Download
1 / 23
E N D
PHIL/RS 335 The Problem of Evil: Theodicy
Hick, "Soul-Making Theodicy" • Hick begins by owning up. Unlike Cleanthes, Hick is willing to testify to the vast amount and range of evils we experience or have knowledge of. • Hick aligns himself with a strategy for addressing the problem of evil that comes from the tradition of rational theology: theodicy. • See the description of theodicy and his conclusion about this description at 266c1. • Important qualifications. • Hick is pursuing a Christian theodicy. • Theoretical Requirements: 1) internal coherence (possibility); 2) external consistency with religious tradition and experience (plausibility).
Reviewing the Tradition • Hick considers a couple of traditional forms of Christian theodicy. • Augustinian: diagnoses the problem by pointing to the fall from grace which, it is argued, has implications throughout the natural world; responds to it with a free-will defense. • It would have been logically impossible for God to create a world containing free beings but no sin and suffering. • Hick's criticism: Based on an event that has possibility but not plausibility. Account of natural evil? • Irenaean: most clearly represented by the philosopher Schleirmacher; presents a developmental picture of human beings, the requirements of which explain moral and natural evil.
In Image, In Likeness • The developmental picture Hick picks up from Irenaeus makes a distinction between human beings created in the image of God and human beings who make themselves into likenesses of God. We don't start in perfection. It is something that has to be accomplished. • One of the real strengths of this account is how well it captures the historical/biological/social realities that we are aware of. Both in our own organism and in our understanding of our species being and development, the human story is a developmental story.
How does this solve the problem? • Hick offers us "a contemporary version of the Irenaean type of theodicy" (268c1-2), that begins with an obvious question: Why would God create us with this gap between image and likeness (capacity and actuality)? • Since a key part of this actuality is knowledge of and relationship with God, it would seem to be better to be created into the presence of God. • Hick insists that this immediacy would render us incapable of independent existence (we would be overwhelmed). • So, we need distance, and in particular, an epistemic distance, the distance of an ambiguous and uncertain world and experience.
Epistemic Distance? • As Hick makes clear, this epistemic distance is necessary in order for a finite, free (rational) creature to "know and love God" (269c1). • Hick presents this as a logical necessity: if God wants us to freely love him, we can't have been created loving him. • Madden and Hare give this necessity another interpretation: distance as "tough love." • How tough does it have to be? • Is the payoff worth it? • What are we buying and who are we buying it for? • Is there another way to the payoff?
Moral Perfection • Another common observation made in the context of the problem of evil is that it seems both possible and plausible that God could have created us with the necessary epistemic distance but morally perfect (or even very strongly inclined to act morally perfectly). • Hick responds to this possibility by insisting that the virtues that arise from struggle are better than naturally implanted ones (cf. 270c1).
Possible and Plausible? • Hick's theodicy certainly seems internally consistent. It provides the basis for an account of both natural (?) and moral (?) evil stemming from a common developmental conception of human beings. • Hick recognizes that plausibility is an issue, so he takes up the task of demonstrating that we and our world fit the terms of the Irenaean hypothesis. • We and our world are certainly not the only combination that would fit, but Hick insists that exclusivity is not necessary. • We and our world do fit.
Our Moral Situation • "…the general fact of humankind's basic self-regarding animality is an aspect of creation as part of the realm of organic life; and this basic self-regardingness has been expressed over the centuries both in sins of individual selfishness and in the much more massive sins of corporate selfishness…social injustice" (271c1). • The development into 'likeness'comes through overcoming this animality through worship of God, which Hick glosses as overcoming of selfishness.
Our Natural Situation • Given our moral situation, the question Hick asks is: "what sort of world would constitute an appropriate environment for this second stage of creation"(271c2). • Referring to experiments done on kittens (?), Hick insists that our moral development requires natural evil: we need to strive, to overcome. • "…a world in which there can be no pain or suffering would also be one in which there can be no moral choices…" (272c2)
Not so quick. • Granting for a second the argument, a critic might ask if Hick can so quickly 'write off' natural evil. • Even if pain and suffering must be overcome for us to be moral beings, does it need to be so much? • This is the point of the "tough-love" discussion. • Hick's answer: "judgments of intensity are relative" (274c2). • But what about the indiscriminateness of the suffering? • Hick: It's necessary that it be random for the good effects to occur (275c1).
One Final Thing • So, Hick has demonstrated how an Irenaean theodicy can respond to the challenges posed by moral and natural evil. • But, because "likeness" is a developing feature, we are never done becoming like God. Thus we need an eschatology, an account of the end of God's plan. • The Irenaean eschatology is a familiar one: communion with the divine. • Is it plausible? Many would have their doubts, but Hick thinks an eschatology is necessary to respond to the problem of evil (275c2). • Interesting feature of Hick's eschatology: universal salvation (only thing that justifies all of the evil).
Leibniz, The Best of All Possible Worlds • In the excerpt we have from Leibniz’s TheodicyLeibniz is offering an ‘abridgement’ of the argument offered in the book in syllogistic form. • Such a supplement is typically intended as an alternative mode of presentation, another take that can address objections, highlight previously unremarked features, and is explicitly formal. • In this particular case, because the argument of the book is that God’s being is not inconsistent with the presence of evil in the world, the syllogisms considered are all objections to this claim. • Responding to them successfully serves as an argument for the theodicy.
