A concepção de linguagem no de magistro de Agostinho de Hipona

Abstract

This research aims to elucidate the conception of language in the De Magistro (389 AD) of Augustine of Hippo. It is based on the idea that this text can be divided into two antagonistic but complementary theses. The first thesis tells us that "nothing is taught without signs" (Mag. I-VII) and the second thesis tells us that "nothing is taught with signs" (Mag. VIII-XIV). It is necessary to emphasize that for Augustine words represent signs. Linguistic signs, according to Augustine, seem not to be closed in on themselves, per se, in terms of propositional signification. Would this notion move Augustine's theory of language away from a semantic realm of signification? How to understand the full elucidation of propositional meaning, in the human interiority, from an insufficiency of signs opposed to an ontological sufficiency coming from God? The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate which arguments Augustine uses to move from the first thesis (the necessity of words) to the second (the insufficiency of words). It is intended to show that the epistemological insufficiency of the linguistic signs points to the solitude of the interiority of the rational soul of the listener, in which the process of knowledge formation will be elucidated by an ontological basis, according to the action of the Inner Master. Finally, we will try to reflect on the idea that propositional explicitness is found less in a semantic sense and much more in the illuminating presence of God.