The Confession of Augustine

by Jean-François Lyotard, Francois Rouan (Photographer), Richard Beardsworth (Translator)

This remarkable posthumous work by one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century engages Augustine's Confessions , one of the major canonical works of world literature and the very paradigm of autobiography as a definable genre of writing. Lyotard approaches his subject by returning to his earliest phenomenological training, rearticulating Augustine's sensory universe from a vantage point imaginarily inside the confessant's world, a vantage point that reveals the intense point of conjuncture between the sensual and the spiritual, the erotic world and the mystical, being and appearance, sin and salvation. Lyotard reveals the very origins of phenomenology in Augustine's narrative, and in so doing also shows the origins of semiotics to lie there (in the explication of the Augustinian heavens as skin, as veil, as vellum). Lyotard's explication of Augustine is also a final survey of the entirety of the philosophical enterprise, a philosopher's profound reflections on the very basis of philosophy. He sees the Confessions as a major source of the Western—and decidedly modern—determination of the self and of its normativity, the point of departure for all reflection and the condition of possibility of all experience. Lyotard suggests that Augustine's "I," Descartes's "cogito," and Husserl's "transcendental ego" in essence or structurally say the same thing. Lyotard aims at no simple ascription of Augustine's position. Instead, his text centers on what he takes to be Augustine's central the repeated avowal of an essential uncertainty concerning the status of the faith confessed, of being in a sense already too late, of a difficulty in being no longer of this world while being in it all the same. Far from offering the foundation of all subsequent journeys to selfhood, Lyotard sees the Confessions as many evocations of a certain loss of self, of a temporality that is not given or recuperated all at once—or once and for all—but that time and again is lost or forgotten.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

131 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Jean-François Lyotard (DrE, Literature, University of Paris X, 1971) was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well-known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and for his analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition.

He went to primary school at the Paris Lycées Buffon and Louis-le-Grand and later began studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. After graduation, in 1950, he took a position teaching philosophy in Constantine in French East Algeria. He married twice: in 1948 to Andrée May, with whom he had two daughters, and for a second time in 1993 to the mother of his son, who was born in 1986.

Reviews

[Corey]

What a shame he didn't live to finish it. I should really quit smoking.

[Trường Antonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Một tác phẩm cực kỳ khó đọc nhưng đầy suy tư của thánh Augustine. Xuyên suốt tác phẩm là những ký ức của thánh nhân về quá khứ đầy tội lỗi của mình, rồi được hoán cải và soi sáng. Bao trùm lấy cuốn sách này là một tâm hồn khiêm hạ, luôn hướng lòng về Đấng Tối Cao, vì thế, người đọc luôn cảm thấy đang say sưa trong dòng cảm xúc của thánh nhân.

[Katrinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure going through Lyotard is one of the only ways I can stomach Augustine: "... the divine solicitor, the judge wonders.... What game is he playing with me, pleading one hundred percent guilty? Trying to snatch some sympathy from me."

[Elda Horvat]

Jean-Francois Lyotard nije uspio dovršiti Augustinovu ispovijest. Ovo izdanje predstavlja polovinu knjige koju je namjeravao napisati. Samo bilješke prikupljene u zadnjih nekoliko godina daju naslutiti razmjere koncipiranog djela.

[Bruce Gott]

good insights but too wordy