The Discovery of Mens and the Unity of Self-Cognition in St. Augustine's De Trinitate X

THE DISCOVERY OF MENS AND THE UNITY OF SELF-COGNITION IN ST. AUGUSTINE'S DE TRINITATE X

Benjamin Patrick Lee

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia August 2008

395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada

Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44007-0 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44007-0

NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats.

The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission.

In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these.

While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. •*• Canada DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY

To comply with the Canadian Privacy Act the National Library of Canada has requested that the following pages be removed from this copy of the thesis:

Preliminary Pages Examiners Signature Page (pii) Dalhousie Library Copyright Agreement (piii)

Appendices Copyright Releases (if applicable) For Andrea, carissimae coniugi

lv TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

I. THE PROBLEM OF SELF-COGNITION IN DE TRINITATE X, ITS SOURCES AND INFLUENCE 1

1.1. Mens and Human Self-Cognition in the Augustinian Tradition 2 1.2. The Passage from Corporealism to Scepticism to Platonism 7 A. Biographical Account and the "Beginning" of Philosophy 7 B. Review of the Literature in Connection to Scepticism .10 1.3. Plan of Interpretation 20 CHAPTER TWO: THE MIND'S DISCOVERY OF ITSELF 23 2.1. Exercises of the Mind: Towards an Initial Imago Trinitatis CVIII-IX) 23 2.2. Approaching a Sceptical Problematic (X,l,1-2,4) 32 2.3. Negative Demonstration of Immediate and Total Self-Knowledge (X,3,5-4,6) . . 43 A. The Impossibility of Denying Self-Knowledge (X,4,6) 45 B. The Impossibility of Partial Self-Knowledge (X,4,6) 51 2.4. Positive Demonstration the Mind's Self-Certitudes (X,5,7-10,16) 54 A. Two Kinds of Cognition/Tove and the Possibility of Error (X,5,7) 55 B. The Incorporeality of the Mind Against Philosophical Opinions (X,7,9-10) 64 C. The Proper Method to Achieve Indubitable Self-Knowledge (X,8,11-10,13) 69 D. Proofs of the Mind's Certitude Concerning Itself(X,10,13-16) 70 2.5. Formulation of the Imago Trinitatis (X,l 1,17-12,19) . 72 CHAPTER THREE: CONCLUSION 75 BIBLIOGRAPHY 80 A. Primary Sources 80 B. Secondary Sources 81

v ABSTRACT

Guided by the purpose of demonstrating the divine Trinity within the human mind, De trinitate X is an exercise of philosophical obedience to the Delphic precept, "Know Thyself!" In light of current scholarship, this thesis situates book X in a polemical context against the sceptical denial of self-knowledge and corporealist epistemology. My exposition follows Augustine's rigourous argument whereby the mind discovers itself. On the basis of its immediate self-presence, the mind knows itself (se nosse) in a total, inamissable, and absolutely certain unity of its intellect, life and being. But the mind's fallen condition is such that its ability to think itself (se cogitare) is partial, erroneous, and thus inconstant in discerning its true nature. This discrepancy remains an unresolved problem in book X. For Augustine, the unity of self-cognition is ultimately a question of the mediation of the human mind and God, in whose image it was made,

vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many to whom I am profoundly indebted.

I am thankful to my parents and family for their unconditional love—especially to my first critic, my mother, for enkindling in me a spirit of inquiry.

I am grateful for the wonderful conversations I have shared in Halifax over the past several years amongst peers, Daniel Wilband, Michelle Wilband, Reuben Penner, Adam Labecki, James Bryson, and for all the fine graduate students in the Classics Department who have stimulated and refreshed me.

This thesis could not have been written without the friendship and spiritual direction of Fr. Gary Thorne, whose ministry granted me the self-recollection necessary for philosophical study. I am also thankful to Fr. David Phillips and Fr. George Westaver, and to the people of King's Chapel and St. George's parish for their support.

I would like to thank Dennis House for his efforts to make the language of Greek philosophy seem less strange to me, and for the generous hospitality he and Doris provided on so many occasions. I thank Peter O'Brien for his constant encouragement, and for insisting that I endure greater toils in my Latin training. I am very fortunate to have been influenced by Fr. Robert Crouse, as much by his great quietude as through his writings which everywhere reflect such learned devotion to the thought of St. Augustine. Fr. Robert Dodaro gave generously of his time and knowledgeable advice during the early stages of my research at the Augustinianum, in Rome. I express my gratitude to all who contributed to the discussion of my paper at the Atlantic Classical Association meeting in October, 2007, which allowed important issues of my second chapter to come into focus. Many helpful suggestions were made by Michael Fournier, Eli Diamond, Daniel Wilband, and Neil Robertson, who read drafts of my thesis or portions thereof. I also acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

An immensely important debt is to my supervisor, Wayne Hankey, in whose Neoplatonism seminar this thesis first took shape; his tireless dedication as a scholar has been a continual inspiration, and his great care as a teacher instilled in me both confidence and humility at crucial points.

Most of all, I gratefully acknowledge my wife, Andrea. I have been sustained by her enduring vitality, and guided by her wisdom and graceful countenance every step of the way.

Halifax, NS The Feast of St. slugustine, 2008

vn CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

I. THE PROBLEM OF SELF-COGNITION IN DE TRINITATE X, ITS SOURCES AND INFLUENCE

In the order of searching after wisdom, according to Saint Augustine, the human soul's introspective self-cognition is the condition of its ascent to the contemplative vision of God. Paradoxically, divine illumination is the precondition of the mind's conversion to its innermost self. Augustine expresses the human mind's indissoluble link to God in a well- known phrase from his Confessions: "You however were more interior than my most intimate part and higher than my highest." This phrase captures both the immediacy of the union between human and divine, as well as the dynamic character of the relation. It also contains the idea that self-cognition and cognition of God must occur together in the human mind.

Many other celebrated formulations of this spiritual itinerary can be found throughout

Augustine's prolific career, but perhaps his most thoroughly developed undertaking of this kind comprises the long meditation in the second half of De trinitate: On the basis of the predication of scripture that man was made "according to the image of God," these books seek to demonstrate the nature of the supreme Trinity through a sustained inquiry into the

1 conf. 111,6,11: tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo. I use the text of Skutella reproduced in A. Solignac, ed., Les Confessions, 2 vols., 2nd ed., Bibliotheque Augustinienne, Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 13 & 14 (Paris: Insitut d'Etudes Augustiniennes, 1998). My references to the notes and introductions in the Bibliotheque Augustinienne (BA) editions are indicated by the series number. All abbreviations for Augustine's works follow the conventions of Cornelius Mayer, ed., Augustinus-Lexikon, vol. 1 (Stuttgart/Basle: Schwabe & Co. AG, 1986-1994). 2 Here are a few such sentences, which describe the human soul's relation to God as at once through an interior transcendence and transcendent interiority: sol. 11,1,1: Deus semper idem, noverim me, noverim te. Oratum est, ord. 11,18,47: \philosophiae] duplex quaestio est: una de anima, altera de Deo. Prima efficit ut nosmetipsos noverimus, altera, ut originem nostram; mag. 12,39: Cum uero de his agitur, quae mente conspicimus, id est intelkctu atque ratione, ea quidem loquimur, quae praesentia contuemur in ilia interiore luce Veritatis, qua ipse qui dicitur homo interior inlustratur et fruitur, vera rel. 39,72: Noliforas ire, in te ipsum redi, in interiore homine habitat Veritas. . . illuc ergo tende unde ipsum lumen rationis accenditur, conf. VI,3,4: tu enim, altissime etproxime, secretissime et praesentissime; ibid., X,l,l: Cognoscam te, cognitor meus, cognoscam, sicut et cognitus sum; ibid., X,5,7: confitear ergo quid de me sciam, confitear et quid de me nesciam, quoniam et quod de me scio, te mihi lucente scio, et quod de me nescio, tamdiu nescio, donee fiant tenebrae meae sicut tneridies in uulto tuo; ibid., X,7,l 1: Quid ergo amo, cum deum meum amo? Quid est ille super caput animae meae? Per ipsam animam meam ascendam ad ilium; trin. XIV,3,5: Nempe ab inferioribus ad superiora ascendentes, pel ab exterioribus ad interiora ingredientes. For all of Augustine's dialogues, I use the text of Giovanni Catapanno, ed., Aurelio Agostino, TuttiI Dialoghi, II Pensiero Occidentale (Milan: Bompiani, 2006). 31 use the text of P. Agaesse, and J. Moingt, eds., La Trinite, 2 vols., Bibliotheque Augustinienne, Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 16 & 17 (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1955).

1 2

nature and operations of the human soul, or mind {mens). Book X in particular, governed by this purpose, is a philosophical exercise in response to the Delphic precept—usually translated in English as "Know thyself!" In the view of Wayne Hankey, especially singling out the systematic importance of this book within Augustine's corpus: "So far as within the

Platonic tradition the Delphic command was understood to direct us to the knowledge of

God through self-knowledge and vice versa, I judge that no pagan obeyed the oracle more completely than Augustine." Having deeply imbibed the Platonism available to him in the fourth- and early fifth-century Latin world, this rhetorician-cum-philosopher, biblical exegete, and episcopal defender of the catholic faith examines the problem of the mind's self-cognition with rigourous and precise arguments. His own resume states that the problem of the human's trinitarian image "was treated in the tenth book more diligently and more subdy, and was led to this point: that a more evident trinity was discovered in the mind, namely in memory, understanding and will." The problem, to put it another way, concerns the mind's discovery of its own interior nature and substantial unity, and involves the return of the created image to its Trinitarian exemplar. Although these cannot be regarded as discrete moments of Augustine's thought, De trinitate X consists of both a metaphysical speculation into the mind's self-cognition in terms of its substance or being, and a dynamic spiritual itinerary unifying the mind with itself and with God.

1.1. Mens and Human Self-Cognition in the Augustinian Tradition

The importance of the mind's self-cognitive structure and dynamic interiority in

Augustine's thought can hardly be overstated. As Gerard Verbeke observes, "la connaissance de soi-meme occupe une place fondamentale dans la philosophic augustinienne. On peut dire que sa metaphysique est une metaphysique d'«interiorite»."6

Augustine's philosophical analysis of the mind in De trinitate contains seeds of reasons whose fecundity has been realised in the entire subsequent course of western intellectual tradition.

4 Wayne Hankey, '"Knowing as we are Known' in Confessions 10 and Other Philosophical, Augustinian and Christian Obedience to the Delphic Gnothi Seauton from Socrates to Modernity," Augustinian Studies 34 (2003): 23-48, at 33. 5 trin. XV,3,5: In decimo hoc idem diligentius subtiliusque tractatum est, atque ad idperductum, ut inveniretur in mente evidentior trinitas ejus, in memoria scilicet et intelligentia et voluntate. 6 Gerard Verbeke, "Connaissance de soi et connaissance de Dieu chez saint Augustin," Augustiniana 4 (1954): 513. 3

The influence of Augustine's teaching on the mind as the image of the Trinity, including its various types of self-cognition, is immeasurable. Here, it is enough to mention a few points of contact with the history of Augustine's reception in this regard, so as to give an impression of the power of the ideas which may be traced to De trinitate and especially book

X. Before we consider mens in Augustine, it can be of some use to glimpse the character of the "Augustinian" mind and its self-cognition which emerges through this interpretive legacy.

In the early middle ages, the philosopher John Scotus Eriugena (c.810-870) derives and radically modifies Augustine's doctrine of self-cognition in his great work Periphyseon.

While adopting Augustine's basic scheme of the mind's triadic nature as imaging the Trinity, he is especially interested in the aspect of the human mind's dynamic self-seeking. Laying stress on the discursive and ongoing character of the mind's self-cognition and the infinitude of memory in Augustine, Eriugena denies that the mind can comprehend itself; he even goes so far as to claim, according to Dermot Moran, "that humans have perfect self-knowledge when they do not know who or what they are."7 It is debatable to what extent such a teaching can be viewed as a legitimate development of Augustine's intentions,8 but it is at least quite clear that many in the later medieval tradition did not understand an antithetical relation between the two thinkers but rather could embrace Eriugena's philosophy as a perspective in the interpretation of the meaning and implications of his Latin predecessor's doctrine.9

Or take Anselm of Canterbury, for instance. In his eleventh-century book of monastic, speculative devotion, Monologion, he drew direct inspiration from Augustine's text.

Thus he is able to write:

The rational mind is the only thing through which the mind itself can best make progress in finding him [God]. For we have already realised that it comes especially close to him through the likeness of its natural essence. So what is more obvious

7 Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scotus Eriugena: si Study of Idealism in the Idealism of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 186. 8 As argued by I. P. Sheldon-Williams, "Eriugena's Greek Sources," in The Mind of Eriugena: Papers of a Colloquium, Dublin, 14-18 July 1970, ed. John J. O'Meara and L. Bieler (Dublin: Irish University Press for Royal Irish Academy, 1973), 1-14. 9 See Robert Crouse, "What is Augustinian in Twelfth-Century Mysticism?" in Augustine: Mystic and Mystagogue, ed. Frederick Van Fleteren et al., Collectanea Augustiniana (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 401- 414, at 404-407. 4

than this: that the mote diligently the mind tries to come to learn itself, the more efficaciously it rises up to think him; and the more it neglects to gaze upon itself, the more it falls away from seeing him. The mind can therefore most fittingly be said to be like a mirror for itself, in which it may see, as it were, the image of whom it cannot see face to face.1"

The mind's self-reflection is the means of seeing God as through a mirror; what appears here is especially the immediacy of the self-cognitive union in Augustine. Similarly, one could also mention Hugh of St. Victor, who, only several generations later, worked out the mystical path of the mind from cogitatio to contemplatio following the same intuitive immediacy, and earning him the name "Alter Augustinus."11

With the twelfth- and thirteenth-century influx of Aristode's works into the Latin- speaking world, the examination of the human mind was able to become more articulate in scholastic disputations. Not surprisingly, the close interpretation of Augustine's De trinitate

X was central to disagreements about the nature of the soul. One line of interpretation, set forth by Peter Lombard, held that Augustine taught the real identity, that is, substantial unity, of the soul and its faculties. Augustine's views were also considered by Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, among other theological doctors; in particular, they disputed the trinitarian imago Dei as to whether it pertained to the essence, habits, powers or activities of the soul, and the vexed problem of certitude and the nature of illumination.14 All of these questions bear more or less direcdy on how to conceive the mind's unity and cognitive relation to itself.

If we look to the Augustinians of the early modern period, the philosophical treatises of Descartes stand out, and this connection is an interest to the study of the origins of the

10 Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi opera omnia, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Apud T. Nelson, 1946), 77-78 (Monologion 66-67): Quid igitur apertius, quam quia mens rationalis quanto studiosius ad se discendum intendit, tanto ejficacius ad illius cognitionem ascendit, et quanto seipsam intueri negligit, tanto ab eius speculatione descendit? Aptisime igitur sibimet esse velut speculum did potest, in quo speculetur, utita dicam, imaginem eius quam facie adfaciem videre nequit. 1 x See his De sacramentis christianae fidei. 12 See D. Oddon Lottin, "L'identite de Fame et de ses facultes avant saint Thomas d'Aquin," in Psychologic et morale aux Xlle etXIIIe siecles, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Belgium: J. Duculot, 1957), 483-502, at 483-84. 13 Bonaventure, Quaestiones disputatae de scientia Christi q.4; Thomas Aquinas, De veritate q.10; Summa theologiae I, q.93, art.7; q.87; Summa contra gentiles III, cap.46. See also John P. O'Callaghan, "Imago Dei: A Test Case for St. Thomas's Augustinianism," in Aquinas the Augustinian, ed. Michael Dauphinais et-al. (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 100-144. 14 See B. A. Gendreau, "The Quest for Certainty in Bonaventure," Franciscan Studies 27 (1961): 104-227. 5

western concept of selfhood and subjectivity as res cogitans}s In 1648, Arnauld was the first to trace the parentage of Descartes' arguments against scepticism to De trinitate X, the most obvious links including the indubitable powers of the soul and the sharp distinction of the soul and body. ' Especially in the current literature which treats of Augustine's place in the history of philosophy, "almost nothing is more easily encountered there . . . than reflections on Augustine and 'the self.'"17 The proto-Cartesian interpretation of Augustine remains highly debated, and De trinitate X is of basic importance to this research, being one of

Augustine's most sustained and rigourous examinations of the mind's inward turn to itself.

That Augustine's living thought has had an influence on the conception of the human mind's self-cognition over these fifteen centuries cannot be denied. But it would certainly be difficult to maintain the assumption of a uniform Augustinian tradition throughout. In view of these many diverse and divergent appropriations of Augustine, the observation of Stephen Menn seems to me correct: "the history of Augustinianism is the history of the many revivals of Augustine by different thinkers, who have each discovered some new aspect of Augustine's thought, and seen in it a way to answer the philosophical or theological challenges of their own times." Beyond a mere statement of fact, perhaps one should also hear a word of caution here. An approach which seeks to recover Augustine's accurate philosophical teaching on the mind's self-cognition must learn to discern its own place within this history, and to recognise how the questions and presuppositions of each age have served more or less to promote a genuine dialogue.

While centuries of Augustinian influence upon the conception of mens complicates our recovery of Augustine's thought in its own terms, the task of interpretation is further complicated when the flow of influence is considered from the opposite direction.

15 For a recent collation of texts, see Zbigniew Janowski, Augustinian-Cartesian Index: Texts and Commentary (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2004), esp. 30-45, in which excerpts are compared from trin. X and Meditation II. For a valuable study of the historical transmission of the so-called "Augustinian cogito" see Etienne Gilson, Etudes sur le role de lapensee medievale dans la formation du systeme cartesien, 2nd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1930). 1fi For the early history of the question of Descartes' Augustinianism, see Emmanuel Bermon, he cogito dans lapensee de saint Augustin, Histoire des Doctrines de l'Antiquite Classique 26 (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2001), 9-30; he gives references for the more recent scholarship in the notes on p. 23. See also Robert Crouse, "St. Augustine and Descartes as Fathers of Modernity," in Descartes and the Modern, ed. Neil Robertson et al. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 16-25. 17 John Cavadini, "The Darkest Enigma: Reconsidering the Self in Augustine's Thought," Augustinian Studies 38 (2007), 119-32, at 119. This volume's first issue contains four papers devoted to "the self." 18 Stephen Menn, Descartes and Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ix. 6

Regarding the extent to which the second half of De trinitate retains the disciplined exercises—of conversion, purification, and ascent—and also the structures—psychological and noetic—-inherited as the main constituents of Platonic philosophy, one does well to recall Thomas Aquinas' reference to Augustine as "having followed Plato as far as the catholic faith would allow."19 Modern scholarship on Augustine, since the advent of the genetic and philological methods introduced by Gaston Boissier and Adolf von Harnack in

1888, has been dominated by the quest to identify and trace the influence of Augustine's philosophical, especially Neoplatonic, sources. ° Although the Dominican scholastic was not concerned with the methods and aims of modern criticism, the advances in this research have confirmed his estimation of Augustine's enormous debt to the followers of Plato, with rather more precision. But just as for Aquinas, so for many modern interpreters, there is an interest to determine a limit to how far this following was taken. This leads to the question about how Platonism underwent a transformation in being transposed into the context of Augustine's own mental world. What remains very much in dispute is the precise character of the conversion of the Platonic tradition effected by Augustine.22

19 De spiritualibus creaturis, art. 10, ad 8: Augustinus autem Platonem secutus quantum fides catholica patiebatur, quoted in Goulven Madec, Le Dieu dAugustin, Philosophic et Theologie (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1998), 155. 20 Gaston Boissier, "La conversion de saint Augustin," Revue des Deux-Mondes 85 (1888): 43-69; Adolf von Harnack, Augustins Konfessionen (GieBen, 1888). See the discussion of various methodogical implications for conceiving Augustine's relation to Neoplatonism in Goulven Madec, "Le neoplatonism dans la conversion d'Augustin: Etat d'une question centenaire (depuis Harnack et Boissier, 1888)," in Internationales Symposion iiber den Stand der Augustinus-Forschung, ed. Cornelius Mayer and K. H. Chelius (Wiirzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1989): 9-25; cf. Anne-Isabelle Bouton-Touboulic, "L'approche philosophique de l'oeuvre dAugustin au miroir de la Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes," Revue dEtudes Augustiniennes et "Patristiques 50 (2004): 325-47'. 21 There is general agreement that Augustine's acquaintance with Plato's dialogues (with the possible exception of Timaeus) was only ever indirect, derived in large part from his reading of Cicero; furthermore, while numerous treatises of Plotinus and Porphyry have been identified as likely sources (in Latin translations, presumably by Marius Victorinus, now lost), much is unresolved, many proposed source-texts conjectural, and likely to remain so. See the masterful review of the scholarly literature in Catapano, "Le fonti filosofiche e teologiche," in Tutti I Dialoghi, cxv-cxliv; cf. Robert Crouse, "Pautis mutatis verbis: St. Augustine's Platonism," in Augustine and his Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (London: Routledge, 2000), 37-50, at 37-38. 22 Crouse, "Panels mutatis" 43: "To work out the details of that conversion, and thus to define precisely the character of that post-Nicene, post-Plotinian Augustinian Platonism and its historical significance is a monumental task. It is one in which a century of critical scholarship has hardly made a beginning, and to which the 'post-modern retrieval of Christian Neoplatonism' has so far contributed little." Cf. Goulven Madec, "Une lecture de Confessions Nil, 9, 13, 21, 27 (Notes critiques a propos d'une these de R. J. O'Connell)," Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 16 (1970): 79-137. Two examples of vastly divergent views in this regard are Lewis Ayres, "The Discipline of Self-Knowledge in Augustine's De trinitate Book X," in The Passionate Intellect: Essays on the Transformation of Classical Traditions, Presented to Professor I. G. Kidd, Rutgers 7

1.2. The Passage from Corporealism to Scepticism to Platonism

A crucial aspect of Augustine's examination of the mind and its self-cognition includes his arguments to overcome scepticism, and these arguments brilliandy exhibit the peculiarities of his Platonism. But the intersection of Augustine's Platonism and anti- sceptical polemic is by no means confined to De trinitate X. An understanding of the broader context of his engagement with scepticism, from both historical and philosophical perspectives, can be beneficial for my detailed analysis of the arguments in De trinitate X. By first considering Augustine's own understanding of his engagement with scepticism from other works, I shall bring to light some of the broader interpretive issues relevant for approaching the problem of the cognitive unity of the mind in De trinitate X. Next, through an overview of the scholarship connecting De trinitate X and the refutation of scepticism, I shall be more able to define and situate my own approach relative to the current discussion.

A. Biographical Account and the "Beginning" of Philosophy

As is well known from his testimony in the Confessions, on the way out of his nine- year adherence to Manichean corporealism, Augustine passed through a brief period of sceptical doubt which he would later criticise in light of his Platonic conversion to the intelligible, immutable truth. Augustine was becoming increasingly disenchanted with

Manichean doctrine when, after his arrival at Rome in 383, he came upon the philosophical teaching of the Academics. He considered the Academic philosophers shrewder than the rest; yet his thinking was still held captive by the totally corporealist rationalism of the

Manichees: "When I wanted to think of my God, I knew of no way of doing so except as a • corporeal mass. Nor did it seem to me that anything existed which was not such. That was the principal and almost sole cause of my inevitable error." Augustine relates that shortly

University Studies in Classical Humanities 7 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995), 261-96; and Edward Booth, "St. Augustine's motitia sui» related to Aristotle and the Early Neo-Platonists," Augustiniana 27 (1977): 90-132; 364-401; 28 (1978): 183-221; 29 (1979): 97-124. 23 To express what is sometimes referred to as "materialism" in the scholarly literature, I prefer the term "corporealism" on account of its closer affinity to Augustine's own vocabulary; here I follow the use of Menn, Descartes and Augustine. 24 conf. V,10,19: Etenim suborta est etiam mihi cogitdtio, prudentiores illos ceterisfuissephilosophos, quos Academicos appellant, quod de omnibus dubitandum esse censuerant nee aliquid vert ab homine conprehendi posse decreuerant. . . . et 8

afterwards, his encounter in Milan with Ambrose and his spiritualiter exposition of the scriptures led eventually to his adopting a position following the Academics, as they are usually interpreted: dubitans de omnibus atque inter omnia fluctuans. ' Although having quit the

Manichee sect and become a catechumen, Augustine's universal doubt did not offer any help in conceiving anything to exist in terms other than his former dogmatic corporealism. The decisive change occurred in the early summer of 386, through reading certain books of the

Platonists. From them he learned, as Henry Chadwick calls it, the "ascent by introspection": the mind's reflection upon itself, through which he was able to perceive not only the nature of his own mind, but of that which is above it, namely, God.29 Several months later, in November 386, shordy after the conversion of his will in die Milanese garden and before his baptism, Augustine produced Contra Academicos, based on conversations among his friends while on retreat in a rural villa at Cassiciacum. This earliest extant work, in the form of a philosophical dialogue, constitutes an examination and refutation of the same sceptical position which he had only recendy rejected through the intellectual conversion in which Neoplatonism had been the catalyst.

As rudimentary and selective as it is, this represents the traditional account, based primarily upon autobiographical details from the Confessions, of the historical permutations of

Augustine's thought, particularly of his passage from corporealism to scepticism, and from scepticism to Platonic participation in the intelligibles. In accord with this basic scheme,

Aime Solignac can comment on Augustine's move away from scepticism as enabled only after his discovery of the doctrine and method of self-knowledge, the mind's interior conversion, afforded by Platonic insight: "Sans doute, la refutation qu'il apporte au scepticisme de la Nouvelle Academie n'est-elle devenue possible qu'apres la lecture des libri

Platonicorum qui. . . lui ont fait decouvrir la refiexivite et lui ont donne le sens de l'esprit comme acte. quoniam cum de deo meo cogitare vellem, cogitare nisi moles corporum non noueram—neque enim uidebatur mihi esse quicquam, quod tale non esset—ea maxima etprope sola causa erat ineuitabilis erroris mei. Cf. ibid., VI,1,1; VI,11,18. 25 Ibid., V, 14,24. 26 Ibid.,V, 14,25. 2Ubid.,VlI,l,l-l,2. 28 Henry Chadwick, ed., Saint Augustine, Confessions, Oxford World Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 123. 29Ife/.,VII,10,16. 30 Solignac, "Introduction," in Les Confessions (BA 13), 99-100. 9

Despite the historical contingency of having found himself among a cultured

"Milanese circle" which initiated him into Neoplatonic teachings,3 it is not without reason that Augustine's first philosophical work should have been concerned to establish the possibility of certainty against scepticism. Near the end of his Contra Academicos Augustine portrays in dramatic terms what is at stake in confronting the sceptical challenge: "It is enough for me by any manner to cross over that barrier which sets itself against those who are beginning philosophy (intrantibus adphilosophiam). It piles up darkness from some hidden source, and warns that the whole of philosophy is obscure, and does not allow one to hope that any light will be found in it." However suggestive this may be as an historical description of Augustine's own intellectual pilgrimage, we are not constrained to interpret the challenge of scepticism confronted by those 'beginning' or 'entering into' philosophy primarily in the temporal sense. For one encounters it at the 'beginning' in that it casts doubt on the very possibility of certain knowledge of anything. From this perspective, it is crucial to recognise Augustine's critique of scepticism as logically prior to, and thereby in a certain sense determinative of, the philosophical way of life—or una verissimaephilosophiae disciplina—which he considered Christianity to be. That is to say, the overcoming of sceptical doubt is the philosophical ground of the conversion to, and pursuit of, the truth.34

Augustine evidently regarded Contra Academicos as his definitive refutation of the

Academic position. He notes the success of his argument already near the conclusion of that work: "although the reasonings of the Academics used to deter me not lightly, by this disputation, as I judge, I am sufficiently armed against them."15 This view of the triumph of his first work was maintained by Augustine even in his old age, reaffirmed in both De trinitate

31 Solignac, "Note complementaire 1," in Les Confessions (BA 14), 529-36. 32 ^W. 111,14,30. 33 Ibid., 111,19,42. 34 The recognition of the importance of scepticism to the founding of Neoplatonism, and to Plotinus' thought in particular, owes much to the pioneering -work of R. T. Walks, "Scepticism and Neoplatonism," in Philosophic, Wissenshaften, Technik, ed. Wolfgang Haase (Berlin: W. De Gruyter, 1987), 911-954. More recently, see Eli Diamond, "Plato's Sophist and its Neoplatonic Interpretation," (MA Thesis, Dalhousie University, 2002); Ian Crystal, Self-Intellection and its Epistetno logical Origins in Ancient Greek Thought (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2002), esp. 155-206; and the essays by Werner Beierwaltes, Dominic O'Meara, Kevin Corrigan, and Wilfied Kiihn in Monique Dixaut et al., ed., La connaissance de soi: Etudes sur le traite 49 de Plotin, Tradition de la Pensee Classique (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2002). 35 Acad. 111,20,43. 10

and the Retractionesf Despite the sureness of this initial critique, however, Augustine plainly exercised himself with what he took as a challenge that needed to be revisited in order that the implications of his critique might be deepened. As Wayne Hankey insists, "the refutation of the Academics is not something which can be left behind as he advances into theology. It is repeated in later works and remains essential to the highest reaches of his most developed theology."37 Among the numerous loci in which Augustine repeats, clarifies, and elaborates his earlier arguments against the sceptics, it is above all the anti-sceptical context of argumentation in De trinitate X with which this thesis is concerned. Since, in the argument of the De trinitate, the cognition of God occurs together with the mind's clear and sure cognition of itself, the essential role of the critique of scepticism is to convert and purify the mind: away from sensible things and their images to the true knowledge of its own incorporeal nature as the imago Trinitatis.

