Augustine on Testimony

Abstract

Philosophical work on testimony has flourished in recent years. Testimony roughly involves a source affirming or stating something in an attempt to transfer information to one or more persons. It is often said that the topic of testimony has been neglected throughout most of the history of philosophy, aside from contributions by David Hume (1711-1776) and Thomas Reid (1710-1796). True as this may be, Hume and Reid aren't the only ones who deserve a tip of the hat for recognizing the importance of testimony: Augustine of Hippo (354-430) affirms the place of testimony in human cognition, at least in his later writings.In what follows, we consider three questions raised by Augustine's thinking about testimony: the analytical question of what sources count as testimony (Section I); the epistemological question about the status of testimony-based belief (Section II); and the doxastic question about the circumstances in which it is appropriate to believe on the basis of testimony (Section III).