Ego, or endowed with itself

This edition presents the central chapter from the book “Instead: Augustine"s approach” by Jean-Luka Marion, one of the largest modern French philosophers. The book “Instead” from a formal point of view is a detailed commentary on “Confession” - probably the most famous text of the Christian tradition about what the path of the soul to God and to itself. The number of comments on the “confession” is boundless, but the text of Marion is strikingly different from most of them. The book that you are now holding in your hands is not just the result of the work of a brilliant historian of philosophy, commentator and interpreter of classical texts, it is also an imitation of Augustine, an attempt to involve the reader in the same work of the soul, which is mentioned in Confession. As the text of Augustine does not speak of God, about the soul, about philosophy, but addresses God, to the soul and the listener, to the “true philosopher”, that is, to the one who “loves God”, so the text of Marion is under the mask of historical -filosophical interpretation -addressed to God and the reader as someone who seeks God and seeks a radical change in himself. But what does “God” mean and what does “change” mean? Can you change yourself?