Augustine and Neoplatonism

Delivered as a lecture course during Heidegger’s early years at Freiburg, this text dissects Augustine’s Confessions through a phenomenological lens, probing how the saint’s “restless heart” (cor inquietum) prefigures existential temporality. Heidegger, then distancing himself from his Catholic theological training, isolates Augustine’s account of time as a distentio animi (stretching of the soul)—not a linear succession but a fractured unity of memory, attention, and expectation—to critique Neoplatonism’s static metaphysics. Where Plotinus and Proclus sought escape from temporal flux into the One’s eternity, Augustine’s inward turn, for Heidegger, discloses a primordial care (cura) that binds human existence to its finite horizon. Yet Heidegger charges Augustine with recapturing this insight within a theological framework that defers to divine eternity, muting time’s existential weight.

The lectures reveal Heidegger’s emerging method: plundering historical texts to unearth “pre-ontological” insights later buried by metaphysical systems. Augustine’s struggle with temporality becomes a veiled prototype for Dasein’s ecstatic temporality in Being and Time (1927), but here, the focus remains fractured—Heidegger grafts Husserlian intentionality onto Augustine’s memoria, while skirting the latter’s theology of grace. Neoplatonism, meanwhile, is framed as a dead end: its hierarchical emanationism obscures the “being-toward-death” that defines authentic temporality. The work’s tension—between deconstructive rigor and unacknowledged debt to Augustine’s spiritual anxiety—mirrors Heidegger’s own pivot from theology to fundamental ontology, a shift still incomplete in 1921.

The original manuscript, consisting of 19 pages, contains a continuous text on the left and space for notes on the right. The complex nature of Heidegger's marginal notes, often interspersed with the main text, required careful transcription. The editors have ensured clarity by enclosing the notes in round brackets and placing them at the end of each paragraph. The edition also includes additional material relating to Heidegger's studies of religion and mysticism in 1918/19, which sheds light on the development of his early philosophical ideas. The thorough work of the editors, together with the collaboration of the contributors, contributes to a comprehensive understanding of Heidegger's lectures and their significance for his philosophical development.

Heidegger critically examines Augustine's incorporation and transformation of Neoplatonic concepts, focusing in particular on notions of Being, temporality, and selfhood. This analysis is not a mere historical account, but a phenomenological exploration of how Augustine reconceptualizes these ideas within a Christian framework. He examines Augustine's concepts of 'being', 'temporality', and 'ontology' and shows how they are deeply influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy. Heidegger's approach, however, is not merely to trace philosophical influences, but to uncover the existential dimensions in Augustine's thought. Heidegger illuminates how Augustine navigates and redefines the Neoplatonic heritage in order to address fundamental questions of existence, truth, and the human condition within a Christian paradigm. Heidegger's exploration is thus both a critical analysis of Augustine's philosophical adaptation and a reflection on the existential and phenomenological implications of this synthesis. He notes that while both Judaism and Christianity contain inherently Platonic Ontological concepts, Augustine further synthesized Neoplatonism around the conceptualization Dasein to form a distinctly Latin flavor of Theanthropic Philosophy.