augustine remains too Greek, in the sense that he keeps a universal position (ϰαθόλου) regarding the difference in the phenomenalizations, but yields to it all the more when, following the uninterrogated “catholic” theology, he maintains, by recourse to a “universal extension,” the equivalence of the happy life and God.

4. “Tradition—nicht, bzw. nicht ganz destruiert!” (GA 60:193 [English trans., 141 (modified)]). The reproach is constant: Saint Augustine destroys the “Greek,” objectifying, metaphysical approach but not entirely; he remains “still Greek” (257 [English trans., 193]), “not radically existential, but Greek” (247 [English trans., 185 (modified)]). The ambivalence of this approach, which at once plays Saint Augustine against the Greeks and condemns him for not completing their “destruction,” will continue in Sein und Zeit. It has not yet been studied with the attention it deserves.

5. De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum I, 25, 47, BA 1, 206ff.

6. See below, Chapter 7.

7. De Trinitate XIII, 4, 7, 16, 284.

8. Ibid., IX, 12, 18, 16, 108. Should we hear an echo of Aristotle: “The act of the sensible and that of the sensing are one and the same, αὐτὴ μέν ἐστι ϰαὶ μία” (On the Soul 3.2.425b25–26; see also 3.5.430a20 and 3.7.431a1)?

9. Confessiones X, 20, 29, 14, 194. See: “Sed quaero utrum in memoria sit beata vita. Neque enim amaremus eam, nisi nossemus. . . . Quod non fieret, nisi res ipsa, cujus hoc nomen est, eorum memoria tenetur” (I am asking if the happy life is found in memory. For we would not love it if we did not know it. . . . This would not occur if our memory did not contain the thing itself, for which it is the name) (ibid., 194–96).

10. Confessiones X, 23, 34, 14, 202. See also: “Accusat Deus peccata tua; si et tu accusas, conjugeris Deo. Quasi duae res sunt, homo et peccator. Quod audis homo, Deus fecit; quod audis peccator, ipse homo fecit. Oportet ut oderis in te opus tuum, et ames in te opus Dei. . . . Sit ante te quod non vis esse ante Deum. Si autem post te feceris peccatum tuum, retorquet illud tibi Deus ante oculos tuos; et tunc retorquet, quando jam paenitentiae fructus nullus erit” (God accuses your sins, and if you too accuse them, you will be united with God. It is as if there were two things [in you]: the man and the sinner. What you understand by a man is what God did; what you mean by sinner is what the man himself did. You should hate your own work and love in yourself that of God. . . . Put before yourself what you would not like to see put before God. For if you put your sin behind you, God will thrust it back before your eyes; and he will thrust it back before your eyes at a moment when repentance will no longer bear fruit) (Commentary on the Gospel of John XII, 13, PL 35, 1491).

11. Commentary on the Gospel of John XXXV, 4, PL 35, 1659.

12. Heidegger, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, §10, GA 60:201 (English trans., 148 [modified]).

13. Cicero had already described this repulsion, not of course with regard to truth but with regard to the birth of philosophy among the Latins: one must work at it but knowing full well that it will attack and reject: “eamque non adjuvemus, nosque ipsos redargui refellique patiamur.” Those will not bear it well, who are committed, by tradition, habit, or interest, to keeping preconceived opinions, that they themselves cannot demonstrate (“certis quibusdam destinatisque sententiis quasi addicti et consecrati sunt eaque necessitate constricti, ut, etiam quae non probare soleant, coguntur constantiae causa defendere”). By contrast, those who seek truth, or at least stick to what is close to it, will accept, without fighting back, being refuted and, without acrimony, finding themselves refuted by it (“nos, qui sequimur probabilia . . . et refellere sine pertinacia et refelli sine iracundia parati sumus”) (Tusculanes II, 1, 5, ed. J. E. King [Cambridge, MA, 19452], 150–52). This use is found in the passage: “Nam tu, Deus verax, improbas eos et redarguis atque convincit eos” (For it is you yourself, veracious God, who reproves them, impugns them and convinces them of error [the Manicheans]) (Confessiones VIII, 10, 24, 14, 56).

14. Or, by contrast, of the truth that gives birth to love: “Concordiam pariat ipsa veritas” (Let the truth itself give birth to concord) (Confessiones XII, 30, 41, 14, 416).

15. Terence, Andria 1.1.68, a verse cited first in Confessiones X, 23, 34, 14, 202. J. J. O’Donnell (Augustine: Confessions, vol. 3, Commentary on Books 8–13, 194) refers to other occurrences in the form of a proverb in A. Otto, Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig, 19891, Hildesheim 19622), s.v. veritas, 2 (Ausonius, Lactantius, Rufinus, etc.).

16. Cicero, De amicitia 24.89, ed. W. Falconer (Cambridge, MA, 19231, 199612), 196.

17. Lemaitre de Sacy’s translation does not hesitate to say that “the wounds left by one who loves are worth more than the deceptive kisses of one who hates.” See also Galatians 4:16: “Ergo inimicus vobis factus sum, verum dicens vobis” (Have I then become your enemy in speaking the truth to you?) John 8:40 and Galatians 4:16 are combined in the second citation made by the very same text of Confessiones X, 23, 34, 14, 202.

18. Thus the preface to De civitate Dei cites in the same trajectory and as equivalents Proverbs 3:34 (taken up for that matter by 1 Peter 5:6 and John 4:6) and the Aeneid 6.853: “Rex enim et conditor civitatis hujus, de qua loqui instituimus, in scriptura populi sui sententiam divinae legis aperuit, qua dictum est ‘Deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam.’ Hoc vero, quod Dei est, superbae quoque animae spiritus inflatus adfectat amatque sibi in laudibus dici: ‘Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos’” (The king and founder of this city, about which we have decided to speak, has disclosed in the scriptures of his people the sentence of the divine law in which it is said that “God resists the proud, but shows grace to the humble.” But, this which is God’s prerogative has been claimed as its own by the spirit that inflates the proud soul of man and loves to hear it said in its own praise, “it spares the submissive and subdues the proud”) (De civitate Dei, Praefatio, 33, 192). The proud soul who wants to appropriate the law of God (favor those who submit, knock down the proud) is here Rome: “Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento / (Hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque imponere morem, / parcere subjectis et debellare superbos” (Aeneid 6.851–53).

19. Commentary on the Gospel of John XXX, 2, PL 35, 1633. Lippitudo, “inflammation of the eyes,” can be translated by ophthalmie in French (see F. Gaffiot, Dictionnaire, s.v. “lippitudo,” p. 914) or ophthalmia in English (see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ophthalmia).

20. This is confirmed by the Commentary on the Gospel of John XVIII, 11, PL 35, 1542–43. When we want to turn ourselves toward the light, “rursus quasi reflectimur pondere nostro ad ista consueta, tales sumus quales lippientes, cum producuntur ad videndum lumen, si forte antea visum omnino non habebant, et incipiunt eumdem visum per diligentiam medicorum utcumque reparare” (we are again reflected [bent back] by our own weight toward our habits; we are all like the opthalmiacs, when they are led to see the light, if they saw absolutely nothing beforehand, and begin to reestablish their vision by the care of doctors). The doctor, therefore, cares for them and tries to lead them once again to see the light. But “cum viderint, fulgore ipso reverberantur quodammodo, et respondent medico demonstranti: ‘Jam jam vidi, sed videre non possum.’ Quid ergo facit medicus? Revocat ad solita et addit collyrum” (once they saw, they were reverberated in some way by the very flash [of light] and, to the doctor who shows them the direction, they respond: “I just saw this very moment, but I cannot see.” What does the doctor do? He sends them back to their old habits and gives them some eyedrops). And the same goes for the faithful: “erexistis cor vestrum ad videndum Verbum, et ipsius luce reverberati ad solita recedistis, rogate medicum ut adhibeat collyria” (you set up your hearts to see the Word, and struck backwards by his very light, you were sent back to your habits; ask a doctor, now, to apply eye drops). The question in its entirety consists in knowing how to make good use of the pain, which appears when we want to uproot ourselves from custom. For one must suffer to see.

21. Soliloquia I, 13, 23, BA 5, 72, which continues: “Quibus periculosum est, quamvis jam talibus ut sani recte dici possint, velle ostendere quod adhuc videre non valent. Ergo isti exercendi sunt prius, et eorum amor utiliter differendus atque nutriendus est” (To these, whom one can indeed say to be healthy, it is still dangerous to want to show what they cannot bear. They must therefore be trained first, and their love, which must be nourished, should usefully be delayed).

22. De quantitate animae 33, 75, 5, 382. See also: “In ista Trinitate quo missi sunt apostolic, videamus quod videmus, et quod mirum est quia illi non vident; non enim vere non vident, sed ad id quod facies eorum ferit, oculos claudant. . . . Ergo, dilectissimi, videamus quod videre illi nolunt, non quod videant, sed quod se videre doleant, quasi clausum sit contra illos” (In this Trinity by which the apostles were sent, we see what we see and how astonishing is it that they do not see; not that they do not really see, but that they close their eyes to what smacks them in the face. . . . Therefore, beloved, let us see what they do not want to see, not because they do not see it but because what causes them pain to see closes up, as it were, before them) (Commentary on the Gospel of John VI, 6, then 9, PL 35, 1427 and 1429). The importance of this text resides in the fact that the impossibility of vision does not result from a fault or a weakness but from a decision about God himself.

23. De vita beata III, 19 and 21, 4, 256, 258. This ambivalence in the access to God according to the dispositions of man is based on 1 Corinthians 11:28–29. It is confirmed by “quam [sc. Sapientiam] quidem omnis rationalis anima consulit; sed tantum cuique panditur, quantum capere propter propriam, sive malam sive bonam voluntatem potest” (Wisdom is consulted by every rational soul, but it opens to each of them only insofar as each can receive it, according to its own will, be it good or ill) (De Magistro XI, 38, 6, 102).

24. Commentary on the First Epistle of John VI, 3, PL 35, 2021. See another development of the same argument: “Multi enim delixerunt peccata sua, multi confessi sunt peccata sua; quia qui confitetur peccata sua et accusat peccata sua, jam cum Deo facit. Accusat Deus peccata tua; si et tu accusas, conjungeris Deo. . . . Oportet ut oderis in te opus tuum, et ames in te opus Dei. Cum autem coeperit tibi displicere quod fecisti, incipiunt bona opera tua, quia accusas mala opera tua. Initium bonorum operum, confessio operum malorum. Facis veritatem et venis ad lucem. . . . Quia et hoc ipsum quod tibi displicuit peccatum tuum, non tibi displaceret nisi Deus tibi luceret et ejus veritatem tibi ostenderet” (Many are those who loved their sins, many those who confessed their sins; because he who confesses his sins and so to speak accuses them, he does it with God. God accuses your sins; if you too accuse them, you are joined with God. . . . It behooves you, then, to hate in yourself your own doing and to love in yourself God’s work. When what you have done will have begun to displease you, your good works will begin because you accuse your bad works. The beginning of good works is the confession of the bad. Do the truth and you will come to the light. . . . For the very fact that your sin was displeasing to you would not have been displeasing to you had God not illuminated you and had his truth not shown itself to you) (Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John XII, 13, PL 35, 1491).

25. Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John XC, 3, PL 35, 1860.

26. Confessiones VI, 11, 20, 15, 560. See: “Quid ergo adhuc suspendor infelix, et cruciatu mirabili differor? Jam certe ostendi mihi nihil aliud me amare, siquidem quod non propter amatur, non amatur. Ego autem solam propter se amo sapientiam” (Why then did I still stay in suspense and will I defer with an astonishing sorrow? It is now surely shown to me that what one does not love for itself, one simply does not love. And as for me, what I love for itself is only wisdom) (Soliloquia I, 13, 22, BA 5, 70).

27. See: “te ipso, non in te ipso frui debes, sed in eo qui fecit te” (you should enjoy yourself, not however in yourself, but in he who made you) (De Trinitate IX, 8, 13, 16, 98).

28. De Trinitate XII, 11, 16, 14, 240.

29. De civitate Dei XIV, 4, 1, 35, 362. See also: “Haec igitur trinitas mentis non propterea Dei est imago, quia sui meminit mens, et intelligit ac diligit se: sed quia potest etiam meminisse et intelligere et amare a quo facta est” (Therefore the trinity of the mind is not an image of God because it remembers itself, understands itself, and loves itself, but because it can also remember, understand, and love he who made it) (De Trinitate XIV, 12, 15, 16, 386). The character of image does not stem from the pure and simple trinitarian structure of mental operations but from their common orientation toward him from whom they bear, by creation, the likeness.

30. Confessiones X, 2, 2, 14, 142. See another exchange of pronouns: “Sed unaquaeque anima tanto est pietate purgatior, quanto privato suo minus delectata, legem universalitatis intuetur, eique devote ac libenter obtemperat. Est enim lex universalitatis divina sapientia. Quanto autem amplius privato suo gaudet et neglecto Deo, qui omnibus animis utiliter et salubriter praesidet, ipsa sibi vel aliis, quibus potuerit, vult esse pro Deo, suam potius in se vel in alios, quam illius [Deus] in omnes diligens potestatem, tanto est sordidior, tantoque magis poenaliter divinis legibus, tanquam publici servire cogitur” (Now every soul is of a piety all the more pure as, taking pleasure less in what is proper to it, it keeps before its eyes the law of universality and submits to it willingly and with devotion. The law of universality is the wisdom of God. But the more it enjoys what is proper to it and, neglecting God, who presides over all souls, seeing to their interest and health, wants to be taken for God, either in its own eyes, or in the eyes of others, if such a thing can be, preferring more its own power to that of God who loves them all, the more it degrades itself and feels weighing on it, as a punishment, the constraint of the divine laws which protect that interest of all) (De diversis quaestiones LXXXIII, 79, 1, 10, 344).

31. Commentary on the Gospel of John II, 4, PL 35, 1390.

32. De Trinitate X, 8, 11, 16, 142.

33. Confessiones X, 23, 34, 14, 202.

34. Ibid., III, 6, 10, 13, 378. Or else: “non solum ignorata, sed falsa tam vesana superbiae vanitate diceret [sc. Faustus]” (V, 5, 8, 13, 474).

35. See “sibi tribuendo quae tuae sunt, ac per hic student perversissima caecitate etiam tibi tribuere quae sua sunt” (ibid., V, 3, 6, 13, 470).

36. Ibid., IV, 16, 28, 13, 454.

37. Ibid., VII, 9, 13, 13, 608.

38. Ibid., XII, 25, 34, 14, 398. See the same question in XII, 14, 17 and the response that follows in XII, 15, 18, 14, 366ff.

39. Metaphysics 1.1.980a1.

40. De Trinitate VIII, 7, 10, 6, 284; and Pensées, §148, Œuvres complètes, 519 (English trans., 74).

41. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 1; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 82, Ak. A III, 79 (English trans., 97); and Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, VI, §39 (Tübingen, 19212), 121 (English trans., 263 [modified]).

42. Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii VIII, AT X, 396, 3–4 (English trans., 1:30); and Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 350 (“Wahrheit und Schein sind nicht im Gegenstande, sofern er augeschaut wird, sondern nur im Urteil über denselben, sofern er gedacht wird,” Ak. A III, 234) (English trans., 297).

43. Sein und Zeit, §44, 219 (English trans., 262).

44. Ibid., §44, 218 (English trans., 261 [modified]).

45. Ibid., §7, 28 (English trans., 51). And therefore phenomenology has no other goal and definition than “to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself” (Das was sich zeigt, so wie es sich von ihm selbst her zeigt, von ihm selbst her sehen lassen) (§7, 34 [English trans., 58]).

46. “Sein—nicht Seiendes—‘gibt es’ nur, sofern Wahrheit ist. Und sie sit, nur sofern und solange Dasein ist” (Sein und Zeit, §44, 230 [English trans., 272 (modified)]).

47. “Wahrsein als entdeckend-sein ist eine Seinsweise des Daseins” (Sein und Zeit, §44, 220 [English trans., 263]). See also: “Die Erschlossenheit ist eine we-senhafte Seinsart des Daseins. Wahrheit ‘gibt es’ nur, sofern und solange Dasein ist. Seiendes ist nur dann entdeckt und nur solange erschlossen, als überhaupt Dasein ist” (Disclosedness is a kind of Being which is essential to Dasein. “It gives” truth only insofar as Dasein is and so long as Dasein is. Beings are uncovered only when Dasein is; and only as long as Dasein is, are they disclosed) (ibid., 226 [English trans., 269 (modified)]). It should, however, be checked if and how far, when Heidegger developed these analyses in “On the Essence of Truth” (a seminar given in 1930), he maintained still more firmly this quasi-transcendental function or if he did not try to overcome it: “existent freedom as essence of truth is not man’s property; rather man ex-ists as the property of this freedom and only in this way founds a history” (Wegmarken, GA 9:191 [English trans. in Basic Writings, 129 (modified)]).

48. See some suggestions in De surcroît: Etudes sur les phénomènes saturés (Paris, 2001), chap. 2, §5, and chap. 3, §1 (In Excess: Studies in Saturated Phenomena [New York, 2004]).

49. Pensées, in Œuvres complètes, §739, 596 (English trans., 256 [modified]).

50. Ibid., §377, 546. (English trans., 137).

51. Ibid., §979, 469 (English trans., 350).

52. Ibid., §978, 636ff. (English trans., 348–49). Cf. “There is a lot of difference between not being for Christ and saying so, and not being for Christ and pretending to be. The former can perform miracles, but not the latter, for it is clear in the case of the former that they are against the truth but not in that of the others, and so the miracles are clearer” (ibid., §843, 610 [English trans., 290]).

53. See my translation of Confessiones X, 23, 34, above, §17, p. 109.

54. Pensées, §962, 632 (English trans., 340).

55. Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John XII, 13, PL 35, 1491.

