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[Expo. 3.1 (2009) 73–96] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368  
doi:10.1558/expo.v3i1.73 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 

Notes, INsIghts aNd Flashes

An Analysis of Augustine’s Argument in Confessions That 
Evil Does Not Exist

BErNArd G. PrUSAk

Villanova University 
bernard.g.prusak@villanova.edu

For Augustine, following Genesis, it is a bedrock belief that creation is 
good. Perhaps this is the Augustinian belief. But it immediately gives 
rise to what is perhaps the Augustinian problem, namely, the problem 
of evil. For “[w]here then does evil come from, seeing that God is good 
and made all things good?” (Augustine 1992, 76; 1963, 130). In book 
7 of the Confessions, Augustine famously denies that evil exists. His 
argument (book 7, chapter 12) takes the form of a reductio ad absur-
dum. 

§1. Analysis

According to Augustine (I employ in the following [Augustine 1963, 
140–141]):

Things that are good are subject to corruption.•	
Things would not be subject to corruption if they were either •	
1) supremely good or 2) not good at all. Supremely good things 
are by definition incorruptible. Things that are not good at all 
have nothing that could be corrupted, since corruption does 
harm, and harm is the diminishment of the good of a thing.
What is to be demonstrated is that things that are deprived of •	
all good cease to exist altogether.
If things can no longer be corrupted, yet go on existing, they •	
would be better than they were before they were corrupted.
(Why? Unspoken premise: It is better for things to be incor-•	
ruptible than to be corruptible.)

mailto:bernard.g.prusak@villanova.edu


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But it is absurd to assert that things could become better by •	
being deprived of all their goodness.
Therefore, if things are deprived of all their goodness, they •	
must not exist. (Again, to assert that they could exist without 
goodness is absurd, for it is to say that things could be in a bet-
ter state [namely, incorruptibility] by becoming worse.)
It follows that all things that exist are good. So long as they •	
exist, they are good.
It also follows that evil is not a “substance,” that is, not an •	
existent thing, since if it were a substance it would be good, 
because all things that are, are inasmuch as they are good.

§2. Observations

Given Augustine’s bedrock belief that creation is good, it only makes 
sense for him to think that things move toward evil by being corrupted 
or by losing good (think of a rotting piece of fruit). But what if some-
thing did not become evil through corruption (the deprivation of its 
good), but were evil to begin with (which is the Manichean view)? 
Augustine rules out this possibility by postulating that “God is good 
and made all things good.” The point of his argument is to secure this 
postulate: that is, to persuade us that it is credible despite the problem 
of evil.

Nevertheless, the possibility that evil might be coeval with good has 
not been disproven. Augustine might counter that to assert that an evil 
thing exists is absurd for a different reason: It is absurd to assert that 
something without any good, and for this reason incorruptible, could 
be in a better state (namely, incorruptibility) than something that is 
good yet corruptible.

The critical premise in Augustine’s argument that I analyzed in §1, as 
well as in the counter that I just formulated for him, is the unspoken 
one, namely, that it is better for things to be incorruptible than to be 
corruptible. recall that there are, according to Augustine, two ways to 
be incorruptible: 1) to be “supremely good”; 2) to be “not good at all.” 
It makes sense to say that something that is incorruptible because it is 
“supremely good” is better than something that is corruptible. Why? 



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© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009

The obvious answer is: Something that is incorruptible because it is 
supremely good is better than something that is corruptible because the 
supremely good thing is, as supremely good, “more good.” But what makes 
the supremely good thing obviously better is its goodness, not its incor-
ruptibility as such. In other words, it is not incorruptibility that makes 
the supremely good thing good; perhaps we should say instead that it 
is the thing’s supreme goodness that makes its incorruptibility good. 
The important point is that in this case it is right to say that the incor-
ruptible (the supremely good) is better than the corruptible. But what 
reason do we have to agree with the claim that to be incorruptible is in 
every case better than to be corruptible? The case of the supremely good 
does not give us any reason to agree that this claim holds for something 
that is “not good at all.” Why say that a thing that has been totally cor-
rupted or that is not good at all—and for this reason is incorruptible—
is better than when it was not corrupted or than a thing that is good yet 
corruptible? It seems much more sensible to reject this claim as absurd, 
which, however, undercuts Augustine’s reductio ad absurdum.

The upshot is that Augustine’s argument in book 7 does not logically 
compel us to agree with either his conception of creation (that it is 
good) or his conception of evil (in terms of corruption of the good). 
Other reasons must be given.

It is interesting to consider Shakespeare’s King Lear in this regard. In 
the words of the critic A.C. Bradley, King Lear is

the tragedy in which evil is shown in the greatest abundance…. On 
the one hand we see a world which generates terrible evil in profu-
sion. Further, the beings in whom this evil appears at its strongest are 
able, to a certain extent, to thrive. They are not unhappy, and they 
have power to spread misery and destruction around them…. On the 
other hand, this evil is merely destructive: it founds nothing, and seems 
capable of existing only on foundations laid by its opposite. It is also 
self-destructive…. Thus the world in which evil appears seems to be 
at heart unfriendly to it. And this impression is confirmed by the fact 
that the convulsion of this world is due to evil, mainly in the worst 
forms here considered, partly in the milder forms which we call the 
errors or defects of the better characters. Good, in the widest sense, 
seems thus to be the principle of life and health in the world; evil, at 
least in these worst forms, to be a poison. The world reacts against it 



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violently, and, in the struggle to expel it, is driven to devastate itself.
(Bradley 1929, 303–304)

Is Shakespeare Augustinian here?

References

Augustine

1992 Confessions. Edited by J.J. O’donnell. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1963 Confessions. Trans. rex Warner. New York: Signet.

Bradley, A.C.

1929 Shakespearean Tragedy. Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. 
London: Macmillan.


