Lack of Self-Discipline Augustine Faces Difficulties

In book 8, Augustine faces a dilemma regarding whether to be baptized as a result of having two wills. Due to his lack of self-discipline, Augustine faces the difficulty of knowing what is right and wrong but is drawn to his temptations. He is trying to change who he is so that he can enter into a full relationship with God but is struggling with giving up his sexual desires, Even when he prays to God, he shows he is not entirely committed.

Augustine knows what he ought to desire and wishes he could want it more because he does in fact desire that relationship with God. The desire for carnal pleasures overpowers his desire for fulfilling a relationship with God, Augustine‘s dilemma is that he has two wills fighting against each other, one carnal and the other spiritual. He states, “thus my two wills […], wasn’t one of the body and the other of the spirit, clashed with each other and in their combat were devastating my soul” (Augustine and Ruden 216).

Augustine remains attached by habit to the beauty of material things and pleasures, Even though he wants to be able to enjoy the grace of God, “the new will that had started to exist in me [m] the only sure pleasure, wasn’t yet adequate for overcoming my earlier will”(Augustine and Ruden 215), He believes the Manicheans’ teachings are the reason he faces this turmoil within himself. They believed that there are “two wills opposing each other in a single person… good on the one side, and bad on the other” (Augustine and Ruden 230).

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These two wills compete with each other. A person‘s higher good is drawn to spirituality whereas the ill impulses are drawn to human temptations, The problem Augustine had with this philosophy is that it is disagreed with his belief that a person‘s will is unified, According to the Manicheans’, we have the capacity for self— determination, ”[a person‘s impulses] all contending with one another until one is chosen as the direction for a single, unified will”(Augustine and Ruden 231).

If a split will did exist, then, every time someone makes a decision, they would have a good or bad impulse, even for the most trivial things. Augustine argues this can’t be true because a person may have two good impulses at the same time. The Manichean ideology is flawed because it teaches that human beings have no control over which impulseithe good or the badiis being fed. Augustine counters this by saying that a person’s will cannot adequately take into account a range of good or bad items or the number of impulses; human beings have the freedom to choose their desires, but not control over them. Augustine believes everyone has one will and a person has freedom to choose what will to act on, Augustine finds himself torn by two different desirable things.

The first is God, which reason, knowledge, and the eternal law teach him what he should be pursuing. The second will is the habit of his pleasures of the flesh which tempt him, as he describes that “[his] ruthlessly impinging habits kept asking [him]” (Augustine and Ruden 233). Due to his indecisiveness, he is unable to proceed in just going after the actual higher good which is God The more that he gives in to his habits and customs, the more that his will becomes conflicted, which causes his intention to give in to the lower good. If he disciplined himself more, then he would be able to choose the will of pursuing good, Even though Augustine can make sense of this ideolog}’, he is still unable to overcome his temptations by himself.

Due to divine aid from a “self»restraint” woman, he is able to change and fully commit his life to pursuing God. Once he reaches this revelation with the help of the divine aid, he plunges into the letters of Paul, the apostle, and reads the first thing he sees. From there, his desires disappear, He states, “all the darkness of my hesitation scattered away (Augustine and Ruden 237). Augustine’s disagreement on the Manicheans’ philosophy of two wills, begins his journey of analyzing what hinders his conversion. Through the help of divine aid, Augustine is able to overcome this turmoil within himself, He is able to make sense of this ideology of having a unified will and starting a fully committed relationship with God. His desire for a relationship overpowers his will for worldly things.