Autobiography/autofictionality, the constitution of time and historical consciousness in Augustine: The unity of 'Confessions' with regard to the vision of Ostia.
Protestant Theology
History of Philosophy
Roman Catholic Theology
Final Report Abstract
This monograph focuses on the thought-provoking potential of Augustine's Confessions with an eye to current questions and debates. Among other things, Conf. contains a theory of time that has often been misinterpreted: According to this theory, neither is time a physical object of the sensible world nor a mere construct of subjectivism nor a given 'category' as proposed by Kant. By contrast, according to the church father, time as an actual entity is only established by soul or mind cognizing a certain (outer or inner) process in its (relative) entirety: Time has no actual being without the activity of soul or mind respectively. This does not entail that time is a kind of autosuggestion or a merely subjective interpretation of a 'given world'. Augustine's view on time offers suggestions that may help solve some modern aporiai, as for bridging the gap between 'the subjective experience of time' and 'time as an object of physics'. This theory of time both has a potential of critique of certain modern assumptions as well as it can be combined with some aspects of modern physics (e.g. the relativity of time). The experience of time presupposes memory and expectation and forms the basis of Augustine's reflections on his life: With regard to literary criticism, Conf. presents itself as a text that neither intends to be a historical autobiography nor autofictional self-fashioning. Common distinctions as, for instance, between author and narrator or between narrator and character do not apply to Conf. if the text is scrutinized by means of a close reading. Rather Augustine finds himself engaged in an actual speech act while addressing both his memoirs as well as his attempts of gaining a proper self-knowledge to God. Therefore, 'Augustine' cannot be considered simply an 'author' or 'narrator' but a person confessing and acknowledging the differences between his past selves and his present self. Invoking the omniscient God and only secondly addressing his human readers, the church father thereby presents a panorama of his life, understood in the sense of the times preserved and 'condensed' in his soul. On these lines Augustine unfolds his very own historical consciousness. In the Conf., the truth value does not concern the border of where autofiction ends and autobiography begins, but refers to the extent of how much self-knowledge a soul is able to gain in the light of God's absolute truth transcending the soul as such. Reflections on memories, on the soul in her temporal condition and on her relation to God's supratemporality prove that Conf. is primarily a psychological text, the theoretical and hermeneutic basis of which is the theory of time given in Book XI. Moreover, the unity of the work can be shown to hinge on its psychological scope. Since, according to Augustine, selfknowledge depends on the knowledge of God, Conf. ends with several meditations on the Holy Scriptures of Christianity.
