Time and temporality - Modern understanding of Augustine's concept of time

Discussing the enigma of time in the 11. Book of the Confessiones St. Augustine asks himself riddles. On the one hand his formula time as distentio animi separates him from Plato, Aristotle, and Plotin; on the other hand modern conceptions of time, such as those of I. Kant, or E. Husserl, or M. Heidegger, naturally are not yet in the horizon of his thinking. In fact his formula does not have the character of a real solution of the enigma of time, if at all there will ever be one. Instead of fruitless reductionisms - for example to the worldsoul, or to the conditions of a time-constituting transcendental subject, or to the temporality of the existence of human being - St. Augustine looks at the irreducible difference between worldtime, lifetime, and the time of history. Time as distentio animi makes the time of human beings a subject of discussion, in the sense of acting persons living their whole life in the horizon of eternity. This is the attractiveness of St. Augustine's way to understand time.