Augustine's Concept of the Self in Soliloquy and Spiritual Exercises

Self, Soliloquy, and Spiritual Exercises in Augustine and Some Later Authors
Author(s): Brian Stock

Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 91, No. 1, The Augustinian Moment (January 2011),
pp. 5-23
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Self, Soliloquy, and Spiritual Exercises in
Augustine and Some Later Authors*
Brian Stock / University of Toronto
i
Augustine is one of the recognized architects of Western thinking about
the self.1 He is not the earliest student of the subject in the ancient
world. That distinction belongs to Socrates, who talks briefly about the
self and self-knowledge in a well-known passage of the Alcibiades.2 The
self is an infrequent topic in philosophy down to late antiquity, when a
number of figures from different schools take up the theme. Among
the Stoics these include Seneca, Plutarch, and Epictetus; among the
Neoplatonists, Plotinus and Porphyry, who provide Augustine with the
starting point for many of his reflections on selfhood.3 In the Judeo-
Christian tradition the psalms, gospels, and letters of Paul contain pro-
found but scattered insights into the self. In the Confessions, Augustine
becomes the first Christian author to bring these insights together in
order to complement and at times to supersede what he has learned
about the self from his readings in philosophy.4
By way of introduction I would like to draw attention to three features
of Augustines wide-ranging conception of the self to which I will return
later.5 First of all, Augustine is concerned with proving that the self
exists against the argument of the Skeptics that its existence is subject
* This article is dedicated to Giles Constable.

1
See, e.g., Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modernity Identity (Cambridge,
MA: Belknap, 1989), chap. 1.
2
Plato, Alcibiades 128d132d.
3
See Richard Sorabji, Soul and Self in Ancient Philosophy, in From Soul to Self, ed. M.
James C. Crabbe (London: Routledge, 1999), 1422.
4
See Augustine, Confessiones 1.1.1, in Sancti Augustini Confessionum libri XIII, ed. Lucas Ver-
heijen, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina no. 27 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1981), 1, and accom-
panying notes on biblical sources.
5
In this and the following paragraph I draw on my study Augustines Inner Dialogue: The
Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), chaps.
12.
2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0022-4189/2011/9101-0005$10.00
to doubt. His response is summed up in the statement Si fallor, sum,

which is recognized to be the distant antecedent of Descartess defense
of the same principle, Cogito, ergo sum.6 Second, in Augustines un-
derstanding of the self, a large role is reserved for intentions. We think
of the words we want to say before they are uttered;7 similarly, he pro-
poses, we create designs for many other things in our minds, and one
of these is the intentional configuration of the self. Finally, in Augus-
tines conception of the self a great deal of attention is devoted to
memory. In memory, he notes, I meet myself and recall what I am.8
He even suggests that self and memory may be one and the same thing:
Ego sum, qui memini, ego animus.9
When Augustine makes reference to such themes in his thinking about
the self, he usually does so in the form of an inner dialogue, as in the
quotation I have just made from book ten of the Confessions. Augustine
invented a term to describe these conversations with himself, namely,
soliloquia (soliloquies). In the Soliloquia and Retractationes, where he at-
tempts to define what he means by this neologism, he states that solil-
oquia are dialogues between two speaking voices within his mind, one
of which is his faculty of reason.10 Augustine maintains this link between
content and form throughout his early writings, where some of his most
interesting discussions of the self are found. As a consequence, when
we analyze the topic of the self in works written before 400 (the assumed
date of completion of the Confessions) we are almost always talking about
what he says in soliloquies.
In making use of the soliloquy, Augustine is not abandoning the an-
cient dialogue: he is just engaging in a different sort of dialogue. Like
Plato, he is convinced that philosophical problems are best addressed
6
This is the case despite recognized differences in their approach to the subject. The texts
to which I refer for these quotations are, respectively, Augustine, De civitate Dei 11.26, and
Descartes, Discours de la methode, pt. 4. The seminal article on the connection between Au-
gustine and Descartes on this theme remains Genevie`ve Rodis-Lewis, Augustinisme et car-
tesianisme, in Augustinus Magister, vol. 2 (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1954), 10871104;
for a list of parallels, see Zbigniew Janowski, Index Augustino-Cartesien: Textes et commentaire
(Paris: Vrin, 2000), 20106.
7
Compare Augustine, Confessiones 1.8.13: ego ipse mente, quam dedisti mihi, deus meus,
cum gemitibus et uocibus uariis et uariis membrorum motibus edere uellem sensa cordis mei,
ut uoluntati pareretur nec ualerem quae uolebam omnia nec quibus uolebam omnibus. The
connection between self, language, and intentions is made clear by the origin of the desire,
which is ego ipse (Augustines pronominal way of designating the self) and by the link between
the heart (sensa cordis mei) and will or desire (uoluntati, uolebam); cf. De Trinitate 15.11.20,
where the analogy is between the Word of God and Gods image implanted in the mind, as
the source of the self.
8
Augustine, Confessiones 10.8.14; Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 186.
9
Augustine, Confessiones 10.16.25.
10
Augustine, Soliloquia 2.1.1; cf., Retractationes 1.4.1. Augustine uses only the plural.
Self, Soliloquy, and Spiritual Exercises
by means of questions and answers, as Reason reminds him in the So-

