Abstract

Trying, in his Soliloquia, to prove the immortality of the soul from the imperishability of truth, Augustine apparently commits a fallacia aequivocationis. Truth is imperishable insofar as it subsists independently. Immortality follows from this only insofar as truth is constituted by mental acts and is thus inseparable from the soul; for dualistically inspired scepticism, truth is given as being immanent to consciousness through methodologically correct procedures establishing coherence. This fallacy is avoidable only by presupposing a Platonic two-world-dualism: The soul, as well as truth, belongs to the subsisting intelligible and therefore essentially has knowledge. Ignorance can be understood, according to recollection theory, as partial forgetting allowing for distinguishing between true and false, and remarkably also between true ideas and deceiving sensory imaginations. Such a faculty encompassing the intelligible as well as the sensible, however, undermines dualism