Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share 53. Confessions.
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
53. Confessions.
I confess to you, Lord, that I still do not know what time is. Yet I confess
too that I do know that I am saying this in time, that I have been talking
about time for a long time, and that this long time would not be a long time
if it were not for the fact that time has been passing all the while. How
can I know this, when I do not know what time is? Is it that I do know what
time is, but do not know how to put what I know into words? I am in a sorry
state, for I do not even know what I do not know.
Our cluster on Time begins with Augustine’s Confessions , one of the most
widely read books of of the most widely read books of late antiquity, written
in the last years of the Roman Empire. On the one hand, the book is
autobiographical, describing (sometimes in very personal detail) Augustine’s
childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, culminating in his conversion and
commitment to Christianity in his early thirties. On the other hand,
especially in its less often read final chapters, the book is a philosophical
and theological exploration of what allows a person to change over time — and,
in particular, a meditation on the nature of time itself. Suzanne and Chris
explore Augustine’s fraught relationships to his friends and family, and they
begin to unpack the ways time structures and informs the book.
Show Notes.
Augustine: Confessions.
[Bookshop.] [We’re using the
classic translation by R.S. Pine-Coffin, but many translations are available.]
Other books by Augustine: City of God; Literal
Commentary on Genesis; De
Magistro [The Teacher].
Manichaeism.
Our episodes on the Inferno and
Paradise Lost.
Brian Stock: Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics
of Interpretation.
Catherine Conybeare picks Five Books about
Augustine.
The Cloisters.
Birgit Brander Rasmussen: Queequeg's Coffin: Indigenous Literacies and Early
American Literature.
Samuel R. Delany: Tales of Nevèrÿon.
Ayelet Tsabari, Eufemia Fantetti, and Leonarda Carranza: Tongues: On Longing
and Belonging through Language.
Next: W.G. Sebald: The Rings of Saturn.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
View all episodes
By Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma
4.8
3030 ratings
I confess to you, Lord, that I still do not know what time is. Yet I confess
too that I do know that I am saying this in time, that I have been talking
about time for a long time, and that this long time would not be a long time
if it were not for the fact that time has been passing all the while. How
can I know this, when I do not know what time is? Is it that I do know what
time is, but do not know how to put what I know into words? I am in a sorry
state, for I do not even know what I do not know.
Our cluster on Time begins with Augustine’s Confessions , one of the most
widely read books of of the most widely read books of late antiquity, written
in the last years of the Roman Empire. On the one hand, the book is
autobiographical, describing (sometimes in very personal detail) Augustine’s
childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, culminating in his conversion and
commitment to Christianity in his early thirties. On the other hand,
especially in its less often read final chapters, the book is a philosophical
and theological exploration of what allows a person to change over time — and,
in particular, a meditation on the nature of time itself. Suzanne and Chris
explore Augustine’s fraught relationships to his friends and family, and they
begin to unpack the ways time structures and informs the book.
Show Notes.
Augustine: Confessions.
[Bookshop.] [We’re using the
classic translation by R.S. Pine-Coffin, but many translations are available.]
Other books by Augustine: City of God; Literal
Commentary on Genesis; De
Magistro [The Teacher].
Manichaeism.
Our episodes on the Inferno and
Paradise Lost.
Brian Stock: Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics
of Interpretation.
Catherine Conybeare picks Five Books about
Augustine.
The Cloisters.
Birgit Brander Rasmussen: Queequeg's Coffin: Indigenous Literacies and Early
American Literature.
Samuel R. Delany: Tales of Nevèrÿon.
Ayelet Tsabari, Eufemia Fantetti, and Leonarda Carranza: Tongues: On Longing
and Belonging through Language.
Next: W.G. Sebald: The Rings of Saturn.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
More shows like The Spouter-Inn
View all
The Book Review
3,999 Listeners
Travel with Rick Steves
2,483 Listeners
Dear Hank & John
7,758 Listeners
The History of Literature
1,118 Listeners
All About Agatha Christie
1,102 Listeners
Pod Save America
87,146 Listeners
It’s Just A Show
48 Listeners
You’re Not Funny
1 Listeners
And Thereby Hangs A Tale
1 Listeners
Shedunnit
709 Listeners
The Bulwark Podcast
12,500 Listeners
Dear Reader
1 Listeners
This Is Your Mixtape
10 Listeners
By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. Tolkien
32 Listeners
Life Kit
4,741 Listeners
The Opposite Of Lonely
0 Listeners
A Part Of Our Scare-itage
7 Listeners
The Scene of the Scene
0 Listeners
HubrisWeen!
0 Listeners
Maintenance Phase
16,601 Listeners
Gone Medieval
1,865 Listeners
Game Show 1939!
2 Listeners
Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
1,375 Listeners
The Next Level
3,136 Listeners
The Rest Is Politics: US
2,115 Listeners