liloquia.11 However, in his early writings there are two types of such
exchanges, namely, outer and inner dialogues, and in his view the inner
is the superior form: not because this type of conversation is more
rational than the alternative, but because all human communication
takes place in a hierarchy of types of words. The lowest level in this
hierarchy consists in the words of everyday speech; the next level, in
the interior words of thought; and the third level, in a conceptual or
composite word, which is a human approximation of the Word of God.12
Within this scheme, what we know about our selves by means of language
arises chiefly from the words we speak and the words we think; therefore,
with respect to the essential features of the self, which are derived from
Gods image and likeness, this knowledge is incomplete.
There is one other aspect of Augustines notion of the self to which
I should like to draw attention. This is its ethical context. Here again
he is working in a tradition which goes back to Socrates, who tried to
convince the attractive but irresponsible Alcibiades in the dialogue of
the same name that he would be better equipped to achieve his political
ambitions if he were to engage in a program of self-cultivation. The late
Pierre Hadot called such a program a spiritual exercise and provided
an authoritative outline of their role in ancient schools of philosophy.13
Such exercises were popular among Stoics and Neoplatonists, and some
of the texts in which they are described were accessible to Augustine
(chiefly through Cicero and Plotinus). He made use of them along with
biblical writings as a basis for his original formulation of the idea of
such an exercise, which consisted in confessional self-scrutiny by means
of soliloquy.
Among the ideas that Augustine took over from the philosophers was
the notion that improving the self is a question of practice.14 If we take
Socrates as a representative of this view, cultivating the self can be com-
pared to training to be an athlete or learning to play a musical instru-
ment. Socrates suggests that as we acquire a skill of this kind we become
aware that we possess something within us that the modern world calls
a self. This is a third element in our makeup, in addition to body and
soul, for which Greek has no specific word but that Socrates designates
in the Alcibiades by means of the pronoun itself. In Socrates view,
Alcibiades cannot find out what precisely this itself is [auto to auto];
11
Augustine, Soliloquia 2.8.14.
12
Augustine, De Trinitate 15.10.1715.11.21.
13
See Pierre Hadot, Spiritual Exercises, in Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase,
ed. and intro. Arnold I. Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pt. 2.
14
See Augustine, De musica 1.3.41.4.6.
he can only acquire a limited understanding of the makeup of an

individual self [auton hekaston], namely, his own.15 The reason for this
is that the self, like the mind, cannot know itself fully, since, in seeking
such knowledge, it is both observer and observed. Socrates argues that
it would be preferable to read the Delphic inscription Know thyself
as if it said See thyself.16 This would make it clear that in speaking of
the self we are not referring to a reality that we know at first hand but
to a likeness or replica, which can be compared to a visually perceived
mirror image.
ii
I have been discussing just one concept of the self in antiquity, namely,
the view of Plato, in which the self is looked upon as an image in the
mind or soul.17 As transformed and deepened by Plotinus, this became
the most important philosophical influence on the formation of Au-
gustines notion of the self.
I would now like to say a few words about the role of Christian thinking
in the generation of Augustines ideas on the subject, which is oriented
in a different direction from that of Platonic (or other pagan) philos-
ophy. This consists in conceiving the self in an autonomous or inde-
pendent fashion.18
Let me begin this section with a reminder that Christian writers are
generally more concerned with the self than ancient philosophers. The
philosophers incorporate what they want to say about the self into what
they say about the soul, as does Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. Chris-
tian thinkers typically recognize that there are problems concerning the
self that have to be taken up on their own terms rather than being
connected with those of the mind or soul. These have to do with the
selfs theological setting and arise chiefly from the interpretation of
Christs crucifixion and resurrection. For, according to the canonical
gospels, it was not the Lords soul that was put on the cross but his
living, historical personhis embodied self, one might saywhich had
15
See Plato, Alcibiades 129ab, trans. (with emendations) D. S. Hutchinson, in Plato, Complete
Works, ed. John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett,
1997), 587, 589.
16
Plato, Alcibiades 132d.
17
See Augustine, Soliloquia 2.6.11, where a classification of such images is found.
18
Owing to the influence of Jacob Burckhardt, the literature on the emergence of the
autonomous self, as distinct from the soul, is chiefly associated with the period after Petrarch;
for a recent review of the issues and an original approach to Petrarchs writings on the subject,
see Gur Zak, Petrarchs Humanism and the Care of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), 153.
been sent to earth to dwell for a time among mortals. It was the same
incorporated self that reappeared before Mary Magdalene three days
after his execution.19 The telltale detail in this episode is the empty
tomb. Had it been Christs soul alone that went upward, his embodied
self might well have remained behind.
Later Christian thinking on the embodied self owes a great deal to
the letters of St. Paul,20 whose reflections on flesh and spirit were much
studied by Augustine in the years in which his conception of the self
was taking shape. Augustines major statements on the subject are found
in mature works such as the Confessions, De civitate Dei, and books 815
of De Trinitate. But there are hints of an interest in a Christian inter-
pretation of the self in his earlier writings, even though these works are
chiefly concerned with other philosophical questions. How else can we
interpret the conclusion to De beata vita, written in the winter of 386
87, where he states that lasting happiness, which is the reiterated goal
of ancient philosophy, demands above all the acceptance of Christs
divinity?21 Also, in book three of the Confessions, which recalls his state
of mind even further back in time (at age nineteen), he notes that it
was the absence of the mention of Christ that dampened his enthusiasm
for Ciceros Hortensius, the work that converted him to the search for
wisdom and happiness through philosophy. There he states that any
book which lacked this name, however well written or polished or true,
could not entirely grip me.22
We do not have to look far in the gospels for the sort of statement
that the young Augustine found valuable in his reflections on these
themes. One such locus classicus is the collection of sayings involving the
self found at Matt. 16:24-28, Mark 8:34-39, and Luke 9:23-27. In the
version in Mark, Jesus addresses his disciples (and others present) with
these words: Anyone who wishes to be a follower of mine must leave
self behind; he must take up his cross, and come with me. Whoever
cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man will let himself be lost for
my sake and for the Gospel, that man is safe. What does a man gain by
winning the whole world at the cost of his true self [ten psychen autou]?
What can he give to buy that self back?23
19
Matt. 28:9; John 20:1118.
20
For example, Romans 1215, where Paul admonishes his brethren to offer their very
selves to Christ with mind and heart (Rom. 12:1). The gifts of Gods grace outlined in
the statement that follows are framed within the notion of a Christian spiritual exercise for
which there were philosophical as well as biblical precedents.
21
Augustine, De beata vita 4.34, citing John 14:6.
22
Augustine, Confessiones 3.4.8, trans. Chadwick, 39-40.
23
Mark 8:3438 (The New English Bible: New Testament [Oxford: Oxford University Press and
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961], 70).
If we look back to the discussion of the self in the Alcibiades, we can

