An understanding of reality in a Neo-Platonic key. Two passages of St. Augustine’s De ordine
Keywords:
St. Augustine, Neoplatonism, Evil, Aesthetics, Late AntiquityAbstract
Understanding the reality of the world and then justifying the path of interiority, the interaction between “knowing” and “knowing oneself ”, constitutes the Augustinian sapiential nucleus. De ordine places us right at the beginning, in dialogue
with Neoplatonism. The text refers to Providence and then to the ordo rerum, apparently refuted by the scandal of evil; indeed, it is not possible to affirm that nothing happens outside of Providence, if the original event of evil cannot be reconducted to the order of God. Augustine resorts to the aesthetic argument: the light of being is turned off for those who are not able to fully enjoy beauty. This requires, since Plato, an ascesis of the senses, which is maintained here through the assiduous study of the
Liberal Arts. Two passages allow us to calibrate the Augustinian accesses to the whole of the real: the sound of water at midnight and a fight of roosters.
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