Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi.
De Vera Rel., 39.72INTRODUCTION
In Chapters 1 and 2 of this study I propose the view that Augustine's soliloquies were intended to be understood as “spiritual exercises.” In Chapter 2, I outline the history of the soliloquy as a literary and philosophical genre in antiquity and discuss Augustine's use of soliloquies in handling one philosophical problem, namely the demonstration against Scepticism of the undeniability of the self's existence. In this chapter I am concerned with more general influences shaping Augustine's conception of such an exercise.
As a preface to the topic of general influences, I should like to return briefly to the question of Augustine's intellectual disorderliness in the dialogues. In the Introduction I tackled this question from the viewpoint of their disunifying features. I suggested that there are two sources of this apparent confusion, one of which, namely Augustine's implicit criticism of the external dialogue, is deftly introduced into the ongoing discussion of philosophical questions in order to create a favourable reception for his preferred alternative, the inner dialogue or soliloquy.
In general, the problem of the dialogues' disunity has been approached in one of two ways. The first was suggested by Pascal, who said that Augustine's sense of order includes even his digressions. In his view the non sequiturs break the flow of the discourse so frequently that they should be viewed as a principle of organization in themselves.
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