see how far Christian thinking on this subject differs from its philo-
sophical antecedents. In their respective statements on the theme Soc-
rates and Jesus are both concerned (in rather different ways) with the
problem of self-improvement. But Socrates thinks that the individual
can reach this goal on his own, without help, whereas all three versions
of the gospel sayings maintain that salvation can be achieved only
through unwavering loyalty to Christ. Also, while it is presumed that
Socrates style of self-cultivation takes place over time, since it involves
training or practice, there is nothing in the Alcibiades (or elsewhere in
Plato) that resonates like the decisive befores and afters of the col-
lection of gospel sayings, which suggest a sudden, decisive, and irrev-
ocable change of direction for ones life. In this respect, Matthew repeats
Mark almost verbatim, and in all three statements there is an identical
emphasis on the role of the will, with the result that the demands made
in the sayings are only relevant for a person who consciously decides
to become a follower of Christ.24
In this passage of the gospels we are not in fact presented with a
philosophical conception of the self. This is clear no matter how we
translate the texts in question. I have quoted from the version of the
gospel of Mark in the 1961 edition of The New English Bible, which trans-
lates the Greek pronoun for self and the noun for soul (or life)
by the single word self. In the Latin Vulgate, completed early in the
fifth century, Jerome is more careful in his choice of words, expressing
the pronominal form for self in the first quoted phrase in Greek as
semetipse and the second as anima sua. But whether we prefer a less or
more literal rendering of the statement, it is clear that Jesus is speaking
to his followers about the type of self that each of us knows inwardly,
day by day, in what Heidegger would call a preconceptual manner. If
there is a philosophical element in the version of the gospel sayings that
I have quoted, it is only concerned with the factor of time: this enters
sentence one as an aspect of the narrative, since the potential follower
of Christ leaves the self behind, and reenters the text in sentences two
and three, where he or she realizes that what is implied in this transition
is the overcoming of time.
Note also that Mark makes a distinction between two sorts of persons
in his statement, namely, crowd and disciples.25 The followers of
whom he speaks are not all intended to become disciples,26 but they
are all supposed to pattern their lives on Christs life. It is this pattern
24
Vincent Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 1952), 381.
25
Compare Mark 4:10, where both are mentioned.
26
However, see Mark 8:34, 9:38, 10:21, etc.
10
which the gospel passage emphasizes, and it has essentially three com-
ponents. The first is self-denial (aparnesastho heauton). Jesus does not
ask his followers to give up material things or to adopt an ascetic lifestyle,
although these are mentioned elsewhere, but literally to surrender the
self, to disown it. This is a more radical reshaping of self than is implied
in the spiritual exercises of which Socrates and later philosophers
speak. Second, the person who desires to become Jesuss follower must,
so to speak, take up his cross. Since this implies crucifixion, one can
consider the statement a figurative way of saying that a follower of Christ
must be prepared to lose his or her life, as indicated in the next verse
(apolesei ten psychen autou). The image of a humiliating death, usually
reserved for criminals, therefore reinforces the image of a willful or
voluntary sacrifice of ones self, which is implied in the Christian concept
of self-denial. Of course it is not an actual death that Jesus has in mind
here, but, as I have suggested, a kind of discipleship; nonetheless the
unwavering allegiance that he demands of his followers is envisaged as
leading, potentially at least, to torments or sufferings, if not to martyr-
dom. It is in that sense that we should understand the third component,
namely, the directive for the convert to follow Jesus (akoloutheito), as
mentioned in the opening phrase.
Augustine singled out the directives for self-reform in the gospels or
the letters of Paul for comment, especially in his sermons. He was aware
that it was a saying comparable to the ones I have quoted, namely, Matt.
19:21, which inspired the conversion of St. Antony, as related in the
second chapter of Athanasiuss Life; and it was the translation of the
Vita Antonii by Evagrius of Antioch, completed around 371, that played
a major part in the conversion of the bureaucrat Ponticianus at Confes-
siones 8.6.15 and in his own conversion at Confessiones 8.12.29. Let me
remind you of these literary connections as they are summed up in the
celebrated tolle, lege scene, where Augustine says:
Audieram enim de Antonio, quod ex euangelica lectione, cui forte super-
uenerat, admonitus fuerit, tamquam sibi diceretur quod legebatur: Vade, uende
omnia, quae habes, da pauperibus et habebis thesaurum in caelis; et ueni, sequere me.27
[For I had heard how Antony happened to be present at the gospel reading,
and took it as an admonition addressed to himself when the words were read:
Go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven;
and come, follow me.]28
This recollection of the Vita Antonii is followed by Augustines quo-
27
Augustine, quoting Athanasius, Vita; Matt. 19:21.
28
Augustine, Confessiones 8.12.29, trans. Chadwick, 153.
11
tation of Rom. 13:13-14, in which he is literally asked to put on (in-

