NATURAL RHYTHMS IN ST. AUGUSTINE’S METAPHYSICS

Abstract

The paper presents a historico-philosophical reconstruction of St. Augustine’s conception of natural rhythmic accomplished on the material basis of the treatises “On Music”, “On True Religion”, “The City of God”, “The Literal Meaning of Genesis”. To restore structural lacunas inSt. Augustine’s conception the congenial Neoplatonic text of Aristides Quintilianus’ treatise “On Music” is engaged. The methodological paradigm of the reconstruction is Hegel’s classical conception of philosophy of nature permitting to reveal natural rhythmic in its consecutive aspects of mechanics, physics and organics. The reconstruction displays the metaphysical trend ofSt. Augustine’s thought, characteristic of ancient philosophy in general. Its most conspicuous symptom consists in the fact that the specific rhythmic of the more developed spheres of nature – physical and organic – is deprived of its self-dependent significance: the rhythmic determinacy of physical elements as well as that of the region of vegetation and animals is reduced to the most abstract stratum – that of celestial mechanics – as the “pure” form of the realization of numerical (rhythmical) correlations in nature. The achieved results are important for comprehensive understanding of the antique metaphysical tradition as a whole.

Keywords

• st. augustine, rhythm, nature, mechanics, physics, organics, metaphysics