Ways of Knowing

Augustine2.17.10

Review• Medieval philosophy• Augustine• Belief and knowledge• Evil• Free-will/love

Today• Evil and desire• Free-will/choice• Free-will and responsibility• Free-will and determinism

Evil and “inordinate desire”“Then perhaps what makes adultery evil is

inordinate desire? • libido • cupitas

Fear and desire“All wicked people, just like good people, desire

to live without fear. The difference is that the good, in desiring this, turn their love away from things that cannot be possessed without the fear of losing them. The wicked, on the other hand, try to get rid of anything that prevents them from enjoying such things securely” (360).

“Now I’ve come to my senses. I am glad that I understand so clearly the nature of that blameworthy cupidity that is called inordinate desire. Obviously it is the love of those things that one can lose against one’s will” (360).

The Great Chain of Being

“[O]nly the will and free choice can make the mind a companion to cupidity…the mind is dragged by inordinate desire into ruin and poverty; not taking false things for true and even defending those falsehoods repeatedly…now withholding assent and often shying away from clear arguments…

In the meantime cupidity carries out a reign of terror, buffeting the whole human soul and life with storms coming from every direction. Fear attacks from one side and desire from the other; from one side, anxiety; from the other, the empty and deceptive happiness, from one side, the agony of loosing what one loved; from the other, the passion to acquire what one did not have;

[F]rom the one side, the pain of an injury received; from the other, the burning desire to avenge it. Wherever you turn, avarice can pinch, extravagance squander, ambition destroy, pride swell, envy torment, apathy crush, obstinacy incite, oppression chafe, and countless other evils crowd the realm of inordinate desire and run riot” (Bk. 1, Ch. 11).

“We have clearly and carefully distinguished between two sorts of things—eternal and temporal; and in turn between two sorts of human beings—those who pursue and love eternal things, and those who pursue and love temporal things. We have determined that the choice to follow and embrace one or the other lies with the will, and that only the will can depose the mind from its stronghold of power an deprive it of right order” (Bk. 1, Ch. 16)

“All sins come about when someone turns away from divine things that truly persist and toward changeable and uncertain things. These things do have their proper place, and they have a certain beauty of their own; but when a perverse and disordered soul pursues them it becomes enslaved to the very things that divine order and law command it to rule over” (Book 1, Chapter 16).

Free-will• action• decision about intentions • judgments about beliefs• control over desires

Free-will and responsibility“If humans beings are good things, and they

cannot do right unless they so will, then they ought to have a free will, without which they cannot do right” (361)

Free-will and responsibility1. “No action would be either a sin or a good

deed if it were not performed by the will, and so both punishment and reward would be unjust if human beings had no free will.”

2. “But it was right for there to be justice in both reward and punishment…”

3. “Therefore, it was right for God to give free-will to human beings” (361).

Freedom and determinism“If that movement existed by nature or necessity,

it could in no way be blameworthy” (363).“The movement by which the will turns from

enjoying the Creator to enjoying his creatures belongs to the will itself. So if that movement deserves blame…then it is not natural, but voluntary.”

“The movement of the will is similar to the downward movement of a stone…but the two movements are dissimilar in this respect: the stone has not power to check its downward motion, but the soul is not moved to abandon higher things and love inferior things unless it wills to do so” (354).

Types of determinism • Theological• Sociological • Psychological• Biological/Physical

Responses to determinism

1. deny its reality, either because of the existence of free will or on independent grounds

2. accept its reality but argue for its compatibility with free will

3. accept its reality and deny its compatibility with free will

SummaryWhat is the source of evil-doing?

-What is evil-doing? What makes something “evil”?

1. God does not cause evil. 2. Evil is caused by inordinate desire. 3. Inordinate desire is the result of a choice/free-

will. Humans (with free-will) are the cause of evil.

Important/interesting questions1. What is the difference and relationship

between “belief” and “knowledge”?2. What makes something “evil”?3. Do we have control over our desires?4. Are we really free and responsible beings?

For next class:

Read - Aquinas, Summa Theologiae • Part 1, Question 1, Article 1 (p. 440-443).• Part 1, Question 2, Article 1 and 2 (p. 450-452)