Time and eternity: Saint Augustine on the experience of music

This paper examines Augustine’s teaching on music, with particular focus on his understanding of the experience of music within the framework of Christian ontology. It demonstrates that Augustine’s conception of music represents a deeply reflective model of aesthetic experience - one that is not reduced to mere sense perception, but rather involves the totality of the human being. The central concept of numerus, signifying both number and rhythm (measure), serves in Augustine’s thought as a key to understanding not only music itself, but also the relationship between created and uncreated reality. Special attention is given to the relationship between music and time: through the experience of music, the human being becomes directly aware of its own temporality, which in turn leads to a deeper understanding of the relation between the esse of the creature and the divine esse. In this light, music emerges as a distinctive form of aesthetic-ontological experience, one that reveals the very structure of human existence.