B. Review of the "Literature in Connection to Scepticism

In order to bring about the recognition of the connection between De trinitate X and the repudiation of scepticism, I can now endeavour a brief review of the literature. As will become evident, the current status of the scholarship holds that the polemical context of De trinitate X is implicated in a complex mediation of criticisms against scepticism, or to distinguish more precisely, as philological exigency requires, against scepticisms which derive from different sources: i) Augustine's argument rejoins a refutation of the scepticism of the

New Academy, in particular their objections to the possibility of,knowing the truth which he learned from Cicero' Academica; ii) Augustine also stands in an indirect relation to a certain sceptical objection to the possibility of self-intellection, as formulated in the Adversus

Mathematicos of the Neopyrrhonian, Sextus Empiricus, the terms of which he most likely

36 trin. XV,12,21: Et alia reperiuntur, quae adversus Academkos valeant, qui nihil ab homine sari posse contendunt. Sed modus adhibendus est, praesertim quia in opere isto non hoc suscepimus. Sunt inde libri tres nostri, primo nostrae conversionis tempore conscripti, quos quipotuerit et voluerit legere lectosque intllexerit, nihi eumprofecto quae ab eis contra perceptionem veritatis argumenta multa inventa sunt, permovebunt. Cf. retr. 1,1,4: Illud etiam, quod in comparatione argumentorum Ckeronis, quibus in libris suis Academitis usus est, meas nugas esse dixi, qui bus ilia argumenta certissima ratione refutavi. 37 Wayne Hankey, "Between and Beyond Augustine and Descartes: More than a Source of the Self." Augustinian Studies 32:1 (2001): 74. 38 See, e.g., beata u. 2,7; sol. 11,1,1; lib. arb. 11,3,7; uera rel. 39,73; ciu. XI,26. For an array of the texts in which Augustine repudiates scepticism, see Gerard O'Daly', Augustine'sPhilosophy of Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 162-71. 11

encountered through the mediation of Latin translations of Plotinus' EnneadV,3, and

Porphyry's Sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes.

Within the last century of scholarship, Charles Boyer's 1920 study, L'idee de la write dans laphilosophie de saint Augustin^ is notable for its appreciation of Augustine's critique of scepticism in relation to his philosophy generally, while also indicating the significant presence of anti-sceptical arguments in De trinitate X,10,14 and XV,12,21.4(! Boyer's point of departure is an analysis of the argument of Contra Academicos, in which he determines that

Augustine undertakes "la tache de montrer qu'il y a des verites auxquelles il est impossible de donner une apparence d'erreur, ou encore, qu'il y a des evidences subjectives qui n'existeraient pas si elles n'etaient pas la saisie d'une verite objective, et que par suit il n'est pas vrai que toute chose soit incertaine." Boyer reports that Augustine's principal source for the sceptical doctrine of the New Academy is Cicero's Academica, which was directed specifically against the Stoics' dogmatic certitude in sensible representations,42 but he is also keen to point out that, in opposing the Academics, Augustine's method especially follows

Plotinus, "son maitre."43 Two moments are distinguishable in Augustine's strategy: a negative dialectic, in which he exposes the absurd contradictions of the sceptical denial of truth, and a positive argument, in which he enunciates unshakable certitudes on which doubt itself depends, so as to open the sceptic's interior eyes to the intelligible world.44

Boyer finds examples in De trinitate X and XV of the method used earlier in Contra

Academicos, according to which Augustine recalls the Academic sceptic to an awareness of the mind's properly incorporeal activity above sense-perception through the intellectual

39 Charles Boyer, Cide'e de la verite dans la philosophie de saintAugustin (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1920). 40 Ibid., esp. 35-40. . 41 Ibid., 20-21. 42 Ibid., 16. For the evidence of Augustine's dependence on Cicero see the classic studies by Maurice Testard, Augustin et Ciceron, vol. 1 (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1958), esp. 81-129; and Harold Hagendahl, Augustine and the Catin Classics, Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia 20 (Goteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1967), esp. 491-510. On the distinct character of the sceptical concerns of the New Academy, especially as directed primarily against die Stoics' empiricist epistemology and its materialist basis, see P. Couissin, "The Stoicism of the New Academy," in The Sceptical Tradition, ed. Myles Burnyeat, Major Thinkers Series (Berkley: University of California Press, 1983), 31-63; Carlos Levy, Cicero Academicus: Recherches sur les Academiques et sur la philosophie ciceronienne, Collection de l'Ecole Francaise de Rome 162 (Rome: Ecole Francaise de Rome, 1992), 207-243; cf. B. D. Dutton, "Augustine, Academic Skepticism, and Zeno's Definition," Augustiniana 53 (2003): 7-30. 43 Boyer, Cidee de la verite, 36-37. 44 Ibid., 21-32. 12

intuition of incontestable truths. The connection of XV,12,21 to sceptical doctrine is clear in Augustine's own explicit reference to the Academics by name, and Boyer simply expounds the argument there that it is impossible to doubt the knowledge that one lives.

Although it is less self-evident, Boyer makes the connection of X,10,14 to anti-sceptical polemic on the basis of its form of argument, in which the certitude of doubt reveals itself as

"merveilleusement feconde" in proving a great number of certitudes.45 Included among the certitudes which Augustine takes to be a fact of the mind's intuitive knowledge of its own thinking and existence is the proof of the immateriality of the soul.

Etienne Gilson's Introduction a I'etude de saint Augustin, first published in 1928, follows the work of Boyer in citing the same texts from De trinitate in a chapter devoted to

Augustine's overcoming of New Academic scepticism. With this connection established,

Gilson moves the discussion beyond one or two isolated texts, and draws attention to the integrity of the argument of De trinitate X,l 0,13-16 in its opposition to sceptical doubt. "En meme temps qu'elle se libere du doute par la certitude de sa propre existence, la pensee s'apprehende comme une activite vitale d'ordre superieur, car penser c'est vivre."48 This unity of the mind's thinking with its being and its living is central to the argument of De trinitate X, and Gilson is particularly interested in Augustine's method of proving it. He argues that Augustine's definition of the substance of the soul in sharp distinction from the body is fundamentally preoccupied with turning us away from the body and the sensible.

This aversion is at once a conversion, and purposes to lead us back to the superior part of man, the rational mens, in which an intimate self-knowledge resides "qu'aucun sceptique ne saurait douter."49 Gilson attributes the provenance of this method to Plotinus, and as an historian of medieval philosophy he also makes comparisons of Augustine's thought with such later philosophers as Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, and Malebranche. So, for example, after a reference to De trinitate X, he writes of Augustine and Descartes: "Pour l'un et l'autre

45 trin. X,10,14: Quandoquidem etiam si dubitat, vivit: si dubitat unde dubitet, meminit; si dubitat, dubitare se intelligit; si dubitat, certus esse vult; si dubitat, cogitat; si dubitat, scit se ne scire; si dubitat, judicat non se temere consentire oportere. Quisquis igitur aliunde dubitat, de his omnibus dubitare non debet: quae si non essent, de ulla re dubitare non posset. 46 Boyer, Uidee de la verite, 39-40. 47 Etienne Gilson, Introduction a I'etude de saint Augustin, 2nd ed. (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1943), 54-55. 48 Ibid., 56. 49 Ibid., 60. 13

philosophe, le doute sceptique est une maladie d'origine sensible dont l'evidence de la pensee pure est le remede, et cette premiere certitude ouvre la route qui, par la demonstration de la spiritualite de l'ame, conduit a la preuve de l'existence de Dieu." Following Boyer, Gilson finds in Augustine robust distinctions between interior and exterior, intellectual and sensible—he goes so far as to say that the soul's radical transcendence to the body renders it necessarily impermeable. Accordingly, for Gilson,

Augustine's teaching that the mind finds immediately within itself what is necessary to overcome scepticism is accompanied by no slight consequences:

Fame est done a elle-meme son premier objet. Du meme coup, puisque rien ne separe alors le sujet pensant de l'objet qu'il pense, l'ame augustinienne trouve dans l'acte par lequel elle s'apprehende immediatement une certitude invincible, garantie de la possibilite d'une certitude en general; e'est done un premier caractere de l'augustinisme metaphysique que Y evidence par laquelle l'ame s'apprehende elle-meme est la premiere de toutes les evidences et le criterium de la verite}2

Although Gilson ultimately finds Augustine's following of Plotinus problematic,53 he nevertheless perceives one of its important results, namely the theoretical connection as set out in De trinitate X,10,13-16 between the mind's knowledge of its own interiority and the critique of scepticism.

A different aspect of the anti-sceptical polemic of De trinitate X comes into focus with the philological research of Jean Pepin, which emerged in 1953 and was published the following year as "Une curieuse declaration idealiste du «De Genesi ad litteramo (XII,10,21) de saint Augustin, et ses origines plotiniennes («Enne'ade» 5,3,1-9 et 5,5,1-2)."54 Pepin's particular concern lies with Augustine's description of intellectual knowledge in his commentary on Genesis, and his treatment of self-knowledge as set out in De trinitate IX and

X,3,5-4,6; in both respects, he traces the parentage of Augustine's doctrine to the Enneads of s» Ibid., 55. 51 Ibid., 321. 52 Ibid; the italics are Gilson's. 53 Against Boyer's conciliation of Augustine's doctrine of illumination with Aquinas' doctrine of the agent intellect (see op. at., 156-220), Gilson argues that Augustine's enthusiasm for Plocinian Neoplatonism had the unfortunate result that his theory of the mind's self-reflexivity, in De trinitate X and his whole epistemology, was confused by certain indeterminations, which in turn expose the points of greatest difference with Aquinas (111-47); cf. idem, "Pourquoi saint Thomas a critique saint Augustin," Archives d'histoire doctrinak et litteraire du mqyen age I (1926): 5-127. For a less ideologically biased comparison, which nonetheless brings out this point of difference, see O'Callaghan, "Imago Dei: A Test Case," 100-144. • 54 Reprinted in Jean Pepin, 'Ex Platonicorum persona ": Etudes sur les lectures philosophiques de saint Augustin (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1977), 183-210. 14

Plotinus. Noting that the idea of a relationship between De trinitate and EnneadV,3 was already suggested in German scholarship as early as 1915 in studies by Kratzer, Schmaus, and Theiler, among others,55 Pepin makes a strong case that Augustine's De trinitate X exhibits remarkable parallels with Plotinus' EnneadsV,3,l and V,3,5 (Treatise 49, "On

Knowing Hypostases"). Through a method of careful textual analysis and comparison,

Pepin shows that the relation of Augustine's De trinitate X and the Plotinian texts centres on their arguments adduced for self-knowledge, respectively, of mens and nous. An important point for our purposes is an observation which Pepin himself touches on only in passing.

For insofar as there is an evident parallelism of thought in De trinitate X,3,5-4,6 and Ennead

V,3, the formal structure of Augustine's argument may be regarded as implicated in, and to some extent determined by, the terms of scepticism to which Plotinus' text is a direct response, namely, the denial by Sextus Empiricus of the possibility of self-knowledge. For

Sextus, as set forth in Adpersus Mathematicos VII,3\0-3\2, the dilemma of self-knowledge is formulated in terms of an opposition and radical separation between knowing and known, subject and object, whole and part: either, nous attempts to know itself as a subjective whole, in which case nothing of itself remains as an object to be known; or, nous attempts to know itself from a part of itself seeking to know another part, in which case some part of itself remains unknown ad infinitum. Hence the claim by Sextus that self-knowledge is impossible.

It is against these typically sceptical sophisms, Pepin argues, that Plotinus rises to debate,

"suivi d'assez pres par Augustin." ' In the texts of both authors, the same themes can be found: the absurdity of supposing that mind is ignorant of itself; all knowing as a return to the mind's self-knowledge; the triple identity of the mind which knows, the mind which is known, and the act of knowing.57 Based on the evidence for these parallels, which exhibit resemblances along broad lines and in certain details of expression, Pepin concludes that it seems impossible to doubt Augustine's doctrinal .dependence on Plotinus' Enneads, while he cautiously suggests that, without access to the Latin translations of Plotinus on which

Augustine presumably depended, the claim of literary dependence must remain a likelihood.

^Ibid., 199, n.26. 56 Ibid., 198-99. 57 For a broader account of the philosophical history in which these arguments took shape, see Jean Pepin "Elements pour une histoire de la relation entre l'intelligence et l'intelligible chez Platon et dans le neoplatonisme," Repuephilosophique de la France et de I'etranger 146 (1956): 39-64. 15

The connection of De trinitate X with the anti-sceptical context in EnneadV,3 has been corroborated and developed in numerous editions of Augustine's Latin text, and in subsequent philological scholarship. 9 Pierre Agaesse, for instance, draws an important implication from the observation of Augustine's likely inspiration from Plotinus: "Mais surtout il semble qu'Augustin emprunte a Plotin sa problematique. . . . Plotin repond a une difficulte deja pressentie par Platon et nettement formulee par Sextus Empiricus sous la forme d'aporie."' In other words, Agaesse suggests that Augustine shares with Plotinus, not only certain themes, arguments, and expressions, but a philosophical problematic which, moreover, is characterised by Sextus' formulation of self-knowledge per impossibik. Given this understanding of the problematic, at least one aspect of Augustine's theoretical task is to describe the operation of the mind's self-knowledge so as to avoid falling into the strictures of the sceptical aporia. The research which contextualises De trinitate X within an anti- sceptical polemic seems to have reached a prevailing consensus on this point: there are no philological grounds for contesting that the analysis of self-knowledge at X,3,5-4,6 is, as

Emmanuel Bermon has recendy confirmed, "fondamentalement motive par le souci de refuser les objections des Sceptiques, qui niaient que l'esprit put se connaitre. . . . Plus precisement, il s'inspire vraisemblablement du traite Sur les hypostases qui connaissent (V,3) . . .

C'est done dans le contexte d'une argumentation dont le caractere est essentiellement refutatif et aporetique qu'Augustin affirme d'emblee que l'esprit se connait lui-meme."61

58 Pierre Agaesse, "Note complementaire 24," in YJX Trinite (BA 16), 603-605; cf. the critical apparatus of W. J. Mountain, ed., Sancti Aurelii Augustini De Trinitate Tibri XV (Libri I-XII), Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 50 (Turnholti: Typographi Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1968), 318. 59 Pierre Courcelle, Connais-toi toi-meme: De Socrate a saint Bernard (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1974), 154- 55,n.l96. 6(1 Agaesse, "Note complementaire 24," in La Trinite (BA 16), 603-604. 61 Emmanuel Bermon, Te cogito dans lapensee de saint Augustin, Histoire des Doctrines de l'Antiquite Classique 26 (Paris: Librairie Philosophiquc J. Vrin, 2001), 78; cf. Johannes von Brachtendorf, Die Slruklur des menschlichen Geistes nachAugustinus: Selbstreflexiiori und Erkenntnis Gottes in »De Trinitate* (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2000), 24-34,167-84. Gerard O'Daly, "The Response to Skepticism and the Mechanisms of Cognition," in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Elenore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 159-70, soundly points out that Augustine's knowledge of scepticism excludes any direct use of Sextus Empiricus, but then asserts that "Plotinus' arguments against skepticism appear not to have influenced him" (159)—-an exceptional claim in light of the scholarship, which he does not adequately justify. 16

This judgement is supported by editors of the Enneads who are unanimous in observing that

Plotinus' text is the origin of different traits of De trinitate X.62

It is furthermore clear that the debt of De trinitate X to Plotinus' anti-sceptical polemic cannot be confined only to an initial moment of Augustine's analysis of self- knowledge. One of Augustine's most famous arguments against scepticism is in fact developed further on at X,10,14 (si dubitat, vivit), within a broader critique of a corporealist thesis of the mind (X,10,13-16). The essential logic of this argument appears to be

"embedded in a Neoplatonic account of the relationship between existence, living, and thinking;" this argument Plotinus himself articulates precisely in response to Sextus' problematisation of self-knowledge.63 Augustine here follows Plotinus, according to

Dominic O'Meara, by using the critique of scepticism "de facon a la faire paradoxicalement fonctionner comme fondement d'une philosophic dogmatique . . . de type platonicien, fondee sur une connaissance intellectuelle independante de la sensation, une conscience immediate d'un soi riche de verities dont la fiabilite meme peut se verifier par la mise en oeuvre du doute sceptique."64 Such a founding of dogmatic philosophy, in Augustine, is the simultaneous purification and interior conversion of the mind from sensible, corporeal and imagined things to its proper intelligence; only thus may the mind think itself and live according to its nature.'

One figure I have not mentioned yet, but who plays an important role in mediating the sceptical problematic, is Porphyry. As early as 1933, Willy Theiler had argued for

Augustine's dependence (in De trinitate IX,12,18; X,3,5 and X,10,16) on Porphyry's Sententiae

62 See, e.g., Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, eds., Plotini Opera: Enneades IV-V, vol. 2, Museum Lessianum Series Philosophica 34 (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1959), 300, 304. 63 John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 64; cf. the commentary on EnneadV,?>,5 in Bertrand Ham, ed., Plotin: Traite 49 (V,3): Ce quipense soi-meme doit it etre differenciel, Les Ecrits de Plotin (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2000), 130-41. 64 Dominic O'Meara, "Scepticisme et ineffabilite chez Plotin," in Dixaut, ed., Ea connaissance de soi, 91-103 at 93. 65 trin. X,5,7; X,8,ll. On the methodological importance of conversion, purification and exercise of the mind to Augustine's critique of scepticism in Contra Academicos, see Giovanni Catapano, "In phiiosophiae gremium confugere: Augustine's View of Philosophy in the First Book of his Contra Academicos" Dionjsius 18 (2000): 45-68; Bernard Wills, "Ancient Scepticism and the Contra Academicos of St. Augustine," Animus 4 (1999): 108-23, an electronic journal accessed at: www2.swgc.mun.ca/animus/Articles/Volume%204/ wills4.pdf. Cf. Goulven Madec, "Exercitatio animi," in Cornelius Mayer, ed., Augustinus-Lexikon, vol. 2 (Stuttgart/Basel: Schwabe & Co. AG, 1996-2002), col. 1182-83. 17

ad intelligibilia ducentes66 The latter work in fact constitutes a condensed form of Plotinus' doctrine. Theiler shows parallels both in triadic structure (compare mens, notitia, amor and ousia, gnosis, phi/id), and also in the doctrine that self-knowledge pertains to the very nature of the mind. He proposes that the greater part of De trinitate X could be regarded as an interpretation of the Delphic oracle, and that Augustine's concerns may have been indebted to Porphyry's Peri tou gnothi seauton, now mostly lost. Pepin corroborated this evidence in his

1964 article, "Une nouvelle source de saint Augustin: le Zetema de Porphyre, Sur I'union de

I'dme et du corps."61 But perhaps the most valuable contribution to date has been the two volume critical edition of the Sentences published in 2005 under the direction of Luc

Brisson.68 In this collection, Cristina D'Ancona shows that there is a high degree of doctrinal and verbatim correspondences between Ennead V,3 and Sentences 40-44.69 No doubt building on these insights, Jean-Marie Flamand et Wilfried Kuhn in their note on

Sentence 40 lay out the historical facts of the philosophical tradition of the Delphic command: the beginning with Alcibiades I; Sextus' critique of the possibility of self-intellection; the anti- sceptical response by Plotinus, followed by Porphyry; and finally the arrival to De trinitate X, in which "Augustine a repris les reflexions de Plotin et de Porphyre et les a approfondies en observant en particulier que, simplement pour pouvoir comprendre la devise delphique, il faut deja se connaitre soi-meme."70 It is not necessary for my purposes to judge whether

Augustine is following Plotinus or Porphyry more closely, for they both confirm an indirect connection with the sceptical dilemma of Sextus.71 Among scholars who agree on the basic terms of this problematic as mediated to Augustine by Plotinus, and possibly Porphyry, there is continued debate about the nature and extent of the structural accord between the three philosophers' renditions of self-knowledge. In this interpretative issue of

66 Willy Theiler, Porphyros und Augustin (Halle, 1933). 67 Booth, "St. Augustine's motitia sui»," (1978), 211. r'8 Luc Brisson, ed., Porphyre, Sentences: Etudes d'introduction, texte Grec et traduction Franfaise, commentaire, 2 vols., Histoire des Doctrines de L'Antiquite Classique 33 (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2005). 69 See Christina D'Ancona, "Les Sentences de Porphyre entre les Enneades de Plotin et les Elements de theologie de Proclus," in Sentences, ed. Brisson, 242-50. 711 Jean-Marie Flamand et Wilfried Kuhn, "Note sur la Sentence 40," in Sentences, ed. Brisson, 714. 71 Most recently, see Richard Sorabji, "Porphyry on Self-Awareness, True Self, and Individual," in Studies on Porphyry, ed. George Karamanolis and Anne Sheppard (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2007), 61- 69, at 61-62. 18

philosophical history, commentators tend to emphasise either the differences or the similarities73 in character between their Platonisms.

With respect to Augustine's engagement with the Academica of Cicero, there has been a general neglect in the literature in distinguishing what its particular context of debate contributes to an understanding of De trinitate X. Perhaps part of the problem is that

Augustine does not explicidy mention the Academics in that text. Nor is there evidence that

Augustine himself did, or had an interest to, categorise two "kinds" of scepticism (Academic and Pyrrhonian). This is apparent first in his attitude toward the New Academy itself, which seems to have been rather complex. Although Augustine defines his position against the scepticism of the Academy, his view of their teachings is not wholly negative, as is reflected in various statements such, for instance, as in the Retractiones: "I wrote against the

Academics, or concerning the Academics."75 Or again, in a different context: "I should never even by way of joking attempt to attack the Academics ... I have imitated rather than refuted them."76 The ambiguity here should not be surprising, for in our extant sources there is considerable disagreement over how to interpret the arguments of the different

72 Wayne Hankey, "Self-Knowledge and God as Other in Augustine: Problems for a Postmodern Retrieval," BochumerPhilosophisches JahrbuchjiirAntike und Mittelalter A (1999): 83-123, at 117, comments on the crucial move beyond scepticism for both philosophers by a reflexive movement into the self as against the sensible, and adds: "The fundamental difference between Augustine and Plotinus is that Augustine is able to carry this self-reflexivity all the way through. It is carried further within the individual self, so that reflexivity becomes a positive relation of remembering, knowing and loving on which much else can be established;" idem, "Between and Beyond Augustine and Descartes," 74-80; cf. Therese Fuhrer, "Skeptizismus und Subjektivitat: Augustins antiskeptische Argumentation und das Konzept der Verinnerlichung," in R. L. von Fetz et al., eds., Geschichte und Vorgeschichte der modernen Subjektivitat (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1998), 319-39; Kevin Corrigan, "L'auto-reflexivite et l'experience humaine dans I'Enne'ade V, 3 [49], et autres traites: de Plotin a Thomas d'Aquin," in Etudes surPlotin, ed. Michel Fattal (Montreal: L'Harmattan, 2000), 149-172. 73 Bermon, Le cogito, 84-87, locates the Augustinian immediacy of self-knowledge with Plotinus, in rigourous antithesis to Plato, Aristode, and Cicero within the tradition of philosophical interpretation of the Delphic precept, Gnothi seauton. Cf. Christoph Horn, "Selbstbeziiglichkeit des Geistes bei Plotin und Augustinus," in Brachtendorf, ed., Gott und sein Biid, 102: "Es schcint mix nicht richtig, in Sachen SelbstbewuCtsein eine tiefgreifende Entwicklung zwischen der Position Plotins und derjenigen Augustins anzunehmen. . . . Beide Philosophen stellen das Traditionsmotiv der Selbstbeziiglichkeit des Geistes erstmals auf die Basis eines unmittelbaren Selbstwissens des Ichs." 74 This has been noted by John J. O'Meara, ed., Saint Augustin, Against the Academics (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1950), 16. 75 retr. 1.1. 76 ep. 1,1. 19

sceptics within the Academy.77 Furthermore, Augustine's hypothesis of the history of the

Academy places Plotinus in continuity with the occult Platonism of the ostensibly sceptical

Academy;78 this seems to be another testimony that the lines of demarcation between different kinds of scepticism were of little interest to him. This would seem somewhat odd by modern standards, since Plotinus' relation to scepticism is regarded as defined primarily by his engagement with the thought of Pyrrhonian, not New Academic, scepticism. In a broader perspective, the historical and conceptual relations between the different scepticisms following Arcesilaus or Pyrrho have been obscure from early on, and "the problem of distinguishing between Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism, to which the ancients themselves devoted whole essays, has remained unsolved and is perhaps insoluble: the two traditions were contaminated from the start."79

One notable exception to this lack of attention to the Academic context of debate is the fine study of Bermon, which treats of the sceptical problematic in De trinitate, especially book X, in reference both to Augustine's ancient sources and his later influence among

Descartes and Husserl. Bermon suggests that Augustine's analysis of the mind in De trinitate

X is the very model of the Stoic criterion of truth, or phantasia kataleptike, and argues that

Augustine's concern in book X and XV with the mind's unshakeable self-certitude and infallible self-knowledge is fruitfully understood in relation to what is common to the epistemology of the Academics and Stoics:

A la suite de Socrate, les Academiques et les Stoiciens ont done en commun la meme exigence d'infaillibilite et d'intangibilite vis-a-vis de la science, et e'est sur le fondement de ce presuppose commun qu'ils s'opposent quant a la possibilite ou a l'impossibilite de la science elle-meme. . . . Plus largement, on peut se demander si ce n'est pas sur la possibilite d'atteindre un tel inconcussum que se fonde la philosophic elle-meme, quand elle pretend au titre de science ou de sagesse.81

77 For a helpful discussion of the complicated and controversial evolution of the sceptical Academy as related to Cicero's Academica, see Charles Brittain, "Introduction," in Cicero, On Academic Scepticism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), viii-lviii. 78 Acad. 111,7,14: deinde, ut mihi videtur, ostendam, quae causafuerit Academicis occultandae sentientiae suae; cf. 111,17,37-20,43. See also Levy, Cicero Academicus, 641-44. 79 Jacques Brunschwig, "Introduction: The Beginnings of Hellenistic Epistemology," in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic "Philosophy,ed . Keimpe Algra et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 229- 59 at 251. so Bermon, he cogito. 81H, 110. 20

He finds that Augustine answers this question in the affirmative, through the demonstration of the mind's certitude of itself: that it knows/understands, lives, and is. Upon this certitude the reason for philosophising depends; conversely, this certitude is the "scientific" truth , in the robust, Stoic sense of infallibly demonstrated knowledge, for which philosophy searches.

