Autobiography/autofictionality, the constitution of time and historical consciousness in Augustine: The unity of 'Confessions' with regard to the vision of Ostia.

在文学批评中，自故性(在叙述者虚构的真理的意义上)的概念目前正在争论中，例如关于奥维德的爱莫尔斯：虽然在这部作品中可以找到真实性和虚构性之间的话语区别，但在奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》中却不是这样，正如我想在即将撰写的专著中所展示的那样。虽然这位教父最著名的作品不能被认为是对历史事实的纯粹报道，但它既不是纯粹想象的产物，也不能被称为自我虚构。相反，会议的目标是。是自知之明(面对奥古斯丁信仰的基督教神)。这种认知过程包括对与回忆和反思她/他的过去的个体灵魂的生活至关重要的经验的反映：这种相关性一方面可以追溯到“事件本身”，因为它们可能具有历史核心，另一方面，这种相关性可以追溯到某一事件对于体验和记忆“我”的内在内容，这些内容不能被事实地观察到，但必须在智力和情感上被理解。为了被读者理解，这种个人体验和自我解释的心理过程本身已经成为文本的主题，而不是“虚构的”。因此，在《会议》中，叙述者奥古斯丁表现出严格局限于自我认识和个人历史意识的自传性兴趣。后者直接与奥古斯丁的时间理论联系在一起。根据许多致力于这一主题的研究，可以看出为什么奥古斯丁既不是仅仅是物理的支持者，也不是仅仅是对时间的主观理解的倡导者：根据Conf的说法。物理变化只有通过灵魂的认知活动才能构成实际时间，因为只有灵魂才能理解因果关系以及“早”和“晚”的关系。灵魂建立了过去、现在和未来事件的实际联系，从而在灵魂的认知行为中构成了过去、现在和未来的“三重存在”(例如，通过把握旋律的完整性)。因此，“实际时间”对任何灵魂/人来说都不一定是相同的。然而，这位教会之父在这里并没有引入后现代的概念--“另类事实”(Avant La Lettre)；因为，根据他的理论，有可能解释为什么某人以这种方式而不是以同样的方式经历和理解了一些东西。因此，存在一个标准，为什么武断的争辩不能坚持真理--主张--也区别于虚构的叙述，作为纯粹想象的产物，不能或不必以具有明确的真理价值的方式来解释。通过讨论这些问题，并结合Ostia(Conf.9)，可以用一种新的方法来证明会议的内在统一性。

In literary criticism, the concept of autofictionality (in the sense of fictionalized truth made up by a narrator) is currently debated, e.g. as regards Ovid's Amores: Whereas in this work a distinction of discourse between factuality and fictionality can be found, this is not the case in Augustine's Confessions as I want to show in the monograph to be written. Although the most famous work by the church father cannot be considered as a mere report of historical facts, it is neither the product of pure imagination nor can it be called autofictional. Instead the objective of Conf. is self-knowledge (in the face of the Christian god Augustine believes in). This cognitive process consists in the reflection of such experiences that are of essential relevance to the life of the individual soul remembering and reflecting her/his past: This relevance, on the one hand, goes back to the 'events as such', insofar as they might have a historical core, on the other hand to the inner content a certain event has for the experiencing and remembering 'I', which cannot be factually observed, but has to be intellectually and emotionally comprehended. In order to be understood by the reader, this mental process of personal experience and self-interpretation has itself to become the subject-matter of the text without being 'fictitious'. In Conf., therefore, the narrator Augustine shows autobiographical interests strictly confined to self-knowledge and to his individual historical consciousness. The latter is immediately connected with Augustine's theory of time. In the light of the many studies devoted to this topic, it is to be shown why Augustine is neither a proponent of a merely physical nor of a merely subjectivistic understanding of time: According to Conf. 11, physical changes are constituted as actual time only by the cognitive activity of soul since it is soul that comprehends the relations of cause and effect as well as of 'earlier' and 'later'. Soul establishes the actual connection of past, present and future events and thus constitutes "the threefold presence" of past, present and future within the soul's act of cognition (for example, by grasping a melody in its completeness). 'Actual time', therefore, does not have to be the same for any soul/human being. However, the church father is not introducing the postmodern notion of 'alternative facts' (avant la lettre) here; for, according to his theory, there is the possibility to account for why something was (or is) experienced and comprehended by someone as such, in this way and not differently. There exists, therefore, a criterion why arbitrary contentions cannot hold truth-claims – also in distinction to fictional narratives that, as products of pure imagination, cannot, or do not have to, be accounted for in terms of having a clear truth-value. By discussing these questions and with regard to the vision of Ostia (Conf. 9), a new approach can be made to prove the inner unity of Conf..