Monday, October 5, 2009

Free Choice of Will - Book Two

In Book Two of Augustine’s Free Choice of the Will, Augustine argues with Evodius about what it means to understand. The passage started by the two of them talking about where the free choice of will came from. Evodius was saying that without free will we would never sin, so why would God give it to us? Antigone then explained that without wrong, there is no right. If we didn’t know what was the wrong thing to do, we would never know what the better choice was. The fear of punishment for doing what’s wrong is what makes us make good decisions. No one wants to deal with the consequences of making poor choices.

Augustine and Evodius then discuss religion, and how people know that God created anything, and furthermore how do we know that God even exists? Evodius then started to doubt his own faith, because he realized that very few things on this earth are really completely known. How do we know what it means to fully understand something?

Throughout this passage, Augustine puts things in lists of most important to least important. For example, he says that understanding is more important than what is alive, and what is alive is more important than what exists. This is because what is alive and exists we can still understand. Understanding goes with everything. This seems to link up to the class discussions about eidos. Eidos is like the understanding, and what is alive is what comes from the eidos.

Augustine and Evodius discuss the five senses and numbers. We know what our senses are, but we don’t necessarily know how they are used universally. For example, everyone eats and tastes food, but our senses react differently to it. This is why some people like certain foods and others don’t. On the other hand, numbers are universal. Numbers are one of the only things that does not change, and people do not have different opinions or reactions to the rules of mathematics.

The main message of Book Two is to think about what it means to understand something. For that matter, what is wisdom? Is wisdom what you get when you have an overall, flawless understanding of a concept? Is it ever even attainable?

3 comments:

espino said...

What is wisdom and is it within our capacity to attain this? This is something I've always wondered about. Wisdom seems to have its source in the divine, God, world of forms, etc. yet it needs to be applicable to human life, it needs to be concrete enough to be practiced not just thought about. Yet, reason if anything could be the only thing that can grasp it or understand it, but of course this understanding will be tried by experience.

DomPlav said...

I think that Augustine made a suitable analogy when he compared wisdom to light. He explained that wisdom is like the light of the sun, in that everything we can look upon to understand our world is touched by it. Some people, in search for the true wisdom, may look into the absolute version of wisdom (possibly its Eidos?) and will not be able to see it properly, as their mind cannot yet fathom true wisdom in its entirety; this is as if one tried to view the source of light (the sun) they would be blinded. I feel that Augustine may believe that only after our death, that is, the separation between our soul and body, will we be able to clearly look to wisdom with full ability and understanding.

Prof. Ashley Vaught said...

Cala, on one point you are really wrong: it is not the case that knowing the wrong illuminates the right. In fact, were that so, there would be something to "know" about evil, which Augustine persistently denies. Only the good can be known.

I think the wisdom and light analogy is also very helpful, Dominique. And I like that you pointed out how blinding the sun can be and if there is a analogue in wisdom. Whether or not that is true, I am less certain about.