St. Augustine, Free Will, and Evil
Matthew Ryan
Ancient Philosophy
Dr. Muller
Free Will and Evil in Light of the Thought of St. Augustine
Almost everyday we see and experience evil in the world, whether consciously or not. The presence of evil in the created world presents a particularly difficult problem for the philosopher. How is it that we can say that an omnipotent, perfectly good, God who is the ultimate cause of all that exists created a world in which evil is present? If God made everything and holds all things in existence, would that then mean that God made evil and consequently He is not perfectly good? How can these two apparently irreconcilable statements both be considered true? St. Augustine attempts to solve the problem by pointing out that evil can only be accounted for by the free will of the creature and so although the human will is created by God, we cannot attribute man’s decision for evil to Him. Furthermore, St. Augustine’s notion of evil is that it does not have existence, but is really an absence or privation of goodness. Therefore, the God who holds all things in existence cannot be said to even be a participant whatsoever in the evil action which falls short of the goodness proper to it. My contention is that while St. Augustine correctly identifies the free will of created persons as the origin of evil, his definition of evil as the mere ‘privation of the due good’ is in a sense true, but inadequate.
The Nature of Evil
Before we can arrive at an adequate solution to the problem of evil’s origin, we must first inquire into the nature of evil; we ask, ‘what is evil?’ The Catholic Encyclopedia categorizes evil into three types: physical, metaphysical, and moral.[1] Physical evil consists in natural disasters, misfortune, disease, and any other physical harm to man in his body. Metaphysical evil has to do with the so-called “evil of nature” where lions prey on smaller animals, a desert climate inhibits organic life, or any other limitation inevitable in the nature of the given thing. Moral evil is the type of evil this paper is addressing and will be focusing on because it is the evil that primarily accounts for the problem at hand. With this clarification in mind, we can continue our examination of evil specifically in the moral context.
St. Augustine and the later scholastic tradition hold evil in every category to be a mere ‘privation of the good’. Augustine says, “Evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name “evil.””[2] At first glance this explanation of the privative nature of evil seems to be quite an understandable and attractive solution to the vexing problem of evil. Evil in this understanding is simply the absence of goodness as darkness is the absence of light or coldness is the absence of heat. According to Augustine, evil has no being in itself. Physical evil is the absence of the good of health. Metaphysically, goodness is a transcendental quality of all being and so evil is the limitation of the essence. Moral evil is the deviation from the norm of just and good action. Now we would seem to have a solution and consequently no problem in asserting that an all-good God created everything good. Metaphysically, all beings qua being are good inasmuch as they have being; everything that has been created by God has an ontological goodness or value. On the ontological level, it is true that no substance in the proper sense of the word is evil, but we still cannot yet justify the leap to the conclusion that evil absolutely does not exist. The fact, that being and goodness are inseparable ontologically on the metaphysical level does not preclude that something can be wholly evil on the moral level. We still have yet to arrive at a fuller understanding of the nature of evil and how evil can be compatible with a perfectly good God. Further inquiry requires an understanding of the origin of evil.
The Origin of Evil
St. Augustine asserts that the free will of man is the first cause of evil, saying, “An evil will therefore, is the cause of all evils.”[3] If, however, God is the cause of all things, how can Augustine say that the evil will of a created person is the first cause of evil? St. Augustine continues and points out that there is no incompatibility between these two ideas. Since God is the cause of the man, He is also the cause of his free will. The nature of the will, however, is such that it possesses the capability and freedom to be the absolute origin of an action. By his will, man is capable of freely initiating acts that are completely his own. His volitional acts are attributed to him and belong to him in an absolute sense. Since this autonomy is the nature of the will that God created in man, Augustine says, “No blame attaches to the Creator if any of his creatures does not do what he ought.”[4] The word “ought” is crucial to our understanding of the origin and nature of evil because it implies the authentic nature of man’s free will.
