scholarly journals Ethical Monism and The Problem of Evil

1908 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-222
Author(s):  
B. A. G. Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Ethical Monism ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Perfect World

A favourite argument of the neo-Hegelian apologists for the appearance of evil in a perfect world is the contention that without evil good could not exist. By this we are to understand, not that evil is a sine qua non of the existence of the good, unavoidably incidental to its production and maintenance, but rather, indeed, that it is an indispensable factor in the very essence of perfection and positively contributive to its value. Unaltered in accidents yet changed in substance, it is, as it were, transubstantiated by an eternal act of consecration in the mind and purpose of God. That we neither perceive nor comprehend the miracle is due to our human limitations. Could we see things as God sees them, “under the aspect of eternity,” we should then understand how what we call sin and suffering and defeat and shame have their place in the economy of the whole, and provide, along with the other oppositions and conflicts in the world, the indispensable condition of that victorious battle with obstacles and limitations and that triumphant resolution of contradictories in higher syntheses in which the life and happiness of the absolute consists. So, though our partial and superficial experiences do not enjoy the triumph (and indeed cannot, since were we conquerors or indifferent to defeat there would be no evil to transcend), we may yet have faith that in our deepest and total self the victory has been won and peace attained. Thus God's ways are justified to man; and though the world is apparently full of evil, we are still entitled to believe it really good, and are able intelligently to account for and defend our belief.

The visions of global salvation in Juliusz Słowacki’s messianic thought and the philosophical works of Teilhard de Chardin

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-39
Author(s):  
Olaf Krysowski
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intellectual Style ◽  
Final Shape ◽  
The World ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Common Vision

Juliusz Słowacki and Teilhard de Chardin did not have much in common. The former was a Polish poet who wrote in the first half of the 19th century using a literary-pictorial style. The latter, on the other hand, was a French philosopher working in the first half of the 20th century using a scientific and intellectual style. In spite of these differences, one may get the impression that they both followed the same goal: to learn and explain the principles of the development of the world, from its origin to its end, from Alpha to Omega. This aspiration was accompanied by a belief (in Słowacki’s case, a messianic one) that the progress of existence leads to salvation and takes place according to a certain plan. One of the main mecha- nisms of this plan is the process of lifting the consciousness through the evolution of various biological forms towards its final shape – unity with God who is both a person and the absolute which encompasses all of the creation. Although the poet and the philosopher used different communication codes, their works share a common vision of evolution as a transition from an unconscious, dispersed exist- ence to a united being in which the spirit, the knowledge and the mind can achieve a “global”, yet personalized level.

Free Will and the Problem of Evil

1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Mason Myers
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Actual World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Traditional Theist

Hume after arguing for the compatibility of liberty and necessity, a view now known as soft determinism or compatibilism, noted that it is not ‘possible to explain distinctly, how the Deity can be the mediate cause of the actions of sin and moral turpitude’. It seems that Hume is correct if the explanation must show specifically why an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity must permit certain actions that to human reason seem to be unnecessary evils. On the other hand if such specifity is not required, the soft determinist who also happens to be a theist can argue that it is possible that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds even though the reason for any specific apparent evil cannot be known. If seemingly evil choices are free in the soft determinist's sense but determined by an omnipotent and omniscient deity, then either that deity is not omnibenevolent or that deity has determined the world to have the maximum possible goodness through including seemingly evil choices in the scheme of things. Consequently if, as the traditional theist believes, the creator is omnibenevolent as well as omnipotent and omniscient, the occurrence of seemingly evil choices are necessary for maximizing the goodness of the whole.

scholarly journals Beyond reconciliation – Monistic Yahwism and the Problem of Evil in philosophy of religion

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-92
Author(s):  
J W Gericke
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Mind

I want everything explained to me. And reason is impotent when it hears this cry from the heart. The mind aroused by this insistence seeks and finds nothing but contradictions and nonsense. The world itself, whose single meaning I do not understand, is a vast irrational.

