ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines Saint Augustine's De Libero Arbitrio, in order to uncover what that role of the will may be, and Augustine's understanding of the moral self. Augustine is most concerned about goes a long way toward explaining certain features that many moderns find unsettling in reading De Libero Arbitrio. After writing De Libero Arbitrio he wrote about assent in the Confessions in explicit terms of moral and spiritual struggle. In his thorough treatment of free will in Augustine, Christopher Kirwan offers a highly sophisticated discussion of Augustine's "free will defense" that is a helpful place to begin. Thus the deep purpose behind the De Libero Arbitrio is to get the soul to understand itself morally and to understand that it cannot understand itself morally unless it understands itself in relation to God. Augustine and Saint Evodius and the reader are about to educate themselves and bring their minds and wills into line with the truth.
