Lecture 9: Evil
Dr. Ann T. Orlando
13 November 2008
Biblical Approach to Evil
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Natural Evil
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Suffering and difficulties are teachers
God’s response to Job: there is no answer that
man can understand
Moral Evil
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Result of man’s freedom to choose
Proclivity to evil and original sin
Background: The Key Question
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How can there be a good, omnipotent
creator God and evil in world
Basic formulation by Epicureans
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Either God is good and not omnipotent or God is
omnipotent and not good
Their result: God(s) are neither good nor
omnipotent. God does not care about cosmos
Gnostic Solution
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Two gods
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One good spiritual god
Evil creator god
Mankind is aligned with one or the other
Some affinity for Platonism
Manichaeism included this solution to evil
Plotinus (207-270 AD)
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Alexandrian philosopher, considered himself a Platonist
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Developed a metaphysics of the One
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Good spiritual creator God
Simple, self-caused and cause of all else
Problem: Then how can there be evil
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Contemporary of Origen and Mani
Subsequently referred to as a ‘Platonist’;
Term Neoplatonism an invention of 19th C
Solution evil is the absence of a good that should be there
Evil does not have an independent existence
Ethics based on soul’s return to the One
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Spiritual progression in steps to the One
Sin is turning away from approaching the One
Augustine
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Evil the key question for Augustine; it is what
prevents him from being happy
Starts his turn away from Catholicism over this
question (Confessions Book III)
Return begins with the solution found in the books of
the Platonists (Confessions Book VII)
Recall “On Free Choice of the Will” begins with the
question of evil.
Augustine and
Human Distorted Desires
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Human proclivity to sin is a result of original
sin
Without grace, man always will fall into sin
Charity (grace, gift of the Holy Spirit) is the
only virtue
To be discussed more next week, justification
Medieval Response
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Basically Augustine
Example: Aquinas in ST Ia 48-49 addresses
evil in general
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Evil has no existence in reality
Evil cannot exist without the presence of some
good
Note: Church still follows Augustine in this,
see definition of evil in CCC glossary
John Calvin
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Basically Augustine
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But emphasis on man’s fallen state
Evil is a direct result of man’s now nearly
completely corrupt nature
Institutes II.3
Early Modern Wrestling with Evil:
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)
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Pierre Bayle wrote one of the first modern Dictionaries
His Dictionary was the most widely read book in the 18th C;
having enormous influence on philosophes.
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Bayle was pessimistic about a solution to the theodicy problem
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Voltaire’s Dictionary
Diderot’s Encyclopedia
Raised objection to all solutions, including Manichees (2 gods),
Plotinus (evil does not exist) and Epicurean (God does not exist)
Pessimistic about human nature; more evil than good in the
world
Usually considered one of the first early modern skeptics
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716)
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Born into a prominent Lutheran family
Studied Church Fathers and ancient history and scholastic
theology
Desperately wanted to reconcile Lutheran and Catholic
theologies through philosophy
Made original and brilliant contributions to
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Mathematics (calculus)
Physics
Logic
German jurisprudence
Philosophy
Metaphysics
Some Principles of Leibniz’s
Philosophy
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Opposed to materialism and atheism (revised Epicureanism of Hobbes)
God always acts for the best
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Nothing happens without a reason or cause
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These connections, past present and future, are contained within each substance
Each substance thus is a ‘mirror’ of the entire universe
The universe was created in and remains in harmony
Body and mind each follows their own laws, but are synchronized through universal
harmony
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Although we may not know the reason, and see only the effect
All substances are interconnected, even if we cannot know those connections
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Thus we must live in the best world
Body subject to efficient causes
Mind to final causes
Mind (soul) has innate ideas based on universal harmony
Note, only about half of Leibniz’s works have been published; the only book he published
during his lifetime was Theodicy
Leibniz and Theodicy
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Written as a reply to Bayle in 1710
How can this be the best world when there is evil,
when people are unhappy
Leibniz answer,: earthly happiness of every
individual may not be the right way to judge ‘best’
God creates limited things which taken in aggregate
reflect God’s perfection.
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But this implies that individual things may suffer some evil
or suffering due to their limitations
Limitations as a type of privation
Alexander Pope and Optimism
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Cease then, nor order imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.
Submit. In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good.
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, 'Whatever is, is right.'
Lisbon Earthquake and Voltaire
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Crushing earthquake on All Saints Day, 1755
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Resulting fires and tsunami destroy most of Lisbon
Raises profoundly the question of natural evil and
human suffering
Voltaire writes his poem to refute Leibniz and Pope,
using the Lisbon earthquake suffering as his primary
example
See Rousseau reply to Voltaire,
http://geophysics.tau.ac.il/personal/shmulik/LisbonEq
-letters.htm
The Shoah
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Human moral evil on an unprecedented scale
An event in human history that has been
documented and reported in detail
How could this happen in the most ‘enlightened’ and
scientific country in Europe?
Either ‘proof’ that God does not exist, or that the
Enlightenment is a false philosophy, or both
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
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Born in North Africa
Wrote doctoral thesis on Augustine and
Neoplatonism
Fought in French resistance against Nazis
Evil exists, but God does not
The Plague
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Evil is real, God is not
Main character, a doctor (atheist), narrates the story
as an objective observer
On of key figures is a priest, Augustinian scholar
Pivotal moment: death of a child
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Neither religion nor science can relieve pain
Near end, doctor and mother stare out the window
and see…nothing
Hero of story continually asks, without answer from
doctor, ‘how can I be a saint without God?’
John Hick (1922 - )
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Conscientious objector during WWII in Britain
Studies philosophy after the War, especially Kant
Concerned with real as opposed to counterfeit
religious experiences (Faith and Knowledge)
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Ultimate Divine cannot be known in the world
Valid religious experience is determined by long-term effect
on believer
Both God and evil exist
Evil and the God of Love
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Detailed examination of Augustine on evil and the
impact of Augustine’s thought
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Given the reality of evil, a questioning of the privation
model
Hick Suggests an ‘Irenaean” approach
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Aquinas
Calvin
Leibniz
Man always learning and moving forward
Read his criticism of Augustine, Chapter VIII
Assignments
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Augustine, Confessions VII
Aquinas ST Ia 48-49
Calvin, Institutes II.3
Leibniz, Summary of the Controversy Reduced to
Formal Argument, in Theodicy, trans. E.M. Huggard,
La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1985, pp 377-388.
Voltaire, Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, in The
Enlightenment, A Sourcebook and Reader, Ed. Paul
Hyland, London: Routledge, 2003, pp75-82.
Hick, Evil and the God of Love, Chapter VIII