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ST. AUGUSTINE'S DOCTRINE ON ILLUMINATION Few points in Augustinian doctrine have been discussed as much and interpreted as differently as diat on "illumination." It may appear presumptious if one tries to resume tiiis discussion. It seems, however, diat there is one approach which has not found die attention it deserves . I shall not review die various opinions on die nature of illumination ; tiiis is the more superfluous since it has been done in an exhaustive mannerby F. Cayre.1 Fromhis survey one gatiiers that diere is as yet no agreement on what illumination means. This lack of agreement is largely die result of die scant explanation St. Augustinehimself gives of his idea. Nowhere in his work is diedoctrine of illumination treated systematically or comprehensively. He assumed , probably, diat his meaning would be intelligible to his readers. This may have been die case because light appears as an explanatory principle also in Platonic and Neo-Platonic tiieories of cognition, quite apart fromthefactthat certain Scripturaltexts, of which St. Augustine avails himself frequendy, refer to light in more dian one sense. According to St. Augustine, light is die principle of all cognition. The performance of sight appears to him as die prototype of all, not only sensible, knowledge. "Since light is die most subtle tiling in die body and, tiierefore, closer to the soul than any odier tiling, it is first diffused alone by die eyes and radiates forth in the rays of the eyes towards die sensible tilings at which we look." In the other senses, die light is mixed up widi other matters; first with pure air, then with dark and nebulous air, diirdly with the still darker humidity—or liquid , humor—finally widi die toughness of earth. Correspondingly, die knowledge mediated by die otiier four senses becomes less and less clear.2 Light is die principle of sensory cognition. In tiiis case it is "corporeal " light. Intellectual cognition requires an "intelligible" or "incorporeal " light, on which more will be said below. Since all cognition requires light, "vision" becomes die prototype of all cognitive performances. Thus, St. Augustine remarks tiiat in reading a letter one makes use of "tiiree kinds of vision." There is, first, tiiat of the eyes by which the letter and its words are seen,then another vision ofthe spirit by which one thinks or has the image of the absent writer, and a tiiird vision of the mind which looks at love (con1 .F. Cayré, Initiation à ta philosophie de saint Augustin (Paris, 1947), p. 209ff. 2.De gen. ad lit., XIL, c.16., n. 32. 27 28ST. AUGUSTINE'S DOCTRINE ON ILLUMINATION tuitus) and tiierein envisages love understood by die mind (dilectio intellecta conspicitur) .s The representation by means of a memory image, tiius, is called a vision, and so also die intellectual understanding . The basic likeness of diese cognitive performances appears to St. Augustine as so evident diat he refers to it as a proof for die eminence of sight above otiier senses: the vision of the eye is able as is that of the spirit to envisage simultaneously many things.4 It should benoted tiiat the term "vision" signifies sometimes the performance of sight or of another cognitive power, frequently however also die product of such performances. The image which comes to be in die sense or in imagination is called vision. "The form which is impressed (on the mind) by die sense is called vision."5 Neidier the idea of light as die principle of cognition nor diat of vision as the prototype of all cognitive performances is original widi St. Augustine. These conceptions rest, as do several otiiers, on certain presuppositions which St. Augustine shared widi many of his contemporaries and witii which he had become acquainted tiirough his studies. One of diese presuppositions is common to almost all diinkers of Antiquity and also shared by many of die Middle Ages. Since Empedocles it had been the common conviction that there has to be a "connaturality " between agent and acted upon, tiierefore, also between knower and known. This conception is, for instance, implied in die well-known argument for the immateriality of the intellect: the intellect knows the immaterial, because not individualized...

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