56. Pensées, §926, 622 (English trans., 318 [modified]).

57. Sein und Zeit, §29: “dass das Dasein je schon immer bestimmt ist” (134, 19–20 [English trans., 173 (modified)]), and 139n1 (English trans., 492nv).

58. See Pascal, De l’art de persuader, in Œuvres complètes, 355 (English trans., 406). (I commented on this thesis in On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism, §25. Heidegger refers, though vaguely, to “Vgl. Pensées, a.a.” In fact, as indicated by a note in §1, p. 4 (English trans., 489), he uses the Brunschvicg edition, Pensées et Opuscules (Paris, 18971, 19126), 169, without mentioning the real title of the passage. These enigmatic suggestions have to be completed by a previous remark: “Scheler first made it clear, especially in the essay ‘Liebe und Erkenntnis,’ that intentional relations are quite diverse, and that even, for example, love and hatred ground knowing. Here Scheler picks up a theme of Pascal and Augustine” (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik, §9, GA 26:169 [English trans., 134]).

59. Contra Faustum XXXII, 18, PL 42, 507. The conclusion must also be read: “Probamus etiam ipsum [sc. Spiritum Sanctum] inducere in omnem veritatem, quia non intratur in veritatem, nisi per charitatem: ‘Charitas autem Dei diffusa est, ait apostolus, in cordibus nostris per Spiritum Sanctum qui datus est nobis’ (Romans 5:5).”

60. He goes on: “What Augustine identifies as love and hate and only in certain contexts specifies as Dasein’s truly cognitive mode of being we shall later have to take as an original phenomenon of Dasein” (Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, §20, GA 20:222 [English trans., 164–65]). We should note, too, that as early as 1921, Heidegger understood the “sero te amavi [pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova]” of Confessiones X, 27, 38, 14, 208 as a “level of factical life” in general (Phänomenologie des religiosen Lebens, §11, 204 [English trans., 150]).

61. De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum I, 7, 11, BA 1, 152. Consuetudo no doubt alludes to probable knowledge had from the opinion of the most wise, according to Aristotle’s precept (Topics 1.1.100b22–25).

62. Pensées, §176, 523 (English trans., 84).

63. Posthumous Fragments, 7 [24] and 9 [91], in Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Colli-Montinari, 8:1.311, and 8:2.49.

64. Ibid., 16 [32], 8:3.288. On these points see my analysis in Jean-Luc Marion, The Idol and Distance (New York, 2001), §§5–6.

65. Vermischte Bemerkungen, in Werkausgabe (Frankfurt, 1984), 8:504 (English trans., 39 [modified]).

66. Philosophische Untersuchungen, II, Werkausgaben, 1:566 (English trans., 222).

67. Autrement qu’être, 184 (English trans., 145). In “Vérité du dévoilement et vérité du témoignage,” an early version of Chapter 7 of Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence, we already find an anticipation of this very page: “This witnessing belongs to the very glory of the Infinite. . . . The glory of the infinite is the subject’s exit out from the dark corners of the as-for-myself, which—like the bushes in Paradise where Adam hid after his sin, hearing the voice of God . . . offered a way out in the assignation from the other” (see E. Castelli, ed., Le témoignage [Paris, 1972], 107).

68. Autrement qu’être, 183 (English trans., 143).

69. The Oxford Authors: Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. C. Phillips (Oxford, 1986), 68.

70. Confessiones II, 6, 13, 13, 352; and IV, 15, 27, 13, 454. H. U. von Balthasar showed definitively the decisive function played by pulchritudo in Augustinian theology (Herrlichkeit, 2, Fächer der Style [Einsiedeln, 1962], chap. 3 [English trans., The Glory of the Lord, vol. 2]. I am entirely in his debt. Since then, see C. Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of St. Augustine (Oxford, 1992); and J. Kreuzer, Pulchritudo. Vom Erkennen Gottes bei Augustin. Bemerkungen zu den Büchern IX, X, and XI, der Confessione (Munich, 1995).

71. “pleni sunt vetustatis suae” (Confessiones XI, 10, 12, 14, 290).

72. Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John III, 5, PL 35, 1398.

73. Commentaries on the Psalms 95, 7, PL 37, 1232.

74. It should be noted that hearing comes up as the first of the senses, in opposition to the platitudes often heard about the primacy (obviously Greek and metaphysical) of sight. This primacy is verified with the voice, at first anonymous, that said “tolle, lege!” (Confessiones VIII, 12, 29, 14, 66; commented on in Chapter 1, §6) and thereby shattered his deafness for the first time. Such a voice does not only open access to the joy of truth, therefore to the vita beata; it already fully accomplishes it: “Ecce vox tua gaudium meum, vox tua super affluentiam voluptatum” (Behold, your voice is my joy, your voice [that rings out] higher than the inrushing of pleasures) (XI, 2, 3, 274).

75. Another text confirms this seduction game: “Nunc autem quod gemitus meus testis est displicere me mihi, tu refulges et places et amaris et desideraris, ut erubescam de me et abjiciam me atque eligam te et nec tibi nec mihi placeam nisi de te” (But now that my moaning testifies that I am displeased with myself, you, you shine out, you are pleasing, you are loved, you are desired, to such a point that I am embarrassed about myself and choose you and am never pleasing, either to you or to myself, except on account of you) (Confessiones X, 22, 14, 142).

76. Soliloquia I, 13, 22, BA 5, 70. J. J. O’Donnell, who makes the comparison, finds the seduction in the second part of Confessiones X, 27, 38 “erotic, but much less explicitly [so]” than the possession described in the Soliloquies (see O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 3:197). But isn’t seduction always more erotic than possession? See also the surprising qualification of the “lumen honestatis et gratis amplectendae pulchritudinis” (the light of honesty and of a beauty that is embraced without paying for it) (Confessiones VI, 16, 26, 13, 572), that the French translation of BA waters down passably by rendering it as “that must be embraced with a disinterested goal.” In fact, it truly is about embracing without even paying, in a bold extension of the eschatological feast in which one will eat and drink without having to pay anything.

77. Soliloquia I, 7, 14, BA 5, 52.

78. Confessiones IV, 13, 20, 13, 442. On De pulchro et apto see Testard, Saint Augustin et Cicéron, 49–66.

79. De ordine I, 8, 21, BA 4, 336.

80. Contra academicos II, 3, 7, BA 13, 70.

81. Enchiridion III, 10, 9, 118.

82. De libero arbitrio II, 17, 45, 6, 302; and Confessiones II, 6, 12, 13, 350. It is in this context, obviously, that we must understand how beautiful things achieve beauty itself: “pulchra trajecta per animas in manus artifciosas ab illa pulchritudine veniunt, quae super animas est, cui suspirat anima mea die ac noctes” (for the beautiful things that pass through souls in order to arrive in artful hands come from this very beauty, which surpasses the souls and toward which my soul pants “day and night” [Psalm 1:2]) (Confessiones X, 34, 53, 14, 236).

83. Enchiridion I, 5, 9, 108.

84. Commentary on the First Epistle of John IX, 9, PL 35, 2051.

CHAPTER 4

1. Saint Augustine’s translation says temptatio following the Septuagint πειρατήριόν, while the Vulgate is content with “Militia est vita hominis super terram.” Saint Augustine’s commentary clearly validates this sense: “Temptationem vero dicit tanquam stadium certaminis, ubi vincit homo vel vincitur” (For it says temptation for the stage of combat when man is victor or vanquished) (Annotations to Job VII, 1, PL 34, 832). Following the Vulgate, the question is not one of knowing if Job’s innocent petition is just but of understanding that it rests on the distinction between sin and temptation. For Job it is all about resisting the temptation to accuse God, as one bears a conscription, a service in the army, which is identified with one’s entire life. One can clarify this debate by taking into account D. Marion, L’homme combatif (Paris, 1980).

2. Commentaries on the Psalms 122, 7, PL 37, 1635. J. J. O’Donnell (Augustine: Confessions, vol. 2, Commentary on Books 1–7, 200) cites and discusses other texts in this sense but without seeing the implication of this addition.

3. Commentaries on the Psalms 55, 2, PL 36, 647. See “Qui enim non tentantur, non probantur, et qui non probatur, non proficit” (ibid., 69, 5, PL 36, 870). The discussion concerning the usefulness of temptation in De Genesi ad litteram (XI, 4, 6–6, 8, BA 49, 238–42) remains removed from possibility as such. In contrast, the doctrine of temptation responds to the question of self-knowledge, inaccessible otherwise, as other texts make quite clear. For example: “‘Tentavit, inquit, Deus Abraham.’ Sed ergo ignarus est Deus rerum, sic nesciens cordis humani, ut tentendo hominem inveniat? Absit: non ut ipse discat, sed ut quod in homine latet aperiat” (“God tempted Abraham” [Genesis 22:1]. But then is God unaware of some things, and does he not know the human heart, since he finds it by tempting it? Far from that being the case, this is not done so that God might learn something but so that what there is in man might be disclosed) (Sermon 2, 2, PL 38, 28). And: “tentatione Deum non id agere, ut ipse aliquid cognoscat quod ante nesciebat, sed ut ipso tentente, id est interrogante, quod est in homine occultum prodatur. Non enim sibi homo ita notus est, ut Creatori; nec sic aeger sibi notus, ut medico. . . . Quia nescit se homo, nisi in tentatione discat se” (With temptation God does not act so as to know what previously he did not, but by becoming himself the tempter, that is to say inquisitor, [he makes it happen that] there comes to light what in man had remained hidden. For man does not know himself as his Creator knows him, nor do the sick know themselves as their doctors do. . . . Because he does not know himself, it is by temptation that man learns to know himself) (Sermon II, 3, 3, PL 38, 29).

4. J. J. O’Donnell (Augustine: Confessions, 2:30) makes the highly relevant point that it is not about eliminating the passions and mutabilitas but, contrary to every Neoplatonic schema, deciding mutabiliter, at the heart of the unsurpassable mutability of the created, of facticity itself.

5. Heidegger, commenting on Confessiones X, saw this perfectly and said, “The molestia is not a piece of object—a region of being, present in some sense of the theoretical objectification of nature (vorhanden)—but it designates a How of experiencing, and precisely as such a How, it characterizes the How of factical experiencing” (Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, GA 60:231 [English trans., 172]). See “[Tentatio] is not something that happens, but an existential sense of enactment, a How of experiencing” (ibid., 248 [English trans., 186 (modified)]).

6. GA 60:206 (my emphasis) (English trans., 152 [modified]). Same prudence even farther along: “Inwiefern die Tentatio ein echtes Existenziel” (ibid., 256). The phrase “Oneri mihi sum” is cited only on pp. 205 and 250.

7. GA 60:249 (see perhaps also 242) and 206 (English trans., 186 [modified] and 152 [modified]).

8. Sein und Zeit, §29, 134: “Das Sein ist als Last offenbar geworden. . . . Die Stimmung macht offenbar ‘wie einem ist und wird.’ In diesem ‘wie einem ist’ bringt des Gestimmtsein das Sein in seinem ‘da.’” See Lastcharakter des Daseins, §29, 134–35.

9. With the reservation of a doubt: “Es gilt, diesen Grundcharakter, in dem Augustin das faktische Leben erfährt, die Tentatio, schärfer zu fassen und daraus dann zu verstehen, inwiefern der in solcher Helligkeit und Vollzugsstufe Lebende sich selbst notwendig ein Last ist” (GA 60:206).

10. C. Sommer has accurately qualified this tactic as “de-theologization” (Heidegger, Aristote, Luther: Les sources aristotéliciennes et néo-testamentaires d’ “Etre et temps” [Paris, 2005], 31 and passim).

11. The comparison is justified by the citation of Matthew 11:28–30 in the pending exposition of the temptation of curiosity in Confessiones X, 36, 58, 14, 246 (cf. De Trinitate IX, 9, 14, 16, 100).

12. Commentaries on the Psalms 67, 18, PL 36, 823.

13. Commentaries on the Psalms 7, 16, PL 36, 107.

14. Commentaries on the Psalms 59, 8, PL 36, 719. Sarcina (equivalent of onus as another translation of φορτίον) designates the soldier’s pack. We see here the same sublevare as in Confessiones X, 28, 39, 14, 208. Another reference to Christ in: “Durum jubet [sc. avaritia], levia jubeo [sc. Christus]: onus ejus grave, sarcina mea levias est. Noli velle ab avaritia possideri” (The order that greed gives is hard, mine light. Want not that it should take possession of you) (Commentaries on the Psalms 128, 4, PL 37, 1691).

15. On uti/frui see the canonic text in De doctrina christiana I, 3, 3–I, 4, 4; see also Holte, Béatitude et sagesse; O. O’Donovan, “Usus et fruitio in Augustine, De doctrina christiana I,” Journal of Theological Studies (1992): 361–97; and Madec, Saint Augustin et la philosophie, 77ff.

16. De Trinitate XII, 11, 16, 16, 242.

17. Curiosity (Neugier) comes explicitly from Augustinian curiositas: Sein und Zeit, §36 (p. 171, note citing Confessiones X, 35, 54), does nothing else but confirm Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, §14b, GA 20:223, 225. To curiositas is opposed studiositas (De utilitate credendi IX, 22, 8, 256).

18. A similar conclusion—the crisis of the self in temptation—appears in the description of the libido of hearing: “in [Dei] oculis mihi quaestio factus sum” (X, 35, 50, 14, 232). See the analysis in Chapter 2, §10 above.

19. Saint Augustine here emphasizes a privilege of sight, but it is negative: besides playing its own role as vision, vision is also a double for all the other senses, since we say see with regard to what we hear, taste, smell, or touch: “videri enim dicuntur haec omnia” (X, 35, 54, 14, 238). But this privilege becomes a burden, since, in fact, it is no longer about a sense but a temptation that uses them all.

20. Heidegger rightly cites this text (GA 60:207) as a sketch of factical life, but he completely omits an analysis of delectatio as such, still less in its intrinsic relation with amor. This permits him to neutralize cura, so as to employ it in the Seinsfrage, but it also makes him lose not only the Augustinian argument but, especially, the erotic horizon proper to cura (therefore no doubt to Sorge itself), which thereby becomes unintelligible or, at least, greatly weakened.

21. Commentaries on the Psalms 9, 15, PL 36, 124.

22. Commentaries on the Psalms 77, 10, PL 36, 991.

23. De duabus animabus contra Manichaeos X, 12, 17, 88.

24. The countless criticisms of the Augustinian doctrine of sin ought not lose sight of this point and, especially, not reestablish, unknowingly (or even knowingly), ideologies comparable to Manicheanism.

25. De duabus animabus contra Manichaeos X, 14, 17, 90. This knowledge is so clear that it is formulated in terms of the principle of contradiction: “Ita quidem invitus et volens unus animus simul esse potest; sed unum et idem nolle simul et velle non potest” (One and the same mind can at the same time will and [act] despite itself, but it cannot will and not will the same thing at the same moment) (ibid.).

26. Sublevare again, as in “quem tu imples, sublevas eum” (Confessiones X, 28, 39, 14, 208). I maintain the same translation as above (p. 153). The certainty of enjoying a free will, even experiencing it as evil, constitutes a first liberation. Whence the absurdity of opposing grace to freedom of choice, since freedom itself comes over me as a gracious gift: “non omnibus naturis dedit voluntatis arbitrium” (De Genesi ad litteram VIII, 23, 44, 49, 76). And: “Nam si quaeramus utrum Dei donum sit voluntas bona, mirum si negare quisquam audeat” (For if one asks if a good will is a gift of God, it would be surprising if someone were to deny it) (Quaestiones VII ad Simplicianum II, 12, 10, 470). See below, §29.

27. This would be a strictly Cartesian project. See my sketch “Notes sur les modalities de l’ego,” in Chemins de Descartes, ed. P. Soual and M. Veto (Paris, 1997) (first delivered at Actes du Colloque “Descartes,” organized by l’Université de Poitiers [November 1996]).

28. Soliloquia I, 1, 5, BA 5, 34. It is not a question of a “good will” (as P. de Labriolle translates ad loc.) but of the will as such, good or bad (which, by the way, sounds paradoxically more Kantian than this gloss).

29. Even the difficulty of the all-seeing omnipotence of God could not put it into question, be it only by reference to the case of desire for beatitude. God can foresee that I desire beatitude, without this knowledge preventing me from desiring it freely. “Sed dico, cum futurus es beatus, non te invitum, sed volentem futurum” (But I say that when you will be blessed, you will be so by having wanted it, not against your inclination) (De libero arbitrio III, 3, 7, 6, 338).

30. This permits us to understand De Magistro XI, 38: “Ille autem qui consulitur, docet, qui in interiore homine habitare dictus est Christus, id est incommutabilis Dei Virtus atque sempiterna Sapientia: quam quidem omnis rationalis anima consulit; sed tantum cuique panditur, quantum capere propter propriam, sive malam, sive bonam voluntatem, potest. Et si quando fallitur, non fit vitio consultae veritatis, ut neque hujus, quae foris est lucis vitium est, quod corporei oculi saepe falluntur, quam lucem de rebus visibilibus consuli fatemur, ut eas nobis quantum cernere valemus, ostendat” (He who teaches is therefore he whom one consults, Christ of whom it is said that he dwells within the man, that is to say, the unchangeable Virtue of God and his eternal Wisdom, consulted by every rational soul, but which opens to each only insofar as it can receive according to its own will, be it bad or good. And if a soul should happen to be deceived, the fault does not lie with the truth consulted, no more than if the bodily eyes are often deceived, the fault lies with the external light, that we admit consulting so that it might show us visible things insofar as we are able to see them) (6, 102ff.).

