Since the arrival humans, we have made a large impact on the world. We have shaped our society to what it is today with thoughts and actions. Our actions can be “good” or”bad”, but with every action there will be a reaction. Every person will have an impact on someone or something, and I think no matter how big or small that action is , it will have a meaningful effect one way or another. Firstly I want to cover what Augustine wrote about free will and God. Augustine describes God as a omnipotent and all-knowing being. He also states that “God knows all things that will come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us because we will it.”. I fully agree with Augustine when he says this, and it's not to …show more content…
We often think that a person’s free actions are actions that they do as a result of exercising their free will. Consider a woman who is contemplating doing something such as whether or not to exercise, she will go over all the reasons that she needs to exercise, and make her decision of wether or not she will do it. Human actions are those actions that result from the rational thoughts of humans, we then see that the possibility of free action depends on the possibility of free will. To say that a person acted freely is to say that the person was successful in carrying out a free volition . Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy on free will covers this perfectly. He states that is there is not only free will, but that man is "condemned " to it, which places all obligation in his hands for his life, as well as all others. He defends this claim by expressing that since man "invents" his own meaning to life, that whatever he "creates" is his real self. Unlike Sartre’s positive outlook on life, Arthur Schopenhauer holds disdain about the world and humanity. Schopenhauer explains that human existence is meaningless due to lack
The Augustinian solution to the problem of free will and foreknowledge is given in chapter 30 of “The City of God” (Book XXII). Augustine maintains that free will is not absent in the City of God simply because
So I believe that Sartre prepares the best argument out of Darwin and Freud to explain the choosing of our paths in life. As Freud applies that child develop is chosen and Darwin thinks it was a process of natural selection, we are in fact the result of choices both of others and ourselves to make the actions and effects that we create society. We are all are not to blame higher power for choosing of accountability when we negatively affect others. In lacking of the higher power that no other source can value to the other our own actions. From Sartre’s argument, it is obvious that we are giving the freedom to choose our purpose in life and that we presented with free will in all the situations.
As a matter of fact, Augustine does not realize that if it is as he argues that God foreknows every event in the world, then God created determined creatures that have no knowledge of being determined. Augustine points out that, “…although God foreknows our future wills, it does not follow from this that we do not will something by our own will.” (3.3.7.27). Augustine’s argument here supports my criticism. Namely, what follows from this argument is that humans in reality are not free because every action that they will is necessary, thus already pre-determined by God. What Augustine does not realize is that his argument actually proves that humans have no knowledge of being determined—but they are determined! Therefore, as I shall point out, God could have created a determined world, without evil, where beings act freely not knowing that they in fact are determined.
We choose, act, and take responsibility for everything, and thus we live, and exist. Life cannot be anything until it is lived, but each individual must make sense of it. The value of life is nothing else but the sense each person fashions into it. To argue that we are the victims of fate, of mysterious forces within us, of some grand passion, or heredity, is to be guilty of bad faith. Sartre says that we can overcome the adversity presented by our facticity, a term he designs to represent the external factors that we have no control over, such as the details of our birth, our race, and so on, by inserting nothingness into it.
The power of acting without necessity and acting on one’s own discretions, free will still enamors debates today, as it did in the past with philosophers Nietzsche, Descartes, and Hume. There are two strong opposing views on the topic, one being determinism and the other “free will”. Determinism, or the belief a person lacks free will and all events including human actions are determined by forces outside the will of an individual contrasts the entire premise of free will. Rene Descartes formulates his philosophical work through deductive reasoning and follows his work with his system of reasoning. David Hume analyzes philosophical questions with inductive reasoning and skeptism with a strong systematic order. Neither a systematic philosopher nor a rigid thinker, Nietzsche offers his own nihilistic spin on the topic of free will. The three different approaches of free will by Nietzsche, Hume, and Descartes all obtain their strong suits as well as their pitfalls. Nietzsche insists free will is created by theologians and therefore denies its existence, while Descartes embraces free will, and Hume individualizes the meaning of free will.
The argument of whether humans are pre-determined to turn out how we are and act the way we do or if we are our own decision makers and have the freedom to choose our paths in life is a long-standing controversy. As a psychologist in training and based on my personal beliefs, I do not believe that we truly have this so called free will. It is because of this that I choose to believe that the work of free will by d’Holbach is the most accurate. Although the ideas that Hume and Chisolm present are each strong in their own manner, d’Holbach presents the best and most realistic argument as to how we choose our path; because every event has a cause, we cannot have free will. Not only this, but also, that since there is always an external cause, we can never justify blame. Now let’s review Hume and Chisolm’s arguments and point out why I do not think that they justly describe free will.