1.3. Plan of Interpretation

Having surveyed the pertinent secondary literature, it is possible at this point to gather together the important results for my own approach to De trinitate X. On the question of the sources of Augustine's thought in De trinitate X, there is ample evidence to accept the judgements that he is dealing with a sceptical problematic on which he has meditated over many years, and probably with deepening concern to establish a more secure certitude through the mind's self-cognition. Most obviously, Contra Academicos has explicit literary links with the New Academy, mediated through Cicero, and De trinitate XV,12,21 refutes the Academics by name. We may assume that the link with his own former refutation persist at least in the background, on a doctrinal level, in Augustine's analysis of the problem of doubt and certitude in book X. Another objective connection, through the mediation of Plotinus and Porphyry, is to the aporetic formulation of Sextus which denies the possibility of self-knowledge. The continuity of problematics is most apparent in

Augustine's treatment of the whole/part dilemma at X,3,5-4,6, and perhaps also in the analysis of the unity of the mind in terms of its understanding, life and being at X,10,13-16.

More generally, it does not seem advisable to make any sharp conceptual division between kinds of scepticism, but rather to consider how in Augustine's mind the sceptical critique is a possible hinge from a dogmatic, Manichean or Stoic corporealist epistemology to the

Platonic insight into the intelligible world of mind. In the remainder of this chapter, I present a basic scheme of Augustine's method of refuting scepticism, in terms of the spiritual movement and structure of his argument. These considerations 'will serve to introduce my commentary in the following chapter on the theoretical structure and

See Catapano, "Inphilosophiaegremium confugere," 65, n.86, and 67. 21

movement of the argument, in which I shall especially attempt to characterise the unity of the mind's self-cognition as presented in De trinitate X.

There is a basic structural accord between De trinitate X and the first dialogue of the

Cassiciacum period. We have seen that Augustine's anti-sceptical method may be divided into two forms. Bernard Wills articulates two distinct phases of Augustine's formal refutation of the sceptics in Contra Academicos III: first, he "engages in a dialectical refutation of the sceptical argument," seeking *'to undermine its internal consistency"; and second, he

"switches to the style of direct address in order to develop thematically a phenomenology of our basic forms of knowledge which even a Sceptic would be forced to acknowledge."

This mode, content, and structure of argumentation, I suggest, informs the rigourous logic of De trinitate book X.

Many points in Augustine's argument from book VIII onwards exhibit features of the negative phase, but we see it exercised most fully and thoroughly when the question of self-knowledge properly appears, at X,3,5 to X,4,6. Here Augustine engages with numerous aporiae which would seem to be involved in seeking self-knowledge. Yet he constructs various arguments precisely in order to show their absurdity and lack of internal coherence.

For each of the resulting aporiae vs consequent on "an inadequate manner of posing the question of self-knowledge, which consists in objectifying the mind and representing it as if it were a thing with extension." Hence, the movement of the argument through successive aporiae is a progressive negation of images: a negation of the false conceptions concerning the mind which have been introduced to the mind's self-cognition by means of its imagination. In the course of 'untying the knots,' as it were, certain features necessary to the nature of the mind's self-knowledge thus gradually become manifest as the dialectical enquiry systematically disposes of the absurd corporealist assumptions of the mind's nature and operations. Augustine inaugurates the second, positive phase at X,5,7. Augustine propounds an explicit theory on the origin of the mind's errors concerning itself, which in fact he has assumed up to that point. Henceforth, the argument brings to light specific powers of the mind which constitute its very substance, and which any operation of the mind necessarily presupposes by virtue of its interior self-presence. Near the end of book

83 Wills, "Ancient Scepticism and the Contra Academicos" § 35. 84 Bermon, Le cogito, 77. 22

X, Augustine demonstrates different forms of the mind's self-certitude, all of which are consequent on the unity of the mind and its activities; he even founds certitude upon the exercise of doubt itself. Without denying that the arguments in De trinitate provide the basis for the analysis of the mind's nature, operations, and structure, more than metaphysical theory is at stake.

For the arguments themselves are primarily meant to move and affect the mind as a moral agent along its spiritual itinerarium. This point is brought into view by Pierre Hadot's characterisation of the philosophical treatise of late antiquity:

Above all, the work, even if it is apparently theoretical and systematic, is written not so much to inform the reader of a doctrinal content but to form him, to make him traverse a certain itinerary in the course of which he will make spiritual progress. This procedure is clear in the works of Plotinus and Augustine, in which all the detours, starts and stops, and digressions of the work are formative elements.85

As he explains in book I, because of the difficulty in contemplating and clearly knowing the substance of God, zpurgatio mentis is necessary, by which our mind may be able to see that ineffable ineffably.86 Augustine learned from the Platonists that through the mind's reflection upon itself it returns to its divine Principle. Indeed, for Augustine, the mind's spiritual movement is purification and conversion, from the more exterior to more interior, from corporeal, sensible, or imagined things to an incorporeal and increasingly strengthened and united intelligence. Only by discovering its intimate and complete self-presence, by entering into itself, into its rational or intellectual nature, the mind perceives that which links it to the Trinity in whose image it was made.

85 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 64. 86 trin. 1,1,3. CHAPTER TWO: THE MIND'S DISCOVERY OF ITSELF

Augustine's treatment in De trinitate X of the human mind's self-knowledge properly begins at chapter 3,5, with the question: "What therefore does the mind love, when it ardendy seeks itself in order to know itself, while it is unknown to itself?" That question, however, is implicated in the investigation, extending through the second half of the work, into how the nature of the Trinity can be understood through the mind's reflection upon itself, upon its spiritual nature and the structure and intention of its operations. The question of self-knowledge in book X is positioned between the discussion of two triadic schemes of the mind, identified as images of the divine Trinity: mens, notitia sui, amor sui

(IX,2,2-5,8), and memoria sui, intelligentia sui, voluntas sui (X,l 1,17-12,19). Book X logically derives from and continues the search into the mind, to discover the constitutive Trinitarian

Principle of the mind's intellectual life and being. An overview of the basic method of the argument leading to book X can thus set the stage for my analysis of self-knowledge as it relates to the refutation of scepticism. Since book VIII is a sort of introduction to the research conducted throughout the remainder of the work, it will be important for me to observe the argument's characteristic method. I will then consider book IX with a view to draw out those developments of the argument most pertinent to my analysis of self- cognition in book X.

2.1. Exercises of the Mind: Towards an Initial Imago Trinitatis (VIII-IX)

After expounding in books I to IV that which is said {dicatur) of the Trinity in revealed scripture, Augustine then establishes in books V to VII that which is believed (credatur) of the Trinity according to its necessary logical form. In the prooemium of book VIII, he indicates a shift in the argument. Here Augustine summarily reaffirms the doctrine of the unity and distinctions of the Trinity, which he has discussed in the previous seven books, and then proposes to attend to those same things except now treating them in a more interior manner—modo interiore. As Michael Carreker comments, this transition marks the third segment in the structure of the work: "Books VIII-XV wherein the mind goes

1 Fulbert Cayre, "Note complementaire 8," in 1M Trinite (BA 16), 579.

23 24

beyond logical disputation seeking the very vision of the Principle of its own integral life demonstrate the doctrine as intelligaturr2 This shift to understanding at book VIII in fact indicates a methodological shift from seeking the logical predication of the Trinity to seeking the Trinity itself within the mind itself. Augustine's argument approaches the divine and human in an ever more immediate intellectual union.

One way of tracing this more interior intention of the argument is to notice

Augustine's method of examining the problem that one cannot love what one does not know. This problem first appears in book VIII, and we can see its gradual refinement in the subsequent argument leading direcdy into the problem of self-cognition in book X. At

VIII,4,6 the problem informs a general question which has its ultimate theological purpose in view: "But who loves (diligif) that which he does not know (ignorai)? For something can be known and not loved; but what I am asking is whether something can be loved that is not known? If that is impossible, then no one loves God before he knows him."3 Our knowledge and love of the unseen Trinity, however, presents a problem of no slight difficulty. First, Augustine's via negativa rules out the possibility of discerning the Trinity— which is the intelligible, immutable and eternal Truth itself—according to anything corporeal or mutable, or even any mutable thing which occurs in spiritual things.4 Second, there is no species or genus known in the human innately or by experience such as we may believe that

Trinity to be. Augustine thus refuses two routes as possible means to God: the knowledge and love of him cannot be through the corporeal senses, nor through an analogy from a spiritual creature—such as the human soul is. Nonetheless, this negative argument aims to

2 Michael Carreker, "A Commentary on Books Five, Six, and Seven of the De Trinitate of Saint Augustine of Hippo," (PhD diss., Dalhousie University, 1992), 6. For this tripartite ordering of the work (dicatur, credatur, intelligatuf) I am indebted to Carreker's interpretation of the purpose and method of Augustine's argument at trin. 1,2,4. 3 trin. VIII,4,6. Whether or not Augustine was acquainted with Plato's Meno 80b ff, this is a variation on the same aporia of how it is possible to inquire into the knowledge of something which one does not already know. An earlier meditation on this problem, I suggest, may be found embedded in the marvellous invocation, full of speculative questions, at conf. 1,1,1: da mihi, domine, scire et intelligere, utrum sit prius invcocare te an laudare te et scire teprius sit an invocare te. Sed quis te invocate nesciens te? Aliud enimpro alio potest invocare nesciens. Anpotius invocaris, ut sciaris? One will observe that Augustine does not allow his perplexity there—itself a sort of Socratic scepticism—to be resolved by any other means than ongoing, prayerful dialogue with sacred scripture. 4 trin. VIII,2,3. 5 Ibid., VIII,5,7-5,8. 25

be an exercise of the soul or mind.6 Commenting on the method of book VIII, Jose Oroz

Reta describes the itinerary to God as a movement from the external, sensible world to the intelligible discovered within the human self:

Agostino mette in risalto in processo di ascensione dale cose create lino al Creatore. Ma l'uomo ha bisongno di entrare dentro se stesso per trovare la verita o la possibilita di tale processo. E questa possibilita non esiste esteriormente e non pud provenire dal di fuori. Tutto cio che e esterno e sensibile non potra essere un luogo o un mezzo adatto perquesta meravigliosa scoperta. II mondo sensibile, dunque, deve essere superato per arrivare all'intelligibile, come condizione essenziale e necessaria per raggiungere la verita assoluta, che e Dio.7 Augustine's method is thus a disciplined use of reason in a process of interior conversion, purification, and ascent, so as to make the soul fit for contemplation of the Trinity.

But the argument cannot be purely negative. For Augustine, following the dictates of scripture, already affirms that belief precedes understanding, just as faith precedes sight.

The initiumfidei is not simply left behind as the inquiry proceeds to the intelkctus fidei; there is a definite content of faith concerning the Trinity which Augustine is attempting to understand, not strip away. What the argument requires, in order that out fides be not ficta? is to discern that similitude by which we may love the God whom we believe but in some sense do not yet know. Augustine examines several examples of how we love precisely for this reason: through our love of good things, we see and love God by participation in the supreme Good; our love of Saint Paul's Justus animus is a certain loving perception of its form and truth within our soul, or rather above us in the Truth itself which God is;12 and

6 The notion of the second half of De trinitate as an exercitatio animi is classically argued in Henri-Irenee Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, 4th ed. (Paris: Editions E. de Boccard, 1958; original ed. 1938), 315-27. Curiously Marrou does not include book VIII under this method. In my view, book VIII as a whole is dedicated to this very task of exercising the mind of the reader. Augustine's use of the term exercitatio and its cognates in trin. may be found at IX,12,17: ut ex interiore imagine in qua nobisfamiliarius natura ipsa nostra quasi interrogata respondet exercitatiorem mentis aciem ab inluminata creatura ad lumen incommutabile dirigamus. Cf. XlIL20,26; XV, 1; XV,3,5; XV,6,10; XV,27,49. 7 Jose Oroz Reta, "Dall'interiorita dell'anima alia contemplazione di Dio nel «De trinitate» di sant'Agostino," in Luigi Alici, ed., Interiorita e inten^ionalitd in S. Agostino (Rome: Institutum Patristicum «Augustinianum», 1990), 85-106, at 101. 8 trin. VIII,4,6-5,8. See esp. Isa. 7,9 (following the LXX): nisi credideritis, non intelligetis; and II Cor. 5,7: per fidem adhuc ambulamus, non per speciem. 9 Ibid., VIII,5,7. 10 Ibid., VIII,5,8: Hoc ergo diligimus in Trinitate, quod Deus est: sed Deum nullum alium vidimus, aut novimus, quia unus est Deus, ille solus quern nondum vidimus, et credendo diligimus. Sed ex qua rerum notarum similitudine vel comparatione credamus, quo etiam nondum notum Deum diligamus, hoc quaeritur. 11 Ibid, VIII,3,4. 12 Ibid., VIII,6,9. 26

likewise in that love by which we love a brother, God who is Love itself is more known, because more present, more interior, more certain. "For what is so intimately known (tarn intime scitur), and perceives itself to be (seque ipsum esse sentit), than that by which even all other things are perceived, that is, the animus itself?" In each case, our own animus discerns the realities it truly loves in distinction from bodily things, because it sees and understands itself

(as lover) and its objects (as beloved) not "by any sense of the body (ullo corporis sensu)" but rather through a certain "nearness to itself (apud se ipsum)." "Behold, 'God is love': why do we go and run into the heights of the heavens and the depths of the earth, searching for him who is near to us (eum qui est apud nos), if we wish to be with him?"16 Accordingly, just as the soul knows what it loves by its own greater intimacy to itself, so God who is both supra nos and apud nos is visible "by a more interior vision {yideret Deum . . . visu interiore quo videri potest)}1

The argument thus comes to recognise an interior, spiritual nature by which God can be known, through the soul's perception of the notions of good, truth, the form of righteousness, and love. There is even an intimation of God the Trinity in the triad, amans, quod amatur, amor. 8 Despite these glimpses of clarity, a difficulty remains, insofar as the soul is still accustomed to think in terms of sensible things and bodies. So book VIII concludes with an exhortation: "But in order that we may draw upon something more purely and more clearly, the flesh having been tread down, let us mount up to the soul (ascendamus ad animuni)?' The inquiry has not yet discovered that which it seeks, but it has found where it should be sought: the locus where the higher, divine things are to be sought is deeper within the soul. Such a movement will entail investigation into the soul's more profound self, a

13 Md.,\l\l,l,\ 1-8.12. 14 Ibid., VIII,6.9. 15 Ibid. ™Ibid.,V\\I,l,\\. 177fe'fl'.,VIII,8,12-9,13. ™ Ibid.,VIII,10,U- « Ibid. 20 Augustine's use of the seemingly static, spatial metaphor {locus) does not cancel out the spiritual dynamic inherent to the logic by which God is known in the most intimate presence of the soul to itself. The method is evocative of Augustine's 'definition' of God as interior intimo meo et superior summon meo [conf. 111,6,11), on which see Goulven Madec, "Memoria: Introspection et interiorite," in Saint j\ugustin et la philosophie: Notes critiques, Collection des Etudes Augustiniennes, Serie Antiquite 149 (Paris: Institute d'Etudes Augustiniennes, 1996), 85-91, at 91: "les images de l'immanence et de la transcendance se reduisent l'une l'autre et les deux expressions ont la meme signification. Si elles sont paradoxales, c'est surtout par l'adjonction de comparatives a des superlatives. Mais c'est aussi ce qui leur donne leur sens 27

deeper penetration into its more interior dimensions. Augustine has not yet raised the question of the mind's self-cognition, but his argument is heading in that direction.

This established method or spiritual itinerary, as I have described, is taken up and intensified in book IX. Here, Augustine confines the investigation to the superior part of the human soul which is responsible for its rational or intellectual activity, namely mind (de sola mente tractemus)}x With this shift in terminology, the quest for the appropriate similitude by which God may be believed and loved will henceforth focus upon an examination of the mind itself. As Augustine's argument enters into the intrinsic human capacity of reasoning, it becomes possible to discover the inextricable connection of love and knowledge with firmer reason.

At IX,3,3 the question posed in book VIII appears in a modified form as the argument undergoes a further interior conversion: Augustine here explicitly begins an analysis of the mind's activity reflected upon itself. "The mind cannot love itself unless it also knows itself, for by what mode does it love what it does not know?"22 Recalling his earlier reasoning about the manner in which animus cannot be said to know itself and God,

Augustine asserts that it is most absurd to suppose {insipientissime loquitur) that the mind has a generic or specific knowledge of itself according to its experience of other minds. It is worth highlighting, although we cannot pursue it here, that Pepin links Augustine's language of absurdity to similar language in EnneadV,3,l, 16-19 ipanu atopon;pantapasin atopon), which is precisely where Plotinus engages the aporia of self-knowledge presented by Sextus

Empiricus.23 In this connection, one does not need to look further than Augustine's own

Contra Academicos to find that he commonly uses language conveying the absurdity of his fort: l'interiorite augustinienne n'est pas complaisance dans l'introspection psychologique; elle est exigence de transcendance spirituelle." For an interpretation of Augustine's theory of interiority as a "private inner space" of the self, which draws especially upon the Confessions, see Phillip Cary, Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Vlatonist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 21 trin. IX,2,2. A discussion of Augustine's distinctions of the parts of the soul, which he in fact maintains with considerable consistency in De trinitate, is beyond the scope of this thesis. For an outline of the basic hierarchy see Gilson, Introduction, 56-57; cf. Agaesse, "Note complementaire 9," in l^a Trinite (BA 16), 581- 83. The distinctions are important to the rational integrity of spiritual exercise, as Augustine's remark at trin. XV,1,1 makes evident: Volentes in rebus quaefactae sunt ad cognoscendum eum a quofactae sunt, exercere lectorem, iam pervenimus ad ejus imaginem, quod est homo, in eo quo caeteris animalibus antecellit, id est ratione pel intelligentia, et qmdquid aliud de anitna rationali pel intellectuali did potest, quod pertineat ad earn rem quae mens vocatur pel animus. Quo nomine nonnulli auctores linguae latinae, id quo excellit in homine, et non est in pecore, ab anima quae inest etpecori, suo quodam loquendi more distinguunt. 22 trin. IX,3,3: mens enim amare se ipsam non potest, nisi etiam se noverit: nam quomodo amat quod nescit? 23 Pepin, "Une curieuse declaration," 389. 28

opponents' sceptical propositions. Beyond these semantic connections, however,

Augustine's treatment of the matter in question at De trinitate IX,3,3 is cursory and dogmatic, and he himself seems to be aware that the resolution of the difficulty has not yet been sufficiently demonstrated: "But this is discussed very subtly and obscurely, until it be most plainly demonstrated (donee apertissime demonstretur) whether it holds thus or does not."25 It is my view that this is the very task Augustine undertakes, with greater attention to the mode and conditions of self-cognition, when he returns to the question of what the mind loves when it seeks to know itself, beginning at X,3,5. In book IX, passing over the subtleties which would provide an understanding of the basis of the mind's self-knowledge, Augustine nevertheless deduces several important points from the presupposition of this self- knowledge. Of the rich and complex reasoning in the remainder of this book, I shall be content to relate the following three points of doctrine to be further developed in my analysis of book X.

First, at IX,3,3 Augustine reaffirms and strengthens the claim, already proposed at

VIII,6,9, that the mind knows itself by its immediate presence to itself. This is initially implied in the rejection of the oculus corporis as a proper means by which the mind knows other minds. Augustine renders this more explicit by a rigourous ontological division between corporeal and incorporeal things, and a corresponding epistemological division between the bodily senses and the intelligence. The mind pertains to the latter term of each division. "The mind itself, therefore, just as it collects knowledge of corporeal things through the senses of the body, so of incorporeal things through itself. Therefore it also knows itself through itself (per se ipsam), since it is incorporeal."26 The mind's nature is thus defined precisely by its being apart from any contact with corporeal entities, and its self- knowledge operates immediately through its incorporeal self, that is, without any mediation of the corporeal mode. A positive articulation of the mind's proper mode of seeing—mentis aspectus, rationalis mentis intuitus, and mentis acies—is given several chapters later, as the

24 Acad. 111,9,21: absurdum est, 111,5,12: rem absurdissimam; 111,14,31: redis ad illud absurdum. Cf. trin. X,4,6: sed absurdum est dicere ... 25 trin. IX,3,3 26 Ibid. 27 Ife/., IX,6,11. 29

argument delves further into "what the mind ought to be, in the light of the eternal reasons."28

Second, Augustine holds that these three, mens, its notitia, and its amor, constitute the mind as a unity in their perfect equality. "The mind itself, its knowledge and its love are a certain triad (trid) and these three are one; and when they are perfect, they are equal."29 The context in which Augustine describes the perfection of the mind's love and knowledge is an elementary hierarchy of being, vertically ordered according to degrees of superiority, or greatness, of natura: God is greater than the mind, and the mind is greater than the body.

Accordingly, when the mind loves itself perfecdy, it loves itself as nothing more than itself

(as God) or less than itself (as a body); it loves itself according to the nature of its own rank, and is thus perfecdy self-related. Perfect self-love of course requires perfect self-knowledge.

When Augustine comes to discuss the mind's knowledge, the same basic argument holds.

When the mind perfectly or truly cognises itself, its knowledge {notitia) is not less or greater that it is {quam est); there is an equality between what the mind knows and its being, because it is the same mind which "itself thinks and itself is thought {quia ipsa cognoscit, ipsa cognoscitMr).,,A) The equality of the mind's self-related activity to the mind itself, as Booth remarks, "is not extrinsic equality, but a substantial identity."31 The mind's cognition is adequate to its being when it cognises i) itself as a whole; ii) itself and nothing else with itself; iii) itself from no other nature than itself. As we shall see, Augustine will develop these arguments in more detail, and will work out each of them with dialectical certitude in book X. Here it is sufficient to grasp that there is a unity of the three when the mind loves

28 Ibid., IX,6,9. 29 Ibid., IX,4,4. 311 Ibid. 31 Booth, "Augustine's unotitia sui»" (1978), 208. 32 trin. IX,4,4: Mens pen cum se ipsam cognoscit, non se superat notitia sua quia ipsa cognoscit, ipsa cognoscitur. Cum ergo se totam cognoscit neque secum quidquam aliud, par Hit est cognition sua quia neque ex alia natura est ejus cognitio, cum se ipsam cognoscit. It should be noted that Augustine does not limit his terminology here to notitia/nosse, but also includes cognitio I cognoscere. I point out this distinction because commentators disagree on what is meant by notitia as it differs from both cognitio and cogitatio. In general, cognitio has a broader semantic range than notitia, and thus it is perhaps unnecessary to oppose cognition and knowledge in this passage. Moreover, I argue that within the more encompassing category which I translate as cognition {cognitio I cognoscere), Augustine does indeed make a technical distinction between cogitatio I cogitare and notitia/nosse in book X, and this is crucial to my analysis infra, at 63 ff. See Agaesse, "Note complementaire 17," in ha Trinite (BA 16), 591-93; cf. Gerard Watson, "Cogitatio," in Augustinus-hexikon, ed. Mayer, col. 1046-1051; idem, "Cognitio," in Augustinus-hexikon, ed. Mayer, col. 1051-1064. 30

itself and knows itself according to its proper nature, for then its self-reflexive activities are perfecdy adequate to its true being.

Third, the triad of the mind is a unity of substance, in which the three distinct terms are mutually related. Augustine argues that the mind's knowledge and love are not in the mind as if in a subject, they do not belong to the mind accidentally in the manner that any quality is said to have an underlying substratum; rather they are in the mind substantialiter?""

Love and knowledge are each their own substance, just as the mind is its own substance, but they are distinguished in their relative mutual relation to each other. Each substance is found mutually in the others as a whole, by virtue of their perfect equality and unity in the mind's self-relation; for perfect self-knowledge and self-love extends through the whole of the mind. "When the mind knows itself as a whole, that is, knows itself perfecdy, its knowledge is through the whole of it; and when it loves itself perfectly, it loves itself as a whole and its love is through the whole of it."35 Having shown how all the wholes are in the other wholes, Augustine concludes that the three are in a marvellous manner "inseparable from one another; and yet each of them is a substance, and at once all are one substance or essence, while the terms themselves express a mutual relationship."36

For the remainder of book IX, Augustine is concerned not so much with the substantial relations of the mind as with its operative relations, particularly the mental process of conceiving knowledge. Accompanying this shift of emphasis to the mind's operations at IX,7,12 is a shift from the mind's self-relations in their state of perfect unity, to the mind's self-relations as mutable, as moving towards that perfect equality and identity.

Augustine also wants to show that this mental activity is productive. Accordingly, the mind begets its own true knowledge (verax notitid), as an engendered offspring. The mind's love

(amor) is also integrally involved in this process. However, love is not begotten, but proceeds from the one inquiring, and is that which achieves the union between what the mind conceives and the mind itself which conceives it. In this sense love functions as an agent or efficient cause in any cognitive discovery; it is active in the very seeking after knowledge. To stress its active involvement in seeking after knowledge, Augustine calls this

33 trin. IX,4,5-7. 34 Ibid., IX,4,5. 35 Ibid., IX,4,7. 36 Ibid, IX,5,8. 31

inquiring principle of love an "appetite of finding {appetitus inveniendi)" since everyone who

seeks wishes to know. Hence Augustine, without analysing or even noting the connection,

adumbrates a slightly different structural model of the mind as an active, self-relational

entity: from within the mind (de memorid)^ its true knowledge {verbumf is brought forth and

defined, and the latter is united to the former by means of a certain principle of the mind's

inquiring love {voluntas)?" Throughout book IX, Augustine analyses the triad mens, notitia sui,

amor sui, first in terms of its substantial unity and perfecdy equal self-relations. Then,

pushing this triadic structure nearly beyond its limit, he considers the mind's operational

efficiency to produce a known word. By the end of book IX, Augustine affirms the triad as

quaedam imago Trinitatis.

As I have shown, Augustine's argument in books VIII and IX involves several

closely-knit strands. In the overarching plan of investigation to which the second half of the

work belongs, a primary strand is to give an account of the Trinitas quae est unus Deus, in

order to understand the Trinitarian unity in the distinction of persons, Father, Son, and Holy

Spirit. The argument has thus been an attempt to discern a suitable means or similitude by

which the Trinity may be believed and especially understood (intelligatui).

This is inextricably connected with another strand of the argument, the exercitatio

mentis. The human soul, moving more interiorly, and elevating its activities to the level of

mind, seeks to discriminate its own nature from both all bodies below it and the immutable,

divine truth above. It also seeks to recognise its own mode of intellectual vision in

distinction from all corporeal senses. Such a discipline of conversion and purification

requires "a progressive negation of images, by which the mind seeks to contain itself,

integrate itself, and dispose itself more and more towards its own centre, reforming itself

into the divine image which is its own true nature."42 Briefly put, this is a spiritual itinerary

for the sake of beholding mens as nothing other than imago Trinitatis.

Bound together with this introspective search for the Trinity, a third strand of the

argument emerges that our love must be of something known. For Augustine, this is an

• "Jfe^.,IX,12,18. ™Ibid., IX,10,15. 39 Ibid., IX,7,12. ^Ibid., IX,12,18. 41 Ibid. 42 Robert Crouse, "St. Augustine's De Trinitate: Philosophical Method," 509. 32

axiomatic point of departure which holds in respect to the Trinity and all created things— including the mind in its self-relation. I have highlighted numerous arguments which

Augustine uses to display its logic, already present in book VIII, and more clearly reasoned in book IX with the triad mens, notitia sui, amor sui. By the intuition of its immediate self- presence, the mind discerns its self-knowledge as that on which knowledge of all else logically depends. But Augustine also argues for the temporal priority of self-love, without which the mind cannot beget or actualise its cognition.

