Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Journal of Religion, Vol. 91, No. 1, The Augustinian Moment (January 2011), pp. 24-42 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/656605 . Accessed: 08/02/2011 07:51
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Religion.
http://www.jstor.org
Resting, Moving, Loving: The Access to the Self according to Saint Augustine* Jean-Luc Marion /
University of Chicago
i. creation and the question of the self The rather obvious, although often overlooked, structure of the Confessiones suggests strongly that the questions about his own self, which have upset Saint Augustine within the rst nine books, nd some universal answers either from conceptual analysis (in Confessiones 10) or on biblical grounds (in Confessiones 1113). I would like to show, at least to suggest very briey, how the doctrines of creation (including those of the heaven of the heavens and of the creation de nihilo) contribute to dening the place where, or more exactly from where, the confessio can be lifted up and the self become accessible to himself. But, in fact, it becomes possible to praise God as God only if God himself opens the place and gives the time for it. And where would that be except in God himself? So, the creatures place is not found in itself, but always in God, such that the place for the confessio of God is determined by and in God, to the point that creation consists only in the opening of the place of confessio. It is hence a universal rule. What remains for us to understand is how it is specied in the case of man.1 ii. the human exception The story of creation contains, on the sixth day and in the case of man, several peculiarities. If we admit the story as told in the Vetus Latina,
* The arguments of this lecture come mostly from my book Au lieu de soi: Lapproche de Saint Augustin (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2008) (in translation at Stanford University Press). I am deeply grateful to Jeffrey L. Kosky for helping me in adapting and translating the nal draft of this text. For the sake of consistency, all the translations from Saint Augustine are mine. The original texts are cited according to the note bibliographique (Au lieu de soi, 14). 1 Throughout this article I use the English word man as the equivalent of Augustines Latin word homo. 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/2011/9101-0003$10.00
24
25
Not only does the phrase ad similitudinem nostram literally contradict secundum suam similitudinem, but it is also substituted for kind (or species)that is to say, it holds the place, in the case of man, of any and every denition: Nec dicis secundum genus, sed ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram (You did not say according to its kind [ours], but according to the image and resemblance [yours]) (Confessiones 13.22.32). Whence this paradoxical consequence: man constitutes a creature par excellence, and even particularly excellent, precisely because he has neither a kind nor a species proper to him and therefore does not have a denition that would appropriate him to himself. The human is dened by the very fact that he remains without denitionthe animal properly without property. And this is not just an incidental remark; it deals with what Saint Augustine does not hesitate to name a mystery, in the sense of the magna quaestio that man became for himself,3 and also of a sacrament by which God blesses man by creating him: Sed quid est hoc et quale mysterium est? . . . Dicerem te, Deus noster, qui nos ad imaginem tuam creasti, dicerem te hoc donum benedictionis homini proprie voluisse largiri (But what is this and what is this mystery? . . . I would say, our God, who created us in your image, I would say that you wanted to grant properly to man the gift of your blessing) (Confessiones 13.24.35). However, Saint Augustine hesitates before this conclusion, as the issue remains quite subtle: God also encouraged the animals to reproduce; he even blessed the sh of the sea (Gen. 1:22). What then is particular to the blessing of fruitfulness given to man? No doubt precisely that: man alone got from God a blessing of fruitfulness, while he did not receive a kind or species according to which he could naturally reproduce-re produce himself from himself. This would mean that, if man propagates himself over the entire earth to the point of dominating it, he owes this not to his kind or species (which he does not have), nor to his essence (which remains unknown), but to a direct and ongoing blessing from God. In what does this consist? Obviously in substituting for kind and species the reference ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram, in order to hold the place of the absent essence. Man does not increase according to his kind, his species or his essencethat is to say, according to himself, but according to a blessing coming from elsewhere, which
3 See Jean-Luc Marion, Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing, Journal of Religion 85, no. 1 (2005): 124.
