In the Self's Place by Kosky Jeffrey Marion Jean-Luc

Author:Kosky, Jeffrey, Marion, Jean-Luc
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press

§34. Distentio animi

Bringing to light a second order and, so to speak, intentional present depends on a fact, again and again experienced and discussed by Saint Augustine—the fact that we perceive time—or, more exactly, the persistence of the time of a phenomenon—only by memory. If a man “premeditated” (praemeditando) the emission of a sound by setting its length, that is to say foresaw its future, “egit utique iste spatium temporis in silentio memoriaeque commendans coepit edere illam vocem, quae sonat donec ad propositum terminum perducatur” (he composed its temporal space in silence and, confiding it to memory, began to emit this sound, which goes on resounding until he arrives at the time foreseen in advance) (Confessiones XI, 27, 36, 14, 334). The paradox here stems from the fact that memory intervenes before the sound has passed through the present from the future to the past, so as to keep and collect in advance what will then unfold through the three ecstases of time. It’s the same with the tiniest temporal unity, the tiniest spatium temporis. Take the syllable. “Aut vero vel brevissima syllaba enuncietur, cujus non tunc finem audias, cum jam non audis initium. Porro quippe sic agitur, et expectatione opus est ut peragi et memoria ut comprehendi queat quantum potest. Et expectatio futurarum rerum est, praeteritarum vero memoria. . . . nec coepti motus corporis exspectari finis potest sine memoria” (Or else even the shortest syllable is not uttered, at whose end you now no longer hear its beginning. For what happens there must happen by expectation and is understood by memory, insofar as it can be. Expectation bears on things to come, memory on things past. And the end of the movement begun by a body cannot be anticipated without memory) (De immortalitate animi III, 3, 5, 176). One should not think that I begin to hear the syllable with my memory and then hear it by expectation, for each fragment (however minimal it might be) of its spatium tempus already persists too long to be held exclusively in one or the other but demands both one and the other. The proof is my impossibility to maintain the slightest fragment of it in the present (non tunc, cum jam), which obliges me, in order to perceive its now passing duration, to combine straightaway from the outset expectation and memory. Memory persists as long as expectation and simultaneously with it. Without expectation memoria must be mobilized, as I must not be late in expecting, if I want to perceive the slightest present passing now—so little does this now stay put. Doubtless, one can (and even should) legitimately distinguish memoria from expectation (expectatio) and attention (contuitus)—”nam et expectat [animis] et adtendit et meminit, ut id quod expectat per id quod adtendit transeat in id quod meminerit” (for the mind expects, attends, and remembers, in such a way that what it expects passes through that to which it directs its attention toward what it remembers) (Confessiones XI, 28, 37, 14, 334, congruent with XI, 20, 26, 14, 312).

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