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Resting, Moving, Loving: The Access to the Self according to Saint AugustineAuthor(s): Jean-Luc MarionSource: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 91, No. 1, The Augustinian Moment (January 2011), pp.24-42Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/656605 .

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2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0022-4189/2011/9101-0003$10.00

Resting, Moving, Loving: The Access to the

Self according to Saint Augustine*Jean-Luc Marion / University of Chicago

i. creation and the question of the self

The rather obvious, although often overlooked, structure of the Con-fessiones suggests strongly that the questions about his own self, whichhave upset Saint Augustine within the first nine books, find some uni-versal answers either from conceptual analysis (in Confessiones10) or onbiblical grounds (in Confessiones 1113). I would like to show, at leastto suggest very briefly, how the doctrines of creation (including thoseof the heaven of the heavens and of the creation de nihilo) contributeto defining the place where, or more exactly from where, the confessio

can be lifted up and the self become accessible to himself. But, in fact,it becomes possible to praise God as God only if God himself opens theplace and gives the time for it. And where would that be except in Godhimself? So, the creatures place is not found in itself, but always inGod, such that the place for the confessio of God is determined by andin God, to the point that creation consists only in the opening of theplace of confessio. It is hence a universal rule. What remains for us tounderstand is how it is specified in the case of man.1

ii. the human exception

The story of creation contains, on the sixth day and in the case of man,several peculiarities. If we admit the story as told in the Vetus Latina,

* The arguments of this lecture come mostly from my book Au lieu de soi: Lapproche deSaint Augustin (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2008) (in translation at Stanford Uni-

versity Press). I am deeply grateful to Jeffrey L. Kosky for helping me in adapting and trans-lating the final draft of this text. For the sake of consistency, all the translations from Saint

Augustine are mine. The original texts are cited according to the note bibliographique(Au lieu

de soi, 14).1 Throughout this article I use the English word manas the equivalent of Augustines Latin

word homo.


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each created thing was created according to its kind, secundum genussuum, in conformity with itself and itself alone. This version even em-

phasizes this self-identity of the individuation by kind when it adds se-cundum similitudinem (Gen. 1:11), indeed, when it insists secundumsuam similitudinem (Gen. 1:11-12). The created thing resembles itself.In other words, the work of creation, which separates and distinguishesin order to open distance (thus setting the conditions for the benedic-tion of the created by God, as well as those for the praise of God by thecreated), requires referring each creature to itself, such that it resemblesnothing other than its own kind, its own species, its own aspect (spe-cies)in short, nothing other than itself in its ultimate essence. But for

two reasons, this is not how things go in the case of the creation of man.First, because in the story of his creation, the mention of a kind (or ofa species) disappears; this is to say that there is no reference of thiscreated thing to its own proper essence: Cur ergo et de homine nonita dictum est Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nos-tram secundum genus, cum et hominis propago manifesta est? (Whythen did he not also say with regard to man: Let us make man in ourimage and resemblance according to his kind, since man too obviouslyreproduces [according to his kind]?).2

This modification is not about some threat of no longer being ableto reproduce (as a consequence of the first sin, for example), since whatimmediately follows is the blessing of his fruitfulness (Gen. 1:28: In-crease and multiply). The only explanation would come from the ap-pearance of Eve, who shows up on the margins and as an exception tothe kind (in the sense of gender) of the primordial man, so to speak.But now, how to explain this liberty taken with regard to the strictacceptation of the kind (genus)? In order to understand this first pe-culiarity of the story of the creation of man (and woman), a second,

still more explicit one should be considered. In Gen. 1:26, creation nolonger happens according to the resemblance of the creature to itself(secundum suam similitudinem), but according to its resemblance toanother besides itselfand moreover, to an other of maximum alterity,since it is a reference to God:

non jam secundum genus, tanquam imitantes praecedentem proximum, nec exhominis melioris auctoritate viventes. Neque enim dixisti: Fiat homo secundumgenus, sed: Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similtudinem nostram, ut nosprobemus, quae sit voluntas tua.

[no longer according to a kind, as if we imitated some precedent nearby orlived under the authority of some man better [than us]. For you did not say:

2Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 3.12.20.


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Let man be according to his kind, but: Let us make man in our image andresemblance, so that we might know by the trial what your will is.] (Confessiones13.22.32)

Not only does the phrase ad similitudinem nostram literally contradictsecundum suam similitudinem, but it is also substituted for kind (or spe-cies)that is to say, it holds the place, in the case of man, of any andevery definition: Nec dicis secundum genus, sed ad imaginem et similitu-dinem nostram (You did not sayaccording to its kind [ours], but accordingto the image and resemblance [yours]) (Confessiones 13.22.32).

Whence this paradoxical consequence: man constitutes a creature parexcellence, and even particularly excellent, precisely because he has

neither a kind nor a species proper to him and therefore does not havea definition that would appropriate him to himself. The human is de-fined by the very fact that he remains without definitionthe animalproperly without property.

And this is not just an incidental remark; it deals with what SaintAugustine does not hesitate to name a mystery, in the sense of the magnaquaestiothat man became for himself,3 and also of a sacrament by whichGod blesses man by creating him: Sed quid est hoc et quale mysteriumest? . . . Dicerem te, Deus noster, qui nos ad imaginem tuam creasti,

dicerem te hoc donum benedictionis homini proprievoluisse largiri (Butwhat is this and what is this mystery? . . . I would say, our God, whocreated us in your image, I would say that you wanted to grant properlyto man the gift of your blessing) (Confessiones 13.24.35).

