De immortalitate animae

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De immortalitate animae (Latin: "On the immortality of the soul") is a philosophical treatise that Aurelius Augustine wrote in 387 at the age of thirty-two after his vacation in Cassiciacum near Milan .

Augustin Thagaste

He saw in his treatise a memory aid for a final third book of his self-talk , the Soliloquien ( Retractationes I, 5, I).

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Following the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 10:28) and a corresponding Neoplatonic view, Augustine describes the soul as immortal. Their immortality stems above all from sharing in the eternal truth. Christian thoughts are as good as absent, although he wrote this treatise between his conversion to Christianity (around August 1, 386) and his baptism (April 24/25, 387 (Easter vigil)). Rather, it is Plotin's world of thought that shines through. The body-soul dualism is portrayed much more vividly in Augustine. For Plotinus the soul was above all that which gave form; for Augustine it appears as what is active in man.

The immortality of the soul results from its bond with God. The soul is the link between the divine ideas and the body .

However, Augustine's interest in the soul does not end with this treatise. A little later, in 387, the likewise philosophical script was written: On the size of the soul (“ De quantitate animae ”).

expenditure

  • Harald Fuchs / H. Müller, Düsseldorf / Zurich 2002 (Latin-German).
  • W. Hörmann, CSEL 89, 101-128.
  • Gerald Watson: Soliloquies and the Immortality of the Soul . Aris & Phillips, Warminster, 1990, ISBN 0856685054 (Latin-English with commentary).

literature

  • Wilhelm Götzmann: Proof of immortality in the time of the father and scholasticism up to the end of the 13th century. Karlsruhe 1927.
  • Martin Grabmann: The basic thoughts of St. Augustine about the soul and God . Darmstadt 1967.
  • Wilhelm Metz: Soliloquia. De immortalitate animae. In: Michael Eckert u. a. (Ed.): Lexicon of theological works. Kröner, Stuttgart 2003, pp. 662-664. ISBN 3-520-49301-2 .
  • Rudolf Schneider: Soul and Being. Ontology in Augustine and Aristotle . Stuttgart 1957.