26
It is not a matter of keeping or losing the image of God as a content (as if created in the image of God can count as a denition, as categorical as rational animal, animal endowed with language, or animal that laughs), but of referring the image toward that to which it bears the resemblance. The image is not compared to a model, like a visible reproduction is to another visible accessible elsewhere: the image is borne only by that which refers itself across the resemblance unto an original that remains as such invisible, and only in the measure to which it so refers itself. The image consists only in the tension of referring itself to that to which it means to resemble. It appears only as this movement toward, and only this intentio ad keeps a resemblance. Man bears the image of God (instead of and in place of kind, species, or
27
28
For sure, the three faculties make an image of God; however, it is neither those three themselves, nor their reciprocal organization, nor even their distant similitude with the three persons of the Trinity that does soas the majority of commentators seem to say again and againbut rather the possibility that they might refer to God, as the one who can make them play among themselves the resemblance of the trinitarian game of persons in it. The faculties open a mere place, which becomes a visible and reliable image of the Trinity only insofar as they
29
30
Knowing man therefore demands referring him to God inasmuch as incomprehensible and therefore establishing by derivation his incomprehensibility, in the name of both image and resemblance. Augustine too came to this conclusion. While Saint Paul, for his part, argued that none among men knows the secrets of man, except the spirit of man in him (1 Cor. 2:11) and assumed consistently that manhood understood the secrets of man, Augustine is quick to posit on the contrary that tamen est aliquid hominis, quod nec ipse scit spiritus hominis, qui
31
Man differs innitely from man, but with a difference that he cannot comprehend and that, provided he intends to save it, he ought not comprehend. In this way, we verify again the principle that leads every itinerary toward oneself and toward God (for there is only one of them): Interior intimo meo, superior summo meo (Confessiones 3.6.11). But we know, now, that the aporia of magna mihi quaestio coincides with the solution: the indenition of man. v. the rest The indenition of man, this privilege, implies that I do not reside in any essence, but that on the contrary I resemble what has no semblance, God, without form, indescribable, incomprehensible, invisiblein other words, that I resemble nothing. Or more exactly, that I re semble, that is to say, that I semble re exively and appear in my re port to the resemblance of God (ad similitudinem Dei). I appear each time myself according as I move up (or down) on the invisibly graded scale of my resemblance, of my proximity or separation from the invisibility of God, whose invisible accomplishment I reect (more or less) in the visible. Then it remains to be understood which scale may I walk along from one degree to the other of this re semblance and if I could, in the end, nd a point of stability in a visible reection of the invisible. If I have to cross the re-semblance and dwell in it, which momentum and drive can lead me there?
32
33
This argument looks limpid as well as decisive, for it does not say merely that Anima . . . velut pondere amore fertur quocumque fertur (The soul, wherever it takes itself, takes itself there by love as by a weight) (Epistula 157.2.9), but also and above all species that it is ultimately for the soul a matter of will, of its will: Voluntas . . . ponderi similis est(The will . . . resembles a weight) (De Trinitate 11.11.18). The details of this have yet to be precisely understood.
34
He praises this law of nature even so highly that one can rely on it as one does on an experimental test:
Pondera gemina sunt. Pondus enim est impetus quidam cujusque rei, velut conantis ad locum suum: hoc est pondus. Fers lapidem manu, pateris pondus; premit manum tuum, quia locum suum quaerit. Et vis videre quid quaerat? Subtrahe manum, venit ad terram, quiescit in terra: pervenit quo tendebat, invenit suum locum. Pondus ergo illud motus erat quasi spontaneus, sine anima, sine sensu. Namque si aquam mittas super oleum, pondere suo in ima tendit. Locum enim suum quaerit, ordinari quaerit; quia praeter ordinem est aqua
4 Aristotle, Physics 4.8.214b1216. Denis OBrien has done his best to connect Saint Augustine with Iamblichus (Pondus meum amor meus [Confessiones XIII 9.10]: Saint Augustin et Jamblique, Revue dhistoire des religions 198, no. 4 [1981]: 423-28). Had Iamblichus dealt with love, which is not the case, this demonstration would have been more convincing. 5 See, e.g., Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.17.40 and 5.24.69.