31. Descartes: “ex magna luce in intellectu magna consecuta est propensio in voluntate, atque ita tantomagis sponte et libere illud credidi, quanto minus fui ad illud indifferens” (from a great light in the intellect there follows a great inclination in the will such that I believed it all the more freely [sc. that I exist] as I was less indifferent to it) (Meditationes de prima philosophia IV, AT VIII, 59, 1–4 [English trans., 41 (modified)]).

32. Confessiones X, 23, 34, 14, 202. See Chapter 3, §17, p. 109.

33. Commentaries on the Psalms, respectively, 93, 19, and 100, 6, PL 37, 1206 and 1287.

34. “Lex enim peccati est violentia consuetudinis, qua trahitur et tenetur etiam invitus animus eo merito, quo in eam volens inlabitur” (The law of sin is the violence of habit, which drags and holds the spirit itself against its liking, something it does indeed deserve, seeing as it falls into it by willing it) (VIII, 5, 12, 14, 32).

35. Confessiones VIII, 5, 12, 14, 32. “But the one was pleasing and bent me to it; the other attracted me and tied me to it” (E. Tréhorel and G. Bouissou, BA 14, 32) is better than “But on one side, charm and fascination [?], and, on the other, complaisance and fetters” (P. Cambronne, Les Confessions précédées de dialogues philosophiques, 937).

36. Opposite BA 14, I translate “non est, quod imperat” in the obvious sense of non est id quod imperat, “what it commands does not happen,” and therefore I understand “imperat ut esset” simply as “commanded that it [what it wills] be” without adding a reflexive, as if it commanded itself. This, more sober, reading of the text, is justified conceptually, too: the immediacy of the will to itself (according to De libero arbitrio) makes it impossible, and for that matter useless, that it will itself to the second degree; as soon as it wills, it wills and commands entirely. The difficulty of finding oneself in a situation of having to will to will already indicates an anomaly of the will that Saint Augustine will elsewhere diagnose immediately as a sickness of the spirit.

37. Bergson, La pensée et le mouvant: Essais et conférences (Paris, 1934), 66.

38. Letter 177, PL 33, 766; and Enchiridion IX, 31, 9, 162. See also: “ad vitam vero tenendam voluntas non sat est, si adjutoria sive alientorum, sive quocumque tutanimum desint” (to maintain itself in life, the will is not sufficient without the help of food and other necessities) (Enchiridion XXVIII, 106, 9, 296).

39. Enchiridion XXII, 81, 9, 250. In contrast we read in Plato: “Simonides was not so irreverent as to praise those who do not do evil willingly (ὲϰὼν) as if there were none who did evil willingly (ἑϰόντες): ‘As for me, I am thoroughly convinced that there is nobody, among wise men, who would assert that there is any man whatsoever who would do wrong and dishonorable and wicked things willingly (ἑϰόντα), for everybody knows well that doers of dishonorable and wicked deeds do them against their will (ἄϰόντες)’” (Protagoras 345d).

40. Confessiones VIII, 7, 16, 14, 42. Or “tanto exsecrabilius me comparatum eis [sc. the other converts] oderum” (VIII, 7, 17, 14, 42). This reversal of one hatred into another (a hatred of the hatred of truth) does nothing but recover one of the possible definitions of confessio: “Cum enim malus sum, nihil aliud confiteri tibi quam displicere mihi: cum vero pius, nihil est aliud confiteri tibi quam hoc non tribuere mihi” (For when I am wicked, confessing to you is nothing other than being displeased with myself; but when I am pious, confessing to you is nothing other than not attributing it [being pious] to myself) (X, 2, 2, 14, 142; see above, Chapter 1, §4).

41. Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae, q. 77, a. 2, resp., and the example ad 4. The correct syllogism (No fornication is permitted / This is a fornication / Therefore this is not permitted) is thus transformed into an incorrect syllogism (Pleasure is to be sought [contradiction of the universal, replaced by a particular] / This is not a fornication [distraction as to the nature of the universal] / Therefore this is to be sought). See also De malo, q. 3, a. 7: science merely in habitus (and not in act) can lack by distraction the universal as such, and passio, defined as “fortis circa aliquod particulare,” can also contradict the universal; the modifications of the body proper can end up at the same result. It can be doubted that one can commit fornication without knowing it and smile at the hypothesis.

42. Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, I, 2, Ak. A, t. 6, 29.

43. Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford, 1980), 42.

44. See: “cum efficientes non sint, ut dixi, sed deficientes” (since they are not efficient, but, as I said, deficient) (XII, 7, 35, 170). “Hoc scio, naturam Dei numquam, nusquam, nulla ex parte posse deficere, et ea posse deficere, quae ex nihilo facta sunt. Quae tamen quanto magis sunt et bona faciunt (tunc enim aliquid faciunt) causas habent efficientes; in quantum autem deficiunt et ex hoc mala faciunt (quid enim tunc faciunt nisi vana?) causas habent deficientes” (What I know is that the nature of God can never, anywhere or in any part, be deficient and that what can be deficient are things made from nothing. Which, nevertheless, the more they are and do good works [for they do indeed do something], the more they have efficient causes; but the more they prove defective and in consequence the more they do evil works [and what do they do other than vain and empty things?], the more they have deficient causes) (XII, 8, 35, 172). And again: “malorum [causam] vero ab immutabili bono deficientem boni mutabilis voluntatem” (the cause of evils is only the will for a changing good, which itself defects from a permanent good) (Enchiridion VIII, 23, 9, 148).

45. See also: “Voluntas autem tantam vim habet copulandi haec duo, ut et sensum formandum admoveat ei rei quae cernitur et in ea formatum teneat. Et si tam violentia est, ut possit vocari amor, aut cupiditas, aut libido, etiam caeterum corpus animantis vehementer afficit” (The will has such strength to couple these two terms [sc. the body and the image of the thing] that, in order to form the meaning, it applies it to the thing seen and maintains it formed in it. And if it is violent enough that one can name it a love, a desire, or a concupiscence, it then powerfully affects all the rest of the body that animates it [sc. of the flesh]) (XI, 2, 5, 16, 172).

46. This definition of love by the will, or more exactly of the full will as love, will find a remarkably faithful echo in William of St. Thierry: “bonae voluntatis vehementia amor in nobis dicitur” (strength of will in us is called love) (De contemplando Deo, §18). Or: “Nihil enim est aliud amor quam vehemens in bono volun-tas” (Love is nothing other than a will strong in the good) (De natura et dignitate amoris, §6). Or: “Voluntas in hoc filia gratiae est. Gratia eam generat, gratia lactat, gratia nutrit ac provehit et a perfectum usque perficit; hoc est caritas, id est magna et bene affecta voluntas fiat” (The will is in this child of grace. Grace engenders it, grace nurses it, it nourishes it and leads it to perfection, which is to say it becomes charity—in other words, a great and most affected will) (Speculum fidei, §14). And finally: “magna enim voluntas ad Deum amor est” (Love is nothing other than a great will toward God) (Epistula ad fratres de Monte Dei, §104). Saint Francis de Sales is quite clearly inscribed within this tradition: “The will governs all the other faculties of the human mind, but it is governed by its love, which makes it what it is; . . . thus sacred love is a miraculous child since the human will cannot conceive it if the Holy Spirit does not spread it in our hearts; and as it is supernatural, it must preside and reign over all the affections, even over the understanding and the will” (Traité de l’amour de Dieu, I, 6, in Œuvres, ed. A. Ravier [Paris, 1969], 367). On the relation between the will, freedom, and love (of God) see my sketch “L’image de la liberté,” in Saint Bernard et la philosophie, ed. Remi Brague (Paris, 1993).

47. That sexual desire remains radically uncontrollable is emphasized by many texts: “Quod adversus damnatum culpa inoeboedentiae voluntatem libido inoeboedentialiter movebat, verecundia prudenter tengebat” (Modesty hid out of a sense of shame what concupiscence set on fire with disobedience, defying the will which had been punished for its own revolt) (De civitate Dei XIV, 17, BA 35, 430). This disobedience is doubled into two contraries: not only can’t I hold myself back from desiring, but sometimes I cannot set myself to desiring: “Sed neque ipsi amatores hujus voluptatis sive ad concubitus conjugales, sive ad immunditias flagitiorum, cum voluerint commoventur; sed aliquando importunus est ille motus poscente nullo, aliquando autem destitutit inhiantem, et cum in animo concupiscentia ferveat, friget in corpore” (But the very ones who love this pleasure, whether it be in the conjugal bed or in the impurities of depravity, do not bestir themselves at will; but this movement sometimes imposes itself on them when they do not ask for it, sometimes it is missing from him who aspires to it, and when concupiscence warms the mind, the body remains cold) (XIV, 16, 35, 426).

48. Soliloquia I, 1, 5, BA 5, 32 (twice). In this same dialogue it happens that the character Augustine, in a demand made of the character Reason, formulates a mistaken version of this principle: “Impera quaevis dura, quaelibet ardua, quae tamen in mea poteste sint, per quae me quo desidero, perventurum esse non dubitem” (Command of me things as hard as you will, as arduous as you will, but which still remain within the limits of my power, by which I do not doubt but that I will succeed in what I desire) (I, 14, 24, 5, 74). In fact, the “Jube quod vis et da quod jubes” concerns precisely what does not remain “in mea potestae” but in that of the love that renders it valentior.

49. Liber de gratia I, 17, 18, PL 44, 369. See: “Sed plane illa possibilitas utriusque radicis est capax” (For this possibility has the capacity for two roots) (I, 20, 21, PL 44, 370). And: “possibilitas ad utrumque valere” (a possibility to exercise itself in both directions) (I, 25, 26, PL 44, 373).

50. Ibid., I, 6, 7, PL 44, 363ff.

51. Ibid., I, 34, 37, PL 44, 378. The Pelagians’ attempt to divide the phenomenon of the will into possibility, will, and actualization (posse/velle/esse or possibilitas/voluntas/actio) and to limit the giftedness to one of these moments, so as to detach the others from it, suffers not only from the failing of heresy but, first of all, from a phenomenological fault: it does not help describe the phenomenon and, by contrast, burns it up, dissolves it (ibid., I, 47, 52, PL 44, 383ff.).

CHAPTER 5

1. Respectively Commentaries on the Psalms 101, 2, 10, PL 37, 1311; and Sermon 80, 8, PL 38, 498.

2. On the ignorance of the gods see the excellent collection assembled by J.-C. Bardout and O. Boulnois, Sur la science divine (Paris, 2002).

3. The same proclamation appears in Confessiones IX, 10, 25: “quoniam si quis audiat, dicunt haec omni: ‘Non ipsas nos fecimus, sed fecit nos qui manet aeternum’ ” (for if one tries to hear them, all these things say: “We ourselves did not make ourselves, but he who remains eternally made us’” [Psalm 99:3]) (14, 118—curiously enough this theme is not taken up in Commentaries on the Psalms 99, PL 37, 1271ff.). Elsewhere, a praise is carried out by inanimate creatures as well as the animate: “Undique laudatur Deus ab operibus suis. . . . Laudant coeli, laudant angeli, laudant sidera, laudant sol et luna, laudant dies et noctes, laudat quidquid germinat de terra, laudat quidquid natat in mari, laudat quidquid volitat in aere, laudant omnes montes et colles, laudant frigora et aestus; et caetra omnia quae Deus fecit, audistis quia laudant Deum” (From all corners of the world, God is praised by his works. . . . The heavens praise him, the angels praise him, the stars praise him, the sun and the moon praise him, the days and the nights praise him, all that grows from the earth praises him, all that swims in the sea praises him, all that flies in the air praises him, all the mountains and all the hills praise him, the freezing cold and the burning hot praises him; and you hear all things made by God praising God) (Commentaries on the Psalms 128, 5, PL 37, 1691).

4. Commentaries on the Psalms 148, 15, PL 37, 1946. It should be noted that the Vulgate reads “Confessio ejus super coelum et terram,” while the Vetus Latina says “in terra et coelo,” thus opening the possibility that confession is made in the heavens and the earth in the sense that it would rise on the basis of them.

5. Confessiones XI, 10, 12, 14, 290. This type of question comes from a Manichean context: “cui bono mundum fecerit, qui non erat indigens?” (for what purpose did he make the world, he who was lacking nothing?) (De ordine II, 17, 46, 4, 440ff.), or: “quaerunt [sc. Manichei] ‘In quo principio?’ et dicunt: ‘si in principio aliquo temporis fecit Deus coelum et terram, quid agebat antequam faceret coelum et terram? Et quid si placuit subito facere quod numquam antea fecerat per tempora aeterna?’” (they ask: “In what principle?” and they say: “If God made the heavens and the earth in a temporal principle, what was he doing before making the heavens and the earth? And what if he decided suddenly to make what he had never made in eternal times?”) (De Genesi contra Manicheos I, 2, 3, BA 50, 160). But the Neoplatonists are also at issue (De civitate Dei XI, 4, 2, 35, 40–44); as is Cicero: “Cur mundi aedificatores repente extiterint, innumerabilia saecula dormierint?” (Why did the makers of the world arise suddenly after having been asleep for so many centuries?) (De natura deorum I, 9, ed. H. Rackham [Cambridge, MA (19331), 1972], 24); and Lucretius: “Quidve novi potuit tanto post quietos / Inlicere ut cuperent vitam mutare priorem?” (What novelty could after so much [time] incite the blessed in repose to want to change their previous life?) (De natura deorum V, 168–69, ed. A. Ernout [Paris, 1948], 57). An echo of the objection can already be heard in Saint Irenaeus, who found it an embarrassment: “Ut puta: si quis interrogat: Antequam mundum faceret Deus? dicemus quoniam ista responsio subjacet Deo. Quoniam autem mundus hic factus est ἀποτελεστιϰως a Deo, temporale initium accipiens, Scripturae nos docent; quid autem ante hoc Deus sit operatus, nulla Scriptura manifestat.” (It is thought that if someone asks, “what was God doing before the heavens and the earth?” we would say the answer is left to God. For that the world was made by design, receiving a beginning in time, is something the scriptures teach us; but as for what God was doing before that, no scripture reveals it) (Adversus haereses II, 28, 3). So, too, Origen: “Sed solent nobis objicere dicentes: si coepit mundus ex tempore, quid antea faciebat Deus quam mundum inciperet?” (They are in the habit of objecting to us: if the world began in time what was God doing before he began the world), with a weak response: “Nos vero consequenter respondebimus . . . dicantes quoniam non tunc primum, cum visibilem istum mundum faecit Deus, coepit operari, sed sicut post correptionem hujus erit alius mundus, ita et antequam hic [mundus] esset, fuisse alios credimus” (But we, we will answer coherently . . . by saying that God did not begin to make only when he made this visible world, but that just as there will be another world after the disappearance of this one, so too before this world was, we believe that there were others) (On First Principles III, 5, 3). On this point see E. Peters, “What Was God Doing Before He Created the Heavens and the Earth?” Augustiniana 34 (1984): 53–74. In the immense bibliography concerning the Augustinian doctrine of time, I am basing my own position on the recent collections of E. P. Meijering, Augustin über Schöpfung, Ewigkeit und Zeit: Das elfte Buch der Bekenntnisse (Leiden, 1979); Flasch, Was ist Zeit?; and N. Fischer, “‘Distentio animi’: Symbol der Entfluchtigung des Zeitlichens,” in Die “Confessiones” des Augustinus von Hippo: Einführung und Interpretationen zu den 13 Büchern, ed. N. Fischer and C. Mayer (Freiburg, 2004).

6. See: “Si enim habet causam voluntas Dei, est aliquid quod antecedat volun-tatem Dei, quo nefas est credere. Qui ergo dicit, quare fecit Deus coelum et terra, respondendum est ei, quia voluit. Voluntas enim Dei causa est coeli et terrae et ideo major est voluntas Dei quam coelum et terram. Qui autem dicit, quare voluit facere caelum et terram, majus aliquid quaerit quam est voluntas Dei: nihil autem majus inveneri potest” (De Genesi contra Manicheos I, 2, 4, PL 34, 175). To claim to go back behind the will of God (to assign it a reason or a cause) amounts to the absurdity of pretending to surpass God himself: “Neque enim voluntas Dei creatura est, sed ante creaturam, quia non creatur aliquid, nisi creatoris voluntas praecederet. Ad ipsam ergo Dei substantiam pertinet voluntas ejus” (That is, the will of God is not a creature [of God], but before creatures, since nothing is created unless the will of the creator precedes it. His will belongs therefore to the very substance of God) (Confessiones XI, 10, 12, 14, 292).

7. One can read here the exact inverse of Spinoza’s position: “Eodem sensu quo Deus dicitur causa sui, dicitur etiam causa omnium rerum” (in the same sense that God is said to be self-caused [causa sui] he must also be said to be the cause of all things” (Ethica I, §25, sc. [English trans., 49]). Lacan gives credit, rightly, to Saint Augustine for having here dismissed the very hypothesis of the causa sui (see Des-noms-du-Père, séminaire 1963 [Paris, 2005], 76–78). On the difficulty of (even) introducing into metaphysics the thesis of the causa sui, see my own On the Ego and on God: Further Cartesian Questions (New York, 2007), chap. 8: “The Causa Sui: First and Fourth Replies.”

8. “Scio, quod nulla fiebat creatura, antequam fieret ulla creatura” (I know there was no creature before there were any creatures) (Confessiones XI, 12, 14, 14, 294).

9. Or: “Omnia tempora tu fecisti et ante omnia tempora tu es, nec aliquo tempore non erat tempus” (You made all times and before all times, you, you are, and there is no time where there were no times) (Confessiones XI, 13, 16, 14, 298). And again: “nullum tempus esse posse sine creatura” (no time is possible without creatures) (XI, 30, 40, 14, 340).

