Note sur quelques réminiscences du Ménon dans le De libero arbitrio d’Augustin

Minas, Julie (2025) Note sur quelques réminiscences du Ménon dans le De libero arbitrio d’Augustin. ACTA ANTIQUA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARUM HUNGARICAE, 65. pp. 303-314. ISSN 0044-5975

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Abstract

Augustine’s De libero arbitrio contains a number of intertextual references to Plato’s Meno, which this article analyzes. While it is not determined which of Plato’s dialogues Augustine may have read, the presence of references to the text of the dialogues should constitute an argument in this debate. Without drawing any definitive conclusions, a number of parallels, or rather interplays and shifts between the two texts based on subtle references, will be noted, in order to show that the background of the Meno is used by Augustine, sometimes in a way that runs counter to the initial argument and Plato himself. Thus, Augustine’s philosophical dialogue deals with questions of the nature and origin of evil, an object anti nomic to that of the Meno, which concerns the nature of virtue and the possibility of teaching it. It is precisely through a play of oppositions and inversions that Augustine uses elements of the Meno to drive his argument. This leads us to argue that Augustine seems to find in the Meno both the conceptual and argumentative tools to expound his own thought, but also a number of aporias that he intends to resolve from his own philosophical resources, even if it means using tools of Platonic origin against Plato himself

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