Augustine of Hippo’s On Free Choice of the Will (in Latin, De Libero Arbitrio) is a work of Christian philosophy that explores human free will and the nature of evil. It was written in two stages during the closing years of the 4th century. The first book was written between 387 and 388, while Books 2 and 3 were written a few years later. The work was completed by the year 395, when Augustine sent a copy of it to a friend, Paulinus of Nola. Born in North Africa and trained in rhetoric and the liberal arts from a young age, Augustine converted to Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church at the age of 30. He was ordained a priest and then a bishop a few years later and spent more than 30 years as the bishop of Hippo near the port city that is now Annaba, Algeria.

Plot Summary

On Free Choice of the Will deals with one of the principal paradoxes that Augustine had to overcome during his conversion to the Christian faith: How can a good God allow evil to persist in the world, and who is to blame for that evil? The work is divided into three separate books (or sections), and all serve to answer the question that is asked at the start of the first book: is God the cause of evil? Book 1 concerns itself with whether or not free will exists, whether God exists, and what it means to choose virtue and goodness. Book 2 asks whether or not the gift of free will is a good thing, and whether or not it should have been made a part of human nature. Book 3 rounds out the discussion by asking about the source of evil. Augustine structured the three parts of the discussion as a dialogue between Augustine (a wise persona representing himself) and Evodius, a good-faith interlocutor who probes Augustine for answers to the questions that vex him. Evodius’s remarks punctuate Augustine’s philosophical explanations with an accessible, conversational rhythm.

The text deals with questions about the soul and its powers, the intellect, the will, and how the will finds itself free to act and choose. As all arguments must make certain assumptions at the outset, the critical assumption for Augustine’s logic is that God exists, and that God is perfectly good and perfectly just. This premise allows Augustine to conclude that a perfectly good and just God that brings creation into being would not create human beings who had no means by which to be good themselves. This being the case, the will must be free, since it is only through voluntary choices that human beings can make virtuous decisions. Free will is what allows human beings to be good.

This gift of a free will, however, is also what allows human beings to make evil choices and act wickedly. Free will is thus the cause of evil. Augustine asks whether this is acceptable: shouldn’t a good god have prevented human beings from being wicked? If God is the creator of the human soul—which, in turn, is the cause of evil—doesn’t this make God the cause of evil? Augustine’s answer is simple: no, God is not the cause of evil. God is the cause of all that exists, but evil itself is a flaw, a defect; it is “no-thing.” The flaws and defects that are sinful in humans are caused by defects in the human soul that human beings voluntarily choose. Any evil that is suffered in the world, then, is directly caused by sin—either by personal sin, committed at the individual level, or by original sin, which fractured reality from the beginning.

Augustine argues that if human beings are to be agents of virtue and goodness, their free will is necessary, and that a good God would not create rational automatons that could only do good out of necessity. Augustine contends, in fact, that if there were no free will, there could not be any goodness. Love—the object that goodness is ordered towards—is impossible without freedom; love that is not free is not love at all. Freedom, however, is not simply the possibility of making any choice at all. This would be false freedom, or license. True freedom means possessing the power to desire what is good and having the ability to pursue the good. Freedom involves choice, to be sure, but it is only true freedom when the choice is made for good.

This study guide refers to the edition titled On Free Choice of the Will, translated by Thomas Williams, published in 1993 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.