Augustine and metaphysics

Jean-Luc Marion claims that the word ‘metaphysics’ does not apply to ancient thought at all – despite the fact that Heidegger regularly cites Aristotle as exemplifying ‘the onto-theo-logical structure of metaphysics.’

Scholars such as P. Aubenque, J.-F. Courtine, T. De Koninck, F. Nef have shown that Aristotle's plural and aporetic investigations do not constitute an ontotheology in the sense developed by the commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius, or by Avicenna, a theory in which the notion of being, whether analogical or univocal, acts as a pivot in a systematic ontology of universal ens commune grounded in the divine summum ens. But in a broader, simpler and more radical sense, Aristotle is surely a metaphysician, identifying being as ousia, substance, and grounding beings causally in the supreme being, the divine 'self-thinking thought.' Let us not forget the phenomenological bearing of Heidegger's thought. It is from the intellectualization of the phenomenon of the ontological difference between beings and their being that metaphysics emerges; and metaphysics from the start is ontotheology, that is a logos about being. Heidegger wants to return to a different kind of logos, a legein that sets forth being and beings in their primary phenomenological senses, before the construction of a metaphysical logos.

Marion's position has the effect of cutting off Augustine from the history of metaphysics, and situating him in an extraterritorial realm of purely Christian thought. With the phenomenological purism that is his hallmark, Marion can thus clear the ground for a ‘reduction’ of Augustine in terms of a number of ‘saturated phenomena’ such as divine truth that enlightens conscience or the ineffable divine ultimacy. These phenomena are severed from their close relationship to Neoplatonic experience of similar realities, or rather, in Augustine’s own view, of the same realities.

see Joseph S. O'Leary

see Journal de l'Hypertexte en philosophie

Knowing Greek antiquity

When we talk of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, which is what people have called humanism, we mean a knowledge which is something more than a superficial humanism, mainly decorative.

‘I call all teaching scientific,’ says Wolf, the critic of Homer, ‘which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources. For example: a knowledge of classical antiquity is scientific when the remains of classical antiquity are correctly studied in the original languages.’ There can be no doubt that Wolf is perfectly right, that all learning is scientific which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources, and that a genuine humanism is scientific.

But when I speak of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of authors, in the Greek and Latin languages. I mean knowing the Greeks and Romans, and their life and genius, and what they were and did in the world; what we get from them, and what is its value. That, at least, is the ideal; and when we talk of endeavouring to know Greek and Roman antiquity as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, we mean endeavouring so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, however much we may still fall short of it.


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