Book X sets out to demonstrate the necessity of these insights more securely. As I shall argue, the method of interior conversion and purification plays an increasingly crucial role in book X with Augustine's concern to demonstrate the mind's self-knowledge with absolute certitude. The argument thus conducts one to reflect upon what the mind's own self-love loves, thus progressing to the true knowledge of itself, that is, to the mind's innermost self-presence. By its self-presence, the mind knows its own intellect, life, and being as inseparably united. Proceeding negatively through successive aporiae, the argument rejects all corporeal models of the mind's self-knowledge in order to prove the mind's nature as a rational, incorporeal substance. In a polemical context—specifically against the sceptical denial of the possibility of knowledge and corporealist conceptions of the mind—

Augustine argues for the necessity of self-knowledge in a strict sense. In contradistinction to this immediate, total, indubitable and essentially permanent self-knowledge, Augustine receives the Delphic precept as a discipline of self-thinking: the mind ought to think what the mind knows it is, it ought to reflect upon its constitutive self-knowledge, and live according to its known nature. This problem of the mind's unity ultimately, for Augustine, concerns the human capacity of knowing and loving the Trinity. To this end, book X concludes with the discovery of another, more evident and more adequate imago Trinitatis in the mind, which represents the most suitable means through which the human may be converted to see, as much as one is granted in this life, the highest and most sovereign

Trinity.

2.2. Approaching a ScepticalProblematic (X,l,1-2,4)

Book X opens with a statement of purpose to make a more precise approach ad ea ipsa consequenter enodatius explicanda. The explanation that must be given will be, literally, by 33

unfolding certain problems, a method of becoming more free from conceptual knots.

Exactly what Augustine now intends to explain follows logically upon the problems worked out in the previous two books, which we have already considered. If De trinitate is a progression towards deeper understanding of the Trinity within the mind, the necessity of self-knowledge must be demonstrated. What remains to be seen concerning this self- knowledge, however, is primarily not the quid but the quomodo. While one should avoid setting up an opposition between the mind's nature and operations, my point is simply that

Augustine's argument in book X follows a definite order: it undertakes first to examine how the mind knows itself, and only in the second place to give more ample, positive articulation of the content of the mind's self-knowledge. We may recall that book IX ended with a recognition that the mind brings forth knowledge of itself, within itself, from itself; when the mind itself knows itself, its self-knowledge is wholly on par and equal and identical to itself, since it is of no other essence than the mind itself is. The mind indeed knows this concerning itself, but the crucial question is: how does it know this? Adding to the difficulty of this question is Augustine's faint suggestion in book IX, that some sort of distinction exists between the mind's implicit and explicit self-knowledge {memoria, verbum), the two terms of which are joined by a principle of the mind's self-love (voluntas). As J. Moingt remarks, these original relations of the mind "ont bien ete deduits du rapport d'egalite. Telle est l'egalite entre Fame et son verbe, que la seule difference entre eux est de l'ordre du produire et du reproduire."43 It seems to me correct to infer from these observations that the substantial unity or identity of the mind and its self-knowledge has thus far yet to be proved. Once again, how does the mind know its own nature and operations to be so?

How is the perfect equality of the mind and its self-knowledge possible, when the mind yet seeks itself as if it were imperfecdy known to itself? It is this aporetic 'knot' of self- knowledge which book X is concerned to explain enodatius. In light of these general remarks, let us now proceed to an analysis of the introductory section of book X.

Chapters 1,1 to 2,4 introduce the problem of self-knowledge in book X by a recapitulation of the arguments in books VIII and IX about how the mind knows what it loves. The overall strategy at this point is limited to considering examples in which the desired objects of knowledge are external to the inquiring subject. Because the basic form

43 J. Moingt, "Note complementake 22," in IM Trinite (BA 16), 602. 34

of the initial arguments repeats much of the material I have already discussed, we can avoid a detailed exposition of each successive point. These may be summarised briefly. Augustine shows that one who eagerly seeks to know something unknown already knows what he loves by several possible means, some of which may overlap in any given example: i) generically, by its likeness with something else already known; ii) on account of a known species impressed upon the mind to which the unknown thing belongs by participation; iii) in the form of eternal reason, or, which amounts to the same, by illumination in the light of truth; and iv) by the universal love of the beauty and usefulness of acquiring knowledge. In what follows, my comments on this section concentrate on describing certain of its features which present concrete connections with Augustine's earlier polemic against scepticism.

Rafher than a systematic account of these first few chapters, I highlight some of the terminology, questions, and themes which indicate, from the outset of book X, an argument which both assumes and surmounts a sceptical problematic.45

Augustine's reference in the very first line of book X to enodatius, I have already suggested, has methodological significance; this will be considered again in greater detail when we come to the formulations of the mind's self-knowledge following the introduction.

Before moving on from this first line, I would simply point out one passage from the

Enchiridion in which Augustine uses the same terminology, notably in a context in which he is recounting his decisive refutation to the Academics:

Nor do I take it upon myself at this time to unravel this most knotty question {guaestio nodisissima. .. enodandd) which perplexed the Academics, those most acute men: whether the wise man ought to approve anything, lest he should fajl into error, if he should approve the false for the true, since all things, as they affirm, are either obscure or uncertain. That is why at the beginning of my conversion I wrote three volumes, in order that there might be no impediments for us, which often block the entrance. And certainly it was necessary to remove die despair of finding truth, which their arguments seemed to intensify.46

44 See my analysis supra, 23-28. 45 Besides one isolated and very general reference to trim. X,l,l in Boyer (op. cit. 25, n.2), the scholarship on De trinitate generally lacks a recognition that even the introductory chapters of book X stand in an intelligible relation to a sceptical problematic. The two most valuable interpretive studies which have exploited the connection between book X and an anti-sceptical polemic do not make any objective remarks in this regard until X,3,5. Cf. Bermon, L« cogito, 80 ff; Brachtendorf, Die Struktur des menschlichen Geistes, 170 ff. 46 ench. 7,20: Nee quaestio nodosissima, quae homines acutissimos A-cademicos torsit, nunc mihi enodanda suscepta est, utrum aliquid debeat sapiens approbare, ne incidat in errorem si pro veris approbaveritfalsa, cum omnia, sicut affirmant, vel occulta sint vel incerta. Unde tria confeci volumina initio conversions meae ne impedimento nobis essent quae tamquam in 35

This text gives some insight into what led Augustine to write the Contra A.cademicos. Here he describes the considerable epistemological difficulty which the overcoming of scepticism must pass through or unravel. He also conveys the weighty importance of surmounting the sceptical challenge if one should hope to arrive at the happy life. It was necessary to get beyond scepticism, Augustine reports, in order to open the door to the pursuit of philosophy. As I will attempt to show, beyond the opening reference in De trinitate X to enodatius, we should expect to find in book X some of the same themes in connection to the refutation of scepticism which are expressed in the passage just quoted.

Book X takes up precisely where book IX leaves off, with a problem of love seeking or inquiring after knowledge: "First, since no one is at all able to love a thing entirely unknown, we must carefully examine of what mode is the love of those who are studying, that is, of those not already knowing, but of those still desiring to know whatsoever doctrine." These lines lead one to consider, especially in light of the immediately preceding sentence's reference to enodatius explkanda, whether Augustine sets up a sceptical aporia by the very terms of the proposed examination. Since such a puzzlement would consist in a conflict of accounts, the logic of Augustine's presentation will need to be elaborated. First we note the upheld assumption (quid) of the general axiom that one cannot love what one does not know, yet with an important qualification (prorsus), which admits that the unknown object is not necessarily unknown in an absolute sense and may in fact be unknown in some degree. Thus, from the point of view of the object, it may be possible for one to love a thing somewhat unknown, but the sufficient ground for this possibility is that one loves something somewhat known. When we examine the model of epistemological inquiry from the standpoint of the subject, there seems to be, if not a point of outright contradiction, at least of insufficient clarity. For the studious are those who are still desiring to know but who are not presendy knowing. Once again, while any strict opposition of knowing/unknowing is diminished, in this case by temporal adjectives (Jam and adhuc), there nevertheless remains an unexplained difficulty: how can love move the studious to pursue an inquiry, unless the studious are already in possession of at least some knowledge as the object

ostio contradicebant: et utiquefuerat removenda inveniendae desperado veritatis quae Ulorum videtur argumentationibus roborari. 47 trin. X,l,l: A.c primum, quia rem prorsus ignotam amare omnino nullus potest, diligenter intuendum est cujusmodi sit amor studentium, id est, nonjam sciendum, sed adhuc scire cupientium quamque doctrinam. 36

of their love? But such necessary conditions for the pursuit of knowledge are denied in the scenario, insofar as the studious are those not already knowing. We have two accounts, therefore, the agreement of which is far from clear: i) those who are studious still desire to know while they are presendy unknowing; but ii) as the familiar axiom requires, love must be of something presendy or already known in some degree. The argument of book X thus begins with a perplexity which, according to Augustine's own terms, must be considered a prima facie denial of the possibility of knowledge.

If this analysis is accurate, one may well ask if it is fair to suppose that book X begins by assuming something akin to a sceptical position. The Greek word skeptikos literally means

'inquirer': the sceptical persuasion derives its name, as Sextus Empiricus reports, from its

"activity of investigating and inquiring,"48 and sceptics themselves are those who are "still investigating."49 It is indeed the guiding question of book X to examine how an inquiry can be motivated in those "still desiring to know." But importantly, Sextus distinguishes genuine scepticism, as practiced by the followers of Pyrrho, from both a Stoic dogmatism, supposing to have discovered the truth, and the Academic schools, which asserted the impossibility of things being apprehended (akatalepsis).5" This evidence speaks against viewing the presentation of Augustine's initial perplexity as corresponding to a more nuanced suspension of judgement (epocbe), either positive or negative, as defined in Sextus'

Pyrrhonnian terms. But it also indicates a possible point of contact with the New Academy, or at least an interpretation of it. For the logical implications which I have drawn out of

Augustine's problem would seem to align with Sextus' description of the Academic position, particularly in respect to the notion of their negative dogmatism. Augustine's own assessment of Academic doctrine, as found in his Contra A.cademicos, can further confirm this.

Even a cursory glance at Augustine's representation of Academic arguments reveals that, like Sextus, he determines that their arguments amount to a denial of the possibility of knowledge, a denial that we can possess the truth. Whether or not Augustine neglects the real dialectical character of the Neo-Academic propositions which he found in Cicero's slcademica, it is abundandy clear, as Carlos Levy judges, that he presents their philosophy

48 Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism, trans. Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 4 (PH 1,1,7). 49 Ibid., 3 (PH 1,1,2-3). 50 Ibid. 37

"comme un systeme dans lequel l'acatalepsie et Yepocheauraient ete transformees en dogmes." In Contra Academicos, by marshalling his own Platonic insights against the arguments of the Academics, Augustine attributes to their school a philosophical teaching which bears a striking resemblance to the impossible situation of an ignorant pursuit of knowledge which we have found implicit at the beginning of De trinitate X. For my purposes, it will suffice to highlight a few testimonies. There are two main principles, according to Augustine, to which the scepticism of the Academy can and must be reduced: they propound that "nothing can be perceived," and "one must not assent to anything."52

Augustine also sums it up with his view that "the Academics deny that anything is able to be known."53 Similarly, as we saw from Augustine's precis in the Enchiridion, "all things, as they affirm, are either obscure or uncertain." If, on the basis of these passages, we may observe a parallel problematic in Augustine's earliest refutation of scepticism and his mature philosophical reflection on the nature of the human mind, this is not to suggest an argument for a common source. Of the studies which have paid most attention to Augustine's debt to

Cicero's Academica, not even Testard or Hagendahl find any direct literary connection between De trinitate X and sceptical concerns in Cicero. 4 This is not surprising given the strict requirements of philological research; my argument here, however, makes a more modest claim, within the frame of reference limited to Augustine's own thought. By inferring the logical implications from the opening question of De trinitate X, my analysis of

Augustine is similar to his own reductive analysis of the Academic arguments in Contra

Academicos. As a result, we are able to see that Augustine's mature argument assumes a position which, thirty years prior, he had deemed to be a critical assumption of the New

Academy. In other words, Augustine begins book X with an implicit, but nevertheless determinative, sceptical assumption.

Augustine's use of the terms studere and studium at the beginning of book X may also suggest sceptical and philosophical overtones when considered in relation to his refutation of the Academics. Contra Academicos maintains from the outset the etymological definition of

51 Levy, Cicero Academicus, 640. 52 Acad. 111,10,22. 53 Ibid., 111,9,18. 54 No text of De trinitate X makes an appearance in Testard, Saint Augustin et Ciceron, and Hagendahl, Augustine and the Catin Classics, finds only a paraphrase at X,7,9 of a doxographical conspectus of opinions on the nature of the soul from Cicero's Tusc. 1,18-22. 38

philosophy as amor or studium sapientiae. The decisive question in this connection is whether the mere search for truth is sufficient for the happy life. Cicero is quoted as representing the sceptical position, "that a man is happy if he investigates the truth, even though he should not be able to find it." 6 Such a view, the argument determines, would entail that human perfection consists in seeking and never finding, and Augustine's criticism of the Academics intends to show that this negative relation to the truth cannot reasonably be sustained on either moral or epistemological grounds. Book III depicts a scene in which Augustine attempts to persuade Alypius, representing the Academic position, of the incoherence of his views, particularly through differentiating between the wise man, and the philosopher: "I

[Augustine] replied, 'I wish you would tell me briefly what difference there is in your estimation between a wise man and a philosopher.' 'I judge,' he said, 'that the wise man differs in no way from the studious man (sapientem ab studioso in nulla re differre), except that in the wise man there is a certain possession of those things, while there is in the studious man only an eager longing for them.'" What is interesting in this exchange is how the sceptical

Alypius equates the philosopher (philosophus) to the studious man {studiosus), who is defined in relation to the wise man (sapiens). Might we hear in book X an echo of this sceptical studiosus, who can only long and strive for wisdom but never be certain to attain the habitus of it? An affirmative answer must remain tentative, and its confirmation would require more evidence than I can give here. Nonetheless, it is at least plausible that Augustine's reference to amor studentium in the introduction of book X, along with many other like uses of term,58 signals a connection to this anti-sceptical context. The passage from Contra Academicos is at least a reminder that Augustine himself is convinced of a strong connection between philosophy and scepticism. Studium, as Augustine the rhetorician was surely well aware, is a kind of love or desire, an eagerness, study, intentionality. Insofar as both scepticism and

5? Ibid., 11,3,7; 111,9,20; cf. 1,3,7-9. See Catapano, "Inphilosophiaegregium confugere" 63. 56 Acad. 1,3,7: Placuit enim Ciceroni nostro beatum esse, qui veritatem investigat, etiamsi ad eius inventionem non valeat pervenire. 57 Ibid, 111,3,5. 58 It is a pervasive motif in the introduction. Cf. trin. X,l,l: nullo ad earn discendam studio flagraremus; omni studio circa ilium finem movetur, sic accenduntur studia discentium; 1,2: atque inflamat studia discentium; eis doctrinis quipped studetur vehementius; quisque maxime studet; in studio discendi; eaque accendit studio quaerentem quidem quod ignorat; studiose quaeritur verbum illud ignotum; 1,3: omnis amor studentis animi; 2,4: quilibet igitur. studiosus, quilibet curiosus non amat incognita, etiam cum ardentissimo appetitu instat scire quod nescit. 39

philosophy share this same principle which is necessary for the search for knowledge, truth, or wisdom, their fates are closely bound together.

Following closely upon the previous point, one of the grave problems at which

Augustine's refutation of scepticism takes aim is its impediment to the motivation of seeking after truth or taking up philosophy—a matter especially linked with hope and despair. We have already glimpsed this theme from the passage in Enchiridion (ne impedimento nobis essent. .

.fuerat removenda inveniendae desperatio veriMis).59 It is an important connection also in the

Contra Academicos, as, for example, when Augustine charges the Academics of incoherentiy affirming the truth of 'Zeno's definition': "Was it this that moved you, my dear Platonist, to use every endeavour to draw those who are studious away from the hope of learning [ab spe discendi studiosos retraheres) so that, aided as they were by a shameful lethargy of mind, they might give up the whole business of philosophy?"60 De trinitate X,l,2 contains one very brief instance connecting the hope/despair pairing to the conditions of inquiry. The broader context of the reference concerns, once again, the problem of studying, that is, how one can desire to know what is unknown. In this particular example, Augustine considers how the soul can seek after a certain faculty of learning which it has not yet mastered but can now discern, know, and love through the beautiful dignity and utility of learning. Based on the assumption of the mind's inherent rationality, the main doctrine being advanced is that of illumination: the mind's interior intuition and love of the. forma or species in the reasons of things, in the light of truth. This we have already seen reiterated from book VIII onwards.

Here, however, we wish to attend to those terms which signal a link with Augustine's earlier critique of scepticism. The text reads:

The worth of such knowledge is already discerned in his thought, and is loved {amaturque) by him as something known; which [worth] is so seen, and enkindles the zeal of learners (inflamat studia discentium), that on account of it they are moved . . . the closer he comes to this faculty by hope {spe), the more ardendy he is inflamed with love {amore). For his study is indeed more intensely applied {studetur vehementius) to those sciences which are not despaired of {desperantur) being able to be grasped. For anyone who is not buoyed up by the hope of acquiring something (rei adipiscendae spem quisque non gerii) either loves it tepidly or does not love it at all.61

w ench. 7,20. a]Acad. 111,9,18. 61 trin. X,l,2: Cujus notitiae decus cogitatione jam cernitur, amaturque res nota; quae ita conspicitur, atque inflamat studia discentium, ut circa earn moveantur, eique inhient in omni opera quam impendunt consequendae tali facultati, ut etiam usu amplectantur quod ratione praenoscunt: atque ita quisque, cuifacultati spe propinquat, eiferventius amore inardescit. Eis 40

From this brief discussion it is clear, first, that Augustine regards hope as functioning propaedeutically in relation to love, as both motivating and orienting the mind's desire to know. There is a close relationship in the exercise, intensity, and efficacy of hope and love.

This much is consistent with Augustine's teaching elsewhere in De trinitate on the interaction of the so-called theological virtues.' However, what first distinguishes this passage from

Augustine's other discussions are the pointed references to study. Study, we have seen, accompanies any inquiry as that which impels the search, whether sceptical or Platonic.

Secondly, the two references to a deficient exercise of hope cannot go unnoticed, for despair, or lack of hope, bears direcdy upon the possibility of inquiring into knowledge— functioning as an impediment to it. This coincidence of themes at De trinitate X,l,2, which we have identified in other contexts relate prominendy to Augustine's polemic against scepticism, adds to an accruing weight of evidence that Augustine is here deliberately recalling his refutation of scepticism.

Insofar as De trinitate^. and Contra Academicos hold a common beginning in a sceptical epistemology, they also share the same task of getting beyond it. From this standpoint, what Augustine must accomplish to refute the sceptical 'position' is to demonstrate certissima ratione6' that this denial of the possibility of certain knowledge is itself logically impossible. The final passage I shall consider in this section moves beyond certain terms and themes connected to Augustine's refutation of scepticism, and brings into focus his anti-sceptical method of argument. Augustine gives special attention to his method in De trinitate X. This method, I maintain, accords with the basic method or structure of argumentation which he formerly used in refutation of Academic scepticism in Contra

Academicos. In this regard, the initial question of X, 1,1 gives us a valuable indication that

Augustine is attuned to matters of methodology from the beginning: intuendum est cujusmodi sit amor studentium. I interpret cujusmodi:in distinction from both McKenna's "of what sort" and

Hill's "what sort of," as well as from Agaesse's "de quelle nature."64 The sense of interrogating the 'mode' or 'method' better captures Augustine's focus on how knowledge or

doctrinis quippe studetur vehementius, quae capi posse non desperantur. Nam cujus rei adipiscendae spem quisque non gerit, aut tepide amat, aut otnnino non amat, quamvis quam pukhra sit videat. 62 See, e.g., ibid., VIII,4,6; XIV,17,23-18,24. Cf. Robert Dodaro, "Political and Theological Virtues in Augustine, De Trinitate" Medioevo: Kivista distoria deltafilosofiamedievak 31 (2006): 29-48, at 46-47. 63 retr. 1,1,14, referring to his first refutation Cicero in Acad. 64 McKenna, trans., The Trinity, 291; Hill, trans., The Trinity, 286; Agaesse, trans., Ta Trinite (BA 16), 115. 41

self-knowledge is possible. At X,l,3, Augustine employs a method of negative, dialectical argument, which he will in fact continue to use in the next section, X,3,5 to 4,6. Here, his purpose is to show i) the impossibility of loving the unknown, and ii) the impossibility of not knowing what one loves, even for one who denies that he knows. To illustrate the basic pattern of the argument, it is convenient to highlight another instance of its use, notably, in

Augustine's earliest refutation of Academic scepticism.

We find the same, negative mode of argument, in Contra Academicos 111,3,5, where

Augustine develops his formal critique of sceptical teachings. Representing the position of the Academics, Alypius denies that the wise man possesses wisdom, and prefers instead to claim that he merely supposes or believes it probable that he knows wisdom. Alypius thereby avoids denying that the sage is wise, but attempts to maintain his sceptical stance by denying that the sage possesses knowledge of wisdom. Augustine concedes these terms, and shows that if a sceptic claims to be wise, he cannot not know his own wisdom. For to think or believe that the wise man knows wisdom cannot amount to a belief that he knows nothing—unless wisdom is nothing. Hence, Augustine shows that the sceptical claim is absurd and therefore untenable. Through analysing the logic of the sceptical position, the argument manifests its internal inconsistency in order to bring about an explicit recognition of the state of aporia. Augustine continues in this negative refutation in the following chapters of Contra Academicos, successively disposing of incoherent sceptical claims.

De trinitate X,l,3 begins with the conclusion of the previous chapter, and from this we can see how Augustine has been able to move beyond the initial aporia of X, 1,1. "Every love of a studious mind," Augustine writes, "is not the love of that thing which it does not know (nescit), but of that which it does know (sat), on account of which (propter quam) it wishes to know what it does not know (vult scire quod nescit)."65 The previous argument has particularly appealed to the mind's immediate perception of the known form of the unknown thing in the light of truth; accordingly, the seeming impossibility of the initial formulation—that is, the contradiction between the 'not presently knowing' inquirers and the necessity of knowing in some degree what is loved—is thus dissolved. But at this point,

Augustine introduces a distinction between the studious and the curious person, which again serves to render problematic the possibility of inquiring into knowledge. For it seems that

65 tnn. X,l,3. 42

one who is curious does not conform to the pattern of knowing the unknown on account of the known: for he is rapacious by the love alone of knowing the unknown thing {incognita), . which is precisely a wish to know non propter causam aliam notam.'' Augustine's task is therefore to get beyond this problematic way of thinking. He does so through examining the phenomenon of curious inquiry, in such a way that manifests the self-reflexive character of knowing. He does so by withdrawing the conception of an external opposition of known/unknown, and by simultaneously turning to analyse the more intrinsic process of loving and knowing within the mind. Taking up the aporetic formulation, Augustine reasons:

when you say, 'He loves to know the unknown,' it is not the same as saying, 'He loves the unknown.' The first can happen, namely, that one loves to know the unknown, but it is impossible to love the unknown. ... he who loves the unknown does not love the unknown but the knowing of it. For unless he knows what it is to know, no one would be able to say with confidence, either that he does know, or that he does not know. For not only he who says and truly says, 'I know,' has to know what it is to know, but also he who says, 'I do not know,' and says it confidendy and truly, certainly knows what it is to know.'

Here, Augustine's question about the mode of loving reverts to the logically prior question about the mode of knowing. Just as his argument against the sceptical position of Alypius in

Contra Academicos with respect to the knowledge of wisdom, so here Augustine argues with respect to the knowledge of knowledge. It is impossible not to know absolutely when one claims not to know, for one does not know nothing when one does not know, but in fact must have knowledge of what it is to know. Augustine shows that the position of denying the possibility of knowledge is incoherent. He finds the denial logically untenable by demonstrating that the mind already possesses an implicit or habitual knowledge, even in an instance of denying such knowledge. Augustine's argument has thus found a reason to assert the possibility of knowledge in general, for at least one claim of knowledge has been determined—the knowledge of what it is to know—which the sceptic cannot undermine.

6(1 Ibid. 67 Ibid.: sed intelkgendum est, non hoc idem did, cum dicitur. "Jimat scire incognita," ac si diceretur: "Amat incognita." Jllud enim fieri potest, ut amet quisque scire incognita; ut autem amet incognita, non potest. Non enimfrustra ibi est positum "scire," quoniam qui scire amat incognita, non ipsa incognita, sed ipsum scire amat. Quod nisi haberet cognitum, neque scire se quidquam posset fidenter dicere, neque nescire. Non solum enim qui dicit: "Scio," et verum dicit, necesse est ut quid sit scire sciat; sed etiam qui dicit: 'Nescio," idque fidenter et verum dicit, et scit verum se dicere, scit utique quid sit scire; quia et discernit ab sciente nescientem, cum veraciter se intuens dicit: 'Nescio." Et cum id se scit verum dicere, unde sciret, si quid sit scire nesciret? 43

With this final example, Augustine situates his approach to the question of self- knowledge firmly within a sceptical problematic. Book X begins with a question framed in sceptical terms, and its argument prepares the way for considering the explicitly self-reflexive question beginning at X,3,5 according to another sceptical aporia.

2.3. Negative Demonstration of Immediate and Total Self-Knowledge (X,3,5-4,6)

The progress to an understanding of how we know has thus far compelled a rationally articulated introspection into the inquiring mind. Augustine has adduced various modes of cognition to advance beyond the terms of an initial aporia at X,l,l, so that far from positing the sceptical impossibility of knowledge, now, when the mind desires to know the unknown, the impossibility of not knowing appears. At chapter 3,5, a new question appears:

What therefore does the mind love, when it seeks ardendy to know itself, while it is yet unknown to itself? For behold: the mind seeks to know itself, and is inflamed by this zeal. Therefore, it loves. But what does it love? If itself, by what mode, since it does not yet know itself, nor is anyone able to love what it does not know?68 Several points should be clarified in relation to this question. In the first place, we note that the argument takes a decisively self-reflexive turn. The consideration of the love and knowledge of the mind in its self-relations obviously represents a deepened analysis of the first imago Trinitatis defined in book IX, mens, notitia sui, amor sui. As a development of the first four chapters of book X, the broader question of the mind's desire to know something ialiquid) which it itself is not has shifted to a more precise question. This concerns the mind in an act of loving itself when it seeks itself in order to know itself (se ipsam, semetipsam).

Accordingly, while continuing to examine how the mind can search after knowledge,

Augustine will now strip the epistemological question of extraneous considerations by reducing the mind's object of inquiry to an identity with itself. The appropriateness of this shift to self-reflection is especially apparent, if we observe that the argument to this point has not discerned how a known object can be held in a necessary relation to the mind as an already knowing, and not merely seeking to know, subject. By way of several examples, as we saw, the introductory argument of book X manifested certain causes of the inquiring mind's will to know something unknown. Augustine judges himself to have persuasively

68 I here follow the text established by Mountain, trin. X,3,5: Quid ergo amat mens cum ardenter se ipsam quaerit ut noverit dum incognita sibi est? Ecce enim mens semetipsam quaerit ut noverit et inflammatur hoc studio. Amat igitur. Sed quid amat? Si se ipsam, quomodo cum se nondum noverit nee quisquam possit amare quod nescit? 44

made the case that nothing at all is loved if it is unknown.' However, even in the final example offered at X,l,3, there is a persistent discrepancy between the object of inquiry, still external to the mind seeking to know 'the unknown', and the presupposed knowledge—in this case, the knowledge of knowledge itself—already held within the mind as a condition of its inquiry. What the argument requires is to demonstrate the necessary conditions, intrinsic to the knower, for the possibility of knowledge as such. Such an account must go beyond showing that some knowledge accompanies a claim of knowledge or ignorance. To see the rational or intellectual basis of knowledge is to see the act of human knowing which embraces the knowing subject itself in its very essence. Hence the turn to consider how the mind knows its primary object of knowledge, namely the mind itself.

