Soliloquy and self-existence

Brian Stock

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511760877.005

2 - Soliloquy and self-existence

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011

Brian Stock

Show author details

Brian Stock: Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Etenim qui secum loqui poterit, sermonem alterius non requiret.

Cicero, Tusc. Disp., 5.117

Nearly all my writings are private conversations with myself. Things that I say to myself tête-à-tête.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter I attempted to provide a sketch of some of the factors which contributed to Augustine's adoption of the soliloquy as his preferred form of spiritual exercise. Among these I singled out (1) the lengthy tradition of “spiritual exercises” in ancient thought; (2) Augustine's incorporation of interiorist themes into his outlook before joining the priesthood; (3) his discovery of Cicero's Hortensius, which convinced him of the value of philosophy; (4) his interest in Scepticism and Platonism, and the rôle of Platonism in providing a historical rationale for “Christian philosophy”; (5) his innovative thinking about body and mind, which abandoned the Platonic and Neoplatonic disdain for corporality in favour of a doctrine inspired by his reading of Paul, in which the body plays a central part in spiritual progress; and finally (5) his approach to interpretation, which encompassed his studies in grammar and rhetoric and was shaped into a powerful tool for inward self-scrutiny.

In this chapter I focus on one element in this group of forces, namely the soliloquy itself, and its use in the demonstration of self-existence. My argument is that Augustine is not only interested in refuting the Sceptical view that nothing can be known for certain, as he states in Contra Academicos and elsewhere, but that he also, and perhaps principally, envisages the cogito as an important element in constructing a narrative philosophy.

Type: Chapter
Information: Augustine's Inner Dialogue
The Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity
, pp. 62 - 120

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511760877.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bermon, Emmanuel, Le “cogito” dans la pensée de saint Augustin (Paris, 2001), pp. 9–30Google Scholar

Stock, B., “Ludwig Wittgenstein: réflexions sur le rôle d'Augustin dans sa vie et pensée,” in B. Stock, Bibliothèques intérieures (Paris, 2005), pp. 227–252Google Scholar

Tasso, Torquato, Dell'arte del dialogo, chs. 3–9, ed. Baldassari, Guido, intro., Ordine, Nuccio (Naples, 1998), pp. 38–42Google Scholar

Bede, , Soliloquium de Psalmo 41 (CCSL 122 [1955], p. 447)

Abelard, Peter, Soliloquium, ed. Charles Burnett (Studi medievali 25 [1984], 885–891)

,Bernard of Clairvaux, Soliloquium (ed. Leclercq, J., S. Bernardi Opera 6.2 [Rome, 1972], pp. 239–240)Google Scholar

Kempis, Thomas à, Soliloquium Animae, ed. M. J. Pohl, vol. I (1910), pp. 191–346

Montaigne, , Essais, 39, ed. Villey, Pierre, vol. i (Paris, 1965), p. 241Google Scholar

Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Idea, 2nd edn (1844), trans. Haldane, R. B. and Kemp, J. (London, 1883), book 3, respectively pp. 263–264 and 246Google Scholar

Arnold, Matthew, The Poems of Matthew Arnold, ed. Allot, Kenneth (London, 1965), p. 591Google Scholar

Eliot, T. S., “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca,” Selected Essays 1917–1932 (London, 1932), p. 129.Google Scholar

Hadot, Ilsetraut, Seneca und die griechisch-römische Tradition der Seelenleitung (Berlin, 1969), pp. 142–176CrossRef Google Scholar

Hadot, Pierre, The Inner Citadel: The “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Chase, Michael (Cambridge, MA.: 1998), pp. 88–89Google Scholar

Armstrong, A. H., Plotinus, vol. i (Cambridge, MA, 1989), pp. 29, 31

Magee, John, “Boethius' Anapestic Dimeters (Atatalectic), with regard to the Structure and Argument of the Consolatio,” in Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, ed. Galonnier, A. (Paris, 2003), pp. 147–169Google Scholar

Lerer, Seth, Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in “The Consolation of Philosophy. ” (Princeton, 1985), pp. 90, 152, and 204CrossRef Google Scholar

White, Nicholas P., in Plato: Complete Works, ed. Cooper, John M. and Hutchinson, D. S. (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1997), p. 288

McLeod, Colin, Collected Essays (Oxford, 1983), pp. 262–291Google Scholar

Hadot, Ilsetraut, “Épicure et l'enseignement philosophique hellénistique et romain,” Actes du VIIIe Congrès de l'Association Guillaume Budé (Paris, 1969), pp. 347–354Google Scholar

Rutherford, R. B., The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study (Oxford, 1989), pp. 16–17Google Scholar

Lim, Richard, “Manichaeans and Public Disputation in Late Antiquity,” RA 26 (1992), 236–237Google Scholar

Conybeare, Catherine, The Irrational Augustine (Oxford, 2006), pp. 61–138CrossRef Google Scholar

Madec, Goulven, “L'historicité des Dialogues à Cassiciacum,” RA 32 (1986), 207–231Google Scholar

Andrieu, Jean, Le dialogue antique: Structure et présentation (Paris, 1954), p. 283Google Scholar

Dekkers, Eligius, “Saint Augustin éditeur,” Troisième centenaire de l'édition mauriste de saint Augustin … (Paris, 1990), pp. 235–244.Google Scholar

Saenger, Paul, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, 1997), chs. 1–2Google Scholar

Chadwick, Henry, “History and Symbolism in the Garden of Milan,” in From Augustine to Eriugena: Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in Honor of John O'Meara, ed. Martin, F. X. and Richmond, J. A. (Washington, DC, 1991), pp. 42–55Google Scholar

