On Interrogation, Introspection, Dialectic and the Ineluctable Polarity of Being and Knowing: (Reading Augustine)

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations General Introduction 1. Ephesian Resonances 2. Building a Bridge: Heraclitus to Augustine 3. Augustine and the Theo-log-ical Constitution of the Human Person 4. The Methods of Augustinian Self-Constituion 5. The Dialectical Self and the Abyss Concluding Thoughts Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Matthew W. Knotts teaches Theology at Loyola Academy, USA.

Review :
Matthew Knotts alerts the reader to challenging aspects of being human in Augustine's dialectical approach to the pursuit of self-knowledge within God. He engages in a dialogue between Augustine, himself, and Heraclitus' openness for contradicting phenomena within the universe. In discussion with 'the complete Augustinian overdetermined portrait of the self', he explores in imaginative prose the bishop's efforts to examine the abyss of the self and being human. Confronting the deep division between the self and the exterior world, this work focuses on the therapeutic and psychological aspects of philosophy and theology. This challenging undertaking opens a dialogue with a surprising pair of thinkers, Heraclitus and Augustine, on what it means to be human, as revealed by the pandemic. This book stages an encounter between two thinkers too seldom put into conversation. Far from merely juxtaposing Augustine and Heraclitus, though, Knotts make them his pole stars as he charts a fresh course through the philosophical and theological problems posed by the dialectical constitution of selfhood. His destination is an account of the psyche that is no longer beholden to old Cartesian dichotomies, but instead opens out onto the possibility that Augustinian theology might still have something to teach twenty-first-century psychology. In the late third century CE, a 'pagan' philosopher named Amelius compared Heraclitus' idea of a divine Word, or Logos, to the one we encounter in the first lines of the Gospel of John. However odd it might seem, this text by Amelius reminds us of how important Heraclitus was in late antiquity, and how central the idea of the Logos was to his philosophical legacy. This might be one reason why most of the fragments we possess of Heraclitus' treatise, On Nature, are in fact taken from texts written by early Christians. In this daring and intriguing new study, Matthew Knotts asks whether there might be echoes of Heraclitus, or “Ephesian resonances,” in the fourth- and fifth-century writings of Augustine of Hippo. And he concludes that there are. This study of “how unity is mysteriously forged from opposition,” in Heraclitus' oracular fragments and Augustine's vivid texts, is doubly illuminating. For both thinkers, Knotts argues, “introspection is … a soteriological and eschatological question.” And for both, he rightly observes, what introspection reveals is an oppositional, abyssal self which is nevertheless summoned to encounter a Logos that is both worldly, and divine. We are not done with the abyss, or perhaps the abyss is not done with us. Either way this book is an impressive guide to a profound subject. Orchestrating a novel exchange between Augustine and Heraclitus, Matthew Knotts has arrived at some genuine insights into the authors' enduring relevance for anthropological concerns. The book demonstrates what Augustine scholarship still has to give, through the gift Augustine already gave, to the “abyssal confrontations” in contemporary philosophy, theology, and psychology.