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NIAS)St. Augustine’s concept of the «ego»: antiquity revisited or enlightenment prefigured?
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Quid ergo sum, deus meus? Quae natura sum?
Varia, multimoda vita et inmensa vehementer.
(Confessiones 10, 26.)
St. Augustine’s important role in developing a theory of subjectivity has been universally acknowledged. It has even been suggested that Descartes, usually regarded as the discoverer par excellence of the subject, or the self, owed considerably more to this fourth-century church father than he himself was ever willing to admit. Before Descartes, Augustine already used the concept of the human mind as an immaterial and self-apprehending substance. Moreover, Augustine was the first to rebut fundamental scepticism with the indubitable certainty of the si enim fallor sum.1
Yet in one respect at least an important difference exists between the Augustinian and the Cartesian cogito. Unlike Descartes, Augustine did not consider the awareness that ‘I exist’ to be the primary, and in fact the sole truth that forces itself with irrefutable evidence upon the human mind. To Augustine, self-awareness means awareness of oneself as an image of God, and it is this exclusive relation between man and God which the human mind can deny no more than it can deny its own existence.2 The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset even went so far as to adopt the view that in Augustine no coherent philosophical theory of subjectivity is to be found, precisely because Augustine was a theologian who primarily elaborated on religious notions, rather than a systematic philosopher in the modern sense.3 Ortega’s position, although extreme and suppor ted by little argument, contains some truth. Augustine’s philosophy of the self comprises a peculiar mixture of introspective psychology, religious conviction, and dogmatic systematization.
As a keen and penetrating observer of the human psyche, Augustine is probably at his best in his autobiography, where he records the results of a highly personal and, in many respects, highly original self-investigation. The supposedly proto-Cartesian aspects of Augustine’s theory of the self, however, play a role chiefly within the context of Augustine’s discussion with pagan Greek thought, where they function, either as a reaction to, or as an adaptation of classical philosophical doctrines. It may be tempting to look for the ‘modern’ Augustine first and foremost in the systematically elaborated theories presented in the dogmatic writings. Such an approach, however, as it is bound to overemphasize instances where Augustine is appropriating, or merely reiterating, traditional philosophical schemes, may easily result in a distorted picture of Augustine’s role as an early forerunner of modern thought. For example, the si enim fallor sum argument — in a somewhat different form already to be found in classical literature — provided Augustine with a powerful weapon against the extreme form of scepticism which denied to human knowledge even the slightest degree of reliability.4 It did not imply, however, that its author held a sceptic position himself in regard to all certainties, other than the one certainty that ‘I exist’.5
A more complicated problem of demarcation between tradition and originality arises from Augustine’s concept of the mind as a self-apprehending substance. Few indeed of those who find elements of the Cartesian cogito prefigured in Augustine, have attempted to reconcile a Cartesian interpretation of the concept of self-awareness in the dogmatic treatise On the Trinity, with the rather different picture of the self that emerges from the tenth book of the Confessions. In the second part of the treatise On the Trinity, the human mind is depicted as one immediately present to itself through a single and comprehensive act of self-contemplation. The mind grasps itself, as it seems, not as a complex and constantly changing conglomerate of thoughts, perceptions, and feelings, but as a simple and unchanging entity. The ego of the Confessions, on the other hand, is not a static datum, not an unchanging and indivisible centre of self-consciousness, b ut a steadily developing and accumulating reservoir of experiences, thoughts, emotions, etc. According to Augustine’s report in the Confessions, it is first and foremost in the memories of our previous acts, thoughts, and feelings, that we must look for our ego or inner self.6
That we are indeed dealing here with different types of self-apprehension, is confirmed by a passage from the Confessions, where Augustine, almost casually, singles out the ‘spirit’ as something distinct from the multitude of perceptions, acts, and feelings that constitute the ego. This spirit, Augustine says in Conf. 10, 36, resides in the innermost part of our memory, where it «recollects itself», beyond all sense-images and beyond all affections.7 Yet both types have more in common than the differences in scope and tone that exist between the Confessions and On the Trinity might suggest. The theory of self-knowledge propounded in On the Trinity follows to a large extent the beaten tracks of a long philosophical tradition. However, the elements of this tradition appear to be only partially integrated into a coherent doctrine of the self-apprehending mind. In fact, the very presuppositions upon which Augustine’s argument is based, place his concept of the self-apprehending mind outside the main stream of late classical thought. It is in the graphic and suggestive language of the Confessions, rather than in the systematic expositions offered in On the Trinity, that these presuppositions come to the fore most clearly.
