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Augustine's Metaphysics and Free Will

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Frederick Sontag
Affiliation:
Collegio di S. Anselmo, Rome

Extract

“Free Will” is not a problem which can simply be answered. The long history surrounding this issue would seem to indicate that. It is not that an answer is impossible; on the contrary, the problem is that many answers may be given and no single one can be established to the exclusion of all others. Which answer is adopted depends upon one's metaphysics, upon one's basic assumptions about the first principles which govern and structure the world. Does all this leave us lost in a helpless pluralism where freedom of the will is concerned, an issue which might well be the crucial problem of our own era and which certainly has been important in every philosophical age? No, not unless we adopt an attitude of scepticism where metaphysics is concerned. Thus, our success in dealing with free will depends upon our metaphysical competence. If we can analyze previous metaphysical views and then construct and defend our own, we can still structure an answer to the issue of freedom of the will.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1967

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References

1 Trans. Benjamin & Hakstaff (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1964). All page references are to this edition.