Augustine's Concept of Will - Essay Example

Augustine: Will Introduction Even as Saint Augustine greatly influenced the Protestant movement that would one day become the dominant mode of Christianity in the Western hemisphere, his ideas on will and original sin were at the time revolutionary formulations. His understanding of humanity as influenced by forces of reason sometimes out of their control anticipates Freud and later developments in unconscious impulses. This essay situates Augustine’s concept of the will through an investigation into the biographical forces that shaped its development, and then examines the specific tenants of his philosophy of will as it relates to pre-destination, original sin, concepts of good and evil, and determinism. Background In order to fully understand Augustine’s concept of the will it’s necessary to gain an understanding of the motivations and occurrences in his life that influenced and shaped his philosophy. Augustine was born in North Africa, which at the time was controlled by the Roman Empire. When Augustine turned 11 he was sent off to school at a nearby city where paganism was one of the predominant belief systems. During this period he read a wide array of philosophers, but he later described how he was extremely influenced by the famous Roman politician Cicero and his sound insights into reams of the spirit (O’donnel 2005). It’s notable that even at this early age Augustine experienced a dichotomous relationship between belief structures – namely his mother’s Christian faith, and the paganism that he had become exposed to through his studies. At the age of 17 Augustine left North African for the Carthage region where he was exposed to an even wider array of philosophy. It was here he became exposed to the Manichaean religion and became a devoted follower. The Manichaean’s were a religious sect that stood in direct philosophic distinction from the Christian faith that Augustine’s mother held in high esteem. It seems that the Manichaean religion was more liberal in its philosophical underpinnings than the surrounding followers a Christian, and Augustine experienced a period of lasciviousness and decadence (O’donnel 2005). It’s notable that Augustine experiences this, as later in life his concept of the will is informed by an understanding of the human as born into sin, and indicates that the human capacity for reason actually carries within it the proclivities for sin. While it may be a stretch to indicate that Augustine’s Manichaean period directly influenced this later development, it’s clear to see how Augustine’s youthful decadence may have attributed to his structuring his later understanding of the will to reflect a more accepting understanding of hedonistic impulses. Perhaps the most important incident in Augustine’s life that contributed to his development of the understanding of the will, was his acceptance of the Christian faith through an epiphanic moment of realization. In the Confessions (1971), Augustine illustrates the exact moment of his conversion. He writes: I speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, "Take up and read; Take up and read. " Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most intently whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book…No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away. This is a highly significant occurrence, as all of Augustine’s future understandings of the concept of will would be formulated within the Christian doctrine. This also adds considerable insight in the nature of Augustine, as he is prone to moments of discovery and personal illumination. One might think of Newton in this regard, who claimed to have had a revelation about gravity when an apple fell on his head. It’s the framing of the world as moments of discovery, and as a place to be discovered, that underlines much of the virtues of Augustinean philosophy, particularly his formulation of the concept of will. As an example, one should consider the ways Augustine considers biblical scriptures as subservient to reason and rationality and subject to constant examination, or the slightly revolutionary take her advances on original sin and its implications for the freedom of the will. It’s this belief that knowledge is to be discovered that stands in-direct opposition to traditional Christian virtues of strict adherence to scripture that make Augustine a truly revolutionary thinker, and are essential to grasp when examining his concept of will. Augustine vs. Augustine Augustine’s philosophy demonstrates a hard to define confluence between pre-destination and free-will that have led some scholars to argue that there are actually two different Augustinian philosophies, themselves mutually contradictory (Rist 1972). Adequate research into Augustine however demonstrates that these concepts are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as Augustine’s understanding reveals subtle characterizations that bind their philosophic elements in hybrid enlightenment. Augustine, for example, concedes the existence of free will and its relation to mans salvation, but at the same time emphasizes the need for divine grace. If all actions are predestined, as Augustine believes they are, then the idea of free will seems impossible, and ascribing responsibility to persons who cannot make their own choices seems wrong. Early in his career, Augustine