duere) the lord Jesus Christ. It is an appropriate metaphor if what is
meant is a reclothing of the self, as Paul himself suggests elsewhere.29
Antony is asked to situate his life within the pattern of a single model
life, as were many ancient philosophers, for example the far-flung read-
ers of the letters of Epicurus. The ensuing struggle (as related by Ath-
anasius) is between the saint and the demons, who attempt unsuccess-
fully to prevent him from following his chosen path. The comparable
episode in Augustine works differently. There are no demons, and in
place of a single life we have several lives: the life of Christ, of course,
but also the lives of Antony, Marius Victorinus, and the anonymous
bureaucrats in Trier, who find the Vita Antonii by chance in an aban-
doned cottage. In Augustine these lives inform his own life, as if they
representedto reuse Pauls metaphorits outer garments. What has
changed between Paul and Augustine is the composition of this clothing:
its fabric is no longer made of lives that have been known firsthand,
but exclusively of lives that have been heard or read about. One of the
original features of Augustines conversion episode in comparison with
earlier stories on this theme is the buildup of such overlapping narra-
tives, each of which reinforces the other in the readers mind.
These stories are in Augustines thoughts at the moment of his con-
version; therefore we have to consider his conversion, at least in part,
as a literary event. This event is chiefly structured by his memory. There
are two sorts of memory images involved, namely, phantasiae, which ac-
cording to his definition consist in images of things he has seen, and
phantasmata, which are images of things he has learned about from the
reports of others.30 In the conversion scene, phantasia is represented by
his old self, which he knows well: this is the self he wants to leave behind.
Phantasmatum is represented by his new self, which he does not yet know:
this is the self he wants to become. This is the first time in the conceptual
history of the self as an autonomous theme in philosophy in which the
beginnings of self-reform are brought about by an image in the mind
that the thinking subject recognizes as a figment of his (or her) imag-
ination. And that is the way it has to be: for, had Augustine known
beforehand what he was able to become through conversion, based on
what he had been in the past, his conversion would not have been
necessary. What he has added to the gospels and the Pauline accounts
of self-reform is a combination of intentionality and imagination.
29
Gal. 3:27; Col. 3:12; cf. 1 Thess. 5:8.
30
For example, De Trinitate 8.6.9, where we find Augustines favorite examples of these two
types of memory images, that is, Carthage, which he has seen, and Alexandria, which he has
not seen.
12
As noted, he acquires knowledge about the possibility of shedding

his old self and acquiring a replacement with the help of the reports
of others. These combine verbal reports, such as that of Ponticianus,
and written reports, such as the biblical and hagiographic texts he has
been reading in an intensive but disorderly fashion since the spring of
386. It is of course grace rather than these writings that eventually per-
mits him to convert, at last overcoming the stubborn will of his body.
However, within this process, the writings with which he has previously
been acquainted play a critical role in his interpretation of the event,
both before and afterwards. In this respect his account of conversion
differs in an important respect from that of Athanasius: for Antony hears
the gospel and abruptly changes his life, without the use of interme-
diaries, whereas Augustines conversion is preceded by an interlacing
of already interpreted lives, whose force on his thinking is well advanced
by the time he picks up Pauls letter to the Romans and opens the codex
to the page on which the decisive passage is found. These texts influence
him before his conversion as well as afterward, when he writes up and,
as Pierre Courcelle emphasized, reinterprets his original experience,
possibly altering its narrative details.31 It is possible to label this sub-
sequent elaboration as rhetoric and to envisage the scholars task as
the peeling off of the added literary layers in order to get to the fun-
damentals of the conversion experience. But, if we do that, in search
of historical veracity, we lose something of the conversions meaning.
For Augustine is not just talking to himself: he is addressing a wider
audience of potential converts in the present and future. He is telling
them that if they wish to shed their former selves they will need both
the will to take up new lives and an imaginative setting for the life that
each of them wants to live.
iii
To summarize, I have suggested that there are two ways of looking at
the problem of the self in the ancient and late ancient periods. In the
one, discussions of the self are inseparable from those involving the
soul; in the other, the self is described independently of the soul, even
though the concept of the soul may lie in the background.
31
Pierre Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin (Paris: E. de Boccard,
1955), 175202. The ensuing literature on the veracity of the garden scene is summarized
by H.-I. Marrou, La querelle autour du Tolle, lege, Revue dhistoire ecclesiastique 53 (1958);
4757. For a judicious review of the issues, see Henry Chadwick, History and Symbolism in
the Garden at Milan, in From Augustine to Eriugena: Essays in Neoplatonism and Christianity in
Honor of John OMeara, ed. F. X. Martin and J. A. Richmond (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1991), 4255.
13
Among those who propose an autonomous reading of the self in

