Abstract
Augustine’s deeply influential reflections on linguistic (and other types of) signs are contained in the selections here. In the first, from On Christian Doctrine, Augustine provides a basic taxonomy of signs between those that are natural and those that are given (including conventional signs like linguistic utterances). A sign is what causes something to be known beyond the sign itself, and these teachings formed the basis of Scriptural hermeneutics. In The Teacher, Augustine questions the efficacy of signs and inquires whether anything can truly be learned by signs. Augustine’s answer is negative, and his arguments raise interesting philosophical questions about paradoxes of knowledge. A brief excerpt from Augustine’s autobiographical Confessions provides insight into how humans come to use linguistic speech to meet their various physical and communicational needs.
Text from On Christian Doctrine excerpted from: Green, R.P.H. trans. 1995. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Text from On the Teacher excerpted from: King, P. trans. 1995. Augustine: Against the Academicians and The Teacher. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Text from Confessions excerpted from: Sheed, F.J. trans. 2006. Confessions, 2nd edition. Indianapolis: Hackett.
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Notes
- 1.
John 12: 3–7.
- 2.
Matthew 26: 26–28; Mark 14: 22-24; Luke 22: 15–20.
- 3.
Matthew 9: 20–22; Mark 5: 25–29; Luke 8: 43–44.
- 4.
Genesis 11: 1–9.
- 5.
Vergil, Aeneid 2.659: Si nihil ex tanta superis placet urbe relinqui, spoken by Aeneas to his father Anchises, in reference to the imminent destruction of Troy. Adeodatus takes up the first three words in order, namely si (“if”), nihil (“nothing”), and ex (“from”).
- 6.
Augustine’s “stipulation” is that Adeodatus point out “the very things of which these words are the signs” without using signs.
- 7.
Literally, “these three syllables,” referring to the syllables par-i-es of paries (‘wall’). Here and elsewhere the number of syllables of Latin terms has been altered to fit the English translation .
- 8.
Augustine says in On Christian Doctrine II.3.4 that the gestures of pantomimists “are, in a manner of speaking, visible words” (quasi verba visibilia).
- 9.
“And [the word] ‘signifying’ is derived from this [activity]”: de quo dictum est significare, literally “from which signifying is so called.” That is, the word “signifying” (significare) is derived from the activity of making signs (signa facere).
- 10.
The two subdivisions of (i) are: (i-a) we teach or remind someone of the same signs; (i-b) we teach or remind someone of other signs.
- 11.
Adeodatus proposes coining the term “audible” (audibile), on a par with Augustine’s earlier coinage “signifiable.” See Ambrose, Noah 15.52: “Sight sees the visible and the listener hears the audible.”
- 12.
Terence, The Lady of Andros, 204. Davos uses the formula bona verba quaeso ironically to his master Simo, who is angrily threatening him with dire punishments and calling him names.
- 13.
This paragraph involves several ambiguities, including some (deliberate?) confusion of use and mention, that are difficult to preserve in translation. Augustine considers three cases: (i) “word” signifies names, perhaps among other things; (ii) “name” signifies the particular name “river,” among other things; (iii) the particular name “river” signifies this very river; e.g., the Nile, among other rivers. Now Adeodatus has already explained (iii) and (ii): names are not to be confused with what they name, and a particular name is picked out by the general term “name.” Therefore Augustine is asking Adeodatus about (i), that is, about the difference between words and names.
- 14.
The single Latin term verbum does duty for both English terms “word” and “verb.”
- 15.
The Latin term signum may refer to a banner or standard, as well as having the more general sense “sign.”
- 16.
This translation depends on taking genus in two distinct ways: as “kind” or “class,” and as the gender of the name. If we insist on a uniform reading, the latter part of the sentence might be translated: “and ‘name’ is a name of neither class [i.e., neither word nor sign].”
- 17.
That is, they are not related in the way described at the beginning of the paragraph—mutual signification. “Conjunction” signifies if but “if” does not signify conjunction. The part of speech called “conjunction” was used to cover most cases of “linking” words, including logical particles: and, or, but, when, while, if, because, since, therefore, for, and the like.
- 18.
The false etymological connection proposed here may seem more plausible in Latin: words (verba) are so called from striking the ear (verberando), and names (nomina) are so called from knowing (noscendo).
- 19.
A pronoun (pronomen) is what can take the place of a name (nomen), which is why it is so called (pro-nomen).
- 20.
“Pronouns can only serve in place of names, and can be put only in the place of names”: nullis nisi nominibus servire et pro his solis poni posse pronomina. This phrase could also be translated “pronouns serve only in place of names, and can be put only in the place of names.”
- 21.
That is, they are pronouns when used by themselves. In “this man,” “this” is an adjective .
- 22.
