Augustine, as a Platonist, underrates sense knowledge.

Augustine, as a Platonist, underrates sense knowledge. More about St. Augustine's Illumination. Metaphysics God: The existence of God is proved: (1) a priori, by the presence of eternal truths, which take their origin from the Eternal and Necessary Being; (2) a posteriori, by the imperfection and change of beings, a fact which presupposes a perfect and unchangeable being.

Regarding the nature of God, Augustine holds that God is being, knowledge and love, the three attributes which are revealed also in every created being. Cosmology The world was created by God from nothing. With regard to the manner in which creation was effected, Augustine is inclined ti admit that in the beginning there were created a few species of beings, which, by virtue of the rationes seminales, gave origin to the other species down to the present state of the world.

For Augustine "time" is founded in movement, and its reality is in the intellective memory. Psychology Augustine, as a Platonist, considers the union of the soul with the body rather extrinsic. Regarding the origin of the soul, he hesitated between creationism and traducianism, but inclined toward the latter for controversial reasons. The faculties of the soul are three: memory, intellect and will; the will is free and superior to the intellect.

Along with the question of liberty, there is the problem of the presence of evil. For Augustine, evil is essentially a "privation"; the privation of a due physical perfection makes physical evil, and the privation of moral perfection makes moral evil. The cause of moral evil is neither God nor matter, but the free will, which as such is able to deviate from the right order. Suffering, whether physical or moral, is the consequence of evil.

Liberty and Grace Augustine sustained a long debate against Pelagianism. Pelagius held that human nature has not been corrupted by original sin and therefore is able of itself to attain the supernatural perfection due to it. Against this heresy, Augustine defended the absolute necessity of grace in order to attain the perfection due to man.

How the efficacy of grace is to be reconciled with liberty is a question which disturbed the mind of Augustine, who at times neglected liberty to uphold the necessity and efficacy of grace. Ethics Besides what has been said of free will and moral evil, it must be noted that Augustine holds the primacy of the will over the intellect. Every good work is an action of love.