Akademik

Augustine

Augustine Gerard O’Daly 1 LIFE AND PHILOSOPHICAL READINGS Augustine was born in Thagaste (modern Souk Ahras in Algeria) in Roman North Africa in AD 354. He died as bishop of Hippo (now Annaba, Algeria) in 430. His education followed the standard Roman practice of the later Empire (Marrou [12.59]), in schools at Thagaste, Madauros, and Carthage, and it involved some study of philosophical texts, if only for their literary and rhetorical qualities. At the age of 18 he read Cicero’s Hortensius as part of the syllabus at Carthage, and it affected him profoundly, introducing him to philosophy, and in particular to ethical eudemonism (conf. 3.7). He cites the Hortensius regularly in his writings.¹ But, although already a Christian catechumen (his mother Monnica was a pious believer), and inclined to think of Christ when ‘wisdom’ (sapientia) was spoken of, he found himself more attracted to the Manichees than to what he perceived as the crudities of style in the Latin translations of the Christian scriptures available to him. What attracted him to Manichaeism was its appeal to reason rather than authority (a polarity that was to dominate his mature thought: see section 3): to the modern reader confronted with the bizarre cosmic mythology of the Manichees, this seems an odd claim. But the Manichees proffered a universal system, encompassing cosmology, psychology, and a synthesis of several religions, including Christianity; and they prescribed a way of life consistent with their revealed ‘knowledge’. Augustine was to be deeply influenced by their account of evil, based on the belief in an evil principle in the universe and in humans, a ‘substance’ at war with the good principle in the individual and the universe (duab. an.). It was many years before he shed this belief. Furthermore, Manichaean criticism of the Old Testament enabled him to reject what he took to be its primitive concept of God and its moral ambiguities. As a young man at Carthage Augustine read Aristotle’s Categories and claims not to have found them difficult (conf. 4.28). His other early philosophical readings are not easy to determine. Cicero, especially the Tusculan Disputations, the De re publica, the De natura, deorum, and the Academica (and to a lesser extent the De fato and the De officiis), is his principal source of information about every period of Greek philosophy (he probably read Plato’s Timaeus in Cicero’s translation).² In his first published work, De pulchro et apto (not extant), on aesthetics, written in 380–1, Augustine reveals knowledge of the distinction between beauty (kalon) and ‘appropriateness’ (prepon), the Stoic theory of beauty as proportion of the parts of a thing, and the monad/dyad principles (conf. 4. 20–1), Augustine adopted the career of a rhetor, teaching at Carthage, Rome (from 383), and Milan (from 384), where he held the post of public orator (Milan was then the seat of the Western imperial court). At Milan (possibly in a Platonist circle including figures like the retired high public official Manlius Theodorus) he encountered Neoplatonism, reading—in the Latin translation by Marius Victorinus—works, probably by both Plotinus and Porphyry, in 386 (conf. 7.13–27; beata v. 4; c. Acad. 3.41).³ His knowledge of Greek was mediocre. He expresses distaste for the way in which it was taught at school (conf. 1.23), and he was always to be dependent upon translations for his access to Greek philosophy, Scripture, and theological literature.⁴ At Milan he also heard the sermons of Ambrose, whose Platonizing Christianity undermined the materialistic concept of God that Augustine found in both Manichaeism and Stoicism, and who initiated him into the subtleties of exegetical method, based upon the distinction, taken from Philo of Alexandria and Greek Christian theologians such as Origen, between literal and figurative readings of Scripture. He underwent a conversion experience in autumn 386, resigning his post at Milan and spending the winter of 386–7 in retreat at a country villa in nearby Cassiciacum. From this period came his first extant works, a series of philosophical dialogues whose form is much influenced by Cicero, which includes the Contra Academicos, a critique of Academic scepticism (Cicero’s Academica is Augustine’s principal source), and, in the De ordine and the De beata vita, discussions of the nature of happiness and its relation to knowledge, God’s nature, order in the universe, and the problem of evil. In another ‘inner’ dialogue between Augustine and reason, the Soliloquia, he explores the nature of mind, the identification of truth with being, and the problem of error. Neoplatonist influences permeate these dialogues. Augustine’s characteristic theories of the will and semantics were not developed until after his baptism in 387 and his return to Thagaste in 388 (De libero arbitrio, De Magistro). Anti-Manichaean polemic dominated his writings at this time. The first mature synthesis of his thought, De vera religione, was written in 390. From 371 to 386 Augustine had lived with a concubine: the couple had a son, Adeodatus, who stayed with Augustine after his mother was sent back to Africa in 386, at a time when Augustine was planning to marry an heiress of high social standing (Adeodatus died young, probably in 389). Augustine’s conversion led to the abandonment of his marriage plans and the adoption of a life of celibacy. At Thagaste he established a religious community. In 391 he was ordained priest at Hippo, becoming bishop in 396. Several of his works at this time reveal the influence of Pauline theology upon his thought. When he wrote his autobiography, the Confessions, from 397 on, he was able to apply his analysis of the will and Pauline principles to his conversion experience of 386: both elements were missing from the Cassiciacum dialogues.⁵ By 397 Augustine’s philosophical views were largely formed, and there is no new encounter with other thinkers or fresh ideas in his later career. But he elaborated his thought in several major works, all written over several years: the De trinitate (whose psychological schemes reveal much of his philosophy of mind), the De Genesi ad litteram (on creation, the soul, sense-perception, and imagination), the De doctrina christiana (on hermeneutics), and the De civitate dei (on ethics and social theory). In the last two decades of his life he wrote much on free will, grace, and the causes of evil, in a series of polemical works directed against Pelagius and his followers, in particular Julian of Eclanum. Augustine’s philosophical readings were eclectic and haphazard. Only Cicero was studied systematically, as part of an educational syllabus. Plato was read either in translation or in extracts (or both), the Neoplatonists likewise. The Middle Platonists were known indirectly, through the doxographical tradition (Solignac [12.61]): Apuleius was an exception, but was chiefly exploited for his demonology. Christian writers were more often targets of criticism than sources of new ideas: Tertullian’s corporealist views on the soul, and Origen’s theories of the soul’s preexistence, periodic reincarnation, and embodiment as punishment for previously committed sin, all invited Augustinian objections. But Augustine made a lot of his limited philosophical background, exploiting it with acuity and imagination. 2 AUGUSTINE’S CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY Augustine philosophizes throughout his writings. But, despite the fact that some of his earlier works concentrate on specific philosophical themes, the great majority of his writings are responses to a variety of personal, theological, and church political circumstances (Bonner [12.32]). Speculation for its own sake, although it may determine the amount of space that he devotes to analysing particular problems, is never what motivates Augustine to write in the first place. The polemical aspect cannot be neglected. The De libero arbitrio is directed against the Manichees, for example (retr. 1.9). In longer works, such as De Genesi ad litteram, which were not composed under pressure of time and whose subject-matter offered scope for open exploration of certain (for example cosmological) questions, Augustine speculates most freely (Gn. litt. 1.18.37–21.41; 2.9. 20–1; 2.18.38). Augustine does not construct a philosophical system. But certain themes preoccupy him, and his treatment of them evinces a continuity of development or a coherence of treatment that allows us to describe his position with some confidence. At times he understands by ‘philosophy’ the Graeco-Roman tradition of rational inquiry, as opposed to Christianity; and he distinguishes between rational method in philosophy and Christian belief in religious principles that are often historical events (above all, Christ’s Incarnation) (beata v. 4; c. Acad. 3.37–42; vera. rel. 2– 8, 30–3; conf. 7.13–27; civ. 8.1–12). He deprecates pagan philosophy, when he wishes to throw Christian doctrine into sharp relief. At other times, however, he does not distinguish between the philosophical and theological aspects of his thought. Christianity is the ‘one true philosophy’ (c. Iul. 4.72), and the ‘true religion’ of De vera religione is inconceivable without its Platonist components. Thus he can speak of a ‘Christian philosophy’ (c. Iul. 4.72; c. Iul. imp. 2.166), arguing that the love of wisdom, the search for, and discovery of, truth, and the quest for happiness all find fulfilment in the Christian religion. Augustine appropriates traditional philosophical questions, but the answers which he provides are religious ones. Thus the universal desire for happiness, which he grants to be the proper activity of the highest human faculty, the mind, is, he argues, only fully satisfied in the afterlife, and not in a disembodied mental state, but in the resurrected heavenly body of the saints.⁶ At the same time, the questions which he asks are those of the Greek and Roman philosophical tradition. When he investigates problems of the soul, he inquires into its origin or source, its substance, the nature of the body-soul relationship, its immortality, its condition after death, and so on.⁷ He does not pretend to answer all questions: for example, when human souls are created (see section 7). The scope of Augustine’s Christian philosophy may be appreciated when we realize that he fuses the ‘wisdom’ of the Hortensius with the ‘intellect’ of the Neoplatonist writings and the ‘word’ of the beginning of John’s gospel (conf. 3.7–8; 7.13–27; civ. 10.29). He establishes several parallels between the themes of the Johannine prologue and Neoplatonist writings. Platonism enjoys a special status in his thought. ‘If Plato were alive’ (vera rel. 3), he would recognize in Christianity the realization of his striving: a monotheistic religion with a belief in immaterial principles, God, and the soul. But, despite its theoretical monism, Platonism is, Augustine believes, vitiated by polytheistic demonologies (civ. 8–10). Augustine’s familiarity with the doxographical tradition means that he follows the school division of philosophy into three areas of physics, ethics, and logic (vera rel. 30–3; civ. 8.4; ep. 118.16–21). But he employs no such division in any stringent sense in his discussion of philosophical issues. It serves chiefly to articulate his reporting of philosophical doctrines, as well as to assess the achievement of Platonism in fusing Pythagorean physics with Socratic ethics, and completing the fusion by the development of dialectic (c Acad. 3.37; civ. 8.4). Augustine embraces the traditional definition of philosophy as the science of things divine and human, and he sometimes distinguishes between sapientia as knowledge of things divine (including truth in the strict sense), and scientia as the knowledge of temporal things (trin. 14.2– 3). He understands it to be the achievement of Christianity to establish the true relationship between eternal immutable truth and the beliefs that we may have about temporal things. The proportion of Timaeus 290 (being: becoming : : truth: belief) expresses an ontological and epistemological classification that Augustine approves (trin. 4.24). But he believes that the links between the temporal and the eternal are only realized in the incarnate Christ, who is both sapientia and scientia, and in the doctrines which emerge in Christianity (Gn. litt. 1.21.41). Augustine knows the term theologia from Varro’s scheme of the three kinds of ‘theology’—mythical, natural, and civil—but he uses the word to refer to Christian doctrine only once (civ. 6.8) and in passing. Nor does he proffer a natural theology in the sense in which this is understood in medieval and modern contexts, namely, a theology that refuses to admit doctrinal propositions that are not also accessible to reason as premises. But he is arguably the founder in the Western tradition of ‘philosophical theology’, which does accept such doctrinal premises as assumptions, testing their coherence by analysis and argumentation, explaining them and analysing their implications and connections. Augustine’s programme aims at illuminating faith, which is based on authority, by the understanding which reason provides, inasmuch as this is possible. Nor is this attempt at rational inquiry merely something in which Christians may indulge, but it is a duty incumbent upon them, for it involves use of their God-given reason, the same reason which enables them to believe in the first place (ep. 120.3). Augustine interprets the Latin translation of the Septuagint version of Isaiah 7:9 (‘Unless you believe, you shall not understand’) as an assertion of temporal conditionality (faith precedes understanding), as well as of confidence that ‘God will aid us and make us understand what we believe’ (lib. arb. 1.4; 2.6). But if ‘authority is temporally prior, reason is prior in reality’ (ord. 2.26). Augustine argues that even if Christian beliefs are initially credible only because the believer subjectively accepts divine authority, these beliefs are in principle accessible to, and explicable by, rational inquiry. And he attempts to broaden the basis of authority, stressing, for example, the role of historical evidence and wide acceptability in the tradition of Christ’s life and teaching. His stand is in sharp contrast to Tertullian’s anti-intellectualism, which uses the argument that the mysteries of faith are inaccessible to reason, and that their very inaccessibility constitutes their status as mysteries (De carne Christi 5.4; De praescriptione haereticorum 7.2–3). Augustine appears to claim that all mysteries may be understood, if not in this life, then in the afterlife. And some, such as the Trinity, may only be partly understood (ep. 120.2). Augustine’s claim, he assumes, is strengthened by his observation that the same reason is operative in belief and in understanding.