The concept of “oughtness” implies that by his will, man has the freedom to choose the intentional end of his action as well as the means to that end. This understanding contradicts the scholastic understanding of the freedom of the will which is also implicit in St. Augustine’s understanding as well. The scholastics assert that only one end is possible for all of man’s acts, namely the “good”. If, however, every human action is predetermined to the good then it is meaningless to say that a man ought to choose the good because by his nature he must choose the good. In light of a more personalist view of the person and through our own subjective experience, we can see that man is not determined by his nature to choose the good as the end or motive of his action. This personal freedom and self-determination of the individual consequently casts him into the realm of morality and responsibility. As the absolute initiator of his actions, man assumes full responsibility for those actions and thereby those actions which are free assume a moral character when directed to or against a morally relevant object, especially another person. It is precisely here in the will that we understand the origin of evil. By his free will, man has the capacity to be the origin of an action and moreover can also choose by the will the end or the direction of the action. If the person chooses an end that is contrary to the dignity and justice owed to the object he uses, we say that his intention and action are morally evil.
Even St. Augustine intuits the motivation of the will as being the cause and origin of evil. He says,
Possibly the evil thing in adultery is lust. So long as you look for the evil in the outward act you discover difficulties. But when you understand that the evil lies in lust it becomes clear that even if a man finds no opportunity to lie with the wife of another but shows that he desires to do and would do it if he got the chance, he is no less guilty than if he were caught in the act.[5]
Evodius, with whom Augustine speaks in the work just quoted, concludes with Augustine that “lust alone dominates the whole realm of evil-doing.”[6] ‘Lust’ in the broader context that Evodius uses may be best understood by the ethical terminology of Dietrich von Hildebrand. Hildebrand would articulate Augustine’s “lust” as the “disregard [for] the morally relevant value of a person and his rights in order to satisfy [satisfaction].”[7] An action may be objectively morally neutral. Destroying a building, for example, is by itself a morally neutral action. What would make this action morally good or evil is the motivation or intention of the person destroying the building. If his intent is to bring down the building so that he may rebuild a better one, his action may be considered morally good. If, however, the building is full of people and his intention is to kill those people, the action is morally evil.[8] Since a man freely chooses the intentional end of his action, the responsibility and culpability ultimately falls upon him and not upon his creator. The understanding of the free will as the origin of evil, which is the “creation” of the creature, largely resolves how God can still be said to be perfectly good and the source of all being.
Motivation and Evil as the “Privation of the Good”
Understanding with St. Augustine that the “evil will […] is the cause of all evils,”[9] we can now take a fresh look at the concept of evil as being the ‘privation of the good’. The notion that evil is the ‘absence of the due good’ is inadequate according to Fedoryka, who says, “Saying that evil is the absence of the due good is like saying adultery is the absence of the due wife.”[10] I think Fedoryka’s point is that the privation theory of evil only explains part of the reality. Of course the due good is absent in evil, but there is also something else involved. There is an active principle in evil which in the case of adultery would be the lust, even according to St. Augustine’s own admission. Alford argues that while St. Augustine’s concept and articulation of evil is lacking, his intuition of evil is deeper and more accurate.[11] He cites Augustine’s story of the pilfering of the pears from the Confessions as a point where Augustine really struggles with the nature of evil.[12] According to the story, the young Augustine and his fellow companions steal pears from an orchard for no apparent reason at all; Augustine says, “I did not desire to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself.”[13] The object of his action is not some “lesser good”, the object is the wickedness itself. In this example, we come close to that quality of “pure evil” that remains somewhat elusive to Augustine on the conceptual level. Namely, evil as the active “negation” of the good, an evil that desires the destruction of goodness because of the very fact that it is good. Understanding evil in this absolute sense is broader than the understanding of the ‘privation of good’ as simply being the ‘absence of good’. The really “evil man” does not do evil actions for some “lesser good”, he does them because he hates the good because its good.
