A crise do conhecimento nas Confissões de Agostinho

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the conceptualization and unfolding of the crisis of knowledge in the intellectual and epistemological itinerary of Augustine of Hippo, taking the retrospective weaving contained in the work Confessions as its central hermeneutical landmark. The scope of the work consists of analyzing how the collapse of the materialistic representational model of Manichaeism and the subsequent tension with the skepticism of the New Academy led the author to a profound reformulation of human cognitive capacity, the overcoming of which and access to Truth became attainable through the harmonization between rational inquiry and the authority of faith. Methodologically, the research delimits the crisis from a strictly epistemological perspective and contextualized within Late Antiquity, moving away from vague psychological or existential categorizations. In the first chapter, which analyzes Book V, it is demonstrated how Manichaean cosmological inconsistencies in the face of empirical astronomical data dragged Augustine toward academic systematic doubt, operating as a negative purification of the mind that prepared the ground for the rehabilitation of belief by testimony and the legitimation of the Scriptures under the mediation of Ambrose of Milan. In the second chapter, the object of analysis of which is Book VII, the impact of reading the Neoplatonic books is deepened, explaining that, although Neoplatonism provided the metaphysical apparatus necessary to dematerialize the conception of God and to equate evil under the status of the privation of good, pagan philosophical reason proved to be soteriologically insufficient, demanding the introduction of the doctrine of divine medicinal Grace to heal and unify a volitional faculty split by the weight of habits. The third chapter crowns the investigation by scrutinizing the dynamic structure of memory in Book X, showing that the narrative transition preserves autobiographical value by shifting the object of examination from sensible things to supersensible realities. The mnemonic palace is mapped as the intelligible space of self-consciousness, and the paradox of forgetfulness is deciphered as the theological trigger that breaks solipsistic isolation, proving that the soul, too narrow to contain its own immensity, depends on the illumination of the Word as ratio cognoscendi. Consequently, the results of this research reiterate that the resolution of the Augustinian epistemological crisis shifts philosophy into the orbit of an eminently practical discipline of beatitude, consolidating the thesis that the authentic constitution of knowledge merges with affective rest alongside the Supreme Good and the attainment of the happy life (beata vita).