A verdade em Santo Agostinho: pressupostos kierkegaardianos para compreender o ato de perder-se e, então, encontrar-se na existência

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the construction of existential meaning in light of the Christian tradition, articulating the lived experience and reflection of Saint Augustine with the conceptual reflection of Søren Kierkegaard. Augustine existentially experienced the desperate search for truth, confronting the fragmentation of the self and the despair resulting from attempts to find satisfaction and meaning in pleasures, virtues, and human knowledge. This concrete experience anticipates and grounds Kierkegaard’s conceptualization of the self as a synthesis of finite and infinite, whose disorder or alienation leads to despair which constitutes sin when it lacks an ultimate foundation. The overcoming of this despair, in Augustine, occurs when he realizes that his search for truth was not autonomous but a search for God, acknowledging that encountering God is encountering truly happy life. This movement reveals the paradoxical character of Christian truth: full and absolute Truth manifests in Christ, who is simultaneously human and divine, finite and infinite, and whose revelation enables the self to consolidate both in itself and before God. Kierkegaard conceptualizes this experience by showing that the self becomes itself only when it radically entrusts itself to God, surpassing lykke and achieving salighed, corresponding to Augustine’s beatitude. The dissertation demonstrates that any search for meaning is only fulfilled when grounded in eternal and absolute truth, that is, in Christ as paradoxical Truth. By committing to this Truth, the individual abandons attempts to construct meaning solely from oneself, what Kierkegaard terms lykke, and attains existential consolidation. This act of surrender and encounter generates a qualified life, in which despair is overcome and spiritual happiness manifests as beatitude in Augustine and salighed in Kierkegaard. The study shows that this path is not merely historical or theoretical but is possible for any individual who engages with interiority and the absolute, structuring a full, authentic existence oriented toward ultimate meaning.