The spiritual senses in St. Augustine and their neoplatonic foundations

Over the course of his career, and in several of his major works, St. Augustine expounds his doctrine of a set of spiritual analogues to the five corporeal sense faculties. It is these spiritual senses which are endowed with the capacity to perceive the divine causes within mundane, perceptible phenomena. Unlike many other Augustinian positions, the Bishop demonstrates a remarkable amount of consistency in his various expositions of spiritual perception. The reason for this consistency lies in the very strong Neoplatonic heritage underlying his position.; Augustine's conception of the spiritual senses depends heavily on the systematic formulations of the pagan, Neoplatonic philosopher, Plotinus, as well as on those of Plotinus' disciple, Porphyry. It must also be noted that spiritual perception commanded the attention of these thinkers because of an enduring paradox, within the philosophy of Plato, which elicited solutions from all who followed in the Platonic tradition. The problem of the spiritual senses must therefore be conceived as essentially Platonic, and therefore comprehensive of both the Christian and the pagan philosophical traditions.