Reason or Ratio is a visitor who may be encountered when seeking the "real self" and one's "best good," but whether Reason is ourself or another, within us or without is not known.
— St. Augustine (354-430)
Author
Work Title
Date
386
Metaphor
Reason or Ratio is a visitor who may be encountered when seeking the "real self" and one's "best good," but whether Reason is ourself or another, within us or without is not known.
Metaphor in Context
1. For many days I had been debating within myself many and diverse things, seeking constantly, and with anxiety, to find out my real self, my best good, and the evil to be avoided, when suddenly one — I know not, but eagerly strive to know, whether it were myself or another, within me or without — said to me:
R.Now consider: suppose you had discovered something concerning that which you are so constantly and anxiously seeking to know; to what would you entrust it, in order that you might give your attention to things following?
Categories
Provenance
Reading Michael Prince's Philosophical Dialogue in the British Enlightenment. Cambridge: CUP, 1996. p. 6.
Citation
The Soliloquies of Augustine. trans. Rose Elizabeth Cleveland. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1910). Text available at the Online Library of Liberty <http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0579.php>
Date of Entry
09/10/2003
Date of Review
05/16/2007