10. De civitate Dei XII, 15, 35, 196. The translation of the first passage in BA 35 completely misses the equivalence of the creation of the times and that of man (“he wove the fabric of time starting from a beginning and in this time he made man”). The context of the last phrase unambiguously insists on it, however: “Quis hanc valeat altitudinem investigabilem vestigare et inscrutabilem perscrutari, secundum quam Deus hominem temporalem, ante quem nemo unquam hominum fuit, non mutabili voluntate in tempore condidit et genus humanum ex uno multiplicavit?” (Who could search out this unsearchable depth, scrutinize this inscrutable depth according to which God, with an unchanging will, established in time a temporalized man before which no man was, and made the human species out of just one a multitude?) (ibid.).

11. Commentaries on the Psalms 84, 8, PL 37, 1073. See: “vocantem me invocarem te” (I called you, you who had called me) (Confessiones XIII, 1, 1, 14, 424).

12. And again, with other temporalizations: “fecisti me et oblitum tui non oblitus es . . . priusquam essem, tu eras, nec eram, cui praestares ut essem” (you made me, and even forgetful of you, you did not forget me . . . and before I was, you were, and I was not there for you to grant being to me) (XIII, 1, 1, 14, 424). “O tardum gaudium meum!” (O my delayed joy!) (II, 2, 2, 13, 334). For that matter, those who object to the creation of the world without seeing that of time are also characterized by belatedness, “pleni sunt vetustatis” (puffed up with oldness) (XI, 10, 12, 14, 290).

13. See “differabam ‘de die in diem’ vivere in te, et non differebam quotidie in memet ipso mori” (I deferred “from one day to the next” [Ecclesiastes 5:8], living in you, but I did not daily defer dying in myself) (VI, 11, 20, 13, 560). Or: “Et putaveram me propterea differre ‘de die in diem’ contempta spe saeculi te solum sequi . . .” (And I had thought that if I deferred “from one day to the next” [Ecclesiastes 5:8] following you, you alone, with contempt for the hopes of the world, this was because . . .) (VIII, 7, 18, 14, 44). Note however sometimes a positive occurrence: “amor utiliter differendus” (Soliloquia I, 13, 23, BA 5, 72).

14. We find a striking, but unfortunately untranslatable, parallel in the Commentaries on the Psalms 102, 16: “Frater, non tardes converti ad Dominum. Sunt enim qui praeparant conversionem et differunt, et fint in eis vox corvinas cras, cras. Corvus de arca missus, non est reversus. Non quaerit Deus dilationem de voce corvina, sed confessionem in gemitu columbino. Missa columba, reversa est. Quamdiu cras, cras? Observa ultimum cras; quia ignoras quid sit ultimum cras, sufficat quod vixisti usque ad hodiernum peccator” (PL 37, 1330). Untranslatable is the word cras, because to its obvious meaning, tomorrow, is added the onomatopoeia of the cry of the crow (what we say as caw), meaning thereby no doubt to oppose this harsh explosive to the dove that, having been sent from the Ark to see if land had emerged following the Flood, returned. The intention is unambiguous: always putting off conversion until tomorrow is equivalent to crying caw, caw, therefore to refusing it (so cried the anticlerical faction of 1905, it seems, at the passing of the Catholic processions). Even by risking a double translation (with a more contemporary equivalent), one does not render this play on words: “My brother, do not delay your conversion to God. There are those who prepare for it and defer it, and they end up saying tomorrow, tomorrow / Caw, caw. The crow sent from the ark did not return. God does not ask for the delay in the voice of the crow but the confession from the sighing of the dove. The dove was sent, but it, it came back. Will it go on for a long time, this tomorrow, tomorrow / Caw, caw? Pay attention to the last tomorrow/caw. Because you do not know when it will be, this last tomorrow/caw, let it suffice that the sinner has lived until today.”

15. Plotinus, Enneads 3.7.1; and Husserl, The Phenomenology of the Internal Time-Consciousness (Husserliana 10:4–5 [English trans., 21–22]). See also Simplicius (In Aristotelis Physicorum librorum Commentarium, ed. H. Files [Berlin, 1892], 695). A collection of medieval and modern readings of Confessiones XI is more than outlined in Flasch, Was ist Zeit? 160–95, 27–75.

16. Wittgenstein, very much to the point, cites these “manifestissima et usitatissima” as an example of the real difficulty in philosophy: confronting the obscure evidence of ordinary language (Philosophische Untersuchungen, §436, 1:417 [English trans., 109e]). Elsewhere, when commenting on the Augustinian formulation of time, he shows that the impossibility of saying what we nevertheless know, time, offers a privileged case of “the sense [in which] logic is something sublime”:

Not, however, as if to this end we had to hunt out new facts; it is, rather, of the essence of our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand. [Here is the citation of the aporia in Confessiones XI, 14, 17.] This could not be said about a question of natural science (“What is the specific gravity of hydrogen?” for instance). Something that we know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are supposed to give an account of it, is something that we need to think (besinnen). (And it is obviously something which for some reason it is difficult to think.) (§89, ibid., 291 [English trans., 36e (modified)])

17. Husserl, The Phenomenology of the Internal Time-Consciousness, 21 (though he obviously does so also).

18. See another analysis of the where/ubi accorded to the present: “Ubi sunt deliciae vestrae, propter quas ambulatis per vias pravas? Non dicimus ubi erunt, cum haec vita transierit, sed modo ubi sunt? Cum hesternum diem hodiernus abstulerit, et hordiernum crastinus ablaturus sit, quid eorum quae diligitis non transcurrit et transvolat? Quid non fugit pene antequam capitur, cum ex ipso hodierno die nulla possit vel hora contineri? Ita enim secunda excluditur a tertia, sicut prima exclusa est a secunda. Ipsius horae unius, quae praesens videtur, nihil est praesens: omnes enim partes ejus et omnia momenta fugitura sunt” (Where are your delights, on account of which you go your wicked ways? We do not say where will they be, since this life will pass, but only where are they [now]? Since the day of yesterday was taken away by that of today, as that of tomorrow will take away that of today, what is it, in all that you love, that will not flee and fly away? Is there something that has not already very nearly passed away even before you have grasped it, as soon as one cannot even keep an hour of the day of today? The second hour is eliminated by the third, as the first was by the second. Of this hour itself, which [alone] seems present, nothing is [in the] present; for all its parts and all its moments are fleeting) (Sermon 157, 4, 4, PL 38, 861).

19. This description, which reduces the temporal flux to a delay (mora) ceaselessly vanishing, also and without a doubt first of all has a biblical version, the commentary on Psalm 38:5: “Et numerum dierum meorum qui est” (Vetus Latina). The reduction, in this exegesis, goes from dies to dies hodiernus, then to hora, then to momentum, and finally to est itself. But this ipsum est is still composed of three syllables, the second of which I reach only once the first has passed, and so on, such that nothing remains, not even the delay of a letter: “Cum dicis ipsum Est, certe una syllaba est, et momentum unum est, et tres litteras syllaba habet; in ipso ictu ad secundam hujus verbi litteram non pervenis, nisi prima finita fuerit; tertia non sonabit, nisi cum et secunda transierit. Quid mihi de hac una syllaba dabis? Et tenes dies, qui unam syllabam non tenes?” (When you say even just this est itself, it is only one syllable and one moment, and just three letters; [but] you cannot even touch the second letter of this word without the first having [already] terminated; and the third will not sound out except when the second will have passed. What can you give me of this simple syllable? And you will take hold of the days, you who cannot even hold a single syllable?) Consequently, even the most simple word, est, cannot persist in the slightest present; but est is precisely est of to be; therefore it is to be that cannot be. “Est illud simplex quaero, Est verum quaero, Est germanum quaero, Est quod est in illa Jerusalem sponsa Domini mei, ubi non erit mors, non erit defectus, non erit dies transiens, sed manens, qui nec hesterno praeceditur, nec crastino impellitur” (I seek this pure and simple is, the true is, the authentic is, the one that is in this Jerusalem that is the bride of my Lord, where death will not be, nor lack, nor the passing day, but the day staying, that no yesterday precedes nor any tomorrow presses ahead” (Commentaries on the Psalms 38, 7, PL 36, 419). The aporia of present time, its im-mora-lity, poses a crisis for the being of the instant, the est of the nunc. Far from consecrating the primacy of presence by the privileging of the present, the aporia of present time defers, from the outset and forever, the advent of any presence equal to itself. Saint Augustine theorizes differance and destroys Being in presence. Another commentary pushes the decomposition all the way to the letter in the syllable: “Dum syllabus loquor, si duas syllabas dicam, altera non sonat, nisi cum illa transierit; ipsa denique una syllaba, si duas litteras habet, non sonat posterior littera, nisi prior abierit. Quid ergo tenemus de his annis!” (While I am saying syllables, in the case when I say two of them, the latter does not sound if the former has not already passed; and in the final analysis, this first syllable, if it has two letters, the last does not sound so long as the first has not passed. What then will we say when it is a question of years!) (Commentaries on the Psalms 76, 8, PL 36, 976).

20. Physics 4.10.217b33.

21. “What is composed of nonbeings seems not to be able to participate in oὐσία” (Physics 4.10.218a2–3).

22. BA 14, 307, unfortunately translates “sentimus intervalla” as “we perceive the intervals,” “sentiendo metimur” as “we measure them by perceiving them,” and “tempus sentiri et metiri potest” as “it can be perceived and measured.” That is a misreading, for Saint Augustine endeavors to sense in the immediacy of immanence what we precisely cannot perceive in intentional ecstasy—time as passage.

23. See the suggestions of A. Solignac in BA 14, 586, and the research of J.-F. Callahan, “Basil of Caesarea: A New Source for St. Augustine’s Theory of Time,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 63 (1958): 437–54; “Gregory of Nizza and the Psychological View of Time,” Atti del XII Congressio internazionale di filosofia, vol. 9 (Florence, 1960); and Augustine and the Greek Philosophers (Villanova, 1969). But why not simply think of the “man inflated with a monstrous pride” (homo immanissimo typho turgidus) mentioned in Confessiones VII, 9, 13, 13, 608? He would have transmitted, through “certain platonic books” (per quidem Platonicorum libri) (for example, Plotinus, Enneads 7.7), the doctrine of time as ϰίνησις, or ϰινουμένον, or more generally, ϰινήσεῶς τι, a doctrine common to Plato (Timaeus 39c–d; see R. Brague, Quatre études sur le temps chez Platon et Aristote (Paris, 19821); Aristotle obviously; and Chrysippus (see Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, ed. J. von Arnim [Stuttgart (19021), 1968], 3.2.14.492). Let us note that Basil of Caesarea also criticized Eunomius precisely for having defined time on the basis of the movement of the stars (Against Eunomius I, 21, PG 29, 557).

24. “What is composed of nonbeings seems unable to participate in ousia” (Aristotle, Physics 4.10.218a2–3).

25. Ibid., 4.10.218b9.

26. Ibid., 4.11.219b1.

27. “Quaero utrum motus ipse sit dies an mora ipsa, quanta peragitur, an utrumque” (Confessiones XI, 23, 30, 14, 320).

28. See: “iste spatium temporis in silentio memoriaeque commendans” (this man confiding the space of time silently to his memory) (XI, 27, 36, 14, 334).

29. See also: “Cum enim movetur corpus, tempore metior, quamdiu moveatur, ex quo moveri incipit donec desinat” (When the body moves, I measure it by time, as long as it is moving, starting from the moment when it begins until the moment when it ends) (XI, 24, 31, 14, 322).

30. In opposition to God, for man, “ejus intentio de cogitatione in cogitationem transit” (his intentionality passes from thought to thought) (De civitate Dei XI, 21, 35, 92ff.). For him, “intentio ad agendum praesentis est temporis, per quod futurum in praeteritum transit” (intentionality bears on the present time, across which the future passes to the past) (De immortalitate animi III, 3, 5, 176).

31. Likewise, God “non enim more nostro ille vel quod futurum est prospicit, vel quod praesens est aspicit, vel quod praeteritum est respicit” (does not do as we do: he does not foresee what arrives, he does not observe what is present, and he does not look back upon what is past) (De civitate Dei XI, 21, 35, 92).

32. Confessiones XI, 27, 35, 14, 330, citing Saint Ambrose: “Deus creator omnium (2 Maccabees 1, 24) / Polique auctor, vestiens / Diem decoro lumine / Noctem saporis gratia” (Hymni I, 2, v. 1, in Sancti Ambrosii Episcopi opera: Hymni Inscriptiones. Fragmenta, ed. G. Banterle [Milan 1994], 42). Though the name of the author is not mentioned, this is an homage paid to Saint Ambrose, who has played a decisive role ever since the somewhat failed encounter reported in Confessiones V, 12, 23, 13, 506.

33. Translating pronuntio/renuntio by declamation/proclamation (as BA 14, 331) inverts the temporalities by putting the pro-clamation after the re-sumption. For what it’s worth, despite the displacement that reclaim imposes, it should be noted that—nuntiare is recovered exactly in—clamer and therefore authorizes the parallelism of the two terms.

34. Two texts from De musica comment, to the same effect but with less detail, on the same verse from Ambrose’s hymn: (a) De musica VI, 2, 2 asks if, in pronouncing “Deus creator omnium,” “istos quattuor iambos, quibus constat, et tempora duodecim, ubique esse arbitraris?” (these four iambs of which it consists and the twelve times, where do you think they are found?). Is it in physical extension, in the sensation of the listener, or in the act of pronunciation? Or else: “in memoria quoque nostra” (also in our memory) (BA 7, 360)? In fact, they are found everywhere, but the rhythms are found only in memory, genus numerorum in memoria (VI, 3, 4, 7, 366). Cognition, which always amounts to cognizing temporally, therefore means recognition: “talis agnitio, recognitio est et recordatio” (VI, 8, 22, 7, 408). Is this a matter of reproductive memory, or what I have here translated as reclamation? (b) “Sed ego puto, cum ille a nobis propositus versus canitur ‘Deus creator omnium,’ nos eum et occursoribus illis numeris audire, et recordabilibus recognoscere et progressoribus pronuntiare” (But I suppose that when one sings the verse that we are proposing, “Deus creator omnium,” we begin by hearing it thanks to the arriving rhythms, then we recognize it by those returning to memory, and finally we pronounce them by those that advance toward us) (VI, 9, 23, 7, 410). (c) Another reference to this verse insists on its truth (signified), more than on the manner of hearing it or singing it (signifying) (De musica VI, 17, 57, BA 7, 472).

35. Commentaries on the Psalms, respectively 44, 4, PL 36, 496 and 99, 5, PL 37, 1272.

36. As J. J. O’Donnell ventures to affirm: “His famous description of time as a distentio animi cannot be a definition, but is, rather, a metaphor” (O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 3:289).

37. Also: “Quoniam sensus manifestus, brevi syllaba longam metior eamque sentio habere bis tantum” (Inasmuch as the sensation is manifest, I measure the long syllable by the short and I sense that it counts as two of them” (XI, 27, 35, 14, 330). It is about the affect we already saw: “Affectionem, quam res praetereuntes in te [sc. anima mea] faciunt, et cum illae praeterierint, manet, ipsam metior praesentem” (It is the affect, which the passing things produce in you and which remain once passed, that I measure [because it remains] present to it) (XI, 27, 36, 14, 332).

38. Plotinus, Enneads 3.7, respectively §§2–3, 8, and 9–10. See W. Beierwaltes, introduction to Plotinus: Uber Ewigkeit (Enneade 3.7) (Frankfurt, 1967).

39. Plotinus, Enneads 3.7.11.41. See P. Ricoeur, Temps et récit, 1:34ff. (English trans., 1:27ff.).

40. Plotinus, Enneads 3.13.65 and 3.13.67. Here I follow G. O’Daly: “Plotinus’ approach is quite different. . . . Whatever it may hold in principle, Augustine does not behave very platonically in practice in Confessions. His method is rather empirical: he considers time as a fact of everyday experience, as a practical problem. This has rather liberating consequences” (Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind [Berkeley, 1987], 152). Ricoeur says nothing different (Temps et récit, 1:41ff. [English trans., 1:29ff.]).

41. For example, “animus meus”: Confessiones XI, 22, 28, 14, 314; XI, 27, 34, 14, 328; XI, 27, 36, 14, 332.

42. Homilies on Ecclesiastes VI (τò δίαστημα τοῦ χρόνου) and VIII ὁ αἰὼν διστηματιϰόν τι νοήμα), PG 44, 700c and 752d. On these texts, in addition to H. U. von Balthasar, Presence and Thought. An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa (San Francisco, 1995); and J. Daniélou, L’Être et le temps chez Grégoire de Nysse (Leiden, 1970); see also T. P. Vergehen, “Diastema and diastasis in Gregory of Nyssa,” in Gregory of Nyssa and Philosophy, 2nd Colloque International, 1972 (Leiden, 1978); and the classic works of J.-F. Callaghan, esp. Augustine and the Greek Philosophers, chap. 3.

43. G. Madec assembled the relevant texts perfectly in Saint Augustin et la philosophie, chap. 12, in particular p. 95.

44. Aristotle, Physics 4.11.219a5.

45. Ibid., 4.14.223a21–28. The argument, a difficult one, can be reconstituted in this way: certainly time, understood as the decompositive accounting of before and after, is not possible without the soul, which alone decomposes and counts. But the very thing that is in each moment time, its “substrate”—namely, movement—that very thing happens without the soul, for in the natural world it changes and moves without the soul. Whence the at least implicit conclusion that time, if it evidently is not carried out without decomposition (therefore without the soul), is not equal to it, according to what it is in each moment. I am following the interpretation advanced by R. Brague, Quatre études sur le temps chez Platon et Aristote, 144; and the notes of W. D. Ross, Aristotle: “Physics” (Oxford, [19361], 19664), 611.

