Augustine, Lucretius and the Dispute of Free Will - 851 Words

Augustine and Lucretius and the Dispute of Free Will Augustine: Hello Lucretius. Lucretius: Hello Augustine. Augustine: What brings you to these parts? Lucretius: I just wanted to update my findings on the philosophy of Epicureanism and also the theory of free will. Augustine: Free will, you say? Lucretius: Yes free will. Do you have any idea of what free will is? Augustine: Why yes I do, for it is a will by which we seek to live a good and upright life and to attain unto perfect wisdom. Lucretius: Exactly. Augustine: Are you familiar of how one is able to attain free will Lucretius? Lucretius: We obtain free by the collision of atoms which will then create a swerve. However it is very important to know how the atoms move and there is a total of three movements. Augustine: Then tell me these three different movements. Lucretius: The three atomic motions are, downward fall of atoms, collision, and swerve. Augustine: How are these three movements distinct from one another? Lucretius: The downward fall of atoms just fall at a regular speed and follow within the same direction, collision is when they become fused into the elementary building blocks which give rise to matter and life ‘being driven into closer union and held there by the entanglement of their Interlocking shapes, and one of the most important motions, swerve, is the spontaneous and infinitesimally small change of direction in the course of an atom’s downward fall. Augustine: What makes swerve so important?