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Overview
In 1970, R. J. O'Connell observed a ‘strangely Kantian’ tone in the lex aeterna of Augustine's De libero arbitrio I. Although nearly fifty years have passed, O'Connell's tantalizing observation remains undeveloped. My purpose in this article is to bring out more fully the role played by the concept of law in De libero arbitrio I, including aspects that indeed might be called Kantian. My method is reconstructive. First, I examine a proper fragment of Augustine's account of moral agency, expressly not including his concept of law, and I note some of the fragment's implications. In brief, knotty problems emerge, including, rather startlingly, a puzzle familiar from Stoic philosophy. I then restore Augustine's concept of law and observe the result – in brief, a neat resolution of all of the problems generated by removing it. The role of the concept of law in Augustine's account of moral agency makes it clear that, far from being superficially Kantian, as one might surmise from O'Connell's comment, Augustine's complete account of moral agency in De libero arbitrio I is in fact deeply Kantian. There are, however, important differences between the two approaches, two of which I conclude by indicating.
Background
We begin by setting the stage. Augustine reflected on the problem of postlapsarian human moral agency continuously over the course of his long career. Whether or not his commitments changed over that time, his emphasis certainly did: he began by insisting that postlapsarian humans are free and ended by insisting that humans are doomed to sin. This change is partly explained by the positions against which he was disputing. His first efforts were directed against the Manichaeans, who explained sin as the result of a power of darkness overcoming the soul. Against this, Augustine argued that postlapsarian humans are wholly responsible for the evil they do, a claim that presupposed, or so he took it, that humans are free. Augustine's later works were directed against the Pelagians, who held that humans can earn salvation by rightly exercising their free will. Against this, Augustine argued that postlapsarian humans are saved by divine grace alone, a claim that he took to presuppose an otherwise insuperable propensity to sin. The Pelagians were quick to note the apparent...