When prompted about the true nature of the human race, a great majority assumes “survival” instead of “good”. What this assumption leads to is a study of weather the human race is in fact “good” as people would like to think. In fact the one think that has allowed our race to survive is praying on the weaker, so are we morally “evil” by allowing our nature to dominate over us? If so is this nature a true evil?
Many philosophers have studies epistemology wich is “a study of knowledge and justified belief” (Steup). And ontology wich is a study focusing on the question being. Both of these branches of philosophy have influential figures in the questions of evil and human nature such as Kant, St. Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Socrates, Aristotle, Leibniz, Thomas,S. Kubarych and Spinoza among other great minds.
The first and perhaps most important question to be answered is whether Evil exist. Theories such as St. Augustine’s provide the most logical perspective on the nature of evil and how it comes to be. Nietche also addresses this same question in a similar manner although his theory greatly differs from that of St. Augustine.
St. Augustine starts out by stating that everything in nature is good since the “Creator of all things is supremely good.” Thus evil is not created nor destroyed, it is in fact “diminished and augmented” good (Augustine). His theory is presented in a way that lets the most ignorant of minds understand the evolution of good into evil. Say, a superior good is “an entity that cannot be corrupted”, while a lesser good is “an entity that can be corrupted”(Augustine). Therefore there cannot be evil without good, and if an entity is corrupted in its entirety it stops existing because one cannot corrupt without de...
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Works Cited
Augustine, Saint. (1955) Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope, and Love. Tetrieved online December12, 2013 from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Augustine/augustine_evil.html
Johnson, Robert, "Kant's Moral Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = .
Leiter, Brian, "Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
Steup, Matthias, "Epistemology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = .
An Analysis of Peter van Inwagen’s The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy
In Augustine's Confessions, the early church father puts forth a complex theodicy in which he declares evil to be nonexistent. Such a leap may seem to be illogical, but this idea stems from the understanding of what is substance and what is not. According to Augustine, the duality of good and evil is false, because anything that is good is substance and what humans think of as evil is simply the absence of the good (Confessions, 126). Vices for example, are just the display of the absence of the good. Pride is the absence of humility, unrighteous anger the absence of temperance, and so on. This idea is evident as he writes that the ability to be corrupted is what makes something good, not i...
The problem of evil is inescapable in this fallen world. From worldwide terror like the Holocaust to individual evils like abuse, evil touches every life. However, evil is not a creation of God, nor was it in His perfect will. As Aleksandr
It is perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to a Christian how God and evil can both exist. Many of the greatest minds of the Christian church and intellects such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas spent their entire lives trying to solve this problem, and were unsuccessful (Erickson, 2009, p.439). However, this dilemma is not only an intellectual challenge, but it is emotional. Man feels it, lives it. Failing to identify the religious form of the problem of evil will appear insensitive; failure to address the theological form will seem intellectually insulting. This conundrum will never be completely met during our earthly life, but there are many biblical and philosophical resources that help mitigate it.
One of the many questions Augustine raised is ‘what is evil’? Committing an act of evil is doing something malicious; the act is done with the intent to cause harm. However, there is a problem with this definition
Philosophers of the Medieval period struggled with the problem of evil - specifically, the existence of evil brought a question to the fore: if the world was created by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, then how was it that evil existed? To further complicate the matter, a second question branched off of the first as individuals pondered over whether or not God was ultimately the cause of evil. If God created everything, and evil exists as part of everything, then God, logically, had created evil. But this presented yet another issue, in that if God had knowingly created evil, then he could not truly be all-good. And it is these concerns that philosophers addressed.
Whether or not humans are instinctively good or evil has been a much talked about debate for many years and is known as an unanswerable question. Determinists, such as Thomas Hobbs, have come to the conclusion that humans are naturally evil and it is within our basic instincts to be greedy, selfish and otherwise drawn to chaos. Hobbs states that “our true nature arises in times of strife and it is within us, when threatened, to self preserve.” I on the other hand disagree with this famous philosophers take on human nature. In this short essay, I will argue that human beings are born with the instinct to be good and to love one another, as well as to be loved.
It therefore appears evident that God must be the root of all evil, as He created all things. However, Augustine delves deeper in search for a true answer. This paper will follow ...
Augustine. On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print.
In the Confessions, Augustine wrote about his struggle with understanding how evil exists in a world created by God. He questioned how it was possible and why God allows evil in his creations because God is supremely good. After delving into finding a solution, Augustine concluded that evil does not exist, and the things deemed as evil are caused by free will. This paper will argue that Augustine has successfully proven that evil does not exist by explaining his earlier explanation of the origin of evil taught by the Manicheans, explaining Augustine’s teachings, and finally, using the textual descriptions of Augustine’s unwillingness to convert as support for his conclusion.
would like to thinks so. Or do we act in a negative, more primitive and bloodthirsty way,
Johnson, Robert, Johnson,. "Kant's Moral Philosophy." Stanford University. Stanford University, 23 Feb. 2004. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.
Williams, Michael. The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology. (Eds. Greco, J. and Sosa, E.). Blackwell.(1999). Chapter 1. pp. 35-69.
Evil 's beginning can be found in Genesis chapter three when the serpent begins to tempt Eve. Evil can be anything of God 's creation that man has put a twisted spin on in order for it to be pleasurable or satisfying. Because humans find pleaure in evil, it begins to diminish the relationship to God, and blinds man from the truth of the gospel. Because of evil, some have tried to pin the point of evil onto God since He is the creator of everything, thus creating problems between God and evil by trying to draw distinctions between the two. The problem with evil is that it takes different forms, according to Erickson one form is that of religion when "some particular aspect of one 's experience has had the effect of calling into question the greatness or goodness of God, and hence threatens the relationship between the believer and God." 11 The next form is theological saying that "it is not a question of how a specific concrete situation can exist of light of God 's being what and who he is, but of how any such problem could possibly exist." 12 By identifying these different types of problems with evil, the soultion will be realized. One way of solving this debate is to leave the idea of God 's omnipotence. This approach is called finitism, which says that there are two principles within the universe, "God and the power of evil" 13
Author Claudia Gray stated, “Self-knowledge is better than self-control any day” (Goodreads). Evil and sin exists in our world today and the temptation they bring bounds many human’s spiritual being. Finding the root of all evil is a hard and torturous concept to understand, but knowing one’s own free will helps bring understanding and deliverance from the evils of the world. Throughout the book Confessions Saint Augustine “ponders the concepts of evil and sin and searches the root of their being” (Augustine 15). The existence of evil is one of the most worrisome challenges a Christian or any individual deals with throughout life. Saint Augustine’s beliefs concerning the root of all evil and sins transforms as he begins to grow and develop in the knowledge of his free will and spiritual being. Early on, he believes “God created all things and evil is a thing, therefore God created evil” (Augustine 73-74). From this he conceives the notion that God cannot be good if he knowingly created evil. As Augustine begins to grow in his spiritual walk, his views begin to evolve as he questions his Manichee’s beliefs and explores the concepts of good and evil. From his inquiring Augustine develops the question, what is evil and what if evil did not need creating? He asks, “Do we have any convincing evidence that a good God exists” (Augustine 136-137)?