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PHIL 1000: Philosophy of Human Nature
Paper 2: Reconstruction and Textual Interpretation
Describe in detail Augustine’s evil act from Book II
Augustine knew that evil is real. The arguments of reason and everyday experience (natural theology) were sufficient to convince him of the existence of God, and that all that He had done was good. But evil, too, must be something real, though not a thing, not an entity, not a substance in the traditional understanding of being. Evil is not something, separately created, but spoiled by good, which has become possible due to the freedom of moral choice in rational beings. Evil is not something independently existing, it is always a lack of something, namely, the lack or absence of good.
God could create a world in which creatures with free will would nevertheless remain always and always good, but then the fullness of perfection, the highest good would be impossible. The possibility of evil makes the attainment of this fullness real. God created the world in which, thanks to the process of struggle, truly moral decisions and actions became possible. There is a serious reason why God permits evil. And this does not contradict His goodness. Bon is not the author of evil, nor his helpless victim. Rather, on the contrary, precisely because He is all-good, incomprehensibly good, He temporarily allowed the coexistence of evil in this world.
He questions the origin of evil, gives his reflections on the nature of time, or marvels at the power of memory. This Manichean conception of evil has the necessary consequence of the imperfection of God, and that is what does not satisfy Augustine. On the other hand, the problem of the origin of evil torments Augustine: where does evil come from? Everything shifts when Augustine turns his gaze away from the world, in which he had vainly sought God until now, and turns him to himself, in an introspection that leads him to conversion.
How does Augustine understand evil in general? Or, to put the question another way, how does he define sin?
Augustine tries to find truth in other teachings. At this time, he learned about the Manichean sect, and they promised to give answers to all his questions. At the core of the teachings of this sect is philosophical dualism: there is, on the one hand, Good, generated by Light, and on the other, Evil, generated by Darkness. In order to leave life in Evil and rush to the Light, the sect requires asceticism from its adherents. The Manichaeans despise the human body that binds man to Evil.
Augustine explains that the power of Good was purely passive and subjected to cruel testing by Evil, the force of active and corrupting. But the teachings of Plotinus and Augustine are significantly different. They have different ideas about time and eternity. Plotinus lacks the ideas of creation and the connection of the Christian God with the thinking being. In other words, Augustine goes further. For Plotinus, evil is the negation of good. Augustine explains evil by the interference of sin in the act of creation. “Finally, in the words of Francis Ferrier, the abstract Providence, as Plotinus represented it, has nothing to do with the idea of a military love for a freely created being, guiding him along the intended path.”
Why, according to Augustine, did he and his friends steal the pears? (Note that he might be giving more than one reason).
Augustine drew in this teaching a way to overcome himself, which he longed for. The young man first received some theoretical answer to the question about the essence of evil, tormenting him all his life. And in the call for self-overcoming, he saw the means he needed to fulfill his life purpose. In the sect, he was just an ordinary novice. But his connections with the Manichaeans were so strong that Augustine even persuaded his friend Alypy and the patron Romanian to join them. For its part, the sect helped Augustine in his career. Augustine wrote his Confession shortly after turning to faith and learning about the existence of original sin. Having taken this teaching to heart, he considers all his deeds committed in life to be "sinful." Take, for example, childhood time Augustine knows that then his actions were unconscious. Why then are they sinful? Because it upset the balance of the human soul.
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