Augustinus und die Tradition der klassisch-paganen Literatur

Zur Funktion der Zitate im ersten Buch der Confessiones

Abstract : While Augustine reveals in connection with the Cicero quote that his philosophical writings can also be useful in the sense of Chresis for Christians, he exercises a fundamental criticism of the classic pagan poetry, which particularly affects Virgil and thus its icon. Traditional poetry...

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Bibliographic Details
Author:Stefan Feddern
Published: S.n., s.l., 2021
Volume:67
Pages:221-257
Language:German
Periodical:Revue d'études augustiniennes et patristiques
Number:2
ISSN:1768-9260
Format:Article
Topic:- Works > Confessiones > Conf. I
- Doctrine > The World > [Esthétique. Musique] > Liberal Arts > [Influence]
- Works > Confessiones > Topics > Liberal Arts
- Biography > Relations and Sources > Profane Latin authors > Cicero
Status:Active
Description
Summary:Abstract : While Augustine reveals in connection with the Cicero quote that his philosophical writings can also be useful in the sense of Chresis for Christians, he exercises a fundamental criticism of the classic pagan poetry, which particularly affects Virgil and thus its icon. Traditional poetry causes an alienation from God for two anthropological and ontological reasons which are internally related: many poetic passages exert a harmful influence on the young recipients in particular, because instead of reason they activate their affects and desires and seduce them into immoral behavior. To make matters worse is the fact that the behavior triggered by such works does not benefit any real person in the sense of Chresis, but that the poetic fictions belong to an intermediate status between the things of the sensually perceptible world and nothing. Ideally, the Bible would be covered in school lessons. Augustine does not criticize the pagan content of classical pagan poetry. Rather, he considers the effects of the psychological mechanism they trigger to be fatal, since they can culminate in the unleashing of desires. Augustine’s reflections on the seductive appeal of affects could be explained by the fourth discussion of Plato’s criticism of poets in the Politeia. But it is unlikely that he knew this passage. Rather, it becomes clear that Augustine, in the discursive passages of the first book of the Confessions, receives and updates Cicero’s criticism of poets by expressing his own point of view on this topic from a Christian perspective.

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