CSAMP Proseminar: Peter King

“Augustine on Pulling the Trigger.”

ABSTRACT. The main philosophical puzzle in Confessions 8 is how someone can want to do something but nevertheless fail to do it. This is, I argue, a problem about what we now call “commitment” and, as such, it is distinct from (but related to) classical problems of weakness of will. I will look at Augustine’s motivation of the problem, his first proposed solution (which he rejects) in terms of a “divided-soul account”, and then at his final solution to the problem, which mobilizes a different way of thinking about the will and what transformative willing involves.