46. Some of these have been collected in particular in Flasch, Was ist Zeit? esp. 92ff. See also U. Duchrow, “Der sogenannte psychologische Zeitsbegriff Au-gustins im Verhältnis zur physikalischen und geschitlichen Zeit,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche (1967), who insists on the contradiction between distentio animi and the time of the creation of the world.

47. Confessiones XI, 30, 40, 14, 340. See the excellent response to Flasch by N. Fischer, “Distentio animi: Ein Symbol der Entflüchtigung des Zeitlichen,” in Die “Confessiones” des Augustins von Hippo: Einführung und Interpretationen zu den 13 Büchern, ed. N Fischer and C. Meyer (Freiburg, 2004); see also N. Fischer, Augustins Philosophie der Endlichkeit: Zur systematischen Entfaltung seines Denkens aus der Geschichte der Chorismos-Problematik (Bonn, 1987).

48. There is even less contradiction between these texts from Confessiones XII and those of Confessiones XI as the latter opens, just after the aporia of time, with this same argument: “Si nemo ex me quaerat scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio: fidenter tamen dico scire qui, si nihil praeteriret, non esset praeteritum tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil eset, non esset praesens tempus” (If nobody asks me, I know it; if I want to explain it to whoever asks me the question, I do not know. But nonetheless, I can say with confidence that I know that if there was nothing that passed, there would not be past time; if there was nothing that came, there would be no future time; and if there was nothing present, there would be no present time) (XI, 14, 17, 14, 300). This [non]nihil—how are we to understand it? This could mean here only the mens itself, not inasmuch as “psychological” and “intramental” reality in opposition to the “physical” and “extramental” world but as the first and least contestable occurrence of the creatura, in fact as its most radical figure, since it conditions the knowledge of the change of all the other creaturae.

49. As for the opposition between the subjectivity of time (as pure form of intuition) and the objectivity of the phenomena that it determines in the world (the objects of experience), it is surprising to see that a number of principals to the debate take it as a given, indisputable and obvious, while Kant demonstrated perfectly and definitively its inanity (see Critique of Pure Reason, “Transcendental Aesthetic,” §7, A 36–47/B53–58, Ak. A. IV, 39ff.). A little bit of philosophy never hurts in the examination of conceptual texts, something the critics seem to forget.

50. C. Romano, L’événement et le temps (Paris, 1991), 121, 123. This objection thus nullifies that of Ricoeur: “The major failure [my emphasis] of the Augustinian theory of time is that it is unsuccessful in substituting a psychological conception of time for a cosmological one, despite the undeniable progress this psychology represents in relation to any cosmology of time. The aporia [my emphasis] lies precisely in the fact that while this psychology can legitimately be added to the cosmology, it is unable to replace cosmology, as well as in the further fact that neither concept, considered separately, proposes a satisfying solution to their unresolvable disagreement” (Temps et récit, 3:19 [English trans., 3:12]). I. Bochet indicated, with all good intentions, the limits of this reading; see his Augustin dans la pensée de Paul Ricœur (Paris, 2003), 44ff.). It could be there was neither disagreement, failure, nor aporia.

51. I resume a lexicon I used in my Le visible et le révélé (Paris, 2005), 91ff. The treatment of creation as event, whose advent temporalizes the distentio animi itself, was highlighted by R. Jurgeleit: “Dem Zeit als Dauer kann freilich erst mit dem ersten Ereignis überhaupt einsetzen. Dies ist für Augustinus die Schöpfung, von der in der Bibel berichtet wird. Dieser Bericht kann vergegenwärtigt werden, d. h. der Hörer oder Leser des Alten Testaments kennt die Schöpfung als das erste Ereignis” (“Die Zeitbegriff und die Kohärenz des Zeitlichen bei Augustinus,” Revue des études augustiniennes 34 [1988]: 209–29).

52. Sein und Zeit, §82, 436 (English trans., 486 [modified]). This criticism takes place under cover of a discussion of Hegel’s doctrine of time, but the Augustinian determination of time as distentio animi (XI, 26, 33, 14, 326) is cited, with those of Aristotle, Hegel, and Kant, under the heading “ordinary conception of time” (§81, 427). As often is the case, Heidegger puts Augustine forward as his opponent at the precise moment when he resumes Augustine’s analysis against Aristotle.

53. Sein und Zeit, §68, 347 (English trans., 398).

54. Flasch puts this quite nicely: “Distentio appears on one hand as our life and on the other hand as an evil” (Was ist Zeit? 398). Likewise Ricoeur: “Distentio animi no longer provides just the ‘solution’ to the aporia of the measurement of time. It now expresses the way in which the soul, deprived of the stillness of the eternal present, is torn asunder” (Temps et récit, 1:50 [English trans., 1:27]).

55. Which I have done up until now, just as BA 14 (“distention,” 327, 339); O’Donnell (distentio, Augustine: Confessions, 3:289ff., distention, 295ff.); and Flasch (distentio, Was ist Zeit? 381ff., 398ff.).

56. J.-L. Chrétien has indicated this point quite precisely: “Contrary to what is written about Saint Augustine in a peremptory and professorial tone by those authors who have read, and poorly, only a few pages of the Confessions, and repeat afterward those who have read nothing, the distentio does not characterize the essence of human time in general, but only the time of man the sinner” (La joie spacieuse: Essai sur la dilatation [Paris, 2007], 46).

57. The Vulgate reads: “Fratres, ego me non arbitror comprehendisse: unum autem: quae quidem retro sunt, obliviscens, ad ea vero, quae ante sunt, extendens me ad destinatum persequor, ad bravium supernae vocationis Dei in Christo Jesu.”

58. See, on spaces: “Quando Deum ubique praesentem, et non spatiis distentibus quasi aliqua mole vel distentione diffusum, sed ubique totum, cogitare te extendis, averte mentem ab omnibus imaginibus corporum” (When you extend [extract] your thoughts to thinking omnipresent God present everywhere without spreading out into distanced spaces as if like some mass or by a distantiation, turn your mind from all images of bodies) (Letter 187, 13, 41, PL 33, 848). And, for times: “neque enim . . . variatur affectus sensusque distenditur” (for, [your] affection does not change, nor does it distract [your] feeling) (Confessiones XI, 31, 41, 14, 343).

59. See also other strategic uses of Philippians 3:13 in the Confessiones, which, without explicitly mentioning the opposition distentio/extensio, have treated temporality. For example: IX, 10, 23, 14, 114ff. (the contemplation at Ostia): “Conloquebamur ergo soli valde dulciter et ‘praeterita obliviscentes in ea quae ante sunt extenti’ quaerebamus inter nos apud praesentem veritatem, quod tu es” (We were speaking one to another very sweetly and “forgetting passed things, stretched out toward those to come,” we were seeking together the present truth, that you are); XI, 30, 40, 14, 340: “Videant itaque nullum tempus esse posse sine creatura et desinant istam vanitatem loqui. Extendantur etiam ‘in ea quae ante sunt’ et intelligant te ante omnia tempora aeternum creatorem omnium temporum neque ulla tempora tibi esse coaeterna nec ullam creaturam, etiamsi est aliqua supra tempora” (Let them see that there can be no time without creatures and then cease to speak vainly. Let them also tend “toward the things that are before them” and understand that you are before all times the eternal creator of all the times, that no time is coeternal with you and that no creature either, even if it was above the times); XII, 16, 23, 14, 378: “recordans Hierusalem extento in eam sursum corde”; XIII, 13, 14, 14, 448 (Heavenly Church). But also Commentaries on the Psalms 38, 8, PL 36, 419; or 39, 3, PL 36, 434; or 72, 5 PL 36, 917 (“Ad patriam supernae promissionis Dei”); and 80, 14 PL 36, 1040 (“‘in ea quae ante sunt,’ id est in veritatem extensus”); or else 149, 8, PL 37, 1954 (“Extendit se ipse: tetigit Christus et sonavit dulcedo veritatis”).

60. See the highly relevant commentary of P. Agaësse: “The words intentio and extensio are therefore a bit like synonyms. . . . In opposition, distentio characterizes the state of dispersion and corresponds to the Plotinian διάστασις, scattering in a non-unified time” (note in BA 16, 589ff.). The same opposition is found in J. M. Quinn, “Four Faces of Time in St. Augustine,” Recherches augustiniennes 26 (1992): 181–231.

61. J. J. O’Donnell: “The punning between intentus, extentus, and distentus is only possible in Latin” (Augustine: Confessions, 3:290). I note that even this “kunst-volle Spiel” (Flasch, Was ist Zeit? 397) can be transposed into French and English.

62. Commentaries on the Psalms 83, 4, PL 37, 1058.

63. Commentary on the First Epistle of Saint John IV, 6, PL 35, 2008–9. See also: “Antequam perveniamus ad unum, multis indigemus. Unum nos extendat, ne multa distendant et abrumpant ab uno. ‘Ergo, inquit, non me arbitror apprehendisse unum autem quae retro oblitus, in ea quae ante sunt extentus.’ Non distentus, se extentus. Unum enim extendit. Multa distendunt, unum extendit. Et quamdiu extendit? Quamdiu hic summus. Cum enim venerimus, colligit, non extendit” (Before we reach the one, we have need of multiple things. The one extends us [by extraction, drawing us out], so that multiplicity does not distend us and separate us from the one. “Truly,” says Saint Paul, “I do not believe myself to have understood anything, except just this: forgetting all that is behind me, I tend toward what is before me” [Philippians 3:15]). Not distended, but tended (by extraction). For the one makes for tension. The multiplicity of things distend; the one puts into tension. And for how long a time does he put us in tension? As long as we remain here. When we will have arrived, he will gather, without extending (Sermon 255, 6, 6, PL 38, 1189). See the wise comments of E. P. Meijering, Augustin über Schöpfung, 103ff.

CHAPTER 6

1. There are, of course, exceptions: “Sed sic est Deus per cuncta diffusus, ut non sit qualitas mundi; sed substantia creatrix mundi, sine labore regens, sine onere continens mundum” (But God is so diffused through all things that he is not a quality of the world, but substance creator of the world, which he directs effortlessly and contains without weight) (Letter 187, 14, PL 33, 837). But God also creates the heart (Letter 166, 26, PL 33, 731). When in other places he uses the term mundus (world), Saint Augustine intends it in the Johannine sense: “Mundus enim appelatur non solum ista fabricata quam fecit Deus, caelum et terram, mare, visibilia et invisibilia, sed habitatores mundi mundus vocantur; quomodo domus vocatur et parietas et inhabitantes” (We call world not only this fabrication made by God, the heavens and the earth, the sea, visible and invisible things, but the inhabitants of the world are also called world, just as we call house the walls and also those who live in it) (Commentary on the First Epistle of Saint John II, 12, PL 35, 1995). See:

Quid est “mundus factus est per ipsum”? Caelum, terram, mare et omnia quae in eis sunt, mundus dicitur. Iterum alia significatione dilectores mundi mundus dicuntur. . . . Sed qui non cognoverunt? Qui amando mundum dicti sunt mundus. Amando enim habitamus corde: amando autem hoc apellari meruerunt quod ille, ubi habitabant. Quomodo dicimus: mala ista domus aut bona est illa domus, non in illa quam dicimus malam, parietes accusamus, aut in illa, quam dicimus bonam, parietes laudamus, sed malam domum, inhabiantes malos; et bonam domum, inhabitantes bonos. Sic et mundum, qui inhabitant amando mundum. Qui sunt? Qui diligunt mundum, ipsi enim corde inhabitant in mundi. Nam qui non diligunt mundum, carne versantur in mundo, sed corde inhabitant caelum.

What does it mean: “Through him the world was made”? Heavens and earth, the seas and all that is found therein, are called world. But there is an additional meaning: those who love the world are called the world. . . . But who are those who do not know this? Those who, loving the world, were also named world. For it is by loving that through the heart we dwell; they have in effect deserved, by loving, to be called with the very name of what they inhabit. In the same way when we say that this house is bad or that that one is good, we are not accusing the walls of the one that we call bad, nor praising those of the one that we call good; but in the bad, the inhabitants are bad; in the good, the inhabitants good. In this way we call world those who inhabit the world by loving it. Who are they? Those who love the world; for it is they who are inhabitants of the world by their heart. Those who do not love the world are found there carnally, but by their heart they reside in the heavens. (Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John II, 11, PL 35, 1394)

In this sense one cannot, as Heidegger does, comment on the latter text by saying that “‘World’ means: being in its totality as the definitive How in accordance with which human Dasein positions and holds itself with respect to being” (Vom Wesen des Grundes, GA 9:145 [English trans., 57]). The world defines not being as being, even as a whole, but the (ontic, if you will) whole of what I love, of being as I love it (possibly in the place of God); for I dwell only to the measure of my love. Or rather: to be sure I dwell only by thinking, but I think in the radical sense only as I love, since in the end I know only by loving (see above, Chapter 3, §§20–21).

2. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, §6, 24, 38–40 (English trans., 46 [modified]). I am risking the neologism creatureness in order to avoid the pleonasm being-created [être-créé] used in the French translation by Martineau.

3. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, §20, 92, 34–35, then 24–26 (English trans., 125 [modified]). Heidegger is here criticizing Descartes. His criticism explicitly understands ens creatum in terms of Vorhandenheit, whose connection to creation, in its theological sense, remains entirely undetermined (at least as much so as the meaning of Being according to Descartes).

4. The strange ambiguity in Heidegger’s formulation has not been commented upon often enough: does creation (creature status; creatureness, therefore) truly emerge with “ancient thought” in general or, since the Greeks seem to know nothing of it, with Christian theology alone? And if the latter, why attribute to it the eminently Greek characteristics of presence, Gegenwart, Anwesenheit (Sein und Zeit, §6 25, 19–24 [English trans., 47])? My question becomes even less avoidable when it is seen that Heidegger is here critiquing Descartes, whom it is difficult to consider Greek or a Christian theologian.

5. Heidegger, Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik, §1, GA 40:9 (English trans., 6–7 [modified]).

6. Heidegger, “Was ist Metaphysik?” Wegmarken, GA 9:122 (English trans., 112 [modified]).

7. Heidegger, “Einleitung zu: ‘Was ist Metaphysik?’” Wegmarken, GA 9:382 (English trans. in Pathmarks, 290 [modified]).

8. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, §20, 92, 18 (English trans., 125).

9. Commentaries on the Psalms 128, 5, PL 37, 1691. Only the vices (lust, greed, etc.) cannot praise God because, being nothing themselves, they do not bear the trace of any good creation. In contrast, even the wicked man, who was created and remains, inasmuch as still real, good, can wind up praising: “Non laudant ista, quia non ipse illa fecit. Laudant ibi homines Deum; hominis creator Deus est” (These things, they do not praise him because he did not make them. Here, in contrast, men praise God; for God is creator of Man) (ibid.).

10. See: “Quid est ‘Confessio ejus est in terra et caelo?’ Qua ipse confite-tur? Non, sed qua illum omnia confitentur, omnia clamant; omnium pulchritudo quodam modo vox ejus est, confitentium Deum. Clamat caelum Deo: Tu me fecisti, non ego. Clamat terra: Tu me condisti, non ego. Quomodo clamant ista? Quando considerantur, et hoc invenitur; ex tua consideratione clamant, ex tua voce clamant. . . . Id est, confiteris ei de rebus terrenis, confiteri ei de rebus caelestibus” (What is this “His confession is on the earth and in the heavens”? Would this be the confession by which he would confess himself? No, but rather that by which all things confess him, all acclaim him; the beauty of all that which confesses God is in a certain way the voice of confession. The heavens proclaim to God: “It is you who made me, not myself.” The earth proclaims: “It is you who established me, not myself.” How do they proclaim this? When one considers them [correctly], one finds out: they proclaim it through your consideration, they proclaim it through your voice; . . . that is to say, confess God for the things of the earth, confess him for the things of the heavens) (Commentaries on the Psalms 148, 15, PL 37, 1946ff.).

11. It is within this framework that one must consider (and seriously) the rules posed for the discussion, confrontation, and possible covalidation of the different hypotheses for interpreting scripture in general (and the caelum caeli in particular) in the second section of Confessiones XII (14.17–32.43). The agreement of the exegeses and even the exegetes, despite their differences (when they are found to be mutually legitimating), constitutes an essential condition for recognizing creation (precisely creatureness, to say exactly the creature status of the things seen). Praise can come only from the community of believers.

12. I should note that here it is not a matter of the moral defect of a place, my heart, not yet purified, denounced in other texts. “Invocas Deum, quando in te vocas Deum. Hoc est enim illum invocare, illum in te vocare, quodam modo eum in domum cordis tui invitare. Non autem auderes tantum patrem familias invitare, nisi nosses ei habitaculum praeparare. Si enim tibi dicat Deus: Ecce invocasti me, venio ad te, quo intrabo, tantae sordes conscientiae tuae sustinebo? Si servum meum in domum tuam invitares, nonne prius eam mundare curares? Invocas me in cor tuam, et plenum est rapinis” (You invoke God when you call him into yourself. For that is what it means to invoke him: to call him into yourself, to invite him in some fashion into the house of your heart. Now you would not dare to invite even the father of your family if you had not prepared a lodging for him. But if God says to you: “Behold, you called me, I come unto you, where will I enter? If you invite my servant into your house, wouldn’t you take care first to clean it? You called me to come into your body, and it is full of rapaciousness”) (Commentaries on the Psalms 30, 2, PL 36, 249).