antiquity are Stoics and Neoplatonists, who support their views, respec-
tively, through material and nonmaterial considerations. However, the
most influential conception of the autonomous self in the period is
made in Christian writings on the subject, especially in the gospels, the
epistles of St. Paul, and the works of Augustine. In addition to building
on earlier philosophical and theological views of the self, the bishop of
Hippo brings a new way of approaching the subject, which consists in
the use of the soliloquy as a spiritual exercise.
One of the features of thinking about the self in antiquity and late
antiquity that has to be taken into account in an assessment of Augus-
tines contribution is the differing perspectives arising in literature and
philosophy, to which I now turn. Autonomy is a feature of writing about
the self in literature from the time of Homer; however, as noted, it was
only in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods that the question seri-
ously enters philosophical discussions. By the time we reach Augustine
it is clear that rhetorical (or literary) and philosophical traditions have
been combined. Augustines Confessions represents a major advance in
the literary tradition of self-characterization. The Augustine who nar-
rates books 19 is boldly conceived as a successor to Virgils Aeneas and
will not be rivaled in literature until the appearance of the first-person
narrators in Dante and Petrarch. However, Augustine brings together
and transforms a number of received views on the theology of image
and likeness and, as noted, unites them with a conception of the self
which is based on the reality of Christs historical and physical existence
in time. On occasion Augustine is capable of approaching the issues
uniquely as a theologian, for example in De Trinitate, where he refers
to soul and self as if they were interchangeable notions, anima and
animus.32 Alternately in the Confessions he virtually invents the Western
concept of autobiographical writing, which subsequently becomes the
preferred literary genre for portraying the autonomous self.
Important developments in the literary, philosophical, and theolog-
ical understanding of the self take place in the following centuries. By
way of conclusion I would like to discuss two examples of new thinking
on this theme within a pluralistic, medieval Augustinian tradition. One
of my examples is drawn from philosophical theology; this is the Mon-
ologion and Proslogion of Anselm of Canterbury. The other, which arises
in literature, is found in the Commedia of Dante.
32
See Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, trans. L. E. M. Lynch (New
York: Random House, 1960), 26971 nn. 13. For a full review of the subject, see Gerald J. P.
ODaly, Anima, animus, in Augustinus-Lexikon, ed. C. Mayer et al. (Basel: Schwabe, 1988),
vol. 1, fasc. 23, 31540.
14
Anselm.In the case of Anselm, there is no doubt about Augustines

influence. Anselm acknowledges the debt in a well-known letter to Lan-
franc, stating: It was my intention throughout [the Monologion] to assert
nothing which could not be immediately defended either from canon-
ical writers or from the words of St. Augustine. And however often I
look over what I have written, I cannot see that I have asserted anything
other than this.33
In this statement Anselm is responding to a letter from Lanfranc in
which he is asked to reveal the authorities on which the argument of
the Monologion is based; as a consequence he may be somewhat on the
defensive. But there is no doubt about the accuracy of his assessment.
His documented sources include De Trinitate, which he mentions in the
letter and elsewhere,34 as well as other writings by Augustine.
In my view, the chief among these may be the Soliloquia. The Mono-
logion and Proslogion are conceived as Augustinian soliloquies. In Anselm,
as in Augustine, the background for these soliloquies is open dialogue:
this takes place between Augustine and his students in Milan and at
Cassiciacum, and between Anselm and his brethren in the monastery
at Bec.35 Anselm then configures himself in the Monologion in solitary
isolation, as does Augustine in the Soliloquia. Both authors move from
outer to inner dialogue on the assumption that the latter brings their
thinking closer to truth.
Anselm calls this thinking meditatio, which is a medieval rather than
classical term, and says that its purpose is to investigate within himself
things that he has not previously realized.36 It is at once a process of
discovery and a logically organized inquiry. Anselm mentions the part
played by texts in preparing for his meditatio, as well as in making its
conclusions known to his brethren after it is finished;37 however, the
primary role is given to intima locutio, one of the meanings of which is
the equivalent of Augustines soliloquium.38 Anselm says more than once
that the sort of reflection that he has in mind takes shape in the way
33
Anselm, Epistula 77, trans. R. W. Southern, in Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer,
Birkbeck Lectures 1959 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 31.
34
On the trinity, see Monologion, chaps. 5664; on language, see chaps. 1011.
35
The role of these preliminary conversations is emphasized in the prologue to the Mon-
ologion as well as in the envisaged audience reaction to the work after it is written; see Anselm,
Monologion, Prol., in Sancti Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Nelson,
1946), 78.
36
Ibid., 8: Quaecumque autem ibi dixi, sub persona secum sola cogitatione disputantis et
investigantis ea quae prius non animadvertisset, prolata sunt.
37
Ibid., 7.
38
Ibid., chap. 11, 26, line 5; cf. chap. 12, 26. Here the term refers to divine creation;
however, Anselm also uses the notion to describe humans inner speech; e.g., chaps. 29, 32.
15
in which someone talks silently to himself.39 As in the Soliloquia, this is

a conversation between himself and his faculty of reason, from which
irrelevant alternatives are excluded.40
The type of reasoning which Anselm has in mind is spelled out in
greater detail in the preface to the Proslogion. There he describes the
Monologion retrospectively as an example of the way in which he med-
itates in order to establish the principle of reason which informs his
faith (velut exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei). In the Proslogion this ap-
proach is once again presented in the setting of someone who is rea-
soning silently with himself (in persona alicuius tacite secum ratiocinando),
inquiring into things he does not know (quae nesciat investigantis)41 and
working out difficulties in a logical fashion. As in Augustines inner
dialogues, we are aware that we are following the thinking of a living
person, who speaks to us in the first person as he searches within himself
for a solution to his chosen problem, namely, the existence of God. We
never lose sight of the subject, the pronominal I, which is the only
self-representation which Anselm himself has left us.
This is in effect a dramatization. The goal is not an open dialogue
between different persons or positions, as in Plato, but the represen-
tation of a single philosophical actor, who effectively plays to himself,
as his own audience, in order to clarify his thinking for himself and for
others. As later in Descartess Meditations, this reasoning takes place
entirely within his mind, without reference to the outside world, unlike
the comparable exercise of Augustine, into which the business of the
world finds its way from time to time, despite his efforts to isolate him-
self. It is in the context of such a soliloquy that we should judge Anselms
celebrated statement in which he declares that he is faithfully adhering
to Augustines ideas while summing them up in a shorter chain of
argument,42 thereby seeking a single statement that by itself would
suffice to prove that God really exists.43
As in the Soliloquia, the rational part of the dialogue is accompanied
by a spiritual exercise in the form of a prayer.44 In Augustine, this prayer
establishes a meditative environment for the ensuing debate with Reason
and forewarns the reader of the eventual solution, which demonstrates
39
Ibid., chap. 1, 14: ut aliquis sic secum tacitus dicat.
40
Ibid., chap. 1, 13: ut deinde ratione ducente et illo prosequente. In Anselm, irrelevancy
is rigorously excluded, whereas in Augustine digressions occur.
41
Anselm, Proslogion, Prooemium, in Schmitt, Opera, 1:93.
42
Anselm, Epistula 71, trans. Southern, in Southern, Saint Anselm, 31.
43
Anselm, Proslogion, Prooemium, trans. M. J. Charlesworth, in St. Anselms Proslogion, with
a Reply on Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilo and the Authors Reply to Gaunilo, trans. and intro. M. J.
Charlesworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 103.
44
Compare Augustine, Soliloquia 1.1.26.
16
the limitations of both outer and inner dialogues on matters of faith.

