Like his predecessor Marius Victorinus, Augustine tried to find the image of the divine Trinity, as understood by Western pro‑Nicene theology, in the human soul, created, according to Gn 1 :26f., in the image of God. Unlike Victorinus, Augustine finds this image not in the soul as such but only in the rational soul capable of intellectual insight, i.e. the mind (mens). The „image” of the divine Trinity is thus constituted by the mind itself and its self‑knowledge and self‑love (De (...) trin. IX) or, alternatively, by memory, intellectual insight, and will (De trin. X). Apart from this Neo‑Platonising exposition, Augustine attempted to show a longer path to the same goal, intended, in his words, for „slower” readers (De trin. XI‑XIV). This „Aristotelianising” procedure gradually seeks analogous triads on the level of sense perception, imagination, and practical reason. However, these triads are not the image of God in a true sense, but only the way to find it in the mind. Finally, in the last book of his work, Augustine uses this image to develop his idea of the divine Trinity (De trin. XV). (shrink)

The article treats the role of attention in Augustine’s analysis of sense perception, the notion of time, and the Trinitarian structure of the human mind. The term intentio covers a broad range of meanings in Augustine’s usage. Its most fundamental meaning is the life-giving presence of the soul in the body, intensified in attention’s being concentrated on a particular thing or experience; Augustine also uses the term attentio in this latter sense. According to his analysis of time, by way of (...) attention, the soul fixes the present in which the future passes into the past. Due to the intention of the soul, the form abstracted from an external object is both imprinted into the sense organ and retained in the memory in order to be, by intention again, recalled before the sight of mind. As “the intention of the will” or just “the will”, attention connects intellectual understanding with memory. In Augustine’s eyes, attention has a different quality depending on the object it is oriented to, and a different intensity, ranging from inattentive distraction to concentrated effort. (shrink)

Po disputacích k tématům Filosofie nepředmětnosti Ladislava Hejdánka a Nekonečnost konečnosti podle Ivana Chvatíka uspořádala Katedra filosofie Evangelické teologické fakulty UK v Praze dne 29. června 2009 v pořadí již třetí pokus o výměnu mezi domácími filosofy. Tentokrát však nebyl východiskem diskusí programový text některého z účastníků, ale Platónův výklad o nejvyšších rodech v dialogu Sofistés. Tomuto textu se zde dostalo trojí velmi odlišné interpretace, kterou bychom snad mohli vzdáleně přirovnat k liternímu, morálnímu a alegorickému neboli naukovému pochopení posvátného textu (...) Písma. Filip Karfík nabízí co možná přesný výklad Platónova textu, Štěpán Špinka sleduje etické implikace Platónovy ontologie, konečně Pavlu Koubovi je pasáž ze Sofisty záminkou pro velmi zajímavé vyrovnání s Heideggerovým pojetím bytí v jeho rozštěpu na bytí jsoucna výskytového a bytí pobytu, o to zajímavější, že je provedeno prostředky Heideggerova vlastního výkladu dialogu Sofistés. Na příspěvek Pavla Kouby navazuje diskuse o zdánlivě dílčím aspektu jeho výkladu, totiž o otázce, zda identitu chceme, nebo nechceme chápat pouze jako dějství diferujících vztahů. V zájmu historické věrnosti třeba poznamenat, že tato diskuse proběhla na disputaci samé jen částečně, zato se zde odehrálo mnoho pozoruhodných diskusí dalších, které nebylo možné svěřit písemnému zachycení. Mnohé se nicméně podařilo zachytit médiem jiným, totiž na fotografiích Věry Koubové, jež jsou uveřejněny na stránkách katedry. (shrink)

Book review: Lenka Karfíková, Látka, tělo, vzkříšení podle starokřesťanských autorů, Praha (Karolinum) 2022, 203 p.

Edited by Svetla S. Griffin and Ilaria L.E. Ramelli. Harvard University Press, Hellenic Studies 88, 2019, ca 600 pages. ISBN-10: 0674241320; ISBN-13: 978-0674241329. Contributors: Luc Brisson, Kevin Corrigan, John Dillon, Harold Tarrant, John Turner, John Finamore, Ilaria Ramelli, Karla Pollmann, Carlos Lévy, Lenka Karfíková, Pauliina Remes, Mark J. Edwards, Pier Franco Beatrice, Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, Aaron Johnson, Dimka Gocheva, Olivier Dufault, and Robert Hannah.

In this special issue, our goal is to ... show that the distinguished history of philosophical reflection on attention, insofar as the Western tradition is concerned, has at least some of its roots in Classical Greek and Roman philosophy. This is offered as a partial corrective to historical overviews of the Western discourse, which rarely reach further back than René Descartes. Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that ancient treatments of attention are especially concerned with its role in the context of (...) ethics and human agency. Even when they take their departure from an analysis of selective perceptual attention, their intention is not only to account for this phenomenon as part of a naturalistic science of the mind but also to motivate the view that the capacity to focus or to shift our attention is indispensable to human flourishing. Moral training is to a large extent conceived of as a matter of acquiring and sustaining the mental strength required for maintaining an attentive state of mind while resisting the interference of competing stimuli. -/- TABLE OF CONTENTS Pauliina Remes: From Natural Tendencies to Perceptual Interests and Motivation in Plato’s Timaeus Voula Tsouna: The Epicurean Notion of epibolê Katerina Ierodiakonou: The Stoic Provenance of the Notion of Prosochê Charles Brittain: A Stoic Ethics for Attention (Seneca Letter 56) Lenka Karfíková: Attention in Augustine. (shrink)