This article investigates Augustine’s reflection on the death of his friend in Confessiones IV. A critical treatment of this passage discloses the three key themes which will form the main substance of the analysis: self-presence, the contingency of being, and divine absence. Integrating philosophical and theological methodologies with an historical-critical treatment of Augustine’s work, this article relates Augustine’s insights to his foregoing classical context and his reception in posterity, with particular attention to Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4 BCE-65 CE) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). This investigation shows that these three figures are connected by an appreciation of how self-presence and ontological instability are constant facets of human life, though easily neglected. Each advocates a curriculum of philosophical training, whereby one learns to pacify the mind by an awareness of the true nature of mundane reality. This research contributes to the renewed appreciation of how the therapeutic aspects of classical philosophy influenced early Christian authors; illuminates a key episode in Augustine’s life en route to his conversion to Christianity; and raises questions about the “apophatic” dimensions of Augustine’s theology and anthropology.
In Conf. VI, the younger Augustine – as described by his older self – is well on his way to conversion, even though he is not yet aware of this himself. His spell as a Manichaean had not given him what he had hoped to find, and he feared that the Catholics would prove equally disappointing. Confronted with this situation, he decided to consult his friends. After an evocation of the influence of Ambrose (Conf. VI,1,1–6,10), to which he proved susceptible, and before dealing with the problems to which the resulting choice gave rise (Conf. VI,11,18–16,26): to continue to work or not, to marry or not, Augustine describes his encounters with Alypius and Nebridius in Conf. VI,7,11–10,17. In this section, which is very carefully composed with regard not only to form (structure), but also, and primarily, to content (argument), he summons up the impasse in which he finds himself, and describes it with the aid of two images: that of illness, and that of danger at sea. The argument that he develops is that of a crisis: when a person is ill, it sometimes happens that the patient’s condition must first deteriorate before it improves, just as someone in danger at sea must sometimes face even greater peril before he is able to escape. This is what Augustine describes in Conf. VI,7,11–10,17, and this ensures that Conf. VI is not a book in which he comes to a standstill, but one in which a therapeutic delay is created that gives him the strength and courage to accept humility instead of pride, and to persevere on his journey towards conversion, described in Conf. VIII. This article analyses and interprets the strategy that Augustine employs to achieve this.
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