Aquinas and Augustine

Mystical experiences are often regarded as potential sources of epistemic justification for religious beliefs. However, the ‘disanalogy objection’ maintains that, in contrast to sense perceptions, mystical experiences lack social verifiability and are thus merely subjective states that cannot substantiate objective truths. This article explores a novel externalist response that involves the concept of angels. As spiritual beings, angels can directly perceive God and verify these perceptions in their celestial community. Thus, the ‘direct perception of God’ is not inherently incapable of (...) social verification. While invoking angels might appear contentious, it coheres with the externalist approach of conceptualising cognitive states under hypothetical settings. Despite the differences between humans and angels and their lack of interaction for verification purposes, our approach remains valid because mystics not only exemplify the same general type of ‘direct perception of God’ as angels but can also be preliminary members of a wider celestial community. (shrink)

In this contribution, an analysis of the term pestilentia in Augustine’s works is developed. First, all the textual places where the term recurs are listed, specifying the type of meaning it has. A distinction is made between a proper sense, of a medical kind, and a metaphorical sense, of a moral kind. Secondly, the passages where the word pestilentia is used in a clearly medical sense are examined in detail.