But let us first examine in more detail the views advanced in On the Trinity. Essential to the notion of the ego in a (post-) Cartesian sense is the idea that the ‘I’ is immediately aware of itself as an indivisible and irreducible thinking subject. Descartes took this immediate self-awareness as his point of departure, and from it he derived his views on the immaterial character of the mind, and on the distinction between mind and body.8 Classical philosophers, on the other hand, usually reversed the argument. Given the existence of an immaterial and indivisible mind whose thinking is not in any way directed towards material objects, both Peripatetics and Platonists concluded to the absolute identity of such a mind and what it apprehends, i.e., a pure act of thought.
Augustine thus apparently follows a traditional line of thought when he maintains that the mind grasps itself as a whole (Trin. 10, 6), without there being any distance between the thinking subject and its object (Trin. 14, 8). Yet in the latter passage, Augustine proceeds to suggest that the mind can apprehend itself, because «it is as it were its own memory». It may seem as if this allusion to memory should only be taken metaphorically, as an illustration. If, one might argue, the mind were indeed to ‘remember’ itself, this would imply that it merely looks back to an earlier stage of itself. Apparently, the time-lag thus introduced between the apprehending mind and what it apprehends, would destroy the simplicity and directness that is supposed to characterize the mind’s self-apprehension.
In Trin. 10, 12, however, Augustine clearly suggests some kind of distance between the mind and what it apprehends. At first sight, he there contrasts the mind’s immediate self-apprehension with the impossibility of the eye seeing itself otherwise than by looking into a mirror. Yet the comparison between the mind and the eye is elaborated in a rather unexpected way. The argument is not that while the eye needs a mirror in order to see itself, the mind can do without such a device because it is immediately present to itself and thus is capable of apprehending itself directly. On the contrary, what Augustine rather means, is that while the eye only occasionally sees itself in a mirror, the mind is always able to look into its own internal mirror, so to speak. The mind is always able to apprehend a picture or image of itself.
The idea that the mind indeed apprehends itself, not directly, but through the intermediary of an image (imago, similitudo), is corroborated by the passage Trin. 9, 16. There, Augustine distinguishes between three types of images: those that are abstracted from material objects, and which are therefore of a nature inferior to that of the immaterial mind; those that are superior to the mind, viz. the knowledge that we have of God; and finally, those that are of exactly the same nature as the mind. The latter kind of images are such as provide to the mind knowledge about itself. This self-knowledge is infallible, Augustine argues, precisely because the knowing agent and its object are of the same ‘nature’ or ‘substance’. The mind «knows itself through itself, since it is immaterial¯, Augustine concisely states in Trin. 9, 3.
With this argument, Augustine apparently wants to provide a firm basis for the idea that the human mind really and fully knows itself. It is with the same argument that Aristotle, in book Lambda of his Metaphysics, defends the unity and perfect self-apprehension of the prime mover. In the case of the prime mover, Aristotle posits, the thinking agent and its object are identical, because they are both immaterial and therefore cannot be in any way severed. The problem with Aristotle’s notion of full and immediate self-knowledge was, however, that Aristotle had remained rather vague with respect to the question whether a similar kind of self-apprehension may be assumed in the case of the human mind. In Greek philosophical schools, debate on this issue had revived particularly during the era of the Roman emperors.