indeed rejected the idea of predestination, partially for this very reason, and he believed that the free will of man could decide his own destiny (Rist 1972). In a sense, the free will Augustine describes is limited. The individual does not have the free will to change the future but has the free will to accept responsibility. The only choice of real important is the choice to accept God and to take responsibility for ones actions, even if those actions are predestined. De Libero Arbitrio Augustine influenced the development and evolution of Christianity in a number of ways. Perhaps most importantly, he helped shift the focus from Roman and Greek pagan beliefs in a multitude of Gods whom one pays penance to, to a more intimate understanding between man and his maker. In this regard he formulated a concept of free will. While philosophers since Greek antiquity had considered the concept of free-will, notably the Platonic dialogues have a number of investigations into the matter, Augustine offered an entirely new perspective. When Augustine existed the predominant mode of religious thought viewed man as an extension of Godly being, and through philosophical investigation they could come into contact with their godly nature. Augustine recognizes the "freedom of will" and has clearly stated in his writings: "there can be no denying that we have a will." At the same time, he emphasizes very strongly the absolute rule of God over mans will due to His omnipotence and omniscience and also insists on the necessity of divine grace for doing good (Augustine 1990). This harks back to Augustine’s involvement with Manichaeism; an ancient religion of Iranian origin, which Augustine himself had adhered to before converting to Christianity. The Manicheans believed in the concept of "absolute dualism"-the belief that a "supreme evil" god existed which was as powerful as the good god and men are made to do evil acts by this supreme evil being. Augustine, after embracing Christianity, sought to disprove the Manichaean notion of a supreme evil principle, by holding that evil is not a material or spiritual substance and that all natures are good because their existence is from God. He further explained that even though evil is non-existent as a substance; it is like silence-a non-thing-but still important in the composing of speech and God uses it for teaching and justice (Bubacz 1981). According to Augustine when someone chooses to do evil, it causes a loss of harmony in nature since nature is basically good, and mans punishment is built into the act of doing evil, as it is contrary to human nature. (Bubacz 1981). Despite his valiant attempt at combining the concept of "free human will" as well the "absolute rule of God over mans will" attributable to His omnipotence and omniscience, I believe that Augustines doctrine of free will is self-contradictory. It further confuses the age-old question of whether a man has freedom to exercise free will or he is made to do good or bad deeds by God? Good vs. Evil Augustine showed a Platonic duality in that he separated the secular from the sacred world in his image and developed a philosophical underpinning for Christianity, shifting the world from one ruled by the Greek pantheon and a philosophy related to that pantheon to a Christian vision of the relationship between man and God. In doing so, he addressed an issue that had been addressed as well by various Greek philosophers and that posed a problem in a world where God was omnipotent and also benign. Augustine characterizes God as the perfect being, the actual signification of goodness in celestially-carnate; as man is an extension of God there is then no true ‘evil’ in the traditional sense, but rather a ‘lack of good (Blah 12).’ It this sense, evil exists only in the sense that the people exhibiting it aren’t exhibiting evil, but have just been more removed physically and mentally from the transcendent nature of reality. The action of evil in the world was seen as a clear fact, and yet for this to be true, God had to allow evil, which in itself raised questions about the omnipotence of God. In Augustines time, the new view of man was that the human being possessed a divine spark and was capable of discovering within himself the image of the infinite deity. Augustine would be considered a neo- Platonist who envisioned an ideal to which the imperfections of this world might aspire and of which this world was a reflection. He also recognized the need for free will in order for God to be justified in punishing human transgressors. Augustine as well sought to try to reconcile the idea of free choice with divine knowledge of the future, with a benign God that still allows bad things to happen. Original Sin The concept of original sin remains an essential topic of discourse within Catholic theology and it warrants further investigation as it relates to Augustine’s concept of the will. The traditional understand of free-will asserts that Adam and Eve were born of Godly nature, but because of illicit impulses or greed were torn away from this goodness and thrown into sin. The resultant occurrence is that all of humanity is then born into sin and requires God’s grace for their freedom. An interesting formulation Augustine makes in his works is the point that original sin is not only embodied in wayward reason and impulses, but in the very physicality of man ( fdsfs). This is, after Adam and Eve committed their act of original sin they had to wear clothing, because their actual pure physicality was an extension of the sin. This concept relates to Augustine’s concept of the will, as it indicates that man is a physical extension of the non-goodness of existence. That even as non-good reasoning is an essential characteristic of humanity leading them towards sin, and even as Augustine allows for the concept of the freedom of the will, man is ultimately damned because his physicality is even embedded as a sinful act. Determinism One problem with determinism as an argument is that it always turns back on itself so that arguing it would be itself predetermined. It becomes an exercise in futility unless even the person arguing for determinism is behaving as if free will were possible. When the individual arguing for determinism exercises free will in order to make the argument, the issue becomes so convoluted that free will has to be accepted as a governing factor. Free will as Augustine discusses the matter involves the same set of contradictions, but the focus for Augustine is more on precisely what free will can mean in such a universe. Even recognizing that Augustine refers to free will in terms of choosing salvation or not, the issue remains that God, if omnipotent, already knows what that choice will be. Even as this seems to remain contradictory to even the slightest element of free-will it’s important to understand that traditional concepts of determinism and religious concepts differ greatly. When Augustine considers the concept of determinism, he isn’t necessarily saying that man’s fate is pre-determined in the Calvinist sense, but allows for humans to exercise their powers of will. It’s just that God ultimately understands how they will use these powers and already understands their fate. It’s a more liberal understanding than the strict Calvinist doctrine that asserts man’s fate is already determined, set in stone, and there’s not much he can do about it but suffer in hell or experience the eternal communal joy of heaven. Augustine held that the individual human will is free in the sense that the individual man has the freedom to disobey Gods commands. Otherwise, Gods will predestines man to be either saved or damned, since once man has sinned and disobeyed God it is only gods intervention, though the intercession of his Son, Jesus, that some humans are to be saved and others damned, rather than God damning the whole lot of them. Even when man does something that he thinks it good, it is usually, to Augustine, done for reasons that are self centered and even destructive of others. Augustine thus holds that the only free will man has is that of choosing evil and rejecting good, and that if a man does the opposite it is only because of the intervention of god in extending his divine grace to him that this can take place (Fitzgerald 1999). Augustine holds here that there is not a question of becoming moderate in following ones inclinations or even any question of acting rationally on ones own. We are regarded by Augustine as entirely tainted by sin as a result of the fall and our own natures that have been tainted as a result of it (Fitzgerald 1999). Aristotle does not talk of free will, but does speak of avoidable and unavoidable actions that are done by individual men, and thus takes the position that men can make decision on their own and that these may even be intelligent ones. Man can pursue happiness by avoiding extremes and living a life of moderation (Fitzgerald 1999). Yet in addition to this ability to make rational choices for oneself, man also acts within a community, participating in its decisions and political processes. As such, men develop as individuals, but as individuals who are members of a society. In doing so, they learn, grow, and mature in so far as they act rationally and responsibly. In such cases, the society and state that they are in forms the stage where their ethical growth and maturity develop. The happiness that is mans highest goal is that very process of individual and social development that Aristotle sees as cultivating virtue. Augustine, in contrast, is concerned with the individual personal relation to the divine than to the human’s wordly position. Conclusion In conclusion, it’s evident that Augustine’s concept of the will is indicative of later Protestant formulations, yet perhaps not as extreme. Ultimately, Augustine situates the will as an intermediary between humanistic understandings of complete freedom and Protestant formulations of man as wrought into decadence through original sin. While Augustine acknowledges that humans are controlled by reason that motivates certain transgressions, he also understands that humanity has the power to implement their power of reason in ways not entirely shackled to determinism. References Augustine, Saint. (1971). Confessions New York: Bantam Books. Augustine, Saint (1990). The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, New City Press. Bubacz, Bruce (1981): St. Augustines Theory of Knowledge: A Contemporary Analysis, Edwin Mellin 1981. Fitzgerald, Allan D., O.S.A., General Editor (1999). Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co Odonnell, James (2005). Augustine: A New Biography. New York: ECCO. Rist, John (1972): "Augustine on Free Will and Predestination" in Markus 1972. Read More