O contraste entre intentio e distentio na expêriencia interna do tempo: Paul Ricoeur e o livro XI das Confissões

Abstract

Paul Ricoeur makes a reconstruction of category of Saint Augustine’s time, centered in Book XI of Confessions, pointing elements that, according to him, subtly incorporate what later would prove the thesis that the being and the measure of time are solved in a narrative way, through the dialetics of intentio and distentio. Our proposal, beyond the reconstruction of Ricoeur’s interpretation of Book XI of Confessions, is to verify the scope and validity of this interpretation concerning the treatment of the relation between intentio and distentio, the narrative solution to the paradox of temporality and to the comprehension that the contrast between time and eternity serves to intensify the experience of temporality. To accomplish this task, three main thematic units will be examined. The first one consists in presenting the proposal for the resolution of the paradoxes of being and of the measure of time, which implies passing from a cosmologic conception of time to a conception from the soul or psychological one, and the contrast between intentio and the distentio. The second unity looks for the textual elements of Confessions used by Ricoeur to justify the proposal of a narrative solution to the paradoxes of time. In that topic, we will also address the critics from Augustine specialists to Ricoeur’s interpretations. Finally, we will examine the relation between time and eternity based on the three functions suggested by Ricoeur, in which eternity would serve to intensify the temporal experience. This work presents a positive response of Paul Ricoeur’s appropriation of Book XI of Confessions concerning the contrast between intention and distention in the internal experience of time and the contrast between time and eternity in the experience of external conscience of time. Such claim is relevant since it consists in one of the core matters for the three conclusive aspects of Ricoeur’s work: in Time and narrative I, in which the aporetic of temporality is solved in the poetics of narrative; and also that time becomes human time insofar as it's articulated in a narrative way; and, finally, in Time and narrative III, that the narrative be the "guardian of time", because there is only time tought when it's narrated.