Reflecting this tradition, Anselm entitles his opening chapter Excitatio
mentis ad contemplandum deum, which one might translate as a calling
forth, awakening, or arousing of the mind toward the contemplating of
God. His words are these:
Eia nunc, homuncio, fuge paululum occupationes tuas, absconde te modicum
a tumultuosis cogitationibus tuis. Abice nunc onerosos curas, et postpone la-
boriosas distentiones tuas. Vaca aliquantulum deo, et requiesce aliquantulum
in eo. Intra in cubiculum mentis tuae, exclude omnia praeter deum et quae te
iuvent ad quaerendum eum, et clauso ostio quaere eum [cf. Matt. 6:6]. . . . Eia
nunc ergo tu, domine deus meus, doce cor meum, ubi et quomodo te quaerat,
ubi et quomodo te inveniat. Domine, si hic non est, ubi te quaeram absentem?
Si autem ubique es, cur non video praesentem?
[Come now, insignificant mortal, leave behind your concerns for a little while,
and put aside for a short time your restless thoughts. Cast off your burdens and
cares; set aside your labor and toil. Just for a little while make room for God,
and rest a while in him. Enter into the chamber of your mind, shut out
everything but God and whatever helps you to seek him, and seek him behind
closed doors. . . . Come now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how
to seek you, where and how to find you. Lord, if you are not here, where shall
I seek you, since you are absent? But if you are everywhere, why do I not see
you, since you are present?]45
In addition to scripture, this prayer combines quotations (or para-

phrases) from Augustine with those drawn from later traditions of med-
itation. A brief list of the Augustinian borrowings would include the
restless thoughts and desire for inner peace from the opening lines of
the Confessions (although these are placed in a two-stage, medieval pro-
cedure, that is, unburdening the mind and self-isolation within a mo-
nastic cell).46 The quotation from Matt. 6:6 may be taken from Augus-
tines De magistro, where the text is used to explain to his son, Adeodatus,
why God is not taught anything by us when we pray. In this statement,
which underpins both Augustines and Anselms connection between
language and meditation, Augustine tells his son:
You do not realize, I think, that the command to pray in the secrecy of our
chambera term signifying the innermost recesses of the soul [mentis penetra-
lia]was given only for this reason, that God does not need to be reminded
45
Anselm, Proslogion, chap. 1, in Schmitt, Opera, 97-98; translation from Anselm, Monologion
and Proslogion with the Replies of Gaunilo and Anselm, trans., with intro., Thomas Williams (In-
dianapolis: Hackett, 1995), 97 (slightly modified).
46
On this theme, see the classic study of Dom Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the
Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. C. Misrahi (New York: Fordham University
Press, 1961).
17
or taught by us in order to give us what we desire. When a person speaks, he

gives an outward sign [signum foras dat] of what he wants by means of an artic-
ulated sound [per articulatum sonum]. But we must seek and pray to God in the
innermost court of the rational soul, which is called the interior man (1 Cor.
3:16; cf. Eph. 3:16-17).47
Other borrowings include the reuse of Augustines term distentio, re-