The Best? • Key to Leibniz’s theodicy is his account of the nature of reality (his metaphysics). • His account of created beings relies an a theory of predicative determinateness: what makes a being the being that it is is its complete predicate (the sum of its states and relations with the rest of creation). • The recognition of common predication requires the acknowledgement that it is impossible for everything to express the predicate to it’s complete degree. • Me being taller than something else requires that the something else exhibit ‘tallness’ less completely than I do. • This is an impossibility that conditions not just our experience but the nature of creation. This leads Leibniz to the conclusion that this is the ‘best of all possible worlds.’
Syllogism 1 • Failing to choose the best is a failure of power, knowledge or goodness. • God did not choose the best in creating this world. • Therefore, God has failed to exhibit power, knowledge or goodness. • It is the second of these two premises that Leibniz contests by examining an argument that supports it (prosyllogism, 277c2). • The claim he denies here is that choosing evil is necessarily not to choose the best. • He does so in a way that sounds like the cosmological point of view we saw from Demea, but it’s ultimately not dependent on a cosmic point of view, but a metaphysical one.
Syllogism 2 • What is true of the pinnacle of creation (free, rational creatures) is true of the rest of creation. • Evil is more characteristic than good in free, rational creatures. • Evil is more characteristic than good in the rest of creation. • In this case, Leibniz rejects both of the premises. • The first he rejects on the grounds that it commits a part/whole fallacy. • The second he rejects on the basis of the gap between the infinitude of good and the finitude of evil, and the recognition that we cannot properly generalize to the character of free rationality on the basis of our limited example.
Syllogism 8 • If we must do something, we are not free to choose to do it. • God (on Leibniz’s account) must choose the best. • God is not free. • This is an argument that should sound familiar. • It’s the kind of argument we looked at in consideration of God’s nature. • Leibniz’s response is also familiar, arguing that acting in a way consistent with necessity is no basis for limiting God (279c1).
Adams, “Creating the Best” • Adams addresses the claim that we saw Leibniz articulate (and which many other participants in the discussion about evil have agreed with); namely, “(P) If a perfectly good moral agent created any world at all, it would have to be the very best world that [s]he could create” (280c1). • Adams works to reject this view, on the grounds of its inconsistency with with the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, and particularly on the basis of the moral thinking exemplified by that tradition. • His conclusion is that this tradition requires believers to affirm that the world is a good one, but not that it is the best possible one.
Religion and Morality • Adams observes that certain moral theoretical perspectives would require a believer to affirm the “best-possible” thesis. • Maximizing theories like Consequentialist theories require agents to choose either the best possible action or the best possible rule of action. • As he notes, there’s an argument to be made that Leibniz’s moral framework was a consequentialist one. • Other approaches, that may in fact be better suited to the Judeo-Christian perspective (like Virtue Theory) impose no such requirement.
Non-Consequentialist Justifications of P • Adams acknowledges that there may be other, non-consequentialist based reasons to affirm P, identifying 2 possibilities. • Creation of a less than best-possible world would impose unnecessary harm and a perfectly good agent wouldn’t do that. • Even if not unnecessary harm was imposed, creation that fell short of capacity would be evidence of a defect in character. • The first part of the essay is devoted to arguing against these two claims.
An Obligation? • The first claim, Adams addresses by considering under what conditions it could possibly make sense to say that God had an obligation to an individual or entity to create the best possible world. • There are obligations of two sorts to consider: possible obligations to possible inhabitants of the best of all possible worlds and possible obligations to inhabitants of worlds that are not the best possible. • As Adams notes, the notion of obligations seems to require actual, rather than merely possible existence, so it makes no sense to speak of the first sort of obligation. • In response to the second, Adams establishes a set of conditions for a possible creation (see 282c1), and then argues that with respect to this world, at least, it would be contradictory for inhabitants to argue that they had somehow been wronged by God’s failure to create the best possible world.
A Defect? • In response to the suggestion (represented in the text by Plato) that the failure to create the best possible world marks a defect in God’s character, Adams explores the sense of the term ‘moral perfection.’ • Assuming God’s moral perfection, virtue theory emphasizes the ‘wholeness’ of God’s moral character: it’s not enough to exhibit just one virtue, she must exhibit the whole of virtue. • In what this whole consists is a matter of debate, but one common element of Judeo-Christian virtue theory is the virtue of grace, defined here as “a disposition to love which is not dependent on the merit of the person loved” (284c1). • If this is part of the whole of virtue, then God’s creative act is not determined by the merit of the created, and creation of a world less than the best possible is consistent with the whole of virtue.
Counterexample(s)? • The set of conditions articulated by Adams in his response to the first objection invites a serious objection to his position on the basis of an interesting possible counterexample: the choice to produce a retarded child (285c1-2). • Adams’s response to this challenge is bold: he insists that the parents have done something wrong, but it is not a wrong done to the child. • While the latter would require holding on to Principle Q (286c2), the former only assumes violation of (the weaker) Principle R (287c1). • Why prefer R to Q? Adams ultimately justifies this by reference to the claim that we are God’s creatures, and violation of R would interfere with the creator’s intentions for creatures like us.
