San Agustín y el neoplatonismo cristiano

Abstract

The aim of this work is to visualize the development of Christian Neoplatonism in St. Augustine’s thought. In order to do that, we take as a source of inspiration Giovanni Reale’s words on his Introduction to Werner Beierwaltes’s Augustinei: “The archetypal summary of St. Augustine’s philosophy, in a global sense, is expressed by Augustine himself in the formula: ‘credo ut intellegam, intellego ut credam’, this ‘hermeneutic circle’ was first put into words in Against the Academics, III, 20, 43 and in De ordine, II, 9, 26”. To reach the proposed goal we resort to Confessiones, VII and Ennéadas, I, 6; I, 8. The simultaneous reading of Plotinus and Ambrose’s Sermons, highlighted in Pierre Courcelle’s Recherches sur les Conseffions de saint Augustin is not shared among all scholars, incluiding O’Meara. Does Courcelles’s  proposition settle the dispute between P. Alfaric and Ch. Boyer? Did Augustine convert first to Neoplatonism or to Christianity? As a conclusion we refer explicitly to Augustine’s assessment on the things he found and the things he did not found in the Libri platonicorum, ending with an evaluation of the importance of the Mystery of the Incarnated Verb in Augustine´s life and the light it sheds on his philosophical approach.