However, Saint Augustine hesitates before this conclusion, as the issueremains quite subtle: God also encouraged the animals to reproduce;he even blessed the fish of the sea (Gen. 1:22). What then is particularto the blessing of fruitfulness given to man? No doubt precisely that:man alone got from God a blessing of fruitfulness, while he did not

receive a kind or species according to which he could naturally repro-duce-reproduce himself from himself. This would mean that, if manpropagates himself over the entire earth to the point of dominating it,he owes this not to his kind or species (which he does not have), norto his essence (which remains unknown), but to a direct and ongoingblessing from God. In what does this consist? Obviously in substitutingfor kind and species the reference ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram,in order to hold the place of the absent essence. Man does not increaseaccording to his kind, his species or his essencethat is to say, accordingto himself, but according to a blessing coming from elsewhere, which

3 See Jean-Luc Marion, Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing,Journalof Religion 85, no. 1 (2005): 124.


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sets him up to go in the resemblance and image of an other than himself,God. Man does not develop by some essential and internal law, but solely

by receiving Gods blessing, a blessing that consists only in being dis-posed according to the image and resemblance toward God. Man hasno proper essence, but refers himself directly to an other than himself,an other who, more intimate to him than himself (than his lackingessence), plays for him the role of essence by proxy.

For the image, by definition and essentially, can neither provide anessence nor a definition obtained by replicating, reproducing, and im-itating another essence or definitionall the more so as the image dealshere with that for which man does not, by principle, have any means

to sketch the slightest bit of a representation: God. Here, and in thecase of the human more than in that of any other creature, the imageremains impracticable; consequently, it has to be thought starting fromthe resemblance (similitudo). Obviously man does not bear the imageof God as God, the Son, bears it toward God the Father through theconnection of the Spirit; for only the Son is the image of the Father,while man is found only in the image of God:

Sed quia non omnino aequalis fiebat illa imago Dei tanquam non ab illo nata,sed ab illo creata, hujus rei significandae causa, ita imago estut ad imaginemsit:

id est, non aequaliter parilitate, sed quadam similitudine accedit. Non enim lo-corum intervallis, sed similitudineacceditur adDeum, et dissimilitudine recediturab eo.

[But because this image of God [man] was not absolutely equal to him, sincenot born of him, but created by him, so, to make this point clear, this image isimage inasmuch as to the image, that is, it is not equal to it in a parity of Godand man, but approaches it by some resemblance. It does not draw near towardGod by degrees of place, but by resemblance toward him and it grows apart bydissemblance away from him.] (De Trinitate 7.6)

It is not a matter of keeping or losing the image of God as a content(as if created in the image of God can count as a definition, as cat-egorical as rational animal, animal endowed with language, or an-imal that laughs), but of referring the image toward that to which itbears the resemblance. The image is not compared to a model, like avisible reproduction is to another visible accessible elsewhere: the imageis borne only by that which refers itself across the resemblance unto anoriginal that remains as such invisible, and only in the measure to which

it so refers itself. The image consists only in the tension of referringitself to that to which it means to resemble. It appears only as thismovement toward, and only this intentio ad keeps a resemblance. Manbears the image of God (instead of and in place of kind, species, or


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essence) inasmuch as he resembles Him. But he cannot, except absurdly,claim to resemble him as a visible image resembles a visible model,

indeed as an intelligible image resembles an intelligible model. Thiswould seem to be the illusion of the Neoplatonists: establishing a positiveresemblance, one measurable by intervals, between the terms of theresemblance. It must be that man resembles God otherwisewhichmeans both in another way and by remaining in alterity: Sola est autemadversus omnes errores via munitissima, ut idem ipse sit Deus et homo;quo itur Deus, qua itur homo (In order to avoid in advance all errors,one thing alone is needed: that the same item be God and man, Godtowardwhich going goes, man throughwhom going goes) (De civitate Dei

11.2).This means that one must go toward the image through the resem-blance: man bears the image of God up to the point that he gives upany resemblance to himself (ad suum genus, ad suam similitudinem) forthe sake of resembling nothingat least nothing of which he couldhave any idea, that is, any species. For man does not resemble God byresembling something visible or intelligible, but mostly by resemblingnothing visible or intelligiblein short, by resembling no image, es-pecially not some so-called imagoof God, but in bearing the resemblance

of the style of God. Man is a God, like a Cezanne is a Cezanne, a Rem-brandt a Rembrandtwithout anything behind or beside them, thatwould be Cezanne or Rembrandt, yet visible as themselves as part ofthe painting. No, the paintings of Rembrandt or Cezanne appear assuch, without any other visible mark or signature besides them, but onlyas paintings bearing all over the inimitable style of Cezanne or Rem-brandt. In this sense, man is a God. He appears as God-made, as a Godinsofar as he endorses bearing Gods style, and lets his own particularfeatures be subdued, so that its provenance might appear. Man is a God

only as he returns from where he comes, to his most intimate other.

iii. the unimaginable image

One should not be misled into assimilating the image to a content ofthe resemblance, for it provides less a content than a container, in thesense of a place where the resemblance is at play in its varying degrees:Ergo intelligimus habere nos aliquid ubi imago Dei est, mentem scilicetatque rationem (We understand therefore that we have somewhere where

the image of God is, our mind indeed and reason) (Enarratio in psalmos42.6).