ferring originally to the mental understanding of times dispersal,48 and
the notion that God is everywhere and nowhere at once, recalling the
opening prayer to book ten of the Confessions.49
Dante.Dante presents a different approach to the Augustinian her-
itage of inner dialogue. Like the Confessions, the Commedia is written in
the form of a lengthy soliloquy. Dante numbers Augustine among his
sources of inspiration,50 and so it is possible to speculate on whether
the literary form of the Confessions is among these influences, which
include, of course, the other great soliloquized dialogue of late antiquity,
Boethiuss Consolation of Philosophy. The comparison with either work
must be made with caution, since Dantes conception of the soliloquy
is more complex and layered than that of either Augustine or Boethius.
In addition to the historical Dante, who is configured in the Commedia
as talking to himself, Dante engages in dialogues sequentially in nu-
merous cantos and these dialogues take place within the larger frame-
work of his ongoing conversations with Virgil in the Inferno and Pur-
gatorio and with Beatrice in the Paradiso. Also, some of the characters
whom Dante meets on his journey appear to have been in conversation
with themselves before their encounters with the poet. An example is
the heroic figure of Farinata in Inferno, canto 10, who recapitulates an
already interpreted version of the political difficulties which have trou-
bled Florence in Dantes time.51
The figure of Dante is a fiction in the Commedia, even though, like
Augustines configuration of himself in the Confessions, it is based on a
historical reality. The other figures who appear in the Commedia are real
people and their portraits are in many cases drawn from Dantes per-
sonal memory. In the Commedia Dante thus completes the book of
memory that he begins in his earlier work De vita nuova.52 The memories
in the Commedia fall into two categories, namely, people whom Dante
47
Augustine, De magistro 1.1.2; my translation.
48
Augustine, Confessiones 11.27.3536.
49
Ibid., 10.1.110.2.2.
50
For a brief review, see Alberto Pincherle, Agostino, . . . , in Enciclopedia dantesca (Rome:
Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970), 1:8082.
51
Dante, Inferno, canto 10, verses 2227, 7799.
52
Dante, Vita nuova, ed. Michele Barbi, 2nd ed. (Florence: Societa` Dantesca Italiana, 1960),
chap. 1, 3: In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria.
18
has known personally (or who lived within his lifetime) and people
whom he knows about through his reading (or occasionally through
Virgils or Beatrices instruction). The first category corresponds to what
Augustine calls phantasia, the second to phantasmatum, that is, respec-
tively to things known by sight and to things known by report.
In parallel with these two types of memories there are two levels of
ethical discussion in the Commedia, namely, the universal and local. The
overall framework for ethics is universalist and imposes a Christian
scheme of moral judgements based on the teachings of the Bible, the
church fathers, and selected scholastic thinkers, including Bonaventure
and Thomas Aquinas.53 In this respect, Dante reiterates and transforms
books one to ten of Augustines City of God, in which pagan and Christian
moralities are compared in order to illustrate the superiority of the
latter. By contrast, the dialogues on ethical issues between Dante and
the figures whom he meets on his journey through the Inferno and
Purgatorio are local, inasmuch as each episode deals with a different
fault, a separate person, and a specific social or political milieu. Here,
I would propose, the universalist program fades into the background,
although it does not by any means disappear, and we are confronted
with deeply moving dramatizations of human situations, some of them
having tragic consequences which could not have been foreseen by the
actors.
In sum, within Dantes soliloquy, which is the Commedia, we have two
levels of external dialogue, one which pertains to a large ethical picture
and another which pertains to a series of smaller ethical dramas. There
are some eighteen of these local dialogues in the Inferno and Purgatorio,
and I would like to mention in passing just two of them in order to
make my point about their mediating function in the poem. These are
the conversations that Dante has with Francesca da Rimini in canto 5
and with Guido da Montefeltro in canto 27. These figures are linked
by the mention in both cantos of the Polenta and Malatesta families.
The eagle of Polenta, mentioned in canto 27, is the father of Francesca
and ruler of Ravenna, where Dante took refuge in his last days. The
old and young mastiff of Verucchio in canto 27 represent the succes-
sive rulers of Rimini, the cruel father and half-brother of Gianciotto
and Paolo Malatesta, who are, respectively, husband and lover of Fran-
cesca in canto 5.
In neither of these cantos are we dealing with historical facts. In canto
5, Dante colors what he knows about the lovers murder with his own
53
For an enduring introduction to these themes, see Bruno Nardi, Dante e la cultura medievale,
2nd ed., ed. Paolo Mazzatini (1942; Rome: Laterza, 1990).
19
emotional involvement, and, in canto 27, he frames what he has to say

about Guido da Montefeltro within his passionate dislike of the papacy
of Boniface VIII. These are not dialogues, therefore, which reflect a
pair of rational arguments, as in Anselm, but in which there is chiefly
an expression of different opinions by separate spokesmen. As we read
the Inferno and Purgatorio, it is important to bear in mind that Dante is
one of these: he is not a neutral observer of events.
In both cantos the universal scheme condemns, respectively, the sins
of illicit love and political connivance. Francesca is guilty of adultery;
Guido, of fraud. But in each case the local ethical scheme tells a different
story, in which it is more difficult to draw a hard and fast line between
right and wrong.
In Dantes retelling of the story of Paolo and Francesca the poet is
undecided on whether it is preferable to condemn the lovers, despite
the mischief involved in Francescas betrothal to the crippled Gian-
ciotto, or to sympathize with them, since they are victims of forces be-
yond their control. Dante addresses the whirling spirits of Paolo and
Francesca with sympathetic words:
O anime affannate,
venite a noi parlar, saltri nol niega!
(Verses 8081)
[Oh breathless souls,
come and speak to us, if no one forbids it.]
Francesca tells the story of their murder by Paolos brother when they
were caught embracing, after reading together an amorous passage of
the story of Lancelot. Dante tells her that their martyrdoms make him
weep with sadness and pity (verses 11718); then, while Paolo himself
weeps, he breaks down emotionally and falls to the earth, as if dead
(verses 14142). This is the end of the dialogue but it is not the solution
to the ethical dilemma which the story has raised: namely, whether two
people, whose emotions are aroused by a third force, deserve Dantes
(and the readers) pity, even though they stand guilty of willfully taking
the steps toward a sinful act.
There are also two sides to the story of Guido da Montefeltro, who
is the subject of a different type of internal conversation in Inferno, canto
27. Guido was an important personality in Dantes time,54 whom Gio-
vanni Villani called the cleverest and subtlest military figure in Italy.55
54
Dante, Convivio 4.28.3-8.
55
Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica 7.80; quoted by Natalino Sapegno in Dante Alighieri, La
divina commedia, vol. 1, Inferno, ed. Natalino Sapegno (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1966), 307
n. 63.
20
He was a lion in battle but his repeated intrigues earned him a second
title, namely, the fox.56 Among the treacheries to which Dante has
him confess in canto 27 is playing a part in the betrayal of the Colonna
family in the conquest of Palestrina by Boniface VIII, as well as in sup-
porting the abandonment of the crusade after the fall of Acre. Dante
did not invent these accusations, but they have to be weighed against
Guidos documented achievements.57 These include his victory over the
Guelfs in Romagna between 1274 and 1282 and in Pisa in 1292, and
his reconciliation with the Church, following his excommunication, as
well as his entry into the Franciscan Order.
The ambivalent attitude of Dante toward Francesca and Guido is ech-
oed in other episodes of the Inferno involving his contemporaries: for
example, in his pity for the father of his poet friend, Cavalcante (Inferno,
canto 5), when he asks whether his son is alive; in his vindication of
Piero delle Vigne (canto 13), despite the condemnation of his ignoble
suicide; in his admiration for the scholarly attainments of Brunetto Lat-
ini (canto 15), which have been tainted by the accusation of sodomy;
and in his sympathetic portrait of Ugolino (canto 33), which mitigates
his sin of hatred. In these examples the external dialogue presents al-
ternatives without finally and definitively choosing between them, and
these are incorporated into Dantes soliloquy. What he has in mind is
a limitation of the human condition, which is summed up eloquently
by Farinata in canto 10, when he says:
Noi veggiam, come quei c ha mala luce,
le cose disse che en son lontano;
cotanto ancor ne splende il sommo duce, . . .
(Verses 100103)
[We see like those with poor vision, he said,
the things that are far away from us,
to the degree the supreme lord yet gives us the light. . . . ]
In order to rise above such constraints, one needs another method,

