Abstract

In recent Augustinian scholarship, a question has focused on the implications of what appears to be two separate views of time in Confessions, XI, 14.17-30.40 and in City of God, XI, 4-6. In the former passage Augustine contends that man and time were created simultaneously and that time is the distentio of the soul; in the latter context he intimates that time existed before man . ;The specific purpose of the dissertation is to formulate a basis on which to synthesize the two perspectives and thus demonstrating a unitary position on time in Augustine's philosophy. The basis set forth is the Plotinian fallen-soul doctrine with its particular notion of the relationship between time and eternity as well as the view that time is peculiarly oriented to the soul and its life. ;Consequently, the dissertation is predicted on the development of three basic contentions: in the history of ancient Greek philosophy there exists a persistent and discernible tradition of treating the subject of time as an objective phenomenon. Regardless of the extent of their philosophical differences, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus all viewed the nature of time from the perspective of change and succession; Augustine properly belongs to this tradition. The repeated attempts by various commentators to portray him as the progenitor of an entirely new methodology for dealing with the nature of time--one that prefigures Kant, Heidegger, or Bergson--is an interpretation which ignores the distinction between what time is in itself as extramental reality and what it is accidentally as measured; the immediate source for Augustine's view of time is Plotinus. For both thinkers, time is derived from the notion of eternity and for both the soul has fallen into time--its pride caused it to abandon the highest being for lower beings. ;Thus, Augustine does consider time to be an objective phenomenon independent of the mind in which it is measured. There are not two separate and contradictory views of time in his thought. Its objective basis lay in its "createdness," in its mutable character; its subjective dimension lay in the fallen soul which measures it