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making with his worldly falling tendency. This exhibits Heidegger’s own attitudinal tendency on Augustine’s issue, 55 which is like Fleteren mentioned that Heidegger did not consider Augustine’s theological position as his analytical point, otherwise he may not take molestia as his concluded discussion of Augustine’s Confessions X.56 In a few words, both Fleteren and Barizza hold the opinion that Heidegger ignored Augustine’s own position, but they still admit his contribution on the exploration of Augustine’s factical life experience. In fact, their observations are valuable to our later discussion for they discover an alternative way to interpret Augustine’s Confessions by means of Heideggerian approach.
3.2 A possible access to Augustine’s conversion
We have hitherto gauged the different interpretative positions on Augustine’s
Confessions, from which we can find that these discussions are in consensus to assume that
Augustine, along with his own historical narrative, is meant to be a Christian no matter in which perspective. However, in my study, I do not take his Christianity for granted. Rather, I see Augustine as an individual who merely seeks an ideal way of life for him to feel
authentic, secure, and self-aware, and being a Christian (a philosopher at his context) is a means for him to achieve such a status. However, to prove my assumption we need to discuss how to comprise Heidegger’s formal indication and his own position to Augustine’s
conversion issue.
As we have discussed earlier, formal indication is a way to delineate a historical Dasein’s factical life experience, in which we can discover his specific tendency-to-secure and enactment from any specific historical event, and further determining what sorts of science Dasein enacts during his lifetime. Retrospectively, we find that although the two
55 Wang (2011) has pointed out that Heidegger’s theological tendency is closer to Luther’s theologia crucis, who rejected Augustinian theology (theologia gloriae) for he stressed human’s divinity presented from his humbleness and agony rather than his motivation to ascend toward God. See〈海德格究竟主張神學性的哲學
或哲學性的神學？－與胡塞爾及鄂蘭立場的比較來看〉，《哲學與文化》，38(3)，75-93; 89-90.
56 However, in my opinion, this concept molestia can be a standpoint to discuss Augustine’s conversion.
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terms—genuine enactment and ontological science—appear in Heidegger’s different lectures,57 this genuine enactment in fact exhibits a progressive conglomeration of
ontological science. More specifically, through these genuine enactments, Dasein has his own renewal requirement derived from his self-world, which further spontaneously constitutes Dasein’s pre-faithful worldview. The ontic science, on the contrary, is determined as that Dasein brings himself to the history of communal and surrounding world with inauthentic enactment.
However, things turn to be intricate in Augustine’s conversion case. On one hand, if we assume that during the different thoughtful stages Augustine has his enactments
spontaneously derived from his ownmost history, then we can determine that he constitutes his lifeworld by means of ontological science. On the other hand, we also discover that this Augustinian science will be determined as the ontic science because both his philosophical and theological thought do not really explore the problem of Being if we completely follow Heidegger’s term. Moreover, if we are in line with Confessions, we would also find that Augustine has already taken Jesus Christ as a reliable figure in his communal world during his seeking stages from every perspective (theological, philosophical, and
phenomenological), 58and so his reason to seek the truth would be exploring his love and building his relationship with God, which has been completed and narrated by the ontic (theological) enactment of confession. In other words, to Heidegger, whatever Augustine’s position was before he would be determined as ontic science. Consequently, we are unable to infer whether Augustine has enacted a historical turning around when he determines to convert to Christianity. Nevertheless, aside from the fact of Jesus Christ’s impact or the
57 Since Heidegger had depicted the same words with alternative meaning in different stage, we here only discuss the definition we have adopted from his literatures earlier.
58 Augustine, Aurelius. Confessions. Trans. by Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, Vol. III. iv. (8).
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philosophical thoughts he adopted, Augustine constitutes his own lifeworld based on the enactment of his intellectual judgement and motivation during his pre-faithful phase, which is coincident with the definition of genuine enactment and thus the part conglomeration of ontological science. Hence, we need to find a compromise between the historical Augustinian study and Heideggerian methodology. That is, we can treat Augustine as a historical Dasein just like what Heidegger does in his lecture Augustine and Neoplatonism (1921). In this, we can put Augustine’s own religious and philosophical tendency aside and divide his
conversion process as ontological and ontic science if we admit that Augustine’s pre-faithful life is a continuous becoming to his faithful Christian life.
Hence, I want to merely depict his process of conversion based on the conglomeration of his historical enactment. In this, I think that Augustine’s conversion is progressively enacted in the following phenomenon: as factical Dasein, Augustine is unable to have a primordial enactment when he confronts the historical situation and so he can only be taken by the history of his communal and surrounding world. However, how does this turning around occur? In my view, a possible inference would be that the genuine enactments that Augustine takes to his lifeworld have consumed his ownmost history completely so that he can no longer revive his own existence. To better explicate this phenomenon, I will refer
Heidegger’s interpretation about Augustine’s three temptations and the enactment of molestia (trouble) with my modification and reinterpretation in next chapter.59
59 However, I argue that Heidegger’s discussion leaves out Augustine’s conversion, which reflects his transition of factical situation from the ontological status to the ontic. Because Heidegger regards Augustine’s confession as an ontological, genuine pursuit, which is not what he defines to the traditional theology. Since this is not the point to my thesis, I am not going to argue this inconsistence here.
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Chapter Four: The Constitution of Augustine’s Worldview
But in these words what have I said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What has anyone achieved in words when he speaks about you? Yet woe to those who are silent about you because, though loquacious with verbosity, they have nothing to say.
Confessions I, iv, 4