28 2004 pp. 235 245 1 Received November 5, 2004 In the eighth volume of Confessiones is a famous and critical passage in which Augustine describes the process leading to his conversion. It is a long and lively description of the inner conflicts of will. Here it is not the mind and the will that split and conflict with each other, but the will itself. One part of Augustine s will wishes to follow the right path, but the other doesn t, and we can see from his detailed reflection that it is in will s very nature to split dissipare. This strange split of the will is repaired or healed only by the very act of deciding, and the power to decide, according to Augustine, is given him by Grace. Augustine s long involvement with Manicheism provided him with a keen awareness of the problem of evil and that of free will, and his reading of St. Paul s epistles, especially The Letter to the Romans had a deep influence on him in shaping of this idea of a will, free and independent of other faculties of the mind, a concept which was new to the Greek and Roman world. 235
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