ke the fruit, but she really did not understand what would happen if she did. This leads me to a dilemma. In saying what I just did about Eve taking the fruit this is saying that the origin of sin, of choosing evil, was caused by ignorance. This backs up what Augustine and the other philosophers stated. Then there is the present. Is evil inevitable now? I believe to a point it is, but we can no longer blame it on ignorance. We know the story of the Garden of Eden, we know the devil is tempting us with evils, and we know what the consequences could be if we choose the evil. This shows we are not ignorant like Eve was; we are in the state of wisdom. After all that is true we still choose evils, ignorance can not be used as an excuse. Descartes, in his fourth meditation, argues th choice of good or evil in a different way. He first states why his will power and understanding are not to blame for his mistakes. Both the power of willing and the power of understanding come from God. Therefore, he says the power of willing is perfect and everything he understands he understands correctly. Therefore the reason for his mistakes, choosing evil, is the "scope of the will". This is larger than the intellect. This means he makes mistakes because he does not have the means to understand the mistakes he is making (Pojman 479). When comparing Descartes to Augustine and Plato I believe his argument to be the least logical. Basically, to me, his argument sounds like a big excuse. I believe we are all capable of understanding the difference between good and evil. The only people who are not able to always understand are young children. In their case it is our job to teach them what is right and wrong. Saying that the will is made of a much wider spectrum than our understanding is ridiculous. For those who are ignorant this is of course true, but I do not believe, as I have stated before, that all those who choose evil are ignorant. ...
