“A helper in troubles”
“A helper in troubles, which have found us exceedingly” Ps 45[46]:3). Many are our troubles, and in every one of them we should flee to God; whether it is trouble in our families or with our health, or danger to our loved ones, or about things needed to sustain this life, a Christian should have no other refuge than his Savior, than his God: he will be strong when he flees to God. A Christian will not be strong in himself, will not be his own strength; the one who has become his refuge will be his strength. But, my dear brothers and sisters, among all the troubles of the human soul none is greater than the consciousness of sin. For if there is no wound there, if that inner realm that is called conscience is sound, wherever else he may suffer troubles, he can flee there and there find God. But if there is no rest there because of an abundance of sins, and because God is not there, what is one to do? Where shall he flee if he begins to suffer troubles? He will flee from the countryside to the city, from the city-streets to his home, from his home to his bedroom, but his trouble will follow him. From his bedroom he has nowhere to flee except to his inner bedroom. But if there is disquiet there, the smoke of wickedness, the flame of sin, he can’t flee there either. He’s driven out from there; he’s driven out from himself. And see: now he finds the enemy to be the very one to whom he had fled. Where can anyone flee from himself? Wherever he flees, he drags himself behind, and wherever he drags such a self, he tortures himself about himself.
These are the troubles that find a person exceedingly, and there are none harsher; the less inward troubles are, the less harsh they are. Notice, beloved: when trees are cut down and are being planed by carpenters, sometimes they seem damaged and rotten on their surface. But the carpenter looks at the inner marrow (as it were) of the tree, and if he finds the inner wood sound, he can promise that it will last if used in a building, and he won’t be overly concerned that the outer part is wounded if he thinks the inner part is sound. Now, nothing is more inward than one’s consciousness. And what use is it if what is external is sound while the marrow of one’s consciousness has rotted? These are the intense, quite disturbing troubles, the “exceeding” troubles the Psalmist speaks of. But even for them the Lord has become a helper by forgiving sins. For only forgiveness heals the consciences of sinners. (Augustine, En in Ps 45[46], 3; PL 36, 515-16)
There is a clear distinction here between “conscience” and “consciousness”. What are the Latin words which these translate?
In both cases the word is conscientia, and one has to rely on context to decide which English word is more appropriate. The same problem bedevils translators from Italian (coscienza and French (conscience.
Thanks. I ask because I find the genealogy of the word “consciousness” in the simple sense of “awareness of. . . ” to be fascinating. The ancients had a concept of mind (“mensa”) of course, but that is a much, much more complex concept, as is the related term “intellect”. I haven’t found the modern meaning any earlier than perhaps in Descartes, but since Augustine influenced Descartes a lot, I though D. might have gotten some hints from him.
As I indicated a week or so ago, there is a dispute about whether Augustine belongs in the genealogy that led to Descartes’ “cogito.” There doesn’t seem any doubt that Descartes knew Augustine. I wouldn’t exclude Aquinas from the genealogical tree, either, because reflection on conscious activities is not infrequent in his arguments. “Everyone can experience in himself” begins one of them.
If anybody else is reading this thread, let me note that although the topic looks like scholastic nit-picking in the extreme, the topic of “consciousness” in philosophy is a central one these days. Unfortunately, it’s hard to pin down any of the meanings of the words in contemporary uses. It’s extremely important because it seems to be central in defining “soul”, a word that was banished from philosophy for several generations at least, but has started to appear again.
“Consciousness”, “soul”, and “self” have been mixed up since Locke (he sometimes identified them), and, as I see it, this is a main reason the secular philosophers are having such difficulty with it.
Unfortunately, it seems that we can get no help from the scholastics because they apparently didn’t distinguish “consciousness” from the more complex “mind”, of which it is a part. I was hoping that there might be some help with the topic in Augustine. Like Aquinas, he is always worth listening to on fundamental matters.
Maybe we should look for some help from the Buddha, since he’s one of the all-time great descriptive psychologists. But he’s just so — well — foreign, and I wonder how well it is possible to translate his works.
The neuroscientists (who are dominating psych right now) are no help at all. They think brains are identical with thoughts. Sheesh.
Ann: There are lengthy monographs on the notion of consciousness in both Augustine and Aquinas, so I am not sure why you seem to think they don’t have anything to contribute to the debate about it. I don’t quite understand your rapid description of the Scholastic view (if indeed there is a single one) when you say, on the one hand, that “they apparently didn’t distinguish “consciousness” from the more complex “mind”, of which it is a part.” This distinguishes “mind” and “consciousness” as a whole is distinguished from a part. And why would this not be a helpful distinction? Not that I would agree with it. I don’t think consciousness is a “part” of mind; it is a characteristic of mind–thinking and judging and deciding are conscious activities.
JAK –
Are you thinking of monographs on “consciousness” or on “intentionality”? Of course, the distinction between mind and consciousness is useful — the real distinction of cs. and mind is there and needs investigation. See the importance of the contemporary “mind=body problem”.
