Simulation, Human Nature, and Search for Truth in the Thought of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio
In this article we analyze the reflection pursued by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure on the relation between simulation, human nature, and search for the truth. In his commentary on the “fall” of the Progenitors, contained in De Genesi contra Manichaeos, Augustine sees in the simulation o...
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| Formato: | Artículo revista |
| Lenguaje: | Español |
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Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires
2026
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| Acceso en línea: | https://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index.php/petm/article/view/17831 |
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| Sumario: | In this article we analyze the reflection pursued by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure on the relation between simulation, human nature, and search for the truth. In his commentary on the “fall” of the Progenitors, contained in De Genesi contra Manichaeos, Augustine sees in the simulation of the condition of nudity as the reason for hiding from God not only a simple going away from truth, but a far more dangerous detachment from the simplicity and, at the same time, from the high dignity of the human being. In the great medieval Scholasticism, both Thomas and Bonaventure resume Augustine’s reflection, adapting and systematizing it within their own reflection on the human being and on the Church. Thomas Aquinas puts in relation simulation with hypocrisy, underlining how the fact of pretending to be someone else leads to the wilting of the awareness of being God’s creature; in this sense, the sinner who simulates integrity loses himself and becomes unaware of himself. In the Collationes in Hexaemeron, Bonaventure compares the abandonment of simplicity and the going away from the source of truth by the Progenitors to the Church going away from its original simplicity: just like Adam and Eve preferred simulation to truth and knowledge to beatitude in Eden, so the Church abandoned its original simplicity by assuming a posture of false zeal for the Law, driven by a sterile science that tends towards the search for God. |
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