{"id":555,"date":"2016-08-08T11:05:28","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T11:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/?p=555"},"modified":"2016-08-08T11:07:06","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T11:07:06","slug":"a-dilation-of-the-soul-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/a-dilation-of-the-soul-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"A dilation of the soul-itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Aurelius Augustinus was born on 13 November 354 to the small-landowning Aurelii of Thagaste, an \u201cobscure provincial city\u201d in the uplands of Roman Numidia; and in the year of his birth the Christian emperor in Milan devised this new imperial epithet: \u201cEternity.\u201d He died as Augustinus Hipponiensis, in the Vandal-besieged city of Hippo Regius \u2014fronting the Numidian coast, not far from Thagaste\u2014on 28 August 430.<\/p>\n

As of this writing, then, Augustine is \u2018long dead.\u2019 And this expression, however banal, is suggestive, since Augustine asked when he was still living: \u201cWhere is the time we call \u2018long\u2019?\u201d Or said differently: What is the condition of possibility of a Greek poet\u2019s trope like \u201cthe long years of time\u201d (\u03c4\u1ff7 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u1ff7 \u03c7\u03c1\u03cc\u03bd\u1ff3), or a hackneyed Latinism like \u201cthe space of time\u201d (spatium
\ntemporis)?<\/p>\n

For Augustine in Confessions XI\u2014as for Aristotle in the Categories and Physics, or Cicero in De Natura Deorum\u2014the Greek \u03c7\u03c1\u03cc\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 and Latin tempus signify, in the first instance, a space of time. Thus, to ask with Augustine, in Confessions XI, \u201cWhat is time?\u201d is also necessarily to ask this: What is time\u2019s dimension or space?<\/p>\n

In the Eighty-Three Questions, Augustine alludes to star-clocks that could subdivide hours into \u201csixty minutes\u201d (sexaginta minutas), minutes into \u201cseconds\u201d (minutas minutarum). In Confessions XI, he then speculates that seconds could be subdivided into \u201chyper-minimal instants\u201d (minutissimas momentorum). Only such a \u2018microsecond,\u2019 only a \u201chyper-minimal point of time\u201d is ever present.<\/p>\n

This is why Augustine asks in Confessions XI, \u2018Where is the time we call long?\u2019 He responds, \u201cin the soul.\u201d And what is the space of time? In the last pages of Confessions XI, Augustine suggests that it is \u201csome dilation\u201d (quandam . . . distentionem), and apparently, \u201ca dilation . . . of the soul-itself<\/strong>\u201d (distentionem . . . ipsius animi).<\/p>\n

David van Dusen. The Space of Time: A Sensualist Interpretation of Time in Augustine, Confessions X to XII. Leiden: Brill, 2014. (pp 1-4)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurelius Augustinus was born on 13 November 354 to the small-landowning Aurelii of Thagaste, an \u201cobscure provincial city\u201d in the uplands of Roman Numidia; and in the year of his birth the Christian emperor in Milan devised this new imperial epithet: \u201cEternity.\u201d He died as Augustinus Hipponiensis, in the Vandal-besieged city of Hippo Regius \u2014fronting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[94,8,95,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":557,"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sicv.activearchives.org\/logbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}