Second, the initial question signals a concern with the mind's self-knowledge that explicitly distinguishes between what the mind is and the method of its operations. This is evident in the shift from the question concerning what (quid) the mind loves when it seeks to know itself, to the question concerning the mode by which (quomodo) the mind can know itself. For unless the question of how the mind knows itself can first be settled, the question of what the mind is as imago TriniMis cannot be answered with confidence. Augustine here demands that the mind have certitude of itself as a true image, and not a figment imagined from sensible and corporeal things. In this regard, the philosophical method of conversion also represents a more rigourous purification of the mind, for the more interior turn to the self is simultaneously a suppression of all external objects of cognition.

Third, it is crucial to see that Augustine's leading question again puts forth a sceptical aporia, and for good reason. The point of departure for Augustine's attention to the mind's method of self-knowledge is the assumption of a sceptical position regarding epistemology.

Augustine repeats the axiom, by now familiar: what the mind loves, it must already in some sense know (nee quisquam possit amare quod nescit). But here we see that the mind seeks to know itself while it is unknown to itself, since it does not yet know itself (dum incognita sibi est

. . . cum se nondum noverii). By this juxtaposition, Augustine heightens our awareness of the aporia. Here once again the description of the mind as seeking to know itself therefore seems to deny, or at least obscure, the basic requirement for any seeking after knowledge. I m Ibid., X,2,4: neque omnino quidquam ametur incognitum, arbitror mepersuasisse verum diligenter intuentibus. 70 Ibid., X,l ,3: Non solum enim qui dicit, Scio et verum dicit, necesse est ut quid sit scire sciat: sed etiam qui dicit, Nescio, idque fidenter et verum dicit, et scit verum se dicere scit utique quid sit scire. 45

have already made reference to the philological research which has established indirect links of Augustine's problematic, beginning at De trinitate X,3,5, to the sceptical contestation of the possibility of self-knowledge through the intermediation of Plotinus and Porphyry.71

Prompted by this sceptical consideration, the question we must ask is: how does the argument move beyond it, how does it pass through the aporia? Given a similar motivation of their philosophical concerns, Plotinus' analysis of the self-intellection of Nous in response to Sextus' scepticism can help to illuminate how Augustine himself moves beyond the denial of the self-knowledge of mens. Accordingly, D. O'Meara's comment on Plotinus is a plausible description of what Augustine himself undertakes beginning at X,3,5:

Or, pour sauver la connaissance et la verite, il faut supprimer ce sur quoi la critique sceptique a prise: l'exteriorite et la mediation separant le sujet de l'objet de la connaissance. Pour que la connaissance vraie soit possible dans l'intellect transcendant [sc. Nous/mens] il faut que sujet et objet de connaissance y soient unifies, sans exteriorite ni mediation les separant. Ces exigences sont satisfaites par la these selon laquelle l'intellect transcendant est uni a ses objets, les Idees, dans une sorte de transparence, une presence mutuelle totale.

Getting beyond the aporia, in this view, requires the negation of a corporealist epistemology in which the object of knowledge remains external to the subject and mediated by the senses of the body. From this sceptical beginning in the impossibility of self-knowledge,

Augustine's argument will proceed, by a reductio ad absurdum, to the conclusion at X,4,6 that the mind does not have any need to seek to know itself, for it in fact already knows itself, and knows itself in its entirety. Similar to the reversal in the introductory section, this negative, dialectical phase of Augustine's argument will move against the sceptical position to demonstrate the impossibility of the mind not knowing itself.

A. The Impossibility of Denying Self-Knowledge (X,4,6)

Augustine proposes four explanatory models of how the mind might seek self- knowledge through loving something other than itself. The explanations in fact each present an aporetic hypothesis, and the argument signals their introduction by the preposition, "an." Augustine rejects each in turn, as the argument manifests the absurdity of contriving any kind of mediation between the mind and its self-knowledge. Augustine first

71 See supra, 10-20. 72 O'Meara, "Scepticisme et ineffabilite chez Plotin," 96. 46

conjectures whether the mind knows and loves its own beautiful form {speciem suani), which it imagines itself to be. If it does fashion a similitude of itself {sui similetti), it therefore loves itself when it loves this image (jigmentuni), and it knows itself by that generic idea {genere ipso sibi nota est). This account supposes that the mind represents itself to itself from a prior knowledge of entities external to itself, as if from things absent, namely, from other minds it knows. Moreover, such an indirect mode of achieving self-knowledge would depend on a generic knowledge of the mind's own self as a likeness to the other minds it knows. But the problem arises concerning how the mind knows what it knows: "Why, then, when the mind knows other minds, does it not know itself, since nothing is able to be more present to it than itself? {cum se ipsa nihil sibipossit esse praesentius?)" ~ The incoherence of this first hypothesis clearly appears from the implications of the premise which the argument takes to be self-evident. For if the mind seeks to know itself, then it seems absurd that a knowledge of other things, absent or more remote from itself, should be wedged between its immediate self-presence and its knowledge of its immediate self-presence. The immediate self-presence of the mind's being also holds for the mind's knowing: nothing can be known as more present to the mind than its knowledge of itself. Thus is it absurd not only that the mind should have a knowledge of other minds before knowing itself, but also that it should somehow have a prior knowledge of its own generic likeness to other minds.

Augustine further refines his criticism of a generic self-knowledge by revealing the absurdity of any analogy with corporeal sight. For in the case of the eyes of the body, other eyes are more known than they are to themselves, for they cannot see themselves except in a mirror. But such an appeal to the corporeal senses and the images of corporeal things must

"in no way be thought applicable to contemplating incorporeal things {nee ullo modo putandum est etiam rebus incorporis contemplandis tale aliquid adbiberi)."14 Once again, the argument firmly rejects a conception of the mind arriving at self-knowledge by any extrinsic method, for this would entail: i) that it would never discover itself—literally, never be about to go into itself

{nunquam inventurd)—and hence would simply cease to seek itself; ii) that the possibility of its self-knowledge would not reside within that which is more present to it, but rather derive

73 trin. X,3,5. Cf. Sorabji, "Porphyry on Self-Awareness," 61-62, argues, following Courcelle, that the provenance of Augustine's terminology of self-presence here is especially indebted to Porphyry {Sent. 40). 74 trin. X,3,5. 47

from that which is less present; and iii) that its knowledge of incorporeal reality would have no firmer basis than corporeal sight and the bodily senses generally.

These insights concerning the mind's cognitive operations also, albeit still implicitiy, carry consequences for the mind's nature. For, as Ludwig Holscher points out, "the fact of the mind not only being ontologically identical with itself, as any other being, but also being conscious of its self-identity in this uniquely intimate manner, shows that it cannot be a body." Augustine was certainly familiar with the Stoic notion of the soul as a corporeal entity, as well as its connection to sceptical doubt;76 this may be in the background of his argument at this point, perhaps in anticipation of his evident imitation, and refutation, of

Cicero's doxography on the essence of the soul at X,7,9.77 Be that as it may, by an introspective turn to the mind's unique and exclusive self-presence, the argument shows that such non-empirical self-knowledge "presupposes a being that, compared to lifeless matter and even to man's animated body, possesses a radically new kind of life: consciousness."

What this consciousness means and entails will occupy Augustine for the remainder of book

Here we may note that Augustine's argument shares a certain affinity with scepticism, as a critique of the possibility of knowledge, insofar as its critique is the negative corollary of a Platonic intuition of intelligible reality. For if the possibility of self-knowledge were premised upon a corporeal view of reality or its corresponding empirical epistemology, on this point both the sceptic and the convinced Platonist would be compelled to agree: self-knowledge, or any certain knowledge for that matter, is impossible on such terms. The argument in De trinitate X clearly follows the pattern established in the Contra Academicos, whereby the sceptical denial of knowledge, as Wills observes, witnesses negatively to what the Platonists show positively; for as a Platonist, Augustine thought it possible to know both God and the self through a consideration of what was directly available to the mind in its own reflexive activity. For him, the scepticism of the Academy, far from abolishing the quest for truth, actually pointed to the true way of finding it by purging us of a dogmatic reliance on the senses. The

75 Ludwig Holscher, The Reality of the Mind: Augustine's Philosophical Arguments for the Human Soul as a Spiritual Substance (London: Routledge, 1986), 133. 76 Cf. Cicero, Acad. 1,39. 77 Cf. Cicero, Tusc. 1,18-22. See Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics, 139-40. 78 Holscher, The Reality of the Mind, 133. 48

negative result of the Sceptics displayed the nullity of sense experience conceived, in • Stoic fashion, as in itself primary.79 Thus it is not by a dismissal of scepticism, but rather by passing through the sceptical critique of an epistemology reliant on the senses and bodily images—that is, by passing through the aporia—that the mind can turn to itself, to discover therein its own immediate self-presence. Augustine's via negativa operates by systematically withdrawing corporeal images of the mind and its operations from the argument, so as to establish the basis of knowledge within the mind apart from all bodily senses; by dialectical argument, the absurdity of the sceptical claim is made more manifest the more the mind turns to its interior light and becomes freer from representations of material things. The point is well put by Augustine himself in Contra Academicos:

Certainly, whatever is disputed against sense perception {contra sensus) is not valid against all philosophers. For there are those who maintain that all things which the soul (animus) receives by way of bodily sense are able to generate opinion, but they deny it to be knowledge (scientiam), which they nevertheless insist is contained in the intelligence and, far removed from the senses, abides in the mind (remotamque a sensibus in mente vivere). This captures the logic and spiritual itinerary of Augustine's more mature argument which we have been following at X,3,5, in particular its common cause with scepticism as against a corporealist epistemology, and its movement beyond sceptical doubt towards the intellectual life constitutive of the mind itself. With this, we move beyond the first aporia, having recognised the impossibility of a generic self-knowledge.

The postulation and refutation of the next several aporiae share a concern to demonstrate how the mind can have no true knowledge which is not already the knowledge of itself. Each hypothesis represents a concentration of the mind into its own inward self- presence—in the reason of eternal truth, through a certain hidden memory, by reflecting upon what knowing itself is—yet each falls short of recognising where knowledge truly resides, as already present to the mind itself and its self-knowledge. Augustine thus postulates the second hypothesis: he wonders whether the mind loves, if not itself, perhaps how beautiful it is to know itself (An in ratione vertitatis aeternae videt quam speciosum sit nosse

79 Wills, "Ancient Scepticism and the Contra Academicos," § 29. 8(1 Acad. 111,11,26: Quidquid enim contra sensus ab eis disputatur, non contra omnesphilosophos valet. Sunt enim qui ista omnia, quae corporis sensu accipit animus, opinionem posse gignere confitentur, scientiam vera negant. Quam tamen volunt intellegentia contineri, remotamque a sensibus in mente vivere. 49

semetipsam, et hoc amat quod Met, studetque in sefieri?). But then, it is quite strange (quidem permirabik est) that it should not yet know itself but already know the beauty of self- knowledge. Augustine conjectures the third aporetic hypothesis: perhaps, he asks rhetorically (an), the mind has a memory of its own excellent end or beatitude, and seeks itself as unknown on account of that known end? But the argument again reaches a perplexity, for why is it able to have a memory of its own beatitude, but not a memory of itself? The fourth hypothesis: perhaps (an) the mind knows knowing itself as its own, by which it wishes to comprehend all other things, including itself. This latter conception highlights the perplexity of the begging question underlying all the hypotheses, to which none of them can give a reasoned account, and by which the absurdity of each is manifest:

"where does the mind know its own knowing, if it does not know itself?"82 To manifest the reason of these hypotheses is to see their perplexities in a proper light, which is possible only by a more radical conversion inward to the mind. This understanding of the sceptical problematic in turn releases our thinking from its chief error: to suppose that the mind which seeks to know itself is able to seek this by any means other than those available to itself as an incorporeal subject, or on the basis of any cognition other than the knowledge of itself as a knowing object. In other words, since the mind knows whatever it knows only within and through itself, that is, by means of its own intrinsic knowing activity, it follows that the mind cannot be divided against itself in its own act of self-knowledge, as if knower and known were discrete entities. This point first appears inchoately at X,3,5 by the use of scire in both the active indicative and accusative participle forms: "By what manner therefore does it know itself knowing something, which ignores itself? (Quo pacto igitur se aliquid scientem scit, quae se ipsam nescit?)." ' Moving the argument beyond this incoherent division of knowing itself as knowing something but not knowing its very self, Augustine infers the necessity that the mind knows itself (Scit igitur se ipsam). If we may fill out Augustine's elliptical style here, his meaning is that the mind knows itself knowing something.

Augustine does not at this point make an explicit argument for the unity of the mind with itself, nor for the identity of its being and its knowing. But on a grammatical level, the

argument implies very particular claims about the mode of self-knowing. First, the

81 trin. X,3,5. «2 Ibid. "3 Ibid. 50

distinction of the mind as the agent of its knowing activity and as its own object of knowledge is clearly held within the unity of mind itself. Second, and conversely, the mind's self-knowing activity comprehends the mind itself in its self-identity as the knowing subject and the knowing object. It is also clear, third, that this mode of knowing does not only pertain to the mind's knowledge of itself, but comprehends the possibility of all knowledge: if knowing something involves knowing the mind's knowing something, any act of knowing presupposes the mind's knowledge of itself. Self-knowledge is thus the prior condition in which all knowing is encompassed; or, to state this another way, whatever the mind can know depends primarily on the mind's knowledge of itself. Bermon puts it astutely: "La connaissance de la connaissance de soi se fonde sur la connaissance de soi."84

By the end of the chapter, rather than displaying the mind's knowledge of itself as already knowing, the argument rejoins the concern with the mind's ongoing quest to know itself. Self-knowledge is affirmed, now conceived as the mind's knowledge of itself seeking and not knowing, while it seeks itself in order to know itself (Novit enim se quaerentem atque nescientem, dum se quaerit ut noverit)^ With this the argument achieves a certain recognition of the priority of self-knowledge. We are now able to see the reversal of the initial paradox.

For the mind's seeking itself does not entail that it seeks itself in simple ignorance, as the terms of aporia previously assumed; ' rather, it is by the very fact of seeking itself that the mind knows itself, inasmuch as it knows itself as seeking and not knowing. What is more, by the fact of its seeking to know, "the mind-is convinced that it itself is more known to itself than unknown [magis se sibi notam quam ignotam esse convincitur)^1 But even here, despite affirming a certain mode of self-knowledge, the argument does not yet follow through on the substantial implications which have to this point been demonstrated negatively. As a result, something of a perplexity still determines the terms of the argument: for a division of the mind's being into two parts, one known and another unknown, regardless of the greater proportion of the former to the latter, nevertheless remains. The next chapter, accordingly, takes up this very aporia of whether the mind knows itself ex parte.

84 Bermon, Le cogito, 87. 85 trin. X,3,5. 86 See supra, 44-45. 87 trin. X,3,5. 51

B. The Impossibility of Partial S elf-Knowledge (X,4,6)

Augustine's argument in X,4,6 is dedicated to another aporetic hypothesis, the whole-part dilemma of self-knowledge. The terms of this hypothesis Augustine likely inherited from the texts of Plotinus and Porphyry—the most pertinent being Ennead

V,3,5,l-15 and Sentence 44—which in turn are indebted to the origins of this sceptical problem in Sextus Empiricus.88 Augustine begins with a question formulated in accordance with the sceptical aporia, and asks if we should say "that from a part the mind knows itself, and from another part it does not know itself?"89 Augustine's immediate reply to this hypothesis, parallel with Plotinus' response that such a division is atopos, is to declare that it is absurdum to say that "the mind does not know as a whole what it knows (non earn totam scire quod scit)" Overall, the problematic conception Augustine seeks to reject is that the mind in its self-knowledge is divisible into parts, as if it could partially know itself and partially not know itself. Augustine deploys basically two different arguments in order to show that self- knowledge ex parte is logically incoherent and thus to be rejected, along with the materialist presupposition on which it is based. I shall examine these in turn.

The first proceeds by assuming the ex parte hypothesis from the point of view of the object known. Augustine's initial counter-argument is as follows, here quoted in full due to the grammatical order of reasoning and the difficulty of rendering its sense into English: What therefore shall we say? That from a part the mind knows itself, and from another part it does not know itself? But it is absurd to say that the mind does not know as a whole what it knows. I do not say, it knows totally; but as a whole it knows. When therefore it knows something of itself, which it is not able except as a whole to do, it knows itself as a whole. Or it knows itself knowing something, nor is it able except as a whole to know anything. Therefore it knows itself as a whole. Considered from the perspective of the object of knowledge, the ex parte hypothesis is assumed when Augustine says that the mind does not know totally (totum) but rather knows

88 On Plotinus in connection to the whole-part dilemma in Sextus, see Wilfried Kiihn, "Comment il ne faut pas expliquer la connaissance de soi-meme (Enneade V,3[49],5.1-17)," in ha connaissance de sot, ed. Dixaut, 229-66. On Porphyry in this connection, see esp. Jean Pepin, "Notes sur la Sentence 44," in Sentences, ed. Brisson, vol. 2, 756-86. For a comparison of Plotinus and Porphyry, see Jean Pepin, "Porphyre et Plotin: Sur le tout et les parties dans la connaissance de l'lntellect par lui-meme," in Ea connaissance de soi, ed. Dixaut, 267-77. 89 trin. X,4,6. y,) Enn. V,3,5,7. 91 trin. X,4,6: Quid ergo dicemus? An quod ex parte se novit, ex parte non novit? Sed absurdum est dicere, non earn totam scire quod sett. Non dico, Totum scit; sed quod scit, tota sett. Cum itaque aliquid de se sett, quod nisi tota non potest, totam se scit. Scit autem se aliquid scientem, nee potest quidquam scire nisi tota. Scit se igitur totam. 52

something of itself—or, to take the partitive sense of aliquid de se more literally, it knows some part of itself.92 But at once the difficulty in applying this hypothesis to the mind must be dispelled; for, as Pepin puts it well, "a la difference des corps, les realites spirituelles ne sont pas moindres dans la partie que dans le tout, en d'autres termes que le tout est dans la partie: ce qui est vrai de la partie Test done du tout." Accordingly, if any part of the mind contains the whole, part and whole cannot be divided against one another; and if the whole cannot be divided against itself, the argument can proceed on the basis of the identity in being of knower and known. Insofar as the mind knows what it knows as a subjective whole (Ma), by virtue of the unity of knowing subject and object known in a self-reflexive activity, it therefore knows itself as an objective whole (totam). This same basic argument that the mind as a whole knows itself as a whole (sat total totam) is rehearsed in terms of the mind's knowledge that it lives (to(a vivit. . . Totam se igitur novit), and that it is (tota mens est, totam se novit).

Augustine's second argument presses the conclusion of the first into yet another paradoxical position: if the mind already knows itself completely and without remainder, then it would seem there is nothing left for it to seek. Once again, Augustine takes up the hypothesis of self-knowledge ex parte, further clarifying why such a conception must be abandoned, but now tests it from the point of view of the mind's seeking itself. In brief, the mind seeking itself cannot be conceived as if a part already discovered were to seek another part which is not yet discovered, for that part seeking does not seek itself but another.

Conversely, nor is it adequately conceived as if a part which is not yet found were to seek itself, for what is sought is precisely that which is not yet found by that part already found.

However configured, the ex parte hypothesis of self-knowledge posits a division between knower and known which cannot be overcome, so that the mind could not ever know itself.

What then remains is the mind's total self-presence, its ontological wholeness and unity with itself, and this has profound consequences for conceiving the possibility of self- knowledge. It is obvious that the logic of a search implies some lack, and the mind "seeks for what is wanting." However, as the argument demonstrates, to think otherwise than that

92 For this partitive interpretation, I am following Pepin, "Le tout et les parties dans la connaissance de la /WW par elle-meme," 110, n.14, 117. 93 Ibid., 122. Here, Augustine is at odds with the Stoic notion of the soul as a corporeal entity, to which the Academic sceptics also, beginning with Arcesilaus, could not assent; cf. Cicero, Acad. 1.39 ff. 53

the mind "is present to itself as a whole," that "there is nothing further to be sought," and that "nothing is wanting to it of itself' is absurd. In order to understand the mode of the mind's innermost self, it is precisely the notion of the mind as seeking itself which must be purged from our conception of self-knowledge. Insofar as the mind is a subjective and objective whole, there is strictly speaking no "unknown" for the mind to seek or discover.

The argument has thus enabled us to see that any attempt to conceive the mind as seeking to know itself, either as a whole or a part, collapses into aporia. This last point draws the argument to pass beyond the very problem that the mind seeks itself at all (Quocirca, quia nee tota se mens quaerit, nee pars ejus ulla se quaerit, se mens omnino non quaerit) !)A

A few brief comments at this point. First, we note that this long and labourious dialectic has operated negatively, to show the internal incoherence of successively confused notions of the nature of the mind and the possibility of its self-knowledge. Each hypothesis of how self-knowledge is acquired propounds a mechanical theory of the mind's self- refiexivity, all of which conclude that self-knowledge is impossible. Such theorizing sets up a banal opposition between the mind's proper life or activity of knowing and its own being.

But once the debris has been swept away, so to speak, what remains is the pure inwardness of mens, already immediately and totally present to itself. The mind's constitution therefore is identical with its self-knowledge, and any self-reflexive activity of the mind in fact depends upon a prior wholeness or unity of the human mind as the subject and object of its knowing.

Augustine's argument for the equivalence, unity or identity of the mind as a subjective and objective whole (total'Mam), demonstrates, in light of the totality of the mind's self- knowledge, the absurdity of the ex parte and se quaerit hypotheses. The mind knows itself (se novit) by an intuitive immediacy, not self-reflexively; completely, not partially; already, not as still seeking to know.

Second, how this joins the overcoming of scepticism is not difficult to see. For scepticism as a critique depends on a thoroughgoing repudiation of the senses as the ground of certain knowledge; in this sense, it contains negatively the epistemological sine qua non of the conversion from sensible to intelligible, while itself being unable to think in any other than corporeal terms. By beginning with corporealist formulations of self-knowledge in which the subject and object of the mind's knowledge are opposed and external to one

94 trin. X,4,6. 54

another, Augustine thus assumes the sceptical position. The sceptic has rightly found the sensible appearance inadequate to the inwardness of thought, but, being still under the sway of the dogmatic corporealist assumptions he has refuted, has recourse only to a vacuous interiority. Augustine, by taking up the sceptical formulations of the mind's self-knowledge with utter seriousness, uses dialectic to uncover their ill-fated, and ultimately self- contradictory presuppositions; and precisely through this exercise of reason or intellect, the mind has effected its own conversion into itself, it has seen its own self-knowledge inseparable from its own being.

In the remainder of this thesis, I shall mainly consider the positive phase of

Augustine's argument, from chapter 5,7 to 10,16, which propounds explicit statements both on the origin of the mind's errors, and its certitude of its own rational, incorporeal substance and activities.

2.4. Positive Demonstration the Mind's Self-Certitudes (X,5,7-10,16)

The opening question of chapter 5,7 is an admission that the conclusions of the previous two chapters present an altogether new problem. Up to this point, Augustine has moved the argument beyond both the epistemological impasse of scepticism, and the empiricist and corporealist presuppositions on which it depends. The difficulty of self- knowledge is really not so difficult; the aporetic knot of each hypothesis of self-knowledge effectively dissolves, when we discern the following points and their necessary logical connection: i) the mind is most exceedingly present to itself; ii) the mind already knows itself in an immediate union of its being and knowing, which is the prior condition of all knowledge; iii) the mind knows itself totally, without remainder. Furthermore, by virtue of the necessary priority and completeness of its self-knowledge, iv) the mind does not seek itself at all (se mens omnino non quaerit). Whether the sceptical position is defined according to the Pyrrhonian "still investigating," or the more dogmatic interpretation of the Academics as

"denying that anything is able to be known," the cumulative result of Augustine's reasoning is clear. He has demonstrated beyond doubt the logical ground of a dogmatic Platonism, according to which mind already possesses self-knowledge—a self-conscious life of an incorporeal nature, totally aware of its own ontological unity and absolute self-identity—so that it has no need whatsoever to seek itself, as if it were absent. The question that comes to 55

view, therefore, is not how self-knowledge is possible, since self-knowledge is in fact essentially given in the mind's own nature, but rather how self-cognition could possibly err.

Unlike the previous aporiae, Augustine will not explain away this difficulty, for it is no forged hypothesis. Instead, he will propound the theory of the mind's nature and operations which the negative demonstration of self-knowledge presupposed; this chapter thus marks the beginning of Augustine's positive argument.

A. Two Kinds of Cognition I ljove and the Possibility of Error (X,5,7)

"Why then was the mind ordered to know itself? (fJtquid ergo eipraeceptum est, ut se

ipsam cognoscat?)" This reference to the Delphic precept is significant, for at least two

reasons. First, together with numerous subsequent mentions,95 it supplies evidence of

Augustine's awareness that his discussion in book X stands in relation to a certain

philosophical tradition, the origin of which is traceable to the Platonic dialogues First

Alcibiades and Charmides. ' Aside from probable allusions in Aristotle, the Latin tradition in

fact contains some of the most ancient witnesses of philosophical interpretation of the

Gnothi seauton, notably in treatises of Cicero with which Augustine was certainly familiar.98

In addition, Augustine most likely owes a debt to other, later sources, involving a complex

history of transmission through Plotinus and Porphyry at the precise point where the maxim

95 Ibid., X,8,l 1: Cum igitur eipraecipitur ut se ipsam cognoscat; Cognoscat ergo semetipsam; X,9,l 2: Ipsum enim quod audit, Cognosce te ipsam; Sed cum dicitur menti, Cognosce te ipsam;~K,lO,\3: Non ergo adjungat aliud id quod se ipsam cognoscit, cum audit ut se ipsam cognoscat. 96 See Courcelle, Connais-toitoi-meme, vol. 1; Booth, "St. Augustine's «notitiasui»" (1977): 380-89, (1978): 211-16; O'Daly, Augustine's Philosophy of Mind, 56, 206 ff; Bermon, he cogito, 78, 82-86, 193-94; cf. Hankey, '"Knowing as we are Known'," 23-48; Daniel Wilband, "Self-Knowledge in Plato's Alcibiades" (MA Thesis, Dalhousie University, 2007). 97 A. P. Segonds, "Introduction," in Proclus, Sur le Premier Acibiade de Platon, vol. 1 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985), xi. • 98 Mountain, ed., De Trinitate, 320 (critical apparatus at X,5,7), cites Cicero, Tusc. 1,22,52; leg. 1,22,58, 23,61. Pierre Boyance, "Ciceron et le Premier Alcibiade" in Etudes sur Phumanisme ctceronien, Collection Latomus 121 (Brussels: Revue d'Etudes Latines, 1970), 256-75, at 263, points out that Tusc. designates the human intellect which receives the command to self-knowledge by the term, mens, which Cicero holds as an equivalent to the Greek term, nous. Similarly, Booth, "St. Augustine's unotitiasum" (1977): 71-75, (1978): 184, 200, 203-206, argues that Cicero's translation of Greek philosophy into a Latin idiom is determinative for Augustine's Romanitas, which disposed him also to transpose the transcendent categories of Neoplatonic nous into the individual human mens; cf. idem, Saint Augustine and the Western Tradition of Self- Knowing, The Saint Augustine Lecture Series (Villanova: Villanova University Augustinian Institute, 1989), 17. 56

to "know thyself converges with the refutation of scepticism. The themes and formulations associated with this Neoplatonic context are important for interpreting

Augustine's De trinitate X as a concerted development of the author's own earlier refutation of Academic scepticism. Second, the reference to the precept at 5,7 is just as important for the creative manner in which Augustine interprets it. Above all I am interested in the technical distinction he makes between two types of cognition, nosse and cogitare.

