2.1 The general arguments on Augustine’s conversion
2.1.3 Reflection on the two perspectives
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Dobell terms this acquisition process about Catholic belief as Augustine’s intellectual conversion, but to him it still needs to be completed with volitional conversion in the garden scene. In Dobell’s view, Augustine’s conversion must combine intellectual and volitional transition at the same time, and the conversion scene in Confessions can thus be coherent to history.
In this, Augustine must first experience the intellectual changes and later the volitional one, then he can complete the whole conversion. Dobell suspects that Augustine may not write Confession in line with his historical fact and he thinks it better “to regard the narrative as the story of Augustine’s intellectual development from 386 to c. 395” (p. 26). He discovers that there are amount of Platonic thoughts among Augustine’s early writings (386-c. 95), and therefore he doubts that Augustine possibly first accepted his baptism and then progressively completed his intellectual conversion until 395. This means that, in the historical 386 (the year Augustine withdraw his secular life and decided to have a celibate church life), young Augustine did not convert to Christology, but to Platonism instead. Moreover, through comparing Augustine’s factual understanding about Christ with his narration in Confessions, Dobell points that “the early Augustine has a great deal in common with Porphyry, much more than the later Augustine would care to admit” (27). To conclude, if we follow Dobell’s theoretical viewpoint, our perspective may tie to Augustine’s historical position and conclude Augustine is not a complete Christian until he finished the intellectual conversion in 395.
This is an arbitrary and simply judgement to observe Augustine’s conversion, for it just ostensibly acknowledges Augustine’s historical identity and ignore his factical situation. To further gauge its deficiency, I will discuss it in the following section.
2.1.3 Reflection on the two perspectives
Based on the discussion of Mourant and Dobell, we can gain two different threads on observing Augustine’s conversion. On one hand, by way of religious perspective, Mourant argues that all Augustine’s philosophical investigations are nothing but a mean to transfigure
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his Manichean belief into Catholic belief. On the other hand, with theoretical perspective, Dobell suggests that Augustine’s historical conversion event is not coherent to his
autobiography. To him, the truth is that in 386 Augustine accepted Neoplatonic thought first, and until 395 he did complete his intellectual conversion to Christology. However, these studies seem to show a similar approach to the conversion issue. That is, they all ostensibly take Augustine’s garden scene as the key to infer his conversion retrospectively derived from different philosophical or religious stages. Consequently, things like what Mourant (1966) has mentioned in his own study that scholars largely agree that Augustine’s conversion is out of some necessary motivations such as “moral, intellectual, and religious” (77). In other words, scholars would assume that Augustine need to overcome some obstacles he mentioned in Confessions, and then he could convert to Christianity. A possible implication amid these
argumentations is that Augustine’s authentic quest may be dissipated when it is simplified to a philosophical or religious answer. This is true that as the bishop of Hippo, Augustine needs to write an autobiography in line with his orthodox historicity, yet it does not mean that all his narration can only be concluded in terms of these perspectives.
In my opinion, these viewpoints should be transcended by means of phenomenological method. In this method, we can detect Augustine’s authentic quest and explore during the process of his conversion. In the following section, I will introduce the Heideggerian terms－
factical life experience and formal indication－ to support our main discussion.
2.2 Heidegger’s phenomenological method
As we have discussed before, under the context of the historical dispute about theology and philosophy, the viewpoint of Augustine’s conversion issue has been narrowed. As long as scholars assume that there are no exceptional perspectives, this issue will not come to an authentic response. In this, Heidegger’s definition to ontic and ontological sciences can be an alternative way of interpretation. Notably, this interpretation will not lead into another
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either/or perspective because it merely demonstrates the varied scientific attitudinal
enactment that Augustine had experienced amid his lifeworld other than what philosophical thought he has. In a few words, this Heideggerian way can minimize the related distractions from its historical context, discovered an extended thread, and view Augustine's experience as a Dasein’s case solely.48 In the following discussion, I will demonstrate this methodology in Heidegger’s The Phenomenology of Religious Life (1921).
