Paradoxes of Presence and Practice: Love, Lack, and Loss in Augustine (a Merleau-Pontyan Perspective)

Abstract

I focus upon Augustine’s experiences through the lens of the phenomenology of the body. More specifically, I focus on five relationships described by Augustine in terms of love, lack, and loss. These include the relationships of Augustine with a dear friend who died; with Monica, his mother; with Adeodatus, his son; with the reader; and with God. Augustine’s relationships were presented within a dialectical relationship with the reader – and since the Confessions is an open prayer, also with God. Complementing work done by John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-François Lyotard, I show how each relationship can be read as a critique of the metaphysics of presence by explicating them in the context of Merleau-Ponty’s account of the reversibility of the flesh. I frame each of these relations as embodied reversible relations, focusing upon the divergence involved in the experiences. Reversibility is an ontological account of intercorporeity (shared embodiment). Reversibility entails what seems to be a paradox: our bodies are never solely our own; while at the same time we are our bodies. Merleau-Ponty described the reversible existence of our bodies as “the flesh of the world.” Thus, Augustine’s relationships are reframed as a critique of the metaphysics of presence.