and like Augustine and Anselm, Dante finds this in a spiritual exercise
which is replete with metaphors of higher illumination. This occurs in
canto 33 of the Paradiso, which consists of two parts, a prayer and a
prophetic vision. The purpose of St. Bernards prayer, with which the
canto begins, is in part to establish a meditative frame of mind, from
which he can leave his former concerns behind and proceed upward:
56
Dante, Inferno, canto 10, v. 75.
57
Inferno, ed. Sapegno, 308 n. 63.
21
Bernardo maccennava e sorridea

perchio guardassi suso; ma io era
gia` per me stesso tal qual ei volea.
(Verses 4952)
[Bernard made a sign to me and smiled
so that I might look upwards; but I was
already by myself doing what he wanted.]
In keeping with the Augustinian model the constraints of speech and

memory are then withdrawn:
Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio
che l parlar nostro, cha tal vista cede,
e cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio.
(Verses 5557)
[From that point my vision was greater
than our speech, which is not equal to such a sight,
and memory too is unequal to something so surpassing.]
In the final lines of the canto Dante emphasizes the inability of speech
to convey what he saw in this transforming vision, or, one might be
tempted to say, this conversion:
O quanto e` corto il dire e come fioco
al mio concetto!
(Verses 12122)
[O how limited is speech and how faint
before my conception!]
Memory fails as well:

Allalta fantasia qui manco` possa.
(Verse 142)
[Here the power failed the high phantasy.]
I would read fantasia here as Dante defines it in the Convivio, namely,

as an image in the mind of what was actually seen.58 This is an indication
that he is transcending the limitations of self and moving to a higher
plane of experience, where the Commedia ends.
The type of exercise that I have briefly illustrated from the writings
of Anselm and Dante is reworked by later authors, including Petrarch,
Montaigne, and Descartes. We may think of this as an Augustinian ap-
proach to interconnections between soul and self during the Middle
58
Dante, Convivio, 3.4.9-11; cf., 4.15.15; Vita nuova 16.2, 23.46.
22
Ages and afterward. In presenting a very brief outline of this model I

have drawn attention to the similarities between Augustine, Anselm,
and Dante. In conclusion let me emphasize an important difference
between them. Put simply, Anselm is convinced that spiritual exercises
of the sort I have been talking about can prepare the way for universally
acceptable solutions to the ethical problems with which he is dealing,
the context for which he sees as religion. In Anselm, therefore, as later
in Descartes, the soliloquy is a valid philosophical method.
By contrast, Dante is not certain that any sort of human dialogue,
inner or outer, can solve the ethical problems with which he is faced
in the Inferno and Purgatorio, many of which arise in the civil society of
his native Florence or elsewhere in wartorn Italy. In his view, one of the
sources of these problems is the conception of the autonomous self. As
a consequence no philosophical formula involving the autonomous self
can be proposed as their solution. In Dante, therefore, soliloquies are
literary in form and descriptive in function. Despite the beatific vision
with which the Commedia ends, temporarily uplifting its author beyond
mortal concerns, it is with these concerns that Dante leaves his readers
at the end of the poem. He places them at a historical crossroads with
respect to the concept of the autonomous self. They can go backwards
and try to rebuild its ethical underpinnings within the concept of the
soul, as the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition suggests. Alternately they
can go forward along the bumpy road on which Dante himself has
been traveling, which will lead within a century to still more radical
notions of self-autonomy and along with them unresolvable problems
of alienation.
23

Augustine's Concept of the Self in Soliloquy and Spiritual Exercises

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Self, Soliloquy, and Spiritual Exercises in Augustine and Some Later Authors

Author(s): Brian Stock

* This article is dedicated to Giles Constable.

to doubt. His response is summed up in the statement Si fallor, sum,

by means of questions and answers, as Reason reminds him in the So-

he can only acquire a limited understanding of the makeup of an

If we look back to the discussion of the self in the Alcibiades, we can

This recollection of the Vita Antonii is followed by Augustines quo-

tation of Rom. 13:13-14, in which he is literally asked to put on (in-

As noted, he acquires knowledge about the possibility of shedding

Among those who propose an autonomous reading of the self in

Anselm.In the case of Anselm, there is no doubt about Augustines

in which someone talks silently to himself.39 As in the Soliloquia, this is

the limitations of both outer and inner dialogues on matters of faith.

In addition to scripture, this prayer combines quotations (or para-

or taught by us in order to give us what we desire. When a person speaks, he

Other borrowings include the reuse of Augustines term distentio, re-

emotional involvement, and, in canto 27, he frames what he has to say

In order to rise above such constraints, one needs another method,

Bernardo maccennava e sorridea

In keeping with the Augustinian model the constraints of speech and

Memory fails as well:

I would read fantasia here as Dante defines it in the Convivio, namely,

Ages and afterward. In presenting a very brief outline of this model I

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