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God and the Soul: A ugustine on the J ourney to True Selfhood

2014; Wiley; Volume: 57; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/heyj.12166

1468-2265

Terence Sweeney,

Violence, Religion, and Philosophy

In the past century, the decentering or opacity of the self has been of increasing importance in philosophy, whether in existentialism, psychoanalysis, or post-modernism. This is often seen as a new development after the confidence of Enlightenment and 19th century thought. While there are certainly new trends in these schools of thought, they are not without precedent: Augustine wrestled with the problem of selfhood and self-knowledge. In fact, he saw it as one of the two primary issues for the intellect, claiming in his Soliloquiorum that he sought only to know 'God and the soul.'1 The similarities of Augustine's search to contemporary concerns, especially those of Christian existentialists, is marked and important. Augustine, in writing his spiritual exercises, reveals to his readers the groundwork needed to return to true selfhood. We should not treat Augustine's philosophy of form and his existential concerns as unrelated but reflect on them as revealing our existential predicament. Further, we must recognize the epistemic problem of ourselves as known-unknowns; this is the hint that leads us to become persons on the way to self-knowledge. Recognizing this, we can see that the necessary condition for knowing oneself is that we must come to ourselves, stop wandering, and start the journey to selfhood. We come to ourselves as lost but able to perceive the rough contours of our way home. The way home is a turn from created goods to our inner selves where we find the Selfsame who calls us to become selfsames. By reflecting on the beginning of the journey to true selfhood, Augustine shows that we can establish the conditions for selfhood by becoming and remaining peregrini, focused on the mystery of our self and our God, while ever seeking to return to our true home with God who is the very self of our selves. When Augustine says he want to know the soul, does he mean this as an academic pursuit? Is he referring to soul in general or his soul in particular? The answer initially seems unclear. In the Soliloquiorum, Augustine states he wants to know the soul and God, but only pages later he prays 'Oh God, who art ever the same, let me know myself and Thee.'2 It seems that these two expressions are of a different sort: one desiring knowledge of soul and the other of myself. The two statements are oriented differently. Augustine states his intellectual goal in a manner not too different from a statement of intent or an abstract for a paper; whereas, the second expression is a prayer spoken to God. One seems to seek a kind of academic knowledge of the nature of the soul in the form of an abstract scientific search. The other is an impassioned plea more reminiscent of a psalm than an academic abstract. These seemingly distinct epistemic goals are part of what makes the Augustine's Confessionum so bewildering to some. Why does Augustine combine books 1–9 with books 10–13? The first part seems to be autobiographical, a story about the self seeking self-knowledge; whereas, the last books are structured more like an academic discourse on the nature of the soul in time and on the book of Genesis. Is this distinction between the desire for self-knowledge and the desire to know the soul an accurate one? The opening nine books of the Confessionum are not devoid of philosophical reflection nor are the last four books purely 'academic.' The self is a soul, thus knowledge of soul would help in self-knowledge, and knowledge of the self as instantiation of soul would help in understanding soul. However, this account still keeps this knowledge on a scientific abstract level. We should not merely think of the self as a specimen that is better understood by knowing the genus, or that knowing the specimen will give use greater data about the genus. For Augustine, it does not seem that the problem of self/soul knowledge is scientifically abstract like this. It may be helpful to introduce a distinction made by Gabriel Marcel. Marcel indicates that there are two basic forms of questions that face a human person. He calls the first kind a problem. A problem is an issue or question in which the self of the questioner is not in question. They are not implicated by the problem and can abstract themselves from the question. Mysteries on the other hand do implicate the self; they are questions in which the questioners are at question themselves. To question the nature of the soul is to inquire about one's very self. The question and the possible answers impact the person asking. Augustine's intellectual interests were oriented to what Marcel would later call mystery. This is part of the reason that some 20th century scholars have cited Augustine as an existentialist. 