Comic · Brill Academic Publishers

The Space of Time

A Sensualist Interpretation of Time in Augustine, Confessions X to XII

From Robert Grosseteste to Jean-François Lyotard, Augustine’s suggestion that time is a “dilation of the soul” (distentio animi) has been taken up as a seminal and controversial time-concept, yet in this book, David van Dusen argues that this ‘dilation’ has been fundamentally misinterpreted.0Time in 'Confessions XI' is a dilation of the senses — in beasts, as in humans. And Augustine’s time-concept in Confessions XI is not Platonic — but in schematic terms, Epicurean.0Identifying new influences on the Confessions — from Aristoxenus to Lucretius — while keeping Augustine’s phenomenological interpreters in view, this book is a path-breaking work on 'Confessions' X to XII and a ranging contribution to the history of the concept of time.