Abstract:
This thesis is based mainly on the books About the Potentiality of the Soul: De
quantitate animae and De libero arbítrio written by Saint Augustine. We discourse
about the process of conceptualization of the being soul and of the solution of the
problem of free choice through the Augustinian pedagogical system circuitum
nostrum. We will see that this immaterial being which makes us rational, and
therefore human, is what comes closest to God of all the beings of the creation. An
immortal being, with innate ideas, without division and which monitors all the
functions of the body, making it possible for the human being to use the memory,
reason and rationality. Subsisting in itself, it remains, even after the separation from
the body, as a whole entity and carrier of all the memories of the body which
animated it for life. Presenting himself as a dualist, St. Augustine reveals to us that
although the soul is in the body it is not bound to the body, but is in the body. Without
growth and aging this immaterial being without dimensions is real, however unknown
to the subject him/her self who houses it. A being which maintains the vital principle
and that of animation (animus) of the body. When this soul is educated by rationality
it permits the human being the full use of freedom in the moral choice of action, or
free will. We will see the influence of Socrates, Plato and neoplatonism through the
dialogs inserted in the Augustinian pedagogical system circuitum nostrum and the
relation between the pedagogism of Paulo Freire as a mirror of augustinianism,
through the dialog as producers of active subjects in the transformation of society.