Of course, the rational mind offers the place for the resemblance,but it does not offer its content. Indeed, one can draw up a table of


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the images bestowing on the rational mind a resemblance with the Trin-ity: either by considering this mind as a whole (De Trinitate 9), so that

the triad mind, knowledge, and love (mens, notitia, amor) refers to theTrinity; or by relating man to the world, so that to sketch Trinity withtwo other triads: first (according to De Trinitate11.2.25), the thing seen,sight, and the intention which connects the one to the other (res, visio,intentio); second (according to De Trinitate 11.3.67) memory, interiorvision, and the will (memoria, visio, voluntas); or, finally and especially,one can privilege the triad of memory, understanding, and will (memoria,intelligentia, voluntas; following De Trinitate10.11.17). Eventually, this lastfigure specifies the place of the best similitude: Ecce ergo mens mem-

init sui, intelligit se, diligit se: hoc si cernimus, cernimus Trinitatem;nondum quidem Deum, sed jam imaginem Dei (Look, the mind re-members itself, understands itself, loves itself: if we see that, we see theTrinity; not yet God, of course, but already the image of God) (De Trin-itate 14.8.11).

But all these analogous triads, though disclosing an image of theTrinity, do not display in themselves any stable and steady content, butfind meaning solely in the degree to which they refer this content toGod himself. A major text specifies this:

Haec igitur trinitas mentis non propterea Dei est imago, quia sui meminit mens,et intelligit ac diligit se; sed quia potest etiammeminisse, et intelligere, et amarea quo facta est. Quod cum facit, sapiens ipsa fit. Si autem non facit, etiam cumsui meminit, seseque intelligit ac diligit, stulta est. Meminerit itaque Dei sui, adcujus imaginem facta est, eumque intelligat atque diligat. Quod ut brevius di-cam, colat Deum non factum, cujus ab eo capax est facta, et cujus particeps essepotest.

[And therefore this final trinity of the mind is not the image of God inasmuchas the mind in it remembers itself, understands itself, and loves itself, but be-

cause it can also remember and understand and love he by whom it was made.If it does that, it itself becomes wise. But if it does not do so, it is stupid, even

when it remembers itself, understands itself, and loves itself. To put it briefly,let it worship the God not made, of whom it was made capable and in whomit can participate.] (De Trinitate 14.12.15)

For sure, the three faculties make an image of God; however, it isneither those three themselves, nor their reciprocal organization, noreven their distant similitude with the three persons of the Trinity thatdoes soas the majority of commentators seem to say again and

againbut rather the possibility that they might refer to God, as theone who can make them play among themselves the resemblance of thetrinitarian game of persons in it. The faculties open a mere place, whichbecomes a visible and reliable image of the Trinity only insofar as they


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receive (in the sense of capacitas) participation in the trinitarian com-munion and, thus, play trinitarily, as if by derivation, among themselves.

They appear as images only according to their resemblance, thereforetangentially, by changing degrees, measured by their participation: Nonsua luce, sed summae illius lucis participatione sapiens erit. . . . Nequeenim participatione sui sapiens est [Deus], sicut mens participationeDei (It [the mind of man] will not be wise by its own light, but byparticipating in this great light. . . . For God is not wise by participatingin himself, as in contrast the mind [of man] is wise by participation inGod) (De Trinitate 14.12.15).

What makes the image a resemblance does not stem from some status,

a property, or an essence of this image, but from the movement, fromthe tension and the intentio toward God, therefore according to thedegree of participation allowed by the capacitas. In this sense, the ab-sence of a proper definition becomes for man the compelling and neg-ative condition of the resemblance toward God, a negation that shouldforever be increased and confirmed. Not only is man defined by hisnever fixed resemblance with God, rather than by a fixed definition;but he is defined by this very absence of definition: it is proper to himnot to appropriate himself or be appropriated to himself; it is proper

to him not to resemble himself, because that which he does resemble,God, does not coincide with his essence, nor with any essence whatso-ever. Briefly, because God resembles nothing in this world, man resem-bles nothing in this world. Man is man only without properties andtherefore without definition. To the question quid sit homo? (What isman?), Saint Augustine has answered at least once, provided that thismay be an answer: Nec nunc definitionem hominis a me postulandumputo (I think that a definition of man cannot be asked of me now) (Demoribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum 1.4.6).

iv. the privilege of unknowing

However, this essential indefinition of man should be understood as aprivilege. The inability and the freedom not to be so circumscribed doesindeed constitute a privilegeat least the very privilege of God accord-ing to the prohibition against making any graven image, nothing thatresembles what is found in the heavens (Exod. 20:4), nothing thereforethat would claim to represent God by comprehending him. Would man

therefore also find himself in the heavens? To be sure, first by becom-ing a nonresident alien (by participation) of the heaven of the heav-ens, if not an official citizen. Then also in the sense that what countsfor God (that no name, no image and no concept can pretend to com-


