:::: augustine ::: from robert :::

From Augustine’s  On Christian Doctrine I,iv,4:

I am translating jouissance by ‘enjoying’ .

” To enjoy (jouir) is to cling to it (the thing) with love for its own 
sake. To use something, however, is to employ it in obtaining
that which you love, provided that it is worthy of love”

“It is to be asked whether man is to be loved by man for his own sake 
or for the sake of something else. If for his own sake, we enjoy him; 
if for the sake of something else, we use him. But I think that man is 
to be loved for the sake of something else. In that which is to be 
loved for its own sake the blessed life resides; and if we do not have 
it for the present, hope for it now consoles us. But “cursed be the man 
that trusteth in man” [Jer:15]. But no one ought to enjoy himself 
either, if you observe the matter closely, because he should not love 
himself on account of himself but on account of Him who is to be 
enjoyed [I xxii,20-21]

Note: does it follows for Augustine that only the thing that is 
absolutely not a sign (because it is the object of enjoyment par 
excellance) is God.  Is this not the ultimate notion of sign and 
meaning, in our culture today ?  it imparts a coloration of the divine 
to every ultimate signified = something that is signified without 
signifying anything in turn = the presence of an absence.