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Full Idea
Augustine solution to the problem of evil was to say that, strictly speaking, evil does not exist. Human beings are not part evil and part good, but rather just a limited amount of goodness.
Gist of Idea
Augustine said evil does not really exist, and evil is a limitation in goodness
Source
report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 2.III
Book Ref
Perkins,Franklin: 'Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed' [Continuum 2007], p.44
A Reaction
Augustine was rebelling against Manicheanism, which he espoused when young, which proposed a good and an evil force. An apathetic slob seems devoid of goodness, but is not evil. It takes extra effort to perform active evil.
| 22167 | Our images of bodies are not produced by the bodies, but by our own minds [Augustine, by Aquinas] |
| 4348 | Love, and do what you will [Augustine] |
| 22117 | Our minds grasp reality by direct illumination (rather than abstraction from experience) [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 22118 | Augustine created the modern concept of the will [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 7821 | Pagans produced three hundred definitions of the highest good [Augustine, by Grayling] |
| 22119 | Augustine said (unusually) that 'ought' does not imply 'can' [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 22116 | Augustine identified Donatism, Pelagianism and Manicheism as the main heresies [Augustine, by Matthews] |
| 19338 | Augustine said evil does not really exist, and evil is a limitation in goodness [Augustine, by Perkins] |