Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Augustine
- 2 Faith and reason
- 3 Augustine on evil and original sin
- 4 Predestination, Pelagianism, and foreknowledge
- 5 Biblical interpretation
- 6 The divine nature
- 7 De Trinitate
- 8 Time and creation in Augustine
- 9 Augustine’s theory of soul
- 10 Augustine on free will
- 11 Augustine’s philosophy of memory
- 12 The response to skepticism and the mechanisms of cognition
- 13 Knowledge and illumination
- 14 Augustine’s philosophy of language
- 15 Augustine’s ethics
- 16 Augustine’s political philosophy
- 17 Augustine and medieval philosophy
- 18 Post-medieval Augustinianism
- Bibliography
- Index
13 - Knowledge and illumination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Augustine
- 2 Faith and reason
- 3 Augustine on evil and original sin
- 4 Predestination, Pelagianism, and foreknowledge
- 5 Biblical interpretation
- 6 The divine nature
- 7 De Trinitate
- 8 Time and creation in Augustine
- 9 Augustine’s theory of soul
- 10 Augustine on free will
- 11 Augustine’s philosophy of memory
- 12 The response to skepticism and the mechanisms of cognition
- 13 Knowledge and illumination
- 14 Augustine’s philosophy of language
- 15 Augustine’s ethics
- 16 Augustine’s political philosophy
- 17 Augustine and medieval philosophy
- 18 Post-medieval Augustinianism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In Rome at the beginning of his stay in Italy, Augustine became disenchanted with the Manichaeism he had provisionally embraced in Carthage. He found himself increasingly attracted to the skeptical position taken by the Academics, the followers of Arcesilaus and the New Academy, who, as he writes in his Confessions, “held that everything is a matter of doubt and asserted that we can know nothing for certain ” (5.10.19). What Augustine knew of ancient skepticism, including the debate between Arcesilaus and the Stoic Zeno of Citium, he seems to have learned from Cicero's Academica.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Augustine , pp. 171 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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