Quod sui non capit: la sintassi del dubbio e la constitutio textus (Aug. conf. 10,8,15)

Conf. 10,8,15 provides an example of a consecutive clause within a direct question; this is a rare syntactic pattern that nonetheless has some occurrences in classical or pagan authors like Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus. Because of its slightly illogical structure – a subordinate clause turns into an independent one – both scribes and scholars tended to emend the transmitted texts; as for Conf. 10,8,15, the presence of a similar syntactic pattern in a passage belonging to the same context (10,17,26) proves that this is an effective stylistic tool that aims to present doubt as a fundamental step in the ascent toward God