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prehend him), also counts for man as well: neither one nor the otheradmits either kind, species, or essence. Man remains unimaginable, since

formed in the image of He who admits none, incomprehensible becauseformed in the resemblance of He who admits no comprehension. Tospeak strictly and officially, man resembles nothing since he resemblesnothing other than He whom incomprehensibility properly character-izes. Or again, if God remains incomprehensible, man who resemblesnothing other than Him (and especially not himself) will bear the markof his incomprehensibility. In other words, man, deprived of kind, species,and essence, delivered from every paradigm, appears without mediationin the light that surpasses all light. Of such a bestowed incomprehen-

sibility, his face bears the mark precisely inasmuch as it reveals itself asinvisible as the face of God. Man differs radically from every other beingin the world by an insurmountable differenceone no longer ontolog-ical, but holy. He no longer differs as the rational animal, as ego cogitans,as transcendental I, as absolute consciousness, as the Dasein or even asthe shepherd of Being (Hirt des Seins), but as the icon of the invisibleGod (Col. 1:15)exactly as by participation in the image and resem-blance of the incomprehensible icon of the invisible. His invisibilityseparates man from the world and consecrates him as holy for the sake

of the Holy.In coming to this conclusion, Saint Augustine inscribes himself withinan ongoing tradition of Christian theology, whose argument was for-malized by Gregory of Nyssa:

An icon can only be per fect insofar as it lacks nothing from what can be knownin the original. So, since incomprehensibility pertains to what we see withindivine nature, it follows necessarily that any icon should keep that similarity too

with its archetype. For, would we comprehend the nature of the icon and wouldnevertheless the nature of the archetype surpass our comprehension, this op-

position would attest the deficiency of the icon. But, because the nature of ourmind as referred to the icon of the Creator, overwhelms any comprehension,it keeps exactly its similarity with its model by keeping the seal of incompre-hensibility on its own unknowing. (On the Creation of Man11.3, Patrologia Graeca44:156b)

Knowing man therefore demands referring him to God inasmuch asincomprehensible and therefore establishing by derivation his incom-prehensibility, in the name of both image and resemblance. Augustinetoo came to this conclusion. While Saint Paul, for his part, argued that

none among men knows the secrets of man, except the spirit of manin him (1 Cor. 2:11) and assumed consistently that manhood under-stood the secrets of man, Augustine is quick to posit on the contrarythat tamen est aliquid hominis, quod nec ipse scit spiritus hominis, qui


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in ipso est, tu autem Domine, scis ejus omnia quia eum fecisti (andyet there is something in man that not even the spirit of man itself

knows, which is [nevertheless] in him, but you, O Lord, you know allof him [man], for you made him) (Confessiones 10.5.7).Starting from this nonknowledge of oneself nevertheless known by

another, God alone, it is necessary to launch the operation of confessio,or rather the duality constitutive of a doubly oriented confessio, towardmy ignorance of myself and toward the knowledge of myself by another:

Confitear ergo quid de me sciam, confitear et quid de me nesciam, quoniamet quod de me scio, te mihi lucente scio, et quod de me nescio, tamdiu nescio,donec fiant tenebrae meae sicut meridies in vultu tuo.

[I will confess what I know of myself and I will also confess what I do not knowabout myself, since even what I know of myself is because you illuminate myknowledge of it, while what I do not know of myself I remain ignorant of aslong as my shadows do not become like a noonday [Psalm 89:8] before yourface.] (Confessiones 10.5.7)

Man differs infinitely from man, but with a difference that he cannotcomprehend and that, provided he intends to save it, he ought notcomprehend.

In this way, we verify again the principle that leads every itinerarytoward oneself and toward God (for there is only one of them): Interiorintimo meo, superior summo meo (Confessiones 3.6.11). But we know,now, that the aporia of magna mihi quaestio coincides with the solution:the indefinition of man.

v. the rest

The indefinition of man, this privilege, implies that I do not reside in

any essence, but that on the contrary I resemble what has no semblance,God, without form, indescribable, incomprehensible, invisibleinother words, that I resemble nothing. Or more exactly, that I resemble,that is to say, that I semble reflexively and appear in my report to theresemblance of God (ad similitudinem Dei). I appear each time myselfaccording as I move up (or down) on the invisibly graded scale of myresemblance, of my proximity or separation from the invisibility of God,whose invisible accomplishment I reflect (more or less) in the visible.Then it remains to be understood which scale may I walk along from

one degree to the other of this resemblance and if I could, in the end,find a point of stability in a visible reflection of the invisible. If I haveto cross the re-semblance and dwell in it, which momentum and drivecan lead me there?


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To go farther, let us go back to our point of departure, to the confessio.It has, since the beginning, operated in putting into operation the prin-

ciple of rest and restlessness: Et tamen laudare te vult homo, aliquaportio creaturae tuae. Tu excitas, ut laudare te delectet, quia fecisti nosad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te (And hewants to praise you, man does, this tiny portion of what you have created.You excite him to love and praise you because you have made us [sothat we might carry ourselves towards and] to you, and our heart knowsno rest so long as it does not rest in you) (Confessiones 1.1.1).

The question is all about my restlessnessliterally, of my disequilib-rium: paradoxically enough, so long as I rest in myself, I do not hold

up nor hold myself together, and I only cease to vacillate if I find aplace outside myself in God. I cannot not want (and love) to find myrepose in God, because I cannot settle in myself, nor in anything else,if I do not posit myself in God. With perfect coherence, the final momentof the confessio describes, in three passages that follow, the three actorsof this rest: the one that completes creation, but also the one in whichcreation took place as a place of repose for the created, and finally thevery repose in which creatures should end, if they admit it as in theirown place: Quamvis ea [sc. opera tua] quietusfeceris, requievistiseptimo

die, hoc praeloquatur nobis vox libri tui, quod et nos post opera nostraideo bona valde, quia tu nobis ea donasti, sabbato vitae aeternae re-quiescamusin te (Though you made your works while remaining restful,you rested the seventh day, your book told us in advance that we, too,after our works [which are very good, since it is you who gave themto us], in the Sabbath of eternal life, we will find our rest in you) (Con-fessiones 13.36.51).

