Augustine for the Philosophers: The Rhetor of Hippo, the Confessions, and the Continentals

1. The Confessions and the Continentals

1 Calvin L. Troup the Confessions And the ContinentAls 1 Saint Augustine, fifth-century bishop of Hippo Regius in Roman north Africa, sanctions the resurgence of rhetoric and philosophy of communication that began in the mid-twentieth century. He is an intellectual catalyst for many continental philosophers whose ideas have been formative in contemporary rhetoric and philosophy of communication, yet many working scholars remain unacquainted with Saint Augustine’s contributions. His significance within ancient and medieval traditions has been well documented and remains undiminished, but his work also intersects with current thought in ways many scholars might not anticipate.1 The question is, though, What has led continental philosophers to engage Augustine deeply and directly on questions in rhetoric and philosophy of communication? in response, this volume invites readers to consider Augustine as a fulcrum for continental thought. The contributing authors are scholars fluent in the work of a cast of important continental philosophers: edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-François Lyotard, Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, HansGeorg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques ellul. each chapter explicates the substantial conversations between one of these thinkers and Augustine on issues in rhetoric and philosophy of communication. The chapters point to the many ways that Augustine can strengthen our grasp of continental thought and, taken together, commend further explorations of his rhetoric and philosophy of communication. At least since edmund Husserl, continental scholars have engaged the work of Augustine in the formulation and reformulation of their ideas related to rhetoric and philosophy of communication, but until quite recently, Augustine’s role in continental thought was not well known. 2 f Augustine for the PhilosoPhers Then two major figures in continental philosophy devoted late works to Augustine. Jacques Derrida wrote an extensive essay, “Circumfession,” published in Jacques Derrida by Geoffrey Bennington in 1993, and Jean-Fran- çois Lyotard wrote Confession of Saint Augustine, published posthumously in 2000. These texts signaled what we now recognize as a long-standing pattern of engagement. in 2005, John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon published Augustine and Postmodernism: Confessions and Circumfession, which explored some of the philosophical implications of these relationships. of particular interest to scholars of communication and religion, Augustine’s most compelling intellectual work is informed by his pervasive religious presuppositions. Although some modern scholars have tried to ignore Augustine’s Christian intellectual commitments to extract secularized concepts from his work, the continental philosophers considered here were prone to admit Augustine’s Christian intellectual ground at least in part and engage him directly on questions of phenomenology, hermeneutics , and rhetoric, rather than to dismiss or ignore the Christian dimensions embedded in his ideas.2 Therefore, at the nexus of continental philosophy and theory in formative postmodern moments, Augustine invites intriguing questions concerning intellectual contributions from religious grounds today. in this chapter, i first explain the relationship between rhetoric and hermeneutics, with special attention to the influence of existential phenomenology . Second, i introduce benchmarks in Augustine’s Confessions that provide entry points for continental scholars working from existential, phenomenological , and rhetorical grounds. Third, i discuss important interpretive assumptions employed by continental thinkers that make engagement with Augustine’s philosophically plausible. The chapter concludes by considering openings for further inquiry with Augustine, followed by brief summaries of the chapters in the volume. existentiAl Phenomenology, hermeneutiCs, And rhetoriC The relationship between rhetoric and hermeneutics is a prime point of contact between continental thought and Augustine. Hermeneutic scholars regard Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine as the field’s founding text, launching both biblical and philosophical hermeneutics.3 While Augustine’s hermeneutic theory resides primarily in books 1–3, rhetorical scholars tend to focus on book 4, which is typically read as a “Christianization” of Cicero, and ignore the first three books.4 Augustine himself regards the four books the Confessions And the ContinentAls f 3 as a coherent whole, comprehending speaking performances that unite hermeneutics and rhetoric, wisdom and eloquence, in practice. That previous scholars have missed this connection reflects a broader, ongoing inattentiveness to the relationship between hermeneutics and rhetoric. As Michael Hyde and Craig R. Smith note, “An important relationship existing between hermeneutics and rhetoric has been overlooked by communication scholars,” with significant implications for the specifically epistemological functions of rhetoric and for rhetorical theory and criticism generally.5 Hyde and Smith suggest that to disclose the relationship between hermeneutics and rhetoric requires phenomenological inquiry, and they argue that all knowledge we acquire “is contextual, a...