3 Augustine took seriously many themes that 20th century existentialist considered however he also believed in the essential soul. Nonetheless, he did not detach the soul from an earnest account of the self; he kept the intellectual and existential united.4 The intellectual goal to know nature of the soul and the prayer to know the self are not distinct; they are an expression of a person trying to understand the mystery of the self who is a soul. In this, the prayer for self-knowledge informs the statement of intent about knowing the soul. Further, it is notable that in the Soliloquiorum, Augustine, as he learns from Reason, moves from a more abstract desire to know the soul to a more existential desire to understand his self. The strict separation of the intellectual and the existential is not present in Augustine's thought (although Augustine sees this divide in the curious). In mystery, the intellectual goal of knowing the soul and the prayer to know the self are two sides of the same coin. Augustine describes this mystery as an enigma. 'I became a great enigma to myself and I was forever asking my soul why it was sad and why it disquieted me so sorely. And my soul knew not what to answer me.'5 The soul disquiets itself because it is a mystery to itself; the solution cannot be found by reading academic texts that elucidate problems (although that can help). It cannot be inquired into as 'men proceed to investigate the phenomena of nature… for they wish to know simply for the sake of knowing.'6 Robert Vallee rightly points out that 'Augustine is a thinker who is quickly bored with problems and fascinated by mysteries, the mystery of himself and his world no less than the mystery of his God.'7 Those who are dominated by curiosity only seek the solution to problems and ignore mysteries, which are the questions toward which the mind should be oriented. In this, an essentialist without an existential orientation reduces the soul to a problem and thus a matter of curiosity. One can be curious about the soul, itching to know its arrangement without recognizing the need for conversion. Augustine contrasts individuals who are curious about problems (and thus problematize the soul) with those who are studious (and thus recognize the mystery of the soul): 'both have a keen desire to know, the curious man… about things which do not concern him, and the studious man… about things which do concern him.'8 Augustine is not an abstract philosopher; he philosophizes with his soul on the line. He is looking for the revelation of the self and of God; this is his philosophical prayer. Augustine critiques those 'who love truth when it reveals itself' and 'hate truth when it reveals them.'9 Those who are curious about the essence of the soul may discover true things about the soul but do not discover the truth about themselves. As Augustine notes, 'much that they [the curious] know is true, but they do not religiously seek the Truth' and thus they do not find the truth about themselves or of God.10 They have missed the mystery of the self-soul. In T.S. Eliot's words, they 'had the experience but missed the meaning.'11 'Above all, the work, even if it is apparently theoretical and systematic, is written not so much to inform the reader of a doctrinal content but to form him, to make him traverse a certain itinerary in the course of which he will make spiritual progress. This procedure is clear in the works of Plotinus and Augustine, in which all the detours, starts and stops, and digressions of the work are formative elements.'12 It appears theoretical or systematic because there is form; it is an exercise because the self is involved. Augustine's more systematic writing (like De Trinitate) and his more personal writing (like in books 1–9 of the Conf.) must be read as spiritual exercises for the essential soul. A spiritual exercise is not an academic pursuit, nor is it merely an existential or personal quest of self-actualization. It is the exercise of a self, who is a soul, trying to understand itself and become the soul it is and is meant to be. The writing is both an exercise for the writer and an invitation to the reader. It is not the claim to have figured out everything for 'the modesty of a mind admitting incapacity' is a necessary part of the spiritual exercise.13 In addition, for Augustine, the combined spiritual exercise of seeking the self and God is not an arbitrary combination. These are not separate searches in which we try to understand two wholly different subject matters. Nor is this search for one thing; rather, the desire to know God and the self interpenetrates. The reasons for this will be clearer in the course of these reflections. It may strike one that, for Augustine, the self's knowledge of itself is not a mystery at all. In fact, at times in Augustine's writings he appears to present the human person as capable of solving the mystery of selfhood with ease. In De Libero Arbitrio, Augustine claims that all one must do to live the good life is 'to do nothing but will