A sharp reaction against the idea of there being any such thing as human self-knowledge, had come from the part of the sceptics. Sextus Empiricus refuted the idea that man can know himself any more than the eye is able to see itself.9 If, he argued, the mind knows itself as a unity, then either it should be conceived of as a pure object of thought, in which case it cannot simultaneously be a thinking subject; or it is indeed a thinking subject, in which case there is no object towards which the mind’s thinking is directed. In the Peripatetic tradition, Sextus’s provocative stance had been largely ignored. Aristotle’s commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias, for example, when discussing the way in which the mind knows itself, mainly follows the Stagirite’s line of argument.10 The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus, however, used the sceptic argument as a basis for a critical reexamination of the Aristotelian definition of self-knowledge.11
In his early treatises, Plotinus usually accepts the idea of a supra-human mind that is capable of apprehending itself fully and immediately, and which may be defined — with a phrase coined by Aristotle — as a pure ‘thinking about thinking’ (noêsis noêseôs). However, in the late work Ennead 5, 3 he expresses serious doubts with respect to the question whether such a perfect self-apprehension may also be assumed in the case of human knowledge. First, he argues, one should neatly distinguish between a thinking that is directed towards external objects and a thinking that truly has its objects within itself. Now in the case of human thinking, Plotinus continues, it is doubtful whether we may ever speak of ‘internal objects’ in the strict sense. Not only do occurrences within our body of which we are aware, constitute objects external to the mind that apprehends them (Enn. 5, 3, 1-2). Even the so-called self -apprehension — the act in which the human mind is assumed to grasp its own immaterial nature — seems to be nothing else than the apprehension by one element within the human mind of an other element, by way of a kind of internal perception. The human mind, Plotinus posits, is essentially multiple. Therefore, when we are said to ‘apprehend’ ourselves, this self-apprehension should better be explained as a ‘mutual perception’ (synaisthêsis) in which each element of the mind grasps all the other elements (ib. 13).
Initially, Plotinus is not prepared to dismiss the idea of a self-apprehending mind altogether. By introducing the concept of a higher, supra-human mode of thought that is pure activity, he attempts to circumvent the sceptic argument that a mind that is wholly thinking cannot at the same time be wholly apprehended by itself. If we consider the existence of a pure thinking activity, Plotinus argues, then it should be possible that this mode of thought, by fully concentrating on itself, apprehends nothing but activity, and thus truly apprehends its own essence (ib. 5). In the course of the argument, however, it becomes apparent that the notion of a thinking activity and that of a perfect unity are ultimately incompatible. The idea of full and direct self-apprehension presupposes that the thinking subject and its object are truly one and undifferentiated; yet if there is no distinction whatsoever between subject and object, Plotinus concludes, we cannot speak of thinking in the pro per sense. Thus, true self-knowledge can only be defined as a limiting case of various levels of apprehension which, strictly speaking, are all directed towards an object external to the apprehending agent (ib. 10 ff.).
Neoplatonic thought played an important role in Augustine’s philosophical education.12 What interests us here, however, are the differences, rather than the resemblances between Augustine’s position and the above outlined Plotinian analysis of the notion of self-knowledge. First of all, Augustine does not want to make a distinction between human and supra-human self-knowledge. In On the Trinity, the structure of the human mind is analysed with the help of schemes that Plotinus reserves for his concept of the supra-human mind that is pure activity. Augustine ignores the Plotinian view that human knowledge can never be self-knowledge in the strict sense because it is always directed towards something external to the apprehending agent. Thus, the description of human self-apprehension in On the Trinity echoes the arguments with which Plotinus, in Enn. 5, 3, 5, attempts to retain the idea that th e supra-human mind can fully grasp itself. The human mind, Augustine states in Trin. 14, 8, need not duplicate or divide itself, in order to behold itself. Also, Augustine’s idea of a triadic structure within the human mind — whose elements, in Trin. 10, 13, are referred to as ‘being’, ‘life’, and ‘mind’ — recalls the Plotinian notion of a pure activity which is supposed to bridge the gap between the subject-aspect and the object-aspect of the self-apprehending mind.
