Abstract
In this chapter I argue that two apparently different accounts of perception in Augustine’s works—the subjective and objective accounts—can be rendered compatible if intentio is understood as the way the soul is present in the body, thus preceding any particular sense experience. In the remaining sections of the chapter, the consequences of this understanding are explored, namely in the context of Augustine’s distinction between bodily and spiritual seeing. It is argued that perception is of external things, not of their inner representations that are automatically formed by the soul and of which we are not immediately aware. Perception requires that this automatically produced sensory imagery be further processed by a higher-level attention with the contribution of the power of memory. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that two senses of intentionality are at play in the Augustinian theory of active perception: ontological intentionality, or intentionality of state, which refers to the soul’s continuous attention to the body; and epistemic intentionality, or intentionality of content, which refers to the perceptual acts as directed to external things and is further divided into lower unconscious and higher conscious intentionality.
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- 1.
The existence of the tradition of medieval Augustinianism is problematic in the sense that it is difficult to define the exact requirements for “membership”, but I take its existence to be undisputable. As a starting point, membership could be assigned to all authors who used Augustine as an authority to justify their thought with respect to a specific topic such as the activity of the soul in perception. For illuminating discussions on this subject, see and more recently Marrone (2001).
- 2.
Direct contact here means without the mediation of any representational devices.
- 3.
The key aspect of perception is on the soul’s activation of the sensory instrument (see De musica 6.10) rather than the exact working of that particular instrumental bodily sense.
- 4.
The edition of Augustine’s works as well as the translations used are listed in the bibliography.
- 5.
See Silva (2012, pp. 164–165) for references.
- 6.
De Trinitate 11.2.3. The argument is that only through rational reflection are we able to discriminate between the object and the likeness.
- 7.
My attention was directed to this passage by Tomas Ekenberg. See Saarinen (1994, pp. 26–31) for a detailed discussion.
- 8.
See Knuuttila (1999). Solère (2008) shows how the term “intentio” was commonly used in the Latin tradition prior to Augustine in a non-voluntarist sense. On this tradition, see Dihle (1982, pp. 123–44). Di Martino (2000, pp. 173–198) argues for a developmental hypothesis—from intentio to voluntas—within the Augustinian corpus. On intentio see also Caston (2001, pp. 33–41).
- 9.
I do not claim to be particularly original here. If anything, the difference from other interpreters is one of emphasis: normally intentionality is approached from the account Augustine offers in De Trinitate 11, which is modeled according to the trinity and applied to the human rational soul. Instead, I take the most fruitful approach to start from the works in which he discusses perception in general, as the activity common to all (rational and non-rational) perceivers, and then find out what there is in common with the account in De Trinitate.
- 10.
As I point out in my chapter “Medieval Theories of Active Perception: an Overview” (in this volume), medieval Augustinians would adopt this view and emphasize that operations such as perception are vital acts. See, for instance, John Pecham, Tractatus de anima, ed. G. Melani (Florence: Biblioteca di Studi Franciscani, 1948), Chapter III is entitled “About the act of life that is to cognize” (De actu vitae qui est apprehendere), 9.
- 11.
“Per totum quippe corpus, quod animat, non locali diffusione sed quadam uitali intentione porrigitur”, Epistola 166.2.4, 551. Cf. O’Daly (1987, p. 29).
- 12.
The same argument is found in Epistola 166.2.4.
- 13.
Hölscher (1986, p. 96) makes the suggestion that intentio animi precedes actual perception but he does not associate it with the soul-body relation, and he takes this intention to be directed to a particular “thing to be perceived”. I would suggest that this intentionality is directed to the body and undetermined by any particular object.
- 14.
De musica 6.4.7. This is softened by the emphasis on the inherent dignity of the human body in comparison with other bodies.
- 15.
The structure of the argument in De Genesi ad litteram brings the levels of life and the levels of knowledge in parallel (being/existence, life, understanding). The association with Aristotle’s discussion in De anima of the three kinds of soul/life is, of course, close, although Augustine permeates it with phenomenological considerations.
- 16.
- 17.
It would be interesting to know if this association between perception and pain is attributable to Plato’s influence—on Plato, see Remes’s contribution to this volume.
- 18.
Augustine himself associates these two aspects—the mode of presence and perception—in Epistola 166 (see footnote 11 above). See Hölscher (1986, pp. 37–39).
- 19.
On the other hand, the dominated body can resist the action of the soul in a way that the soul (when not hidden from it) experiences as painful (De musica 6.5.9).
- 20.
The object exists, naturally, prior to being perceived; vision after the object is present to the sense (De Trinitate 11.2.2).
- 21.
De musica 6.4.7; De Genesi ad litteram 12.16.33.
- 22.
In De quantitate animae (30.58) Augustine stresses that both sensation and knowledge (scientia) are forms of awareness.
- 23.
Brittain (2002, p. 277) rightly states that Augustine, arguing against bottom-up causality, “needed to characterize the apparent passivity of the soul in receiving information in perception as an activity it performs on the body”. I would suggest, however, that Augustine goes even further by making the mode of the presence of the soul in the body what makes the cognitive reception of sensory information possible in the first place.