Augustine asserts the reason for the precept: "so that it should think itself and live according to its nature (ut se ipsam cogitet et secundum naturam suam vivat).,,w" He introduces here, rather suddenly, a subjunctive conjugation of the verb, cogitare. Prior to this point, we recall, even as far back as book IX, Augustine affirmed the necessity that the mind does indeed know itself, which he has argued consistently by means of the verb, nosse.vn By the end of X,4,6, he has abandoned the hypothesis that the mind seeks itself at all [se mens omnino non quaerit). Accordingly, the argument has well surpassed the formulation at chapter 3,5 which combined these two ideas, whereby the mind seeks in order to know itself (se quaerit ut noverii). In light of the demonstration that the mind's innermost being is, as a matter of indicative fact, constitutively and comprehensively self-knowing, the Delphic precept could appear redundant in the extreme: for since the mind's act of self-knowledge, thus defined, is not something to be fulfilled in the future, that the mind should have any purpose or intention to know itself is a non sequitur. But Augustine avoids that would-be incoherence by shifting the discussion from an act of self-knowing, in the strict sense of se nosse, to a cognitive act which I translate as self-thinking, self-consideration, or self-reflection, denominated in the text by se cogitare. By stressing the difference of these terms (aliud sit non se nosse, aliud non se cogitare), Augustine clearly applies the imperative of the precept not to se nosse, but rather to se cogitare as a type of self-cognition which is not inherent in the mind's created nature and must be worked out practically, in the right ordering of the mind's life according to its proper nature.

99 See supra, 13-18. Cf. O'Daly, Plotinus' Philosophy of the Self, 7-19; Werner Beierwaltes, "Le vrai soi: Retractions d'un element de pensee par rapport a YEnneade V,3 et remarques sur la signification philosophique de ce traite dans son ensemble," in ha connaissance de soi, ed. Dixaut, 11-40; Kuhn, "Comment il ne faut pas expliquer," in 1M connaissance de soi, ed. Dixaut, 229-66; Flamand and Kuhn, "Note sur la Sentence 40," in Sentences, ed. Brisson, vol. 2, 713. 10,1 tnn. X,5,7. 101 E.g., ibid., IX,3,3: ergo et semetipsamper se ipsam novit;~X,3,5: iam se ergo «ew'/;X,4,6: se ipsam utique novit. 57

In Confessions X, Augustine spells out the etymology of cogitare in a context where he wishes to explain how it seems he can cease to recollect that which his mind already in some sense contains within the depths of its memory. Insofar as the account distinguishes the activity of thinking {cogitare) from a latent cognition in memory (jam in memorid)w and similarly from our knowing (nosse),m it can shed light on De trinitate's technical distinction of nosse/cogitare. Here I give a very literal translation:

Concerning this matter we find that to learn those things—of which we do not draw images through our senses, but rather, without images, we discern inwardly, just as they are through themselves—is nothing else except this: to gather together, as it were, by thinking and to take care for by the soul's turning towards those things (cogitando quasi colligere atque animaduertendo curare), which notions the memory contained everywhere and inordinately, so that, once ordered as if ready to hand in that memory, where formerly scattered and neglected they used to be latent, those things may now easily occur to a familiar intention (ut. . . iam familiari intentioni facile occurranf). How many things of this sort my memory carries, which are already discovered and, as I said, ordered as if ready to hand. We are said to have learned these things, and to know {nosse) them. If for modest intervals of time I cease to recollect (recolere) those things, they thus again sink down and slip away as if into more remote recesses, so that they have to be thought out (excogitandd) as if anew from the same place—for they have no other region. Once again they have to be brought together (cogenda), so that they can be known {ut sciripossint), that is, they have to be gathered (colligenda), as it were, from their dispersed state. Hence is derived the word cogitare. For "I bring together (cogo)" is thus to "I think (cogito)" just as "I do (ago)" to "I set in motion (agito), "I make (facio) to "I frequently make (factito)." Nevertheless, the soul {animus) appropriately claims this word [cogitare] for itself, just as that which is collected (colligitur), that is, brought together (cogitur), not elsewhere but in the soul, is now properly said to be thought (cogitariproprie iam

According to this passage, the type of cognition expressed by cogitare normally functions as a self-reflexive activity. Augustine does not here use reflexive pronouns, but rather depicts the self-refiexivity of the soul's thinking with metaphors of conversion and gathering together.

1112 mnf. X.10,17. v* Ibid., X,l\,l&. 104 Ibid.: Quocirca inuenimus nihil esse aliud discere ista, quorum nonper sensus haurimus imagines, sed sine imaginibus, sicuti sunt, per se ipsa intus cernimus, nisi ea, quae passim atque indisposite memoria continebat, cogitando quasi colligere atque animaduertendo curare, ut tamquam ad manum posita in ipsa memoria, ubi spars a prius et neglecta latitabant, iam familiari intentioni facile occurrant. Et quam multa huius modi gestat memoria mea, quae iam inuenta sunt et, sicut dixi, quasi ad manum posita, quae didicisse et nosse dicimur. Quae si modes tis temporum interuallis recolere desiuero, ita rursus demerguntur et quasi in remotiora penetralia dilabuntur, ut denuo uelut noua excogitanda sint indidem iterum—neque enim est alia regio eorum—et cogenda rursus, ut sciri possint, id est uelut ex quadam dispersione coligenda, unde dictum est cogitare. Nam cogo et cogito sic est, ut ago et agito, facio et factito. Uerum tamen sibi animus hoc uerbum proprie uindicauit, ut non quod alibi, sed quod in animo colligitur, id est cogitur, cogitari proprie iam dicatur. 58

Thinking thus involves the rational soul's conversion to that which it pre-contains, an active orienting of attention to retention, a sort of mental concentration upon what is held latent within. That is to say, the activity of thinking has the discursive task of turning the human intellect upon itself, into its own memory, to effect the discovery of itself and its knowledge.

Although there can be an implicit awareness of something in memory, this does not mean the soul has a clear and distinct view of what it knows. At De trinitate XIV, Augustine will come to highlight this visual aspect of thinking as distinct from knowing: "It remains, therefore, that its sight is something belonging to its nature, and the mind is recalled to it when it thinks of itself (quando se cogitat), not as it were by a movement in space, but by an incorporeal conversion." ' But Augustine at once sharply distinguishes this reflexive cognition, a kind of objectifying seeing of oneself, from another which is hidden from the sight of the mind yet still contained therein: "On the other hand, when it does not think of itself, it is indeed not in its own sight, nor is its gaze formed from it; but yet it knows itself

(tamen novetit se), as if it were a remembrance of itself to itself. Just as one who is skilled in many branches of learning knows those things which are contained in his memory, nor is anything thereof in the sight of his mind except that of which he is thinking, while all the rest are stored up in a kind of secret knowledge which is called memory."1"6 The purpose of this conversion or reflection upon the self, therefore, is to bring forth into evidence the knowledge (notitid) that lies hidden in the memory, to discern the connection or to gather together into a unity things which are already known, but now in a way that appears present to the soul's intellectual regard.

On a grammatical level, there is a discrepancy between the antecedent disposition of knowing relative to the acts of thinking. Augustine draws a parallel between what we are said "to know" and "to have learned," because nosse, as the present infinitive form of a defective verb, conveys the completion and antecedence equivalent to the perfect infinitive, didicisse. By contrast, the forms of cogitare and its parallels convey a sense of continuance in the present or future, in terms of active causation (cogitando, animadvertandd), necessity

105 trin. XIV,6,8. 1(16 Ibid., XIV,6,8: Vroinde restat ut aliquidpertinens ad ejus naturam sit conspectus ejus, et in earn, quando se cogitat, non quasi per loci spatium, sed incorporea conversione revocetur. cum. vero non se cogitat, non sit quidem in conspectu suo, nee de ilia suus formetur obtutus, sed tamen noverit se tanquam ipsa sit sibi memoria sui. Sicut multarum disciplinarum peritus ea quae novit, ejus memoria continentur, nee est inde aliquid in conspectu mentis ejus, nisi unde cogitat; caetera in arcane quadam notitia sunt recondita, quae memoria nuncupatur. 59

(excogitanda, cogenda, colligendd), and repeated or intense action {cogito, agito,factito). This discrepancy indicates the reason why there can and should be a need for thinking at all. For while the mind already knows within itself what it knows, it must actively think what it knows in order to achieve the meeting of an inwardly focused attention and the receded contents of memory. Hence, in De trinitate chapter X, the command of self-cognition means that the mind should think itself adequately to the logically prior self-knowing constitutive of its being. From this we may infer that the activity of self-thinking, in distinction from the given and complete unity of the mind's being and intuitive self-knowing, does not belong to the mind's essential nature.

When at De trinitate X,5,7 the concern lies with the mind's imperative to think itself

{se cogitare), the measure of its adequacy is the mind itself or, more precisely, its nature.

Echoing the discussion at IX,3,3 about the mind's intermediary position in a hierarchy of being, Augustine elaborates what he means by ut secundum naturam suam vivaP. "it should desire to be ordained (ordinari appetai) according to its nature, namely, beneath that [the divine nature] to which it ought to be subject, and above those things [of a corporeal nature] which it ought to govern."108 The mind of course already knows its true nature in the order of things. However, the difference between what the mind knows and thinks its nature is leaves open the possibility for thinking to fall short of its goal; herein lies the mind's risk of cognitive error concerning itself. So Augustine says that the mind indeed behaves in a manner unbecoming of its nature: "thus, as though it had forgotten itself, it does many things by depraved desire (Multa enimper cupiditatempravam, tanquam sui sit oblita, sic agit)."m

Augustine first worries that the mind presumes to appropriate to itself the divine nature. "For it sees certain beautiful things intrinsically, in the more excellent nature which

God is: and although it ought to remain steadfast so as to enjoy those things, wishing (volens) to attribute them to itself, ... it is averted from God {avertitur ab eo), and is moved and sinks into being less and less, which it supposes to be more and more." " Rather than reverting to its true self, the mind in this case turns away from itself and God, by its will to be sufficient unto itself and to think itself as above its properly subordinated rank.

107 See supra, 29. 1(,« trin. X,5,7. 1119 Ibid. 1111 Ibid. 60

Accordingly, the human mind fails to recognise its own median position as beneath the sovereign nature: by desiring to be more, it becomes less; by becoming excessively intent upon its own actions and power (fit nimis intenta in actiones suas), it projects itself outside of itself and loses its security (atque ita cupiditate acquirendi notitias ex its quaeforis sunt, . . . perdit securitatem). Augustine offers further clarification on this point in book XII: "Thus, when man wills to be like God, subordinate to no one, as a punishment he is also driven from the very centre of himself into the depths, that is, to those things in which beasts delight."111 As

Goulven Madec points out, Augustine's description of the degradation of the mind in De trinitate X,5,7 follows the same spiritual movement by which he represents a phenomenology of sin. Here is a description, for example, from De musica:

The soul itself is nothing through itself and whatever being it has is from God, remaining in its own order it is nourished, by the presence of God himself, in its mind and conscience. It thus holds this good in its intimate being. Wherefore to swell with pride is for it to depart into exterior things and, if I may say, to empty itself, which is to be less and less. But to depart into exterior things, whai else is it than to reject interior things, that is, to make God far from oneself, not by an interval of space but by a disposition of mind? The mind thinks itself inadequately, then, when its interior intention becomes turned away from God because of superbia; thereby, in thought, it dirninishes its own being and alienates itself from its created nature in reference to God.

On the other hand, Augustine next worries that the mind can forget itself by thinking itself less than it is, that is, according to the lower nature of bodies. The propensity towards bodies and their images is also a cognitive self-diminution of the mind, a dispersion to the exterior. This danger, as Gerard Verbeke observes, "est bien plutot que nous nous confondions avec le monde qui nous entoure, que nous ne nous distinguions pas suffisamment de cette realite materielle qui est toujours la, a laquelle nous sommes habitues et attaches."114 In particular, when the mind comes to think itself, because it "has become

111 Ibid., XII,11,16: Ita cum vult esse sicut ilk sub nullo, et ab ipsa sui medietatepoenaliterad imapropellitur, id est, ad ea quibus pecora laetantur. 112 Goulven Madec, L« Christ de saint Augustin: hapatrie et la voie, 2nd ed. (Paris: Desclee, 2001), 244-45. 113 mus. VI,13,40: cum ergo ipsa per se nihil sit et quidquid illi esse est a deo sit, in ordine suo manens ipsius deipraesentia vegetatur in mente atque conscientia. Itaque hoc bonum habet intimum. Quare superbia intumescere, hoc illi est in extima progredi et, ut ita dicam, inanescere, quod es minus minusque esse. Progredi autem in extima quid est aliud quam intima proicere, id est longe a sefacere deum non locorum spatio se mentis adfectu? Cf. Gn. adu. Man. 11,9,12; 11,4,5-5,6. 114 Gerard Verbeke, "Pensee et discernement chez saint Augustin: Quelques reflexions sur le sens du terme «cogitare»" RecherchesAugustiniennes2 (1962): 59-80, at 77. 61

entangled" with its love for corporeal things and their sensible allurements, it drags in images of bodies from outside of itself, foreign to its own incorporeal nature.

Yet the power of love {vis amoris) is so great that the mind attracts together with itself those things which it has long thought with love {cum amore diu cogitaverit), and in which it has become fixed by the glue of its care, even when it returns in some way to think itself {cum ad se cogitandam quodam modo redii). And since they are bodies which it has loved outside of itself through the senses of the body {quae forisper sensus carnis adamavii), and with which it has become entangled by a kind of daily familiarity, it cannot bring those bodies inwards with itself as though into a region of incorporeal nature {nee secum potest introrsum tanquam in regionem incorporeae naturae ipsa corpora inferre). It rolls together the images of these things, which it makes from itself, and forces them within itself. . . . The mind errs, however, when it joins itself together with these images with a love so strong, that it even estimates itself as something of this kind.115

This error of the mind is to assimilate itself to an inferior nature, by conforming itself to images of bodily things—not in reality—but in its own thinking. By this confusion, the mind thinks itself as pertaining to bodily reality. Augustine says that "when the mind thinks itself to be such a thing, it thinks itself to be a body {corpus esse seputai)." 6

Augustine's distinction of these kinds of cognition coincides with a distinction of kinds of love, and the reference to vis amoris indicates a range of loves, including cupiditas.

The adequacy of the relationship between amor I' am are and notitia/ nosse has been central to the argument since book IX; indeed, as we saw, the argument assumed that self-knowledge and self-love are constitutive of the mind, insofar as the mind, its knowledge and its love are equal and united in a perfect self-relation.117 At X,5,7 self-thinking is a problem of the mind's cognition which, once again, involves the adequacy of its love. However, Augustine disrupts the perfection of amor and notitia: for he now brings self-thinking into relation with a kind of love which can in some way be inordinate or perverse, and therefore deficient or excessive—in either case, inadequate—with respect to its object. The theme of love, according to Aime Solignac, "est peut-etre le plus central chez Augustin. C'est aussi le plus

115 trin. X,5,7-6.8: cum ergo aliud sit non se nosse, aliud non se cogitare, tanta vis est amoris, ut ea quae cum amore diu cogitaverit, eisque curae glutino inhaeserit, attrahat secum etiam cum ad se cogitandam quodam modo redit. Et quia ilia corpora sunt, quae foris per sensus carnis adamavit, eorumque diuturna quadam familiaritate implicate est, nee secum potest introrsum tanquam in regionem incorporeae naturae ipsa corpora inferred, imagines eorum convolvit, et rapitfactas in semetipsa de semetipsa. . . . Errat autem mens, cum se istis imaginibus tanto amore conjungit, ut etiam se esse aliud huiusmodi existimet. "6Ibid.,X,7,9. 1,7 See supra, 30. 62

complexe."118 It is obviously well beyond the scope of this thesis to explore Augustine's doctrine of amor in detail, but a few general remarks are nevertheless in order, which can help to clarify the problem of the mind's self-thinking in obedience to the Delphic command.

For Augustine, amor is what orients and moves the mind: as he states in the

Confessions, "My weight is my love, by it I am borne wherever I am borne {pondus meum amor meus, eoferor, quocumque feror)."m But crucially, the soul or mind is capable of being directed by its love either inward and upward, or outward and downward: "Every love either ascends or descends. By good desire I am raised up to God, and by evil desire I am cast headlong to the depths."120 We recall that the argument has already introduced a distinction between dikctio and cupiditas and their corresponding verbal forms, in Augustine's first extended discussion of love in De trinitate VIII. There he announced that "in this question concerning the Trinity and the knowledge of God, nothing else is to be particularly considered, except what true love is, or rather what love is {nisi quid sit vera dikctio, imo vero quid sit dikctio)."nx

That Augustine should find it necessary to qualify dikctio—a term which he sometimes uses as equivalent to amor —as vera, is because he also holds that 'false' or Unauthentic' kinds of love exist. On one level, these kinds of love are opposed on the basis of the different objects to which they refer, for all love must be love of something, and not all things are equally worthy of love. Accordingly, dikctio is a kind of love of spiritual substances and eternal realities, that is, of one's own soul, a neighbour's soul, and ultimately God himself.123

Cupiditas is in contrast "an amor of transient things {Nihil aliud est cupiditas, nisi amor

118 Solignac, "Note complementaire 28," in Les Confessions (BA 14), 617. 119 corf. XIII,9,10; cf. pondus amoris et voluntatis in civ. XI,16. The basic notion of the pondus amoris draws upon a metaphor from Greek physics to describe amor. Accordingly, pondus is that which attracts something, whether a body or an incorporeal soul, to its natural place. This power of attraction conducts or inclines the subject to where it finds its proper stability and rest in relation to itself and all other things. Nothing in the cosmos takes exception to this rule. According to P. G. Walsh, "Explanatory Notes," in The Consolation of Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 142, this is a classical line of argument: "Cicero ascribes to Aristotle the doctrine that 'things moved by nature and are borne either downwards by their weight, or upwards by their lightness.' The citation is probably from Aristotle's lost Dephilosophia." 120 en. Ps. 122,1: omnis amor aut ascendit, aut descendit. Desiderio enim bono levamur ad Deum, et desiderio malo ad ima praecipitamur. 121 trin. VIII,7,10. 122 Solignac, "Note complementaire 28," in Les Confessions (BA 14), 619. 12'^«.VIII.7.10. 63

transeuntium)." 4 From this, it is clear that Augustine can sometimes use amor as a neutral term to encompass a diversity of human loves, both good and bad.

But different loves are also, perhaps better, defined by interior attitudes of the will, than simply by their different objects. Since, for Augustine, the creature cannot be itself except in reference to its divine creator, intentio is that state of psychological and intellectual concentration according to the capacity of one's desiderium for God.125 For the soul in search of its divine destiny—intentio—discovers itself and founds its own interiority.126 Dilectio, amor and caritas, then, are synonymous for the impulse of love or the tendency of the will to God, as to its perfect end and true repose. Opposed to this, libido and cupiditas represent the movement of love according to a perversion of the will from the natural course of its desire; hence, Augustine can say, wrestling with his divided will in the Milanese garden scene, ex voluntate perversa facta est libido. Similar to the characteristic difficulty of self-thinking described in X,5,7, cupiditas-love causes the soul's self-abandonment or dispersion: so weighed down by its appetites and emotional vehemence, the soul is in a state of distentio: dispersed, distracted and diverted from the essential order of its nature.129

As with the division between knowing and thinking, this division between true and false loves is not as rigidly opposed as it may seem. The movement of conversion can thus be expressed as a redirection of the soul's attention, "that it should convert from temporal things to eternal and interior things {temporalibus . . . ad aeterna atque interiora converteret)."m In affective terms, this requires a conversion from its various false loves to true amor, from the perversion of will to its right ordering. In cognitive terms, the soul's actualisation of unity with itself must involve a conversion of its thinking towards itself, so as to be adequate to its self-knowledge.

These remarks bring into focus a fundamental condition of the activity of mind which Augustine designates by cogitare, namely its lived experience in time. Due to the

124 diu. qu. 83,33; quoted by Agaesse, "Note complementaire 12," in ~La Trinite (BA 16), 584. This spiritual dynamic ad ~Deum underlies the entire movement of the Confessions, comprehended right from the beginning: quiafecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donee requiescat in te (1,1,1). It also underlies the movement of De trinitate, especially the second half, which is based upon an interpretation of the Genesis account that man was made ad imaginem Trinitatis (VII,6,12). 126 See Agaesse, "Note complementaire 15," in La Trinite (BA 16), 589-90. 127 Cf. trin. IX,8,13. 12S««/:VIII,5,IO. i29trin.VIlI,7,U. 13l) Ibid. 64

mind's intermediary position as an incorporeal yet also mutable being, self-thinking is inevitably a discursive movement, a gradual, partial, successive process beginning in distentio.

Augustine's negative definition of time in the Confessions—"behold, my life is a distentio ... I am scattered in times, the order of which I do not know" —aptly describes the condition of cupiditas in De trinitate X,5,7, which causes both the mind's erroneous "seeking knowledge from things which are /oris," and its having "loved those things foris which are bodies through the carnal senses." In this sense, the mind errs in its self-thinking by moving away from itself towards non-being, away from its unity and stability towards self-ignorance. The purpose of the mind's created nature, however, is not this state of aversion from self and

God, but rather, as the Delphic precept invokes, the exercise of conversion. Hence

Augustine's affirmative definition of time also applies to self-thinking: "forgetting the past, turned not to those things future and transitory, but to those which are before me, not as distended, but extended, not in an effort according to distension, but according to intention,

I follow the prize of the vocation from above." ' This then suggests the mode of possibility for correct self-thinking: a movement from distentio to intentio, from a depraved cupiditas to perfect caritas, from a completely inadequate self-thinking in terms of bodies and their images to a complete self-knowing which is equal to what the mind purely is as an incorporeal substance.

B. The lncorporeality of the Mind Against Philosophical Opinions (X,7,9-10)

With this, we return full circle to the mind's failure to distinguish itself from an image of exterior, bodily things. The Breviculus captures the content of X,7,9-10 precisely: De opinionibus eorutn qui mentem aliquidpraecipuum corporis esse senserunt. " Augustine determines that this is the basic error of the false opinions of the philosophers concerning the nature of the mind: to think of it as an exceptional kind of body. He presents a cursory doxography of various hypotheses of the mind propounded in the history of philosophy, lifted more or less direcdy from Cicero. Some, he reports, thought the mind was blood, the brain, the heart, others believed it was made of indivisible bodies called 'atoms,' still others said its substance

131 conf. XI,29,39. 132 Ibid. 133 Mountain, ed. De Trinitate, 14. 134 Cicero, Tusc. 1,18-22; cf. Hagendahl, A-Ugustine and the Tatin Classics, 139-40. 65

was air, or fire, a fifth element, and so the list goes on. Augustine himself is not terribly interested in discussing any of the corporealist theories, but dispenses with them summarily by addressing their methodological error:

those who regard the mind as a corporeal substance do not err because their mind is lacking in knowledge (desit eorum notitiae), but because they add (adjungunt) those things without which they are unable to conceive of any nature. For whatever they are commanded to think without phantasms of bodies they judge to be absolutely nothing (nihil omnino esse arbitrantui). "

Here, the explanation of contending views of corporealist physics resonates with certain themes of Augustine's former sceptical suspension of judgement. By drawing the sceptical position regarding the soul as a subtle kind of body to its fullest conclusion, Augustine establishes the doctrine of the incorporeal nature of the soul and indeed opens the way for

Platonic philosophy.

First, an underlying Platonic division of two worlds, and the location of self- knowledge in only one of them, accompanies Augustine's identification and rejection of the corporealist opinions as in Contra Academicos: It is sufficient for that which I purpose, that Plato thought there were two worlds, one intelligible, in which truth itself resides, and the other sensible, which, it is manifest, we sense by sight and touch (unum intellegibilem, in quo ipsa Veritas habitaret, istum autem sensibilem, quern manijestum est nos visu tactuque sentire); that one [he thought] was the true world, while this world, a similitude of the true and made according to its image (hum veri similem et ad illius imaginem factum). And thus from that world (de Hid), the truth could, as it were, be refined and made serene in the soul which knew itself (in ea quae se cognosceret anima velut expoliri et quasi serenari veritatem); but from this world (de hue), not knowledge but opinion can be generated (in stultorum animis non scientiam sed opinionem posse generari) in the souls of the foolish.136

The purpose of Augustine's enumeration of divergent corporealist opinions on the nature of the mind in De trinitate X thus parallels a turning point in his transition from the

Manicheanism to Platonism, as ConfessionsV, 14,25 further confirms. From this testimony, one can say more precisely that the theories of the philosophers he had encountered in

Milan were restricted to what pertains to this world, the physical world as it was accessible to

135 trin. X,7,10: simul oportetvideat eos qui opinantur esse corpoream, non ob hoc errare, quod mens desit eorum notitiae, sed quod adjungunt ea sine quibus nullam possunt cogitare naturam. Sine phantasm enim corporum quidquidjussi fuerint cogitare, nihil omnino esse arbitrantur. 136 Acad. 111,17,37: Sat est enim ad id quod vo/o, Platonem sensisse duos esse mundos: unum intellegibilem, in quo ipsa Veritas habitaret; istum autem sensibilem, quern manifestum est nos visu tactuque sentire. Itaque ilium verum, hunc veri similem et ad illius imaginem factum. Et idea de ilk in ea, quae se cognosceret, anima velut expoliri et quasi serenari veritatem; de hoc autem in stultorum animis non scientiam sed opinionem posse generari. 66

the bodily senses {de ipso mundi huius corpore omnique natura, quam sensus carnis attingeret). This corresponds to Augustine's Platonic interpretation of a Pauline expression in Contra

Academicos^1 the empty philosophy of "this world," the sensible world of opinion. This sceptical denial of a corporealist physics, bound together with an affirmation of Platonic conversion to the intelligible, pertains to the constant principle of Augustine's interpretation of the "philosophy" condemned by sacred scripture as dangerous, as Catapano has recently argued with exacting precision: "[F]rom 386 to 416, . . . Augustine retained the belief that the warning issued by Co/2:8 concerns a philosophy related to the sensible world ("this" world) and not a philosophy like the Platonic one, which is able to ascend to the intelligible cause of the world." Although admitting the opinions of the philosophers as generally more probable imultoprobabiliorapleroque sensissephilosophos) than the myths of the Manichees,

Augustine was not, it seems, able to decide between any of the hypotheses with certainty.

For at this point he had adopted the universal doubt of the Academics, as popularly understood. It is interesting to note that Cicero himself, in the most likely source for

Augustine's corporealist hypotheses on the mind, namely book I of Tusculanes Disputationes, concludes his doxography with a sceptical admission in the face of the competing theories: even after a lengthy account, he is still unable to decide the truth of the matter. Levy observes that Cicero's reflections at bottom "n'apportent aucune certitude et, notamment, ils ne permettent pas de preciser si Fame est un souffle, un feu, ou encore le cinquieme element aristotelicien."139 The Neo-Academic inspiration is also evident in the fact that, for Cicero, the question of the immorality of the soul could only be a matter of probability, that is, concerning the similitude of truth, which "n'etait envisagee que comme une approche incertaine de la verite." " This helps us to see how Augustine's own argument in De trinitate

X once again shares a certain affinity with, and indeed even exploits, the sceptical critique of a dogmatic, corporealist conception of the mind's nature. From the vantage point of the

137 Augustine no doubt has in mind Colossians 2:8: "Take care that no one deceives you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elements of this -world, and not according to Christ." 138 Giovanni Catapano, "The Development of Augustine's Metaphilosophy: Col 2:8 and the 'Philosophers of this World,'" Augustinian Studies 38 (2007), 233-54, at 244-45; cf. Goulven Madec, "Si Platon viveret. . . (Augustin De uera religione, 3,3)," in Neoplatonisme: Melanges offerts a Jean Trouillard (Paris: Cahiers de Fontenay, 1981), 233-47, at 234-45. 139 Levy, Cicero Academkus, 458. Cf. Cicero, Tusc. 1,11,23: Harum sententiarum quae uera sit, deus aliqui uiderit; quae ueri simillima, magna quaestio est. 140 Levy, Cicero Academkus, 467. 67

Platonist and the sceptic both, any opinion that relies only upon the bodily senses, and so is restricted to the physical plane, cannot be a firm basis either for a judgment of truth or certain knowledge, nor the mind's knowledge of itself.