But neither does Augustine follow Plotinus in the latter’s fundamental criticism of the idea of self-apprehension as such. Unlike Plotinus, who ultimately denies that thought, which is of necessity differentiated, can truly apprehend itself, Augustine does not seem to be troubled about the question whether both concepts — that of a complex and differentiated mind, and that of full and direct self-knowledge — are truly compatible. In fact, in the already quoted passage Trin. 14, 8 he even seems to agree with Plotinus (and with the sceptic Sextus Empiricus) that the mind grasps itself as an object, but not as a thinking agent. «When the mind thinks», Augustine there says, «it beholds itself as intellectam.» In this rather ambiguous statement, the word intellectam may be rendered in different ways. One might take it as simply referring to the mind’s immaterial nature (the mind sees itself as a pure ‘Intelli gible’). In view of the context, however, one is inclined to recall the doubts expressed by Plotinus as to whether true self-apprehension is possible at all. Even if we assume that the mind need not divide itself in order to grasp itself, Plotinus says, then it is likely to look upon itself as ‘something contemplated’ (theôroumenon), rather than as a ‘contemplator’ (theôrôn).
Alternatively, one might think of the distinction drawn, e.g., in Trin. 10, 19, between the ‘knowledge’ or ‘understanding’ (intellegere) that is permanently stored in memory, on the one hand, and the actual and conscious ‘thinking’ (cogitare) of something, on the other. The phrase would then suggest that the mind, rather than directly apprehending itself in its actual state, merely recalls the knowledge that it has acquired about itself in the past. This interpretation is in agreement with the statement that the mind «is, as it were, its own memory» (Trin. 14, 8), and with the idea, expressed in Trin. 9, 16, that the mind reflects upon an image of itself. Yet in this case too, Augustine appears to diverge from the idea of an immediate and instantaneous self-apprehension. When the mind reflects upon itself, Augustine says in Trin. 14, 8, it is «called back to its own nature, not thro ugh any distance in space, but by way of an immaterial conversion». Yet if no spatial distinction exists between the apprehending agent and its object, then there appears to be nevertheless a distance in time between the two. In Augustine’s view, ‘knowing oneself’ is essentially ‘recalling oneself’. Accordingly, Augustine transforms the Neoplatonic triad ‘mind ÿ|Ä act ÿ|Ä being’ into a triad ‘intellect ÿ|Ä volition ÿ|Ä memory’ (cf. the end of Trin. 14, 8). Thus, when the mind ‘thinks itself’, it reflects upon an image of itself, which it retrieves from memory.13
Now, how does this concept of a mind that apprehends itself through the intermediary of an image stored in memory, relate to the idea, outlined in the Confessions, of a self that emerges from a conglomerate of recollections of various thoughts, acts, and feelings? Both types of self-apprehension, or self-recollection, represent, not a permanent state of consciousness or awareness, but an incidental reflection upon knowledge that usually remains hidden in memory. It is obvious that we do not always recall all our previous acts, thoughts, perceptions, and feelings. But neither is the so-called ‘self-conscious’ mind continuously aware of its own existence. In a passage from the Commentary on St. John’s Gospel (23, 11), Augustine likens the distinction between the permanent but hidden remembrance and the intermittent state of self-awareness, to the difference between the eye’s general and permanent capacity to see, and its actual focusing on a spec ific object. For the mind to become aware of itself, a special act of concentration or attention is required.