II Corinthians 1:19. The Septuagint has: Ναί καί ού, which means “Yea or Nay.” Yet there is no straightforward way to say “yes” in Latin; locutions saying that something is the case were typically used instead—sic, est, ita. Various translators used the standard substitute, “It is so” (est), which can also simply be translated “is.” Thus the Latin text reads “There was not in Christ is and is not, but in Him was is only.” That is why Augustine argues later that it has the dual force of both verb (as “is”) and name (as “yes”).
- 23.
Augustine’s point is that “est” is, strictly speaking, a verb. See the preceding note.
- 24.
The “conviction” is the claim that other parts of speech are also names, and the “basis” for the conviction is the argument taken from St. Paul.
- 25.
II Corinthians 11:6.
- 26.
The seven question-answer pairs above correspond to seven of the eight parts of speech, respectively: pronoun , verb, adverb , adjective , conjunction, preposition, interjection. The other part of speech is the name, which surely includes names, and so can be left out of Augustine’s argument.
- 27.
“Authors who everyone agrees are paradigms of proper language”: literally “authors to whom the rules of usage (verborum leges) are attributed by the consent of all.” Augustine is referring to authors whose writing has been taken to be a paradigm of correct style, such that their texts set the standards that are then taught as the “rules of usage”: Cicero for rhetorical and philosophical prose, Livy for historical prose, and Vergil for poetry.
- 28.
When Cicero describes Verres’s forgery of judicial records to make it appear that Sthenius, tried in absentia, was instead present at the trial, he writes: “Don’t you see this whole name ‘in the presence of’ (coram) is in the text where [Verres] put it?” (viditisne totum hoc nomen coram ubi facit delatum esse in litura?, The Action Against Verres, 2.2.104). Augustine admits that he is unsure about his reading of the passage.
- 29.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.7.14: “Every proposition (pronuntiatum)—at the moment it strikes me that I should render άξιώμα in this way; I’ll use a different term later if I find a better one—a proposition, then, is what is true or false.”
- 30.
Cledonius, The Grammatical Art (35.1–3): “Among the old [grammarians ] there was this distinction between names and terms (inter nomina et vocabula): living things were denoted by names, whereas inanimate things were denoted by terms. But this usage was confusing and died out.” The same view is apparent in Donatus, The Grammatical Art (373.5): “Now ‘name’ is for a single man, ‘appellation’ for a multitude, and ‘term’ for things.”
- 31.
Vergil, Aeneid 2.659.
- 32.
Adeodatus gives [3] before [2] in his summary here; I have reversed the order to conform to Augustine’s earlier presentation of the fundamental division.
- 33.
The phrases “not so much,” “just so much,” and “the same” are adverbial modifiers, describing the kind of signification possessed by terms. Adeodatus seems to be talking on the one hand about inclusion-relations among the class of significates, and on the other hand about sense (or intension ). Let x and y signify each other mutually. The class of x-significates may be a subclass of the class of y-significates, so that x “means not so much” as y; or the class of x-significates and the class of y-significates may be the same, so that x and y “mean just as much.” (Adeodatus does not mention the case in which the classes overlap, but neither is completely contained within the other.) The Latin term “tantum” indicates quantity, and suggests this extensional reading. However, the case in which terms “mean the same” is not a case in which the extensions are equal (that case is covered by terms that “mean just as much”). Adeodatus offers two ways in which terms can fail to mean the same: (a) they may have a sense that is derived from their initial use, revealed by etymology ; (b) they are not interchangeable in ordinary contexts. Hence this case seems to include a difference in ‘meaning’ beyond the comparison of significate-classes. Thus it appears to be a difference not in extension , but in intension or sense.
- 34.
There is some untranslatable wordplay here: si praeludo tecum, non ludendi gratia.
- 35.
“In the second and fourth place”: literally, “in the middle,’ since the question is utrum homo homo sit.
- 36.
Here and in the next several paragraphs I have not inserted quotation marks, since Augustine’s argument turns on blurring the distinction between man and “man.”
- 37.
The “law of reason” is to follow explicit contextual signs in disambiguating questions, which overcame Adeodatus’s Rule always to interpret questions from the standpoint of what is signified. Augustine suggests in the next paragraph that Adeodatus’s Rule comes into play in the absence of contextual signs.
- 38.
Call this “Augustine’s Rule”: if x exists on account of y, then y is more valuable than x.
- 39.
This awkward sentence has a simple meaning: Adeodatus uses the name “filth” when he wants to talk about filth with someone—that is, to convey knowledge, which is a matter of either teaching or recalling, according to the start of the dialogue.
- 40.
Romans 16:18
- 41.
The story is an old one. The saying is reported in the Pseudo-Cicero’s Rhetoric for Herennius 4.28.39 and in Quintilian, Oratorical Guidelines 9.3.85; it is attributed to Socrates by Aulus Gellius in Attic Nights 19.2.7.
