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11 - ‘But it's not fur eatin’ …'

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2010

Lewis Ayres
Lewis Ayres
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

Our greatest protection is self-knowledge, and to avoid the delusion that we are seeing ourselves when we are in reality looking at something else. This is what happens to those who do not scrutinize themselves. What they see is strength, beauty, reputation, political power, abundant wealth, pomp, self-importance, bodily stature, a certain grace of form or the like, and they think this is what they are. Such persons make very poor guardians of themselves: because of their absorption in what is foreign to them, they overlook what is proper to them and leave it unguarded.

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter and the next I turn to what is frequently taken to be the central and distinctive contribution of Augustine to Trinitarian theology, the attempt in the latter books of the De trinitate to illustrate some of the key principles of Trinitarian doctrine through analysis of triadic structures in the human mens. I do not aim here to offer a comprehensive interpretation of De trinitate 8–15 as a whole, nor even a reading that gives a full picture of Books 8–10 alone. I wish only to draw out the central lines of argument pursued through Books 9 and 10, adumbrated in Book 8 and reprised in Book 14. At the end of this investigation I will suggest the reasons behind his deployment of memoria, intellegentia and voluntas in Book 10.

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Chapter
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Augustine and the Trinity , pp. 275 - 296
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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References

Bonnardière, A.-M., ‘Le De trinitate de saint Augustin, confronté au livre XI de la Cité de Dieu’, AÉPHÉ 85 (1976–7)Google Scholar
O'Daly, Gerard, Augustine's Philosophy of Mind (London: Duckworth, 1987), 11–15Google Scholar
McCall, Marsh H., Ancient Rhetorical Theories of Simile and Comparison (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Mark, ‘Porphyry and the Intelligible Triad’; Matthias Baltes, Marius Victorinus. Zur Philosophie in seinen theologischen Schriften (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2002)Google Scholar
Bechtle, Gerald, The Anonymous Commentary on Plato's ‘Parmenides’ (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1999)Google Scholar

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