Augustine also suggests differences between the two modes of self-recollection. Firstly, contrary to the broadly defined memory of previous deeds, thoughts, perceptions, etc., self-apprehension in the strict sense is infallible, because it represents the ideal example of what Greek philosophers since the Presocratic Empedocles had termed knowledge ‘of the alike through the alike’. Infallibility, however, is not to be uniquely attributed to self-apprehension. It equally applies to the knowledge a priori of a variety of universal truths which «we discern within ourselves without images, as they are, by themselves» (Conf. 10, 18).14
Secondly, and more importantly, the knowledge that the mind has of itself, seems not to be subject to any change through time. The ‘spirit’ that, according to Conf. 10, 36, resides in the interior of the human psyche, and which, in Trin. 9, 16, is described as a ‘vital substance’ (substantia vitalis), apparently constitutes a constant factor, a background against which the gradually developing and constantly changing picture of the ego unrolls. This idea of a permanent and self-apprehending substance to which all thinking activity can be related, sounds, of course, much like Descartes. Moreover, it seems to provide an answer to the objection raised by Sextus Empiricus, to the effect that knower and object known can never be completely identical. The human mind, one might retort, indeed apprehends, not itself in its actual state, but an image which reflects an earlier state of itself. Nevertheless, if the mind-substance does not c hange through time, and if, therefore, the mind’s earlier and present states are identical, the mind may justifiably be said to possess true self-knowledge.
Yet the question arises, what exactly does Augustine mean by this concept of a self-recollecting substance. More precisely, what does the mind actually come to know, when it beholds its own image and thus ‘recollects itself’? In On the Trinity, Augustine defines this self-recollection negatively, as a process whereby the mind learns to distinguish itself from all that is not mind. Only then does the mind become aware of itself, when it «thinks of itself as something distinct (discretam)», Augustine says in Trin. 10, 19. And: rather than «looking for itself as if it were absent [i.e., as if it were something external to itself]», the mind should attempt to «discern itself as present» (ib. 12). If the mind wants to know itself, «it should not look for itself, as if it were detached from itself; on the contrary, it must detach from itself what it has attached to itself». The mind, Augustine explains, must seek to avoid confusing itself with the images that inevitably accompany the thinking of itself (ib. 11).
The first distinction that Augustine wants us to become aware of, and which he has borrowed, of course, from the Greek philosophers, is that between sense-perception and intellect. The former relates to material objects, while only the latter is directed towards objects whose nature is identical to that of the mind itself.15 Yet the human mind has to go further than this, if it is truly to grasp itself as a ‘vital substance’. It has to abstract from specific contents of its own thought, and simply think that it thinks, i.e., simply apprehend that it is an intellect which, by an act of volition, directs itself towards the possible objects of thought that are stored in memory (ib. 13). Thus, while the concept of a self-recollecting ego refers to the awareness of oneself as a human individual with a unique personal history, the mind’s self-apprehension is of a general, unchanging, and non- personal nature. It is of a general nature, because it is directed towards the act of thinking as such, rather than towards a specific object of thought. It is unchanging, because as a mental process it will always follow the same path. Finally, it is non-personal, because its contents are the same for each human being, and because its conclusions will be recognized and accepted by all humans alike.16
In other words, the ego of the Confessions and the self-apprehending mind of the treatise On the Trinity differ, not so much as ‘things’ or ‘substances’, but first and foremost with respect to their contents. One might argue that while the ego — which reflects a particular stage in the life of a particular person — may change in the course of time, the mind always remains the same. Yet such a timeless immobility of the mind, as opposed to a gradually developing ego, is neither a necessary condition to Augustine’s definition of self-apprehension, nor is it, strictly speaking, implied by this definition. When Augustine speaks of the self-apprehending mind as a ‘substance’, he does of course refer to something really existing, to a distinguishable part of the human psyche,17 rather than to a mere representation, or a particular form of r easoning. Nevertheless, the mind’s identity is predicated, not on the fact that, as a ‘thing’, a substance, the mind is always in the same state, but on the fact that, whenever the act of self-apprehension is performed, this act will have exactly the same contents. Individual human minds, Augustine explains in Trin. 9, 9, are not immutable. Yet they can enounce certain statements about themselves that are true for all human minds, and for all subsequent states of either one of them. It is these basic truths that are immutable, as are the ‘eternally valid reasonings’ (sempiterna rationes) from which they follow.18
