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Abstract
Throughout his works, St. Augustine offers at least nine distinct views on the nature of time, at least three of which have remained almost unnoticed in the secondary literature. I first examine each these nine descriptions of time and attempt to diffuse common misinterpretations, especially of the views which seek to identify Augustinian time as consisting of an un-extended point or a distentio animi. Second, I argue that Augustine’s primary understanding of time, like that of later medieval scholastics, is that of an accident connected to the changes of created substances. Finally, I show how this interpretation has the benefit of rendering intelligible Augustine’s contention that, at the resurrection, motion will still be able to occur, but not time.
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19)
As, for example, in Danne W. Polk, ‘Temporal Impermanence and the Disparity of Time and Eternity’, Augustinian Studies 22 (1991), 63-82, John F. Callahan, Four Views of Time in Ancient Philosophy (New York, 1948), and Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (New York, 1948), 212.
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25)
Ibid. XI.27.36, “Ergo aut ipsa sunt tempora, aut non tempora metior.” PL 32, col. 824.
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28)
Wilma G. von Jess, ‘Augustine: A Consistent and Unitary Theory of Time’, The New Scholasticism 46, (1972), 337-351, notes that the thesis that Augustine’s final definition of time was a distentio animi was “taken severely to task” by a number of scholars in the 1950’s. Richard Sorabji, in Time, Creation, and The Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (1983), 30-32, also claims that Augustine defines time as a “dimension of the mind.” Sorabji gets around the problem of Augustine’s other views of time by suggesting that Augustine abandoned his psychological view of time in his later writings.
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31)
Michael F. Wagner, ‘Real Time in Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine’, The Journal of Neoplatonic Studies, Vol. IV, No. 2 (1996), 111, also follows the interpretation just offered. Cf. Aristotle, De memoria et reminiscentia 452b6-25, which should be compared to the above account.
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44)
Cf. Katherin A. Rogers, ‘St. Augustine on Time and Eternity’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 70:2, (1996), 207-223. Rogers emphasizes the importance of the angelic doctrine of time, but (incorrectly, I think) believes that Augustine is committed to the thesis that God is metaphysically unable to perceive time, since His perception is restricted to a eternal present, and that finite conscious beings must exist in order for time to be at all.
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Search for other papers by Jason W. Carter in
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Abstract
Throughout his works, St. Augustine offers at least nine distinct views on the nature of time, at least three of which have remained almost unnoticed in the secondary literature. I first examine each these nine descriptions of time and attempt to diffuse common misinterpretations, especially of the views which seek to identify Augustinian time as consisting of an un-extended point or a distentio animi. Second, I argue that Augustine’s primary understanding of time, like that of later medieval scholastics, is that of an accident connected to the changes of created substances. Finally, I show how this interpretation has the benefit of rendering intelligible Augustine’s contention that, at the resurrection, motion will still be able to occur, but not time.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 2381 | 103 | 7 |
| Full Text Views | 264 | 7 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 215 | 16 | 0 |