Autor: Liddy, Richard M.

Buch: Transforming Light

Titel: Transforming Light

Stichwort: Augustin, Cassiciacum, Skeptizismus, Akademiker, Unsterblichkeit, Seele

Kurzinhalt: Überwindung d. Skeptizismus, Inkonsistenz d. Skeptiker, Zweifel (Descartes), Dialog mit d. Vernunft, Selbstgewissheit des Denkens; Selbstevidenz d. Verstehens, sicherer als d. Wissen um Zahlen

Textausschnitt: () ... the truly wise person will refuse to give assent to anything; for the wise person merely seeks the truth. Lest this lead to a paralysis of action, the skeptics held that some things resemble the truth, that is, they are probable, and probability is a sufficient basis for action in this world.
()
'Everyone who knows that he has doubts knows with certainty something that is true, namely, that he doubts. He is certain, therefore, about a truth. Therefore everyone who doubts whether there be such a thing as the truth has at least a truth to set a limit to his doubt; and nothing can be true except truth be in it. Accordingly, no one ought to have doubts about the existence of the truth, even if doubts arise for him from every quarter.
()
Centuries later Bernard Lonergan would pay tribute to Augustine's basic methodology: 'For Augustine, the mind's self-knowledge was basic; it was the rock of certitude on which shattered Academic doubt; it provided the ground from which one could argue to the validity both of the senses of one's own body and, with the mediation of testimony, of the senses of the bodies of others.'
()
: first, the human subject inevitably knows that he exists; and secondly, he knows that he thinks. Augustine brings out the immediacy of the 'knowledge' that the concrete subject has of himself as existing and acting through the very fact that he thinks.
()
In this work Augustine aims at proving the existence of God by beginning with the first evidences of the human spirit: one's personal existence, about which one cannot be mistaken, because existence is the first condition of the possibility of error itself. Also, since the existence of his interlocutor, Evodius, is evident through the fact that he actually lives, his living is also at the same time evident. The two facts are evidently true. The interlocutor clearly understands them. Therefore, Augustine moves to a third fact, the fact of understanding.
()
I now say to both of you: Beware lest you think that you know anything except what you have learned at least in the manner in which you know that one plus two plus three plus four is ten. And, likewise, beware lest you think either that in philosophy you will not gain a thorough knowledge of the truth, or that truth can by no means become known in this manner. Believe me - or rather, believe Him who says: 'Seek, and you shall find' - that knowledge is not to be despaired of, but that it will be even more manifest than those of numbers (CA 2, 9).