Most of Augustine’s Confessions is a sort of autobiography, but in the last three books (11-13), he turns to an interpretation of the account of creation in the biblical book Genesis. At the beginning of book 11, he considers ways of understanding the place of God as the creator of time; and, in ch. 14—where your assignment begins—he asks about the nature of time. The closest he comes to a definitive answer appears near the end of ch. 26 (p. 24) and he pursues the same line of throught through ch. 28, with the last three chapters pointing to links between this view of time and the nature of eternity, a topic in the earlier part of the book.

While you should, of course, think about Augustine’s account of time and whether you agree with it, you should also look for connections (e.g., points of agreement or disagreement) with Aristotle. And, although Augustine’s discussion is more focused on a single question than is Aristotle’s, you should look for things he says about time that are of interest even if not directly tied to his final account of it.

We won’t have much time to discuss the nature of eternity, which is why I haven’t assigned the beginning of book 11; but, if you are interested in this idea, you can find further material on it in Westphal and Levenson’s anthology. The selection from Plotinus, pp. 73-93, is focuses almost solely on the idea of eternity, and Plotinus’ views are likely to have influenced Augustine. The idea of eternity also appears, though in a very different way, in the selection from Eliade near the end of the anthology.

As I noted in the first class, Augustine’s expression of puzzlement about time at the beginning of this assignment is famous. You can find comments on it at the beginning of the selection from Wittgenstein, and ideas like Wittgenstein’s are developed at much greater length in the first section of the article by Bouwsma.