Abstract

In this article we have tried to draw some connections between the philosophy of St Augustine and the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger. The occasion for our choosing this subject was the fact that on the next 13th November 1620 years have elapsed since Augustine's day of birth. The way Augustine approached the basic questions of human existence is closely related to contemporary phenomenological thought. This we will illustrate with the help of some notions as „memory” and „time”. Modern thought is very interested in Augustine's reflection on interiority : in this respect his acute analysis of „memoria” is so timely because it tries to understand the interiority from within and in a continuous attempt to recover the original unity which in his view is the truth. Augustine philosophizes starting from the experienced reality of his seeking existence. None the less it would be wrong to call Augustine a forerunner of the modern way of viewing the problem of time. With him the problem of time is not limited to the horizontal perspective of human temporality as is the case with Husserl and Heidegger. But Augustine and the phenomenologists are united in the fundamental insight that human consciousness and time are connected one with the other. Highly appreciating Augustine's way of philosophizing from within actual experience, Heidegger thinks that Augustine sticked in a metaphysical idea of time which does no justice to the factuality of human existence. Heidegger thinks that for that reason existence lacks a sufficient ontological clarification. Nevertheless he discovered in Augustine several motives which are highly relevant for a contemporary view of man