⁸ 3 BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE Although he sometimes distinguishes sharply between the certainty of knowledge and the insubstantial nature of belief (c. Acad. 3.37, 43; div, qu. 9, 48; ep. 147.7, 10), Augustine, not least because of his Christianity, more often grants belief, if properly founded, the status of a kind of knowledge. If believing is nothing other than ‘thinking with assent’ (praed. sanct. 5), belief is rational. The validity of our beliefs depends upon the authority by which they are held, the evidence or testimony which commands assent (c. Acad. 3.42–3; ord. 2.26–7; lib. arb. 2.5; util. cred.). Different kinds of authority are in play in, for example, historical evidence and the truths of religion, but it is the same kind of mental activity which engages in belief in each case. Yet the objects of belief may differ radically. Historical evidence can only be believed: it can never be scientific knowledge (mag, 37; div. qu. 48). But religious truths may one day be understood, and so known, by believers. In fact, the progression from belief to understanding is a fundamental tenet of Augustine’s views about our knowledge of truths about God, though the transformation of this kind of belief into knowledge will, he argues, occur only in the afterlife (trin. 9.1; ser. 43; en. Ps. 118, ser. 18.3). This theological postulate betrays a fundamental attitude of Augustine’s, that belief is inferior to understanding. True belief may be rational, justified, and trustworthy, but it lacks the firsthand justification of knowledge, and the comprehensive synoptic overview of a complex field achieved by understanding (mag. 31, 39–40, 46; ep. 147. 21; Burnyeat [12.67]). It also lacks the first-hand justification of senseperception: properly authenticated sense-perception is a form of knowledge (ep. 147.38; trin. 12.3; retr. 1.14.3) in the sense that historical testimony never can be. It is only when Augustine is arguing against sceptics that he is moved to talk of our ‘knowing’ historical facts (trin. 4.21; 15.21). Augustine’s knowledge of Academic scepticism is chiefly informed by Cicero’s Academica, and it was his disenchantment with Manichaeism that made him a temporary sceptic (conf. 5.19, 25). His arguments against sceptics in Contra Academicos are concerned with exposing inconsistencies and inadequacies in the Academic position (such as the concept of the ‘persuasive’ or ‘probable’, and the claim that there can be an Academic sage (c. Acad. 2.12, 19; 3.30–2)), and preparing the ground for an acceptance of the possibility of epistemic certainty in general.⁹ Augustine’s premise that the sage alone is happy is tested by the sceptical argument that wisdom may be the quest for truth rather than its attainment. In his answer he argues that nobody can be happy if she cannot attain something which she desires greatly, such as the truth (c. Acad. 1.9). But this argument presupposes that happiness entails accomplishment of desired goals rather than the conviction that the pursuit of a worthwhile desire, even if unfulfilled, is satisfying (Kirwan [12.42] 17– 20). In fact, Augustine never repudiates the premise that the unremitting search for truth may in itself be a worthy human activity, and that wisdom may consist in the path that leads towards truth and not merely the goal of truth discovered (c. Acad. 1.13–14). The Academic claims that things may be credible or probable without those or other things being known. Augustine exploits the fact that Cicero translates the Greek term pithanon (‘persuasive’ or ‘credible’) by verisimile, ‘like truth’ (c. Acad. 2.16, 19, 27–8). Augustine argues that it is absurd to claim that something is like a truth when one purports not to know what the truth is, applying a version of Plato’s thesis (Phaedo 74d–e) that comparing x with y entails previous knowledge of y. But I can say that x is like y if I know how y would seem if it existed. The Academic claim stands if the Academic knows ‘how a truth would seem if there were any’.¹⁰ Augustine’s argument fails. Augustine’s critique of sceptical epochê or suspension of judgement— itself an intended safeguard against the risk of error—concentrates on the inevitability of risking error if one habitually assents to what one does not know (c. Acad. 2.11). This is a neat rejoinder. Since action and the forming of judgements are not to be avoided, as the Academic concedes, the Academic cannot claim that suspension of judgement is either possible or brings with it avoidance of error (c. Acad. 3. 33–6).¹¹ Augustine’s attack on scepticism takes the form of a defence of the Stoic criterion of truth (c. Acad. 2.11; 3.18, 21; cf. Cicero, Academica priora 18, 113). He believes that the evidence of sense-perception does not, strictly speaking, satisfy the conditions of the criterion. His search for propositions which satisfy the conditions, as he understands them, leads him to look for propositions of such a kind that they cannot be taken for false. He argues that propositions of logic (such as ‘not p and q’, ‘if p, then not q’) satisfy the conditions, as do mathematical propositions (c. Acad. 3.21, 23, 25, 29; cf. doctr. chr. 2.49–53). So do such propositions as ‘I exist’, ‘I am alive’, or even ‘If I am deceived, I exist’ (beata, v. 7; sol. 2.1; lib. arb. 2.7; vera rel. 73; trin. 10.14; civ. 11–26). It is arguable that propositions of this last kind are intended to demonstrate the impossibility of thinking of any kind without existing, and that Augustine is inferring the certainty of our existence from the fact of consciousness. But it may be that Augustine is arguing that he cannot mistakenly believe that he exists, or is alive, etc.¹² Does Augustine anticipate Descartes’s cogito? When Descartes’s first readers suggested to him that this was so, Descartes replied that there was a difference between Augustine’s use of the argument and his own.¹³ But in fact Augustine puts his cogito argument to various uses, to argue for the immateriality of the mind, or as part of a demonstration of God’s existence. In his account of what we can indubitably know Augustine follows the Platonist tradition in asserting that knowledge is not derived from senseperception or experience, but that truths are somehow impressed upon our minds a priori. What are these truths? They certainly include the mathematical and logical propositions alluded to above. But they also include ideas or concepts like that of ‘unity’ (lib. arb. 2.21–3, 26, 28–9, 40; trin. 8.4). For knowledge is not just of propositions; it is also direct acquaintance with entities that correspond to the Forms of Plato and the Platonist tradition, in which particular things in our world participate (div. qu. 46). Augustine contrasts the immutability of the eternal Forms with the mutability even of the human reason which apprehends them (imm. an. 7; ser. 241.2). He adopts the Middle Platonist view that the Forms are the thoughts of God, who looks into his mind in order to create the universe (div. qu. 46; civ. 12.27). In Christian terms, Augustine links the concept of the Forms to the belief that the son of God is both wisdom and ‘word’, in the sense of a causal creative power (vera rel. 66, 113; ep. 14.4; civ. 9.22; Gn. litt 1.18.36). Augustine considers but rejects the Platonic doctrine of anamnêsis as an explanation of the presence in the human mind of knowledge that is not derived from sense-experience. Knowledge is recollection, an exercise of the memory, but in the sense that when I know I actualize what is latent in my mind, eliciting truths by a process of concentration. This sounds Plotinian, but it is combined with a reluctance to believe in the pre-existence of the soul (c. Acad. 1.22; sol. 2.35; imm. an. 6; ep. 7; conf. 10.16–19).¹⁴ Nor is the human mind able to realize knowledge unaided. Augustine believes that divine illumination is required to achieve this. God is the light of the mind, and knowing is a kind of mental seeing. The divine light illumines not merely what is apprehended, but also the apprehending mind. Moreover, the light of truth is also the light in which we make judgements, whether about intelligible phenomena or sense-perceptions. But illumination’s role is not just normative or formal: illumination attempts to account for the mind’s access to concepts and ideas, not merely its power to judge (sol. 1. 12, 15; ep. 120.10; conf. 9.10; div. qu. 46; trin. 4.4; 14.21; Gn. litt. 12.31. 59).¹⁵ Although it is obvious that the illumination theory is an aspect of the doctrine of divine grace, it is not an attempt to deny the mind its proper cognitive activity. Rather, it is a realization of the mind’s natural capacity. Knowledge of this kind is a result of introspection. Augustine powerfully reiterates the Neoplatonist themes of conversion or return to oneself, of self-knowledge as the means to all knowledge, the fulfilment of a deep desire to possess wisdom, as deep as the desire to be happy (vera rel. 72; sol. 2.1; trin. 9.14; 10.1–16).¹⁶ Self-knowledge is a realization of self-love, but self-love moves beyond itself to the knowledge of truth (beata v. 33, 35; ord. 2.35; trin. 9.18). In a sense, God is the truth which I know. But God is not the Forms. Transcending them, he is both known and unknowable, ‘touched’ rather than apprehended, a vision like our seeing the Forms, but unlike our seeing them a vision that cannot be complete in our temporal condition (conf. 9.24; 10.35–8; trin. 15.2; ser. 117.5). 4 SEMANTICS AND HERMENEUTICS The most discussed aspect of Augustine’s philosophy of language in this century is the account of language-acquisition criticized by Wittgenstein for concentrating on words as names of objects and on ostensive definition as the means by which words are understood (Philosophical Investigations 1– 3, 32, citing conf. 1.13). Wittgenstein’s critique is, at least in part, misplaced. Whereas Augustine tends to insist that single words are names, he does not regard ostensive definition as the sole or even principal way in which understanding of language is achieved. For Augustine, language is a system of signs conveyed in speech: every word signifies something. What words signify is not immediately obvious. They convey thoughts from speaker to hearer, but it is not clear whether Augustine maintains that they signify those thoughts, or the objects of those thoughts, or both thoughts and objects. Augustine adapts to an explicitly linguistic context Stoic discussions (themselves indebted to Aristotle) of signs as a means of inference in the acquisition of scientific knowledge.¹⁷ Verbal signs refer to something ‘beyond themselves’. But verbal signs are not the kind of sign upon which Stoic theory concentrates: these Augustine calls ‘natural’, whereas verbal signs are ‘given’ by a speaker to express something, to provide evidence of, at the very least, mental contents (mag. 1–31; doctr. chr. 1.2; 2.1–4; dial. 5; conf. 1.7, 12–13, 23). If verbal signs are evidential, they will signify not merely specific things, but also facts, actual or purported. Thus sentences as well as individual words signify, and some individual words (conjunctions or prepositions, for example) are more readily understood as signifiers when they are considered as parts of a sentence or proposition. But Augustine also attempts to show that all individual words are names, and that every word can be used to refer to itself: every word is a sign inasmuch as it can be used to bring itself to mind (this is how Augustine deals with words like ‘if’ and ‘because’) (mag. 3, 13–19). In the De dialectica¹⁸ Augustine distinguishes between words and what is ‘sayable’ (dicibile), the conception of a word in the mind, what is understood by a word, the mental perception of a word (dial. 5). This account has something in common with the Stoic lekta doctrine. But there are substantial differences between the two concepts. If lekta are the incorporeal meanings of words, they are only ‘complete’ as the meanings of completed sentences. Their principal function is to be true or false, and their linguistic form is propositional. Parts of lekta are not meanings. Augustine’s dicibile concept is underdeveloped. In part, it resembles his concept of the inner word, the notion that thought is a kind of inner speech in no particular language, but capable of being verbalized, even if, as in the case of God’s word, it is not vocal (see section 9).¹⁹ Language expresses the speaker’s will, verbal signs signify states of mind (‘if’ indicates doubt, ‘nothing’ a perception that there is no object or real thing there (mag. 3, 19)). We explain words by means of other words, using signs to signify other signs (mag. 7–18). Likewise, gestures, whether mimic or not, function as signs that make things known (mag. 4–6). But we can also make things known by performance, for example of an action like walking, where no signs are used (mag. 29). Signs point beyond themselves to that which they signify, and cognition of what is signified is superior to perception of its sign. Augustine suggests that this is so because the sign is functionally dependent upon the thing signified, or is a means to an end, but he does not resolve satisfactorily the question of value (mag. 24–8). Why are words inferior to things? The reason why Augustine raises the value-question may be that, despite his initial thesis that language teaches something, Augustine eventually adopts the position that nothing is learnt by means of signs (mag. 32–5).