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Work #124 · Early period

On Free Choice of the Will

De Libero Arbitrio — Augustine's early dialogue on the problem of evil and the freedom of the will

Augustine of Hippo · c. 387–395 (Book I in Rome 388; Books II–III at Hippo c. 391–395) · Late Latin · Three-book philosophical dialogue with his friend Evodius

Tradition: Latin Christianity / Augustinian theology

God is not the author of evil — free will is; and yet the will's very freedom is itself a divine gift

De Libero Arbitrio is Augustine's most extended early philosophical engagement with the problem of evil. The three books, composed across roughly seven years, develop the position that evil is not a substance authored by God but the privation of good produced by the misuse of free will. The dialogue runs against the Manichean dualism Augustine had recently rejected (the Manicheans treated evil as a real co-eternal substance). The work's defence of free will sits in apparent tension with Augustine's later strong-grace theology (against Pelagius), and the Pelagians cited De Libero Arbitrio against him; Augustine responded in the Retractations (427) by noting the work's pre-grace-controversy context but not retracting its arguments. The book is the foundational Christian philosophical text on free will and evil.

Author

Editions cited

  • On Free Choice of the Will (Thomas Williams, Hackett, 1993)
  • On Free Choice of the Will (Anna Benjamin & L. H. Hackstaff, Bobbs-Merrill, 1964)
Compare this work

School Embodiments

Catholic/Thomistic · 25%
Lutheranism · 15%
Reformed / Calvinist Theology · 15%
Neo-Platonism · 15%
Rationalism · 10%
Platonism (Classical) · 10%
Christian Personalism · 10%
Augustinianism · 8%
Catholic/Thomistic 25%

Aquinas develops Augustine's privation theory of evil and the doctrine of free will under grace (Summa I-II q.79). The Catholic philosophical tradition's account of evil descends from this text.

"Evil is no positive nature but the loss of good." (De Libero Arbitrio II.20)
Lutheranism 15%

Luther engages De Libero Arbitrio in the Bondage of the Will — partly accepting Augustine's framework while pushing the bound-will doctrine harder. Erasmus cited De Libero Arbitrio in his Diatribe.

"Free will is not equal in the fallen and unfallen state." (De Libero Arbitrio III, paraphrasing)
Reformed / Calvinist Theology 15%

Calvin and the Reformed tradition treat De Libero Arbitrio as one source of the privation theory of evil and the doctrine that pre-fall free will is the ontological situation only of unfallen creatures.

"The cause of sin's evil is the deficient cause of the will." (De Libero Arbitrio III)
Neo-Platonism 15%

Augustine's privation theory of evil is taken over from Plotinus's Enneads I.8 and the broader Neo-Platonist tradition. Evil as the absence of being is Plotinian first, Christian second.

"Evil is no nature; the loss of good has received the name evil." (De Libero Arbitrio III.13)
Rationalism 10%

The dialogue's rigorous deductive structure and its reliance on the inner certainty of the cogito-like "si fallor, sum" anticipate Cartesian rationalism.

"If you did not exist, it would not be possible for you to be deceived." (De Libero Arbitrio II.3, the anti-skeptical argument)
Platonism (Classical) 10%

Augustine's engagement with Platonism is visible throughout — the priority of intelligible over sensible, the doctrine of recollection-like apprehension of eternal truths.

"The truth that we apprehend by the mind is better than the truths we apprehend by the senses." (De Libero Arbitrio II, paraphrasing)
Christian Personalism 10%

Augustine's analysis of the will as a constitutive feature of the human person — capable of turning toward or away from God — is foundational for modern Christian personalism.

"The good will is the better part of man." (De Libero Arbitrio I, paraphrasing)
Augustinianism 8%

Augustinian tradition.

Internal Tensions

Augustine's later anti-Pelagian theology of grace pulls strongly against the early De Libero Arbitrio's emphasis on free will. The Retractations acknowledge the tension without resolving it. Modern Augustinian scholarship (Peter Brown, Carol Harrison) reads the early and late Augustine as developing a single position with different emphases under different polemical contexts.

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I. Time

Standard Christian-cosmological background. Time within fallen history is the medium of moral choice; eternity is God's mode.

Attributes
Extent: Both Ontological Status: Substantival Grain: Continuous Freedom: Both Traversability: Linear Direction: Uni-directional Dimensionality: One
✦

II. Space

Standard.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Substantival Curvature: Flat Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
◉

III. Matter

Created good; against Manichean dualism, matter is not the source of evil.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Substantival Conservation: Conserved Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
◎

IV. Observer

The Augustinian observer is the free created will — embodied, plural, active. Moral authority is scripture; metaphysical agency is personal.

