Abstract

In this article, the notion of image, as it appears in Confessions X, is analysed. Literature on this theme is lacking, though the word imago appears up to a forty-five times. Augustine, in his analysis of memory, widely uses the notion of image. Memory, he states, confronts us with the unknown in ourselves. Firstly, we can’t grasp its dimensions; secondly, it also bears in it what has been forgotten. But in fact, what has been forgotten but still lingers on in memory, otherwise we couldn’t remember what has been forgotten. So it appears that all we know and all we remember is based on images. Image therefore bridges the gap between the known and the unknown in our memory, i.e. in ourselves. Thus, he gives the notion of image a very important role and transforms it in a idea guaranteeing our inner unity and overcoming the split in ourselves between subject and object. In a second phase however, when he discovers God inside our memory, he refrains from using this notion and passes to the notion of confession. It appears that confession functions in a similar way as does image. It creates the unity between God and man, where image creates the unity of the human subject. Image and confession are used in comparable ways, both serving to create a unity. Image in this sense is used in a much more positive way than in the platonic tradition Augustine based himself on. Secondly, it allows him to prepare elements of his Trinitarian theology, especially the theme of unity of the son and the Father.