Augustine's On Free Choice Of The Will

In On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine addresses the issue of evil by drawing on the human capacity to make our own decisions and determine our own course of action. His main point—that evil is the result of one’s desire to obtain something that is superficial and temporal—leads the reader to conclude that true happiness is derived from doing the opposite of evil: honoring things that are ethical and ever-lasting. From this, it is clear to me that we, as humans who possess the power of will, are all responsible for our own individual outcomes in life, and that we are capable of resisting the urge to do evil for the sake of preserving our own happiness. First and foremost, Augustine argues that evil is explicitly the result of man’s own deliberate …show more content…
In Augustine’s example of adultery, he explains that it is considered evil purely because the one who commits it does so out of lust. In this case, lust is the desire that drives one to sacrifice something of higher order (love and commitment to his or her spouse), for something of lower order (momentary sexual gratification). Another example is stealing. According to Augustine’s logic, it is incorrect to assume that stealing is evil because it is against the law or plainly because it involves taking someone else’s property. Instead, stealing is considered evil because of the disruption of The Order of Love that is involved. When one steals another’s possession, he or she gives up honesty (something that we can all control) for a material object that can be easily taken away. Evidently, it is the desire behind the act of stealing, the desire for something that does not belong to oneself, that truly defines the act as …show more content…
Augustine states that “all who will to live upright and honorable lives, if they will this more than they will transitory goods, attain such a great good so easily that they have it by the very act of willing to have it” (I.13). Essentially he is saying that we can obtain true happiness if we focus on things that exist in the higher order of love—things that are permanent and that are in our realm of control. Returning to the example of stealing: if someone decides that he does not want to steal something, he is therefore maintaining his integrity, a characteristic of the higher order, instead of sacrificing it for something material. Ultimately, he will be more happy with the fact that he remained honest than he would have been if he were to have stolen something. The main reason why things of the lower order have the potential to make us unhappy is because we don’t have the power to control them. For example: all material objects have the potential to be taken away at any given moment, and there is nothing that the owners of these objects could possibly do to prevent it. Severe unhappiness, the ultimate punishment for committing evil by pursuing something of the lower order of love, is thus caused by living in fear; knowing that what you have, whether it be something material, support from another person, or fame and success, can disappear in an