13. See: “et exclamaverunt voce magna: ‘Ipse fecit nos’ . . . responsion[ibus] caeli et terrae et omnium . . . dicentium ‘Non sumus Deus’ et ‘Ipse fecit nos’” (and cried out with a loud voice: “He, he alone made us” . . . the responses of heaven and earth and of all things . . . saying: “We are not God” and “He, he alone made us”) (X, 6, 9, 14, 156). Or: “Ecce sunt caelum et terra, clamant, quod facta sint; mutantur enim atque variantur. Quidquid autem factum non est et tamen est, non est in eo quicquam, quod ante non erat: quod est mutari atque variari. Clamant etiam, quod se ipsa non fecerint” (Behold heaven and earth, which say that they were made; they change and vary. Everything that was not made but which nevertheless is does not give place for anything whatsoever that was not there beforehand: which is what is called changing and varying. They cry aloud, too, that they did not make themselves) (XI, 4, 6, 14, 280).

14. When it takes on a positive sense, it is always a matter of the very here (ibi) of God or of a here seen from God’s point of view, which becomes acceptable for us only eschatologically: “Ibi esse nostrum non habebit mortem, ibi nosse nostrum non habebit errorem, ibi amare nostrum non habebit offensionem” (Here, no more death for our being, here no more error for our knowledge, here no more offense done to our love) (City of God XI, 28, 35, 122).

15. See Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel, by P. Sabatier, newly collected and edited by Erzabtei Beuron (Freiburg, 1951), 2:2–6.

16. Ève, in Œuvres poétiques complètes, ed. F. Porché (Paris, 1967), 936.

17. De natura boni XVIII, 1, 454. See: “materies informis corporalium forma-rum capax ab eis ὓλην appellaretur” (Contra Faustum XXI, 4, PL 42, 39).

18. See: “nec intelligis, cum Deus dicitur de nihilo fecisse quod fecit, non dixit aliud quia de seipso non fecit. . . . De nihilo est ergo, quod non est de aliquo” (you do not understand that when it is said that God made what he made with nothing, nothing other than this is being said: he did not make it with himself. . . . That is made with nothing which is not made with something” (Contra Julianum V, 31, PL 45, 1470). In other words God created starting from and with the stuff of the only imaginable contrary to him, nothingness: “Ei ergo qui summe est, non potest esse contrarium nisi quod non est” (Nothing can be contrary to him who exists supremely, except what is not) (De natura boni XIX, 1, 456).

19. See the study by J. Pepin, “Recherches sur le sens et les origines de l’expres-sion caelum caeli dans le livre XII des Confessions de saint Augustin,” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin du Cange) 23, no. 3 (1953); repr. in Ex Platonicorum Persona: Etudes sur les lectures philosophiques de saint Augustin (Amsterdam 1997), as Chapter 6, “Le platonisme judéo-chrétien d’Alexandrie et l’exégèse augustinienne du ‘ciel du ciel.’” He comes to several conclusions: (a) other bib-lical bases (Deuteronomy 10:14; Amos 9:6; Psalm 113:24, but also Psalm 67:34 and 148:4); (b) the origin of the theme in Philo, De Opifice Mundi §35; and esp. Saint Ambrose, Expositio Psalmi 118, 8: “Unde et caelum purius et defaecatius ad omni labe peccati est, longeque remotius ab illo de quo scriptum est ‘Sicut volatilia caeli’ (Matthew 6:26)” (CSEL 62:127); (c) its posterity (Prosper of Aquitaine, Expositio in Psalmos 118, 16 PL 51, 329); (d) its plurivocity (formless matter of the intellectual creature, of the visible world, and the formed being of the invisible creature by opposition to the physical sky); and, above all, (d) its ambiguous status including both “intellectual creature near in dignity to the divine Word,” but which also “inasmuch as it turns away from Wisdom . . . lives wretchedly in uniformity, but . . . receives counsel by turning toward it” (216). See also H. Armstrong, “Spiritual or Intelligible Matter in Plotinus and St. Augustine,” Augustinus Magister, 1:277–83; and A. Solignac, BA 14, 592ff.

20. See: “spiritualem vel intellectualem illam creaturam semper faciem Dei contemplantem” (this spiritual and intellectual creature who is always contemplating the face of God) (XII, 17, 24, 14, 380).

21. Or casta civitas tua (XII, 15, 20, 14, 372).

22. Confessiones XII, 16, 23, 14, 378. This wonderful text melds Psalm 122 (the ascent to Jerusalem) and Philippians 3:13 (see above, Chapter 5, §36 and Chapter 7, §47).

23. I am here taking up an illuminating hypothesis put forward by J. J. O’Donnell (see Augustine: Confessions, 3:250ff.).

24. I am following the reconstitution of the text attempted by J. J. O’Donnell (Augustine: Confessions, 3:344ff.) on the basis of Beuron, Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel, 16–17, 26.

25. The Vulgate says either in species suas (Genesis 1:21) or secundum species suas (Genesis 1:24) or juxta species suas (Genesis 1:25), as well as secundum genus suum (Genesis 1:21) or also in genere suo (Genesis 1:24, 25).

26. De Genesi ad litteram III, 12, 20, BA 48, 242ff. Farther along, the same text observes that in order to create man, God does not say fiat, but passes into the plural: “Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram) (III, 19, 29, BA 48, 258), indicating in this way not only the Trinity but also the direct implication of God, which no longer harbors the neutrality of (efficient) causality and abstract omnipotence.

27. Certainly, in this same text, Saint Augustine hopes that we will not say “Hominem vero non imaginem, sed ad imaginem” (ibid.), arguing on the basis of the authority of 1 Corinthians 11:7: “Man should not cover his head, for he is the image and glory of God” (doubtless, for that matter, wrongly, because this is about ὲνήρ/vir, not homo and because our question concerns not so much its image status as the likeness of this image). But he concedes at least that even if man is not always reducible to the ad imaginem, this restriction never applies to the Son, “imago aequalis Patri.” Concerning the importance of this ad, see the note “L’homme à l’image,” in BA 15, 589; H. Somers, “Image de Die: Les sources de l’exégèse de saint Augustin,” Revue des études augustiniennes 7 (1961): 105–25; P. Hadot, “L’image de la Trinité dans l’âme chez Victorinus et chez saint Augustin,” Studia Patristica 6 (1962): 410–24; and R. A. Markus, “Imago and similitudo in Augustine,” Revue des études augustiniennes 10 (1964): 125–43.

28. De civitate Dei XI, 2, BA 35, 36. This is indeed a case of a reflection on ad imaginem: “Cum enim homo rectissime intellegatur, vel si hoc non potest, saltem credatur factus ad imaginem Dei” (ibid.).

29. “In its proper sense, however, the distinction of being an image belongs only to man,” says quite beautifully Etienne Gilson, Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin, 288 (English trans., 219). But in a sense still more radical than he seems to suppose: not because man is the image but because he appears in, according to, by reference to the unimageable and thus bears his image.

30. Commentary on the Psalms 42, 6 PL 36, 480.

31. These terms are very nearly confirmed by the Confessiones: “Trinitatem omnipotentem quis intelliget? Et quis non loquitur eam si tamen eam? . . . Vellem ut haec tria cogitarent homines in se ipsis. . . . sed dico autem haec tria: esse, nosse, velle. Sum enim et scio et volo: sum sciens et volens, et scio esse me et velle, et volo esse et scire” (Who understands the omnipotent Trinity and who can speak of it, if indeed it is it of which he speaks? . . . I would like for men to think in themselves these three things. . . . I will say them, these three things: being, knowing, willing. For I am and know and will: I am knowing and willing, and I know myself being and willing, and I will being and knowing) (XIII, 11, 12, 14, 442).

32. De Trinitate XIV, 8, 11, 16, 374.

33. Ibid., 12, 18, 16, 386.

34. Ibid.

35. De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum I, 4, 6, BA 1, 144.

36. Levinas: “The face is signification, and signification without con-text. . . . In this sense one can say that the face is not ‘seen.’ It is what cannot be-come a content, which your thought would embrace, it is uncontainable, it leads you beyond” (Ethique et infini: Entretien avec Philippe Nemo [Paris, 1982], 90–91 [English trans., 86–87]).

37. Nietzsche, “als das ‘abschätzende Tier an sich,’” Zur Genealogie der Moral II, §8 (English trans., 70).

38. Heidegger, “Was ist Metaphysik?” in Wegmarken, GA 9:118 (English trans., 108).

39. Heidegger, Brief über den “Humanismus,” 342 (English trans., 210).

40. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man XI, 3, PG 44, col 156b (English trans., 396–97 [modified]). See also the same teaching in, among others, Basil of Caesarea, Against Eunomius III, 6, PG, 29, col. 668bff.; as well as Jean Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God V.

41. Confessiones X, 5, 7, 14, 150 (see above, Chapter 2). This citation of 1 Corinthians 2:11ff., which we saw was diverted from its obvious sense in Saint Paul, returns to it again in fine within the frame of a complete response to the question of what we are: “Quomodo ergo scimus et nos ‘quae a Deo donata sunt nobis’? Respondetur mihi, quoniam quae per ejus Spiritum scimus etiam sic ‘nemo scit nisi Spiritus Dei’” (How then do we too know “the things that God has given us”? The response given to me is this: the things that we know by the Spirit, even in this way, “nobody knows them except the Spirit of God”) (XIII, 31, 46, 14, 512). What we know of ourselves, since that too, comes to us as a gift, we know only inasmuch as the Spirit knows it in us and for us. We are ego, but of a cogito that is displaced, by reference, unto the image and resemblance of the incomprehensible. I think myself in another thought besides my own, more mine than whatever I myself might think myself.

42. Confessiones X, 5, 7, 14, 152, which cites at the end Psalm 89:8.

43. Letter 157, 2, 9: “Anima quippe velut pondere, amore fertur quocumque fertur. Jubemur itaque detrahere de pondere cupiditatis quod accedat ad pondus caritatis, donec illud consumatur, hoc perficiatur” (The soul, wherever it goes, is taken there by its love as by a weight. Let us strive then to shake off the weight of desire so as to add to the weight of charity, to the point that the first is consumed and the latter completed) (PL 33, 677).

44. De Trinitate XI, 11, 18, 16, 210.

45. Aristotle, Physics 4.8.214b12–16.

46. Iamblichus uses this distinction to explain that the νοũς can descend if it goes toward the body but ascend if it goes toward the intelligible (according to Simplicius, Commentary of the “Categories,” Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, vol. 8, ed. C. Kalbfleisch [Berlin, 2007], 128, l, 32–35). See the evidence collected by D. O’Brien, “‘Pondus meum, amor meus’ (Conf., XIII, 9, 10): Augustin et Iamblique,” Revue d’histoire des religions 4 (1981): 423–28; and Studia Patristica 16 (Berlin, 1985); see also R. J. O’Connell, Imagination and Metaphysics in St. Augustine (Milwaukee, 1968), 4–16; as well as J. J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 3:356ff. This rapprochement (as also with Aristotle and Plotinus) still remains highly approximate, since it concerns neither love nor even weight but quantities in the incorporeal ἐν τοῖς ἀσωμάτοις

47. “Terrena et humida [partes] suopte nutu et suo pondere ad pares angulos in terram et in mare ferantur, reliquae duae partes, una ignea, altera animalis, ut illae superiores in medium locum mundi gravitate ferantur et pondere, sic hae rursus rectis lineis in coelestem locum subvolent, sive ipsa natura superiora appetente, sive quod a gravioribus leviora natura repellantur” (Tusculanes I, 17, 40). See also: “Inde est indagationata initiorum et tanquam seminum . . . unde terra et quibus librata ponderibus, quibus cavernis maria sustineantur, qua omnia delata gravitate medium mundi locum semper expetant, qui idem infimus in rotundo” (Tusculanes V, 24, 69, 48 and 496).

48. De quantitate animae XXII, 37, BA 5, 302.

49. Commentaries on the Psalms 29, 2, 10, PL 36, 222.

50. De civitate Dei XXII, 11, 1, 37, 602. Likewise: “Sed necesse est, inquiunt, ut terrena corpora naturale pondus vel in terra tenat, vel cogat ad terram et ideo in caelo esse non possint” (It is necessary, they say, that the natural weight of earthly bodies either maintains them on the earth or forces them toward the earth and that therefore they cannot be in the heavens) (ibid., XIII, 18, 35, 298).

51. See a commentary on this verse in De Genesi ad litteram IV, 3, 7, 14, BA 48, 288–98; and De Genesi contra Manicheos I, 16, 25–26, BA 50, 212ff. (and the note on p. 515).

52. Virgil, Bucolics 2.65, ed. F. Plessis and P. Legay (Paris, 1903), 14.

53. Commentary on the Gospel of John XXVI, 4, PL 35, 1608. See “amandi trahitur” (26, 5, PL 35, 1609).

54. See 2 Corinthians 4:17, on which Saint Augustine offered little commentary.

55. De musica VI, 11, 29, BA 7, 424.

56. Letter 55, 10, 18, PL 33, 212ff. See also: “Et est pondus voluntatis et amoris, ubi apparet, quanti quidque in appetendo, fugiendo, praeponendo postponendoque pendatur” (And in the weight of the will and of the soul appears what is at issue in what one seeks, what one flees, what one prioritizes, and what one postpones, and its price) (De Genesi ad litteram IV, 4, 8, BA 48, 290). Or: “Et ordinem aliquem petit aut tenet, sicut sunt pondera vel collocationes corporum, atque amores aut delectationes animarum” (And [every creation of God] asks for and possesses a certain order, the loves and pleasure of souls as well as the weight and placement of bodies) (De Trinitate VI, 10, 12, 15, 498).

57. De civitate Dei XI, 28, 35, 122.

58. Ibid., 26, 35, 84.

59. De libero arbitrio III, 1, 2, 6, 326.

60. Sermon 344, 1, PL 39, 1512. See: “pondere superbiae meae in ima decidebam” (the weight of my pride makes me fall lower) (Confessiones IV, 15, 27, 13, 454). And: “et non stabam frui Deo meo, sed rapiebar ad te decore tuo moxque deripebar abs te pondere meo et ruebam in ista cum gemitu; et pondus hoc consuetudo carnalis” (and I did not remain stable in the enjoyment of you, but I was ravished unto you by your beauty; then all at once I was hoisted away far from you [dragged] by my own weight, and I collapsed in grief among the things around me; and this weight was the habit of the flesh) (VII, 17, 23, 13, 626). This confirms: “pondere malae suae consuetudinis” (beneath the weight of bad habit) (De Genesi contra Manicheos II, 22, 34, 50, 352). And one more time: “Amant enim requiem, sive piae animae, sive iniquae; sed qua perveniunt ad id quod amant, plurimae nesciunt. . . . Nam sicut corpus tam diu nititur pondere sive deorsum versus sive sursum versus, donec ad locum quo nititur veniens conquiescat . . . , sic animae ad ea quae amant propterea nituntur ut perveniendo requiescant” (Letter 55, 10, 18ff., PL 33, 212ff.).

61. De Trinitate VIII, 2, 3, 16, 32. See: “tanta vis amoris, ut ea quae cum amore diu cogitaverit, eisque curae glutino inhaeserit, attrahat secum etiam cum ad se cogitandum quodam modo redit” (so great is the strength of love that what it [the spirit] has, for a long time, thought lovingly and that to which it is stuck in caring about it, it draws it along with it in some fashion [even] when it turns back toward itself in order to think itself) (De Trinitate X, 5, 7, 16, 134).

62. Commentary on the Gospel of John VI, 20, PL 35, 1435.

63. Confessiones X, 28, 39, 14, 208. See above, Chapter 4, §2.

64. Commentaries on the Psalms 86, 3, PL 37, 1 (respectively 1102 and 1103).

65. Commentaries on the Psalms 121, 1 PL 37, 1618.

66. Ibid.

67. Commentaries on the Psalms 31, 2, 5, PL 36, 260.

68. Sermon 34, 1, 2, PL 38, 210. This transcendental and unconditioned character of love was seen perfectly by Jaspers: “The universality of love: In human life, Augustine finds nothing in which there is no love. In everything that he is, man is ultimately will, and the innermost core of will is love. Love is a striving for something I have not (appetitus). . . . Everything a man does, even evil, is caused by love. . . . There is no excuse that would permit him not to love” (Augustinus, 51 [English trans., 95 (modified)]).

69. Anders Nygren, Den kristna kärkkstanken genom tiderna: Eros und Agape (Stockholm, 1932), vol. 1 (English trans., 494). Seeing as well this point and expressing it in the same terms, Arendt credits it to Saint Augustine: “Charity and covetousness differ only by the object they intend, not by how they intend it” (Le concept d’amour . . . , p. 40).

70. Nygren, Den kristna kärkkstanken genom tiderna (Agape and Eros, 210 and 451 respectively).

71. Ibid. (Agape and Eros, 460). Nygren goes on: “The impulse toward this deepening [in Augustine’s doctrine of love] came, without doubt, from the New Testament, but not from it alone. What Augustine found in the New Testament would never have been enough by itself to give love the place it holds for him. It was only because he came to Christianity by way of Neoplatonism that he became aware of the centrality of love in Christianity” (ibid. [my emphasis]). A truly peculiar vision of things is called for to think that Saint Augustine first had the experience of love in reading books, and above all those of philosophers, without imagining that his conception could have come from the things themselves. Later on, commenting on a text that shows precisely that every “ecstasy” (Neoplatonic or not) fails (“aciem figere non evalui” [Confessiones VII, 17, 23, 13, 628]) if it claims to do away with the mediation of Christ, Nygren acknowledges finding no foothold for his thesis but obviously does not hesitate to maintain it: “True, in certain respects this differs from the Neoplatonic tradition, and in particular the ecstatic absorption in God is lacking; yet it is impossible to doubt that the entire scheme of this ascent is determined by the Eros motif” (Agape and Eros, 467 [my emphasis]). In other words the argument can be summed up in this way: the text cited has nothing Neoplatonic about it; therefore, it is indubitable that it is thoroughly Neoplatonic. It is remarkable that this sort of sophistry or, more simply (for it isn’t even a matter of a ruse or of ignorance), that this contempt for the texts could enjoy so long an authority. See the critical account of Holte, Béatitude et sagesse, 207ff.).