²⁰ Rather, it is perceptions of things that teach us the meaning of signs like words. Words do not convey their meaning unless we know that to which they refer. More precisely, words have the function of calling to mind the things of which they are signs (mag. 33). But ‘calling to mind’ or ‘making known’ or ‘showing’ is not the same as ‘teaching’, and having something ‘made clear’ is not the same as ‘learning’ it (mag. 33–5). Knowledge is direct acquaintance with what is known, signs have an instrumental function, they serve to remind us of what we know. Augustine expresses this theory in Christian terms by asserting that the one teacher is Christ, the divine ‘inner teacher’, the wisdom whereby we know what we know (mag. 2, 38–40, 46). But we only achieve knowledge because we teach ourselves, through introspection: we are no passive recipients of that which we learn. This Platonist position leads to the devaluation of signs in the learning process. Their function is auxiliary. They may prompt the direct acquaintance that is knowledge. And they also serve as vehicles for communication of thoughts and ideas. When communication occurs, something is indeed transferred from one mind to another, but once again it is not a case of communication from an active sign-giver to a passive signrecipient. Rather, what one mind has apprehended is apprehended through the sign by another mind: it is simply another instance of cognition (mag. 39–46). The focus of Augustine’s semantics is epistemological rather than linguistic, although he has interesting observations to make about language and meaning. The uses of his sign-theory in theological contexts, such as its application to his views on non-literal, figurative meanings of Scripture or to the Church’s sacraments, proved to be highly influential.²¹ Together with his North African contemporary Tyconius, Augustine, especially in the De doctrina christiana, develops a hermeneutics of reading Scripture that is profoundly original, with repercussions beyond Biblical interpretation. 5 ETHICS, POLITICAL THEORY, AESTHETICS Augustine appropriates the eudemonist ethics of ancient philosophy.²² Happiness (beatitudo) is a universal human desire (c. Acad. 1.5–9; beata v. 10, 14; civ. 10.1), the goal (finis) of human endeavour (civ. 19.1): it is the highest good for humans (in one version of this thesis Augustine posits peace, rather than happiness, as the universal goal (civ. 19.10–13). In common with the eudemonistic tradition since Aristotle, Augustine investigates what constitutes the well-being of the human being as a rational being (beata v. 30–7; lib. arb. 2.7, 26; Gn. c. Man. 1.31). He does not equate happiness with pleasure or enjoyment, any more than Aristotle or the Stoics do, although he argues that the happiness appropriate to humans, if realized, is accompanied by delight and enjoyment (doctr. chr. 1. 3–5; trin. 1 11.10). The happiest form of life is living in accordance with reason, whether this consists in the search for truth or its discovery and possession, the state of wisdom (sapientia) that reflects divine wisdom (see section 3). The proper end or goal for humans is to ‘enjoy God’ qua truth as an end in itself, and this teleological goal should also determine all our moral choices (lib. arb. 2.35–6; civ. 8.8; 15.7; c. Faust. 22.78). In one sense, Augustine’s account of happiness equates it with a form of knowledge, namely knowledge of what is best and highest: happiness consists in contemplation of stable eternal being, something that endures and, unlike other kinds of possessions, cannot be lost (beata v. 11; lib. arb. 1.32–4; vera rel. 86; mor. 1.5). But Augustine qualifies this equation of perfect virtue with knowledge by an insistence that enjoying or ‘possessing’ God entails doing what God wills, living well, performing virtuous actions. On the one hand, therefore, wisdom is contrasted (Stoically) with folly (beata v. 28–9). But Augustine also argues that being virtuous and its contrary are not merely instances of knowledge or ignorance. In this context his concepts of use and enjoyment, and his notion of the will, are crucial. The Augustinian contrast between use and enjoyment is influenced by rhetorical and philosophical antitheses in Cicero, in particular the ‘usefulgood’ (utile-honestum) contrast (div. qu. 30). At first sight, however, it is not so much a distinction between kinds of evaluation of temporal things as a contrast between the eternal and the temporal (lib. arb. 1.32–4). In order to enjoy God, who is eternal being, we may use temporal things, as means to an end, in an instrumental way. Augustine includes other human beings among the objects of use, but only by arguing that my use of them is appropriate if it involves love of them ‘on God’s account’ (propter deum) (doctr. chr. 1.3–4, 20–1).²³ In Augustine’s maturer thought the category of use is not seen in exclusively instrumental terms, but as a pointer towards the activity of willing, so that even enjoyment becomes a sub-category of use. God’s love for us is not ‘enjoyment’, for that would imply that God needs us for his blessedness. Divine love is rather ‘use’ in a providential sense (doctr. chr. 1.34–5). If there is order and hierarchy among beings, it is an ‘order of love’ (ordo amoris) (civ. 15.22). A difficulty with human beings is that, whereas their relations with one another are temporal, they are not just temporal beings. Augustine’s vision of the afterlife for those saved is of a heavenly community of God and the saints: thus loving (or enjoying) one another in God becomes a frequent expression in his attempts to escape from problematic consequences of the application of the use-enjoyment category to human relations (doctr. chr. 1.36–7; trin. 9.13). Augustine appropriates the Greek philosophical principle that what is especially valuable about truth and knowledge is that they cannot be lost involuntarily (mor. 1.5). He understands the principle in terms of love, rather than merely of choice (trin. 13.7–11). This is in part because, in thinking about truth, he is thinking about a person, God, and our relation to that person. But the principal reason why he talks of love in this context is to be found in his psychology. It is commonplace in Augustine that what I do depends upon what I love, not merely in the sense of what I value, but above all in the sense that I act in accordance with a settled inclination (conf. 13.10; civ. 14.7). Acting in accordance with a settled inclination is, for him, acting voluntarily in the strict sense. He finds no place for the Aristotelian view that enkrateia (self-mastery) may involve acting voluntarily and morally despite inclining to the wrong things. For Augustine it is not possible to love and value the wrong things and at the same time to choose what is right (conf. 8.19–24). Loving the right things is a question of character, not just of rational insight.²⁴ Loving something is a necessary condition of willing it: sometimes Augustine suggests that it is tantamount to willing it. Loving the right things for the right reasons is a pre-condition of acting well. Loving the wrong things, or the right things for the wrong reasons, leads to evil actions. Reacting against the Manichaean belief that evil is a substance or a nature in the universe and in ourselves, and also to some extent reacting against the Plotinian view that metaphysical evil (matter or bodies formed in matter) somehow helps to determine moral evil,²⁵ Augustine argues that whatever exists is, qua created by God, good in some degree (civ. 19.13). If things ceased to be good in any sense, they would cease to exist. On this principle things are relatively evil to the degree that they lack goodness. Evil is privation of good, but not in an absolute sense. This is not necessarily a moral distinction: a stone has less goodness than a mind, but I cannot speak of the stone’s moral status. Evil in the moral sense is, Augustine suggests, the fact or consequence of willed evil action, chosen by a mind (angelic or human) that remains essentially good, whose nature is good (civ. 12.1–9). Persons are, strictly speaking, not evil: actions may be. If love determines action and is a symptom of character, self-love is the source of sin: more specifically, the source is pride, understood as a refusal to accept subordination to God, to acquiesce in one’s place in the hierarchy of beings. In Platonist terms, this is a ‘turning away’ from God to selfabsorption (sibi placere), a failure to understand the relationship between God and humans. Adam’s fall results from the delusion that he is an autonomous being. His sin is a ‘perverse imitation of God’ (conf. 2.12–14; civ. 12.6–8; 14.12–14). Virtue is defined in terms of order (doctr. chr. 1.28; civ. 15.22). In the early De beata vita, Augustine understands the virtues to possess a kind of measure that is without either excess or defect (beata v. 30–3). In that work he suggests that the attainment of wisdom by the sage entails possession of the virtues. In his later writings he is less sanguine about the perfectibility of human nature in this life. Life is a continuing struggle with vices; virtue is not a stable, attainable state (civ. 19.4). The virtues control but do not extirpate emotions. Augustine recognizes the traditional four cardinal virtues (mor. 1.25; div. qu. 31). Virtue is a form of love (mor. 1.25, 46), primarily of God, but also of other humans. Justice is ‘giving God his due’ (civ. 19.21) as well as loving one’s neighbour. The practice of the virtues expresses the inherently social nature of humans: we are naturally members of societies (civ. 12.22; 19.12; ep. 130.13). Augustine subscribes to the natural law theory (div. qu. 53; spir. et litt. 48). Our awareness of the natural law derives from self-love, or the instinct for self-preservation, and it extends (as does the Stoic concept from which it derives) to a realization of the need for justly regulated relations with others (civ. 19.4; doctr. chr. 1.27). Primarily, this realization is a form of the Golden Rule²⁶ in its negative version ‘Do not do to others what you would not have others do to you’ (ep. 157.15; en. Ps. 57.1; Io. ev. tr. 49.12). Augustine gives the natural, or, as he often calls it, eternal law the status of a Platonic Form inasmuch as he says of it, as he says of the Forms, that it is ‘stamped on our minds’ (lib. arb. 1.50–1; trin. 14.21; ser. 81.2). Strictly speaking, the laws of human societies should be framed in accordance with divine eternal law (vera rel. 58), but it is political authority, rather than strict conformity to natural law, that gives validity to positive law (ep. 153.16; civ. 19.14). Only those human laws that are explicit contraventions of divine commands may be disobeyed, and Augustine’s understanding of what constitutes divine commands is specific: they are commands directly revealed in Scripture, such as the prohibition of idolatry (doctr. chr. 2.40, 58; civ. 19.17; ser 62.13). Augustine is otherwise reluctant to assert as a principle that individuals may decide for themselves whether an individual temporal law is just or unjust, even if promulgated by an unjust ruler or without reference to the natural law. One obvious exception is a law that might sanction something contrary to nature (Augustine’s example is sodomy (conf. 3.15–16)). Other laws (for example, about monogamy or polygamy) merely reflect the customs of different societies (conf. 3.12–13; c. Faust. 22.47). Hence there is scope for great differences in the laws of different societies.²⁷ The peace which is the highest good is also the proper aim of human societies. They should aspire to practise justice, to be stable, to be equitable in their dealings.²⁸ In practice, this is often only realized by coercion, punitive measures, and harsh exercise of authority: Augustine finds this appropriate to our fallen human nature, vitiated as it is by original sin. Controlling humans driven by greed, pride, ambition, and lust calls for a rule of law that, at best, contains vestiges or traces of authentic justice (Simpl. 1.2.16; trin. 14.22). Certain features of his society—private property and slavery, for instance—Augustine regards as consequences of the Fall, not, strictly speaking, natural, at least not natural to our pristine created selves (civ. 19.15–16; Io. ev. tr. 6.25–6). In general, Augustine insists that it is the proper use of wealth and possessions that counts. He proffers no moral critique of the economic or social institutions of his society. Misuse of wealth is wrongful possession of it, not in the legal sense (unless the misuse is also criminal), but in the moral sense that, in strict justice, the individual has forfeited his right to a material good (ep. 153.26; ser. 113.4; en. Ps. 131.25). Renunciation of property and wealth is part of the ascetic ideal, but it is the desire for unnecessary wealth, rather than the possession of wealth, that is immoral. Curbing desires is a central function of political authority, and it often has to take the form of merely restricting the harm that those who misuse the world’s goods would do: Augustine takes a sanguine view of government, which will not be required in the ideal state of heaven, where the tranquillity of order that is only realized by the rule of law in earthly societies (and only infrequently) will be realized spontaneously by the community of saints (civ. 19.11, 13–14; 22.30).²⁹ One social institution which Augustine defends is matrimony. His defence argues that it is not merely for the procreation of children but also to provide fellowship for the partners (b. coniug. 