Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the signification of inventio (vidi lucem) in "the experience in Milan" in the Book VII of Confessions. Confessions, as we understand, aims at the interpretation of Scriptura. And this inventio also consists in the orientation of interpretation as follows. 1) The working of Augustine's mind shifts from the reading of libri Platonicorum on the basis of Scriptura, through videre lucem, to the correct understanding of malum. 2) The epistemic mode of the inventio is basically coincident with its mode of the interpretation in the Books X-XIII, i.e., the internal access to Truth (consulere veritatem), the response of Truth (dicere, docere), and the hearing of the voice in the self-disclosure of Truth (audire). The light-symbol in the beginning of the true interpretation peculiarizes the inventio. Here the phase-difference of light, to grasp the light itself (ch. 10) and to grasp by the light (ch. 17), means that of Truth, Truth itself as the unable-to-be-grasped (invisibilia) or the unable-to-be-defined (infinitum) and the operation of Truth as the clear statement, illuminatio, of the ground for interpretation. Through the phases of light, Augustine explains the inventio of the orientation of interpretation.
