Saint Augustine’s Concept of Evil

Fear no evil or do no evil?

By Josh Howard on Unsplash.

Introduction

I’m not a religious person, but lately I’ve found myself thinking about the concept of evil. What does it mean to be evil? Is it fun? Should it be fun?

Can we truly draw a line between good and evil?

Should we do no evil or fear no evil? If we should fear no evil doesn’t it make it easier to be evil?

Is being evil easy — or easier than it should be?

I like to think that:

If God granted us everything, good and evil, then how could we reject such a generous gift?

Is evil truly a generous gift?

How can philosophy help us answer these questions?

What philosophy has taught through its many centuries of history is that to navigate between good and evil, we must consider multiple perspectives.

We can quantify our impact when assessing whether we’re doing good in this world (see Bentham), but we must also evaluate the qualitative nature of our actions.

‘How many people are happy?’ is one valid ethical criterion, but ‘who is happy with what?’ also matters.

Philosophy also teaches us to test every idea we have against relativism and skepticism — to ensure we’re not overgeneralizing one viewpoint at the expense of others.

This is a lesson we inherit from the Sophists, Montaigne, the skeptics, and others who refused to commit to specific doctrines, insisting instead that almost no single thesis holds absolute certainty.

Very few ideas survive this skeptical-relativist scrutiny, and those that do are often so abstract they dissolve into very abstract problems like the possibility of the number 2.

What does being evil have to do with you or me?

According to every philosopher I know, all those questions eventually circle back to Plato’s timeless inquiry:

Is doing good simply about benefiting our friends?

By grappling with all those questions in the previous sections, they say we might better discern whether our friendships are blinding us to our own cruelty.

To Plato, only those committed to philosophy are not easily blinded by appearances and circumstances, and if we let ourselves be influenced by philosophers, society would be a better place.

But of course, reality isn’t as simple as Plato imagined. He believed wrongdoers were ultimately either foolish or disorganized — as if evil actions inevitably backfired on their perpetrators, and as if wickedness could never gain popular appeal.

Contrary to what he thought, those who do harm can be brilliant and meticulously organized; and evil acts may bring various consequences for both the individual and its society.

For St. Augustine, on the other hand, evil takes on a transcendental dimension. It demands a deterministic judgment of good and evil, irrespective of context. To him we can label things by their proximity to God.

Let’s explore what St. Augustine had to say.

Augustine’s historical context

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the West was still influenced by both the remnants of Greek and Roman cultures.

Under the influence of these two traditions — Greek philosophy and Roman Christianity — the context of St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) emerged.

At that time, people were still in search of social cohesion, moral codes and religion served this purpose so well that, to a certain point, the Church in the Middle Ages became the supreme authority over all European states.

It was the Church that decided who had to marry whom, who was the public enemy of Europe, and what all kings had to do.

To achieve such a level of political power, Christians focused on spreading Christianity either within pagan communities or in opposition to them.

Over the medieval period, the Church also refined its discourse with complex philosophical arguments to keep people committed to Christianity.

Augustine’s answer to the problem of evil

One of his most famous reflections can be seen as an answer to Epicurus’ paradox, which poses the following questions:

If God is good, why does evil exist? If He is good and evil exists, is He not omnipotent? If He is good and evil exists, then is He not truly good? If He is good and evil exists, is He not omniscient?

Augustine examined this deeply, questioning: Who created evil? Is evil an independent force opposing good?

He endorsed the conclusion that evil is the absence of good. For Augustine, all things are good, though in varying degrees (some things are better than others) and Evil exists in the world to test us (meaning God recognizes the importance of this trial).

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

The problem of the origin of evil (unde malum), he claims, had haunted him (Augustine) from his youth (Confessiones 7.7). At first, he accepted the dualist solution of the Manicheans, which freed God from the responsibility for evil but compromised his omnipotence (ib. 3.12; 7.3). After having encountered the books of the Platonists, Augustine rejected the existence of an evil substance and endorsed the Neoplatonic view (argued, e.g., in Plotinus, Enneads I.8) that evil is in fact unsubstantial and a privation or corruption of goodness.

Therefore, for him, God didn’t create — nor is He creating — a better world specifically for you or me. To St. Augustine, God created a world where we might ascend and come to understand the importance of everything — God, evil, trials — and comprehend all things in their fullness. He gave us a complete world (with both good and evil).

In his own words:

For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name ‘evil.’ (Confessions, Book III).

All things that are corrupted suffer privation of some good. (City of God, Book XI).

Augustine argues that bad people were once trying to be good, but the world — a cruel one — led them astray. Yet they can be redeemed and set back on the right path if they accept God. Augustine believed that humanity requires this constant trial — but is this not a cruel test?

Moreover, shouldn’t we listen to the world? It seems that for Augustine, to do good, we must be authentic — to listen only to ourselves and no one else. But shouldn’t we also consider context when evaluating our actions? If we reject the world entirely, what remains for us?

Plato and Augustine

There is certainly a connection between Plato’s concept of good and evil and Augustine’s version of it. For both, doing good is the highest ideal a society can achieve. If people were honest with themselves, truly knew themselves, and committed to the pursuit of wisdom, there would be no need for harmful behavior.

Is such a world so difficult to attain? History proves that it is. Access to therapy and quality education is far from universal, and even if they were it would hardly lead to a Christian world.

The economic limitations alone cannot explain why the grand visions of Christianity and philosophy fell short of their transformative promise. Why were the teachings of Plato and Christ not enough to ease the world’s suffering?

A more empirical perspective suggests that they rushed to universal morality too soon. Religion offered a simple answer, but the true solution demands something far more complex: open dialogue, shared understanding, and continuous philosophical inquiry among different people.

Final thoughts: Moral issues today

Whenever you face big ethical questions — to cheat or not to cheat? To lie or not to lie? — here’s something you can do to find your way through them: compare how moral codes fit into your life. Compare others’ moral codes with the ones you should apply in your own context. This is an exam only you can take.

All religions and philosophies of the world offer a way, a method, a perspective on the world. If you’re worried about which path you’re going to choose, give a thought or two to your context and yourself.

Freud, the famous Austrian psychoanalyst, believed religion failed to build a better world for people. He thought psychology would somehow politically replace religion. Things didn’t go exactly that way, but in one thing he was surely right:

Individuals must examine their own story and circumstances, and summon the kindness and courage to confront what they’ve been told their entire lives. When in psychological distress, it’s vital to recognize what has shaped us and where it’s leading us.

It’s easy to see how his method of psychoanalysis took a somewhat anti-religious path. When everyone follows a moral code — whether based on religion or not — it’s hard to stand out and say you have a different one. Socrates, for instance, was sentenced to death when he challenged common people’s ideas.

I don’t believe there’s a straightforward answer to the problem of evil. The human experience is diverse, circumstances shift, and reality demands attention, constant testing, and creativity.

There was a time when I thought a select few should be free to act as they pleased (boosting the diverse aspect of human experience)— but justification always comes into play and when done properly (justification), it’s beautiful.

References

• Tornau, Christian, “Saint Augustine”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.).
• O’Donnell, J. “St. Augustine.” Encyclopedia Britannica, May 13, 2025.
• Plamenatz, John P. and Duignan, Brian. “Jeremy Bentham.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2025.