De civitate Dei 8. 3: a Socrates tailored to Saint Augustine

Keywords:

doxography, theology, Socrates, Philosophical schools, Roman Africa

Abstract

The notion of natural theology is a key one in the work of Augustine who, as a Roman formed from the coordinates of the classical canon, builds within his work the necessary devices to give legitimate, although partial, entry to Greco-Roman elements that will be guide his own argument in the territory of Christian literature. The eighth book of his treatise The City of God allows us to observe the extraction of that notion from its area of origin, especially the texts of Varro and Cicero, which in turn have their antecedents in the academic and Stoic philosophical tradition, their adaptation to the horizon of biblical-Christian meaning and its interested use within it. The operation carried out by Augustine gives us a glimpse of his knowledge and ability to manipulate the Roman-Republican literary tradition, in addition to certain conceptions from the doxographic vulgate in force in his context, such as those of “schools” and philosophical “successions.” We are interested in focusing, above all, on the games of amalgamations and semantic shifts that Augustine rehearses on the profile of Socrates, with very specific purposes, and which lead us to observe, also, the circulation of ideas in the North African Roman area, for which we have some interesting antecedents, such as the Latin apologetics books of Tertullian and Minutius Felix, between the 2nd and 3rd centuries. 

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Author Biography

Estefanía Sottocorno, Universidad de Buenos Aires / Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero

Profesora y Licenciada en Filosofía por la Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Doctora en Historia por la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero/ Ca’Foscari, con estudios de especialización en ecdótica latina en el Instituto de Sources Chrétiennes de Lyon. Actualmente es docente de Historia del Pensamiento en la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Entre las publicaciones recientes se encuentran los artículos “Los árabes de Bosra y una peculiar concepción del alma”, Bibiliotheca Augustiniana 10 (2020); “Modelos para el ascetismo del siglo IV. Un contrapunto entre Jerónimo y Agustín”, Bibiliotheca Augustiniana 11 (2021); “Lectura y predicación de los Salmos por Agustín: Lot y su familia”, Circe 27/ 2 (2023). Es autora de la edición crítica del texto atribuido a Genadio de Marsella Sobre los hombres ilustres (Madrid, 2021).

Published

2024-06-30

How to Cite

Sottocorno, E. (2024). De civitate Dei 8. 3: a Socrates tailored to Saint Augustine. Circe De clásicos Y Modernos, 28(1), 49–65. Retrieved from https://ojs.unlpam.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/circe/article/view/8443