The Structure of the Human Mind According to Augustine: Self-reflection and Knowledge of God in De Trinitate

Abstract

Augustine's late speculative work De Trinitate is of philosophical significance because of its analysis of the human mind. In his interpretation of the Delphic injunction to "know thyself," Augustine anticipates modern theories of self-consciousness by discovering the basis for all striving and self-knowledge in an immediate and constant self-relation. This book explores Augustine's theory of finite subjectivity, examining the Neo-platonic relation of self-knowledge and self-transcendence in his early thinking and the later development of his conception of the human mind on the model of the divine Trinity. This close reading of De Trinitate shows how Augustine distances himself from Aristotle's substance-accidents schemata in order to establish the structural analogy between the human mind and the divine Trinity. Through his unique ontological coneptualization of the trinitarian structure of the mens humana, Augustine demonstrates both the link between self-knowledge and the knowledge of God and the way human persons are always already an image of God and also are called to become an image of God.