Temps et éternité dans le livre XI des Confessions : Augustin, Plotin, Porphyre et saint Paul

Abstract

The analysis of time in Book XI of the Confessions (14:17-28:38) is commonly presented as dependent on Plotinus’s Treaty 45 (Enneads, III: 7), and unduly isolated from all the books XI-XIII, which are a commentary of the beginning of Genesis. A careful comparison between Plotinus and Augustine reveals only the possible parallel between distentio (animi) [XI, 23, 30 and 26, 33] and διάστασις, a term of the Neoplatonic vocabulary. The hypothesis of a porphyrian source for the doctrine of the triple intentionality of the soul (present in De immortalitate animae, III, 3) is fragile. Connections with other philosophical or patristic doctrines (Stoics, Posidonius, Gregory of Nyssa) cannot be excluded. The Neoplatonic Νοῦς is recognized in an allusion to the caelum caeli (XI, 30,40), which is referred to in Book XII, but the animus of universal science and prescience, whose distentio underlines by contrast the eternity of God (XI, 31, 41) is not the Soul of the World. The digression on time is an exercitatio animi intended to test what human temporality is, in its difference with the eternity of God. We can’t admit in Conf. XI neither a radical “subjectification” of time nor a plotinian-type structure (a universal Soul as the basis for both the time of the World and the time of particular souls). The three “acts” of the soul (memoria, attentio, expectatio, XI, 28, 37) are illustrated by the experience of singing which is at the heart of Book XI (28, 38). And the meditation of St. Paul, Philippians, 3:12-14, intertwines with philosophical reflection to propose to the human soul, wretched and torn, the perspective of an extensio “to the things that are ahead” (in ea quae ante sunt), towards unity and stability in God - the spiritual condition of a correct understanding of the verses of Genesis. Philosophical work, in Conf. XI, is thus ordered to an exegetical, theological and ultimately mystical horizon. The article attempts to take stock of the various interpretations proposed, up to modern phenomenological thinking, and underlines the soundness of Goulven Madec’s reading.