3). But a state of sexual abstinence is preferable. Augustine’s one argument for this view revolves around his understanding of sexual arousal. He has many grounds for championing abstinence as the supreme form of ascetic renunciation,³⁰ but they usually reflect his attitude to sensuality in general and control of emotions in particular. The argument concerning sexual arousal is that it is involuntary, not subject to the will or consent (civ. 14.16, 24; ep. 184A.3). It seems to be an exception to the rule that other bodily organs can be activated by the will, with or without emotional stimulus, indeed require some kind of willing in order to operate. But sexual arousal happens without the will’s consent, and neither can it be aroused at will. Even when desire has fired the mind after arousal (and so some kind of willing has occurred), the sex organs may fail to be responsive. Augustine considers this to be a consequence of original sin, and can envisage a pre-lapsarian form of sexual activity that is controlled by the will. His Pelagian adversary Julian of Eclanum argues that sexual desire is not merely necessary for copulation but also natural and in itself morally neutral (c. Iul. imp. 1.70– 1; 3.209). But why are anarchic genitals so bad? What distinguishes sexual arousal from, say, sneezing or coughing? Augustine seems to argue that what distinguishes it is its power over both body and mind: it overwhelms a person emotionally, physically, and mentally. This he finds sinister. There is, by implication, no emotion which cannot be brought under the control of reason, but sexual arousal is impervious to reason and to will (civ. 14.16). Augustine’s other arguments —such as the sense of shame attending sexual desire and acts—cannot explain why sex is tainted. But he finds that sexual arousal occurs even in the dreams of those who, like him, have devoted themselves to a life of continence, and that in dreams he seems to consent to sexual acts that his waking self repudiates. He argues that this cannot involve any moral responsibility, but feels that such dreams are a symptom of his imperfect moral status, as well as being yet another indication that the sex instinct is beyond our conscious control (conf. 10. 41–2; Gn. litt. 12.15.31).³¹ In several areas of ethics where Augustine’s ideas are not necessarily original he exerted, because of his authority and the wide dissemination of his views, a considerable influence. This is the case with what he says about the ethics of warfare, which does not advance much beyond Cicero (civ. 1.21; 4.15; 19.7; ep. 189.6; 229.2; c. Faust. 22.75),³² or his views about suicide, which contain the arguments that we do not dispose of our lives (a Platonic argument) and that killing oneself is a kind of cowardice and of despair, the triumph of emotion over reason (civ. 1.17–27; ser. 353. 8).³³ Augustine’s Platonism makes him equate the beautiful with the good. The God whom we love is the supreme beauty which we desire (conf. 7.7; 10.8, 38; sol. 1.22; trin. 1.31; civ. 8.6, 11.10; ser. 241.2; en. Ps. 44.3). Beauty consists of a numerically founded form or relation whose sensible manifestation is a reflection of a higher, immutable divine ‘reason’. Beauty’s structure is rational and accessible to the judging mind (ord. 1.18, 2.33–4; mus. 6.30, 38; Gn. litt. 3.16.25). But the formal beauty of the arts is to be transcended no less than natural beauty, and all perceptible beauty is an ‘admonition’ to mind to ascend to a spiritual plane where intelligible beauty is one with truth and wisdom (conf. 7.23; 10.9; vera rel. 101). In his creation account, Augustine uses the craftsman-analogy: God is the true artist and the universe is an artefact whose perfection is both numerical and hierarchical (civ. 11.18, 21–2; 12.24–5; Gn. c. Man. 1.25). If we could perceive the whole, we would realize that evil in the universe does not detract from its overall goodness, and that the presence of antitheses and contraries in it may enhance its beauty (ord. 1.18; conf. 7.18; civ. 11.18, 22; 12.4). Augustine recognizes the temptations inherent in aesthetic pleasure, as in any pleasure. He perceives, for example, that piety and fervour can be nourished by church music, but that the senses may sometimes usurp the place of reason when we delight in song (conf. 10.49– 50). Once more, it is a question of proper use of a lesser good. To delight in the beauty of the universe for its own sake, even if the delight is intellectual rather than sensual, is to confuse reflected goodness and beauty with the truly and perfectly good and beautiful. This would be a failure to know the Good and to love God. It would also, Augustine believes, leave us dissatisfied, our potential for the perfecting of our natures unrealized.³⁴ 6 THE WILL Augustine’s concept of the will³⁵ and defence of free will rest on the paradox that God determines our wills when we will the good, but that such willing is nonetheless free choice, for which we are responsible. This applies as much to Adam before the Fall as to humanity’s postlapsarian state. Divine help for Adam in paradise was a necessary, but not sufficient condition of his free choice of the good, and neither was freedom of choice sufficient. Only divine grace and human free choice together are sufficient for attaining the good (civ. 14.26; corrept. 28–34). Augustine argues, puzzlingly, that Adam, and all created beings, have a tendency to choose evil rather than good because they are created out of nothing and are possessed of an ontological weakness that does not entail their sinning but makes it possible that they will choose evil (civ. 12.6; 14.13; c. Iul. imp. 5.3). In an early work, the De libero arbitrio, Augustine describes the faculty of free will as a middle good whose activity is necessary to virtue: the neutral will can be used either rightly or wrongly, it is morally indifferent (lib. arb. 2.50–3). But as his thought develops, Augustine argues for the concept of a will that is morally determined, that is good or evil depending upon the value of what is willed. This is in part a reaction against Pelagian views. Pelagius describes human choice as a ‘power to take either side’, neither good nor evil per se: ‘in the middle’. Augustine denies that the same will can choose good and evil. Will is either good or evil, or, more accurately, the power of free choice (liberum arbitrium) of the will (voluntas) may be exercised in a good or an evil way (lib. arb. 2.1). The Pelagians had a strong case when they argued that Augustine’s views in De libero arbitrio were akin to theirs (retr. 1.9; conf. 8.19–21; pecc. mer. 2.18– 30; spir. et litt. 58; gr. et pecc. or. 1.19–21). Will for Augustine is a mental power or capacity, like memory, but because it is morally qualified it reflects a person’s moral standing in a way that memory cannot. As well as referring to a good or bad will in the singular, Augustine talks of two or more wills in us, where there is moral conflict: in this latter case, our wills are the range of possible courses of action open to us (lib. arb. 2.51; conf. 8.19–21; gr. et lib. arb. 4). If God determines my good will, how can I be free? Augustine believes that the fact that God has foreknowledge of my will does not determine that will, for God’s knowledge (strictly speaking, not foreknowledge) is timelessly eternal (Simpl. 2.2.2; civ. 5.9; 11.21; praed. sanct. 19). Divine omniscience is compatible with free choice of the will. Yet predestination to salvation is actively caused by God. Augustine argues that this does not make us passive recipients of divine grace. The notion of ‘compulsion of the will’ is to him an absurd one (c. Iul. imp. 1.101; c. ep. Pel. 2.9–12). Willing entails the power to do X through, and only through, the means of willing X. Augustine’s psychology is based upon the belief (which he derives from analysis of our behaviour) in the centrality of concentration or attention (intentio) in all mental processes. The mind is activated by the will, not in the sense of one faculty or ‘part of the soul’ affecting another, but inasmuch as we cannot perceive, or imagine, or remember without concentrating or paying attention or willing to do so. Thus grace may only become operative in humans when the will is attracted to the good. For the will is always goal-directed, and will entails assent. Willing is a form of action, not a reaction to external stimuli (gr. et lib. arb. 32; c. ep. Pel. 1.5, 27). If divine grace is irresistible, this does not entail that grace compels us. People are ‘acted upon that they may act’ (corrept. 4). It is seems impossible to argue that this is not determinism. What Augustine is stressing is that consent is necessary to the modus operandi of the will’s reception of grace. Augustine’s arguments against Pelagius’ description of human choice as ‘a power to take either side’ is based upon the observation that it posits the same cause (the indifferent will) of opposite effects (gr. et pecc. or. 1.19–21). Augustine appears here to reject the so-called ‘freedom of indifference’ of the will. His position seems to be closer to freedom of spontaneity, where absence of force or compulsion, rather than absence of external causation, is characteristic. Will is not self-determining, yet humans are not accurately to be described as being instruments of God’s will. Thus the Stoic example of the dog tied to, and dragged by, the cart (SVF II 975 [7.2]) cannot apply to Augustine’s understanding of spontaneity. Freedom is not merely acquiescence in God’s activity, but rather the exercise of a human faculty that involves both consent and power to act, or to initiate action. Both in his account of Adam’s freedom in paradise and in his early version of his freewill theory in De libero arbitrio Augustine subscribes to the liberty of indifference account; but it is not applicable to fallen humanity. However, the fallen human being possesses both the ability and, it may be, the opportunity, to act otherwise, even though that ability is not, in fact, exercised when the will is determined by the good. Exercising the ability to commit sin is not, of course, an exercise of freedom of the will for the mature Augustine. Rather, it is an instance of the enslavement of the will to evil, from which only divine grace can liberate it. If freedom to sin is a form of slavery, then willing and obedient slavery to the will of God is true freedom (ench. 30). On the other hand, sin is the price of having free will, and having free will is a necessary condition of acting rightly. Sin is the price of freedom, because freedom entails absence of compulsion. This is Augustine’s version of the free will defence (ench. 27; lib. arb. 2.1–3).³⁶ It reveals why defence of free choice of the will seems to be so important to Augustine. Heavenly rewards (and hellish punishments) make no sense if they are not a consequence of acting rightly (or wrongly), even if God is the author of our virtuous actions. The argument does not explain satisfactorily why God tolerates sin. Augustine’s characteristic strategy here is to concede that nothing happens ‘apart from God’s will’, even those things, like sin, that happen ‘against God’s will’ (ench. 100). God lets us sin, but does not cause us to do so. But it is difficult, on these premises, to avoid the consequence that God is responsible for sin, in the sense that he is responsible for states of affairs brought about voluntarily, if not intentionally, by him. The distinction between causing and permitting seems impossible to maintain.³⁷ God’s grace precedes (in Augustine’s terminology) acts of the free will. God makes good decisions possible, but also causes them, for grace is irresistible. Prevenient grace is more than merely enabling, nor is it a form of co-operation between God and humans. Rather it is operative. Again, the question arises: can a decision caused by God be free? Augustine’s answer is the one discussed above. God causes the reception of his gifts by the mechanism of human consent. But since God’s will is never thwarted, it is as true to say that what happens as a consequence of divine will happens by necessity, as it is to maintain that human realization of good behaviour is an instance of human freedom. ‘God cannot will in vain anything that he has willed’ (ench. 103), and the human being whom God wills to save cannot be damned. But neither will such a human being be saved against her will. 7 SOUL Augustine’s concept of soul as an immaterial, naturally good, active, inextended, and indivisible substance owes much to his Neoplatonist readings. It is also likely that Porphyry is a major source of his knowledge of the contents of Plato’s Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Timaeus. Scripture and the Christian tradition provide Augustine less with a concept of soul’s nature than with texts requiring exegetical elucidation by means of Platonist psychology, and attempts at philosophical exegesis which he rejects, such as Tertullian’s corporealist theories and Origen’s arguments for pre-existence, embodiment as punishment for sin, and reincarnation.³⁸ Soul is the life-principle, and to various kinds of life—vegetative, sentient, intelligent—correspond degrees of soul (civ. 7.23, 29; en. Ps. 137. 4). The awareness that we are alive is awareness that we are, or have, souls: Augustine argues that we are empirically conscious of the fact that we have a soul, even if we do not perceive soul with any of the senses (beata. v. 7; trin. 8.9). The single soul in humans has rational and irrational faculties: the latter include the powers of impulse, sense-perception, and certain kinds of memory, and they can be disturbed by the passions. It is the function of the rational soul (and mind is a part of soul) to control the irrational element (civ. 5.11; 9.5; en. Ps. 145.5). There is an inescapable moral dimension in Augustine’s accounts of the levels of soul, and it is linked to the Neoplatonist concept of soul’s conversion to the Good, seen in terms of an ascent from the corporeal and percipient levels, through those of discursive reason and moral purification, to the intellection of the highest principle by a mind that is morally and mentally prepared for understanding. This conversion or return makes good the ‘turning-away’ from divine wisdom and interiority that characterizes sin: rejecting the distracting multiplicity of what is external, it discovers the divine within us (imm. an. 12, 19; ord. 1.3; 2.31; conf. 2.1; 7.23; 13.3; trin. 8.4; 10.7; 14. 