Courcelle, Pierre, Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin, 2nd edn (Paris, 1968), pp. 188–201Google Scholar

Stock, B., Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1996), pp. 20–111Google Scholar

Morrison, Karl F., Conversion and Text: The Cases of Augustine of Hippo, Herman-Judah, and Constantine Tsatsos (Charlottesville, 1992)Google Scholar

Schopenhauer, Arthur, “On Philosophy and its Method,” no. 6, in Parerga and Perilipomena, trans. Payne, E. F. J. (Oxford, 1974), vol. ii, p. 7Google Scholar

Stock, B., “Intelligo me esse: Eriugena's ‘Cogito’,” in Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie (Paris, 1977), pp. 327–335Google Scholar

Jeauneau, Edouard, “Le Cogito érigénien,” Traditio 50 (1995), 95–110CrossRef Google Scholar

Janowski, Zbigniew, Index Augustino-Cartésien: Textes et commentaire (Paris, 2000), pp. 20–106Google Scholar

Janowski, , Cartesian Theodicy: Descartes' Quest for Certitude (Dordrecht, 2000), pp. 141–149CrossRef Google Scholar

Hankey, Wayne J., “Between and Beyond Augustine and Descartes: More than a Source of the Self,” Augustinian Studies 32 (2001), 65–72CrossRef Google Scholar

Geneviève, [Rodis]-Lewis, “Augustinisme et cartésianisme,” in AM, vol. ii (Paris, 1954), pp. 1087–1104; repr. in L'Anthropologie cartésienne (Paris, 1990), pp. 101–125Google Scholar

Gilson, Etienne, “Le Cogito et la tradition augustinienne,” in Études sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien 2nd edn (Paris, 1930), pp. 190–201yearGoogle Scholar

Gilson, , The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York, 1937), pp. 125–198Google Scholar

Gouhier, Henri, Cartésianisme et Augustinisme au xvii siècle (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar

Marion, Jean-Luc, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Paris, 1981)Google Scholar

Menn, Stephen, Descartes and Augustine (Cambridge, 1998)CrossRef Google Scholar

Bourgeois-Gironde, Sacha, Reconstruction analytique du cogito (Paris, 2001), esp. pp. 132–155Google Scholar

Matthews, Gareth B., “Augustine on the Mind's Search for Itself,” Faith and Philosophy 20 (2003), 415–429CrossRef Google Scholar

Anscombe, G. E. M., “The First Person,” in Mind and Language, ed. Guttenplan, Samuel (Oxford, 1975), p. 44Google Scholar

Biographia Literaria, ed. Shawcross, J. (London, 1907), vol. i, pp. 94–95

McFarland, Thomas, “Coleridge and Descartes,” in Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (Oxford, 1969), pp. 320–323Google Scholar

Husserl, Edmund, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. Gibson, R. W. Royce (New York, 1962), part 2, chs. 3–4Google Scholar

Kant, Emmanuel, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in Emmanuel Kants Werke (in Gemeinschaft mit Hermann Cohen et al.), ed. Cassirer, Ernst (Berlin, 1912–1922), vol. iii, p. 647Google Scholar

Leibniz, , see Die philosophische Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ed.Gerhardt, C. J. (Berlin, 1895–1890), vol. iv, p. 468Google Scholar

Bochet, Isabelle, Saint Augustin et le désir de Dieu (Paris, 1982), pp. 118–130Google Scholar

Martin, J., Symposion: Die Geschichte einer literarischen Form (Paderborn, 1931)Google Scholar

Pantel, Pauline Schmitt, Le cité au banquet: Histoire du repas public dans les cités grecques (Rome, 1992)Google Scholar

Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Idea, 2nd edn (1844), trans. Haldane, R. B. and Kemp, J. (London, 1883), p. 253Google Scholar

Madec, Goulven, Saint Augustin et la philosophie. Notes critiques (Paris, 1996), pp. 21–23Google Scholar

Cipriani, Nello, “La schema dei tria vitia (voluptas, superbia, curiositas) nel De vera religione: Antropologia sogiacente e fonti,” AUG 38 (1998), 158–161Google Scholar

Stock, , Augustine the Reader, pp. 23–33, 126–206

Studer, Basil, “History and Faith in Augustine's De Trinitate,” Augustinian Studies 28.1 (1997), 14–15Google Scholar

Williams, “The Paradoxes of Self-Knowledge in the De Trinitate,” in Augustine: Presbyter factus sum: Collectanea Augustiniana, ed. Lienhard, J. (New York, 1993), pp. 121–134Google Scholar

Gioia, Luigi, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine's “De Trinitate, ” (Oxford, 2008), pp. 6–23CrossRef Google Scholar

Hill, E., Augustine, Saint, The Trinity in The Works of Saint Augustine 1.5 (New York, 1991), pp. 18–59Google Scholar

Ayres, Lewis, “Between Athens and Jerusalem: Prolegomena to Anthropology in De Trinitate,” Modern Theology 8.1 (1992), 53–73CrossRef Google Scholar

Ayres, , “The Discipline of Self-Knowledge in Augustine's De trinitate Book x,” in The Passionate Intellect, ed. Ayres, Lewis (Brunswick, NJ, 1995), pp. 261–296Google Scholar

Hankey, Wayne J., “Self-Knowledge and God as Other in Augustine: Problems for a Postmodern Revival,” Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter 4 (1999), 83–123CrossRef Google Scholar

Book contents

2 - Soliloquy and self-existence

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive