1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910966174103321

Autore

Nightingale Andrea Wilson

Titolo

Once out of nature : Augustine on time and the body / / Andrea Nightingale

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2011

ISBN

9786613362742

9781283362740

1283362740

9780226585789

0226585786

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (259 p.)

Disciplina

233/.5

Soggetti

Human body - Religious aspects - Christianity

Time - Religious aspects - Christianity

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Edenic and resurrected transhumans -- Scattered in time -- The unsituated self -- Body and book -- Unearthly bodies -- Epilogue: "mortal interindebtedness" -- Appendix: Augustine on Paul's notion of the flesh and the body.

Sommario/riassunto

Once Out of Nature offers an original interpretation of Augustine's theory of time and embodiment. Andrea Nightingale draws on philosophy, sociology, literary theory, and social history to analyze Augustine's conception of temporality, eternity, and the human and transhuman condition. In Nightingale's view, the notion of embodiment illuminates a set of problems much larger than the body itself: it captures the human experience of being an embodied soul dwelling on earth. In Augustine's writings, humans live both in and out of nature-exiled from Eden and punished by mortality, they are "resident aliens" on earth. While the human body is subject to earthly time, the human mind is governed by what Nightingale calls psychic time. For the human psyche always stretches away from the present moment-where the physical body persists-into memories and expectations. As Nightingale explains, while the body is present in the here and now, the



psyche cannot experience self-presence. Thus, for Augustine, the human being dwells in two distinct time zones, in earthly time and in psychic time. The human self, then, is a moving target. Adam, Eve, and the resurrected saints, by contrast, live outside of time and nature: these transhumans dwell in an everlasting present. Nightingale connects Augustine's views to contemporary debates about transhumans and suggests that Augustine's thought reflects our own ambivalent relationship with our bodies and the earth. Once Out of Nature offers a compelling invitation to ponder the boundaries of the human.