21). Soul, the principle of movement in bodies, is itself a self-moving principle: my consciousness of my self-movement is my consciousness of my power to will (div. qu. 8). Soul’s movement is not local, nor does it entail substantial change, but impulse and will often result in bodily movement (ep. 166.4; quant. an. 23). Rejecting all corporealist theories of the soul’s substance, Augustine engages in polemic against them, be they Epicurean, Stoic, Manichaean, or Christian. Examination of the nature of soul’s activities rules out even the most subtle of corporeal soul-substances. Memory and imagination are not subject to the physical law that corporeal likenesses correspond in size to the bodies in which they are reflected, like the image in the pupil of the eye. Perception, concentration, and volition are indicators of immateriality, as is the mind’s power of abstraction and intellection of non-corporeal objects, such as geometrical figures (quant. an. 8–22; Gn. litt. 7.14.20; 7.19.25–20.26). Although physical and mental powers appear to develop concomitantly in growing humans, there is no strict correlation between their development, still less any evidence that soul physically grows or diminishes (quant. an. 26–40). Augustine is nonetheless aware that it is paradoxical to maintain that soul is present as an entirety throughout the body and is yet inextended and indivisible. It is omnipresent not in a spatial sense, but as a ‘vital tension’ (vitalis intentio), which, for example, enables it to perceive in more than one bodily part simultaneously (imm. an. 25; quant. an. 26, 41–68; ep. 166.4). Soul is mutable: that makes it substantially different from God’s unchangeable nature (conf. 7.1–4). As a Manichee, Augustine had believed that the good human soul is part of the divine, and he sees Stoic pantheism as leading to the same conclusions (duab. an. 16; vera rel. 16; civ. 7.13, 23). The soul is subject to various kinds of mutability. Learning, the affections, moral deterioration and progress, all effect changes in the soul (imm. an. 7). Soul exists in a temporal medium in which it can and must change. It is maintained in its continued existence by God’s will (div. qu. 19; ep. 166.3; trin, 4.5, 16, 24). To characterize soul’s changeability Augustine uses the Aristotelian distinction between a subject and qualitative changes in that subject which do not entail substantial change in it (Aristotle, Categories 2). For the soul’s identity persists through change. In fact, the necessarily unchangeable nature of certain kinds of knowledge entails the substantial identity of the mind in which, as in a subject, such knowledge is present. Augustine regards this as proof of the soul’s immortality (imm. an. 5, 7–9; sol. 2.22, 24). He also argues for its immortality from its equation with life. If being alive is the defining characteristic of soul, soul cannot admit the contrary of life and so cannot cease to live (imm. an. 4–5, 9, 12, 16; trin. 10.9): this is the final argument for the soul’s immortality in Plato’s Phaedo (102a-107b). Augustine believes that the irrational human soul is also immortal, and that we have both memory and feelings in the afterlife (civ. 21.3; Gn. litt. 12.32.60–34. 67). The soul, like God inasmuch as it has a similar creative and rational domination over subordinate creation, cannot, in its nature, be evil. It is a corruptible good, occupying a medial position between God and bodies. Its position on the scale of being and its moral standing should coincide. Pride, a desire for self-mastery in an order where the soul is not the master, degrades it morally to animal level (conf. 7.18; civ. 19.13; en. Ps. 145.5; ep. 140.3–4; trin. 12.16). But this degradation can only be understood in a metaphorical sense. Augustine repudiates Manichaean and Platonist doctrines of transmigration of human souls into, or from, animal bodies, agreeing with what he takes to be Porphyry’s rejection of the view that a rational soul, whose reason is not accidental but belongs to its substance, could become the essentially different irrational soul of an animal, or vice versa (civ. 10.29–30; 12.14, 21, 27; 13.19; Gn. litt, 7.10.15–11.17). The incorporeal soul cannot be a condition of the body, such as its harmony or the proportion of its parts (imm. an. 2, 17; Gn. litt. 3.16.25; 7. 19.25). Yet soul is entirely present in every part of the body, and its various activities and conditions point to a symbiosis in which body and soul influence one another (ep. 9.3–4). Soul is mixed with body in a way that allows each element to maintain its identity, as in the mixture of light and air (ep. 137.11; Gn. litt. 3.16.25). The ‘vital tension’ (ep. 166.4) by which soul is present to body has also a volitional dimension (mus. 6.9; Gn. litt. 8.21.42). Augustine is aware of the Platonist view that, even when not embodied, souls may inhabit a vehicle, but doubts the truth of the theory, considering pure spiritual existence to be possible, even if he also believes in the future resurrection of the body: it is natural for souls to govern bodies (ep. 13.2–4; Gn. litt. 8.25.47; 12.32.60; 12.35.68). On two traditional problems Augustine remains agnostic: the origin of souls, and the existence of a world-soul. On origins he vacillates between the view that souls are propagated by parents, like bodies, and the theory that they are created directly by God as each individual is conceived. The former is difficult to explain, the latter seems to compromise the completeness of God’s creation. Augustine considers various forms of preexistence theory, including the view that all souls are created individually in the moment of creation, and embodied at different times. But his discussions remain inconclusive, just as he remains uncertain about the moment when the foetus is animated (lib. arb. 3.56–9; Gn. litt. 6; 7; 10).³⁹ Hevacillates on the question of the world-soul because he finds it plausible to believe that the ordered and cohesive universe owes its continued existence to the presence of a cosmic soul. He objects to particular consequences of world-soul theories (dual good and evil cosmic principles, as in Manichaeism; Stoic views on the world as the body of a divine mind) rather than the theories as such, and is benevolent towards what he takes to be Plotinus’ position, that cosmic soul is created and illuminated by a transcendent divine principle. But his tentative conclusion is that the universe is an inanimate body full of stratified soul-kinds (imm. an. 24; ord. 2.30; civ. 4.12, 31; 7.5–6, 23; 10.2, 29; 13.16–17).⁴⁰ When Augustine analyses human behaviour, he recognizes that impulse or assent (appetitus) is the cause of action, whether it is the impulse of selfpreservation, or motions of appetency or avoidance or simply the motor of a proposed course of behaviour (div. qu. 40; ep. 104.12; civ. 19.4; trin. 12. 3, 17). Augustine’s views on impulse and assent are crucial to his account of the will. The links between impulse, assent, will, and desire are fundamental in his psychology: to eradicate desire is impossible, and desire can be for good things—knowledge, happiness, God (lib. arb. 3.70; div. qu. 35.2; civ. 10.3; conf. 13.47). Assent is good if it results in moral behaviour, if desire is directed towards appropriate goals, and for the right reasons. It is the same with the emotions. They are expressions of the irrational faculty, and forms of intention. They should be controlled by reason and used properly. They are an inescapable feature of our condition: Augustine does not believe in the existence of a dispassionate soul (civ. 9.4; 14.6–10). Augustine’s insistence upon the value of introspection, both as a means of discovering the truth and as a condition of moral purification (vera rel. 72; trin. 9.4; 10.2–15), leads him to talk of senses of the soul, of inner senses, inner speaking, and—using a Pauline analogy (Romans 7:22–3, etc.)—of the ‘inner man’ (ser. 126.3; Io. ev. tr. 99.4; civ. 13.24). Augustine supposes that such locutions are about our souls or our minds, and that the phenomena which they describe entail mind-body dualism. But they do not. They may describe the contrast (or consistency) between model cases of human behaviour and how we actually behave, or they may refer to dissembling or insincere behaviour.⁴¹ In Christological and Trinitarian contexts Augustine speaks of the concept of a person, whether he is talking about the unity of Christ’s persona, despite his human and divine natures, or about the relation between the three persons of the single substance that is the Trinity (trin. 7. 7–11; ep. 137.11; Io. ev. tr. 19.15). Sometimes he equates the person with the self, as distinct from the emotional or mental powers or activities (trin. 15.42), or as the subject of personal attributes. But his conclusions do not lead to any concept of personality as distinct from traditional views of what it is to be human. The distinction between person and substance in his Trinitarian theology, and the relational aspect of his definition of person there, are not exploited in his account of human psychology.⁴² 8 SENSE-PERCEPTION AND IMAGINATION Augustine’s theory of sense-perception has a physiological bias. Like Plotinus, he exploits the discovery of the nervous system by Alexandrian medicine (Plotinus 4.3.23; see Solmsen [12.106]). The sensory nerves transmit stimuli to the brain from the various sense-organs. The nerves contain soul pneuma as a means of communication between brain and senses (Gn. litt. 7.13.20; 7.19.25). Augustine co-ordinates this belief with other traditional philosophical accounts of perceptive processes, such as the ray theory of vision (trin. 9.3; ser. 277.10). The senses are not reflexive, and awareness of their activity is a perception of the internal sense (which corresponds to Aristotle’s koinê aisthêsis), which controls and judges sensations (lib. arb. 2.8–12). Sensation is a form of motion or change. Augustine believes that it is a motion running counter to the motion set up in the body by sensory stimuli (mus. 6.10–11, 15). Sentience is the product of the interaction of two movements of qualitative change. Most likely it is the soul pneuma that is set in motion in this process. Because of the presence of pneuma in the sensory nerves, they are themselves sentient. The perceiving subject, soul, is entirely present in them, and is not merely located in a central receptive organ with which they communicate in a nonsentient way (imm. an. 25; c. ep. fund. 16.20). But if sensation has a physiological mechanism, perception is nonetheless a psychological process. The body-soul interaction in perception is a kind of tempering by mixture (contemperatio); its mental aspect is called concentration (intentio). In vision, for example, the visual ray is the necessary physical counterpart of mental concentration. Intentio is an activity, the active concentration of soul power: perception is exercised upon the sensory stimulus rather than being a passive reception of the latter (quant. an. 41–9; mus. 6.7–11; trin. 11.2; Gn. litt. 7.20.26; 12.12. 25; 12.20.42). Body does not act upon soul: ‘perception is something directly undergone by the body of which the soul is aware’ (quant. an. 48). Augustine extends the notions of concentration and counter-motion to his accounts of feelings like pleasure and pain (mus. 6.5, 9, 23, 26, 34–58). The awareness implicit in any perceptive process is underpinned by the instantaneous operation of memory. A series of memory-impressions is stored in the mind in the course of even the shortest perception, and this process is essential to the functioning of perception (mus. 6.21; Gn. litt. 12. 11.22). Some texts of Augustine dispute that perception gives us any knowledge of the external world, suggesting that there are no characteristics of our sense-perceptions that enable us infallibly to distinguish between true and false (c. Acad. 3.39; div. qu. 9). But many other texts make claims for our ability to know the external world, the kind of knowledge that Augustine calls scientia, contrasting it with sapientia, the knowledge of eternal and immutable truths (trin. 12.16–17, 21; 15.21). Even optical illusions have a kind of consistency (c. Acad. 3. 36). Augustine maintains that if our perception of an object is comprehensive and our faculties are functioning normally, reliable information may be acquired about the external world (ep. 147.21; civ. 19. 18). Sense-perception is perception of images of objects, not of the objects themselves, and these images are not corporeal. Like Aristotle (De anima 2. 12), Augustine argues that perception is the ability to receive forms without matter (quant. an. 8–9). Moreover, perception is the perception of like by like. There is an affinity between the percipient’s reason and the image or form of the object perceived, and it is this affinity which makes perception possible as well as reliable (ord. 2.32–3; trin. 11.2, 4, 26). Now the objects of perception are themselves formed by the Forms or Reasons or Ideas in the mind of God, to which they owe their existence (div. qu. 23, 46). In sense-perception these Forms function as standards (regulae) accessible to our minds whereby we may distinguish between the truth and falsity of the images conveyed by perception (vera rel. 58; trin. 9.9–11). When the mind errs in its evaluation of perceptions it does so because it applies itself to the phenomena in question in some deficient way: access to the Forms is no guarantee of infallibility in perception (Gn. litt. 12.25.52). Assembling of evidence and common sense will prevent mistakes being made: Augustine believes that we are capable of establishing working distinctions between reliable and illusory perceptions. Strictly speaking, perception does not convey certainty, but empirical processes operate on the basis of a distinction between true and false, and there is a ‘truth appropriate to this class of things’ (ibid.). That this is so is due to our access to the transcendent criterion, the Form, because of divine illumination of our minds (sol. 1.27; trin. 9.10–11). The reproductive exercise of the imagination (often called phantasia by Augustine) depends on remembered images that are reactivated, but so does the creative activity of imagination (often called phantasma by him) (mus. 6.32; trin. 8.9; 9.10). Imagination may be willed and subject to our control, but not necessarily so. Creative imagination is a process of contracting and expanding the images of what we have perceived, or of combining or separating their data (ep. 7.6; trin. 11.8). In such cases concentration or will is operative (trin. 11.6–7). But there are imaginative processes that seem to be involuntary, such as dreams and hallucinations. Augustine adds to this category prophetic inspiration, arguing that some dreams are also prophetic. Dreaming is imagining, often on the basis of images derived from the day’s preoccupations, and it is beyond rational control (Gn. litt. 12.18.39; 12.23.49; 12.30.58). Thus consent to sinful actions in dreams is not morally reprehensible although it is the case that our dreams reflect our moral character (see section 5). In dreams the creative imagination is more usually in operation. But not all dreams or visions are entirely dependent upon our mental powers. Augustine recognizes external agencies, divine, angelic, or demonic, and is curious to explain a wide variety of paranormal phenomena in terms of the imagination (O’Daly [12.46] 118–27). In such cases a reciprocal influence of body and soul upon one another is often discernible (ep. 9.3–4; Gn. litt. 12.13.27; 12.17.37–8). Anticipation of intended actions is an activity of imagination, as is the prediction of future events, and both of these processes depend upon experience and the creative manipulation of images (conf. 10.14; 11.23–4, 26, 30, 36–8; trin. 15.13; Gn. litt. 12.23.40). Augustine is also interested in the pathology of the imagination, where some physical disruption of the link between brain and sensory nervous system occurs. In such cases concentration takes place, but because it cannot function normally, it generates images in a wholly introspective way. Or the disturbance may be in the brain itself or in the sense-organ. The hallucinatory states which ensue have something in common with dreams (Gn. litt. 12.12.25; 12.20.42–4). There is no single influence upon Augustine’s accounts of senseperception and imagination. The Stoic concept of sunaisthêsis lies behind his definition of perception, as it does behind Plotinus’ account. There are Neoplatonist traces in his concept of internal sense. But he is not reproducing other men’s doctrines.