2.2.1 Factical Life Experience and Historical Phenomenon
In order to manifest the original divergence of philosophy and science, Heidegger (1921) raised the term—factical life experience—as an assistance to illuminate those
phenomena that are inappropriate to define or philosophize straightly.49 To him, factical life experience can only be delineated through the enactment of pure taking-cognizance-of other than the objective taking-cognizance-of. The difference is that the former one points out the straightforward significance, namely, the experienced activity of “confrontation-with” while the latter is meant to transform this significance into an object-domain (p. 11). In this, it shows that factical life experience is the grounding of every object-domain, but only through these straightforward significances derived from “self-assertion of the forms of what is experienced” and “the experiencing itself” we can approach it (p. 7). With the accumulation of these experienced activities, these straightforward significances can progressively
constitute a passive scientific-objective worldview together. Notably, this constitution does not occur at the process of the cognizance of “object” but at the experience of confronting with the “world” (p. 8). Heidegger (1921) delineated the sense of “world” in the following three-level:
“World” is that in which one can live (one cannot live in an object). The world can be
48 However, this Heideggerian interpretation also confronts some critiques, to which we will discuss them in the next chapter.
49 This inappropriateness, to Heidegger, is that the traditional scientific methodology has disturbed the naive factical life experience in which he is trying to discover.
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formally articulated as surrounding world (milieu), as that which we encounter, and to which belong not only material things but also ideal objectivities, the sciences, art, etc. Within this surrounding world is also the communal world, that is, other human beings in a very specific, factical characterization: as a student, a lecturer, as a relative, superior, etc., and not as specimen of the natural-scientific species homo sapiens, and the like. Finally, the “I”-self, the self-world, is also found within factical life experience. Insofar as it is possible that I am absorbed by the arts and sciences such that I live entirely in them, the arts and sciences are to be designated as genuine life-worlds. (p. 8)
Therefore, it is the self-world, communal-world, and the surrounding world that mutually construct the overall lifeworld where Dasein lives in. Moreover, factical life experience owns the characteristic of “attitudinal, falling, relationally indifferent, self-sufficient concern for significance” which makes the straightforward significance connect and relate each of the experienced activities among the three-level world (p. 11). This kind of connection is termed as “relational sense” and it is initially characterized from the self-world’s indifferent factical life experience (p. 11-12). This process of the passive apprehension of the “I” can be
experienced differently in his varied experienced content:
I am in a different mood at a concert than in a trivial conversation constitutes a difference which I experience merely from the content. I become conscious of the diversity of experiences only in the experienced content. Thus, the manner of
participation within and of being taken along by the world of the “I” is an indifferent one. (p. 11)
This indifferent manner keeps constituting the factical life experiences related to the I’s
“falling tendency” of “attitudinal determination” and “regulation of objects.” To be noted, there is a “turning around” between the indifferent factial life experience and the factical life experience of object (p. 12). Based on this “turning around”, we can signify one’s motive of
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philosophizing and demonstrate his falling tendency related to his own history. However, before giving a demonstration of “turning around,” we should elaborate the concept
“historical” first, for we can only observe this “turning around” through a “historical situation.”50
According to Heidegger, the concept “historical” cannot be separated from the concept
“factical,” and it is not the other way around (7). It is because that every factical experience is first experienced among the three-level world, and this kind of world is embodied in an objective historical world which is already formed by a specific scientific-objective enactment (7-8). The concept “historical” comes from the foregoing process of conglomeration, and thus we can always find a scientific characterization from any of historical object. In addition, “historical means here becoming, emergence, proceeding in time, a characterization that befits a reality” (22). Due to this definition, on one hand,
“historical” indicates the becoming phenomena that is preserved or maintained by any scientific-objective viewpoint. On the other, this historical consciousness will constrict the dimension of factical Dasein’s concern because of its tendency-to-secure (35-36).To gauge this historical attitudinal tendency and its boundary, Heidegger compared three types of philosophy of history and categorized them as (1) platonic way, (2) the way of
self-extradition, and (3) the compromise of the first two ways (28). In Platonic way, the form of temporality is its main concern. When Dasein adopts this kind of historical perspective, he will content his insecure reality by assuming that he temporality is the “after-copy” of the extra-temporal “paradigm.” As Heidegger points out (1921), Platonic way presents a way that one chooses non-temporal falling tendency during his lifetime:
These images signify an objective connection of Being between the two worlds of the temporal and the extra-temporal…the mode, the sense of securing fulfills itself
