Image and the Self: Spiritus in Augustinian Philosophy
Author: SUN Shuai, Lecturer at School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China
Abstract:
According to Augustine, human spirituality not only includes the intellectual parts of soul, but also inferior spiritual parts, including the ability to form images. This article focuses on this seriously overlooked aspect of the spiritual in Augustinian philosophy, as well as his thorough transformation of the ancient conception of pneuma. The article suggests that the spirit, as a mechanism of producing images, not only ensures our ability to perceive and record external bodies, and allows the external world to be interiorized in a world of images, but also organizes more fundamentally our daily actions and integrates our being as images in time into an ordered totality. Image is the basic way of being in the world, and one of the biggest tests that individuals face in piecing together the fragmented self.
Keywords:
Augustine, spiritus, image, vision, self
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