We have arrived at the most significant shortcoming of St. Augustine’s conceptualization of evil as the privation of good. Understanding evil to be nothing implies that man always does everything for the good because he has no other alternative. Even St. Augustine himself holds that “Evil deeds are punished by the justice of God. They would not be justly punished unless they were done voluntarily.”[14] How can we say then that a man voluntarily commits an evil deed if we say at the same time he does the deed because he believes he is doing it for the sake of some good? We may not simply say that the goodness due in an act is not there, for there is actually some thing that is morally perverted and evil in itself. Is God the origin or cause of the evil? No, we have seen that the person who preformed the act is the originator. He is the initiator of the evil action. Since he is the initiator and metaphysical owner of the morally evil action, we can impute the moral character of the action to him; he is guilty. The moral character of his soul can then be said to be “in the state of evil”. We can see on this account the reasonableness and justice of the theological tenet that asserts that God condemns sinners to eternal punishment. If we hold that evil is a mere privation or absence of the good, then we must conclude that God’s criteria for moral goodness and evil is the degree of goodness found in a person. People who are not as good as they ought to be are punished because they do not have enough moral goodness in their character. Furthermore, if we hold that man always chooses the good then we must conclude that God sends that man to eternal damnation for making a mistake in his choice of means to the good.
The main problem in holding that man always chooses the good is that man can choose the object of his action not under the aspect of the good. The error stems from the fact that man can choose as the object of his action something that may possess some form of goodness or value objectively, but he does not always choose it under this aspect. Can we say that when St. Augustine was a boy that he stole the pears for the sake of an lesser good? While objectively pears may be good for me because of the physical health they bring, St. Augustine knows this is not the reason for which he stole. He stole simply to be wicked; He says, “I loved my error—not that for which I erred [the pears] but the error itself.[15] Motivation is the key to an adequate understanding of good and evil. St. Augustine rightly identifies the motivation of lust as that which “dominates the whole realm of evil-doing,”[16] but does not include evil motivation in his definition of evil as the “privation of good”.
The sin of envy really makes the positive nature of evil evident. Many people confuse jealously with envy. Jealously, it should be noted, is when a man wants to possess goods that belong to another because he does not have them. In envy, however, a man does not want what another man has, perhaps because he already possesses them, but rather the envious man wants to spoils what the other has because the very existence of that other enjoying those goods makes him feel less satisfied.[17] Desiring the destruction of another’s goods for no other reason than the fact that they are possessed by another is much more than a mere lack of goodness in his intention. The envious man is taking a positive stance against the good. We have arrived at essence of moral evil: The positive attitude and motivating principle of a free person against the intrinsically good because of its goodness. Augustine asserts that the turning away from the good is evil, but I assert that evil does not simply “turn away”, it turns against the good.
Conclusion
I think that St. Augustine rightly identifies the free will of man as the origin of evil and not God, but in his conceptualization of evil as being the “privation of good”, however, he limits himself from arriving at a more complete understanding of evil as a more active principle. I propose that a more accurate understand of evil to be something that positively exists in the will of man as a motivating principle that hates and wills the destruction of the good because it is good. Desiring the destruction of the good because it is good has an incomprehensible quality to it, which makes the investigation of the nature of evil elusive. In the face of pure evil, one inevitably asks himself ‘why?’ In its purest forms, evil is always irrational or “anti-rational”; evil defies reason. I think this ‘incomprehensibility’ of evil is the reason why St. Augustine struggles and falls short of an adequate articulation of the nature of evil. I assert that evil has both a negative and a positive aspect to it and St. Augustine only admits the negative in his definition, i.e. that evil is the privation of good. The positive aspect of evil is not ‘being’ in the substantial ontological sense, but ‘being’ as the motivation or intention of the will of a created person that actively wills the destruction of the good because it is good. I think that an adequate definition or understanding of evil must include both these negative and positive aspects of evil.