50 The term “situation” will be discussed with the “enactment” together at 2.2.3.
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through the development of a theory about the sense of reality of the temporal. In recognizing what kind of sense of reality the temporal has, it ceases to disturb me, because I recognize it as a forming-out of the extra-temporal. (Heidegger 1921, 31) As to the second one, Spengler’s philosophy of history is the representative:
For in Spengler, the historical world is the foundational reality, the single reality; we know only cultures, that is to say, the process of becoming of world destiny. My recognizing as a foundational reality the historical in which I myself stand and which disturbs me results in my having to enter into the historical reality, since I cannot resist it. For us today, a conscious participation in the declining occidental culture ensues. Thus also in Spengler the interpretation of the reality of the historical has a liberating effect. (Heidegger 1921, 31)
The third is a compromising one:
On the basis of a theory of historical reality, it seeks to fulfill the tendency toward securing…On the one hand, I am within history; on the other, I am oriented toward the ideas; I actualize the extra-temporal by entering into the temporal. (Heidegger 1921, 31)
Heidegger noted that all the three ways are actually based on the platonic view to confront with the historical context. That is, the first (platonic way) attempts to fight against the “historical” through positing the “absolute norm as a reality,” the second treats “the historical” as the reality itself, and the third “recognizes a minimum of absolute values, but ones given only in relative forms in the historical” (32). Collectively, they all treat “historical reality” by means of typology. From varied theses tendencies, we can find out that each of them represents related attitudes among their historical context, and this related attitude can be termed as “attitudinal relation” (33). However, how we determine the form of “attitudinal relation” is that Heidegger wanted to discuss and clarify in his phenomenological method.
Through the determined “attitudinal relation,” the “I” takes factical life experience itself as an
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“object,” and “as object it is placed within the historical objective reality” (34). Consequently, we may fail to reflect the tendency-to-secure of the “I” and his concern of his lifeworld for they are all occupied by the objective history. In a few words, “the worry” of factical Dasein itself makes the straightforward significance “[become] the attitudinal fore-conception of an object” (34).
2.2.2 Formal indication
Retrospectively, the factical Dasein is Dasein who experiences the content his factical life experience formed by an attitudinal relational sense derived from his concern of life among his three-level world. When factical Dasein is distressed by his worry, he will have a related attitudinal relation toward a specific historical context around him. It can be
simplified to the following consequence: the concerned Dasein will be leaded to against the historical object itself either by way of transcendental meaning, or back to Dasein himself by a “new meaning that exceeds the one of earlier life” (p. 35). In this, “historical” (the
temporally-becoming) and “facitcal” (something temporal) are both produced by Dasein’s worry and its consequential falling tendency-to-secure (p. 38). According to that, “formal indication” is Heidegger’s phenomenological method to access this process (p. 35).
Given that the term “formal” in the “formal indication” can only be illuminated orderly from the enactment of “general” and “generality,” the term “general” needs to be determined first (p. 38). Historically speaking, “generality” is taken as the object of philosophy. Since Aristotle, the “totality of beings” has been distributed to different scientific regions in accord to the historical philosophizing. As the time marches on, the content of beings is changed to the consciousness, and the ontological study also becomes to how the specific consciousness can be conscious of and what modes of consciousness “[constitute] themselves” (p. 39).
Consciousness hitherto turns out to be the most general grounding in both the scientific principle and every related region, yet Heidegger did not testify whether the consciousness is the ground of everything. Rather, he preferred to infer an appropriate phenomenological
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method through delving the sense of “general.” Succeeded from Husserl’s works,51
Heidegger continued this approach in determining the differentiation of “formalization” and
“generalization.” Normally, “formalization” is constructed on the “grounding of a pure logic of objects” while “generalization” is a sort of “formal ontology” (p. 39). Among
“generalization,” the “formal ontology” is a way of deduction, in which one can infer an objective material to its basic material that one can acquire from its related order of
“generalities (genus and species).” For instance, one can infer an apple to “red,” to “color,”
and final to the “sensuous quality,” but one cannot conclude its essence from above all;
conversely, “formalization” can infer the “sensuous quality” to the “essence” because it does not constrict itself to any material content but only concern ones’ attitudinal relation such as how the “sensuous quality” can be motivated as “essence” (40). In short, generalization is merely an order that determines the object of material while formalization is the order of forming-out of a divergent attitudinal relation (41-42). More specifically, formalization at least includes three progressive dimensions among its application. That is: (1) formalization;
it is the initial connection toward an object and it can derive the “formal-logical” and the
“formal-ontological” from one’s related relation meaning, from which it also “[makes]
possible the performance of mathematical operations. (2) “formal-ontological (mathesis universalis)”; through it, each theoretical region has been prescribed as individual. (3)
“phenomenology of formal;” it directly demonstrates the “original consideration of the formal itself and explication of the relational meaning within its enactment” (43).
