Augustine and Aquinas on Diachronically Unified Consciousness

Medieval accounts of diachronically unified consciousness have been overlooked by contemporary readers, because medieval thinkers have a unique and unexpected way of setting up the problem. This paper examines the approach to diachronically unified consciousness that is found in Augustine’s and Aqui...

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Bibliographic Details
Author:Therese Scarpelli Cory
Published: S.n., s.l., 2012
Volume:50
Pages:354–381
Language:English
Periodical:Vivarium
Number:3-4
ISSN:0042-7543
Format:Article
Topic:- Doctrine > Time. History > Time
- Doctrine > Man > [Doctrine de la connaissance] > Memory
- Doctrine > Man > [Doctrine de la connaissance] > [Connaissance de soi. Le cogito]
- Influence and Survival > The Middle Ages (430-1453) > Influence on the various authors and writings > Thomas of Aquin (+/- 1225-1274)
Status:Active
Description
Summary:Medieval accounts of diachronically unified consciousness have been overlooked by contemporary readers, because medieval thinkers have a unique and unexpected way of setting up the problem. This paper examines the approach to diachronically unified consciousness that is found in Augustine’s and Aquinas’s treatments of memory. For Augustine, although the mind is “distended” by time, it remains resilient, stretching across disparate moments to unify past, present, and future in a single personal present. Despite deceptively different phrasing, Aquinas develops a remarkably similar view when, in order to accommodate Aristotle’s view of memory to Augustine’s, he insists that an implicit self-awareness “time-stamps” all intellectual acts. According to their shared approach, diachronic unified consciousness is the result of the curious way in which the mind is both drawn into and transcends the temporal succession of its own acts.