Bibliography
Alford, C Fred, “Augustine, Arendt, and Melanie Klein: The (De)Privation of Evil”, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2005), URL = [accessed on Dec. 8, 2005]
Augustine. De Civitate Dei. URL = [accessed on Dec. 8, 2005]
Augustine., “On the Free Will.” Pojman, Louis P., ed. Classics of Philosophy. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Augustine. Confessions. URL = [accessed on Dec. 9, 2005]
Evans, G.R. Augustine on Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Koukl, Gregory, “Augustine on Evil” Stand to Reason, URL = [accessed on Dec. 8, 2005]
Mendelson, Michael, “Saint Augustine”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2000 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
Sharpe, A.B., “Evil”, Catholic Encyclopedia (1917 Edition), URL = [accessed on Dec. 8, 2005]
Von Hildebrand, Dietrich. Ethics. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1972.
I pledge upon my honor that I have not received any unauthorized aid on this assignment.
Matthew Ryan
[1] Catholic Encyclopedia, Evil
[2] Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book XI, Chapter ix.
[3] St. Augustine, On Free Will, Book III, 48.
[4] Ibid., Book III, 46.
[5] Ibid., Book I, 8.
[6] Ibid.
[7] von Hildebrand, Dietrich, Christian Ethics, p. 405.
[8] NB: This is not to say that morality is relative. The action’s moral quality in some cases may be objectively relative, but the inner intention of the subject can be considered objectively good or evil.
[9] St. Augustine, On Free Will, Book III, 48.
[10] Fedoryka, Damian, Class Notes
[11] Alford, C Fred, Augustine, Arendt, and Melanie Klein: The (De)Privation of Evil
[12] St. Augustine, Confessions, Book II, Chapter iv, 9.
[13] Ibid.
[14] St. Augustine, On Free Will, Book I, 1.
[15] St. Augustine, Confessions, Book II, Chapter iv, 9.
[16] St. Augustine, On Free Will, Book I, 8.
[17] Alford, C Fred, Augustine, Arendt, and Melanie Klein: The (De)Privation of Evil
Ancient Philosophy
Dr. Muller
Free Will and Evil in Light of the Thought of St. Augustine
Almost everyday we see and experience evil in the world, whether consciously or not. The presence of evil in the created world presents a particularly difficult problem for the philosopher. How is it that we can say that an omnipotent, perfectly good, God who is the ultimate cause of all that exists created a world in which evil is present? If God made everything and holds all things in existence, would that then mean that God made evil and consequently He is not perfectly good? How can these two apparently irreconcilable statements both be considered true? St. Augustine attempts to solve the problem by pointing out that evil can only be accounted for by the free will of the creature and so although the human will is created by God, we cannot attribute man’s decision for evil to Him. Furthermore, St. Augustine’s notion of evil is that it does not have existence, but is really an absence or privation of goodness. Therefore, the God who holds all things in existence cannot be said to even be a participant whatsoever in the evil action which falls short of the goodness proper to it. My contention is that while St. Augustine correctly identifies the free will of created persons as the origin of evil, his definition of evil as the mere ‘privation of the due good’ is in a sense true, but inadequate.
The Nature of Evil
Before we can arrive at an adequate solution to the problem of evil’s origin, we must first inquire into the nature of evil; we ask, ‘what is evil?’ The Catholic Encyclopedia categorizes evil into three types: physical, metaphysical, and moral.[1] Physical evil consists in natural disasters, misfortune, disease, and any other physical harm to man in his body. Metaphysical evil has to do with the so-called “evil of nature” where lions prey on smaller animals, a desert climate inhibits organic life, or any other limitation inevitable in the nature of the given thing. Moral evil is the type of evil this paper is addressing and will be focusing on because it is the evil that primarily accounts for the problem at hand. With this clarification in mind, we can continue our examination of evil specifically in the moral context.