To conclude, both “generalization” and “formalization” are the enactment of attitudinal or theoretical order, but “formal indication” is an enactment that can “indicate beforehand the relation of the phenomenon” (44). That is to say, all determined phenomena are already constructed in a determined formal-ontological way before its philosophizing. In this, we can
51 Logical Investigations and Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology.
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find out that there are some pregiven scientific-objective viewpoints correlated with those prescribed attitudes when it comes to any phenomenon. To manifest this transformation, we need to develop the other two procedures of formal indication— “situation” and “turning around”— in the next section.
2.2.3 Historical enactment and situation
In Heidegger’s explication, we can obtain “situation” from “the manner of enactment”
because it is the transition that connects “the object-historical” and “the enactment-historical”
before one’s “turning around,” in which Dasein makes “the givenness of the surrounding world, the communal world, and the self-world [flow] into each other in factical life” (62-63).
In this, the “manner of enactment” is the essential trigger to the constitution of a factical Dasein’s lifeworld. However, according to Wang (2016), Heidegger does not explain the term
“enactment” and its “relation” to “content” in this lecture, he completes them in both The Problem of Phenomena (1919/1920) and The Phenomenology of Intuition and Expression
(1920) instead. Frist of all, as the tendency of enactment to one’s motive, “relation” is more of an enactment of relational sense with a related object than of an objective or theoretical attitude to a related object (14).52 Through actualizing the “relation,” “enactment” can thus be functioned like the description below:
An enactment is primordial if, as enactment of a relation that is at least codirected in a genuinely self-worldly way, it requires, according to its sense, an always actual renewal in a self-worldly Dasein. It does so precisely in such a way that this renewal and the 'necessity' (requirement) of renewal inherent in it co-constitutes self-worldly existence. (Heidegger 1920, 57)
52 Relationship is the relationship between motivation and trend. Life directly lives in the meaning of this relationship. The meaning of relationship directly experiences the life change caused by motivation. Therefore, this is not the relationship between two objects, but the life self (Selbst) practice. The meaning of
action...Relationship does not take an objectified attitude (Einstellung) to what it is related to, nor does it say to the establishment statement (Aussage) of its relationship, so it is not a relationship in a theoretical or
epistemological attitude. On the contrary, the "object" to which it relates is experienced (erfahren werden) or possessed (gehabt werden) in practice. (Wang 2016, p. 14)
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Consequently, the “content” can be fulfilled with the renewal requirement, but in the same time, “content” also has both the occasional and divergent characteristics because it is
constituted by Dasein’s daily transient confrontation of his communal world and surrounding world.53 Collectively, these elaborations not only pre-delineate the pregiven “situation” but exhibit its correlation with Dasein’s historicity in his factical life experience. In a similar vein, Wang (2016) synthesizes Heidegger’s surveys on the divergence of Dasein’s internal sense, depended on Dasein’s relational tendency to history: (1) Dasein does not have a genuine relationship to history, (2) Dasein has a genuine relationship to history.54
Accordingly, in the first kind of tendency, Heidegger (1920) states that the history is merely treated as “objective past” by Dasein, so factical Dasein will have an enactment renewal without his existence and thus will lead himself be absorbed in the history and “[filled] out”
as an “objective historical process” (49, 61). In contrast, in the second one, Dasein treats history genuinely in the following way:
…here past is had as the ownmost one and this having, in fact, enacts itself in such a
…here past is had as the ownmost one and this having, in fact, enacts itself in such a