Augustine and Evodius begin the second book as Evodius asks why God would decide to give humans free will. He believes that in not doing so, humans would not have the ability to sin. Furthermore all good comes from God, human beings are from Him, and the gift of free will is good. Humans can live justly and rightly if they choose and will. Free will was given to permit humans to live rightly. God punishes those who use their free will to do wrong, seeing that they could have used it for good instead.
Just like many of us wonder and question who God is, and whether or not He exists, Augustine and Evodius speak on the existence of God. Augustine shows the distinction between two verses found in the Scriptures. He points out that Jesus first asks his followers to believe in Him, “Unless you believe you will not understand.”(Isaiah 7:9), but later these words begin to change: “that they may know you, the true God.” If one believes, one should seek to know who God is. But it is necessary first to believe in Him.
The truth of numbers has nothing to do with the senses of our bodies. Senses are experienced by all but can be perceived differently. Nevertheless, numbers are constant and universal. The scriptures links wisdom to numbers in Ecclesiastes 7:25, “…that I might know and consider and seek after wisdom and number.”
Wisdom exists, and wise people can be found, but this question follows; does every person have their own wisdom? So that there are as many wisdoms as there are human minds and wise people. Or is wisdom a single thing although there exists many different highest goods?
3 comments:
I think the point is that wisdom is a single form that we all share. Wisdom is one concept that everyone may have an individual sense of, but it all stems from a single configuration. I think the same holds true for goodness. When Augustine and Evodius discuss numbers as constant and not of the body, wisdom and goodness can be described the same way. There is a universal model for each of these concepts that we all share and know in a way in which we cannot perceive through our senses.
One great Question that Augustine raises is whether there is one single wisdom universally present to everyone, or individual wisdoms that vary from person to person. It seems right that wisdom, like the eidos, is available to everyone. It is only experiences that enhance the wisdom of a person. But is this truly one single wisdom that we all uncover depending on the paths in life that we take? Or do we each have our own wisdom that we in fact do not share at all? Wisdom is hard to judge because it is not something that is tangible. It is very hard to measure because there is not a scale for it nor do we have a set of standards.
Wisdom as a term is in reference to a greater form of higher knowledge. However, because we cannot all learn the same exact things, it becomes something that varies from person to person. For one, a form of wisdom may be having a deeper understanding of what it means to be truly happy in their own lives while for another person it could be attaining the most amount of information possible about the world around them. Therefore, there can be no universal sense of wisdom because we cannot possibly judge what a greater or lesser form of the highest possible learning should be.
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