- 24.
Augustine contrasts (De quantitate animae 24.45–6; 48–9) direct awareness with awareness by inference, as in the case of the bodily change of growth. This still qualifies as sensation because that is knowledge acquired through the senses—in this case through the interpretation of sense data.
- 25.
- 26.
These images (“footprints”) are “impressed on the memory when the corporeal things which are without are so perceived” (De Trinitate 10.8.11).
- 27.
See also De Genesi ad litteram 12.12.25. Both kinds of vision are distinct from intellectual vision, which does not require the use of any sort of inner image of bodily things (De Genesi ad litteram 12.7.16). Charles Brittain convincingly shows in his study on Augustine’s conception of non-rational perception (Brittain 2002, pp. 276–277) that for Augustine what the soul is aware of is the external object by virtue of being aware of a change in the body; the perception is of the thing and not of the bodily change.
- 28.
De Libero Arbitrio 2.14. See also De musica 6.5.21. See O’Daly (1987, p. 87).
- 29.
The same point could be made about the pursuit or avoidance of external things, which follows their perception—see De Genesi ad litteram 7.18.24.
- 30.
De Libero Arbitrio 2.3.
- 31.
De Libero Arbitrio 2.3–4. Augustine expresses his uncertainty about whether this “inner sense” perceives itself (De Libero Arbitrio 2.4), but is clear in ascertaining that the pleasantness or unpleasantness of a sound, for example is judged by the proper sense, whereas “the inner sense judges what is adequate or inadequate in the sense of the eyes” (De Libero Arbitrio 2.5).
- 32.
De Genesi ad litteram 12.11.22. See also De Genesi ad litteram 12.33.49, the sense modality in question being that of touch. What makes these images different from those made at will by the power of the imagination is their intentionality—they are made in order to represent an external thing that acted upon the perceiver’s sensory apparatus (thus determined even though not caused by it), and to represent it so that it can be known. Because of that, the perceiver is aware of the lack of conformity between the image and the real thing (De Genesi ad litteram 12.12.26).
- 33.
De Trinitate 11.2.3.
- 34.
See O’Daly (1987, p. 165).
- 35.
This sort of awareness is different from being aware of the perceptual state one is in because it is a function of high-order rational attention.
- 36.
See also a similar example of the distracted walker in De Genesi ad litteram 7.20.26.
- 37.
Augustine states in De Genesi ad litteram 8.21.42 that the soul moves the body, for instance in walking, “with a king of concentration” (quadam intentione).
- 38.
This is in line with Brittain’s (2002, pp. 277–278) suggestion that Augustine’s theory “may allow for different levels of conscious awareness”, and that the awareness of the bodily change that leads to awareness of the external thing does not mean “conscious awareness”. I think he is right and here I try to describe how these different levels may work in cases of normal perception. In addition to these two levels of cognitive attention, we still have the ontological attention that qualifies the relation between the body and the soul and is pre-experiential: this is not object-specific.
- 39.
Gannon (1956, p. 157) acknowledges that, for Augustine, “the soul may or may not be aware of this motion”—the motion “by which it counteracts the effect of a passion in the organ”.
- 40.
The recognition of the stimuli as familiar or unknown probably means that the processes included in “automatic processing” are quite complex and require some form of expectation.
- 41.
And the more focused is the attention, the more clear is the perception: “the more vehement the fear or the desire, the more clearly is the eye informed”, De Trinitate 11.4.7, 325.
- 42.
On this basis and from what Augustine states about the inner sense in non-rational animals, one might ask whether this low level of information processing is also found in animals, possibly sustained by the force of habit (De quantitate animae 28.54).
- 43.
Brown (2007, pp. 158–168) tries to locate Augustine in the endogenously-exogenously driven nature of attention debate, the problem being that Augustine is very sparing in her comments on the issue.
- 44.
The opposite case is that of a dead body, which is affected but has no perception (De quantitate animae 30.60).
- 45.
Di Martino (2000, p. 191).
- 46.
The distinction I am proposing is somewhat similar to the distinction Augustine makes in De Trinitate 11.6.10 between the will to see and the will to see this thing. The latter, the will to see this particular thing, is a specification of the former generic will to see, determined as it is by the presence to the senses of a particular external object. The generic will to see remains when there is no object, or even no organ (De Trinitate 11.2.2).
- 47.
Condition (iv) shows how Augustine’s theory avoids the major problem in Aristotelian theories, that material objects are the cause of perceptual acts of the immaterial soul but give rise to the questions of representationalism and of what guarantees that the inner image is a correct representation of the external thing. It is the latter concern to which condition (v) alludes in pointing out that the end of the perceptual act is the external thing and not the inner representation.
- 48.
See Leijenhorst (2008).
- 49.
I.e., awareness of perceiving the object, with or without awareness of the representation by means of which it is perceived, and with or without awareness of oneself apart from awareness of oneself as perceiving.
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Silva, J. (2014). Augustine on Active Perception. In: Silva, J., Yrjönsuuri, M. (eds) Active Perception in the History of Philosophy. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_5
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