it.'14 In De Trinitate, he writes 'The mind knows nothing so well as that which is present to itself, and nothing is more present to the mind as it is to itself.'15 In fact, the mind does more than merely know itself, 'the mind always remembers itself, always understands itself, and always loves itself.'16 What then of the Delphic command to 'know thyself?' Augustine writes that the mind 'knows itself at the very instant in which it understands the word thyself.'17 It seems from these passages and others that for Augustine self-knowledge was not only achievable but comparatively easy for the mind which is present to itself. However, in other texts Augustine considers himself a great enigma. He sees within himself parts that are unknown: 'You cannot lay bare the lurking places of your mind.'18 Augustine argues that the mind's vastness is due to its memory and that the mind is memory. He describes memory as full of 'hidden and unsearchable caverns'19 and says that 'in my memory too I meet myself.'20 The mind is a vast place full of unsearched areas and within this unknown interior, the self meets itself. Where in the memory do we meet ourselves? The vastness is so great that Augustine says of himself 'I do not even know what I do not know.'21 Augustine is detailing a double layered problem: we are ignorant of our own ignorance. However, if the self was truly an unknown-unknown, then there would be a total crisis of self-knowledge, a kind of epistemic blindness that conceals our own inability to see. For Augustine this is need not be the case. The self can at least know itself as unknown. This is why Augustine can say of the Manichean Faustus that 'He was not entirely ignorant of his own ignorance' and mean it as praise, faint though it may be.22 To have some awareness of one's own ignorance is a sign of self-knowledge. The self is a known-unknown. How can we understand these two contrary accounts? Are we an easily known soul on an unsearchable self? There are several factors at play that indicate that the latter account is the fuller and more accurate one; however, the two accounts need to be taken in concert. First, it should be reiterated that the self is not wholly unknown. In fact, if it were, it could not begin a search for itself. If it were fully unknown, we could not seek it or know it if we found it. Nor would one seek self-knowledge if one already had complete self-knowledge. The problematic self relates to Plato's claim in the Meno that a person 'cannot search for what he knows—since he knows it, there is no need to search—nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for.'23 The self is not an unknown-unknown, but rather a known-unknown and therefore searchable.24 Augustine notes that when we remember or recall, what we remember was not totally lost or else it could not be recalled. The self has forgotten itself but not wholly. Augustine further notes that when something has been totally forgotten, one cannot be reminded of it but must have the idea reintroduced. If the self were 'utterly blotted out of the mind, we should not remember it' and therefore could not seek it.25 The fully forgotten self has fallen into oblivion. This oblivion is the hell of the self wholly outside itself and therefore wholly separate from God. However, this is not the state of the soul in the world. We remember our self enough to desire to seek it or at least be reminded of it. This sense of divide from self is the hint that God gives us. It can be the intimation that leads one to stop wandering and start wayfaring. He writes that God 'gave my memory the hint of the answer that I was later to arrive at for myself.'26 This hint makes the self a mystery for itself because it becomes a known-unknown. 'Thou [God] in whose eyes I have become a question to myself.'27 By making us a question to ourselves, God compels the self to seek itself. It is this combination of knowing and not knowing, which Augustine calls 'lightless knowledge or… enlightened ignorance,' that allows our search to begin.28 The paradox of a knowable unknown is the source of our restlessness, which sets the soul seeking. This contrast can be clarified further by recognizing Augustine's uses of conditional claims attached to or related to his statements regarding the ease of self-knowledge. For instance, consider the quotation cited above from De Libero Arbitrio, in which Augustine says that the good life requires nothing but willing it. The key to the passage is that the person must wish 'to live rightly and honorable… before all fugitive and transient goods.'29 Once one has done this, the good life will come easily. However, it is precisely this which it is so difficult or impossible to do. In the Confessionum, he states that 'willing means willing wholly.'30 The soul has been scattered by its desires, and the weight of them makes it hard or impossible to will wholly. As Augustine notes repeatedly, the soul is led by its desires but desire is like a weight. If we are pulled in the