St. Augustine and the later scholastic tradition hold evil in every category to be a mere ‘privation of the good’. Augustine says, “Evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name “evil.””[2] At first glance this explanation of the privative nature of evil seems to be quite an understandable and attractive solution to the vexing problem of evil. Evil in this understanding is simply the absence of goodness as darkness is the absence of light or coldness is the absence of heat. According to Augustine, evil has no being in itself. Physical evil is the absence of the good of health. Metaphysically, goodness is a transcendental quality of all being and so evil is the limitation of the essence. Moral evil is the deviation from the norm of just and good action. Now we would seem to have a solution and consequently no problem in asserting that an all-good God created everything good. Metaphysically, all beings qua being are good inasmuch as they have being; everything that has been created by God has an ontological goodness or value. On the ontological level, it is true that no substance in the proper sense of the word is evil, but we still cannot yet justify the leap to the conclusion that evil absolutely does not exist. The fact, that being and goodness are inseparable ontologically on the metaphysical level does not preclude that something can be wholly evil on the moral level. We still have yet to arrive at a fuller understanding of the nature of evil and how evil can be compatible with a perfectly good God. Further inquiry requires an understanding of the origin of evil.
The Origin of Evil
St. Augustine asserts that the free will of man is the first cause of evil, saying, “An evil will therefore, is the cause of all evils.”[3] If, however, God is the cause of all things, how can Augustine say that the evil will of a created person is the first cause of evil? St. Augustine continues and points out that there is no incompatibility between these two ideas. Since God is the cause of the man, He is also the cause of his free will. The nature of the will, however, is such that it possesses the capability and freedom to be the absolute origin of an action. By his will, man is capable of freely initiating acts that are completely his own. His volitional acts are attributed to him and belong to him in an absolute sense. Since this autonomy is the nature of the will that God created in man, Augustine says, “No blame attaches to the Creator if any of his creatures does not do what he ought.”[4] The word “ought” is crucial to our understanding of the origin and nature of evil because it implies the authentic nature of man’s free will.
The concept of “oughtness” implies that by his will, man has the freedom to choose the intentional end of his action as well as the means to that end. This understanding contradicts the scholastic understanding of the freedom of the will which is also implicit in St. Augustine’s understanding as well. The scholastics assert that only one end is possible for all of man’s acts, namely the “good”. If, however, every human action is predetermined to the good then it is meaningless to say that a man ought to choose the good because by his nature he must choose the good. In light of a more personalist view of the person and through our own subjective experience, we can see that man is not determined by his nature to choose the good as the end or motive of his action. This personal freedom and self-determination of the individual consequently casts him into the realm of morality and responsibility. As the absolute initiator of his actions, man assumes full responsibility for those actions and thereby those actions which are free assume a moral character when directed to or against a morally relevant object, especially another person. It is precisely here in the will that we understand the origin of evil. By his free will, man has the capacity to be the origin of an action and moreover can also choose by the will the end or the direction of the action. If the person chooses an end that is contrary to the dignity and justice owed to the object he uses, we say that his intention and action are morally evil.
Even St. Augustine intuits the motivation of the will as being the cause and origin of evil. He says,
Possibly the evil thing in adultery is lust. So long as you look for the evil in the outward act you discover difficulties. But when you understand that the evil lies in lust it becomes clear that even if a man finds no opportunity to lie with the wife of another but shows that he desires to do and would do it if he got the chance, he is no less guilty than if he were caught in the act.[5]
Evodius, with whom Augustine speaks in the work just quoted, concludes with Augustine that “lust alone dominates the whole realm of evil-doing.”[6] ‘Lust’ in the broader context that Evodius uses may be best understood by the ethical terminology of Dietrich von Hildebrand. Hildebrand would articulate Augustine’s “lust” as the “disregard [for] the morally relevant value of a person and his rights in order to satisfy [satisfaction].”[7] An action may be objectively morally neutral. Destroying a building, for example, is by itself a morally neutral action. What would make this action morally good or evil is the motivation or intention of the person destroying the building. If his intent is to bring down the building so that he may rebuild a better one, his action may be considered morally good. If, however, the building is full of people and his intention is to kill those people, the action is morally evil.[8] Since a man freely chooses the intentional end of his action, the responsibility and culpability ultimately falls upon him and not upon his creator. The understanding of the free will as the origin of evil, which is the “creation” of the creature, largely resolves how God can still be said to be perfectly good and the source of all being.