The doxography in De trinitate X can also profitably be compared to the sceptical- corporealist view of reality which Augustine describes as having been his own in Confessions

VII. In that context, he expresses his inability, before encountering the Platonic light of intelligible truth, to conceive the existence of any substance except a body contained in an extension of space:

. . . since whatever I deprived from such spaces seemed to me to be nothing, indeed absolutely nothing [nihil mihi esse uidebatur, sedprorsus nihil) ... So I, having become gross in my heart, nor myself having possessed a clear vision even of myself, anything not extended in space or diffused or concentrated or expanding, which does not possess, or is incapable of possessing, such qualities, I judged to be absolutely nothing [nihilprorsus esse arbitrabar}. Through the forms which my eyes are accustomed to go through, such were the images [tales imagine}) my heart passed through; nor did I see that this same intention, by which I formed those very images, was not any such thing.141 In this passage, we find a clear parallel with Augustine's comment in De trinitate X,7,10 with respect to the prejudice of the philosophers. When Augustine "judged to be absolutely nothing [nihilprorsus esse arbitrabar)"1*2 whatever was not a body extended in space, there is agreement both in his expression and reasoning with the assessment of the philosophers' false opinions: when they "judged to be absolutely nothing [nihil omnino esse arbitrantur) whatever they were commanded to think without phantasms of bodies."14'1 This sentiment represents Augustine's characteristically negative sceptical dogmatism, which in turn depends on a corporealist physics. Self-knowledge or a truly adequate self-thinking, however, is impossible on such terms. The reason, as Augustine points out, is because the error of these opinions is not for lack of knowledge [non ob hoc errare, quod mens desit eorum notitiae); but rather, erring philosophers add to the mind the prejudice of their own corporealist epistemology [sed quod adjungunt ea sine quibus nullam possunt cogitare naturam). Not

141 conf. VII,l,l-2: quoniam quidquidpriuabam spatiis talibus, nihilmihi esse videbatur, sedprorsus nihil, ne inane quidem, tamquam si corpus auferatur loco et maneat locus omni corpore uacuatus et terreno et humido et aerio et caelesti, sed tamen sit locus inanis tamquam spatiosum nihil. Ego itaque incrassatus corde nee mihimet ipsi uel ipse conspicuus, quidquid non per aliquanta spatia tenderetur uel diffunderetur uel conglo baretur uel tumeret uel tale aliquid caperet aut capere posset, nihil prorsus esse-arbitrabar. Per quales enimformas ire so lent oculi mei, per tales imagines ibat cor meum, nee uidebam banc eamdem intentionem, qua illas ipsas imagines formabam, non esse tale aliquid. ™2lbid.,Y\l,\,\. 143 trin. X,7,10. 68

surprisingly, Augustine is careful to avoid using any terms which would indicate the philosophers' hypotheses represent knowledge, in the robust sense, of the mind's nature.

Rather, the philosophers merely hold opinions isententiae), and these they hold in a weaker cognitive sense of thinking, believing, or asserting (existimare, putare, credere, dicere). The argument has already intimated, as we have seen, that a true act of self-reflection is possible only for an incorporeal entity: the mind which is entirely present to itself converts upon itself as an indivisible whole in which subject and object are equal and identical. For the mind actualises its se cogitare in an adequate relation to its connatural se nosse As Holscher explains, the act of self-reflection reveals "a uniqueness of essential structure that is found neither in perceptions implying bodily senses nor in purely corporeal phenomena." In order to demonstrate how the mind knows itself by an intuitive immediacy, the argument has required the mind to reflect upon itself. Since in the course of the argument the mind has been able to think itself and its self-knowledge in a way that is not possible for a body, therefore it is impossible for the mind to be a body, nor can it pertain to a corporeal nature.

"This amazing act of self-reflection {se cogitare) in which the same identical subject looks at itselj and not at its image separately standing before itself, in a way that, unlike the manner in which bodies are given in sense perception, implies actual wholeness (as opposed to the partiality of aspects) and real immediacy, cannot be explained by spatial movements, but must be an incorporeal conversion."145 Thus, in De trinitate X, as exemplified in writings such as Contra Academicos and Confessions, Augustine's adoption and refutation of a sceptical position vis-a-vis corporealist philosophical opinions joins the conversion to the intelligible world to which divine truth and the activity of the human mind properly belong. By differentiating the Platonic teaching of the incorporeal nature of the mind from the philosophies which acknowledge no reality beyond the physical one, Augustine demonstrates more surely, and with a more subtle reason, his earlier assertion that "one discipline of most true philosophy has been refined, as I opine. For it is not a philosophy of this world, which our sacred scriptures most worthily abhor, but of the other, intelligible world (Non enim est ista huius mundiphilosophia, quam sacra nostra meritissime detestantur, sed alterius inte/kgibilis)."146

144 Holscher, The Reality of the Mind, 141. 145 Ibid, 141-42. 146 Acad. 111,19,42. 69

C. The Proper Method to Achieve Indubitable Self-Knowledge (X,8,11-10,13)

If the mind's error in self-thinking consists in adding to itself a nature or operations belonging to lower, corporeal entities, then its proper mode is precisely the opposite process: the removal from itself of anything foreign to its proper nature or pure essence.

The mind should seek to think itself by an inward conversion and purification from all the stuff it has dragged in from the senses. For anything the mind adds to itself can only obscure its actual self-presence. It must expel from itself whatever it has drawn in. So

Augustine writes:

It should not seek itself as though it were withdrawn from itself {non se tanquam sibi detracta sit quaerat), but it should rather withdraw that which it has added to itself (sed id quod sibi addidit detrahat). For it itself is more interior {interior), not only than those sensible things which are evidently without {quae manifeste foris sunt), but even than their images.147 The mind is more deeply within itself, its being is more intimately self-present, even than immaterial products of the imagination which it contains interiorly. It follows that the mind knows itself most deeply within the innermost purity of its being. Obedience to the Delphic command thus entails that the mind should think itself alone: there is no need for the mind to go anywhere, to seek itself as something withdrawn or absent from itself, or to propose any theories which it may suppose itself to be; rather, it should "set the intention of its will upon itself," and "discern itself as present."

At this point, Augustine moves the argument from a recognition of the immediacy of the mind's self-presence, to the permanence of that immediacy. This of course has implications for the mind's self-relations of knowledge and love: "So it will see that never did it not love itself, never did it not know itself: but by loving another thing with itself, it confuses itself and in a certain way has grown together with it."148 Therefore the mind always knows and loves itself; this permanence cannot be lost—it is inamissable—even when it confusedly thinks and loves itself together with what it is not.

trin. X,8,l 1: Cum igitur ei praecipitur ut se ipsam cognoscat, non se tanquam sibi detracta sit quaerat; sed id quod sibi addidit detrahat. Interior est enim ipsa, non solum quam ista sensibilia quae manifeste foris sunt, sed etiam quam imagines eorum quae in parte quadam sunt animae, quam habent et bestiae, quamvis intelligentia careant, quae mentis est propria. 148 Ibid. 70

But if the mind always already knows and loves itself, an indispensible principle of the mind's actual method of self-cognition should be made clear. In order for the mind to recognise itself as totally, permanently, and immediately present to itself, this requires a laying aside of "what it thinks itself to be" and a discernment of "what it knows" {Secernat quod seputat, cernat quod sat). This division is crucial for Augustine, since the difference between quod se putat and quod satis the difference between an unreliable opinion, ever liable to err, and a guaranteed certitude, that is, a demonstrated knowledge which is indubitable and infallible. The importance of this distinction may be stressed yet further: for the only kind of self-knowledge Augustine will admit is that which the mind knows with certainty

(certe . . . novit), and which no one doubts {nulli est dubitum)}5{) Augustine proves this argument by employing the Neoplatonic triad, intellegere, esse, vivere.151 He constructs an argument in these terms both to prove the unity of the mind's triadic structure, and to establish philosophical self-certitude by means of certain mental activities which no mind can doubt concerning itself. Augustine's argument from X,10,13-16 is explicitly set against sceptical doubt, the negativity of which he aims not only to overcome, but to convert to the light of truth within the mind.

D. Proofs of the Mind's Certitude Concerning Itself(X, 10,13-16)

The argument for the certitude of the mind's knowledge is as follows. Any given mind may think itself to be air, or perhaps fire, just as it may doubt whether it is a brain or some kind of body. However, there are some acts of knowing which not even a sceptic can doubt. For example, "all know that they understand, exist and live iomnes tamen se intelligere noverunt, et esse et vivere)." The certainty of this knowledge depends on the fact that whenever a subject reflects upon his own performance of these mental acts, he himself is

149 Ibid., X,10,13. 15" Ibid. 151 Augustine may have adopted the noetic triad from Marius Victorinus, translator of Plotinus and Porphyry, and a theologian in his own right., or they may have shared a common source. See Pierre Hadot, "L'image de la Trinite dans Fame chez Marius Victorinus et chez saint Augustin," Studia Patristica 6 (1962): 409-442; Peter Manchester, "The Noetic Triad in Plotinus, Marius Victorinus, and Augustine," in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, ed. Richard T. Wallis and Jay Bregman, International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992), 207-22, argues it does not seem that Augustine consciously responds to the Porphyrian-Victorine analysis of the triad itself, and does not even understand it. Augustine's Trinitarian application of the Neoplatonic principles is his own. 152/«kX,10,13. 71

necessarily actively exercising them. Augustine's argument, as we have repeatedly seen, draws the mind into itself, to reflect upon its unity with itself; he does not argue by way of an abstract or generic theory of mind. Or again, "no one doubts that no one understands who does not live, and that no one lives who does not exist. Therefore, consequently, that which understands both is and lives, not as a cadaver which does not live, nor as a spirit lives which does not understand, but by its certain proper and more excellent mode."153 While various and innumerable theories about the mind's nature can always be doubted, and thus remain uncertain, one can and must know various formal certainties: i) to understand, one must live; ii) to live, one must be; therefore iii) the activity of understanding necessitates at once both the activity of living and being. Augustine's argument here is less self-reflexive, but shows the formal unity of a subject whose proper activity is intellectual.

At X,10,14, Augustine recapitulates his previous argument, and once again explicitly refers to the challenge of sceptical doubt in his account of the possibility of knowledge:

But since we are investigating the nature of the mind, let us not take into consideration any knowledge that is obtained from without through the senses of the body, and consider more attentively the principle which we have laid down: that all minds know and are certain concerning themselves {pmnes mentes de se ipsis nosse certasque esse).154 This methodological principle Augustine has assumed in his argument from the start of book X, and it consistently governed the first, negative phase in which the aporiae were dissolved. Since the mind cannot regard knowledge from the senses as certain, the possibility of self-knowledge requires the thoroughgoing rejection of scepticism, along with its corporealist epistemology and corporeal fantasies of the mind. In stating that the mind can grant as certain knowledge that it is, it lives, and understands, Augustine's concern is to make explicit what has been his purpose throughout book X, namely, to demonstrate the fundamental activities of the mind which are indubitable. Here we come to the so-called

"Augustinian cogito," about which so much has been written, especially in comparison to

Descartes. "Who however doubts that he lives, and remembers, and understands, and wills, and thinks, and knows, and judges?" Remarkably, even doubt itself, Augustine argues,

153 Wld.

154 trin, X,10,14: Sed quoniam de natura mentis agitur, nomoveamus a consideration monstra otnnes notitias quae capiuntur extrinsecus per sensus corporis; et ea quae posuimus, omnes mentes de se ipsis nosse certasque esse, diligentius attendamus. 155 Ibid. 72

confirms the indubitable character of each of the powers of the mind. "For even if he doubts, he lives; if he doubts, he remembers why he doubts; if he doubts, he understands that he doubts; if the doubts, he wishes to be certain; if the doubts, he thinks; if he doubts, he knows that he does not know; if he doubts, he judges that he ought not to consent rashly."156 By following this rational inference, a sceptic is compelled to recognise that doubt cannot be exercised apart from a whole web of activities of the mind, and this due to the character of the mind's activities as mutually implicated and comprehended one in another, all of which are constitutive of the mind's indivisible substance. Sceptical doubt itself deploys a thoroughgoing critique of the senses, which contains negatively the epistemological sine qua non of the Platonic conversion from sensible to intelligible, from corporeal to incorporeal or spiritual. Augustine thus uses the sceptical attack on dogmatic certainty for the sake of demonstrating that the mind's self-knowledge cannot be derived from sense-perception and images. If the mind's knowledge of itself exists prior to any knowledge derived from sensation or imagination, what is required is an altogether different basis for knowledge—independent from sensation—and a different account of the nature of the mind itself—utterly devoid of materialist conceptions: it must be primarily knowledge within itself and of itself, in which the subject, object and activity of knowing are united in an incorporeal substance alone capable of conversion upon itself. Furthermore, Augustine's critique of the sceptical critique strengthens this discovery of the human mind's unity and powers to a remarkable degree. With the insight that scepticism contains the seeds of its own refutation, any exercise of doubt itself is seen to depend upon the mind's irrefutable self-certainty: an indubitable intellectual life which is the condition of the mind's self-motion in doubt, its indubitable powers and activities which actualise the possibility of doubt, its indubitable substance which constitutes the underlying subject of the doubting act.

2.5. Formulation of the Imago Trinitatis (X,l 1,17-12,19)

Book X concludes, in chapters 11,17 to 12,19, with a consideration of three particular certitudes which the mind knows concerning itself: the trinity of memoria sui, intelligentia sui, voluntas sui}51 Augustine articulates a slightiy modified argument for the same

156 Ibid. 157 to».X,l 1,17. 73

unity of mind he has previously argued, in terms of scire, vivere, esse at X,4,6, and in terms of esse, vivere, intelligere at X,10,13, now in terms of una vita, una mens, and una substantia at X,l 1,18:

"These three, therefore, memory, understanding, and will, since they are not three lives, but one life; not three minds, but one mind; consequently are not three substances, but one substance."158 The triad, memoria sui, intelligentia sui, voluntas sui is a definite advance over the triad mens, notitia sui, amor sui, and, as Augustine later says, it is "more evident (evidentior) ."159

With the replacement of mens by memoria sui, the mind can be seen as united to a greater degree through a more subtle process of cognition. The logic of this new triad appears evident only from the overall context of the argument we have been attempting to follow; exaggerated though it may be, Sullivan's remark that Augustine selects the terms of the triad

"rather arbitrarily if one judges from the immediate context only" indicates the reticence of

Augustine's exposition at this point. Furthermore, insofar as memory is, as Crouse points out, the locus of divine illumination, we are here dealing with the aspect of Augustine's epistemology which has caused the most interpretive difficulty through the ages.160 My analysis of the sense of the triad must remain more broadly synthetic and therefore more tentative.

First, as I argued above, Augustine prefigures this triad already at the end of book

IX, where his stress lies on the activity by which the mind expresses its self-knowledge, thus engendering de memoria, a verbum mentis, by means of voluntas.161 We find the development of this cognitive operation in the distinction in book X of two types of self-cognition, the one which Augustine denominates by a defective perfect verb and the other by a frequentative (se nosse and se cogitare respectively). This then leads to a rapprochement of the two through the formulation of the triad, memoria sui, intelligentia sui, voluntas sui. Augustine preserves the seemingly timeless self-knowledge given in the mind's created nature, on account of i) of the mind's certainty of itself as thus constituted (quorum mens de se ipsa certa est, tria haecpotissimum considerata tractemus); ii) the particular dimension of the mind called memory, to which pertains whatever the mind knows which is not actually being thought [memoriae tribuens omne

15"/fe,i.,X,ll,18. 159 Ibid., XV,3,5. 16(1 Crouse, "Knowledge," in Saint Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. A. D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 486-88, at 486. 161 See supra, 30-31. 162//mX,ll,17. 74

quod scimus etiamsi non inde cogitemus); ' and iii) the permanence and simultaneity of the triad's intrinsic operation as a whole (simul etiam semper).UA Yet the triad also includes the historical or time-bound aspect of self-cognition which necessarily depends on volitional purpose and intentionality. Accordingly, we may infer, it explains the complex process of cognition in a way that connects what we may call the mind's preconscious—or, as one commentator suggests, "subconscious" ' —self-cognition, always immediately and latendy present to its original nature (memoria sui), with the more actualised recollection and explicit self- consciousness of the mind {intelligentia sui), by the principle of the mind's loving and willing attention fixed upon itself {voluntas sui).

Second, what comes into view is a greater intrinsic unity of the mind, insofar as a more perfect equality of distinct relations is held together in a more complete unity of substance: mens is constituted in a dyadic union of subject and object; a triadic union of the activities of memory, understanding, and will; and an enneadic union consequent on the relations of each one of the triad both to itself and to each of the two others by a totally mutual immanence and comprehension. " "For not only is each one comprehended by each one, but all are also comprehended by each one (Neque enim tantum a singulis singular, verum etiam a singulis omnia capiuntur). For I remember that I have a memory, understanding and will; and I understand that I understand, will and remember; and I will that I will, remember and understand." 6 As more than one historian of philosophy has noted,

Augustine's formulation betrays a degree of systematisation, linking the human mind and the divine Trinity, hitherto unprecedented in pagan Platonism or its Patristic heritage;lrtK hence

Booth concludes that a "complete account of the intrinsic nature of mind is thus made theoretically possible."

163 Ibid., XV,21,40; cf. Holscher, The Reality of the Mind, 176-81. 164 Ibid.,X,l2,\9. 165 Holscher, The Reality of the Mind, 180. 166 On the enneadic structure see Booth, "St. Augustine's «notitia sui»," (1979), 109-110. 161 trin. X,12,19. 168 See Pierre Hadot, "Etre, vie, pensee," in Plotin, Porphyre: Etudes neoplatoniciennes, L'ane d'or (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999), 127-81, at 160; Booth, "St. Augustine's motitia sui»," (1979), 121; Manchester, "The Noetic Triad," 220; Andrew Louth, "Love and the Trinity: Saint Augustine and the Greek Fathers," Augus'tinian Studies 33 (2002): 1-16, argues, from a perspective within Greek orthodoxy, that Augustine's doctrine of love, so central to his idea of trinitarian unity, links the human and divine in a way which the Eastern Fathers ruled out altogether, but which determined the kataphatic theology of the West. 169 Booth, "St. Augustine's «notitia sui»," (1979), 119. CHAPTER THREE: CONCLUSION

Augustine's theoretical demonstration of the mind's self-knowledge (se nosse) is integral to the overall intention of the argument. For if the mind does not have true knowledge of what its nature is, there can be no certainty that the imago it discerns within itself is anything but an arbitrary ficta. If there can be no certain self-knowledge, logically prior to all cognition, there can be no certain faith; and if no certain faith, temporally prior to understanding, then the hope of seeking to find the Trinity is destroyed. Augustine's achievement in book X, in moral terms, is nothing less than a refutation of despair in the capacity of the mind to possess certain knowledge of itself or anything else. In order to counter the sceptical denial of the possibility of knowledge, Augustine employs the method of argument against the assumptions of sceptical epistemology which he had worked out most decisively in Contra Academicos. Yet in De trinitate X, the conversion from scepticism to the priority of the intelligible truth effects a deeper analysis of how such turning is possible.

As in his first refutation of scepticism in Contra Academicos, the mature Augustine aims to show how the denial of knowledge presupposes participation in, or illumination by, the incorporeal truth beyond the sensible realm. But there is more. He also pays careful attention to how the mind's more interior self-reflection can discover its own intellect, life and being. Such a discovery adds nothing to the mind, but discerns its constitutive self- knowing. What is at stake in book X, as Augustine makes clearer towards the end of the work, is the human mind as capax Dei. The mind's capacity of self-knowledge is ultimately its capacity to know and love God: self-knowledge as imago Trinitatis is essential for the mind's participation in the life of the Trinity, and without this self-knowledge the whole

argument of the De trinitate would be in vain. The pursuit of philosophy as a way of life

depends on this theoretical foundation in the mind's certitude of itself. It is in this sense, by

establishing the mind's intellectual essence and the Trinitarian Principle of its moral life, that

a deepened critique of scepticism is integral to the argument of the work as a whole.

Such an apprehension of self-knowledge, however, leaves unresolved an enormous

difficulty in Augustine's account of the mind, which has been of central concern to this

1 trin. XIV,8,11: Sedprius mens in se ipsa consideranda est antequam sitparticeps Dei, et in ea reperienda est imago ejus. Diximus enim earn etsi amissa Deiparticipatione obsoletam atque deformem, Dei tamen imaginem permanare. Eo quippe ipso imago ejus est, quo ejus capax est, ejusque particeps esse potest, quod tarn magnum bonum, nisi per hoc quod imago ejus est, non potest.

75 76 thesis. For the mature Augustine, as Rist reminds us, "would be the last thinker to assume that we can achieve, in our fallen state, what it is theoretically possible for us to achieve."2

At issue here is whether Augustine resolves the unity of the mind's speculative or properly intellectual life—in its original nature stricdy independent from all bodily substance—and its moral life—inseparable from its fallen condition, and thus requiring further conversion from a love inadequate to its nature. The real problem that remains concerns the intrinsic unity of se nosse and se cogitare. This is the vital question for understanding Augustine's view on the cognitive unity of the human mind. Having distinguished se nosse and se cogitare respectively in terms of logical and temporal priority, and insisted that the latter should be adequate to the former, Augustine nevertheless does not in book X provide the necessary reason as to how these do in fact come together. Through the lengthy and labourious course of argumentation, Augustine has demonstrated that the mind's true nature excludes all images pertaining to bodies; he finally concludes with the discovery of the mind as "an inferior image, but an image nevertheless (impar imago est humana mens, sed tamen imago)" of "the supreme and highest essence" which God is. Remarkably, by emphasising at the end of book X, on the one hand, the difference of the mind's certain knowledge of its own permanent nature and operations and, on the other, its inability always to think itself correctly, Augustine postpones and radically undermines the actual achievement of their perfect unity. We found the mind itself to be such in the memory, understanding, and will of itself: since just as it is comprehended that it always knows itself and wills itself (se nosse semperque se ipsam velle), so at the same time it is comprehended that it always remembers itself, always understands and loves itself—even though it does not always think itself as different from those things which are not that which it itself is (quamvis non semper se cogitare discretam ab eis quae non sunt, quod ipsa est).4 Although the mind knows itself as imago Trinitatis with absolute certitude, nevertheless it can still be confused in its self-thinking. The mind is perfectly united in its esse and se nosse, yet its

2 Rist, Ancient Thought Baptised, 43. 3 ft/;/., X,l2,19. 4 Ibid.: Mentem quippe ipsam in memoria et intelligentia et voluntate suimetipsius talem reperiebamus, ut qwmiam semper se nosse semperque se ipsam velle comprehendebatur, simul etiam semper sui meminisse, semperque se ipsam intelligere et amare comprehenderetur; quamvis non semper se cogitare discretam ab eis quae non sunt, quod ipsa est: acper hoc difficile in ea dignoscitur memoria sui, et intelligentia sui. In his concluding recapitulation at XV,3,5, Augustine again highlights both the permanent character of the mind's essential activity as image of the Trinity, and the inconstancy of the mind's ability to discern itself in thought from bodily things: Sed quoniam et hoc compertum est, quod mens nunquam esse itapotuerit, ut non sui meminisset, non se intelligent, et diligeret, quamvis non semper se cogiaret, non se a corporalibus rebus eadem cogitatione discemeret. 77 se cogitare has no guarantee of such unity, but rather must progress towards a greater perfection of union with esse and se nosse. The latter point returns us to the purpose which really underlies the whole work. Just as Augustine declares in the first book, quaeritur unitas

Trinitatis, so the unity of the mind is something we seek. Likewise, what Augustine then straightaway adds about this search for the divine Trinity could also be applied to the mind:

"nowhere else is the error more dangerous, the search more labourious, or the discovery more rewarding."6 This question of the unity of the mind, in the manner I have just outlined it, is not answered by Augustine in De trinitate X. The argument developed there opens up serious problems in Augustine's thought about the character and possibility of the unity of the mind in relation to itself and God.

Such a question of the unity of se nosse and se cogitare in Augustine does not permit a banal opposition of the theoretical from the moral, nor the logical-eternal from the temporal-historical. Although in book X Augustine leaves the question unresolved, it is possible that he anticipates an answer in book XIII:

Our knowledge therefore is Christ, and our wisdom also is the same Christ. He plants in us faith about temporal things; he presents us with the truth about eternal things. Through him we go to him, we tend through knowledge towards wisdom, and we do not turn aside from the same Christ "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3).

In this light, the question can still be approached from different aspects, each disclosing various and overlapping implications. How far is the mind as created trinitarian image able to to actualise the unity of its two modes of cognition, se cogitare and se nosse, and how does this relate to Christ's unity as scientia et sapientia nostra? In other words, to what extent is the cognitive power given essentially in the mind's created nature sufficient to effect our conversion to self and God, and how does this relate to the need for faith in Christ as

5 Ibid., 1,3,5: Et hocplacitumpium atque tutum coram domino deo nostra cum omnibus interim quia ea quae scribo legunt et in omnibus scriptis meis maximeque in his ubi quaeritur unitas Trinitatis, Patris et Fitii et Spiritus sancti; quia nee periulosius alicubi erratur, nee laboriosius aliquid quaeritur, neefructuosius aliquid invenitur. 6 Ibid. 7 See Crouse, "St. Augustine's Philosophical Method," 504-505. 8 trin. XIII, 19,24: Scientia ergo nostra Christus est, sapientia quoque nostra idem Christus est. Ipse nobis fidem de rebus temporalibus inserit, ipse de sempiternis exhibit veritatem. Per ipsum perigimus ad ipsum, tendimus perscientiam ad sapientiam: ab uno tamen eodemque Christo non recedimus, "in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae absconditi." 9 See Goulven Madec, "Christus, scientia et sapientia nostra: Le phncipe de coherence de la doctrine augustinienne," Recherches Augustiniennes 10 (1975): 77-85. 78

Mediator?1" How does Augustine, conceive the unity of the exterior homo and interior homo, and how does this relate to the unity of Christ as exemplum and sacramentum?u Insofar as all true cognition is, for Augustine, the illumination of the mind, how does the mind's self- cognitive unity relate to the unity of the illumination intus by of the Creative Word through which the human image was made, and the illumination foris by the Incarnate Word through which that same image is recreated, renovated, reformed? 3 Robert Crouse sums up, while yet keeping the right questions in play, the problem of the mind's conversion towards greater unity and being in its likeness to the Trinity: "for St. Augustine, the ascent to intellectus ... is a matter of a dialogue between the illuminating Word of God spoken foris in the speech, and deeds and example of the Incarnate Lord, proclaimed in the Scriptures and the preaching of the Church, and the word of God intus, as the abiding Trincipium of human reflection."14

Despite leaving the disjunction of se cogitare and se nosse unresolved, at the end of De trinitate X Augustine's argument has considerably clarified the mind's essential nature and its mode of self-cognition. With the new discovery of the human mind as a more evident imago

Trinitatis, reflecting in its created nature the distinction of the three divine Persons bound together in the essential unity of the Godhead, the argument is well beyond a sceptical position. Augustine, we have seen, demonstrates that the human mind's permanent essence is the imago Trinitatis, which belongs to its nature. The mind's unity is therefore a permanent possession inherent in its created nature as imaging the unity of the Trinity. This constitutive self-knowledge belongs so securely to the mind's essence that although it can be

1,1 See trin. XIV,19,26: Sed iste cursus qui constituitur in amore atque investigatione veritatis, non sufficit miseris, id est, omnibus cum ista sola ratione mortalibus sine fide Mediatoris. See Basil Studer, "History and Faith in De trinitate" Augustinian Studies 28 (1997): 7-50; idem, Augustinus, De Trinitate: Eine FJnfiihrung (Paderborn: Ferdinnd Schoningh, 2005), 209-33. 11 On the differences between the outer man/inner man, see trin. XI,1,1; XII,1,1-2,2; XII,8,13. Augustine's conception of the unity of the person, a problem of the body-soul relation, has been a source of unending debate among interpreters. See Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 147-59; Eist, Ancient Thought Baptised, 92-147; Cary, Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self. 12 Madec, Le Dieu dAugustin, 102: "Toute connaissance intellectuelle, en effet, est illumination ... II n'y a, pour Augustin, de connaissance reelle que par participation au Verbe qui illumine tout homme venant en ce monde." 11 On Augustine's doctrine the constitution of the subject from creatio-formatio, see Marie-Anne Vannier, "La conversion, axe de l'anthropologie de s. Augustin," Connaissance des Peres de t'eglise 88 (2002): 34-48; idem, (^Creation, (-conversion, cherts. Augustin, 2nd ed., Paradosis: Etudes de literature et de theologie anciennes 31 (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, 1997). 14 Crouse, "St. Augustine's Philosophical Method," 505. 79 distorted or obscured, it can never be wholly lost. However, at the same time, Augustine shows the imperfection of that created image, insofar as the mind has a vocation to self- reflection, and thereby to return to its divine exemplar, to become a veritable likeness of the

Trinity. The mind can either fall away from its incorporeal, spiritual nature by confusing itself with false images, that is, by failing to discern itself in its purity apart from all sensible things; or, it can progress towards a greater perfection of its being and unity through an interior conversion to its true self, which is its return to God. Either way, the life of the mind has an inevitably mutable character, dynamically oriented by its willed attention, for better or worse.

