The Structure of Augustine's Theory of Truth and Value and the Meaning of Life

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It is characteristic of this study to consider the problems concerining the theory of truth from Augustine's point of view which is, I believe, relly suggestive for modern readers. In his early dialogue Contra Academicos, Augustine refutes the Academics' theory of truth. He puts forward many types of arguments of refutation in this dialogue. And he shows great concern for the problems : (1) what the difference between the tow theories of truth, (i.e. that of Augustine, on the one hand, and that of Academics and of Carneades, on the other) is ; and (2) what the difference means to people who stand on their own theory of truth. One of the difficulties in elucidating the difference between those two theories of truth lies in the situation in which the different parties who never agree on what truth is or what it is to find it may use 'the same' words in showing their theories, though their understandings of those words are radically opposed. In Contra Academicos, we can see that the uses of some crucial words such as uerus, ueritas, uideri etc. of Academics and Augustine are different but that each party's uses of those words are coherent in each party. Augustine focuses on the concept of probabile of the Academics, especially its role in their explanation of action, and analyzing the use of probabile and uerisimile of both sides he shows that their theories of truth are different from each other and that the Academics' theory of truth leads us to have a certain king of mechanical theory of action and agent. We can read his later philosophical works, Confessiones X and De Trinitate VIII-XV, from this point of view, where he develops his theory of truth and value.