Motivation and Evil as the “Privation of the Good”
Understanding with St. Augustine that the “evil will […] is the cause of all evils,”[9] we can now take a fresh look at the concept of evil as being the ‘privation of the good’. The notion that evil is the ‘absence of the due good’ is inadequate according to Fedoryka, who says, “Saying that evil is the absence of the due good is like saying adultery is the absence of the due wife.”[10] I think Fedoryka’s point is that the privation theory of evil only explains part of the reality. Of course the due good is absent in evil, but there is also something else involved. There is an active principle in evil which in the case of adultery would be the lust, even according to St. Augustine’s own admission. Alford argues that while St. Augustine’s concept and articulation of evil is lacking, his intuition of evil is deeper and more accurate.[11] He cites Augustine’s story of the pilfering of the pears from the Confessions as a point where Augustine really struggles with the nature of evil.[12] According to the story, the young Augustine and his fellow companions steal pears from an orchard for no apparent reason at all; Augustine says, “I did not desire to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself.”[13] The object of his action is not some “lesser good”, the object is the wickedness itself. In this example, we come close to that quality of “pure evil” that remains somewhat elusive to Augustine on the conceptual level. Namely, evil as the active “negation” of the good, an evil that desires the destruction of goodness because of the very fact that it is good. Understanding evil in this absolute sense is broader than the understanding of the ‘privation of good’ as simply being the ‘absence of good’. The really “evil man” does not do evil actions for some “lesser good”, he does them because he hates the good because its good.
We have arrived at the most significant shortcoming of St. Augustine’s conceptualization of evil as the privation of good. Understanding evil to be nothing implies that man always does everything for the good because he has no other alternative. Even St. Augustine himself holds that “Evil deeds are punished by the justice of God. They would not be justly punished unless they were done voluntarily.”[14] How can we say then that a man voluntarily commits an evil deed if we say at the same time he does the deed because he believes he is doing it for the sake of some good? We may not simply say that the goodness due in an act is not there, for there is actually some thing that is morally perverted and evil in itself. Is God the origin or cause of the evil? No, we have seen that the person who preformed the act is the originator. He is the initiator of the evil action. Since he is the initiator and metaphysical owner of the morally evil action, we can impute the moral character of the action to him; he is guilty. The moral character of his soul can then be said to be “in the state of evil”. We can see on this account the reasonableness and justice of the theological tenet that asserts that God condemns sinners to eternal punishment. If we hold that evil is a mere privation or absence of the good, then we must conclude that God’s criteria for moral goodness and evil is the degree of goodness found in a person. People who are not as good as they ought to be are punished because they do not have enough moral goodness in their character. Furthermore, if we hold that man always chooses the good then we must conclude that God sends that man to eternal damnation for making a mistake in his choice of means to the good.
The main problem in holding that man always chooses the good is that man can choose the object of his action not under the aspect of the good. The error stems from the fact that man can choose as the object of his action something that may possess some form of goodness or value objectively, but he does not always choose it under this aspect. Can we say that when St. Augustine was a boy that he stole the pears for the sake of an lesser good? While objectively pears may be good for me because of the physical health they bring, St. Augustine knows this is not the reason for which he stole. He stole simply to be wicked; He says, “I loved my error—not that for which I erred [the pears] but the error itself.[15] Motivation is the key to an adequate understanding of good and evil. St. Augustine rightly identifies the motivation of lust as that which “dominates the whole realm of evil-doing,”[16] but does not include evil motivation in his definition of evil as the “privation of good”.