In regard to the Cartesian interpretation of On the Trinity, it is equally important to note that Augustine describes the mind’s self-apprehension as a logical argument which follows upon the awareness of the ego in a broader sense, rather than as a primary intuition that precedes it. It is by a process of abstraction that the mind is able to say, not, ‘I think this and this’, but simply, ‘I think’; and it is by a process of logical inference that the mind may subsequently say, ‘I exist’. In Descartes, the awareness that ‘I exist’ is simply a primary and irreducible intuition,19 rather than a logical statement which can be proven to be either true or false. In Augustine, on the other hand, the conclusion that ‘I exist’ is reached only after a complex and, it might seem, somewhat cumbersome logical argument. If, Augustine expounds in Tr in. 10, 6, the mind knows something, it does so as a whole. Therefore, when it knows as a whole that it thinks, it knows that it is, as a whole, something thinking. Now, thinking is a form of living; for there can be life without thought, but not the reverse. Therefore, the mind knows that it is alive. Again, living is a form of existence; for a thing can exist without being alive, but not the reverse. Consequently, the mind knows that it exists.20
In a passage such as this, Augustine is fighting the sceptics with their own weapons, and he does so aptly and with dialectical dexterity. But does he also pose the existence of an irreducible and indivisible ego? Far from it. In fact, what Augustine discovered, through the introspection so vividly described in the Confessions, was that the ‘I’ is not simple, not indivisible, but infinitely variegated and complex. «A horrendous — my God — a profound and infinite multiplicity: this is my spirit, yes, this I am myself», Augustine exclaims in Conf. 10, 26, after having vainly attempted to fathom the unfathomable depths of his own mind. Not only does this fundamental observation lend to the Augustinian concept of the self a rather un-Cartesian scope. It also prevents Augustine falling in a trap similar to the one that Descartes set up for himself. By its intuitive and subjective nature, the Cartesian ego is irrefutable; yet at the same time it is difficult to see how from this intuitive grasp, objective statements about the apparent complexity of the human psyche can be deduced. Augustine, on the other hand, does not require proof that above and beyond the ego, there is this infinite complexity of mental and corporeal phenomena that constitute the human being. In Augustine, the primary awareness is precisely that of the ‘I’ as an immensely complex structure.
What Augustine describes as the ego that meets with itself in memory, is perhaps more likely to resemble the modern notion of a person: a complex and changing entity whose identity through time is predicated on the fact that its successive psychical states are all being remembered as relating to one and the same subject.21 Once more, such a notion suggests itself in the imaginative language of the Confessions, rather than being systematically elaborated in a dogmatic treatise such as On the Trinity. In the latter work, Augustine indeed refers to the human being as persona. The use of this term, however, is restricted to the theologically orientated analogy between the human mind and the divine Trinity, with its rather schematic division of the human being into body and soul, and of the mind, as the «most excellent» part of the soul, into the triad intellect ÿ|Ä volition &#x 00ff;|Ä memory.22 In this context, persona denotes a representative of the species ‘man’, the individual human being as an object that others can point at and describe,23 rather than a ‘person’ in the sense of a subject which, by virtue of its memory, is able to interrelate its subsequent states in a continuous flow of consciousness.24
Yet in the Confessions too, no unequivocal definition of the ego is to be found. The ego refers, of course, to the author, to ‘me, Augustine, who am writing this section of my autobiography here and now’. But the word also reflects a personal history, a series of experiences and thoughts, recorded in memory and suggesting the idea of a persisting ‘I’ to which they all may be attributed. In one passage, the ego seems to coincide with the ‘spirit’ — the rational faculty that is capable of ‘recollecting itself’ — yet elsewhere, the ego is marked off from the ‘spirit’, and the latter appears to reside somewhere within the former, rather than being identical with it. The only thing we can say about the ego, is that in some form or other it is always there, either as the ‘I who think here and now’, or as a historical continuity suggested to me by my memory , or even as a psychical faculty, a part or a power of the human soul. The essence of Augustine’s theory of subjectivity appears to lie precisely in this indeterminacy of the ego, in the fact that it is always there without our being able to grasp and define it unequivocally, rather than in the somewhat stereotyped theory of the self-apprehending mind advanced in On the Trinity.
