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Abstract:

Augustine, one of the first medieval thinkers, tried to explain evil and the reason for its origin within the boundaries of theistic thinking. According to Augustine, evil can be metaphysical, physical, moral. Metaphysical evil is the very possibility of the manifestation of evil; physical — disease, illness, death; moral — deviation from divine commandments, belittling of good. Augustine’s concept influenced Western European and Russian philosophers. The article attempts to consider the problem of evil in a double light: in Augustine’s autoreception, expressed in the “Confession”; in the perception and assessment of D.S. Merezhkovsky. The events and judgments of Augustine concerning his infancy, childhood and adolescence, described in the “Confession”, Merezhkovsky considers as a kind of evidence that made up the so-called. “Terrible experience of Evil” of human life. Following Augustine, he sees both the universal omnivorousness of evil, spreading in the world, and the inability of man to cope with it on his own. The writer seeks to comprehend the historical facts of the Augustinian era in such a way that they acquire the scale of universal ideas and symbols characteristic not only of the Middle Ages, but also for the Russian XX century, to find in autobiographical events, in features of deeply individual human significance.