gemistos 's review for:

Confessions by Saint Augustine of Hippo

2.0

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When Augustine isn't whining and self flagellating he is capable of making surprisingly insightful observations on the nature of time and memory. Now, I can't quite put on my finger on it but I get the impression that the middle books of Confessions likely provided a source of stylistic inspiration for Descartes when he was composing Meditations, although Augustine's account is spiritually richer. Augustine receives bonus points from me for holding a fairly tolerant view with respect to both allegorical and literal interpretation of the holy scriptures. There is a brief but wonderful discussion in which Augustine wonders how our mind remembers even as it forgets since the mind would never have been able to retrieve something it has completely obliterated. This discussion is followed up by a neat little foray into a phenomenology of time consciousness--according to Augustine the past (remembrance) steadily grows in proportion (like a "block") to what it drains from the future (expectation) but these are all quanties that pertain only (as far as know) to the modes of consciousness, not to the world as such.