⁴³ 9 MEMORY Augustine argues that memory is indispensable to our perceptions of spatiotemporal continua and to the exercise of the imagination. But how are memory-images formed? The series of images stored in the mind in the course of every perception is not merely essential to the process of perception itself, but also to the recollection of perceptions (conf. 10.12–15; quant. an. 8–9; Gn. litt. 12.16.33). Incorporeal sense-impression leads to incorporeal memory-image, and memory depends upon and corresponds to perception in quality, quantity, and kind (trin. 11.13, 16; c. ep. fund. 16. 20). But memory-images are not formed spontaneously. They are willed, a consequence of concentration. And if memory, like expectation, is a prerequisite of deliberate action, concentration is the necessary link between memory and expectation, if the moments of such action are to cohere (imm. an. 3–4; trin. 11.15). In his account of the process of remembering Augustine applies the analogy with sense-perception. The will directs the mind towards the memory’s contents, and the mind’s vision is formed by memory-images. Recollecting is perceiving memory-images: it actualizes memory-traces (mag. 39; trin. 11.6). However, this model of the memory process is only fully satisfactory as an account of how we remember sense-perceptions, and, in addition, it only serves as an analogy between types of mental activity (perceiving and remembering), not between the objects of these activities. The images perceived in sense-perception are those of objects actually there and perceptible by other percipients. The truth-value of the images is verifiable. But Augustine has a difficulty with memory-images of perceptions, for they are images of things absent, no longer there in the state in which they were perceived. Augustine suggests that they must have evidential character as ‘proofs [documenta] of previously perceived things’ (mag. 39), but, strictly speaking, only for the percipient: their verifiability remains problematic.⁴⁴ Augustine does not offer a direct solution to this dilemma. But elements of his solution may be constructed from his account of the functional relations between words and images. That he must envisage a solution is evident, for memory is essential to every type of knowledge claim, including claims about the objects of sense-perceptions. What we perceive is an articulated image, a rational structure which has an affinity with our minds, and is stored in our memory as a form of knowledge. When we wish to reactivate this knowledge by directing our concentration upon it, we generate an ‘inner word’, co-extensive with the memory-image. The image appears to be stored in the memory pre-verbally, as a word-potential (trin. 8.9; 15.16, 19–22). The linguistic metaphor here employed, and the reason for its employment, are clarified by Augustine’s remarks about the understanding and retention of the meaning of words (dial. 5). The meaning (dicibile) grasped by the mind is also a wordpotential, capable of being expressed in language. But meaning is always present to the mind in a verbal manner. Also, it may have a general semantic function: the meaning of ‘city’, if understood, enables me, not merely to recall or recognize known cities, but also to identify new cities and classify them, and so on. Identifying, understanding, naming, and recalling are inextricably linked. Not every perception must be accompanied by overt naming of the object perceived, but naming is usually at least implicit or expected. The metaphor of the ‘inner word’ recognizes this. But Augustine also feels that he can best elucidate the mechanism of perceiving, storing, and recalling by the linguistic illustration: grasping a word’s meaning, storing it as a dicibile, and expressing it. Recalling my memory-image of an object is like actualizing the semantic content of a known word, it is like bringing its meaning to mind. What this analogy emphasizes is the coherence and objectivity of our recollected perceptions: memory claims are meaningful.⁴⁵ Augustine does not apply this solution to the problem of the verifiability of memory-images. But the implication of his argument is that, if senseperception leads to knowledge of the external world, memory is the storing of such knowledge. Verifying memory-claims may involve deciding whether another person’s claims are worthy of credence on grounds of inherent plausibility: it involves deciding what I should believe, and for Augustine belief is a form of knowledge (see section 3). Augustine extends the mental-image theory to one other type of memory, that of past emotions, but he does so tentatively (conf. 10.21–3). For recalling a past feeling need not entail re-experiencing that feeling, whereas the memory-image of a past perception conveys some distinctive quality of what is remembered. Augustine adduces his famous metaphor of memory as the mind’s ‘stomach’ (conf. 10.21), taking in but transforming different emotions. But he is clearly not at ease with the application of the mental-image theory to this kind of memory, chiefly because the ideas of past feelings have not been perceived by any of the senses, but are derived from the mind’s introspection of its own experiences. However, if he were to claim that they can be recalled without an image, he would be making a claim about them that is made for recalled ideal numbers, scientific principles, and Forms. Affections may be mental phenomena, but we can recall them only because we have experienced them, unlike numbers, principles, and Forms. Against the trend of his argument Augustine concludes that memories of past f feelings are more like memories of past perceptions than the privileged category of remembering that does not require images. Augustine puts forward a criterion for establishing that something is in the memory. If I can name P and recognize what the name P refers to, I remember P (conf. 10.23). He applies this criterion to the fact of forgetting (conf. 10.24–5, 27–8). But how can I actualize forgetting in my mind without, in fact, forgetting? Augustine first suggests that the image theory may solve the problem: recalling forgetting may be like recalling a past feeling, and I must not actually experience forgetting every time I recall it. But he is not satisfied with this suggestion, and embarks upon an alternative argument. When I forget the name of a person I know, both my rejection of wrong names and my recognition of the right name, when I recall or am told it, are possible only because I have not entirely forgotten it. Remembering forgetting is related to an object: it is remembering that I have forgotten something. But to remember that I have forgotten something entails that I have not entirely forgotten it. And the experience of forgetting does not entail having a mental image of forgetting. Without such an image I can recognize what ‘forgetting’ means and so remember forgetting something. Augustine also suggests that I can recall the circumstances or context of something which I have forgotten, and that this can help me recollect it. There may be certain indicators (signa) which are contextual and remind me by association of what I have forgotten (trin. 11.12; 14.17). Memory is the focal point of consciousness, in which past, present, and future are related: it appears to underwrite the continuity of mental processes and provide the subject’s sense of his identity (conf. 1.12; 10.14, 21, 26). Mind, memory, and the self are inextricably linked, and Augustine may seem to argue that my identity is dependent upon continuity of consciousness, as does Locke (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2. 27.9). But Augustine is not making any such claim. He points out that areas of my past, such as infancy, are not accessible to my memory, yet nonetheless constitute my identity: my knowledge of myself, past and present, is imperfect (conf. 1.7–12; 2.1; 10.15). Nor is memory the mind without qualification, but rather the mind engaged in certain activities, just as understanding and will are the mind engaged in equally distinctive activities (trin. 10.18–19). Augustine is familiar with the Platonic theory of recollection (anamnêsis) as an explanation of the presence in the mind of knowledge that is not derived from sense-experience. He mentions the complementary doctrine of the soul’s pre-existence as a possibility for the created human soul (lib. arb. 1.24; 3.56–9), but never adopts the doctrine, preferring to use Platonic language about recollection to convey active and latent states of the mind’s possession of knowledge (see section 7).⁴⁶ Recollection is eliciting what is latent in the memory by a process of mental concentration and ordering (quant. an. 50–6). Because of the mind’s intelligible nature it is ‘joined…to intelligible object in a natural arrangement [naturali ordine]’ (trin. 12.24). Such objects are known by direct acquaintance, and no mental image is required in recollecting them (conf. 10.16–19). It might seem appropriate for Augustine to say that God too is in my memory, like ideas. But he is careful to stress that God cannot be in my memory before I learn of him. The reason is, that God is both knowable (as the truth and the Good) and unknowable to the human mind (sol. 1.15; ord. 2.44, 47; ep. 130.28; Gn. litt. 5.16.34), whereas Forms and scientific principles are fully known by us. Knowing God is a different matter, attainable only in a paradoxical sense, and by submission of the will. I may love God before I know him, but I can only remember God after I have, in some respect, learnt about him (conf. 10.8–11, 35–8). Augustine’s use of memoria and of terms f or remembering covers a wide range of activities, not all of them self-evidently kinds of memory: selfconsciousness, self-knowledge, understanding a scientific principle. In this he is influenced by Platonist anamnêsis theory and discussions about the rediscovery of one’s true self by self-reflection. His account of memory is recognizably part of ancient philosophical discussions of the problem. But it is not possible to identify a specific influence to which he is indebted. He neither agrees with Aristotle that all memory processes depend upon the mental image, nor with Plotinus that such an image theory is unnecessary. He implicitly concurs with Stoic theory in his account of memories of sense-perceptions, and his account owes much to Stoic views on presentation and assent (SVF 2.83, 115 [7.2]). But he cannot accept the Stoic theory as a global account of memory. His view that in some kinds of memory the mental image is a prerequisite, whereas in others it is not, is closest to Plato’s position, even if it cannot be based on extensive reading of Plato’s dialogues. Several elements of Augustine’s account are anticipated in Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 1.57–71): memory as an impressive power of the immaterial mind, and as a means of understanding the mind’s self-knowledge and obtaining knowledge of God through his works and by analogy with the human mind. But if the themes are traditional, Augustine’s analysis is of sustained originality.⁴⁷ Some uses of memory-language in Augustine appear questionable or untenable. One such case is his claim that memory is essential to the performance of serial operations such as perception or speaking a sentence. These are not cases of actual reminiscence or memory performance. Notforgetting or bearing in mind are not instances of recalling or remembering, and the concomitant concentration is neither remembering nor does it entail self-consciousness in the sense implied by Augustine.⁴⁸ 10 TIME Although Augustine occasionally refers to time as a trace or copy of eternity (mus. 6.29; en. Ps. 9.17; Gn. litt. imp. 13.38), he departs from the Platonic tradition in not attempting to analyse time with reference to eternity (conf. 11.17–39). The contrast between God’s eternity and human temporality leads Augustine to consider time empirically, as a fact of everyday experience, a practical problem. The ensuing speculative freedom of his discussion has attracted much modern attention: for Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations 89–90) it is an example of a typical but flawed kind of discourse about time.