Attributes
Time Instance: Multiple Space Instance: Single Knowledge Extent: Immediate Knowledge Retainment: Total Physicality: Both Agency: Active Number: Plural Metaphysical Agency: Personal
⚡

V. Energy

Standard medieval Christian doctrine of divine sustenance.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Substantival Conservation: Conserved Dispersibility: Irreversible
⧉

VI. Information

God's knowledge is total. Personal information is conserved.

Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival Cosmic Conservation: Conserved Personal Conservation: Conserved Granularity: Continuous

Personas that cite this work

Augustine of Hippo Thomas Aquinas

Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint

Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.

97%
Al-Kindi
29/30
97%
Athanasius of Alexandria
29/30
97%
Basil of Caesarea (Basil the Great)
29/30
97%
Irenaeus of Lyon
29/30
97%
Jerome (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus)
29/30
97%
John Chrysostom
29/30

Computed school proximity

The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.

84%
Lutheranism
24/26
78%
Methodism
23/26
78%
Southern Baptist / Baptist Tradition
23/26
78%
Radical Reformation / Anabaptism
23/26
76%
Reformed / Calvinist Theology
22/26
76%
Christian Personalism
23/26
75%
Evangelical Protestantism
22/26
74%
Christianity (Generic)
22/26

How On Free Choice of the Will resolves each dilemma

48 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 7 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 9 unaligned.

Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.

Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
How much weight do future people deserve? Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much. 47% Is regret rational? The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing. 47% Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them? Extinct species are as real as we are; they have standing. 47% Is the universe running out of usable energy? Time both has and lacks bounds depending on the level you ask at; finitude is conventional. 26% Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so? The finitude question is level-dependent; resource ethics happens at the level that constrains us. 26% Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide? The owing-and-possibility question is level-dependent; we owe what is appropriate at the level we act on. 26% Are addicts responsible for their addiction? — — Do you really choose? — — Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do? — —
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is the world created from nothing? Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance. 55% Is the physical world fully real? Yes — the physical world is fully real, mind-independent, persisting. 55% Does matter have intrinsic moral standing? Matter is morally considerable insofar as it is created or conserved good. 55% What is money? Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. 54% What is a nation? A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. 54% What makes someone male or female? Sex is a real biological kind with given content. 54% Should we edit the human germline? Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given. 54%

Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive

Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.

Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
What makes someone the same person over time?
When dementia hollows out memory, when a coma resolves with no recall, when you imagine being uploaded — the question of whether the surviving person is still you turns on what kind of thing the 'you' was to begin with.
You span moments — identity is a pattern that need not be located at a single now.
On this view, the observer is not bound to a single present. Identity is something that exists across moments — as a pattern, an ancestral line, a trans-temporal structure. Uploading, in this picture, is not a metaphysical impossibility but an engineering question; ancestors are real …
Roads not taken You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity. (36%) · You are a soul — what persists through change is the non-bodily aspect. (29%) · There was never a fixed self to either preserve or lose. (14%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Loss of memory, of recognition, of the cognitive patterns that made the person — does this end the person, or merely the person you knew? The answer turns on what makes someone who they are.
The person is the pattern across moments — diminished pattern, diminished person.
On this view, the person is constituted by a pattern extending across moments — memory, narrative, characteristic ways of being. As dementia erodes the pattern, the person is correspondingly diminished. What remains is real but is less than what was; the marriage to the person …
Roads not taken Same body, same person — even when the cognitive pattern has changed. (36%) · The soul persists; the cognitive change is the body's, not the person's. (29%) · There was no fixed person to lose; care is owed to whoever is here. (14%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
The Star Trek transporter problem: a machine scans your body atom by atom, transmits the pattern, builds an exact duplicate at the destination, and dismantles the original. Whether you arrive at the destination or die in the scanner is the question; the answer depends on what you are.
You are the pattern; the pattern survives the substrate change. You arrive.
On this view, you are the trans-temporal pattern that has shown up in this body up to now. The teleporter preserves the pattern — destroys one instance, builds another — and the pattern is what matters. You step in and you step out. The fact …
Roads not taken Different body, different person — you died in the scanner. (36%) · The soul accompanies the person; engineering can't transfer it. (29%) · There was no fixed you to either survive or fail to; the question is malformed. (14%)
Distinctive · only 13% of schools agree (26/202)
Are the dead morally present to the living?
Ancestor veneration, intercession with saints, the moral weight of a promise made to someone now gone — these all presuppose that the dead are present in some sense beyond memory. Whether they are turns on whether an observer is the kind of thing that exists in a single moment or across many.
Observers span moments; the dead are present in a real (not merely metaphorical) way.
On this view, an observer is not located at a single moment but extends across moments. The dead, on this signature, are not gone — they are elsewhere on the same trans-temporal structure that you yourself occupy. Ancestor veneration, intercession with saints, the moral weight …
Roads not taken Observers are bounded by their own moment, and no further agency makes the dead present. (44%) · The dead are present through divine memory, communion of saints, or ancestor presence. (35%) · From the standpoint of the One, the distinction between living and dead is conventional. (8%)
Distinctive · only 13% of schools agree (26/202)
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
If God knows what you will do tomorrow, does your tomorrow-self choose freely? The classical problem of foreknowledge turns on whether the divine vantage stands outside time or inside it.
An observer can occupy multiple times at once; foreknowledge is not foreordering.
On this view, observers can in principle exist in more than one moment simultaneously — and divine omniscience is exactly the case of an observer occupying all moments at once. The future actions God 'foresees' aren't foreseen at all in the temporal sense; God simply …
Roads not taken The observer is in time; foreknowledge across times raises real freedom problems. (46%) · The human observer is in time, but God's vantage is not — and foreknowledge is not foreordering. (33%) · Distinction of the One and observed time is itself conventional; the question dissolves. (8%)
26 mainstream positions
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless? Meditation accesses a trans-temporal level the ordinary observer doesn't ordinarily reach. 13% Does prayer change God's mind? Prayer participates in a trans-temporal liturgy or communion; the question of 'changing the mind' misses the trans-temporal mode. 13% Could causation work backwards? Causation runs one way — the arrow of time is real and structural. 68% Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us? The asymmetry is real because time itself has a real direction. 68% Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it? The arrow is real and structural; the asymmetry isn't an artifact of description. 68% Is environmental damage ever truly permanent? Damage is real and permanent on the relevant timescales. There is no recovery; there is only limitation. 66% Can a civilization recover from collapse? Civilizational complexity is hard to build and easy to lose; recovery is at best partial. 66% Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally? Entropy is what time is. The moral weight, if any, is the weight of working against the current. 66% When does a person begin? A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence. 54% What is marriage? Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make. 54% What is our place in nature? Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. 48% Should we colonize space? Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship. 48% Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination? Genetic modification is cultivation by other means. 48% Is reality fundamentally digital? No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure. 44% Are there indivisible units of experience? No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness. 44% Is memory stored or reconstructed? Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed. 44% What happens to "you" when you die? A soul continues into another mode of being. 37% Can prayer for someone far away affect them? Prayer reaches because God or a cosmic ordering acts on the prayed-for. 37% Are coincidences ever more than coincidence? What looks like coincidence is providence — there is no such thing as a real coincidence. 37% Could an AI have a mind that matters? No — minds are not the kind of thing we engineer. 30% Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans? Moral standing comparable to humans requires what only humans have. 29% Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious? Without ensoulment, an organoid is tissue, not a person. 29% Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally? Distance doesn't dilute obligation; communion of saints / divine relation spans the cosmos. 29% Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it? Defer to credentialed traditions; experts are the modern analog. 28% Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge? Revelation is the paradigm case of authoritative knowledge. 28% Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces? An LLM has no soul to whom revelation could be addressed; the question doesn't apply. 28%
6 unaligned
Does history have a direction or meaning? Schools split: 37% / 23% / 19% — How is knowledge of reality produced? Schools split: 25% / 17% / 13% — Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal? Schools split: 15% / 14% / 4% — Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed? Schools split: 65% / 16% / 10% — What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize? Schools split: 44% / 16% / 14% — Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species? Schools split: 40% / 28% / 14% —
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets? Information is conserved — the personal pattern is held even when an individual mind loses it. 39% Does deleting your data online destroy something real? Information at the cosmic level isn't destroyed; deletion only obscures access. 39% Could the dead, in principle, be brought back? The information that constitutes a person is conserved; restoration is in principle possible. 39% Is forgiveness ontologically possible? The offense persists ontologically; forgiveness is real moral work, but it doesn't erase what was. 39%
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