A relação entre as noções de vontade e paixões em a cidade de Deus de Agostinho: um confronto entre a visão do Hiponense e o Estoicismo

Abstract

The question of the free volition and the passion is something present in the thought of Augustine, but in De civitate Deithis question get new outlines, because, in this work, Hiponense is defending the Christians of the accusation that their faith is the cause of the decline of the Roman Empire. However, in the view of Augustine, the decline of Rome isnot due to Christians, but to religion, moral and philosophy followed by the Romans. Among the philosophical schools that Hiponense seeks to oppose, we find stoicism. He makes criticizes the Stoic apatheiathesis as a form of ethical perfection, view thatarising from a conception according to which passions are bad, these are based on four basic provisions: pain, fear, pleasure and desire. Furthermore, the mind is armored from any restlessness through three circumstances: precaution, happiness and volition. Cicero is the stoicism interpreter with whom Augustine dialogues in book XIVof De civitate Dei. Hiponense and Arpinate's conversation takes place from the considerations that the latter weaves about passions in books III and IV ofTusculan Disputations, where passions are seen as bad, as insanity and as disturbances of the soul, also according what Cicero had found in the thought of the old stoicism of Zeno and Chrysippus. Amid his reflections, Cicero establishes a concept of volition different from that of constancy. The first concept is expressed in the figure of the fool, while the second in the wise. However, it is not about of free volition as we find it in Augustine, because in it the volition is free in the sense that it does not necessarily follow the sensitive concerns of the body, nor the rational faculties. The volition conceived by the Hiponense, besides being a choice, it is presented as an impulsive force of adhesion that naturally seeks the unchanging Good, but, because this force does not spontaneously reach its end, it voluntarily ends up being guided by those bad passions of the soul. In the De Civitate Dei, Agostinho interprets Rm 8.5 in a methodological sense, concluding that the human being inside and outside (homo totus), has, for each dimension, his own passions. There are those that are not voluntary (carnal lusts) that arise due to bodily corruption, whose carnal desires awaken the soul to turn to the human physical part. There are also those volunteers who give the body the moral life of the soul. According to Augustine, these passions are the four affections of the soul, if directed for the goodvolition, they will manifest themselves in what Stoacalled constants, and bad, disturbances.