ABSTRACT
Augustinus Aurelius, Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo introduced to western thought one of the most influential accounts of the nature of evil. For Augustine, moral evil in the world is a consequence of decisions made by personal, created beings. Manichaeism provided Augustine with an attractive and explanatory cosmogony that served as a basis for a rigorous spirituality. Augustine ultimately came to doubt the scientific veracity and moral psychology of the Manichaean teachings and parted ways with the movement. He ultimately rejected their teachings after reading some books by the Platonists, translated from the Greek into Latin. The best-known representative of the Neoplatonic tradition, Plotinus distinguished between the Good and the ontologically higher realm of pure being on the one hand, and that of the lower material world on the other. Augustine subsequently adopted Plotinus' account of evil in several notable respects, affirming, in particular, God as the good itself.