I can’t buy this notion of a characteristic of something not being really different in some way from the other parts/element/constituents of a thing unless they are only mentally different. Yes, yes, this gets us into the whole problem of the simplicity of God, but we’re not talking of God right now.
Further, cs. can be aware of itself without being aware of other objects. This indicates to me that the distinction of mind and cs. is a real, identifiable difference.
At any rate I thought Augustine or Aquinas might have a concept of the reality, cs., without having a name for it. That’s possible.
I too think that there is a distinction between mind and consciousness, which was the point of my last post. A discussion of mind must involve many things besides its characteristic of consciousness.
Can you give an example of consciousness being “aware of itself without being aware of other objects”?
You write: “At any rate I thought Augustine or Aquinas might have a concept of the reality, cs., without having a name for it. That’s possible.” I would say that they both engaged in attentive and discerning self-reflection on conscious activities, whether of the senses or of the mind and will, and they both appealed to their audiences to engage in similar self-reflection in order to be able to understand what they were saying. Here’s a passage from one of Augustine’s sermons in which he will outline his argument for an image of the Trinity in the human soul:
“What does your mind have? Perhaps if I were to look, I would find many things; but there’s something close, which is more easily understood. What does your soul have? Inside you call it to mind, think about it. For what I am to say I don’t ask that you believe me; don’t accept it if you don’t find it in yourself.” [Quid habet mens tua? Forte si quaeram, multa invenio: sed aliquid proximum est, quod facilius intelligitur. Quid habet anima tua? Intus commemora, recole . Non enim quod dicturus sum, id posco ut credatur mihi: noli acceptare, si in te non inveneris. (Ser 52, 18; PL 38, 361)]
The difficulty that plagues the conversations about consciousness today is that, as you have remarked, there is not much agreement about what it is or even about how to describe it. And, of course, if one is to investigate whether Augustine or Aquinas had the notion, it would be important, even necessary, that one have oneself a clear idea of what consciousness is. This is also made more difficult when philosophers eschew self-reflection altogether and dismiss it simply as a “black box” useless for addressing philosophical problems.
P.S. The monographs I was referring to were not on intentionality but on consciousness in Augustine and in Aquinas.k
JAK —
Thank you for the response. Sorry to be so stubborn, but as I understand your use of “cs.” it sometimes seems to be bound to/with something larger (“mind”) but at others it is identified with mind and cannot be really distinguished from it. And in the quote from Aug. in your last post he/you are pointing to something which the mind *has*.
My questions and considerations come out of the analytic tradition in which G. E. Moore’s analysis of the difference between cs. and its objects is the grandfather of later discussions. The analysis is quite simple. He says among other things,
“We all know that the sensation of blue differs from that of green. But it is plain that if both are sensations they also have some point in common, What is it that they have in common? And how is this common element related to the points in which they differ? I will call the common element ‘consciousness’ without yet attempting to say what the thing I so call is.
. . .
“The term “blue” is easy enough to distinguish, but the other element which I have called “consciousness” — that which sensation of blue has in common with sensation of green — is extremely difficult to fix. That many people fail to distinguish it at all is sufficiently shown by the fact that there are materialists. And, in general, that which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact seems to escape us: it seems, if I may use a metaphor, to be transparent — we look through it and see nothing but the blue; we may be convinced that there is something but what it is no philosopher, I think, has yet clearly recognised.” (from “The Refutation of Idealism” about 12-15 paragraphs down)
http://www.ditext.com/moore/refute.html
(Note: Moore is mainly interested in this article on the objectivity of knowledge, and it’s certainly arguable. I’m just interested in the cs.-object real distinction.)
Perhaps you’d say this is too simple. I’d certainly agree that the mind, let alone the whole self, can’t be reduced to consciousness. But I do think that there is one *faculty* of cs. (which Aristotle and Thomas missed) that is fundamental in *all* kinds of knowing and it is a large part of what we call “myself” or “I”, What the relationship is between cs. and the most fundamental part of “i” (soul, I”d say) is another, even more mysterious matter.
As to an example of being cs. of cs., the clearest experience I know of can be found in forms of low-level meditation in which consciousness is emptied of all content except for the mysterious awareness of itself. In the practice of Centering Prayer one eliminates all content except the intention to accept the will of God. It is a short step from there to focusing only on cs. itself — which is the cs. of cs.
That last act is ultra-simple, though not absolutely so. I suspect that the mystics, especially the Buddhists, have a lot more to teach us about this. They talk, for instance, about “depths” of cs. and many speak of the ultimate point of the soul/cs. or “the spark of the soul”. But their vocabulary is often blurred too. Nevertheless, a fascinating subject, if it really is just one subject. Some philosophers, of course, also identify the soul with cs. itself. All very murky when you get past the simplest level.
If you think the “black box” contemporary thinkers are bad, take a look at the “eliminationists” like the Churchlands. They say that there is no such think as thought or belief at all. There is no mind=body problem because there is no mind. Madness. (Or stupidity. There, I’ve said it.)