35
The laws of nature (almost in the modern sense) abide so rmly that Saint Augustine will even mention them as objections (at least according to some people) to the possibility of miracles:
Ac per hoc, inquiunt, quoniam terra abhinc sursum versus est prima, secunda aqua super terram, tertius aer super aquam, quartum super aera caelum, non potest esse terrenum corpus in caelo; momentis enim propriis, ut ordinem suum teneant, singula elementa librantur. [And consequently, they say, since, in ascending from lower to higher, earth comes rst, then the water above the earth, third is the air above the water, and fourth comes the heavens above the air; a terrestrial body cannot be found in the heavens, for these different moments balance each of the elements, such that they [each] nd their proper order.] (De civitate Dei 22.11.1)
Up until this point, there has been nothing innovative on the side of Saint Augustine; he simply assumes a doctrine widely accepted at his timeto the point that one could even legitimate it theologically by the authority of Wisdom 11:21: Omnia in mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti (You arranged all things in order, measure, and weight) with the immense posterity that this is known to have. It is thus still only a matter of the laws of local motion, and, in a restricted sense, of the laws of the world. vii. love and motion In fact, the innovation only starts when Saint Augustine no longer deals with a place in the world (neither physics, nor nature, nor local motion), but of the place of he (or she) who confesses. How, it will be asked, can one pass from the laws of local motion to the place of confession? By an unforeseen tactical reversal, the laws of local motion will be el-
36
The breakthrough and the boldness lies in calling on Virgil to interpret John 6:44, so as to complete and correct Cicero (and Aristotle). Local displacementin other words, arrival in the proper placeno longer results only from a physical weight, but also from pleasures inclination, which triggers in the heart the same spontaneity that gravity unleashes in the body. For, what takes up and displaces the role of weight in the spirit does not come (at least not rst of all) from the weight of glory in Saint Pauls sense (2 Cor. 4:17) as it could have been possible, but from delectatio. By delectatio, we must understand the fact not of taking pleasure (according to the debased way of speaking today), but of receiving pleasure:
Delectatio quippe quasi pondus est animae. Delectatio ergo ordinat animam.
37
Love is set forth according to a logic as rigourous as motion, and therefore should be understood as rigorously as it. Thus there is established a comparison between motion and love, which ends up as an analogy of proportion, according to which what weight is to the body, desire is to love. Sometimes the terms correspond strictly without even admitting any difference: Amant enim requiem, sive piae animae, sive iniquae; sed qua perveniunt ad illum quod amant, plurimae nesciunt; nec aliquid appetunt etiam corpora ponderibus suis, nisi quod animas amoribus suis (For all souls love rest, the pious as well as the unjust; but by which path to reach what they love, the majority know not at all, and the bodies too seek nothing with their weight, except what the souls seek with their loves) (Epistula 55.10.18). But more often the terms respond to one another only with the reserve of a gap, for differences remain, because the relation between desire (for pleasure) and love works as the paradigm for the relation between natural weights and bodies, and not the other way around, as common sense certainly would have expected:
Si essemus lapides aut uctus aut ventus aut amma vel quid hujus modi, sine ullo quidem sensu atque vita, non tamen nobis deesset quasi quidam nostrorum locorum atque ordinis appetitus. Nam velut amores, corporum momenta levitate nitantur. Ita enim corpus pondere, sicut animus amore fertur, quocumque fertur. [If we were only stones, waves, winds, a ame, and something of this sort, without any sensation or life, we would not however be deprived of some sort of appetence in our motions and their [right] order. For, just like loves, the pressings of bodies strive on by their lightness. That is, just as the spirit is borne by its love wherever it is carried, so too likewise the body by its weight.] (De civitate Dei 11.28).