72. Homilies on the First Letter of John II, 8, PL 35, 1992; De civitate Dei XIV, 28, 35, 464.

73. Commentaries on the Psalms 90, 1, 8. One can also oppose the desire for the contingent, for the passing (“nihil aliud est cupiditas, nisi amor rerum transuentium” [desire is nothing other than love of things that pass] [De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII 33, BA 10, 98]), to love as such, which loves what does not pass and for itself: “Nihil aliud est amare, quam propter se ipsam rem aliquam appetere” (To love is nothing other than to seek a thing for itself) (De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII 35, 1, also citing the “radix omnium malorum cupiditas” from 1 Timothy 6:10).

74. De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII 35, 2; and Sermon 53, 1: “Quomodo enim non erit ibi caritas, cum nihil caritas, quam dilectio? Ipsa autem fides definita est ‘quae per dilectionem operatur’ (Galatians 5:6)” (PL 38, 359). Similarly: “Ipsa vero dilectio sive caritas (nam unius rei est utrumque nomen)” (Dilection itself or charity [for both names count for one and the same thing]) (De Trinitate XV, 18, 32, 16, 510).

75. Sermon 349, 3, PL 39, 1529.

76. De doctrina christiana III, 10, 16, BA 11, 258.

77. De Trinitate VIII, 3, 4, 16, 32, with the excellent commentary of P. Agaësse: “There is thus a superiority of bonum to esse” (BA 16, 586).

78. Commentary on the First Epistle of John VII, 8, PL 35, 2033. See on this point the analysis by J. Gallay, “Dilige et quod vis fac: Notes d’exégèse augustiniennes,” Recherches de science religieuse 43, no. 4 (1955): 545–55.

79. A surprising text perfectly justifies a rapprochement with Kant, since it asks how one can distinguish the betrayal (traditio) of Judas handing Christ over to death from the Father (traditio again) handing his Son over to the world: “Qui Filio proprio non perpercit, sed pro nobis omnibus tradidit” (Romans 8:32)? He answers by asking us to judge according to the intentions: “Diversa ergo intentio diversa facta fecit” (The difference in intentions makes for the difference in acts). How to judge the intentions? By considering the wills: “Videtis quia non quid faciat homo considerandum est, sed quo animo et voluntate faciat” (See that you must not consider what a man does, but the will and spirit in which he does it). But again, how to judge wills? According to the criteria of charity: “Tantum valet caritas. Videte quia sola discernit, videte quia facta hominum sola distinguit” (So valuable is charity that it alone, mark you well, discriminates, that it alone, mark you well, distinguishes the works and deeds of men) (Commentary on the First Epistle of Saint John VII, 7, PL 35, 2032). On this criterion see G. Combès, La charité d’après saint Augustin (Paris, 1934), esp. the appendix on the natural virtues without charity.

80. Commentary on the First Epistle of Saint John, X, 7, PL 35, 2059, and II, 8, PL 35, 1193. See also: “Habere autem caritatem, et facere malum, non potest” (To have charity and do evil, that cannot happen) (VII, 6, PL 35, 2032).

81. One can even extend this univocity to a certain carnal charity, a spontaneous one between animals: “Nonne videmus etiam in multus animantibus et irrationalibus ubi non est spiritualis caritas, sed carnalis et naturalis, exigi tamen magno affectu de uberibus matris lac a parvulis” (Commentary on the First Letter of Saint John IX, 1, PL 35, 2045). See also Sermon 90, 10, PL 38, 566.

82. De civitate Dei XIV, 7, 1, 35, 370–72. We find in St. Ambrose a sketch of the Augustinian exegesis of this passage when he opposes dilectio and amor to the benefit of the latter. While the former would designate only “animi caritas” (charity of spirit), the second would also include “quemdam aestum conceptum corporis ac mentis ardore” (some warmth conceived by the ardor of the body and mind) (Commentary on the Gospel of Luke X, 176, PL 15, 1848). See an excellent commentary by H. Petré, “Caritas,” Étude sur le vocabulaire latin de la charité chrétienne (Louvain, 1948 [thesis of 1941, Paris]), 79–91. On the originality of the position here taken by Saint Augustine in opposition to previous authors, see P. Agaësse (in Commentaire de la première épitre de saint Jean, Sources chrétiennes [Paris: CERF, 1961], 75:35); and G. Bardy (note to “Amour et charité,” in BA 35, 529ff.). Inversely, dilectio can sometimes take on a negative meaning in the scriptures themselves, as in Psalm 10:6 and 1 John 2:15.

83. Commentary on the Gospel of John CXXIII, 5, PL 35, 1968, which, just like the Homilies on the First Letter of John VIII, 5, PL 35, 2038, lays out the same exegesis as De civitate Dei. Nygren, a very reliable guide a contrario, comments: “he tries to prove that there is no difference between amor and Caritas” (Agape and Eros, 557). We should be more confident about Saint Francis de Sales: “In contrast, Saint Augustine, having given better consideration to the usage of the word of God, shows clearly that the name love is no less sacred than that of dilection and that both sometimes signify a holy affection and also other times a depraved passion, adducing in support several passages from scripture” (Traité de l’amour de Dieu I, 14, 394).

84. Commentary on the First Letter of Saint John II, 8, and II, 14, PL 35, 1195 and 1197.

85. There is, therefore, an ambiguity in seeking the place outside of oneself, “Quaerebam te foris a me” (I sought you outside myself) (VI, 1, 1, 13, 514)—an uncertain step, because if I must indeed seek an other than myself, it could be that this other (and this first place) is not found outside myself but in me. One would thus commit the inverse error of Husserl (in Cartesian Meditations §69, Husserliana 1:183; see above, Chapter 2, §15n p. 348n68 and n69), when, in order to play interiority off against exteriority, without seeing that the nonplace disqualifies them both, he truncates the text of De vera religione XXXIX, 72: “Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas; et si tuam naturam mutabilem inveneris, transcende et teipsum. Sed memento cum te transcendis, ratiocinantem animam te transcendere. Illuc ergo tende, unde ipsum lumen rationis accenditur” (Do not go outside, enter into you yourself; the truth resides in the most interior of man; and if you found your mutable nature, transcend yourself too. But remember that when you transcend yourself, you also transcend your reasoning soul. Direct yourself therefore toward the point from which the rational light shines) (BA 8, 130). Husserl (who curiously omits the ipsum) keeps from Augustine’s text only what in fact amounts to a citation of Plotinus: ἄναγε ἐπί σαυτòν ϰαίἰδὲ return into yourself and see” (Enneads 1.6.9), as was rightly observed by N. Fischer, “Sein und Sinn der Zeitlichkeit im philosophischen Denken Augustinus,” Revue des études augustiniennes 33 (1987): 205–34. It is necessary to return into oneself, or rather toward oneself, but so as to exit oneself at once: “Redi ad te: sed iterum sursum versus cum redieris ad te, noli remanere in te. Prius ad his quae foris sunt redi ad te, et deinde redde te ei qui fecit te” (Return toward yourself: but, again, when you return toward yourself by reascending toward the heights, do not remain in yourself. First, return from the things that are exterior to you toward yourself and next offer yourself to he who made you) (Sermon 330, 3 PL 39, 1457). In fact, the truly interior man is not the ego but the Christ who dwells in him: “Ille autem qui consulitur, docet, qui ‘in interiore homine habitare dictus est Christus’” (The one whom we consult, the one who teaches, the one about whom it is said that “he dwells in the inner man, the Christ” [Ephesians 3:16–17]) (De Magistro XI, 38, 6, 102).

86. Confessiones III, 6, 11, 13, 382. See: “omni luce clarior, sed omni secreto interior, omni honore sublimior” (clearer than all light, but more inward than every secret, more sublime than all honor) (IX, 1, 1, 14, 72). “Rursum, cum ad illum, quantum possum, ingressus fuero, interiorem mihi et superiorem invenio” (Again, having proceeded toward him as far as possible, I find him more inside myself and higher) (Commentary on the Psalms 134, 4, PL 37, 1740). And “cum sit ipse [Deus] nullo locorum vel intervallo vel spatio incommutabili excellentique potentia et interior omne re, quia in ipso sunt omnia, et exterior omni re, quia ipse est ante omnia” (since God, without any spatial or temporal interval, but by the excess of his immutable power, is at once more inside each thing, because all things are in him, and more outside each thing, because he is before them all) (De Genesi ad litteram VIII, 26, 48, BA 49, 82).

87. Homilies on the First Letter of John II, 14, PL 35, 1997.

88. Commentaries on the Psalms 70, s. 1, 1, PL 36, 874.

89. See Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford, 2002), §26; see also Chapter 2, §15 (above).

90. De libero arbitrio III, 16, BA 6, 410. See also: “Neque omnino potuit nisi Deus omnipotens esse talium creator animarum, quas et non dilectus faciat, et diligens eas reficiat, et dilectus ipse perficiet; qui et non existentibus praestat ut sint” (Absolutely nobody, outside omnipotent God, could be the creator of souls such as he makes them while not being loved by them, remakes them by loving them, and perfects them in being beloved; he who gives being even to those who do not [yet] exist) (III, 20, 56, BA 6, 430). In Confessiones VII, 21, 27, the verse 1 Corinthians 4:17 becomes an argument for the theory of knowledge: “Et coepi et inveni, quidquid illac verum legeram, hac cum commendatione gratiae tuae dici, ut qui videt non ‘sic glorietur, quasi non acceperit’ non solum id quod videt, sed etiam ut videat—‘Quid enim habes quod non accepit?’” (And I began to discover that all the truth that I read there [in the Platonists] was found here [in the scriptures] with the recommendation of your grace, to the effect that he who sees “does not glorify himself as if he had not received” not only what he sees but also the very fact of seeing—“what have you that you have not received?”) (13, 638).

91. De Trinitate V, 15, 16, 15, 460ff., and XV, 19, 36, 16, 522.

CHAPTER 7

1. The point was contested by R. Mortley, From Word to Silence, vol. 2, The Way of Negation, Christian and Greek (Bonn, 1986), but should no longer be after V. Lossky, “Les éléments de ‘théologie négative’ dans la pensée de saint Au-gustin,” Augustinus Magister, 1:575–81; and D. Carabine, “Negative Theology in the Thought of St. Augustine,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 59 (1992): 5–22.

2. De Trinitate VI, 7, 8, 15, 488.

3. Confessiones I, 4, 4, 13, 278.

4. See my own explanation of this in “In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of It,” in Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York, 2002), chap. 6, §2.

5. Confessiones, I, 1, 1, 13, 272. Citation composed of Psalm 47:1, 144:3, and 95:4. The latter receives an illuminating commentary here: “Ergo quid diceret? Quoniam ‘magnus Dominus et laudabilis nimis.’ Quid enim dictura est lingua parva ad laudandum magnum? Dicendo ‘nimis,’ emisit vocem et dedit cogitationi quod sapiat; tanquam dicens: Quod sonare non possum, tu cogita; et cum cogitaveris, parvum erit. Quod cogitatio nullius explicat, lingua alicujus explicat? ‘Magnus Dominus, et laudabilis nimis.’ Ipse laudetur, ipse praedicetur, ejus gloria nuntietur et aedificatur domus” (And what then would the Prophet be saying? That “The Lord is great and praiseworthy par excellence.” For what can a tiny tongue say to praise he who is great? In saying “par excellence,” it emits a sound and gives thought to meditate; as if it said: think what I cannot utter; and when you will have thought it, you will see that it is not a great-thing. What the thought of no person explains, whose tongue will explain it? “Great is the Lord and praiseworthy par excellence.” Let him be praised, him and him alone, let him be glorified, him and him alone; let his glory be proclaimed and his house will be built) (Commentaries on the Psalms 95, 4, PL 37, 1230).

6. Confessiones XIII, 33, 48, 14, 516. Observe one difference: the first praise came only from man (“aliqua portio creaturae tuae” [a portion of your creation]), while the last rises from all the works.

7. Sermon 117, 3, 5, PL 38, 663. See also: “Si comprehenderis, non est Deus” (Sermon 52, 6, 16, PL 38, 360).

8. De Trinitate XV, 2, 2, 16, 422. This text can be seen as the source of Pascal: “Take comfort, you would not seek me if you had not found me” (The Mystery of Jesus, 314), by way of St. Bernard: “Sed enim in hoc est mirum, quod nemo te quaerere valet, nisi qui prius invenerit. Vis igitur inveniri, ut quaereris, quaeri, ut inveniaris. Potes quidem quaeri et inveniri, non tamen praeveniri” (De diligendo Deo VII, 22, PL 182, 987).

9. Letter 130, 15, 28, PL 33, 505.

10. Saint Augustine, for that matter, always denied that God could be determined by substance (οὐσία as first acceptation of ὄν):) “Manifestum est Deum abusive substantiam vocari, ut nomine usitatiore intelligatur essentia, quod vere et proprie dicitur; ita ut fortasse solum Deum dici oporteat essentiam” (It is manifestly an abuse to call God a substance, in such a way that one means by that the more usual name essence, which is said truly and properly, so that perhaps God alone is rightly called essence) (De Trinitate VII, 5, 10 [citing Exodus 3:14], 15, 538). For “nihil in eo [Deo] secundum accidens dicitur, quia nihil ei accidit; nec tamen omne quod dicitur, secundum substantiam dicitur. In rebus enim creatis atque mutabilibus, quod non secundum substantiam dicitur, restat ut secundum accidens dicatur. . . . In Deo autem nihil quidem secundum accidens dicitur, quia nihil in eo mutabile” (nothing in God is said according to the accident because nothing happens to him accidentally; but all that is said is not said of the substance. For in created and mutable things, which are not said according to substance, they can only be said according to the accident. . . . But in God nothing is said according to the accident because in him nothing is mutable) (De Trinitate V, 5, 6, 15, 432). It is therefore necessary, rigorously, not to speak of substantia with regard to God but possibly of essentia: “substantia, vel, si melius dicitur, essentia Dei” (the substance, or to say it better, the essence of God) (III, 10, 21, 15, 318, as well as V, 2, 3, 15, 428). For a text that makes an exception (De Trinitate VI, 7, 8, 15, 488), see below, p. 390n18.

11. Respectively E. Zum Brunn, “L’exégèse augustinienne de ‘Ego sum qui sum’ et la ‘métaphysique de l’Exode’” (in Dieu et l’être: Exégèses de l’Exode 3.14 and de Coran 20.11–24, ed. E. Zum Brunn (Paris, 1978), 142; G. Madec, Saint Augustin et la philosophie: Notes critiques (Paris, 1996), 39; D. Dubarle, Dieu avec l’être: De Parménide à Saint Thomas: Essai d’ontologie théologale (Paris, 1986), 173 (originally appearing as “Essai sur l’ontologie théologale de saint Augustin,” Revue des études augustiniennes 16 [1981]: 197–288); and E. Gilson, L’être et l’essence ([19481], 19622), 45. Despite the care, which is, I think, a bit excessive, that the first three take to distinguish themselves from the last with regard to “the metaphysics of Exodus,” it remains obvious that they agree on the nomination of God as Being.

12. See M. Harl, “Exode, 3, 14 chez les Peres grecs des quatre premiers siècles,” in Brunn, Dieu et l’Être, 87–106.

13. De civitate Dei VIII, 11 (no doubt an allusion to Timaeus 27d), which concludes from this that Plato was not unaware of the book of Exodus, “illorum librum expertem non fuisse” (34, 270–72). See another echo of this argument: “Sed haec omnia terrena, volatica, transitoria, si comparentur illis veritati, ubi dictum est ‘Ego sum qui sum,’ totum hic quod transit, vanitas dicitur” (But all these earthly, aerial, and passing things, once compared to this other truth, where it is said “I am He who is,” all that passes here is called vanity) (Commentaries on the Psalms 143, 11, PL 37, 1863; and De vera religione XLIX, 97, 8).

14. Commentary on the Gospel of John XXXVI, 6, PL 35, 1679. See the reading by A.-M. La Bonnardière of the forty-seven Augustinian commentaries on Exodus 3:14, reproduced in Brunn, Dieu et l’être, 164.

15. De Trinitate I, 1, 2, 15, 90. See also, with the same intention, Commentaries on the Psalms 49, 14, PL 37, 575, and 82, 14, PL 37, 1055.

16. Confessiones XIII, 31, 46, 16, 514. I am following the text of Knöll and Skutella, which the BA copies. Here J. J. O’ Donnell (Augustine: Confessions, 3:411) refers to saint Paul in terms of De Magistro V, 14: “Ergo, ut ea potissimum auctoritate utamur, quae nobis carissima est, cum ait Paulus apostolus: ‘Non erat in Christo est et non, sed est in illo erat’ [1 Corinthians, 1:19], non opinor, putandum tres istas litteras, quae enuntiamus cum dicimus est, fuisse in Christo, sed illud potius quod istis tribus litteris significatur” (Therefore, out of preference for using an authority that is very dear to us, when the apostle Paul says: “in Christ there was no yes/is and no, but there was only yes/is,” I do not think that what was in Christ was these three letters that we pronounce when we say yes/is, but what they signify” (6, 48). This text is the basis for Gilson’s entire interpretation, “Notes sur l’être et le temps chez saint Augustin,” Recherches augustiniennes 2 (1962): 205–23. As early as 1932, he assimilated this formulation, though nonbiblical, to “the divine name that God Himself announced” (L’esprit de la philosophie médiévale [Paris, 19321; here cited according to 19432/1969, 53n2] [English trans., 53]). C. J. Vogel, privileging Est est, goes so far as to conclude that “it is by God himself that the philosophical notion of absolute Being is acknowledged and confirmed as expressing his essence” (“‘Ego sum qui sum’ et sa signification pour une philosophie chrétienne,” Revue des sciences religieuses 4 [1961]: 337–55, 354). See another substantive use of est: “Discute rerum mutationes, invenies fuit et erit; cogita Deum, invenies est, ubi fuit et erit esse non possit” (Dissect the variations of things and you will find it was and it will be; think God and you will find neither it was nor it will be) (Commentary on the Gospel of John XXXVIII, 10, PL 35, 1680). Yet this sort of redoubling can also be extended to the good: “Est enim est, sicut bonorum bonum, bonum est” (He is in effect is, just as the good among the goods [is] good) (Commentaries on the Psalms 134, 5, PL 37, 1741).

