THE NOTION OF LOVE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS IN THE AUGUSTINIAN THOUGHT

Abstract

Considering the relevance of love in discussions within the field of philosophy, as well as the importance that Saint Augustine, even today, has within this discipline, the objective is to present in this article the concept and terminology of Augustinian love. To this end, we proceeded with a methodology of a descriptive-explanatory character, in order to present the concept of love in the Augustinian writings and how this is related to the concept of will. To support the study, Augustinian texts such as The Trinity, Confessions, The Christian Doctrine, The City of God and others were used as a theoretical basis; as well as commentators who systematized the doctrine of Augustinian love such as Gilson (2010), Trapé (2018) and Vahl (2018). In this way, it was observed that the notion of love in Saint Augustine is in close relationship with the concept of will, this being the principle of the whole movement of the soul; in turn, love is the impulse and the weight that drives this same will. Thus, love will be straight and orderly if it leads man to desire the intelligible, and false and disorderly insofar as he feels like and clings only to the sensitive, which allows us to conclude that the notion of love in Saint Augustine is key to understanding of man himself, which is what defines man himself.