CORPS ET SEXUALITÉ DANS LA PHILOSOPHIE DE SAINT AUGUSTIN

ABSTRACT:This article aims to evaluate the thought of the body and its close link to sexuality in the philosophy of Saint Augustine. Sexuality is a constituent of the body that must be silenced so that the body-soul couple recovers its original purity. That is to say that if man is supposed to find post mortem the Garden of Eden which he lost because of the disobedience of the human soul to the prescription not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, he can only return to this prelapsarian state by means of an ascetic life based on the gagging of libidinal inclinations linked to the body. However, to think of man by denying the precise aspect by which he is a sexual body, in order to curb the lustful desires that he would have inherited from the sin of the soul, is this not at least disembodiing him and derealize, if not punish him for the sins of the soul? In an attempt to unravel the skein of this thought which will ultimately be that of the periodization of the body in its relationship to sexuality in Augustine, we will use an analytical and critical method.

Keywords: body, sexuality, asceticism, virginity, abstinence, soul.