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Augustine is famous for his sceptical rehearsal of various answers to the aporetic question “What is Time?” Ricoeur attempts to sum up what was achieved :
“Augustine’s inestimable discovery …reducing the extension of time to the distension of the soul.”(P.21)
This, to some extent, is reminiscent of the Kantian account of time which we know relates to activity of the faculty of Sensibility, but a more detailed look at Kant’s position here will reveal that there is no “dogmatic” reduction of the extension of time to the so-called distension of the soul . Instead we find in Kant, a nuanced account of the interplay of the role of movement or change in the external world and and the measurement of such movement or change. Indeed there is much in the Kantian account to suggest that he was committed to the Aristotelian essence-specifying definition of time:
“The measurement of motion in terms of before and after.”.
An illustration of the Kantian position can be seen in his example of the boat moving downstream on a river:
“I see a ship move downstream. My perception of its lower position follows upon the perception of its position higher up in the stream, and it is impossible that in the apprehension of this appearance the ship should first be perceived lower down in the stream and afterwards higher up.”(Immanuel Kants Critique of Pure Reason, A 192)
The real motion of the ship is what is being measured, and that cannot be reduced to any “distension” of the soul, even if the unity of the representations of the soul is irrevocably an inner phenomenon. In the above example, the relation of the representations is in accordance with a rule necessarily connecting the representations. Kant further elaborates upon this by contrasting the above activity with that of the perceptual activity connected with a large house from a point of view where the whole house requires a number of representations in order to be perceived completely. In the case of the succession of representations of the house, this succession is an arbitrary one, and the reversibility of these representations is possible without the internal structure of the perception being threatened with collapse. Kant claims:
“In conforming with such a rule there must lie in that which precedes an event the condition of a rule according to which the event universally and necessarily follows…..The event, as the conditioned, thus affords reliable evidence of some condition and this condition is what determines the event.”(A 193-4)
The resemblance of the above form of reasoning, to that which we encounter in Aristotelian hylomorphic theory of principles and first principles, is striking. In the hylomorphic theory of change there is reference to a “totality of conditions”, which include the infinite nature of the media of change(space, time, matter), 4 kinds of change, 4 causes of change,3 principles of change and the powers or capacities of a soul involved in the experience of this change, e.g. Sensibility. Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic is a significant elaboration upon this already complex theory:
“In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed. But intuition takes place only insofar as the object is given to us. This again is only possible, to man at least, insofar as the mind is affected in a certain way. The capacity(receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility. Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions, they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise concepts. But all thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.”(A19)
The hylomorphic character of the above text becomes more evident in following remarks in this Transcendental Aesthetic section which refer to sensations as the matter and the rule which orders sensation as the form of appearances. This “form”, Kant argues:
“must lie ready for the sensations a priori in the mind, and so must be considered apart from all sensation.”(A20)
Furthermore, Kant adds, in Aristotelian spirit:
“The science of all principles of a priori sensibility, I call Transcendental Aesthetic.”(A21)
From Aristotle’s perspective this form of kowledge would fall into the category of Theoretical Science, e.g. Metaphysics. Aristotle begins his work “Metaphysics”, by claiming that it is the aim of this queen of all sciences, to provide the first principles of knowledge for us “rational animals capable of discourse”, who desire to know. The work continues with a review of a number of aporetic questions which are meant to be defining of the scope and limits of this Philosophy of “First Principles” (or “First Philosophy”). Kantian metaphysics is also focussed on conditions or principles, and this is demonstrated in the Transcendental Aesthetic where the metaphysical conception of Time is presented in 5 sections. Time, insists Kant initially, is not empirically derived concept but rather it is:
“Only on the presupposition of time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at one and the same time(simultaneously) and at different times(successively)”(A.30)
Secondly:
“Appearances may one and all vanish, but time( or the universal condition of their possibility) cannot itself be removed.(A31)
Thirdly,
“Time has only one dimension; different times are not simultaneous but successive(just as different spaces are not successive but simultaneous but successive)”(A.31)
Fourthly,
“Different times are but parts of one and the same time: and the representation which can be given only through a single object is intuition.”(A.32)
And finally, fifthly,
“The infinitude of time signifies nothing more than that every determinate magnitude of time is possible only through limitations of one single time that underlies it. The original representation, time, must therefore be given as unlimited.”(A.31-2)
In a section entitled “The Transcendental Exposition of the Concept of Time”, Kant further emphasises the fundamental role of time in all change, saying specifically that change and the concept of motion are conditional upon an a priori representation of time.