⁴⁹ Augustine’s puzzles about the difficulty of defining something as familiar as time are traditional in ancient philosophy since Aristotle (Physics 4.10– 14). They lead him not to a definition of time, but to an attempt to answer two questions: how do we measure time? how can stretches of time have any length? Augustine admits, if only by implication, that time may not be explicitly definable. His celebrated description of time as a distentio animi (conf. 11.33) is not so much a definition as a metaphor evoking the psychological state (more ‘tension’ or ‘distraction’ than ‘extension’) that accompanies the mental act of time-measurement.⁵⁰ Augustine believes that time is an infinitely divisible continuum. There are no time-atoms. There are extended time-stretches, but at any given instant time has no actual measurable extent (conf. 11.20, 34). Nevertheless, Augustine erroneously asserts that the present ‘is’ (exists now), despite being extensionless and without duration (conf. 11.22–6). This is partly due to the fact that, like most ancient philosophers, he views time as a flow of events of which each instant successively constitutes a present or ‘now’ (Plutarch, De communibus notitiis 1082A).⁵¹ But heal so assumes that ‘now’ is a point or part of time, failing to see that the division of an extended time-stretch will always result in extended time-stretches. For Augustine, the past and the future do not exist (in the sense of existing now), but are present in memory and expectation. Past events are present in the images derived from sense-perception; the presence of the signs or causes of future events enables us to anticipate or predict them. Like the Stoics (SVF 2.509, 518–19 [7.2]), Augustine criticizes conventional language concerning three grammatical tenses: we should, strictly speaking, talk only of three present tenses, and of a ‘present of things past’ and a ‘present of things future’ (conf. 11.22–4, 26). Time is measured in the mind, and is a measurement of duration, which may be a duration of change or motion, but need not be so. Augustine is at pains to demonstrate that our ability to make temporal measurements is prior to, and independent of, any observed physical movement. Time units like day and year are indeed derived from observation of the motion of heavenly bodies, which form an astronomical clock, but our time sense does not presuppose a clock, depending rather upon memories of timestretches. When the sun stood still in Joshua’s war against the Amorites (Joshua 10: 12–13), time qua, duration still passed (conf. 11.27, 29–30). Time is the measurement of a relation, by comparison with known (remembered) time-stretches, but we do not make direct temporal comparisons with the standard unit of measurement: measuring time is not like measuring length, for example. Nor do we measure time as it passes, for time at any given instant is extensionless. What we measure is not the time-process itself, but the impress (affectio) which memory retains after perceptions. In the case of future processes, we measure them by anticipation when we possess the necessary knowledge to enable us to make advance calculations (conf. 11.31, 33–8). Augustine’s insight that our ability to measure times depends upon the fact that durations can be remembered is vitiated by his inference that the time-impress (affectio) is the time-stretch itself. He is led to the inference because he believes that when a time is not present it does not exist, and that the past and the future must somehow currently exist, if they are to be the objects of currently existing memory or expectation. But the proper objects of present memories and expectations are past and future events (not times), and it is they which do not have present existence. Yet that fact does not entail that my dealing with them can take place only through present images and signs of them.⁵² Elements of Augustine’s analysis of timemeasurement reflect Stoic views: the assumption that time is infinitely divisible; the distinction between loose and strict language about temporal phenomena, especially the criticism of grammatical tenses; the distinction between infinite duration and least perceptible times. It is likely that his analysis develops from a Stoic or Stoic-influenced discussion. But his conclusions form a personal contribution of great ingenuity to traditional questions.⁵³ Augustine believes that there cannot be time before the creation, for time requires change and there was no change in God’s eternity. Time, therefore, had a beginning (conf. 11.12–16; civ. 11.6; Gn. litt. 5.5.12). The principle that time requires change is common to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, but Augustine appears to repudiate it when he argues for the primacy of time sense over measured time units. Perhaps he should have concentrated upon the argument that, since creation is a first event, there cannot be time before that event.⁵⁴ 11 GOD AND CREATION Augustine’s concept of divine immutability developed gradually. Initially he seems to have accepted the Manichaean belief that there is a changeable divine principle partly immanent in nature. Later he thought of God as immanent and material, but infinite, incorruptible and immutable. His encounter with the Platonists changed his concept of God definitively: God is transcendent, immaterial, and his timelessness entails unchangeability (duab. an. 16; vera rel. 16; conf. 7.1–2, 26; en. Ps. 101). God is subject neither to decay nor death, he is perfect living being, in whom substance and qualities are identical (trin. 6.6, 8; 7.1–3). The ‘present’ of God’s existence is extensionless, like the ‘present’ of an infinitely divisible time continuum, but God’s present is indivisible, a condition of permanent stability (vera rel. 97; conf. 11.12; ser. 6.4). Divine substance is mental: the eternal Forms (rationes, ideae) are, in Middle Platonist fashion, understood to be in the divine mind, and the second person of the Trinity is often said to be divine wisdom or truth, and hence God is truth (div. qu. 46.2; mag. 38; trin. 4.3). Divine perfection is perfect life, thought, and will (conf. 3.10; div. qu. 28). God is omniscient. His knowledge necessarily embraces events in time, but he does not and cannot know these as past and future occurrences. God apprehends temporal events timelessly as present events. It is more correct to say that he has knowledge, rather than foreknowledge, of events that have not yet happened, and this knowledge is immutable (civ. 5.9; 11. 21; Simpl. 2.2.2).⁵⁵ Although Augustine does not apply this notion of God’s not knowing the future as future to the question whether divine foreknowledge entails determinism, he in fact argues that divine foreknowledge is compatible with free choice of the will (lib. arb. 3.4–9). God the creator timelessly causes the universe to begin. The ‘Why not sooner?’ argument against its beginning is countered by Augustine’s insistence that there was no time before the creation, since time depends on change and God is unchanging. Nor does creation entail that God’s will changes: he changelessly wills to create the universe. The notions that the universe persists for ever or that worlds endlessly recur derive from the misconception that there is otherwise a time prior to creation in which God is idle (conf. 11.8, 12–17; 12.18, 38; civ. 11.4–6, 21; 12.15, 18).⁵⁶ The Greek philosophical principle that nothing comes from nothing led some authors in the Judaeo-Christian tradition to assert that God made the world out of a pre-existing, beginningless matter. But others violated the principle by asserting that God created the world out of nothing.⁵⁷ Augustine adopts the latter viewpoint, which had become dominant by his day (Gn. litt. imp. 1.2; sol. 1.2; mus. 6.57; conf. 11.7; 12.7; 13.48; vera rel. 35; c. Fel. 2.19). But he also argues that God creates unformed matter from nothing, to be the subject of change. Matter is the necessary condition of change, but its creation does not precede that of created beings. Even created immaterial beings have a ‘spiritual’ matter (conf. 12.4–8, 38; Gn. litt. 1.4.9–5.11; 5.5.12–16; 7.6.9–9.12; Gn. litt. imp. 4.11–15; Armstrong [12.117]). Creation is instantaneous and complete, but living organisms are produced at different times throughout the history of the world. In order to account both for the completeness of creation at the moment of creation and the gradual realization of created organisms Augustine adopts and adapts the theory of seminal logoi (rationes causales, seminales). These are immaterial causes and conditions of living organisms, potentials that are realized in the material seeds from which plants and animals develop, with all their specific differences. The rationes are created in the primal creation, along with the heavenly bodies, the firmament, and the elements of earth and water (Gn. litt. 5–7; trin. 3.13, 16).⁵⁸ ABBREVIATIONS b. coniug. De bono coniugali beata v. De beata vita c. Acad. Contra Academicos c. ep. fund. Contra epistulam fundamenti c. ep. Pel. Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum c. Faust. Contra Faustum Manichaeum c. Fel. Contra Felicem c. Iul. Contra Iulianum Pelagianum c. Iul. imp. Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum civ. De civitate Dei conf. Confessiones corrept. De correptione et gratia dial. De dialectica div. qu. De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII doctr. chr. De doctrina christiana duab. an. De duabus animabus ench. Enchiridion ad Laurentium en. Ps. Enarrationes in Psalmos ep. Epistulae Gn. c. Man. De Genesi contra Manichaeos Gn. litt. De Genesi ad litteram Gn. litt. imp. De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber gr. et. lib. arb. De gratia et libero arbitrio gr. et pecc. or. De gratia Christi et de peccato originali imm. an. De immortalitate animae Io. ev. tr. Tractatus in Evangelium Iohannis lib. arb. De libero arbitrio mag. De magistro mor. De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum mus. De musica ord. De ordine pecc. mer. De peccatorum meritis et remissione praed. sanct. De praedestinatione sanctorum quant. an. De quantitate animae retr. Retractationes ser. Sermones Simpl. De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum sol. Soliloquia spir. et litt. De spiritu et littera trin. De trinitate util. cred. De utilitate credendi vera rel. De vera religione NOTES 1 Hagendahl [12.57] 79–94, 486–97. 2 Hagendahl [12.57] 52–156, 498–553. 3 Courcelle [12.56] 159–76; O’Meara [12.38] 131–55. 4 Marrou [12.59] 27–46; Courcelle [12.56] 183–94. 5 Fredriksen [12.51]; Markus [12.52]. 6 Miles [12.88] 99–125. 7 O’Daly [12.46] 7–79. 8 Kretzmann [12.64]. 9 Rist [12.48] 41–8, 53–6. 10 Kirwan [12.42] 22. 11 Kirwan [12.42] 22–3. 12 Matthews [12.69]; Kirwan [12.42] 30–4; Sorabji [12.120] 289; Rist [12.48] 63–7. 13 Letter to Colvius, Adam-Tannery 3.247; Philosophical Letters, tr. A.Kenny, Oxford 1970, 83–4; Matthews [12.70] 11–38. 14 O’Daly [12.104]; cf. O’Connell [12.102]. 15 Nash [12.71] 94–124; O’Daly [12.46] 203–7. 16 O’Donovan [12.47] 60–92. 17 Rist [12.48] 23–40. 18 Stock [12.77] 138–45. 19 Kirwan [12.42] 55–9. 20 Stock [12.77] 145–62. 21 Markus [12.73]; Mayer [12.75]. 22 Rist [12.48] 48–53. 23 O’Donovan [12.89]. 24 Kirwan [12.42] 187–92. 25 Rist [12.98]. 26 Dihle [12.81]. 27 Deane [12.80] 78–94. 28 Rist [12.48] 203–55. 29 Deane [12.80] 94–153; Markus [12.85] 72–104. 30 Brown [12.79] 387–427. 31 Matthews [12.70] 90–106; Kirwan [12.42] 192–6. 32 Markus [12.86]; Swift [12.92]. 33 Kirwan [12.42] 204–8. 34 Harrison [12.83]; Svoboda [12.91]. 35 Rist [12.48] 148–202. 36 Kirwan [12.42] 78–81. 37 O’Daly [12.96] 93–7; Kirwan [12.42] 82–150. 38 O’Daly [12.46] 8–11. 39 O’Daly [12.105]. 40 O’Daly [12.46] 62–70. 41 Matthews [12.101]. 42 Lloyd [12.100], criticizing Henry [12.99], 43 Schwyzer [12.60]; O’Daly [12.46] 103–4. 44 Matthews [12.110]; Bubacz [12.109]. 45 O’Daly [12.46] 141–5. 46 O’Daly [12.104]; O’Connell [12.103]. 47 O’Daly [12.112] 44–6. 48 G.Ryle, The Concept of Mind, London, Hutchinson’s University Library, 1949, 6.4. 49 Mundle [12.115]; McEvoy [12.114]. 50 O’Daly [12.116]. 51 Sorabji [12.120] 35–51. 52 Kirwan [12.42] 182–3. 53 O’Daly [12.46] 153–9; Rist [12.48] 73–85. 54 Sorabji [12.120] 232–8; Kirwan [12.42] 163–6. 55 Sorabji [12.120] 255–6, 263–4; Kirwan [12.42] 171–4. 56 Sorabji [12.120] 232–8; Kirwan [12.42] 159–63. 57 Sorabji [12.120] 193–202; May [12.118] 122–82. 58 TeSelle [12.49] 216–18; Meyer [12.119]. BIBLIOGRAPHY Note: A full synopsis of Augustine’s works and of modern editions is provided in [12.30] 1.xxvi–xli. ORIGINAL LANGUAGE EDITIONS 12.1 Sancti Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Opera Omnia, ed. J.-P.Migne, Paris, 11 vols, 1841–2 (=Patrologia Latina 32–47). A reprint of the Benedictine edition of St Maur, Paris, 1679–1700. 12.2 Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna, Hoelder-Pichler- Tempsky, 1866–. Several vols devoted to Augustine (in progress). 12.3 Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Turnhout, Brepols, 1953–. Several vols devoted to Augustine (in progress). 12.4 Bibliothèque Augustinienne. Oeuvres de Saint Augustin, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer and Etudes Augustiniennes, 1936–. In progress. With French trans., introductions, and notes. 12.5 S.Aureli Augustini Confessionum libri XIII, ed. M.Skutella. Stuttgart, B.G. Teubner, 2nd edn, 1969. 12.6 Sancti Aurelii Augustini Episcopi De Civitate Dei libri XXII, ed. B.Dombart and A.Kalb.Leipzig, B.G.Teubner, 4th edn, 1928–9. 12.7 Augustine, De Dialectica, ed. B.Darrell Jackson and J.Pinborg. Dordrecht/ Boston, Mass., North-Holland Publishing, 1975. ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 12.8 The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, ed. M.Dods. Edinburgh, T. and T.Clark, 15 vols, 1871–6. Wide selection of Augustine’s works. 12.9 A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, New York, 1887–1902. Wide selection of Augustine’s works (reprinted by W.B.Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1979: vols 1–8= Augustine). 12.10 Ancient Christian Writers, Westminster, Maryland (later New York), Newman Press, 1946–. Several vols devoted to Augustine (in progress). 12.11 The Fathers of the Church, Washington DC, Catholic University of America Press, 1947–. Several vols devoted to Augustine (in progress). 12.12 V.J.Bourke (ed.), The Essential Augustine, selection with commentary, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co., 1974. 12.13 Augustine: Confessions, trans. H.Chadwick. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991. 12.14 Augustine: City of God, trans. H.Bettenson. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, new edn 1984. 12.15 Saint Augustine: On Free Choice of the Will, trans. A.S.Benjamin and L.H. Hackstaff. Indianapolis/New York, Bobbs-Merrill, 1964. 12.16 Saint Augustine: On Christian Teaching, tr. R.Green, with introduction and notes. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997. COMMENTARIES 12.17 J.J.O’Meara (ed.), St. Augustine: Against the Academics, Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 12 (see [12.10] above), 1951. 12.18 T.Fuhrer (ed.), Angustin: Contra Academicos (vel De Academicis) Bücher 2 und 3, Patristische Texte und Studien, 46. Berlin and New York, de Gruyter, 1997. 12.19 J.J.O’Donnell (ed.), Augustine: Confessions, introduction, text, commentary. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 3 vols, 1992. 12.20 G.Clark (ed.), Augustine: Confessions I–IV. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. 12.21 E.P.Meijering (ed.), Augustin über Schöpfung, Ewigkeit und Zeit. Das elfte Buch der Bekenntnisse, Philosophia Patrum, 4. Leiden, E.J.Brill, 1979. 12.22 G.Watson (ed.), Augustine: Soliloquies and Immortality of the Soul. Warminster, Aris and Phillips, 1991. 12.23 P.Agaësse and A.Solignac (eds), De Genesi ad Litteram, Bibliothèque Augustinienne, vols 48–9 (see [12.4] above), 1972. See also [12.7] and the notes in the individual vols of [12.4]. BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND RESEARCH REPORTS 12.24 C.Andresen, Bibliographia Augustiniana. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2nd edn, 1973. 12.25 T.J.van Bavel and F.van der Zande, Repertoire bibliographique de saint Augustin 1950–1960. Stenbrugge/Den Haag, M.Nijhoff, 1963. 12.26 R.Lorenz, ‘Augustinliteratur seit dem Jubiläum von 1954’, Theologische Rundschau NF 25 (1959) 1–75; id., ‘Zwölf Jahre Augustinusforschung (1959–1970)’, Theologische Rundschau NF 38 (1974) 292–333; 39 (1974) 95–138, 253–86, 331–64; 40 (1975) 1–41, 97–149, 227–61. 12.27 Augustine Bibliography/Fichier Augustinien, Boston, Mass., G.K.Hall, 4 vols, 1972. Supplementary vol. 1981. 12.28 Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes (1955–) incorporates an annual bibliographical survey (Bulletin). CONCORDANCE 12.29 Corpus Augustinianum Gissense, ed. C.Mayer. Computerized concordance of all of Augustine’s writings and bibliography on CD-ROM. Basle, Schwabe, 1996. ENCYCLOPAEDIA 12.30 C.Mayer et al., Augustinus-Lexikon. Basle, Schwabe, 1986– . BIOGRAPHIES AND GENERAL SURVEYS Ancient 12.31 (Possidius) M.Pellegrino (ed.), Possidio, Vita di S. Agostino, Alba, Edizioni Paoline, 1955. Modern 12.32 G.Bonner, St Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies, Norwich, Canterbury Press, 2nd edn, 1986. 12.33 P.Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, London, Faber & Faber, 1967. 12.34 J.Burnaby, Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St Augustine, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1938 (reprinted Norwich, Canterbury Press, 1991). 12.35 H.Chadwick, Augustine, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986. 12.36 C.Horn, Augustinus, Munich, C.H.Beck, 1995. 12.37 J.J.O’Donnell, Augustine, Boston, Mass., Twayne Publishers, 1985. 12.38 J.J.O’Meara, The Young Augustine: The Growth of St Augustine’s Mind up to his Conversion, London, Longmans, Green, 1954. 12.39 A.Schindler, ‘Augustin’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 4 (1979) 646–98. AUGUSTINE’S PHILOSOPHY: GENERAL STUDIES, COLLECTIONS OF ARTICLES 12.40 G.R.Evans, Augustine on Evil, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982. 12.41 E.Gilson, Introduction a l’étude de Saint Augustin, Paris, J.Vrin, 4th edn, 1969 (Eng. trans. of 1st edn, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, New York, Random House, 1960). 12.42 C.Kirwan, Augustine, London and New York, Routledge, 1989. 12.43 R.A.Markus, in A.H.Armstrong (ed.), The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967, 341–419. 12.44 R.A.Markus (ed.), Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York, Doubleday, 1972. 12.45 R.J.O’Connell, St Augustine’s Early Theory of Man, A.D. 386–391, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1968. 12.46 G.O’Daly, Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind, London, Duckworth, 1987. 12.47 O.O’Donovan, The Problem of Self-Love in St Augustine, New Haven/ London, Yale University Press, 1980. 12.48 J.M.Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994. 12.49 E.TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian, London, Burns & Oates, 1970. AUGUSTINE AS AUTOBIOGRAPHER 12.50 G.Clark, Augustine: The Confessions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. 12.51 P.Fredriksen, ‘Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self’, Journal of Theological Studies NS 37 (1986) 3–34. 12.52 R.A.Markus, Conversion and Disenchantment in Augustine’s Spiritual Career, Villanova, Pa., Villanova University Press, 1989. 12.53 G.Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, vol. 2, 1950, 625–67. AUGUSTINE’S PHILOSOPHICAL READINGS 12.54 A.H.Armstrong, ‘St Augustine and Christian Platonism’, in [12.44] 3–37. 12.55 M.Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Leiden, E.J.Brill, vol. 2, 1985. 12.56 P.Courcelle, Les Lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe a Cassiodore, Paris, Boccard, 2nd edn, 1948 (Eng. trans. Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1969). 12.57 H.Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics, Göteborg, Institute of Classical Studies of the University of Göteborg, 2 vols, 1967. 12.58 P.Henry, Plotin et l’Occident: Firmicus Maternus, Marius Victorinus, Saint Augustin et Macrobe, Louvain, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1934. 12.59 H.-I.Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, Paris, Boccard, 1938, and Retractatio, Paris, Boccard, 1949. 12.60 H.-R.Schwyzer, ‘Bewußt und Unbewußt bei Plotin’, Les Sources de Plotin, Entretiens Fondation Hardt, 5, Vandoeuvres/Geneva, 1960, 343–90. 12.61 A.Solignac, ‘Doxographies et manuels dans la formation philosophique de s. Augustin’, Recherches Augustiniennes 1 (1958) 113–48. 12.62 M.Testard, Saint Augustin et Cicéron, Paris, Etudes Augustiniennes, 2 vols, 1958. 12.63 W.Theiler, ‘Porphyrios und Augustin’, Forschungen zum Neuplatonismus, Berlin, de Gruyter, 1966, 160–251 (first published 1933). AUGUSTINE’S CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 12.64 N.Kretzmann, ‘Faith Seeks, Understanding Finds: Augustine’s Charter for Christian Philosophy’, in T.P.Flint (ed.), Christian Philosophy, Notre Dame, Ind., University of Notre Dame Press, 1990, 1–36. 12.65 G.Madec, ‘Augustinus’, in ‘Philosophie’, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie 7 (1989) 630–3. BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE 12.66 B.Bubacz, St Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge: A Contemporary Analysis, New York/Toronto, Edwin Mellen, 1981. 12.67 M.F.Burnyeat, ‘Wittgenstein and Augustine De Magistro’, The Aristotelian Society. Supplementary Volume 61 (1987) 1–24. 12.68 R.Lorenz, ‘Gnade und Erkenntnis bei Augustinus’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 75 (1964) 21–78. 12.69 G.B.Matthews, ‘Si Fallor Sum’, in [12.44] 151–67. 12.70 G.B.Matthews, Thought’s Ego in Augustine and Descartes, Ithaca, NY and London, Cornell University Press, 1992. 12.71 R.H.Nash, The Light of the Mind: St Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge, Lexington, University of Kentucky Press, 1969. See also [12.46] 162–216; [12.48] 41–91. SEMANTICS AND HERMENEUTICS 12.72 B.D.Jackson, ‘The Theory of Signs in St Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana, in A.H.Armstrong (ed.), The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967, 92–147 (reprinted from Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 15 (1969) 9–49). And in [12.44]. 12.73 R.A.Markus, ‘St Augustine on Signs’, in [12.44] 61–91 (reprinted from Phronesis 2 (1957) 60–83). 12.74 R.A.Markus, Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1996. 12.75 C.P.Mayer, Die Zeichen in der geistigen Entwicklung und in der Theologie Augustins, Würzburg, Augustinus-Verlag, 2 vols, 1969 and 1974. 12.76 K.Pollmann, Doctrina Christiana. Untersuchungen zu den Anfängen der christlichen Hermeneutik unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Augustinus, De doctrina christiana, Paradosis, 41, Fribourg, Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 1996. 12.77 B.Stock, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation, Cambridge, Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1996. 12.78 G.Watson, ‘St Augustine’s Theory of Language’, Maynooth Review 6 (1982) 4–20. See also [12.48] 23–40. ETHICS, POLITICAL THEORY, AESTHETICS 12.79 P.Brown, The Body and Society, London, Faber & Faber, 1989, 387–427. 12.80 H.A.Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of St Augustine, New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1963. 12.81 A.Dihle, Die Goldene Regel, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962. 12.82 D.F.Donnelly (ed.), The City of God: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York, Peter Lang, 1995. 12.83 C.Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augustine, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. 12.84 R.Holte, Béatitude et Sagesse: Saint Augustin et le problème de la fin de l’homme dans la philosophie ancienne, Paris and Worcester, Mass., Etudes Augustiniennes and Augustinian Studies, 1962. 12.85 R.A.Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, revised edn, 1988. 12.86 R.A.Markus, ‘Saint Augustine’s Views on the “Just War”’, Studies in Church History 20 (1983) 1–13. 12.87 J.Mausbach, Die Ethik des heiligen Augustinus, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder, 2 vols, 2nd edn, 1929. 12.88 M.R.Miles, Augustine on the Body, Missoula, Scholars Press, 1979. 12.89 O.O’Donovan, ‘Usus and Fruitio in Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana I’, Journal of Theological Studies NS 33 (1982) 361–97. 12.90 O.O’Donovan, ‘Augustine’s City of God XIX and Western Political Thought’, Dionysius 11 (1987) 89–110. 12.91 K.Svoboda, L’Esthétique de S. Augustin et ses sources, Paris/Brno, Philosophical Faculty of Masaryk, University of Brno, 1933. 12.92 L.J.Swift, ‘Augustine on War and Killing: Another View’, Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973) 369–83. 12.93 J.Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. See also [12.48] 203–55. WILL 12.94 J.P.Burns, The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace, Paris, Etudes Augustiniennes, 1990. 12.95 A.Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, Berkeley/Los Angeles/ London, University of California Press, 1982. 12.96 G.O’Daly, ‘Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s Ethics’, in G.Vesey (ed.), The Philosophy in Christianity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, 85–97. 12.97 J.M.Rist, ‘Augustine on Free Will and Predestination’, Journal of Theological Studies NS 20 (1969) 420–47. 12.98 J.M.Rist, ‘Plotinus and Augustine on Evil’, Plotino e il Neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente, Rome, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1974, 495– 508. See also [12.48] 148–202; [12.93]. SOUL 12.99 P.Henry, Saint Augustine on Personality, New York, Macmillan, 1960. 12.100 A.C.Lloyd, ‘On Augustine’s Concept of a Person’, in [12.44] 191–205. 12.101 G.B.Matthews, ‘The Inner Man’, in [12.44] 176–90 (reprinted from American Philosophical Quarterly 4/2 (1967) 1–7). 12.102 R.J.O’Connell, ‘Pre-existence in the Early Augustine’, Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 26 (1980) 176–88. 12.103 R.J.O’Connell, The Origin of the Soul in St Augustine’s Later Works, New York, Fordham University Press, 1988. 12.104 G.O’Daly, ‘Did St Augustine ever believe in the Soul’s Pre-existence?’, Augustinian Studies 5 (1974) 227–35. 12.105 G.O’Daly, ‘Augustine on the Origin of Souls’, in H.-D.Blume and F.Mann (eds), Platonismus und Christentum=Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Ergänzungsband 10 (1983) 184–91. See also [12.48] 92–147. SENSE-PERCEPTION AND IMAGINATION 12.106 F.Solmsen, ‘Greek Philosophy and the Discovery of the Nerves’, Museum Helveticum 18 (1961) 150–67 and 169–97 (reprinted in Kleine Schriften, Hildesheim, Georg Olms Verlag, vol. 1, 536–82. 12.107 G.Verbeke, L’Évolution de la doctrine du pneuma du Stoicisme a S. Augustin, Paris/Louvain, Desclée de Brouwer, 1945. 12.108 G.Watson, Phantasia in Classical Thought, Galway, Galway University Press, 1988. MEMORY 12.109 B.Bubacz, ‘Augustine’s Account of Factual Memory’, Augustinian Studies 6 (1975) 181–92. 12.110 G.B.Matthews, ‘Augustine on Speaking from Memory’, in [12.44] 168–75 (reprinted from American Philosophical Quarterly 2/2 (1965) 1–4). 12.111 J.A.Mourant, Saint Augustine on Memory, Villanova, Pa., Villanova University Press, 1980. 12.112 G.O’Daly, ‘Remembering and Forgetting in Augustine, Confessions X’, in Memoria. Vergessen und Erinnern=Poetik und Hermeneutik XV, Munich, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1993, 31–46. TIME 12.113 H.M.Lacey, ‘Empiricism and Augustine’s Problems about Time’, in [12.44] 280–308 (reprinted from Review of Metaphysics 22 (1968) 219–45). 12.114 J.McEvoy, ‘St Augustine’s Account of Time and Wittgenstein’s Criticisms’, Review of Metaphysics 38 (1984) 547–77. 12.115 C.W.K.Mundle, ‘Augustine’s Pervasive Error concerning Time’, Philosophy 41 (1966) 165–8. 12.116 G.O’Daly, ‘Time as distentio and St Augustine’s Exegesis of Philippians 3, 12–14’, Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 23 (1977) 265–71. GOD AND CREATION 12.117 A.H.Armstrong, ‘Spiritual or Intelligible Matter in Plotinus and St Augustine’, Augustinus Magister, Paris, Etudes Augustiniennes, vol. 1, 1954, 277–83. 12.118 G.May, Schöpfung aus dem Nichts, Berlin, de Gruyter, 1978. 12.119 H.Meyer, Geschichte der Lehre von den Keimkräften von der Stoa bis zum Ausgang der Patristik, Bonn, Peter Hansteins Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1914, 123–224. 12.120 R.Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, London, Duckworth, 1983.

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