Yet more on The Confessions (400 CE), this time on books 10–13. What is memory and how does it relate to time and being? Augustine thinks that memory is a storehouse, but it contains not just the sensations we put in it, but also (à la Plato's theory of recollection) really all legitimate knowledge. It's our route to God, to real Being. Mark, Wes, and Dylan also discuss Continue Reading …
Episode 122: Augustine on Mind and Metaphysics (Citizen Edition)
A second discussion on The Confessions (400 CE), this time on books 10–13. What is memory and how does it relate to time and being? Augustine thinks that memory is a storehouse, but it contains not just the sensations we put in it, but also (à la Plato's theory of recollection) really all legitimate knowledge. It's our route to God, to real Being. Memory also solves the Continue Reading …
Topic for #121 and #122: Augustine’s “Confessions”
On 7/16 and then 7/28, we forayed into the Middle Ages for only the second time (our first being Maimonides), hitting the first of the big-time church fathers in the philosophical tradition, Aurelius Augustinus, aka St. Augustine of Hippo, reading his most popular work (then and now), Confessions, from around 400 CE. It's known as the first autobiography, and in our first Continue Reading …
Memory, Body, and Truth
Both the Sartre and the Merleau-Ponty episodes have me thinking about memory, body, and truth lately. Our memories are indispensable for forming our identities and are the causal path for experience itself and its effect on our identities. So, there's a piece to this that we can get to by thinking about memory (and the act of remembering) itself and a piece that we can get to Continue Reading …