Put otherwise: Etiam tunc enim sic requiescesin nobis, quemadmodumnunc operaris in nobis, et ita erit illa requiestua per nos, quemadmodum

sunt ista opera tua per nos (For then too you will rest in us, as now youwork in us, and then this rest, yours, will be in us, as your actions areyours through us) (Confessiones 13.37.52).

And finally: Post illa [sc. quaedam bona opera nostra] nos requieturosin tua grandi sanctificatione speramus. Tu autem bonum nullo indigensbono, semper quietuses, quoniam tua quiestu ipse es (After them [someof our works, good ones], we hope to rest in your great sanctification.But you, who have no need of any good, you are always in rest, becauseyou are unto yourself your own rest) (Confessiones 13.38.53).

God alone holds himself in rest because He alone holds himself inhimself, such that everything that does not hold itself in God but remainswithin itself (willingly or not) cannot settle there and therefore doesnot remain anymore in rest. God alone gives rest, because He alone has


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it. And He alone has it because He alone is it. And everything else, allthe way until the ends of his creation, has a place only in this rest.

Creation, originally eschatological, consists only in giving a place to thisadvent of each creature in the place of its repose. And this place, forthe man without definition, is found in nothing less than in the rest ofGod himself: Nam et in ipsa misera inquietudine . . . satis ostendis,quam magnam rationalem creaturam feceris, cui nullo modo sufficit adbeatam requiem, quidquid te minus est, ac per hoc nec ipsa sibi (Foreven in the misfortune of our restlessness itself . . . you show sufficientlyhow great you made your rational creature, since nothing less than youwill suffice for its happy rest, not even itself to itself) (Confessiones13.8.9).

Except for God, man would not find himself, or find where he is.

vi. the weight

Now, and this is a remarkable fact, this text which I just quoted, theone that defined the heaven of the heavens as a place where you finda position in the Spirit (requiesceret in spiritu tuo) and explained thatman could find repose in nothing less than God (magnam rationalemcreaturam feceris, cui nullo modo sufficit ad beatam requiem, quidquid te

minus est), goes on to show how to measure the proximity or distanceof each man in regard to this place:

Corpus pondere suo nititur ad locum suum. Pondus non ad ima tantum est,sed ad locum suum. Ignis sursum tendit, deorsum lapis. Ponderibus suis aguntur,loca sua petunt. Oleum infra aquam fusum super aquam attollitur, aqua supraoleum fusa infra oleum demergitur: ponderibus suis aguntur, loca sua petunt.Minus ordinata inquieta sunt: ordinantur et quiescunt. Pondus meum amormeus; eo feror, quocumque feror.

[The body makes every effort to push itself with all its weight toward its place.

The weight does not push only down, but towards its place. Fire tends towardthe upper, the stone toward the lower. They are [both] put into motion by their[respective] weight, [but] they seek their [own] places. The least ordered thingsremain without a place to come to rest: as soon as they recover their order, theycome to rest. My weight, it is my love; wherever I take myself, it is my love thattakes me there.] (Confessiones 13.9.10)

This argument looks limpid as well as decisive, for it does not saymerely that Anima . . . velut pondere amore fertur quocumque fertur (Thesoul, wherever it takes itself, takes itself there by love as by a weight)

(Epistula 157.2.9), but also and above all specifies that it is ultimatelyfor the soul a matter of will, of its will: Voluntas . . . ponderi similisest(The will . . . resembles a weight) (De Trinitate11.11.18). The detailsof this have yet to be precisely understood.


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It is worth noticing that the point of departure for this argument doesnot concern the question of love, but the strictly physical problem of

the cause of local motion. On this issue, Aristotle reasons in this way:If each of the simple bodies has a natural locomotion, e.g., fire upwardand earth downward and towards the middle of the universe, it is clearthat the void cannot be the cause of locomotion.4 To this distinctionbetween movements upward and downward he also adds the possibledistinction, for each of them, between those that follow nature and thosethat contradict itin other words, by force or by nature. But it is doubt-lessly wise, here and elsewehere, not to exhaust oneself in identifyingthe supposed Greek sources of Saint Augustine by arbitrarily offering

erudite readings; it is enough to stick with Cicero, the common andmost credible mediator.5

Indisputably, Saint Augustine assumes as such this principle for theexplanation of locomotion, namely, as a physical theory. Several textstestify to this:

Lege naturae cedunt pondera minora majoribus, non modo cum ad propriumlocum suo sponte nutu feruntur, ut humida et terrena corpora in ipsius mundimedium locum, qui est infimus, rursus aeria et ignea sursum versus; sed etiamcum aliquo tormento aut jactu aut impulsu aut repulsu, eo quo sponte ferrentur,

vi aliena ire coguntur.[According to a law of nature, the less heavy weights yield to the heavier, notonly when they transport themselves toward their proper place (in this way, themoist and earthly bodies tend toward the place at the center of the world, whichis the lowest, while, inversely, the aerial and fiery bodies tend upward), but also

when they are compelled to transport themselves in another direction besidesthat which they would follow of themselves, by some mechanism, disturbance,attraction, or repulsion.] (De quantitate animae 22.37)

