Free Will In Confessions By Plato And St. Augustine

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How can people willingly do wrong? According to the philosophers St. Augustine of Hippo and Socrates, as recorded by Plato, the concept of free will must be understood according to their ideas of what constituted sin. By comparison, the two philosophers also defined will in relation to knowledge and fragmented will. Socrates argued that one can not act wrongly or knowingly in his Apology. His belief stemmed from our awareness that our actions are determined by our knowledge of what is good. St. Augustine formulates his topic of free and fragmented will in his book Confessions. St. Augustine’s deeply religious beliefs in God defined free will as having the ability to freely choose our actions and beliefs. This may lead to evil as well as goodness. Though both philosophers’ arguments differ in their opinion that there is an inherent ability for one to willingly do wrong resulting from one’s acquired knowledge and actions, I believe that St Augustine’s view of vice and free will is the proper way to answer this question based on his beliefs that our intellect and appetite dictates our actions.
Before we look into Socrates’ and St. Augustine’s view on vice we must first define what vice itself is. To understand what vice is we must first …show more content…
Socrates view that if you know what is right you cannot do what is wrong fails in today’s society. People who sin or do wrong most of the time know that what they are doing is wrong but still do the wrong because they are moved by there emotions. Our society’s way of acting can be explained more thoroughly by St. Augustine’s theory of free will. He adequately explains how a person has three faculties of the soul, the will, the intellect, and the appetite. We are able to sin and commit vice when our will chooses our appetite over our intellect because we have free
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