“Denn keiner trägt das Leben allein”: The Thought of St. Augustine

“`Denn keiner trägt das Leben allein': The Thought of St. Augustine” argues for St. Augustine as a figure of African thought. Toward that end, the essay explores, first, the thought—and the thinking—of Augustine. Second, and here temporality is a foundational issue, the essay addresses Augustine's preoccupation in the Confessions with the relationship between language and thought, between the technical “death,” or “dying,” of language. In Augustine's Confessions considerable heft is assigned to the word and, in key moments, to the syllable, and this essay traces, shall we say, the problem for thought created by the linguistic “death” or “dying” of the word or the syllable. All of which, of course, for Augustine, turns on his veneration for the Word.