Sapientia Et Beatitudo: o humano como imago Dei em Santo Agostinho

Abstract

The theme of happiness had already been treated by ancient philosophers. But in the new Christian world that theme emerged with difference and peculiarities. We must pay attention to the peculiarities that in the Middle Ages, in latin language, will be designated by two words for happiness, that is: one of this expression was the word felicitas, what indicate prosperity and fecundity. And the other term was the word beatitudo, that implied the possession of the absolute true, representing a a of kind the ―eternal‖, or ―ultimate‖, or ―final‖ happiness. What assume the idea of ―perfection‖ – the church appropriated the word of greek origin makaría, eudaimonia and materialized in beatitudo (happiness), giving it a meaning beyond the religious that was proper to it, a meaning that was beyond Christian think. But by thinking of the ultimate end of happiness as communion (intimate union) with a God, that new thought of as a gift and, consequently, now conceived as the fullness of goodness. We will defend that, according to Augustine, happiness implies a communion with what one desires as good for oneself and for others. So the individual moves away from misery, because, how could he be happy who lives in the face of what is temporally is unrealizable. For the other and for himself, by himself, the wise man is that one who recognizes his natural weakness, of his weakness. However, the disturbance of the original order leads us to live in the face of the unrealizable, since its will is directed only at things that are impossible and incompatible with its nature. This is the position that defende the young Augustine. Therefore, in this work we will seek to present this whole journey of the human towards happiness, the role that wisdom plays in the configuration of man as an image of God in the trajectory of Augustinian thought