Movement follows weight, like desire follows love, to the point that the loving push of the desiring soul becomes the paradigm for movements, even in inanimate things. The push of love in its desire plays the role of paradigm not only regarding inanimate nature, but also over all reasonable spirits, for even men and the angels see their hierarchy modied according as the weight of love is exercised according to the law of nature or that of justice: Sed tantum valet in naturis rationalibus quoddam veluti pondus voluntatis et amoris, ut, cum ordine naturae angeli hominibus, tamen lege
38
Love may indeed be explained as a weight, provided that we mean a free weight: free rst from the constraints of matter, second from the limits of nature, and therefore, third perfectly voluntary. Weight, understood this way, does not rst pertain to the physical and material world, but bears originally a spiritual and rational meaning. viii. dwelling out of myself Saint Augustine therefore corrects the model of physics that explains local movement by the weight of bodies; not out of a concern of spiritualizing or edication, but as a matter of adapting the paradigm of pondus to the theoretical requirements that love imposes on it. For, in the case of love, pondus should become voluntary and therefore set itself free from natural (and material) determinations, for it implies freedom in two ways. First because nobody can love without wanting to: even if freedom does not always signify the choice of decision, a lover without freedom inevitably becomes a patient, indeed soon a sick soul. Next because love supposes choosing some beloved rather than another; consequently, the freedom of love requires duplicating its weight so as to oppose one weight to another in order to do justice to the choice be-
39
And therefore, facing this weight that can make one fall in spirit, in spirit too can another weight be practiced, one that makes ascend: Quomodo enim oleum a nullo humore premitur, sed disruptis omnibus exsilit et supereminet: sic et caritas non potest premi in ima; necesse est ut ad suprema emineat (As oil is compressed by no other liquid, but escapes them all and wraps around them, so too charity cannot be pressed down to the bottom. It must necessarily rise up and dominate) (In Johannis Evangelium Tractatus 6.20). Here a paradox, which appeared earlier, nds it structuring logic: I am to myself a weighty burden as long as I remain empty of God, who relieves me of myself and lifts me up toward him, as soon as he lls me: Nunc autem quoniam quem tu imples, sublevas eum, quoniam tui plenus non sum, oneri mihi sum (But now, since you lift up the one whom you ll, seeing as I am not lled with you, I am to myself a burden) (Confessiones 10.28.39). Filled with God, I undergo the impact of a weight oriented upward,
6 7
See also Augustine, Confessiones 4.15.27 and 7.17.23. See also Augustine, De Trinitate 10.5.7.
40
Love, like the weight from above, which comes from there and leads back, lifts us up toward your place, which is dened precisely by the fact that there and there alone we can place ourselves: In dono tuo requiescimus: ibi te fruimur. Requies nostra locus noster. Amor illuc attollit nos (It is in the gift that you give that we nd rest: here we enjoy you. Our rest, our place. Here, your love raises us up) (Confessiones 13.9.10). That weight not only could lift us up toward the heights, but in fact does so rst and essentially when the issue is my proper place, is a paradox that imposes itself because it ceases to appear surprising. The bottom line is that the ground always attracts rather than grounds, precisely because it shows itself above, attracts from on high, weighs on us from above. Consequently, Christ constitutes the ground par excellence, the fundamentum fundamentorum, insofar as he comes from on high, just as the heavenly Jerusalem descends from the heavens, as descends the heaven of the heavens: Etenim origo fundamenti hujus summitatem tenet; et quemadmodum fundamentum corporeae fabricae in imo est, sic fundamentum spiritualis fabricae in summo est (And therefore the origin of this ground stands at the summit; and just as the ground of the corporal construction is found below, so is the ground of the spiritual construction found at the summit) (Enarratio in psalmos 86.3 [both quotations]). I nd my place only there where I truly want to dwell. And I truly want to dwell only there where my love pushes me, transports me, and leads me, as a weight leads, transports, and pushes. I must know this weight in order to know what I freely want: Sed vis nosse qualis amor sit? Vide quo ducat. Non enim monemus ut nihil ametis, sed monemus ne mundum ametis, ut eum qui fecit mundum, libere ametis (But do
41
42