He praises this law of nature even so highly that one can rely on it

as one does on an experimental test:

Pondera gemina sunt. Pondus enim est impetus quidam cujusque rei, velutconantis ad locum suum: hoc est pondus. Fers lapidem manu, pateris pondus;premit manum tuum, quia locum suum quaerit. Et vis videre quid quaerat?Subtrahe manum, venit ad terram, quiescit in terra: pervenit quo tendebat,invenit suum locum. Pondus ergo illud motus erat quasi spontaneus, sine anima,sine sensu. Namque si aquam mittas super oleum, pondere suo in ima tendit.Locum enim suum quaerit, ordinari quaerit; quia praeter ordinem est aqua

4Aristotle, Physics 4.8.214b1216. Denis OBrien has done his best to connect Saint Au-gustine with Iamblichus (Pondus meum amor meus [Confessiones XIII 9.10]: Saint Augustin et

Jamblique, Revue dhistoire des religions198, no. 4 [1981]: 423-28). Had Iamblichus dealt withlove, which is not the case, this demonstration would have been more convincing.

5 See, e.g., Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.17.40 and 5.24.69.


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super oleum. Donec ergo veniat ad ordinem suum, inquietus motus est, donecteneat locum suum.

[There are two kinds of weight. For weight is the push of any thing whatsoeverinsofar as it strives toward its [proper] place: such is weight. Take a stone in

your hand; you feel its weight; it presses your hand, for it seeks to reach itsplace. And do you want to know what it is thus seeking to reach? Withdraw yourhand, it goes to the earth and comes to rest there. It has arrived there whereit tended; it has found its place. Therefore this weight was a quasi-spontaneousmovement, with neither soul, nor sensation. For if you throw water on oil, the

water tends by its weight to go downward. It tends toward its place; it seeks toput itself in order; for water above oil, this is not in order. So long as it has notreturned into its order, movement does not remain at rest, until such time as it has

arrived in its place.] (Enarratio in psalmos 29.2.10)

The laws of nature (almost in the modern sense) abide so firmlythat Saint Augustine will even mention them as objections (at leastaccording to some people) to the possibility of miracles:

Ac per hoc, inquiunt, quoniam terra abhinc sursum versus est prima, secundaaqua super terram, tertius aer super aquam, quartum super aera caelum, nonpotest esse terrenum corpus in caelo; momentis enim propriis, ut ordinem suumteneant, singula elementa librantur.

[And consequently, they say, since, in ascending from lower to higher, earthcomes first, then the water above the earth, third is the air above the water, andfourth comes the heavens above the air; a terrestrial body cannot be found inthe heavens, for these different moments balance each of the elements, suchthat they [each] find their proper order.] (De civitate Dei 22.11.1)

Up until this point, there has been nothing innovative on the side ofSaint Augustine; he simply assumes a doctrine widely accepted at histimeto the point that one could even legitimate it theologically by

the authority of Wisdom 11:21: Omnia in mensura et numero et pon-dere disposuisti (You arranged all things in order, measure, and weight)with the immense posterity that this is known to have. It is thus stillonly a matter of the laws of local motion, and, in a restricted sense, ofthe laws of the world.

vii. love and motion

In fact, the innovation only starts when Saint Augustine no longer deals

with a place in the world (neither physics, nor nature, nor local motion),but of the place of he (or she) who confesses. How, it will be asked,can one pass from the laws of local motion to the place of confession?By an unforeseen tactical reversal, the laws of local motion will be el-


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evated, transposed and overtaken at the level of the rules of love; pondus,its tensions and its movements, will be displaced into the movements

and intentions of amor. Saint Augustine undertakes this by drawing to-gether the formulations of Cicero (more so than those of Aristotle) withanother one, coming from Virgil: Trahit sua quemque voluptas / Eachis led by his own pleasure (Bucolics 2.65). Still more surprising, hequotes it in fact in order to comment on a verse from the Gospel ofJohn: Nemo venit ad me, nisi quem Pater attraxit / Nobody comes tome, if the Father has not attracted him ( John 6:44), in which he triesto explain how the Father, even if He attracts someone toward the Son,does neither compel him, nor contradict his will, even though attracted.

And this is the argument:Quomodo voluntate credo, si trahor? Ego dico: parum est voluntate, etiam

voluptate traheris. Quid est trahi voluptate? Delectare in Domino, et dabit tibipetitiones cordis tui. Est quaedam voluptas cordis, cui panis dulcis est illecaelestis. Porro, si poetae dicere licuit Trahit sua quemque voluptas, non ne-cessitas, sed voluptas, non obligatio, sed delectatio, quanto fortius nos diceredebemus trahi hominem ad Christum, qui delectatur veritate, delectatur bea-titudine, delectatur justitia, delectatur sempiterna vita, quod totum Christus est?

