Free will and the problem of evil in St. Augustine

Abstract

In his work The Nature of Good, written in objection to the conception of Mani as regards the problem of evil and, therefore, the duality of principles that underpin the entire cosmological system and the ontology of Manichaean sect, Augustine demonstrates concern to clarify that all nature is a good, since it comes from God, and that evil, not included among the created beings, is just that whereby the corruption of the mode [modus] species [species] and order [ordo] happens, which are the constituent attributes of beings or natures. The Augustinian thesis about the ontological existence of evil presented in such work and all its philosophical and theological implications had already appeared in the dialogue The Free Will in which, responding to questions of young Evódio, Augustine explains in more detail what later he presents in The Nature of Good, namely, that all things being good, the free will could not be a bad thing, although through it the man can also sin. Drawing on the Augustine’s counter-argument about Manichaeism’s theses, this text, in fact, aims to think about the relationship between the human free will and the origin of evil, according to St. Augustine from the reflection of the works mentioned.