Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Philosophy exam exam 1) Does Augustine succeed in establishing the compatibility between human freedom and the foreknowledge of God? St. Augustine argues the why is there evil in the world if people are free? Also, if evil is not part of God’s creation, who is the author of evil? People with free will are the ones who commit crimes that is why plants and animals do not commit crime because they are no free will. Without human freedom there would not be evil or sin in the world. There are two things that Christian say it must be true, human beings must be free and God is perfect. If God knows everything, He must know in advance what we are destined to do, so therefore, how do we possess free will. The existence of evil in the world undermines the existence of God because if God is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Renevelent, then God should be able to eliminate the pain and suffering in the world. The proof that humans possess free will lies in the fact that there is sin and evil in this world. Augustine succeeds in establishing the compatibility between human freedom and the foreknowledge of God. God knows everything that will happen however, it is the free will that enables humans to act the sinful way and bring evil into the world or act the way God wants us to. 2) Does Aquinas succeed in identifying the criteria of a moral act? St. Thomas Aquinas says that a relevant criterion involved in the evaluation of a moral act depends on three things: objective character of the act, motive and intention, and the circumstances involved in the act. The objective character of the act deals with external issues. A good act cannot be made bad just by circumstance; motive has to be taken into consideration. The object, the intention and the circumstances act together. The intention is what determines the goal of the action or the movement of the will towards an end. All activities are performed for a certain end. Identifying will as the agency of choice, Aquinas’ analysis of the moral worth of voluntary action is more sharply delineated that Aristotle’s. Three components of voluntary acts are morally relevant and, accordingly, bring about different measures of moral worth for nominally identical acts. The first and primary component of an act is the kind of overt act that it is, the second is the kind of motive that prompts it, and the third is its set of consequence-bearing circumstances. To understand fully what these components of a voluntary action are and how they contribute to its “measure of goodness,” we must consider an act in terms of such factors. 3) What does the Prisoners Dilemma have to do with Hobbes’ notion of Social Contract? If two people are arrested and the authorities just need one scapegoat to take the blame, the question of who will confess and who will go free comes up. The two people are out to fulfill their own self-interests, and each one will want to spend the least amount of time in jail as possible. However, sometimes to promote our own best interests, it is best to sometimes engage in compromises. If the two people compromise, they both might have to spend time in jail but it would be less time than if one person would confess. According to Hobbes, there are no moral facts in the basis of things. If we take Hobbes’ theory into consideration, the two people wouldn’t compromise because human nature is not intrinsically good. How could you possibly come up with a theory of human nature when morality is a solution to a practical problem that arises from the fact that human nature is intrinsically selfish. Because of the intrinsic selfishness of nature, according to Hobbes, an absolute sovereign must run the Social Contract of the people. He believes that because of his selfishness, human beings are always at odds with each other. This means that the natural conditions of man are always at war. Hobbes believes that authority should be his own law of nature: A) seek peace, if peace cannot be obtained seek war because one always has the right to defend himself. B) To obtain peace, people should be willing to be content with as much liberty against others as we would allow against ourselves. C) The rules are only as good as our ability to enforce them. The goal of all of us is to perpetuate our existence. We may die, and our children may die, but the political systems will be immortal if it is made on the right foundations. Bibliography: Word Count: 774
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