The space of time: a sensualist interpretation of time in Augustine, Confessions X to XII

From Robert Grosseteste to Jean-Francois Lyotard, Augustine s suggestion that time is a dilation of the soul (distentio animi) has been taken up as a seminal and controversial time-concept, yet inThe Space of Time, David van Dusen argues that this dilation has been fundamentally misinterpreted. Time inConfessionsXI is a dilation of thesensesin beasts, as in humans. And Augustine s time-concept inConfessionsXI is not Platonic but in schematic terms, Epicurean. Identifying new influences on theConfessionsfrom Aristoxenus to Lucretius while keeping Augustine s phenomenological interpreters in view,The Space of Timeis a path-breaking work onConfessionsX to XII and a ranging contribution to the history of the concept of time."