wrong direction it is difficult (or impossible without help) to redirect our desires to the true and eternal and away from the fugitive and transient. Further, Augustine follows up his claims about the know-ability of the self in De Trinitate by indicating major epistemological and ethical problems (which are, for Augustine, much the same thing). All we need to know 'thyself' is to know what 'thyself' is, but this is precisely the crux of the issue. We misidentify ourselves! We desire transient goods and thus identify ourselves with them, 'from this arise its [the soul's] shameful error, that it can no longer distinguish the images of sensible things from itself, so as to see itself alone.'31 Due to this error, we become less real, less ourselves. We identify ourselves with things and thus are outside of ourselves. We attend to things and so fail to attend to our attending, which is the self. The self is attention as knowledge and love. In failing to attend to this, we sink 'into being less and less… by desiring to seek knowledge from these things that are without… it [the soul] thinks of itself so much the less.'32 The double meanings in this sentence are important: quantitatively and qualitatively. The soul thinks less of itself in a quantitative way. It thinks of itself less often – its attention is directed elsewhere. Augustine writes it is 'one thing not to know oneself and another thing not to think of oneself.'33 The command to know thyself is primarily a command to pay attention – to think of oneself more. The soul also thinks less of itself in that it does not recognize the quality of the soul in contrast to lesser goods. By identifying with these desired images, it binds itself to them and, as such, thinks it is of the same nature as them. 'The mind errs when it binds itself to these images… [and thus] regards itself as something of this kind.'34 If one identifies one's self with transient goods, one thinks of his or her identity as being the same as those transient goods. In so doing, one does not even know what a 'thyself' is (the nature of soul) which as Augustine makes clear is required to know thyself. When one 'knows' yourself in such a condition one is really knowing things that are not one's self. Such a person is outside of himself or herself and therefore is not the same as his or her self. It would be easy to know one's self if one was not distracted from the self, if one were not outside the self. However, our distraction, the weight of our desire, is difficult or impossible to correct. We can barely remember that we are more than we think we are. When we are reminded, we are struck with how different we are from our true self. We discover that we are not present to ourselves. This incongruity with one's true self is the hint we need; because, it points us to the destination that Augustine believes we must all set out for. Self-presence is not a given; it is this self-presence that has been lost and must be worked for. Susan Mennel, in "Augustine's 'I;' 'Knowing Subject and Self," helpfully reads Augustine's philosophy of self through the lens of Jacques Derrida. She argues that Augustine does not maintain a knowing subject in the manner that Derrida and others reject. Mennel writes 'again and again, Augustine explores the boundaries of consciousness and again and again he finds, not the self-present knowing subject of philosophy, but the changeable, unknowable self, deeply embedded in time and language.'35 Mennel's account is helpful for showing the problem of presence in Augustine's thought; however, she does not fully account for the Augustine's positive description for self-presence. Augustine does find an unknown self embedded in time and language, but this spurs him to turn inward, transcend the self, and find the immutable God who is present to the self. Mennel reads Augustine as deconstructing Neoplatonism, and this reading is based on her attempt to demonstrate the supposed 'irreconcilable differences' between 'Hebraic and Hellenic strains of Western thought.'36 Such an impulse is valuable because it emphasizes the radical quality of Hebraic thought. However, Mennel's reading fails to take seriously how much Augustine was indebted to Hellenic thought. Augustine both reconciles and revolutionizes Greek philosophy and Hebraic scripture. The strength of Augustine reflections are that he overcomes the differences of Hellenic and Hebraic thought and helps forge a new Christian intellectual synthesis from them. Inheriting the Hebraic tradition, Augustine thought that the self suffers under a diaspora from its true homeland. He also utilizes the Hellenic tradition, arguing that the self could develop a knowing-presence to the soul through the presence of the transcendent and immanent God. His language continually weaves and transforms these two strains. Augustine's road to selfhood depends on his conversion to Hellenic Platonism and his deep reflection on the Hebraic Psalms. If the self does not know itself and in fact is outside of itself, how can this be remedied? Clearly conversion, a turning of the self, is needed, but how is this to be brought about? The journey to the self begins with the hint at the heart of the paradox above. Somehow despite distracting ourselves, despite paying attention to the wrong things, despite the crisis of forgetfulness, we have been reminded of something. