Quotation
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“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to someone who asks, I do not know.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism · Medieval · c. 397–400
What does it mean?
The usual reading treats the contrast as a real philosophical embarrassment: ordinary competence with time collapses when a definition is demanded. He is not boasting of ignorance, and he is not mocking the question. A rival reading hears only a joke about pedantry, as if the failure to explain proved that no explanation is needed. The sentence opens the long inquiry of book eleven, where he will try to say how time can be measured in the mind if the past is gone and the future is not yet.
Did Augustine of Hippo really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Henry Chadwick's translation of Confessions book eleven. Augustine is praying through a puzzle about time and creation, not offering a dictionary definition. The Latin is secure. This English is a translation.
Where it comes from
Confessions XI.14.17
Approximate date: c. 397–400.
How to use it
A parent in Cardiff can get a child to school on time every morning and still have nothing to say when asked what time itself is, beyond before and after and the clock on the microwave. Augustine's point is that practical mastery is not an explanation. The school run does not answer the question; It shows why the question can hide inside a life that seems to have solved it.
A mindset reading
Familiarity is often mistaken for an account, and the sentence is a warning against that swap. Being able to use a word in a timetable is not the same as being able to say what the word commits you to. The honest next step is the attempt he makes, not a shrug that leaves the know-how in charge of the metaphysics.
Understand the philosophy
Book eleven asks how God creates if creation is not an event inside an already running time. The key term is time, which he will describe as a distension of the mind, a stretching across memory, attention, and expectation, rather than as a container things sit in. The opening admission of ignorance is the start of that account, not its refusal. Chadwick's translation is the English in view.
- knowledge
- mind
- change
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading treats the contrast as a real philosophical embarrassment: ordinary competence with time collapses when a definition is demanded. He is not boasting of ignorance, and he is not mocking the question. A rival reading hears only a joke about pedantry, as if the failure to explain proved that no explanation is needed. The sentence opens the long inquiry of book eleven, where he will try to say how time can be measured in the mind if the past is gone and the future is not yet.
Did Augustine of Hippo really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Henry Chadwick's translation of Confessions book eleven. Augustine is praying through a puzzle about time and creation, not offering a dictionary definition. The Latin is secure. This English is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Confessions XI.14.17 Approximate date: c. 397–400.