Could it be argued, then, that Augustine, by suggesting the idea of an indeterminate ‘I’ that accompanies all our thoughts and experiences, in a way anticipated the transformation by Kant of the Cartesian ego into a transcendental notion? Like Descartes, Kant sometimes expresses himself in terms strongly reminiscent of Augustine (and, it should be added, of the Platonic tradition that influenced Augustine’s philosophical elaboration of the theory of the self-apprehending mind). Thus, Kant stresses the intelligible character of the ego — its being a pure Noumenon — and he states that it should be cleared from all associations with sense-perception and the images produced by it.25 Yet as traditional terms and phrases in Kant’s philosophical vocabulary often have their meanings radically changed, such similarities say little.26 Moreover, the question once more forces us to distinguish between tradition and originality in Augustine’s concept of the ego.
The Cartesian philosophical method suffered from a serious flaw, in that Descartes wanted to derive the notion of a ‘thing’, a well-defined object — an immaterial res cogitans — from that of a pure subject, an ego that is accessible only to itself. Kant remedied this methodical shortcoming by eradicating from the notion of the ego all reference to its being a reality, a ‘thing’. The idea of the ‘I’ that of necessity accompanies all our experiences, Kant says, is a pure representation (Vorstellung). Being a representation, it learns us nothing about whether or not it exists as a thing, a reality.27
Now already before Augustine, Plotinus had struggled with a problem somewhat similar to the one that lead Kant to define the ‘I’ — or the ‘unity of apprehension’ (Einheit der Apperzeption) — as a transcendental notion. While Kant concluded that it is impossible to relate the representation of the ‘I’ to an object, a thing that exists somewhere in our minds, Plotinus saw himself faced with the problem of how to conceive of a unity of thought that is not to be found in thought itself, but rather exists outside and beyond the range of human experience. In the Platonic tradition, Aristotle’s self-apprehending mind had gradually been identified with a transcendent first principle from which the variety of phenomena that constitute the world of human experience have originated. Yet if a mode of thought exists which fully and directly apprehends itself, Plotinus asks, why should this perfect unity of thought generate modes of apprehension that are essentially multiple, such as human reason and sense-perception?
Plotinus does not arrive at the radical and clear-cut form of transcendentalism professed by Kant. Yet in the final chapters of the already mentioned treatise Ennead 5, 3, he tends to interpret the idea of a pure self-apprehending mind — outside and beyond the range of human experience, but none the less something really existing — as a limiting case of the various forms of apprehension (thought, imagination, perception, etc.) that we humans are acquainted with. Similarly, he suggests that while it is difficult to see how a transcendent unity of thought could have generated the imperfect forms of self-apprehension that fall within the range of our experience, the idea of a unity nevertheless forces itself upon our minds when we consider the very nature of thought.
In his discussion with pagan philosophy, Augustine hardly touches upon the problem of the unity of thought. Instead, he confines himself to the rather unsatisfactory conclusion that, while God is described as a unity consisting of three ‘persons’ or ‘substances’, the three faculties of human thought are attributes of a single mind and therefore belong to a single human being. In the Confessions, Augustine may be said to come closer to the idea of a unifying ego which underlies all our thoughts and experiences. Yet Augustine does not describe the ego as a simple and indivisible substance in either the Cartesian or the Kantian sense. The ego of the Confessions is not systematically defined as a thing, an immaterial res cogitans. Nor is it to be conceived of as a purely formal and universal unity of thought and experience. On the contrary, it is the bewildering variety of personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences r ecorded in memory that first and foremost constitute the Augustinian ego.