Augustine on Time in Confessions Book XI

Introduction

Welcome to your fourth lesson in our study of Medieval Western Philosophy. In our last lesson, you reconstructed Augustine's powerful argument for evil as a privation of good, a cornerstone of his theodicy from Confessions Book VII. We saw how he grounded this idea in a Neoplatonically-inspired hierarchy of being, where all existence, created by a good God, is fundamentally good.

Today, we continue our deep dive into Augustine's thought by turning to another of his most profound and enduring philosophical investigations, found in Book XI of the Confessions. Our focus will be on his analysis of the nature of time. This is one of the most famous, and famously difficult, inquiries in the history of philosophy.

Your learning outcome is to analyze Augustine's central arguments about the nature of time in Confessions Book XI. This means you will not only learn his conclusions but also break down the logical progression of his thought: how he dismantles common-sense notions of time and constructs a revolutionary new theory in their place. This exploration will lay the groundwork for our next lesson, which examines how Boethius used similar ideas about time and eternity to address the problem of free will.

1. The Context and the Paradox

Why does Augustine, in the middle of a spiritual autobiography and commentary on Genesis, embark on such a complex philosophical journey? The starting point is the first verse of the Bible: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This immediately prompts a question from his critics, the Manichaeans: What was God doing before the beginning? What was he doing in all that time before He decided to create the world?

To answer this, Augustine realizes he must first understand what "time" and "before" even mean. This is not just an academic question for him; it's a deeply spiritual one.

Augustine begins his analysis with a famous admission of perplexity that has resonated with philosophers for centuries:

"What, then,is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one that asks, I know not."

He recognizes that we use concepts of time constantly and with apparent understanding, yet when we try to pin down what it is, it slips through our fingers. This paradox launches his investigation.

2. The Deconstruction of Time: The Vanishing Present

Augustine's first step is to show that our common-sense idea of time as a line with a past, present, and future is logically incoherent.

He argues:

• The past cannot be said to exist, because it is no longer.
• The future cannot be said to exist, because it is not yet.
• That leaves only the present. But what is the present? If it has any duration (a year, a day, an hour, even a second), it can be divided into a part that is already past and a part that is still future. Therefore, the true present can have no duration at all—it is an indivisible, vanishing instant.

If the past and future don't exist, and the present has no duration, how can we speak of a "long time" or a "short time"? How can we measure something that seems not to exist?

Augustine has led us into an aporia—a state of philosophical puzzlement. Time seems to be both something we measure every day and something that is, on closer inspection, immeasurable because its constituent parts don't exist.

3. The Solution: Time as a Distensio Animi

Having shown that time cannot be an objective feature of the external world (like the movement of the sun and moon), Augustine makes a revolutionary move. He turns inward, locating time within the mind itself.

His solution is that time is a distentio animi—a "distension" or "stretching out" of the mind. Past, present, and future do not exist out in the world, but they do exist in the mind as three distinct functions:

1. Memory: The present of things past.
2. Attention (or direct awareness, contuitus): The present of things present.
3. Expectation: The present of things future.

When we measure a "long past," we are not measuring something that no longer exists. We are measuring its impression, the memory, which is present in our minds now. When we speak of a "long future," we are measuring our present expectation of it.

To solidify your understanding of this complex argument, let's read a clear academic summary that walks through Augustine's reasoning.

4. Metaphysical and Theological Implications

Augustine's theory is not just a piece of proto-psychology; it's deeply integrated with his theology and metaphysics.

Time as a Creature

His analysis provides a brilliant answer to the initial question: "What was God doing before He made the world?" Augustine's answer is that the question itself is nonsensical. There was no "before." Time is not a pre-existing container into which God places the world. Rather, time is a property of the created universe; it was created with the world. God exists outside of time altogether.

Time and Eternity

This leads to the final, crucial contrast. Human life is lived in distentio—a state of being "stretched" and distracted between a past we remember, a future we anticipate, and a present that constantly vanishes. Our consciousness is fragmented by this temporal flow.

God, by contrast, exists in Eternity, which is not an infinitely long time but a state of complete timelessness. For God, all moments are present in a single, unchanging "now." His knowledge is not fragmented; He sees the whole of time, past, present, and future, in a single, stable act of cognition.

This contrast between the soul's "distension" in time and God's "standing" in eternity is the ultimate point of the entire exercise. The philosophical analysis of time becomes a path for understanding the human condition and our radical dependence on a God who transcends our temporal limitations. The goal of the spiritual life, for Augustine, is to be "gathered up" from the dispersion of time to find rest in God's eternity, a process he begins by directing his mind's attention (intentio) toward God.

Conclusion

In this lesson, we have analyzed Augustine's profound and intricate argument about the nature of time. We've followed him from his initial perplexity, through his deconstruction of common-sense notions, to his revolutionary conclusion that time is a "distension of the mind."

Key Takeaways:

• Augustine's famous paradox: we experience time constantly but struggle to define what it is.
• He argues that past and future do not exist, and the present has no measurable duration, making time an objective puzzle.
• His solution is to locate time in the mind (animus). Time is the mind's "stretching out" across three functions: memory (of the past), attention (to the present), and expectation (of the future).
• We measure the impressions of events in our minds, not the events themselves.
• This theory has profound theological consequences: Time is a feature of creation, not a container for it. God exists outside of time in an eternal, unchanging present.

This distinction between the temporal world of creatures and the eternal "now" of God is a crucial piece of philosophical machinery. In our next lesson, we will see how the Roman philosopher Boethius, writing from his death-row cell, takes this very concept of God's eternal present and uses it to try and solve another classic puzzle: how divine foreknowledge can be reconciled with human free will.