The sin of envy really makes the positive nature of evil evident. Many people confuse jealously with envy. Jealously, it should be noted, is when a man wants to possess goods that belong to another because he does not have them. In envy, however, a man does not want what another man has, perhaps because he already possesses them, but rather the envious man wants to spoils what the other has because the very existence of that other enjoying those goods makes him feel less satisfied.[17] Desiring the destruction of another’s goods for no other reason than the fact that they are possessed by another is much more than a mere lack of goodness in his intention. The envious man is taking a positive stance against the good. We have arrived at essence of moral evil: The positive attitude and motivating principle of a free person against the intrinsically good because of its goodness. Augustine asserts that the turning away from the good is evil, but I assert that evil does not simply “turn away”, it turns against the good.
Conclusion
I think that St. Augustine rightly identifies the free will of man as the origin of evil and not God, but in his conceptualization of evil as being the “privation of good”, however, he limits himself from arriving at a more complete understanding of evil as a more active principle. I propose that a more accurate understand of evil to be something that positively exists in the will of man as a motivating principle that hates and wills the destruction of the good because it is good. Desiring the destruction of the good because it is good has an incomprehensible quality to it, which makes the investigation of the nature of evil elusive. In the face of pure evil, one inevitably asks himself ‘why?’ In its purest forms, evil is always irrational or “anti-rational”; evil defies reason. I think this ‘incomprehensibility’ of evil is the reason why St. Augustine struggles and falls short of an adequate articulation of the nature of evil. I assert that evil has both a negative and a positive aspect to it and St. Augustine only admits the negative in his definition, i.e. that evil is the privation of good. The positive aspect of evil is not ‘being’ in the substantial ontological sense, but ‘being’ as the motivation or intention of the will of a created person that actively wills the destruction of the good because it is good. I think that an adequate definition or understanding of evil must include both these negative and positive aspects of evil.
Bibliography
Alford, C Fred, “Augustine, Arendt, and Melanie Klein: The (De)Privation of Evil”, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2005), URL =
Augustine. De Civitate Dei. URL =
Augustine., “On the Free Will.” Pojman, Louis P., ed. Classics of Philosophy. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Augustine. Confessions. URL =
Evans, G.R. Augustine on Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Koukl, Gregory, “Augustine on Evil” Stand to Reason, URL =
Mendelson, Michael, “Saint Augustine”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2000 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
Sharpe, A.B., “Evil”, Catholic Encyclopedia (1917 Edition), URL =
Von Hildebrand, Dietrich. Ethics. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1972.
I pledge upon my honor that I have not received any unauthorized aid on this assignment.
Matthew Ryan
[1] Catholic Encyclopedia, Evil
[2] Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book XI, Chapter ix.
[3] St. Augustine, On Free Will, Book III, 48.
[4] Ibid., Book III, 46.
[5] Ibid., Book I, 8.
[6] Ibid.
[7] von Hildebrand, Dietrich, Christian Ethics, p. 405.
[8] NB: This is not to say that morality is relative. The action’s moral quality in some cases may be objectively relative, but the inner intention of the subject can be considered objectively good or evil.
[9] St. Augustine, On Free Will, Book III, 48.
[10] Fedoryka, Damian, Class Notes
[11] Alford, C Fred, Augustine, Arendt, and Melanie Klein: The (De)Privation of Evil
[12] St. Augustine, Confessions, Book II, Chapter iv, 9.
[13] Ibid.
[14] St. Augustine, On Free Will, Book I, 1.
[15] St. Augustine, Confessions, Book II, Chapter iv, 9.
[16] St. Augustine, On Free Will, Book I, 8.
[17] Alford, C Fred, Augustine, Arendt, and Melanie Klein: The (De)Privation of Evil
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