Augustine Nature Of Evil Essay

In our life, actions are considered either good or bad. They are rules and laws that are put in place to prevent people from doing wrong and evil to each other. We learn how to make right decisions. We have a sense of what is right and wrong. The leads to the question that ask is something wrong because it is against the law or is it against the law because it is wrong? As humans, we desire a lot of things. We have a desire for safety, money, justice, respect, and infinite amount more. Our desires not being aligned right lead us to wrongdoing. What makes an action evil is not that it is against the law or someone says that it is wrong, but the fact that it goes against virtue and is the product of inordinate desire.

In Augustine’s book On

Free Choice of the Will, he provides an argument on what makes an action wrong. In his scenario, Augustine looks at adultery and the case of a murder. Augustine argues that “what makes adultery evil is inordinate desire, whereas so long as you look for the evil in the external visible act, you are bound to encounter difficulties” (Augustine 5). Augustine shows that what makes adultery evil is the desire for sex against justice and respect for one’s wife. When someone commits adultery, they lack the desire of respect for others and desire sex over respect. A law against adultery does make it wrong. What makes an action wrong does not come from the outside, but internally within the person. Augustine expands farther on this by arguing that a person would commit murder if a “man kills someone, not out of cupidity for something that he deserves to gain, but because he fears that some harm will come to himself” (Augustine 6). Living without fear is a good desire, but the lack of the desire for justice makes murdering out of fear an evil. Augustine’s understanding of inordinate desire can be farther applied to everyday examples.
To understand Augustine’s argument for inordinate desire leading to evil, it is important to understand what we should desire.

Augustine shows that we should desire the four cardinal virtues of prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. Augustine shows that these four virtues relate to good by using Evodius to say that “all four virtues that you just described, with my agreement, are present in those who love their own good will and value it highly” (Augustine). Augustine believes that these cardinal virtues are unchanging and eternal, and could be held onto by simply wanting them. To do a good action, one must desire these four virtues over other worldly desires like living without fear. In any evil action, one or more of these cardinal virtues are not prioritized at the top and are below some other desire. With this understanding in hand, it is clear why evil actions are wrong. We can see how inordinate desire lead to wrongdoings in everyday life with another example.

Augustine’s idea of inordinate desire applies to what makes an action wrong in our everyday life. Cheating off someone’s test is considered a terrible and despicable thing to do. The person cheating wants to pass the test and do well. The desire to pass a test is not a bad desire by any stretch. However, the lack of desire for justice and respect in this action makes it wrong. Cheating on a test disrespects those who work hard to study and prepare for the test. We have rules and laws against actions like

cheating and murder because they are the product of inordinate desire.
Morality and what makes an action right or wrong is unchanging. Morality is not dependent on any wordily things. Morality and the ability to desire the right things comes from inside us. Augustine argues for an eternal and unchanging law for morality by stating the laws is “the highest reason, which must always be obeyed, and by which the wicked deserve misery and the good deserve a happy like, and by which the laws that we agreed to call ’temporal’ is rightly enacted and rightly changed” (Augustine 11). Augustine argues that the law of the land is the temporal and temporary law we live under. Those laws can change through politics. However, the law of morality comes from something eternal and unchanging. Since God is eternal and unchanging, and he is the creator of mankind, then the law for morality is unchanging. Since the eternal law is unchanging, murder, theft, and adultery is never a right action just because the temporal law allows it. Therefore, the law of the land is only just if it aligns if the eternal law. The eternal law determines are morality. I believe that God has given us the ability to desire the right things if we choose so. But since we begin to be tempted by other desires, we develop an inordinate desire that will lead to evil actions. In Augustine argument, what determines morality is something spiritual inside of us and is not determine by the laws of the land.