[How will I believe willingly if I am attracted? As for me, I say: you are onlyslightly led by your will, but [much more] by pleasure. What does it mean tobe attracted by pleasure? Take pleasure in the Lord, and he will give you what

your heart asks [Ps. 36:4]. There is a certain pleasure of the heart, for whomthe bread that comes from heaven is sweet. For that matter, if a poet could say,Each is led by his own pleasure, not necessity but pleasure, not obligation butdelight, how much more so should we say that the man is led toward Christ

who takes pleasure in the truth, who takes pleasure in blessedness, who takespleasure in justice, who takes pleasure in life without end, all things that Christis entirely?] (In Johannis Evangelium Tractatus 26.4)

The breakthrough and the boldness lies in calling on Virgil to inter-pret John 6:44, so as to complete and correct Cicero (and Aristotle).Local displacementin other words, arrival in the proper placenolonger results only from a physical weight, but also from pleasuresinclination, which triggers in the heart the same spontaneity that gravityunleashes in the body. For, what takes up and displaces the role of weightin the spirit does not come (at least not first of all) from the weightof glory in Saint Pauls sense (2 Cor. 4:17) as it could have been possible,but from delectatio. Bydelectatio, we must understand the fact not of takingpleasure (according to the debased way of speaking today), but of re-ceiving pleasure:

Delectatio quippe quasi pondus est animae. Delectatio ergo ordinat animam.


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Ubi enim erit thesaurus tuus, ibi erit et cor tuum: ubi delectatio, ibi thesaurus;ubi autem cor, ibi beatitudo aut miseria.

[It is therefore pleasure that is something likethe weight of the soul. For pleasureputs the soul in order. There where your treasure will be, there too will be

your heart (Matt. 6:21): there where your pleasure is, there is your treasure; therewhere your body is, there is blessedness or misery.] (De musica 6.11.29)

Love is set forth according to a logic as rigourous as motion, and there-fore should be understood as rigorously as it.

Thus there is established a comparison between motion and love,which ends up as an analogy of proportion, according to which whatweight is to the body, desire is to love. Sometimes the terms correspond

strictly without even admitting any difference: Amant enim requiem,sive piae animae, sive iniquae; sed qua perveniunt ad illum quod amant,plurimae nesciunt; nec aliquid appetunt etiam corpora ponderibus suis,nisi quod animas amoribus suis (For all souls love rest, the pious aswell as the unjust; but by which path to reach what they love, the majorityknow not at all, and the bodies too seek nothing with their weight,except what the souls seek with their loves) (Epistula 55.10.18).

But more often the terms respond to one another only with the reserveof a gap, for differences remain, because the relation between desire

(for pleasure) and love works as the paradigm for the relation betweennatural weights and bodies, and not the other way around, as commonsense certainly would have expected:

Si essemus lapides aut fluctus aut ventus aut flamma vel quid hujus modi, sineullo quidem sensu atque vita, non tamen nobis deessetquasiquidam nostrorumlocorum atque ordinis appetitus. Nam velutamores, corporum momenta levitatenitantur. Itaenim corpus pondere, sicutanimus amore fertur, quocumque fertur.

[If we were only stones, waves, winds, a flame, and something of this sort, without

any sensation or life, we would not however be deprived of some sort of appetencein our motions and their [right] order. For, just like loves, the pressings of bodiesstrive on by their lightness. That is, just asthe spirit is borne by its love whereverit is carried, so too likewise the body by its weight.] (De civitate Dei 11.28).

Movement follows weight, like desire follows love, to the point that theloving push of the desiring soul becomes the paradigm for movements,even in inanimate things.

The push of love in its desire plays the role of paradigm not onlyregarding inanimate nature, but also over all reasonable spirits, for even

men and the angels see their hierarchy modified according as the weightof love is exercised according to the law of nature or that of justice:Sed tantum valet in naturis rationalibus quoddam veluti pondus volun-tatis et amoris, ut, cum ordine naturae angeli hominibus, tamen lege


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justitiae boni homines malis angelis praeferantur (But it holds amongrational nature like some sort of weight of the will and of love, which

makes it such that, if, according to the order of nature, one shouldprefer angels to men, nevertheless, according to the law of justice, oneshould prefer good men to bad angels) (De civitate Dei 11.16).

When it is a matter of the desire that love sets forth, weight loses thecharacteristics that it had when dealing only with the weight of a body:insofar as love is concerned, weight weighs even without nature, indeedopposing it to the point of becoming a free or voluntary weight, whichweighs there where it wants:

Qui motus si culpae deputatur . . . non est utique naturalis, sed voluntarius; in

eoque similis est motui quo deorsum lapis fertur, quod sicut iste proprius estlapidis, sic ille animi: verumtamen in eo dissimilis, quod in potestatenon habetlapis cohibere motum quo fertur inferius; animus vero dum non vult, non itamovetur.

[But if one assigns the blame to it . . . this movement is no longer natural, butvoluntary. It is like the movement that bears the stone downward, in that itbelongs properly to the spirit, like its own to the stone; but it is still unlike, inthat the stone does not have the power to contain the movement which bears itdownward, while the spirit does not move thus unless it wants to.] (De libero

arbitrio 3.1.2).

Love may indeed be explained as a weight, provided that we mean afree weight: free first from the constraints of matter, second from thelimits of nature, and therefore, third perfectly voluntary. Weight, un-derstood this way, does not first pertain to the physical and materialworld, but bears originally a spiritual and rational meaning.

viii. dwelling out of myself

Saint Augustine therefore corrects the model of physics that explainslocal movement by the weight of bodies; not out of a concern of spir-itualizing or edification, but as a matter of adapting the paradigm ofpondus to the theoretical requirements that love imposes on it. For, inthe case of love, pondusshould become voluntary and therefore set itselffree from natural (and material) determinations, for it implies freedomin two ways. First because nobody can love without wanting to: even iffreedom does not always signify the choice of decision, a lover without

freedom inevitably becomes a patient, indeed soon a sick soul. Nextbecause love supposes choosing some beloved rather than another; con-sequently, the freedom of love requires duplicating its weight so as tooppose one weight to another in order to do justice to the choice be-