The first question is an extremely difficult one to answer. Augustine and Calvin define God’s foreknowledge as "The future will happen a certain way, because God foreknows it. If God knows the future with absolute certainty, then are humans truly free? No, if God knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I will choose to do from now to eternity, then I am not truly free. That is not to say that what is happening is caused by God, because that is a totally different claim. But if God knows the future and God knows what I am going to have for lunch tomorrow, and God cannot be wrong, then I do not have the ability to choose other than, what God knows I am going to have for lunch tomorrow. Some use the argument, everyone is free and has had the choice, but the choice has already been made in God’s eyes, because God is eternal and outside of time. That is ho...
...lighted” Augustine’s body (Confessions VIII. 5, p. 148). In this example, regardless of Augustine’s want to will succumbing to God, he found that his habits had rendered him unable to. His will in favor of the lower things held Augustine tighter than his will for God, which caused Augustine to choose the lesser good, which left him “in the midst of that great tumult I had stirred up against my own soul in the chamber of my heart” (Confessions VIII. 7, p.152). His two wills tore at him until he fully abandoned his earthly lust for the spiritual Godly desires; supporting his conclusion that free will in favor of the lesser goods causes evil. Therefore, free will is the ultimate source of evil.
“Please tell me: isn’t God the cause of evil?” (Augustine, 1). With this question to Augustine of Hippo, Evodius begins a philosophical inquiry into nature of evil. Augustine, recently baptized by Saint Ambrose in Milan, began writing his treatise On Free Choice of the Will in 387 C.E. This work laid down the foundation for the Christian doctrine regarding the will’s role in sinning and salvation. In it, Augustine and his interlocutor investigate God’s existence and his role in creating evil. They attempt not only to understand what evil is, and the possibility of doing evil, but also to ascertain why God would let humans cause evil. Central to the premise of this entire dialogue is the concept of God, as relates to Christianity; what is God, and what traits separate Him from humans? According to Christianity, God is the creator of all things, and God is good; he is omnipotent, transcendent, all-knowing, and atemporal- not subject to change over time- a concept important to the understanding of the differences between this world and the higher, spiritual realm He presides over. God’s being is eidos, the essence which forms the basis of humans. With God defined, the core problem being investigated by Augustine and Evodius becomes clear. Augustine states the key issue that must be reconciled in his inquiry; “we believe that everything that exists comes from the one God, and yet we believe that God is not the cause of sins. What is troubling is that if you admit that sins come from… God, pretty soon you’ll be tracing those sins back to God” (Augustine, 3).
Before we dive into what Augustine has to say about free will, we must first understand what the problem is. In The HarperCollins Dictionary of Philosophy, the problem of free will is defined as:
Freedom, or the concept of free will seems to be an elusive theory, yet many of us believe in it implicitly. On the opposite end of the spectrum of philosophical theories regarding freedom is determinism, which poses a direct threat to human free will. If outside forces of which I have no control over influence everything I do throughout my life, I cannot say I am a free agent and the author of my own actions. Since I have neither the power to change the laws of nature, nor to change the past, I am unable to attribute freedom of choice to myself. However, understanding the meaning of free will is necessary in order to decide whether or not it exists (Orloff, 2002).
Augustine was similar to Socrates and Plato in that he recognized that people, including himself, could act sinfully out of pure ignorance. His ideas contrast with that of the two philosophers when he further suggests that people can display a deliberate evil intent without being ignorant as well. Ultimately, God has his reasons for allowing men to have freedom of will. What humanity chooses to do with that freedom will determine the extent of “goodness” in their life, and we will all learn to define happiness on our own
Many religious critics have questioned Christianity because of the simple fact of “blind faith”. This meaning faith in the unseen or believing in something that you have never actually seen for yourself. Saint Augustine of Hippo, a very influential Christian theologian, explored this in his essay “Concerning Faith Unseen”. He makes the point that many people refuse to believe in something that they cannot see for themselves. What possesses Christians to believe in God if they have never seen him with there eyes? Our minds are mad to believe the things which cannot be seen and thus it is ok to believe in them.
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)?
Sartre believes that freedom, in terms of free choices, is a center and unique potentiality, which human all have in nature. We can choose to do what we want. It is the right that no one can take away from us. Freedom, in my opinion, is subjective because it exists in our mind, and only we can be aware of it. Sartre also ignores the determinism theory, which states that everything has be set up in a certain way, and that we can only follow that pathway. I, in the other hand, agree on both theories: freedom and determinism. It is true that we human have our choices to choose for our life. However, we don’t absolutely have choice for everything. Everything has its limit, so does choices. For example, we can choose to work on whatever field we want, and we can pursue the career we dream about. However, a blind man cannot choose to be a painter. He can’t see whatever he wants to see. Or in the other words, our choices are limited by our capacity and our ability. However, this is the only perspective that I consider the presence of determinism. Most of the time, I strongly agree to Sartre’s freedom of choices because it is also my motor. I could do whatever I want, but whatever I choose I’m the one responsible for it. For instance, I was born in a traditional Vietnamese family. Since I was young, because of my parents’ wish, I was always trying my best to become a doctor, which means less