The Problem of Evil
One question preoccupied Augustine from the time he was
a student in Carthage: why does evil exist in the world? He returned
to this question again and again in his philosophy, a line of inquiry
motivated by personal experience. Augustine lived in an era when
the pillar of strength and stability, the Roman Empire, was being shattered,
and his own life, too, was filled with turmoil and loss. First he
lost his mistress, then his mother, and finally his son. To believe
in God, he had to find an answer to why, if God is all-powerful
and also purely good, he still allows suffering to exist.
Augustine’s answers to this question would forever change
Western thought. First, he states that evil exists because we have
free will. God enables humans to freely choose their actions and
deeds, and evil inevitably results from these choices. Even natural
evils, such as disease, are indirectly related to human action,
since they become evil only when in contact with people. According
to this theory, a disease spreads only because men and women put
themselves in harm’s way. Augustine gave a more theological explanation
later in his life: we cannot understand the mind of God, and what
appears evil to us may not be evil at all. In other words, we cannot
judge God’s judgment. The roots of both of these answers stemmed
from two philosophies, Manicheanism and Neoplatonism, which shaped Augustine’s
ideas.
Free Will and Responsibility
Before Augustine, Manicheanism was extremely influential
among early Christians. Manicheanism was a cult that first arose
in Roman North Africa, begun by a Persian named Mani, who died around A.D. 276.
This cult combined elements of Christianity with elements of Zoroastrianism,
the ancient religion of Persia, or Iran. Mani taught that the universe
was a battlefield of two conflicting forces. On one side is God,
who represents light and goodness and who seeks to eliminate suffering.
Opposing him is Satan, who represents darkness and evil and is the
cause of misery and affliction. Human beings find themselves caught
in the middle of these two great forces. According to Manicheanism,
the human body, like all matter, is the product of Satan and is
inherently evil, whereas the soul is made of light. The only escape
from evil is to free the soul from the body through the practices
of asceticism and meditation. Manicheanism taught that Satan is
solely responsible for all the evil in the world, and humankind
is free of all responsibility in bringing about evil and misery.
Augustine became a follower of Manicheanism during his student days
in Carthage, but he ultimately broke with the Manicheans over the
question of responsibility for evil, since he believed that human
beings are capable of free will and are among the causes of suffering
in the world. This disagreement led him to Neoplatonism, a system
of philosophy developed by Plato’s follower, Plotinus, that would
prove to be the most influential in his life and work.
The Importance of the Body and the Soul
Plato’s influence on philosophy was widespread during
the later Roman Empire, the time in which Augustine lived. The philosopher Plotinus
(a.d. 204–270), in particular, was responsible
for redefining and reshaping Platonic philosophy into a cohesive
system of thought called Neoplatonism. To explain the presence of
evil, Plotinus drew on Plato’s distinction between the world of
physical, tangible things and a world of intangible ideas or Forms.
Plato taught that the physical world is changeable, perishable,
and imperfect, in contrast with world of ideas or Forms, which is
constant, perfect, and everlasting. Because the physical world is
marked by change and corruption, it is impossible to fully know
it. True knowledge can be achieved only by thinking about the eternal
and perfect forms, of which the tangible world is only a copy, just
as a painting is only an imitation of something real.
The Neoplatonists used this distinction between the physical
and the ideal to explain the relationship between the body and the
soul. They taught that the soul is perfect but trapped in an imperfect body.
Because the body belongs in the physical realm, it is the root of evil.
Thus, the soul seeks to break free of the body so it can live true to
its perfection, in the realm of ideal forms. In Plotinus, Augustine found
the important idea that human beings are not a neutral battleground
on which either goodness or evil lays claim, as the Manicheans believed.
Rather, human beings are the authors of their own suffering. Plotinus
carried this line of thought further than Augustine was willing
to accept, asserting that the body is unimportant in defining a
human being and that true human nature involves only the soul and
has nothing to do with the body. Augustine disagreed, maintaining
that human beings are both body and soul together. We bring evil
on ourselves because we actively choose corruptible elements of
the physical world rather than the eternal, perfect forms, which
are spiritual. Augustine argues that God does not allow evil to
exist so much as we choose it by our actions, deeds, and words. Later,
he came to the conclusion that it is impossible for us to understand
the mind of God, and therefore we cannot come to a proper comprehension
of why suffering exists.
The Possibility of Certitude
A number of philosophers before Augustine had argued that
certainty is impossible and that the best the human mind can hope
to achieve is the conviction that its conclusions are highly probable. Augustine
disagreed with this premise and sought to demonstrate philosophically
that certitude is in fact possible. His first argument is that if
we accept the possibility of our conclusions being probable, we’ve
already implicitly assumed that certainty exists, because things
can only be “probably” true if truth (in other words, certainty)
does in fact exist. If there is no truth, there is no probability. Second,
happiness is the result of acquired wisdom, which all human beings
desire. Thus, to say wisdom cannot be attained is to say that happiness
is impossible—an unacceptable conclusion. Third, Augustine takes
issue with the idea that the senses cannot be trusted, and he does
not agree with his opponents that the mind is entirely dependent
on the senses. On the contrary, our senses do seem reliable to a
certain extent, and the mind can understand things independently
of the senses, so therefore it must be even more reliable than the
senses. Finally, Augustine points out that our mental states are
beyond doubt. Whatever we may say or not say, we cannot doubt that
at this moment we are thinking. We may say that we are being deceived,
but this very fact of being deceived proves that we exist. These
four reasons support the thesis that certitude is possible.