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, it is said that at the lowest moment in the prodigal's existence that 'he came to himself.' (Luke 15:17) This passage was of special importance to Augustine. The soul has gone out of itself and in a moment of realization comes to itself. This is only the beginning; the prodigal son must now begin his journey back home. What can account for this 'coming to one's self?' Robert Vallee rightly points out 'the topography of the human heart is complex. The movements of the heart open a vast field of questions, aporiai and hermeneutical tensions. Nevertheless, no mystery is more mysterious than the soul's awakening. The soul is a vast deep and is only explicable as inexplicable.'37 Vallee recognizes the mysterious quality of awakening. How could one explicate the transition from sleep to awakening? We woke from forgetfulness; the awakening happened right before we woke. If we cannot remember the exact moment before we woke up this morning, how could we recall the moment before our spiritual awakening? Yet, Augustine does try to understand this mystery without claiming a full grasp of it. Part of the answer to this mystery lies in Augustine's famous passage from Book 10 Chapter XXVII. Augustine writes: 'Thou were within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things Thou hast made.'38 Augustine was outside of himself and far from God, wallowing in created things which are good in themselves but which he turns into swill for himself. Nevertheless, it is important to note that, even at the lowest, the human person is looking for happiness. What is happiness? Augustine states that happiness is 'to be joyful in Thee and for Thee and because of Thee, this and no other.'39 Who then could be said to be happy in this world? Augustine does not answer this question directly, but he does maintain that we all seek happiness. Augustine, like the prodigal son, was seeking happiness in his wandering. Even in his darkness, he was still looking for God and himself. The problem is that he did not know what God and self are. This is the crisis of self-knowledge we noted in the passages from De Trinitate. In this life, we are searching for God and soul, but we do not know what we are doing, and thus get lost in the realm of forgetting by attending to the outside. Augustine 'was kept from Thee [God] by those things.'40 Those things are created things and thus are ontologically dependent on God. 'Had they not been in Thee, they would not have been at all.'41 Augustine was thoroughly distracted from the true search, or as Eliot describes, the prodigal is 'distracted from distraction by distraction.'42 And yet, the things we distract ourselves with are created goods. There is no Manichean god who made things to distract us. God made them. The things in the world are in God and are only distractions because we make them so. However, even as distractions, their goodness can cause them to be signs for us. After noting that these things are in God, Augustine writes that 'Thou didst call and cry to me and break open my deafness.'43 Augustine's language to describe this call uses all five of the senses. While this in part indicates metaphorical mental senses, which perceive God, it is clear that Augustine wants us to realize that even physical senses give us the hint of God's presence. This has a further implication. Even the worst sinner still has some hint or intimation of God and the self. The restlessness of our heart is a sign that we are not at home. 'I walked through dark and slippery places, and I went out of my self in the search for You and did not find the God of my heart.'44 The person walking through dark and slippery places is lost but still wants happiness. They are looking for God and themselves in the wrong place, but they are looking. This looking, as a kind of restlessness, is a clue. The person may not know this, they may have almost totally forgotten themselves, but they are looking. Augustine refers to this as a kind of wandering. He writes 'being a wayfaring spirit, I did not return to you but in my drifting was born on towards imaginings which have no reality either in You or in me.'45 Augustine does not use his term for the true searcher here: peregrinus. Peregrinus is a term for a person who is a foreigner, a stranger in a strange land who knows they are a foreigner and are striving to return home. The prodigal son becomes a peregrinus when he comes to himself and starts to return home. However, in this passage Augustine say the self is spiritus ambulans, a walking or traversing spirit; they are ambulando