Philosophy paper on Free Will

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In the City of God, Augustine attempts to reconcile the ideas of a man; he respects very much, Plato, and his faith in the Bible and the word of God. Also, in On Free Choice of the Will Augustine has a series of conversations, which help him explain his ideas on the type of person that he believes God to be. He actually believes that Plato is a great man and he is in awe with the amount of work that came from him that seem to match the teachings of the scriptures. But while Plato does have a lot of ideas that are easily combined with the Bible he also has some that could make it hard for Augustine to use his ideas with his Christian thought. Because Plato is not really a Christian he has some ideas that Augustine finds unsettling and tries hard to reconcile with his own thought.

In On Free Choice of the Will Book I Augustine is having a conversation with Evodius about the virtues that people acquire (or should want to acquire) that make them better people. People better able to understand God. Augustine is trying to explain to Evodius the idea of good will. He believes that good will is the desire that a man should have, will to live upright and honorable lives. (On Free Choice of the Will Book II, p0-1) It is not enough that a man has will it must be good. Because will in and of itself is not good. He develops this idea from the idea of the four cardinal virtues. The four virtues are prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice. They are all virtues that are found in the Bible. It is said that every man should strive to have these characteristics within him. Augustine believes that these virtues are the building blocks of a man's character and these are the ideas that can bring one happiness. He believes that great wealth, goods, or reputation wont bring these things. The four cardinal virtues that Augustine holds up with such great esteem were actually the same virtues that Plato had come up with himself. Plato had this philosophy on these traits that a man should strive to acquire a hundred years before the bible was even ever written. Augustine believes that the will is inherently good because God gives it to us and since god is inherently and completely good our will could be nothing less than that.

The main point of Book II deals with Augustine discussing his proofs that there is a god. Augustine has many ideas that he feels help him make his point. The significance of Augustine proving God's existence is that it makes him have to integrate the ideas of metaphysics, and metaphysics is largely a neo-platonic idea. (Dr. Hunt lecture, /7) By being able, to do this Augustine will be able to take the ideas of Plato and the ideas he has about God and Christianity and make them all work with one another.

Three ideas that Augustine has though that help him come to terms with his beliefs are based largely upon the thought that everyone will have the same starting point of the picture of reality. Augustine does look at the world like a Christian and that is a very different mind frame from other philosophers, even Plato himself. In the City of God, Augustine explains that Plato divided philosophy into three distinct parts; moral, natural, and rational. Moral philosophy pertains to action; natural philosophy's purpose is contemplation; and rational philosophy discerns between truth and error. By breaking up philosophy in this manner Augustine believes these ideas allow for certain truths to be known about God in Him is to be found the cause of all being, the reason of all thinking, the rule of all living. (City of God, p117) The first truth is natural, the second rational, and the third is moral. While it is not for sure, whether or not that Plato purposely divided these ideas up this way to help people better understand the idea of good, it helped Augustine and he feels that it also served to help disciples of Plato better understand the nature of God.

In Book III Augustine struggles with the notion, that divine knowledge conflicts with free will. God is suppose to be all knowing and if he can already know what will happen then how can we have the freedom to actually make decisions. Augustine believes in the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, which is to say that a person acts freely in a way that is required of moral responsibility, only if they could have acted otherwise. (Dr. Hunt, /7) Augustine believes that a good deed would not really be so great if people had no other choice but to act moral. If the actions are forced from us, we are not then free. The problem with free will, according to Augustine, is that people abuse the free will they have. Because they are allowed the option to good or bad people will chose to do wrong even thought they know they shouldn't do so.

An issue that Plato has is the idea that if God is good then how can there be evil and why would he allow it to occur. Augustine has rationalized these ideas to himself and doesn't believe that there is anything evil about God because people do bad things. Augustine believes that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. Unfortunately these ideas are what make for more of a problem and I don't Augustine really helped clear anything up with that idea. It makes it harder for people to understand why people can do bad things and bad things happen if God is all of these good things. He even says that if he uses his will to do something evil then he has no one to blame but himself. Because a good god made him he can do nothing but live through his will. (On Free Choice of the Will, p7)

It seems that Augustine is sometimes annoyed that Plato does not seem to be taking a strong enough stance or seems conflicted on certain ideas about God. For example, Augustine points out that while Plato does believe in true religion he seems torn on the idea of monotheism and polytheism in relation to beatitude after death Of course this idea would be hard for Augustine to work around because as a Christian there are not a lot of ideas about the afterlife that Augustine could have. It bothers Augustine that his views on important issues don't seem to be clearly made.

Augustine is also conflicted about Plato's idea of the world soul and that human souls are made from the same things as the earth; fire, water, earth, and air. Augustine believes man's rational soul can not be material. He reasons that since the body, which is seen and judged in the mind of a thinking person, is not material. (City of God, p11) He reasons that the soul then can not be made of material cosmos for then how could God be material Augustine believes that nothing other that God can truly make people happy. This would conflict with thoughts from Plato because he wasn't even fully convinced that there was just one God who was running everything. Plato did leave room for the idea that there was more than one God and that he didn't necessarily know what all was out there.

It would seem that Augustine ability to take parts from Plato's philosophy and integrate them into is Christian ideals makes him better at fully understanding where he really stand as far as his own ideas about God and how he believes God to be. Augustine believes that it is all because of God that Plato could come to a point to be able to manifest his ideas. Even ideas that Augustine doesn't support like Plato feeling that polytheistic worship was o.k. I think that Augustine has done a very good job of these two strands of thought. It also is not as hard as it could be to put these two trains of thought together because the ideas are easy to find points of similarity. Even in the issues that Plato and Augustine conflict serve really to help Augustine become stronger in his faith and his ideals because he has to be able to put these two schools of thought together and be able to defend his own ideas.

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