17. De libero arbitrio III, 7, 20, 6, 362. The rest of the text also speaks of “id quod summe est.”

18. Sermon 7, 7, PL 38, 66. See also: “Deus . . . , cui profectio ipsum esse, unde essentia nominata est, maxime ac verissime competit. Quod enim mutatur, non servat ipsum esse” (God . . . , who in the truest sense comes forward as Being itself, from whom essence draws its name. What changes does not preserve Being itself” (De Trinitate V, 2, 3, 15, 428). And: “Deus vero multipliciter quidem di-citur magnus, bonus, sapiens, beatus, verus et quiduid aliud non indigne dici videtur. . . . et non est ibi aliud beatum esse, et aliud magnum, aut sapientem, aut verum, aut bonum, esse, aut omnino ipsum esse” (God is said in many ways, [as] great, good, wise, happy, true, and all that seems worthy of being spoken of him. . . . And, in this case [sc. God’s], to be happy is not another thing than to be great or wise or true or good or, quite simply, than Being itself) (De Trinitate VI, 7, 8, 15, 488).

19. De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum I, 14, 24, 1, 172.

20. De immortalitate animi VII, 12, BA 5, 190.

21. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia, respectively q. 13, a. 11, resp., and q. 12, a. 2, resp. See Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 3, a. 4, resp.; Contra Gentes, II, 54.

22. D. Dubarle, Dieu avec l’être, 203. We should be surprised not only at the casual treatment of Saint Thomas, who “judged it good to nuance” Saint Augustine by imposing on him retrospectively the substantiality of God (despite the Augustinian critique of substance), but especially at what the Augustinian ipsum esse is supposed to signify: “the highest taking place in fullness that, of itself, without needing anything other, it posits itself as a unified and self-sufficient self” (ibid.).

23. J. Maritain, “La sagesse augustinienne,” Mélanges augustiniennes publiés à l’occasion du XVème anniversaire de saint Augustin (Paris, 1931), 405, 1 (my empha-sis). The cited text is obviously “Deus nihil aliud dicam esse, nisi idipsum esse” (De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum I, 14, 24, 1, 172). Gilson, who cites this text with approval in L’esprit de la philosophie médiévale (53), declared, in the same collection and with the same tone: “However, if we admit that a religion must be expressed by a master, and if we inquire as to what metaphysician [sic] can be considered the model and the norm of a Catholic philosophy [sic], who else but Saint Thomas could we choose, Him and nobody else, not even Saint Augustine?” (“L’avenir de la métaphysique augustinienne,” 379).

24. “Ipsa enim natura, vel substantia, vel essentia, vel quolibet alio nomine apellandum est idipsum quod Deus est, quidquid illud est, corporaliter videri non potest” (For this nature itself, or substance, or essence, or by whatever other name one calls that itself which is God, whatever he is, that cannot be seen corporeally) (De Trinitate II, 18, 35, 15, 268). The sequence lists, but so as to disqualify, the usual ontico-ontological nominations, so as to deny them with the same blow as all material nomination (neither more nor less inadequate than they are) and to intend, by a mere designation, in fact empty, the thing itself, idipsum.

25. Confessiones IX, 10, 24, 14, 116 (I am correcting id ipsum with idipsum, following J. J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 1:113). The same terms are found in the Commentaries on the Psalms 121: “Jam ergo, fratres, quisquis erigit aciem mentis, quisquis deponit caligem carnis, quisquis mundat oculum cordis, elevet et videat idipsum” (For here, my brothers, whoever raises the sharpness of his mind, deposes the darkness of the flesh, purifies the eye of his heart, rises up and sees that itself” (121, 5, PL 37, 1622). As we will see, this is not by chance.

26. Confessiones XII, 7, 7, 14, 352 (I reestablish the third idipsum, according to the manuscripts and the Maurists, with J. J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 3:308, contra Skutella and BA).

27. This is the case for the last two texts cited, Confessiones IX, 10, 24 and XII, 7, 7, in BA 14, 117 and 353 (E. Tréhorel and G. Bouissou, trans.). The two major English translators do the same (R. Chadwick, St. Augustine: Confessions [Oxford, 1991]; and M. Boulding, The Confessions, [New York, 1997]). For Confessiones IX, 10, 24, Chadwick offers “towards eternal Being” (171) and Boulding “towards that which is” (227). And for Confessiones XII, 7, 7, Chadwick translates: “the selfsame very being itself” (249: here there are, in fact, two translations juxtaposed, the first one of which is written in the text of Augustine, the other only in the mind of the translator); and Boulding: “Being itself” (315). Both leave out the third occurrence. The same happens in other languages. For example, if Labriolle renders XII, 7, 7 almost correctly (“le même, le même,” the third being left out [Confessions (Paris, 19261), 2:7]), he commits the error in the case of IX, 10, 24 (“vers l’Être lui-même” (10); translation cited by P. Henry, La vision d’Ostie: Sa place dans la vie et l’œuvre de saint Augustin [Paris, 1938], 9, an imprecision that bodes ill for the scientificity of the arguments in favor of “Plotinian ecstases”). And if H. U. von Balthasar renders XII, 7, 7 perfectly (“sondern Derselbe, Der-selbe, Derselbe” [Die Bekenntnisse, 321]), he misses IX, 10, 24 (“zum ‘Wesenhaften’” [229]).

28. Boulding, The Confessions, 217, and BA 14, 91. But Chadwick here translates correctly with the selfsame (St. Augustine: Confessions, 169).

29. Respectively BA 14, 375; and Boulding, The Confessions, 323 (see “not Being itself” [Chadwick, St. Augustine: Confessions, 25]).

30. I am reestablishing id ipsum (BA 14, 444) as idipsum (following J. J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 1:188). Respectively BA 14, 445; Chadwick, St. Augustine: Confessions, 280; and Boulding, The Confessions, 350.

31. This is proven clearly by De Trinitate I, 8, 17, 15, 132: “nondum intellexerat eo quoque modo idipsum se potuisse dicere ‘Domine, ostende nobis te et sufficit nobis’” (he [Philip] had not yet understood that he could say the same thing by saying: “Lord, show yourself to us and that would be enough”) (here correctly translated by “in the same manner,” BA 15, 133). Or else Confessiones XII, 17, 25: “ex nihilo cuncta facta sunt, quia non sunt idipsum quod Deus,” to be understood simply as “all things were made out of nothingness because they are not the same thing as God.” This becomes, however, “de rien toutes les choses ont été faites, car elles ne sont pas l’être même comme Dieu” (BA 14, 382–83), or “because they are not Being itself as God is” (Chadwick, St. Augustine: Confessions, 258) or “they are not Being-Itself ?like God” (Boulding, The Confessions, 325).

32. G. Madec “risks the ‘Identical,’” thereby correcting Solignac (Le Dieu d’Augustin [Paris, 2000], 129; see 403n1). Brunn also: “you are the identical” (Dieu et l’être, 158).

33. Confessiones I, 6, 10, 13, 290 and its translation (BA 13, 291).

34. A. Solignac, translating a fragment of the Commentaries on the Psalms 121, 5, in a note consecrated to Idipsum in Confessiones, BA 13, 550 (my emphasis). Once again, the technical is a dutiful child, masking one’s incomprehension or rather overinterpretation. See the well-placed criticism of G. Madec (402n1), who imagines, however, “a passion for Being that Augustine wants to make the Christian people share” (Saint Augustin et la philosophie, 75). One might hope that he had other passions with a higher priority to share, to begin with the passion for the Passion.

35. For example, M.-F. Berrouard: “Augustine who had meditated on this word [idipsum] from the time of his retreat at Cassiciacum (Confessiones IX, 4, 11), compares it to the revelation at Horeb (Exodus 3:14) and interprets it as the expression of the mystery of the Being itself of God” (in an otherwise helpful note on the “Idipsum” of BA 71 [Paris, 1993], 845). As for D. Dubarle, he does not hesitate to “say not ‘God is Being,’ but ‘God is Being itself’ ipsum esse or [!] id ipsum,” “even if it means having recourse to the convenience of the expression ‘ipsum esse—Being itself,’ or else ‘Idipsum—that (Being) itself’” (Dieu avec l’être, respectively pp. 201 and 200 [my emphasis]). The convenience gains what exactitude loses.

36. See my study “Saint Thomas d’Aquin et l’ontothéologie,” Revue thomiste 95, no. 1 (January 1995): 31–66 (repr. as “Thomas Aquinas and Onto-theo-logy,” in Mystics: Presence and Aporia, ed. Michael Kessler and Christian Sheppard [Chicago, 2003]).

37. Perhaps one could take here in a positive sense Lacan’s warning: “This I am who I am by which God asserts his identity to Being prompts a pure absurdity, when it is God who speaks to Moses before the burning bush” (Des-noms-du-Père, séminaire 1963, 78).

38. This is according to the Vetus Latina used by Saint Augustine. By contrast, the translators who follow the Hebrew all correct the ending. Hence the Vulgate “Hierusalem quae aedificaris ut civitas, cujus participatio ejus simul”; or Lemaitre de Sacy, who follows the Vulgate: “Jerusalem, which is being built as a city, and about which all parties are in perfect unity”; and Le Bible de Jérusalem: “Jerusalem, built as a city, where everyone together makes one body,” which sees in it, in a note, only the “symbol of the unity of the chosen people,” therefore of the Church (Paris, 1961), 779.

39. De Trinitate II, 18, 35, 15, 268 (or “non sunt idipsum quod Deus” [Confessiones XII, 17, 25, 14, 382]).

40. De Trinitate III, 10, 21, 15, 318.

41. “This misreading counts for us as a very lovely exegesis that draws idipsum near not only to Exodus 3:14, but also to the ‘metaphysics of Exodus’” (Brunn, “L’exégèse augustinienne de ‘Ego sum qui sum’ et ‘la métaphysique de l’Exode,’” 158 [my emphasis]). Not only is there no misreading, but the “lovely exegesis” in question tends entirely to distance as much as possible Exodus 3:14 from any “metaphysics of Exodus.” J. Swetnam, in an otherwise helpful article (“A Note on idipsum in St. Augustine,” Modern Schoolman 30, no. 4 (1952–53): 328–31), also is guilty of a misreading when he supposes one in the Augustinian exegesis: “it seems that St. Augustine did not perceive the real meaning of the phrase because of the extremely literal nature of the version he possessed.”

42. Commentaries on the Psalms 121, 5, PL 37, 1621–22.

43. “Jam ergo angelis et in angelo Deus dicebat moysi quaerenti nomen suum Ego sum qui sum. Dices fillis Israël: Qui est misit me ad vos. Esse nomen est incommutabilitatis. Omnia quae mutantur desinunt esse quod erant et incipiunt esse quod non erant. Esse verum, esse sincerum, esse germanum non habet nisi qui non mutatur” (Sermon 7, 7, PL 38, 66). J. Pépin argues very clearly in this direction: “Da due brani emerge che, per Agostino, idipsum significa innanzitutto identità, immutabilità, permanenza; poiché sono i caraterri dell’essere, il termine designerà l’essere in possesso di questi carrateri, ma non; l’essere primo intuitu; non traduerrei petanto l’ ‘essere’, preferendo l’ ‘identico’ o l’ ‘immutabile.’ Del resto, idipsum non indica, in senso stretto, l’Essere, ma Dio in quanto Bene immutabile” (in Sant’Agostino, Confessioni: Testo criticamente riveduto e apparati scritturistici a cura di Manlio Simonetti [Milan, 1997], 5:181). And citing De vera religione, 21, 41: “idipsum id est naturam incommutabilem” (that itself: to wit, immutable nature” [8, 80]; and De Trinitate III, 8: “Idipsum quippe in hoc loco illud summum et incommutabile bodum intelligitur, quod Deus est” (That itself in this case [Psalm 121:3] is understood as this supreme and unchangeable good, which is God) (15, 282).

44. De Trinitate V, 2, 3, 15, 428. See Exodus 3:14 justifying “Est enim vero so-lus, quia incommutabilis” (De Trinitate VII, 5, 10, 15, 538).

45. This is according to the opposition found in De Trinitate II, 5, 9, 15, 204. This visibility of idipsum would even contradict another declaration: “audeo fiducialiter dicere, nec Deum Patrem, nec Verbum ejus, nec Spiritum ejus, quod Deus unus est, per id quod est atque idipsum est, ullo modo esse mutabilem ac per hoc multo minus esse visibilem” (I dare say with confidence: neither God the Father, nor the Word, nor his Spirit, which is the one God, is in any way, by that which he is and the thing itself that he is, mutable and, on that account, still less visible) (De Trinitate III, 10, 21, 15, 318). For in Christ, where the Son “ipse se exuit” (De Trinitate IV, 13, 17, 15, 382), God becomes mutable in order to be made visible.

46. Commentaries on the Psalms 121, 5, PL 37, 1621ff. (the four moments of which I have commented on).

47. See: “Deus autem hoc est quod est, ideo proprium nomen sibi tenuit Ego sum qui sum. Hoc est Filius dicendo ‘nisi credideritis quia ergo sum;’ ad hoc pertinet et tu quis es? Principium” (God is that which is; consequently, he has most properly the name I am who I am. This is the Son saying: ‘If you do not believe that I am’; to which is referred also and you who are you? The Principle) (Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John XXXIX, 8, PL 37, 1685; or else XL, 3, PL 37, 1687). In fact, it should even be said that between Exodus 3:14 and John 8 and 12, the mediator is Philippians 2:6–11.

48. This is emphasized by G. Madec (“Christus, scientia et sapientia nostra,” Recherches augustiniennes 10 [1975]: 77–85); and D. Dubarle: “in Saint Augustine, the event of the burning bush, far from being limited to a teaching about what one might wish to call ‘the metaphysics of Exodus’—a theologic metaphysics to be sure, but one limiting itself to the ontology of the Ego sum qui sum—, already belongs, in anticipation, . . . to Christology, about which the New Testament and in particular the Gospel of Saint John will permit a full explanation” (Dieu avec l’être, 197).

49. Confessiones XII, 7, 7, 14, 352.

50. Sermon 7, 7, which cites Exodus 3:14 and comments: “Esse, nomen est in-commutabilitatis. Omnia enim quae mutantur, desinunt esse quod erant et incipiunt esse quod non erant. Esse verum, esse sincerum, esse germanum non habet nisi qui non mutatur” (Being, this is the name of immutability. For all the things that change cease to be what they were and begin to be what they were not. True Being, authentic Being, originary Being has nothing, except what does not change) (PL 38, 66).

51. “Ontological difference” is meant here in the sense of Sein und Zeit (difference of the ways of Being), not in the later sense (difference of Being and beings), according to the distinction made in my Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), chap. 4.

52. De civitate Dei XII, 2, 35, 154.

53. Ibid., VIII, 11, 34, 272.

54. Confessiones IX, 4, 11, 14, 90.

55. Ibid., XII, 17, 25, 4, 382.

56. De vera religione XXI, 41, 8, 80. See an explanation of Ego sum qui sum in solely temporal terms (ibid., XLIX, 97, 8, 166–68). There remain, of course, less clear-cut texts, such as De Trinitate V, 2, 3, 15, 428 (already cited). Or: “Nam sicut omnino tu es, tu sis solus, qui es imcommutabiliter et scis incommutabiliter et vis incommutabiliter” (For, just as you are absolutely, you are the sole who is immutably, who knows immutably, and who wills immutably” (Confessiones XIII, 16, 19, 14, 458). On these texts and their relative ambiguity see Brunn, “L’exégèse augustinienne de ‘Ego sum qui sum’ et la ‘métaphysique de l’Exode,’” 144–46.

57. Commentaries on the Psalms 146, 11, PL 37, 1906.

58. Commentaries on the Psalms 101, s. 2, 10, PL 37, 1311.

59. Gilson, Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin, 26–27 (English trans., 21). This diagnosis of Saint Augustine is shared by E. Zum Brunn: “the discovery of God-Being is still only an incomplete and distant knowledge” (“L’exégèse augus-tinienne de ‘Ego sum qui sum’ et la ‘métaphysique de l’Exode,’” 144).

60. Isn’t this an artifact produced by the commentary but absent from the text? Like the “absolute Being” supposedly found in Confessiones VII, 10, 16 (according to G. Madec, Saint Augustin et la philosophie, 39), where, in contrast, there appears the intrinsic connection that connects eternity to charity and not to Being: “O aeterna veritas et vera caritas et cara aeternitas!” (BA 13, 616).

61. Le Thomisme: Introduction à l’étude de saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris, 1945), 195, 196, 75, and 127 (English trans., 135, 136, 49, and 87).

62. Ibid., 196 (English trans., 136).

63. De civitate Dei VIII, 1, BA 34, 230.

64. E. Gilson, L’esprit de la philosophie médiévale, 51 (English trans., 51). And if one softens it by saying: “Certainly the identification of God and Being is the common possession of Christian philosophers as Christian. But the agreement of Christians upon this point did not prevent philosophers from being divided on the interpretation of the notion of Being” (Le Thomisme, 123 [English trans., 84]), it would be necessary rather to say that Christian thinkers diverge about Being only inasmuch as they see it first as Christians, on the basis of another authority.