Time, then, is on Kant’s account, manifesting itself in our sensible attempts to measure change or motion, and it is, Kant insists, a form of inner intuition concerned with the intuition of ourselves and our inner state. Time is also a fundamental condition of the possibility of outer appearances. It is also important to note that in the Transcendental Aesthetic our concern is not with objects thought of conceptually, but rather “objects of our senses”(A.34). It is only when objects are subject to the categories of the understanding and the power of thinking(“I think”), that knowledge can then be organised by both analytical principles and transcendental logic. It is only in the special and general uses of understanding that logical principles can regulate the totality of conditions necessary for scientific thinking. It s in this context of explanation/justification that Kant then focuses upon the role of “judgement” in scientific discourse:
“Judgement is therefore the mediate knowledge of an object, that is the representation of a representation of it. In every judgement there is a concept which holds of many representations, and among them, of a given representation that is immediately related to an object. Thus, in the judgement “all bodies are divisible”, the concept of divisible applies to various other concepts but is here applied in particular to the concept of body, and this concept again to certain appearances that present themselves to us. These objects, therefore, are mediately represented through the concept of divisibility.”(A68-9)
Judgements are also logically ordered(via the special use of logic) by the categories of the understanding: an order that results in 12 logical types of judgement. These “categories of judgement” are indeed a very complex elaboration upon the so-called “categories of existence”, Aristotle formulated. In this account, the matter and form of knowledge are clearly distinguished, the former obtained via the senses, and the sensible faculty, and the latter via universal concepts and the principles of pure understanding. Logic and the power of reasoning as manifested in the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason, are seamlessly integrated into both the categories of the understanding and this logical system of judgements. Yet it has to be insisted that it is general, special and transcendental logic rather than dialectical logic which are the constitutive and regulative elements of any science employing these judgements and categories.
Augustine’s sceptical rehearsal of the aporetic questions he formulates in his investigations of time, are not metaphysical, in either Kantian or Aristotelian terms. He, rather launches a two pronged attack upon the humanistic rationalism manifested in both Aristotle and Kant. The first prong is in the form of an epistemological/phenomenological account of our experience of time, and the second in the form of a Philosophical Psychology that would also fall into the field of phenomenological investigations. Augustine asks how we can have access to the past which is no longer and a future which is not yet here, and instead of biting the bullet and saying that we do as a matter of fact know the past and the future which are both real, he focuses upon negation and the absence of the past and the future in order to create a field of primacy for the present (a solipsistic commitment to what can be known here and now). He then argues that memory and expectation are what is measured, rather than past or future “extended objects”. The condition required for such quantification is that the mind or soul be spatially conceptualised into the “circumstance” of an inner theatre of the imagination and its contents, which are then referred to as being located “in” this inner theatre. Scenes wax and wane on this inner stage, and it is this “logical space” Augustine appeals to with his idea of the distension of the soul, an idea which stretches over the present of the past, the present of the present, and the present of the future.
Augustine steers away from real external examples such as ships sailing downstream, whereas it is this kind of example the scientist Kant uses to generate the account he needs in his architectonic of sciences. Instead, Augustine prefers to use private soliloquy in which a psalm is being inwardly recited in order to generate a dialectical manifestation of expectation, attention, and memory. One moment passes away, and another moment waxes into the thought space, as expectation is transformed into memory in a dialectical process that Ricoeur describes in terms of a “living metaphor”. We are never given a precise account of the scope and limits of these “powers” in the Philosophical Psychology of Augustine. His aim, rather, appears to be one of phenomenologically describing the appearance and disappearance of these powers on a solipsistic inner stage in a context of presence and absence that resembles the example Freud referred to in his essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. In Freud’s essay, a one and a half year-old boy missing his mother enacts out the scene with a cotton reel which he throws out of his cot uttering the word “Fort! and pulling it back in via its thread uttering the word “Da!”. This game of “gone!-here!” is a solipsistic exercise that might also be appreciated by many existentialist and phenomenological philosophers who appeal to the notion of “negation” in their accounts of mental mechanisms that regulate our thought processes. One important point to note in the above “presence-absence” game, is that nothing unifies the representations involved. Ricoeur points to how both metaphor and narrative have the task of unifying representations and might almost be considered as organising principles of the literary productive sciences.
The dialectical materialism of Hegel and Marx rest upon key moments of discordance, in which a thesis claiming the truth of something, is challenged by an antithesis claiming the truth of the negation of the thesis. The next stage in this process is a synthesis, in which certain elements of the thesis are integrated with certain elements of the antithesis. This looks a promising outcome, until we learn that this synthesis is merely a new thesis in disguise awaiting the arrival of another discordant antithesis. Scepticism has obviously won the day in this dialectical process, because, on this account, no theses can ever categorically possess the logical characteristics of universality and necessity. At best we are dealing with a judgment that falls into the category of the “hypothetical”. Kant and Kantians would, of course, reject both the scepticism and dogmatism of the Hegelian and Marxist positions on the grounds of the formulation of a critical rationalism which enables them to reject both the materialism and dualism of these times.
Augustine’s meditation on Time then takes a new turn when the idea of eternity is discussed again in terms of the present (that never ends). Our intellect, Augustine argues, contrasts our humanly lived time, with the idea of this never-ending present and a new dialectical argument begins to take shape. Eternity is linked to the eternity involved in words that express the Truth that never changes(P.29), but this is again immediately neutralised by a moment of negation, in which the idea of eternity introduces nothingness rather than being into our idea of Time.