Augustine’s Treatise «De Immortalitate Animae» and the Proof of the Soul’s Immortality in his «Soliloquia»

This paper aims at claryfing in what sense and to what extent Augustine of Hippo’s treatise «De immortalitate animae» really gives instructions that can be useful for finishing his «Soliloquia», in accordance with what Augustine himself says in «Retractationes», 1, 5. On the one hand, the first half of the treatise strengthens the proof of the soul’s immortality given in Book 2 of «Soliloquia» and based on the idea that the soul is the subject of truth. On the other hand, the second half of the treatise makes this proof superfluous and eventually upsets it by maintaining that it is thanks to its immediate dependence on truth, now conceived as the Supreme Being, that the soul always preserves its own being.