Evil in St.Augustine's Confessions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Evil in St.Augustines Confessions - Essay archetypeFrom this paper it is clear thatthe presence of good and evil in the world is obvious, but what are the dealing between them? Many experts emphasize the conflict between good and evil. The main statement of St. Augustine is that evil is scarce the absence of good. This presumption has a long history. It is a well known fact that St. Augustine was initially a Manichean and became Christian single after he realized the drawbacks of Persian Dualism worship- Manichaeism. The main idea of this religion lies in the flavour in two gods, who represent good and evil. In this religion we can go through the struggle between the light and darkness. St. Augustine scrutinized Christianity and rejected Manichaeism. He claimed that in this world there could be only one god, a good one. divinity fudge and the world that he created are the main aspects of the philosophy of Augustine and the transaction between them deserve special attention.T his study stresses thatAugustine argued that the world is the creation of divinity fudge, God does not depend on the world and the world is fully dependent on God. Creating human soul, God initially incorporated in it the striving for happiness as the main goal in a mans life. That is why a man must use all the abilities of his soul to achieve the happiness. Happiness itself consists in the level best cognition of God and in this case the human intellectual becomes the main basis for principle. That is why belief is the foundation and the initial point for cognition.... That is why belief is the foundation and the initial point for cognition. Cognition without the belief is sinful. The supreme form of cognition is divine inspiration given by God to humans, who have fond belief. This Gods wisdom cant be understood by human reason. God gives inspiration to humans only by his own will. Striving for happiness, a man cognizes good and evil. God represents the good, but the question is what evil comes from as God cant be the creator of evil. This trouble was solved by Augustine all the evil comes from the framework nature. All the evil is a product of material body of humans. The first knowledge of Adam and Eve was the product of their cognition, of their material nature and this was a reason of their Fall. Humans were punished for making a fetish of their materiality, their body and after The Fall of the first flock their offspring were doomed to death. For other than this, that which really is I knew not and was, as it were through sharpness of wit, persuaded to accede to foolish deceivers, when they asked me, whence is evil? is God bounded by a bodily shape, and has hairs and nails? are they to be esteemed righteous who had many wives at once, and did kill men, and sacrifice living creatures? (Book II) However, the substance itself and humans body were created by God and consequently, they could not be the source of evil. Augustine comes to the conclusio n that evil does not make up at all. Evil is weakened and corrupted good. Here the philosophy of St. Augustine is based on Platons possibility about the ideas, which are present in material bodies, but can be corrupted by the