St. Augustine facing the paradox of matter in Plotinian cosmology/ontology in solving the problem of evil

Abstract

During the period when he was a Manichean, Augustine shared the idea that the world has its origin in the combination of two ontological substances, God and Darkness, both of corporeal nature. When he met Ambrose in Milan, he made him think about the possibility of talking about a non-corporeal substance, purely spiritual, and that the world has a single principle - God, who created everything ex nihilo. However, as far as the origin of the evil is concerned, this did not solve the problem; on the contrary, it increased even more, since, if there is only one ontological origin of everything - God, who created everything out of nothing, how can we not attribute to Its the origin of evil? It was only in the encounter with Neoplatonism, also in Milan, that Augustine would confirm, philosophically, the notion of “spiritual substance”, which he had heard from Ambrose, and, more than that, he would awaken to the possibility of speaking ontologically about evil, not as being, but as non-being or the nothing. However, although Plotinus defined nonbeing (or nothingness) as "unlimited", "unformed", "indeterminate", this, for Augustine, still did not fully solve the problem of evil, since it is still of a natural explanation, when it puts it in the matter. Anyway, from then on, he began to think of evil as “taking it out”, a deprivation. Finally, in Christianity, it found a place for evil as something totally immaterial, in human free will, which happens as the absence, defection, of the Good - the non-being.