Augustine and Postmodernism: Confessions and Circumfession

Four: Instances

four Instances Temporal Modes from Augustine to Derrida and Lyotard Hent de Vries la conversion ne se dit que de l’instant [conversion takes place only in the instant]1 Here, I would like to articulate a simple question. What happens if we add the reflections on time in Augustine’s Confessions to the historical dossier from which Derrida ’s interrogations of the topos of temporality—from “Ousia and grammè” to Shibboleth—take their lead? How would the Confessions register among the classical sources—Aristotle’s Physics, Hegel’s Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (Encyclopaedia),Husserl’sVorlesungenzurPhänomenologiedesinnerenZeitbewusstsein (The Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness), Heidegger’sSein und Zeit (Being and Time)—that form the horizon for the figures of temporality (the temporal modes, not so much the existence or in-existence of time) that Derrida has indefatigably explored? What if “Circonfession” (“Circumfession,” in English), together with texts such as “Sauf le nom” and Mémoires d’aveugle (Memoirs of the Blind), performs the singular task of reinscribing Augustine into the philosophical drama acted out between Aristotle and Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger (reinscribing, because for most of these authors, including Derrida, the Confessions was a reference all along)? To propose this would mean to raise the question of temporality— quid enim est tempus, what, then, is time?—only obliquely, given that in “Circumfession ” it is never addressed directly, discursively, as such and in these terms, but is instead addressed poetically, rhetorically, in an indirect and testimonial vein—in other words, confessionally and, in a sense to be determined, circumfessionally. Caputo/Scanlon, Augustine 12/2/04 10:09 AM Page 68 In suggesting this, I am not implying that the turn to Augustine should be ascribed to some biographical or autobiographical peculiarity on Derrida’s part. He is not the only contemporary thinker to have rediscovered Augustine—especially the meditations on time in the Confessions—with a certain delay and belatedness, in retrospection, and to have reinscribed him into a text that, given its confessional mode, is replete with retractationes. Indeed, “Circumfession” is not the only text to be punctuated with reconsiderations that redirect our attention to singular motifs , all of them announced but not all of them addressed—or confessed—before. As I will indicate (without being able to reconstitute the relevant context in its entirety), Jean-François Lyotard has testified to a similar confessio, conversio, retractatio, and, as we shall see, spiritual exercise, all circling around the motif of a circumcision of the heart with “an incision,” as he puts it, “from within.”2 In his latest writings, notably La Confession d’Augustine (The Confession of Augustine) and Misère de la philosophie (Destitution of Philosophy), we find a parallel turning to these theological archives, whose rhetorical and argumentative, figurative and semantic potential had so long seemed inaccessible to, and irrelevant for, philosophical reflection and the “honor of thinking.” In passing, let me note that, mutatis mutandis, the same could be said of JeanLuc Nancy, who in a recent project entitled “La Déconstruction du christianisme” (“The Deconstruction of Christianity”) covers, albeit indirectly, much of the same ground.3 In fact, some instances of the temporal modes I discuss are most clearly expressed in Derrida’s ongoing philosophical conversation with Nancy, especially in the central chapters of Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy (Touching, Jean-Luc Nancy). But let me concentrate here on the texts I mentioned at the outset and raise my simple question: What does it mean when Lyotard thinks of confession—here, “conversion”—in light of a peculiar temporal mode and asserts that “conversion only takes place in the instant,” that is to say, can only be spoken of in terms of an instant (la conversion ne se dit que de l’instant), instantaneously, as it were?4 I would like to trace this motif in some detail, not least because here we touch upon a topos central both to Derrida and to a whole tradition of spiritual exercises. I will proceed in three steps. First, I will distill some elements from Derrida’s “Circumfession” that set the stage and will sketch out some premises of my argument . Derrida’s version of “conversion,” I believe, entails a similar “instant.”5 Second , I will dwell for a moment on the work of Pierre Hadot, whose interpretation of the tradition of spiritual exercises will present a foil against which I want to situate the alternative logic of the instant in Derrida and Lyotard. And third, I...