O critério da verdade no Contra Academicos, de Agostinho

• Autor(a) principal: Simões, Edilezia Freire
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (riUfes)
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/6283
• topic: Augustine; Stoic; Academic; Criterion of truth; Wisdom; Happiness; Acadêmicos; Critério-verdade; Filosofia; Estóicos; Verdade; Sabedoria; Felicidade

In the book Contra Academicos by Augustine of Hippo (354-430), the discussion about truth is guided by a fundamental question: Can a man achieve wisdom and happiness while he seeks truth or only after he finds it? The interlocutors in this dialogue confront each other around this question. This dissertation aims at understanding the criterion for truth presented in "Contra Academicos? and contextualizing/analyzing the philosophical sources that influenced Augustine s intellectual evolution, which required a thorough analysis of his work. The theme for discussion in "Contra Academicos? is a relevant problem until today, thus deserving serious debates about the questions it brings. Seeking truth is not a banal or shallow issue, but a necessary and fundamental one. The discussions presented in this book bring the philosophical path followed by Augustin into discussion. Path that started in a meeting with his own self in order to find the truth that dwells inside men. In this search, Augustin walks a path that could not be explained logically, but that concerns his soteriological project, which pushes him through Manichaeism, Neoplatonism and skepticism until he finally reaches Christianity. While passing through skepticism, he has contact with academic skepticism, fruit of confrontation between two Hellenistic schools Academy and Stoa about the criterion of truth. In this confrontation, the Stoic show an unquestionable criterion of truth, while the Academic emphasize impossibility of men to reach truth. As a result, in Contra Academicos Augustin attempts to refute the Academic arguments that had discouraged him from finding truth. He does it in order to reveal the theoretical frailty of those arguments and show that truth can be achieved by men. This truth is Christ, identified by God s wisdom and power. Therefore, Augustine s quest for truth consists in an effort to meet God and thus achieve happiness.