Descartes and St. Augustine

Descartes and St.Augustine

This essay has focused on the concept of Descartes and his predecessor St. Augustine. The research paper has emphasized on the issues of freedom and divine foreknowledge. It has highlighted the ways through which the solutions adopted by Descartes are not being available to Augustine. Even though St. Augustine was predecessor of Descartes but he hold some divergent concept on the problem of freedom and divine foreknowledge. This paper has emphasized on the solutions provided by Descartes that St.Augustine did not find it to be applicable.

In ancient philosophy the problem of free will and divine foreknowledge did not realize it at the time because there is no notion of the will, as most of the people know it today. First approaches to this topic are in Aristotle, who saw the will as a rational and contemporary reasons given by aspiration, and find in the philosophy of the Stoics, who spoke of well-founded quest. The first philosopher of the will can designate Augustine, which will in a standalone instance to the orientation of the action and of life, in addition to and independent of mind and reason saw. In the middle ages the will is examined in terms of its relationship to the mind (Robinson, 2011). Descartes forwarded philosophy has become increasingly separated from theology, even the theological significance of this particular issue has always been perceived as the highest moment. Descartes himself at times clearly supports the freedom of the will and divine foreknowledge. Sometimes, however, mitigated this view and leans toward a kind of providential determinism, that is, in fact, the logical consequence of the doctrine of occasionalism and inefficient secondary cause's latent in his system (Stephen, 1998)

Descartes was the first to clearly equate the mind to consciousness, and to distinguish it from the brain, which he said, is the support of intelligence. Thus, he was the first to formulate the problem body / mind of how it is presented today. Today, the dualism is opposed to various forms of monism, including the physicalism and phenomenalism. The dualism of substance opposes all forms of materialism, while the dualism of properties can be considered a form of emergentist materialism, and would be opposed to non-emergentist materialism. This is also notion by Descartes that God cannot create the eternal truths, he is almighty and it is because of all that is (Kandel, 2007). This means that nothing is subject to the understanding that God is the object of the will of God and, conversely, nothing is subject to the will of God that is the subject the mind of God, the object of the intellect and the will being nothing in itself or outside the act of the understanding and the will that makes it what it is.

The notions because of which the solutions provided by Descartes were not adopted by St. Augustine were due to the divergence in the thought processes of the two. Because Saint Augustine speaks only of created things, not uncreated ...