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Augustine’s Confessions and the Transcendental Ground of Consciousness, or How Literary Narrative Becomes Prophetic Revelation
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 38, Number 1, April 2014
- pp. 204-222
- 10.1353/phl.2014.0005
- Article
- Additional Information
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The generic paradigms for Augustine’s discourse include not only autobiography but also theology, philosophy, exegesis, and “confession.” However, most importantly of all, Augustine’s discourse is cast into the form of a dialogue with God. His life story, unfolding in a succession of anecdotes, forms a horizontal axis that is traversed by and wholly subsumed under a vertical axis, along which he converses directly with God. The point of view evoked through this dialogue is not a temporally finite point of view but rather the totum simul vision of divinity.