- 42.
The earlier occurrences of ‘teaching’ have referred primarily to the activity (ad docendum, docere); here Augustine subtly moves to the distinguishing feature of the activity (or to its content): doctrina.
- 43.
As Augustine points out, here (a) is superior to (b), since the name “vice” is preferable to an actual vice, but (d) is superior to (c), since knowledge of the vice is preferable to merely knowing the name “vice.”
- 44.
Persius, Satires 3.32.
- 45.
Persius, Satires 3.35–38: “Great Father of the Gods! When detestable lust attainted with dreadful venom has moved the souls of cruel tyrants, let it be your will to punish them in no other way but this: let them look upon virtue and pine away for leaving it behind!”
- 46.
“Of these men”: horum. It is unclear who Augustine means to single out here—satirists? poets? pagans?
- 47.
“Hatred and mistrust of reason”: possibly “hatred and mistrust of argument”—in any event, a clear reference to Plato’s discussion of “misology” in Phaedo 89D–E. See also Against the Academicians 2.1.1.12–14.
- 48.
“Rather than by anything that signifies”: nullo significatu.
- 49.
Daniel 3:94 (Vulgate) = 3:27 (Septuagint). (The Vulgate has sarabala rather than sarabara.) I have left sarabarae untranslated, since Augustine is employing a deliberately unfamiliar word to make his point. A good thing, too: the form and meaning of the word are extremely unclear.
- 50.
“It’s like the exclamation ‘look’”: sicut adverbium quod ‘ecce’ dicimus. Nothing turns on the part of speech in question.
- 51.
Anaias, Azarias, and Misahel were cast into a fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar; because of their piety, God made the flames powerless to harm them, whereupon they were hauled out, pardoned, and richly rewarded by the king. This story is recounted in Daniel 3, where the word “sarabarae” appears (Septuagint 3:21 and 3:94; Vulgate 3:21).
- 52.
“Was already known to us”: in nostra notitiam iam fuisse, literally “was already in our conception.” The term notitia is often a technical term, roughly synonymous with ‘definition,’ but it does not seem to bear the technical sense in this passage.
- 53.
Isaiah 7:9. The Vulgate has permanebitis in place of Augustine’s intelligetis.
- 54.
Augustine expresses his point at the end of this paragraph obscurely. Briefly: knowledge and understanding entail belief, but not conversely; belief, even when unaccompanied by knowledge, can be useful (and one can know this last fact). The story of the three boys falls Into the category of useful belief that is not knowledge.
- 55.
Ephesians 3:1&-17. See also The True Religion 39.72: “The Truth lives in the inner man.”
- 56.
I Corinthians 1:24. See Against the Academicians 2.1.1.26.
- 57.
In his early works Augustine is attracted to the idea that wisdom depends on moral rectitude: see his The True Religion 3.3, On Order 2.8.25, and Soliloquies 1.1.2 (the last of which Augustine repudiates in his Revisions 1.4.2 for the obvious reason: non-Christians often seem to know quite a lot).
- 58.
“Our authorities”: the (inspired) writers of the Bible and the early Church Fathers.
- 59.
The images are “false” in that they are not the things themselves, but mere representations of the things themselves.
- 60.
See Against the Academicians 3.17.37.26–28.
- 61.
See Confessions 11.3.5.
- 62.
See The Usefulness of Belief l6.34.
- 63.
See The Usefulness of Belief 11.25.
- 64.
For “student” Augustine uses discipulus, derived from discere (to learn): this connection is lost in the translation.
- 65.
The speaker says: ab aliquibus belvis hominem virtute superari. The ambiguity lies in virtute, which could mean “virtue” or “physical strength” (as Augustine goes on to point out).
- 66.
Augustine likely has in mind the Peripatetics here.
- 67.
“The system of definitions”: disciplina definiendi. Cicero, Good and Bad Goals 2.2.4 says that Epicurus refused to give definitions; perhaps he is the source of the “many arguments” Augustine alludes to here.
- 68.
“Students”: discipuli.
- 69.
The supposed ‘teachers’ are only persons who have been taught by the inner Truth what is true (provided they have been so taught); it is therefore out of place to praise them for their teaching. Augustine offers similar remarks in his Letter 19.1 (Augustine to Gaius).
- 70.
Augustine never does so, though parts of Christian Doctrine and The Trinity discuss the usefulness of words.
- 71.
This citation is a compressed paraphrase of Matthew 23:9–10.
- 72.
See Against the Academicians 1.2.5.13–14.
- 73.
See The Free Choice of the Will1.14.30 and 2.9.26.
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Cameron, M. (2017). Augustine. In: Cameron, M., Hill, B., Stainton, R. (eds) Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language. Springer Graduate Texts in Philosophy, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26908-5_8
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