For his part, Saint Augustine—remembered through the ages as doctor caritatis— ardendy prays with faith and hope for the better. So he concludes the De trinitate, confident that we seek in order to find, and find in order to go on seeking.15 The mind's self-discovery in this sense is an ongoing quest for the Trinity, a continual path of conversion and unification: we now seek by the partial and enigmatic vision of faith until we shall then see facie adfaciem, and only then shall our multiplicity be gathered into a perfect unity:

Deliver me, O God, from the multitude of words with which I am inwardly afflicted in my soul; it is wretched in your sight, and takes refuge in your mercy. . . . Many are my thoughts, such as you know; they are the thoughts of men, since they are vain. . . . A certain wise man, when he spoke of you in his book which is now called by the special name of Ecclesiasticus, declared: "We say many things, and fall short, and the sum of our words is, 'He is all.'" But when we shall come to you, these 'many things' which we say 'and fall short' shall cease; and you as One shall remain, you who are all in all; and without ceasing we shall say one thing, praising you, in the One, we who have been made one in you.

15 trin. XV,2,2. 16 Ibid., XV,28,51. (trans. McKenna). BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Primary Sources

Agaesse, P., ed. Augustin, Ta Trinite (Livres VJII-XV): Fes images. Translated with notes by P. Agaesse and J. Moingt. Bibliofheque Augustinienne. Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 16. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1955. Annas, Julia, and Barnes, Jonathan, eds. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Bett, Richard, ed. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Brisson, Luc, ed. Porphyre, Sentences: Etudes d'introduction, texte Grec et traduction Franfaise, commentaire. 2 Vols. Histoire des Doctrines de L'Antiquite Classique 33. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2005. Brittain, Charles, ed. Cicero, On Academic Scepticism. Translated, with introduction and notes by Charles Brittain. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006. Busa, Roberto ed. Thomae Aquinatis opera omnia cum hypertextibus in CD-R.OAI. 2" ed. Milan: Editoria Elettronica Editel, 1996. Catapano, Giovanni, ed. Aurelio Augustino, Tutti I Dialoghi. II Pensiero Occidentale. Milan: Bompiani, 2006. Chadwick, Henry, ed. Saint Augustine, Confessions. Oxford World Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Deferrari, Roy J., trans. Hugh of Saint Victor, On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith (De sacramentis). Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1951. Douglas, A. E. ed. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I. Chicago: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1985. Ham, Bertrand, ed. Plotin, Traite49-V, 3: Ce qui sepense soi-meme doit-il etre differencialParis: Editions du Cerf, 2000. Henry, Paul, and Schwyzer, Hans-Rudolf, eds. Plotini opera: TomusII, FnneadesTV-V. Museum Lessianum Series Philosophica 34. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1959. Hill, Edmund, ed. Augustine, The Trinity: Introduction, Translation, and Notes. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991. McKenna, Stephen, trans. Augustine, On the Trinity, Books 8-15. Edited by Gareth B. Matthews. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Mellet, M., and Camelot, T., eds. Augustin, Ta Trinite (LivresI-VTI): he mystere. Translated with notes by M. Mellet and T. Camelot. Introduction by E. Hendrikx. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1955.

80 81

Mountain, W. J., ed. Aurelius Augustinus, De Trinitate. 2 Vols. Corpus Christianoium Series Latina. Tumholti: Typographi Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1968. O'Meara, John J., ed. Saint Augustine, Against the Academics. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1950. Pegis, Anton C, ed. Bask Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. 2 Vols. New York: Random House, 1945 Schmitt, Franciscus Salesius, ed. S. Anse/mi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi opera omnia. Vol. 1 Edinburgh: Apud T. Nelson, 1946. Skutella, M., ed. Augustin, Les Confessions. 2 Vols. Translated by E. Trehorel and G. Bouisou. With introduction and notes by A. Solignac. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1962. Walsh, P. G., ed. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Wippel, John F., and Wolter, Allan B., eds. Medieval Philosophy: From St. Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa. New York: The Free Press, 1969.

B. Secondary Sources

Agaesse, Pierre. "Note sur les fondements metaphysiques de l'interiorite dans Plotin et Augustin." Axe$.l (1973): 11-22. Ayres, Lewis. "The Christological Context of Augustine's De Trinitate XIII: Towards Relocating Books VIII-XV." Augustinian Studies 29 (1998): 111-39. . "The Discipline of Self-Knowledge in Augustine's De Trinitate Book X." In The Passionate Intellect: Essays on the Transformation of Classical Traditions Presented to Professor Ian Kidd, 261-96. Rutgers University Studies in the Classical Humanities 7. Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995. . "The Fundamental Grammar of Augustine's Trinitarian Theology." In Augustine and his Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, 51- 76. London: Routledge, 2000. Beierwaltes, Werner. "Le vrai soi: Retractions d'un element de pensee par rapport a YEnne'ade V,3 et remarques sur la signification philosophique de ce traite dans son ensemble." In La connaissance de soi: Etudes sur le traite 49 de Plotin, ed. Monique Dixsaut et al., 11-40. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2002. Bermon, Emmanuel, he cogito dans la pensee de saint Augustin. Histoire des Doctrines de L'Antiquite Classique 26. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2001. Blumenfhal, H. J. Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late Antiquity: Interpretation of the DeAnima. London: Duckworth, 1996. Boissier, Gaston. "La conversion de saint Augustin." Revue des Deux-Mondes 85 (1888): 43-69. Booth, Edward. Saint Augustine and the Western Tradition of Self-Knowing. The Saint Augustine Lecture Series. Villanova: Villanova University Augustinian Institute, 1989. . "St. Augustine's motitia sui»." Augustiniana 27 (1977): 70-132, 364-401; 28 (1978): 183- 221; 29 (1979): 97-124. 82

Bouton-Touboulic, Anne-Isabelle. "L'approche philosophique de l'oeuvre d'Augustin au miroir de la Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes" Revue d'Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques 50 (2004): 325-47. Boyance, Pierre. "Ciceron et le Premier Alcibiade." In Etudes sur I'humanisme cice'ronien, 256-75. Collection Latomus 121. Brussels: Revue d'Etudes Latines, 1970. Boyer, Charles. E'ide'e de veritedans la philosophic de saint Augustin. Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1920. Brachtendorf, Johannes von. Die Struktur des menschlichen Geistes nach Augustinus: Selbstreflexion und Erkentnis Gottes in De Trinitate. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2000. Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. 2nd ed. London: Faber and Faber, 2000. Brunschwig, Jacques. "Introduction: The Beginnings of Hellenistic Epistemology." In The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, ed. Keimpe Algra et al, 229-59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Bubacz, Bruce. St. Augustine's Theory of Knowledge: A Contemporary Analysis. Texts and Studies in Religion 11. Toronto: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1981. Carreker, Michael. "A Commentary on Books Five, Six, and Seven of the De Trinitate of Saint Augustine of Hippo." PhD diss., Dalhousie University, 1992. Cary, Phillip. "Interiority." In Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. A. D. Fitzgerald, 454-56. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999. . Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Catapano, Giovanni. "The Development of Augustine's Metaphilosophy: Col 2:8 and the 'Philosophers of this World.'" Augustinian Studies 38 (2007): 233-54. . "In philosophiae gremium confugere: Augustine's View of Philosophy in the First Book of his Contra Academicos." Dionysius 18 (2000): 45-68. Cavadini, John. "The Darkest Enigma: Reconsidering the Self in Augustine's Thought." Augustinian Studies'38 (2007): 119-32. . "The Structure and Intention of Augustine's De Trinitate!' Augustinian Studies 23 (1992): 103-23. Chadwick, Henry. "Philosophical Tradition and the Self." In Eate Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, ed. G. Bowersock, P. Brown and O. Grabar, 60-81. Boston: Belknap Press, 1999. Charles-Saget, Annick. "Les transformations de a conscience de soi entre Plotin et Augustin." In Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions, ed. Jan Assman and Guy G. Stroumsa, 195-207. Studies in the History of Religions 83. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Cipriani, Nello. "II rifuto del pessimismo porfiriano nei primi scritti di S. Agostino." Augustinianum'37 (1997): 113-46. Corrigan, Kevin. "L'auto-refiexivite et l'experience humaine dans YEnneadeV, 3 [49], et autres traites: de Plotin a Thomas d'Aquin." In Etudes sur Plotin, ed. M. Fattal, 149-172. Montreal: L'Harmattan, 2000. 83

. "The Problem of the Self and its Centre: Postmodernism and Neoplatonism." In History ofPlatonism: Plato Redivivus, ed. J. Finamore and R. Berchman, 323-333. New- Orleans: University of the South Press, 2005. . "Quelques problemes poses par l'anthropologie de Plotin et la conception de «soi- meme» dans le Traite V, 3." In Ea connaissance de soi: etudes sur le traite 49 de Plotin, ed. M. Dixsaut, 133-156. Tradition de la Pensee Classique. Paris: Vrin, 2002. Couissin, P., ed. "The Stoicism of the New Academy." In The Sceptical Tradition, ed. Myles Burnyeat, 31-63. Major Thinkers Series. Berkley: University of California Press, 1983. Courcelle, Pierre. Connais-toi toi-meme, de Socrate a Saint Bernard. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1974. Crouse, Robert. "Paucis mutatis verbis: St. Augustine's Platonism." In Augustine and his Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, 37-50. London: Routledge, 2000. . "St. Augustine and Descartes as Fathers of Modernity." In Descartes and the Modern, ed. Neil Robertson et al, 16-25. Newcasde: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. . "St. Augustine's De Trinitate: Philosophical Method." Studia Patristica 16 (1985): 501- 10. . "Knowledge." In Saint Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. A. D. Fitzgerald, 486-88. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999. . "What is Augustinian in Twelfth-Century Mysticism?" In Augustine: Mystic and Mystagogue, ed. Frederick Van Fleteren et al., 401-414. Collectanea Augustiniana. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. Crystal, Ian. Self-Intellection and its Epistemological Origins in Ancient Greek Thought. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2002. . "Plotinus on the Structure of Self-Interpretation." Phronesis 43 (1998): 264-86. Curley, Augustine J. Augustine's Critique of Skepticism: A Study ^Contra Academicos. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. Diamond, Eli. "Plato's Sophist and its Neoplatonic Interpretation." MA Thesis, Dalhousie University, 2002. Dixsaut, Monique, et al, ed., Ea Connaissance de soi: Etudes,sur le Traite 49 de Plotin. Tradition de la Pensee classique. Paris: Vrin, 2002. Dodaro, Robert. Christand the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. . "Political and Theological Virtues in Augustine, De Trinitate." Medioevo Rivista di storia dellafilosofia medievale 31 (2006): 29-48. Doignon, J. "Etat des questions relatives aux premiers Dialogues de saint Augustin." In Internationales Symposion tiber den Stand derAugustinus-Forschung, vom 12. bis 16. April 1987 im Scholof Rauischhol^hausen der Justus-Eiebig-Universitdtgiefien, eds. C. Mayer and K. Chelius, 47-86. Wurzburg, 1989. 84

Dubreucq, E. "Augustin et le scepticisme academicien." Recherches de science religieuse 86 (1998): 335-65. Du Roy, Olivier. E'Intelligence de lafoi en la Trinite selon saint Augustin: Genese de sa the'ologie trinitairejusqu'en 391. Paris: Vrin, 1966. Dutton, B. D. "Augustine, Academic Skepticism, and Zeno's Definition." Augustiniana 53 (2003): 7-30. Foley, Michael P. "Cicero, Augustine, and the Philosophical Roots of the Cassiciacum Dialogues." Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 45 (1999): 51-77. Fuhrer, Therese. "Skeptizismus und Subjektivitat: Augustinus antiskeptische Argumentation und das Konzept der Verinnerlichung." In Geschichte und Vorgeschichte der modernen Subjektivitat, ed. R. L. von Fetz et al., 319-39. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1998. Gerson, Lloyd P. "Introspection, Self-reflexivity, and the Essence of Thinking according to Plotinus." In The Perennial Tradition ofNeoplatonism, ed. J. J. Cleary, 153-173. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997. Gill, Christopher. The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Gilson, Etienne. Etudes sur le role de lapensee medievale dans la formation du systeme carte'sien. 2nd ed. Paris: Vrin, 1930. . Introduction a I'etude de saint Augustin. 2nd ed. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1943. . "Pourquoi saint Thomas a critique saint Augustin?" Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age 1 (1926): 5-127. Gendreau, B. A, "The Quest for Certainty in Bonaventure." Franciscan Studies 27 (1961): 104- 227. Hadot, Pierre. "Etre, vie, pensee." In Plotin, Porphyre: Etudes neoplatoniciennes, 127-81. L'ane d'or. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999. . "L'image de la Trinite dans Fame chez Victorinus et chez saint Augustin." Studia Patristica 6 (1962): 409-442. . Philosophy as a Way ofUfe: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Translated by Michael Chase. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. . Potphre et Victorinus. 2 Vols. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1968. . Plotin, Porphyre: Etudes neoplatoniciennes. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999. Hagendahl, Harold. Augustine and the Eatin Classics. 2 Vols. Goteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1967. Hanby, Michael. "Desire: Augustine Beyond Western Subjectivity." In Radical Orthodoxy: A. New Theology, ed. John Milbank et al., 109-26. London: Routledge, 1999 Hankey, Wayne J. "Between and Beyond Augustine and Descartes: More than a Source of the Self." Augustinian Studies 32:1 (2001): 65-88. 85

. '"Knowing as we are Known' in Confessions 10 and Other Philosophical, Augustinian and Christian Obedience to the Delphic Qnothi Seauton from Socrates to Modernity." Augustinian Studies 34 (2003): 23-48. . "Mind." In Saint Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. A. D. Fitzgerald, 563- 67. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999. . "Neoplatonism and Contemporary Constructions and Deconstructions of Modern Subjectivity." In Philosophy and Freedom: The Legacy of James Doull, ed. David G. Peddle and Neil T. Robertson, 250-78. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. . "Self and Cosmos in Becoming Deiform: Neoplatonic Paradigms for Reform by Self- Knowledge from Augustine to Aquinas." In Reforming the Church Before Modernity: Patterns, Problems and Approaches, ed. Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis I. Hamilton, 39- 60. Burlington: Ashgate Press, 2005. . "Self-Knowledge and God as Other in Augustine: Problems for a Postmodern Retrieval." BochumerPhilosophisches fahrbuch fur Antike undMittalter \ (1999): 83-123. Harnack, Adolf von. Augustins Konfessionen. GieBen, 1888. Harrison, Carol. Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Holscher, Ludwig. The Reality of the Mind: Augustine's Philosophical Arguments for the Human Soul as a Spiritual Substance. London: Routledge, 1986. Holte, Ragnar. Beatitude et sagesse: Saint Augustin et le probleme de la fin de I'homme dans la philosophie ancienne. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1962. Horn, Christoph. "Selbstbezuglichkeit des Geistes bein Plotin und Augustinus." In Gott und sein Bild: Augustinus De Trinitate in Spiegelgegenwdrtiger Forschung, ed. Johannes von Brachtendorf, 81-103. Paderborn: F. Schoningh, 2000. House, D. K. "A Note on Book III of St. Augustine's Contra Academicos." Studia Patristica 17.3 (1982): 1258-63. Janowski, Zbigniew. Augustinian-Cartesian Index: Texts and Commentary. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2004. Johansen, Karsten Friis. "The Mind's Discovery of Itself: Augustine on Self-Knowledge with a View to the Pagan Tradition." In Henologische Perspektiven II: Zu Ehren EgilA Wyllers: Internationales Henologie-Symposium an Der Norwegischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Oslo, ed. Tore Frost and Egil A. Wyller, 62-82. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1977. Kendeffy, Gabor. "Demarches neo-academiciens chez saint Augustin apres le Contra Academicos." Studia Patristica 38 (2001): 190-98. . "Poirquoi Augustin a-t-il ecrit le Contra Academicos}" Acta Antiqua 42 (1995): 177-83. Kirwan, Christopher. "Augustine Against the Skeptics." In The Sceptical Tradition, ed. Myles Burnyeat, 205-23. Major Thinkers Series. Berkley: University of California Press, 1983. Kuhn, Wilfried. "Comment il ne faut pas expliquer la connaissance de soi-meme (Enneade V,3[49],5.1-17)." In La connaissance de soi: Etudes sur le Traite 49 de Plotin, ed. Monique Dixaut et al., 229-66. Tradition de la Pensee classique. Paris: Vrin, 2002. 86

Levy, Carlos. Cicero Academicus: Recherches surks "Academiques" et sur la philosophic ciceronienne. Collection de l'Ecole Francaise de Rome 162. Rome: Ecole francaise de Rome, 1992. Lottin, D. Oddon. "L'identite de fame et de ses facultes avant saint Thomas d'Aquin." In Psychologic et morale auxXIIe etXIIIe siecles, 483-502. Vol. 1. 2n ed. Belgium: J. Duculot, 1957. Louth, Andrew. "Love and the Trinity: Saint Augustine and the Greek Fathers." Augustinian Studies 33 (2002): 1-16. Madec, Goulven. "Augustin: Disciple et adversaire de Porphyre." Recherches des Etudes Augustiniennes 10 (1964): 365-69. . Ee Christ de saint Augustin: Eapatrie et la voie. 2" ed. Paris: Desclee, 2001. . "Christus, scientia et sapientia nostra: Le principe de coherence de la doctrine augustinienne." Recherches Augustiniennes 10 (1975): 77-85. . Ee Dieu dAugustin. Philosophic et Theologie. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1998. . "Exercitatio animi." In Augustinus-Eexikon, ed. Cornelius Mayer et al., col. 1182-83. Vol. 2. Basel: Schwabe & Co. AG, 1996-2002. . "L'Hortensius de Ciceron dans les livres XIII-XV du De Trinitate." Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 15 (1969): 167-73. . "Une lecture de Confessions VII, 9, 13, 21, 27 (Notes critiques a propos d'une these de R.J. O'Connell)." Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 16 (1970): 79-137. . "Le neoplatonism dans la conversion d'Augustin: Etat d'une question centennaire depuis Harnack et Broissier, 1883." In Internationales Syposium iiber den Stand der Augustinus-Forschung, vom 12. bis 16. April 1987 im ScholofiRauischhol^hausen derjustus- Eiebig-Universitat gieften, ed. C. Mayer and K. Chelius, 9-25. Wurzburg, 1989. . Saint Augustin et la philosophie. Notes critiques. Collection des Etudes Augustiniennes. Serie Antiquite 140. Paris: Institut d'Etudes Augustiniennes, 1996. . "Si Platon viveret. . . (Augustin De uera religione, 3,3)." In Neoplatonisme: Melanges offerts a Jean Trouillard, 233-47. Paris: Cahiers de Fontenay, 1981. Manchester, Peter. "The Noetic Triad in Plotinus, Marius Victorinus, and Augustine." In Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, ed. Richard T. Wallis and Jay Bregman, 207-222. International Society for Neoplatonic Studies. New York: State University of New York Press, 1992. Marrou, Henri-Irenee. Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique. 4th ed. Paris: Editions E. de Boccard, 1958. Mayer, Cornelius, ed. Augustinus-Eexikon. 2 Vols. Stuttgart/Basle: Schwabe & Co. AG, 1986- 2002. Menn, Stephen. Descartes and Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Milbank, John. "Sacred Triads: Augustine and the Indo-European Soul." In Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, 77- 102. London: Routledge, 2000. 87

Moran, Dermot. The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Idealism oj the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Narbonne, J.-M. He'nologie, ontology etEreignis (Plotin-Proclus-Heidegger). L'ane d'or. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001. . La metaphysique de Plotin. Paris: Vrin, 1994. Narbonne, Jean-Marc. Eevinas and the Greek heritage. Followed by W. J. Hankey, One Hundred Years ofNeoplatonism in France. Studies in Philosophical Theology. Leuven: Peeters, 2006. O'Callaghan, John P. "Imago Dei: A Test Case for St. Thomas's Augustinianism," In Aquinas the Augustinian, ed. Michael Dauphinais et al., 100-144. Washington: The Catholic . University of America Press, 2007. O'Daly, Gerard J. P. Augustine's Philosophy of Mind. Berkley: University of California Press, 1987. . Plotinus' Philosophy of the Self. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. . "The Response to Skepticism and the Mechanisms of Cognition." In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Elenore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, 159-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. O'Meara, Dominic J. Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Tate Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. . Plotinur. An Introduction to the Enneads. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. . "Scepticism et ineffabilite chez Plotin." In Ea connaissance de soi: Etudes sur le traite 49 de Plotin, ed. Monique Dixsaut et al., 91-103. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2002. . "Studies Preparatory to an Understanding of the Mysticism of St. Augustine and his Doctrine of the Trinity." Augustinian Studies 1 (1970): 264-70. Ousager, Asger. Plotinus on Selfhood, Freedom and Politics. Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2004. Pepin, Jean. "La connaisance d'autrui chez Plotin et saint Augustin." Augustinus 3 (1958): 227-45. . "Elements pour une histoire de la relation entre l'intelligence et l'intelligible chez Platon et dans le neoplatonisme." Revue philosophique de la France et l'etranger\ 46 (1956): 39-64. . Ideesgrecques sur I'homme et surDieu. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1971. . "Note nouvelle sur le probleme de la communication des consciences chez Plotin et saint Augustin." Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale 56 (1951): 316-26. . Ex platonicorum persona: Etudes sur les lecturesphilosophiques de saint Augustin. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1977. . "Porphyre et Plotin: Sur le tout et les parties dans la connaissance de l'lntellect par lui- meme." In Ea connaissance de soi: Etudes sur le traite 49 de Plotin, ed. Monique Dixsaut et al., 267-77. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2002. 88

. "Le probleme de la communication des consciences chez Plotin et saint Augustin." Revue de Me'taphysique et de Morale 55 (1950): 128-48. • . "Le tout et les parties dans la connaissance de la mens QM. elle-meme (De Trin. X 3, 5-4, 6): Nouveaux schemes porphyriens chez saint Augustin, III." InGott und sein Bild: Augustinus De Trinitate in Spiegel gegenwdrtiger Forschung, ed. Johannes von Brachtendorf, 105-126. Paderborn: F. Schoningh, 2000. Rappe, Sara. Reading Neoplatonism: Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Pmlus, and Damascius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. . "Self-Knowledge and Subjectivity in the Enneads." In The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. L. P. Gerson, 250-74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Reta, Jose Oroz. "Dall'interiorita dell'anima alia contemplazione di Dio nel «De trinitate» di sant'Agostino." In Interioritd e inten^ionalita in s. Agostino, ed. Luigi Alici, 85-106. Rome: Institutum Patristicum «Augustinianum», 1990. Rist, John M. Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptised. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Segonds, Alain. P. "Introduction." In Proclus, Sur le Premier Acibiade de Platon. Vol. 1. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985. Sheldon-Williams, I. P. "Eriugena's Greek Sources." In TheMindofEriugena:Papersofa Colloquium, Dublin, 14-18 July 1970, ed. John J. O'Meara and L. Bieler, 1-14. Dublin: Irish University Press for Royal Irish Academy, 1973. Smith, Andrew. Porphyry's Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition: A Study ofPost-Plotinian Neoplatonism. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. Solignac, Aime. "Doxographies et manuels dans la formation philosophique de saint Augustin.". Recherches Augustiniennes \ (1958): 113-48. Sorabji, Richard. "Mystical Experience in Plotinus and Augustine." In Time, Creation and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 157-73. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. . "Porphyry on Self-Awareness, True Self, and Individual." In Studies on Porphyry, ed. George Karamanolis and Anne Sheppard, 61-69. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2007. . Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life and Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. . "Soul and Self in Ancient Greek Philosophy." In From Soul to Self, ed. James Crabbe, 8-32. London: Routledge, 1999. Steel, Carlos. "Conversion vers soi et constitution de soi selon Proclus." In Retour, repentir et . constitution de soi, ed. Annick Charles-Saget, 161-175. Paris: Vrin, 1998. Stock, Brian, ed. Augustine the Reader: Mediation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Studer, Basil. Augustinus, De Trinitate: Eine Einfiihrung. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh, 2005. 89

. "History and Faith in De trinitate." Augustinian Studies 28 (1997): 7-50. Tarrant, Harold. Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Testard, Martin. Saint Augustin et Cice'ron. 2 Vols. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1968. Vannier, Marie-Anne. "La conversion, axe de l'anthropologie de s. Augustin." Connaissance des Peres de I'Eglise 88 (2002): 34-48. . ('(Creation, che^s. Augustin. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg, Suisse, 1997. Verbeke, Gerard. "Connaissance de soi et connaissance de Dieu chez saint Augustin." Augustiniana 4 (1954): 495-515.

;. "Pensee et discernement chez saint Augustin: Quelques reflexions sur le sens du terme «cogitare»." Recherches Augustiniennes 2 (1962): 59-80.

Verene, Donald Phillip. Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Wallis, R. T. "Scepticism and Neoplatonism." Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt: Geschichte undKultur Roms in Spiegel der neueren Forschung II36 (1987): 911-54. Watson, Gerard. "St. Augustine and Scepticism." Maynooth Review 12 (1985): 42-50. . "Cogitatio." In Augustinus-Lexikon, ed. Cornelius Mayer et al, col. 1046-1051. Stuttgart/Basle: Schwabe & Co. AG, 1986-1994. . "Cognitio." In Augustinus-Lexikon, ed. Cornelius Mayer et al., col. 1051-1064. Stuttgart/Basle: Schwabe & Co. AG, 1986-1994. Wilband, Daniel. "Self-Knowledge in Plato's Alcibiades." MA Thesis, Dalhousie University, 2007. Williams, Rowan. "Paradoxes of Self-Knowledge in the De Trinitate." In Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. Joseph T. Lienhard et al, 121-34. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. . "Sapientia and the Trinity: Reflections on the De Trinitate." In Collectanea Augustiana: Melanges T.J. Bavel, ed. B. Bruning et al., 317-32. Leuven: Augustinian Historical Institute, 1990. Wills, Bernard. "Ancient Scepticism and the Contra Academicos of St. Augustine." Animus 4 (1999). An electronic journal accessed at: www.mun.ca/animus/1999vol4/wills4.htm.