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

6. “A Limit That Resides in the Word”: Hermeneutic Appropriations of Augustine

93 John Arthos “A limit thAt resides in the word” Hermeneutic Appropriations of Augustine 6 Augustine occupies a pivotal place in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics, although at one remove—a teacher of teachers. The root of his significance for Gadamer lies principally in his reflections on “the deepest mystery of Christian doctrine, the mystery of the Trinity.”1 Gadamer placed unequivocal emphasis on this theme: “i personally believe that this doctrine has constantly stimulated the course of thought in the West as a challenge and invitation to try and think that which continually transcends the limits of human understanding.”2 The influence of Trinitarian thought bears principally on the hermeneutic approach to the nature of language, though the view of language developed in the encounter with Augustine takes Gadamer ’s hermeneutics in a direction so radical that we are still feeling its effects. We begin to see in Gadamer’s introduction how Augustine’s understanding of human time in the Confessions will dovetail with his understanding of logos in the Trinitarian writings. i am going to trace the link between these two themes in Augustine and show how this link bears fruit in hermeneutics. At the CrossroAds of western Culture Gadamer wrote a remarkable little précis of Augustine’s significance for Western philosophy in a school anthology he edited entitled Philosophisches Lesebuch, a four-volume collection of primary readings of the Western tradition .3 As an explanatory preface to the selection from Augustine’s Confessions , it has the simple purpose of placing the reading in context, but it has the characteristic density that Gadamer gave to even his simplest statements. it dwells on the connection Augustine establishes between temporality and 94 f Augustine for the PhilosoPhers the soul, and in doing so it opens a path to Augustine’s ruminations on Trinitarian theology as a whole. Gadamer invites his students to consider Augustine’s life experience and intellectual development in relation to Christian theology and the speculation that arose out of this encounter in its impact on the whole area of Western philosophy. Augustine connects two problems: the resistance of time to a simple chronological identity and the way human thought straddles an embodied materiality and a disembodied interiority. i translate Gadamer’s brief preface here in full: Among the early writers of the Christian church, the so-called Fathers or patristic authors, Augustine has by far the largest philosophical significance . He became one of the most influential church leaders, and the most gifted doctrinal systematizer of his time, but his peculiar eminence as a writer lies in the evident power and charisma of his person. The Confessions , a portrayal of his life and eventual acceptance of God’s authority, is one of the most famous writings of world literature, an uncompromising psychological self-portrait and at the same time an exemplar in the salvation literature of a man’s ascent to God. Augustine was originally an adherent of the dualist theology of Manichaeism, and his earliest writings display the heavy influence of philosophical skepticism. Ultimately, though, he came under the influence of the platonic schools, and especially Plotinus, whom he discovered under the tutelage of Gaius Marius Victorinus. in this way he became, after his conversion to Christianity, the quintessential representative of Christian Platonism. The climb of the soul to the heights, as he encountered in the philosophical Gnosticism of Plotinus, is sustained here through a personal experience with God and thus grants to the inner self-assurance of the soul a fundamental significance . The concept of memoria steps into the foreground and develops with it an entirely new dimension of interiority (Innerlichkeit). Memory and recollection point to an inner infinity of the soul, out of which emerges the entirety of awareness. The Christian mystery of the Trinity, which still remains an irresolvable riddle for the thought of natural philosophy, is illuminated repeatedly through analogies so as to make available the selfexperience of the soul. one of the most speculative works of Augustine, the fifteenth book of De Trinitate, elaborates variations on such analogies with a profound depth of speculative meaning. We offer here [in the anthology] the eleventh book of the Confessions; it has a special inner coherence because it brings together the autobiographical character that Augustine brings to the entire work with the introduction of a philosophical theme, the question of the being of time. The reason is “A limit thAt resides in...