Consensus Volume 40 Issue 2 Faith and Science Article 5 11-25-2019 Knife-Edge and Saddleback: Augustine & William James on the Psychology of the Specious Present Sean Hannan Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus Part of the Practical Theology Commons, and the Psychiatry and Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Hannan, Sean (2019) "Knife-Edge and Saddleback: Augustine & William James on the Psychology of the Specious Present," Consensus: Vol. 40 : Iss. 2 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol40/iss2/5 This Articles is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Hannan: Knife-Edge and Saddleback Knife-Edge and Saddleback: Augustine & William James on the Psychology of the Specious Present Sean Hannan1 n the late nineteenth century, William James raised the possibility that an ill-defined notion of ‘the present time’ might cause problems for future psychologists. This line of I inquiry ultimately took James in a sanguine direction, as he convinced himself and many others that, even if our notion of the now remains fuzzy, we should proceed on the basis of whatever vague sense of the present seems appropriate for our clinical or experimental purposes. Almost fifteen hundred years before James, this same question of a specious present was asked by the Christian author Augustine of Hippo as part of an introspective interrogation of time in his Confessions. Augustine’s findings were less sanguine.