ambulabam, a wandering wanderer.46 This is the spiritual wandering which Augustine describes by saying 'I had spilt out my soul upon the sand.'47 We pour ourselves out as a drifter does, going from place to place without ever realizing two related truths: we are homeless and we have a home. Forgetting this, we are borne towards imaginings with no reality; we move toward the oblivion of totally forgetting God and self. The fallen soul starts to head towards things which are 'invented' by their 'own folly playing upon matter.'48 In this state, the fallen soul becomes like 'those, who love the journey rather than the return home or the journey's end, are to be sent into distant parts…. Never reaching home.'49 Their soul would be an unknown-unknown and therefore one could neither search for it nor recognize it. If one gets to this state, it may be that one would have fallen completely, for what could remind them if they have forgotten their homeland completely. It is not clear if Augustine thinks this oblivion of the soul occurs in this life but it would be the case in Hell, 'the distant parts.' However, the wandering soul has not fallen to the depths of oblivion. The wandering wanderer is still driven onto something, this drive is a clue and so are the things we pour ourselves out onto. Fallen souls are wandering wanderers in the world of things that God made, things which point to God. The restless wandering, and the world wandered in, point to God. The partial forgetting can be overcome. This is what inspired Augustine's reflections on Psalm 136 'By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remember Zion…. If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand whither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!' (Psalm 136:1) Augustine understands Babylon as our place of exile and the river as a symbol of mutability. What could be worse than to come to love our wandering in mutability? As Robert O'Connell writes 'whoever finds wayfaring sweet, does not love his homeland'50 and thus cannot find their way to their homeland. In this place of exile, the worst thing that could happen is to totally forget Jerusalem, the place where we stand with God. To forget fully would be to 'gain the whole world' (to be dissipated in time and space) and to lose (totally forget) one's soul and one's true home. To avoid this, the soul, when it stops wandering and looking, must recognize itself as peregrinus. The soul needs to seek its true home and journey to it. This requires the discipline to constantly remind oneself that one is on the way and not at home yet. How can the soul transition from being a wandering wanderer to being a peregrinus? This can occur by realizing what we actually desire, happiness with God, and that we are looking for it in the wrong place. Surprisingly, created things serve as reminders precisely in that they are created. They 'remind' us inasmuch as we understand them as created. The shift in attention occurs in and through the very things we distract ourselves with but only if we come to see them as created. How can those things that we had enjoyed as distractions become the instrument that God uses to remind us of ourselves? How can the wandering wanderer become a peregrinus by the very things that indirectly caused him or her to wander? They cannot act as reminders if we have fallen into the non-being of invented vanities; however, up until then, they can be signs. Augustine describes this distracted search earlier in Book 10. It is precisely the truth that created things are in God that allows them to point to God. In Chapter VI, Augustine describes himself interrogating the world, asking all the things he wanders amongst 'what is this God?' and they all answer 'We are not your God; seek higher.'51 God is our highest love and the things of the world remind us that they are not our highest love. Augustine begs the things of the world to 'tell me something of Him' and they 'cried out in a great voice: 'He made us.' '52 What was this strange dialogue? 'My questioning was my gazing upon them, and their answer was their beauty.'53 The word translated as beauty is species, which in Latin means both beauty and form. The perception of the beauty/form of things is what attracts our attention. When we perceive beauty rightly, we listen to the created things and look higher. How does Augustine describe this looking higher? He writes, 'I turned to myself and said, 'and you, who are you?' '54 The things of the world (which are in God) tell the searcher of God; in so doing, they compel the searcher to 'come to himself.'55 This dynamic once again reaffirms the interpenetration and mutual dependence of Augustine's two epistemic desires to know God and soul. The beauty of the world tells him that God made the world and this telling induces him to turn inward. A true inward turn requires that the self no longer focus on the body but on the soul: on the interior homine, the true self. The revelation of beauty is the revelatio