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tween two loves. There will be at least two loves and two weights: Amoresduo in hac vita secum in omni tentatione luctantur: amor saeculi et

amor Dei; et horum duorum, qui vicerit, illuc amantem tanquam ponderetrahit (Two loves contend with one another during this life at eachtemptation: the love of the world and the love of God; and the one ofthese two loves that emerges victorious will transport the lover as by aweight) (Sermo 344, 1).6

Love redoubled itself, to the extent that the desire of the soulthatis to say, its weightpushes it upward or downward. Love so radicallyreformulates the concept of weight and is so loosely bound to the ma-terial meaning of the displacement of bodies that Saint Augustine does

not hesitate to assign it the upward movement as well as the habitual(physical) movement downwards.If weight can still make something fall, it is no longer an issue of a

physical fall, since it makes the soul fall as well in spirit:

Mane si potes: sed non potes; relaberis in ista solita et terrena. Quo tandempondere, quaeso, relaberis, nisi sordium contractarum cupiditatis visco et pere-grinationis erroribus?

[Stay, if you can; but you cannot; you will fall backinto your earthly habits. Under

the weight of what weight, I ask you, will you fall back, if not that of the filth youhave acquired through the stickiness of your desire and the erring of yourerrors?] (De Trinitate 8.2.3).7

And therefore, facing this weight that can make one fall in spirit, inspirit too can another weight be practiced, one that makes ascend:Quomodo enim oleum a nullo humore premitur, sed disruptis omnibusexsilit et supereminet: sic et caritas non potest premi in ima; necesseest ut ad suprema emineat (As oil is compressed by no other liquid,but escapes them all and wraps around them, so too charity cannot be

pressed down to the bottom. It must necessarily rise up and dominate)(In Johannis Evangelium Tractatus 6.20).

Here a paradox, which appeared earlier, finds it structuring logic: Iam to myself a weighty burden as long as I remain empty of God, whorelieves me of myself and lifts me up toward him, as soon as he fills me:Nunc autem quoniam quem tu imples, sublevas eum, quoniam tuiplenus non sum, oneri mihi sum (But now, since you lift up the onewhom you fill, seeing as I am not filled with you, I am to myself a burden)(Confessiones 10.28.39).

Filled with God, I undergo the impact of a weight oriented upward,

6 See also Augustine, Confessiones 4.15.27 and 7.17.23.7 See also Augustine, De Trinitate 10.5.7.


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while filled (in fact, stuffed) by myself alone, I undergo a weight down-ward. Grace, in other words the love coming from God with the aim of

returning me to him, exerts a counterweight, a weight that ascends, arelief, a rebound, and a remonstrator:

Cui dicam, quomodo dicam de pondere cupiditatis in abruptam abyssum et desublevationecaritatis. . . . Neque enim loca sunt. . . . Affectus sunt, amores sunt,immunditia spiritus nostri defluens inferius amore curarum, et sanctitas tui at-tollens nos superius amore securitatis.

[To whom and how should I speak of the weightof cupidity [which leads] towardthe sudden abyss and of the charity that uplifts . . . ? It is not about a place.. . . These are the affects, loves, of the impurity of our spirit plummeting lowerthrough love of its cares and your holiness lifting us up higher by love of assur-ance.] (Confessiones 13.7.8).

Love, like the weight from above, which comes from there and leadsback, lifts us up toward your place, which is defined precisely by thefact that there and there alone we can place ourselves: In dono tuorequiescimus: ibi te fruimur. Requies nostra locus noster. Amor illucattollit nos (It is in the gift that you give that we find rest: here we enjoyyou. Our rest, our place. Here, your love raises us up) (Confessiones

13.9.10).That weight not only could lift us up toward the heights, but in fact

does so first and essentially when the issue is my proper place, is aparadox that imposes itself because it ceases to appear surprising. Thebottom line is that the ground always attracts rather than grounds, pre-cisely because it shows itself above, attracts from on high, weighs on usfrom above. Consequently, Christ constitutes the ground par excellence,the fundamentum fundamentorum, insofar as he comes from on high,just as the heavenly Jerusalem descends from the heavens, as descends

the heaven of the heavens: Etenim origo fundamenti hujus summit-atem tenet; et quemadmodum fundamentum corporeae fabricae in imoest, sic fundamentum spiritualis fabricae in summo est (And thereforethe origin of this ground stands at the summit; and just as the groundof the corporal construction is found below, so is the ground of thespiritual construction found at the summit) (Enarratio in psalmos 86.3[both quotations]).

I find my place only there where I truly want to dwell. And I trulywant to dwell only there where my love pushes me, transports me, and

leads me, as a weight leads, transports, and pushes. I must know thisweight in order to know what I freely want: Sed vis nosse qualis amorsit? Vide quo ducat. Non enim monemus ut nihil ametis, sed monemusne mundum ametis, ut eum qui fecit mundum, libere ametis (But do


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you want to know which love it is? See where it leads you. For we arenot warning you about not loving anything, but about not loving the

world, so that you might freely love him who made the world) (Enarratioin psalmos 121.1).I am the place where I confess; but I rest in this place only because

my love pushes and poses me there like a weight. But a voluntary weight,since through it I love. And if I love there, I am there as in my self.

resting moving loving in augustine.pdf

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