Evil and Explanation

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 155-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas L. Sturgeon
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Naturalism ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil

In the first part of this paper I want to consider the relation between two familiar philosophical views that have not to my knowledge been considered in any depth together, even by philosophers who are well known for defending each separately. These views have a certain natural affinity, in that each has been attractive to philosophers of a generally naturalistic bent. Thus, since I intend to argue that there is a difficulty in reconciling them, I will be pointing out a difficulty, not, I think, in philosophical naturalism, but nevertheless in one package often accepted by naturalists. One of the views is that the problem of evil is, at the very least, a serious theoretical difficulty for theism. The other is nihilism about value, the thesis that there are no real values in the world and that statements ascribing values to things are never true. I hope it is obvious why there is at least a prima facie difficulty in combining these views: how can someone who thinks that nothing is really good or evil also think that we find in the world more evil than we would expect if theism were correct?

Evil: theodicy or resistance?

2004 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius C. Felderhof
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Other ◽  
Constructive Approach ◽  
Satisfactory Solution ◽  
Active Resistance ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Face

The thinker who approaches the problem of evil theoretically will conceive of the issue differently from one who approaches it practically. He will also differ on what would constitute a satisfactory ‘solution’. One looks for a logical coherence in theism, the other for consolation and the elimination of evil. The theoretical approach, it is argued, actually subverts the thinker morally and religiously. In the face of intractable evil, a theological suggestion that evil is a dark mystery is also rejected in favour of a more practical and constructive approach. It requires an active resistance to evil and then finds consolation in the consequent unity with the Holy Will that opposes all evil.The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, no. 11

The World after the End of the World

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kas Saghafi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
End Of The World

In several late texts, Derrida meditated on Paul Celan's poem ‘Grosse, Glühende Wölbung’, in which the departure of the world is announced. Delving into the ‘origin’ and ‘history’ of the ‘conception’ of the world, this paper suggests that, for Derrida, the end of the world is determined by and from death—the death of the other. The death of the other marks, each and every time, the absolute end of the world.

Anti-theodicy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. N. Trakakis
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Model ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Skeptical Theism ◽  
Alternative Models ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Methodological Considerations

First, the nature of ‘anti-theodicy’ is outlined, and some indication is provided as to how this position differs from both theodicy and skeptical theism, and how the anti-theodicy view can be supported on the basis of moral and methodological considerations. Secondly, a possible metaphysical basis for anti-theodicy is sought, and this is achieved by abandoning anthropomorphic conceptions of God in favour of alternative models of divinity that might make possible new and more fruitful perspectives on the problem of evil. The alternative model advanced here for special attention is the Absolute Idealism of F. H. Bradley. The chapter concludes by showing how the problem of evil can be answered from a Bradleian perspective.

scholarly journals God Below: A Faith Born in Hell—Life and Fate and the Otherwise Than Being

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Karl Shankar SenGupta
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Other ◽  
French Army ◽  
Holy Fool ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Utopian Thought ◽  
Primary Focus

This essay examines the idea of kenosis and holy folly in the years before, during, and after the Holocaust. The primary focus will be Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, though it also will touch upon Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons and the ethics of the Lithuanian-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, speaking to their intersecting ideas. Dostoevsky, true enough, predates the Shoah, whereas Grossman was a Soviet Jew who served as a journalist (most famously at the Battle of Stalingrad), and Levinas was a soldier in the French army, captured by the Nazis and placed in a POW camp. Each of these writers wrestles with the problem of evil in various ways, Dostoevsky and Levinas as theists—one Christian, the other Jewish—and Grossman as an atheist; yet, despite their differences, there are ever deeper resonances in that all are drawn to the idea of kenosis and the holy fool, and each writer employs variations of this idea in their respective answers to the problem of evil. Each argues, more or less, that evil arises in totalizing utopian thought which reifies individual humans to abstractions—to The Human, and goodness to The Good. Each looks to kenosis as the “antidote” to this utopian reification.

scholarly journals The problem of evil in Hinduism

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-224
Author(s):  
Zoran Kindjic
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Educational Purpose ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Times ◽  
Unity Of Opposites

After having pointed to the different religious concepts of the origin of evil, the author focuses on the discussion of Hinduism as a typical paradigm of monism. Since the Indian deities are actually manifestations of the eternal arch principle, they contain within themselves the unity of opposites, i.e. they have both light and dark side. Evil which affects an individual is interpreted as sinning against the universal cosmic and moral order. The doctrine that man's destiny is determined by one's deeds in the previous incarnations is almost widely accepted in India. The idea of karma at the same time provides the cosmic justice and releases God from the responsibility for evil in the world. The impersonal law of karma also has the educational purpose. The whole world derived from the brahman and under the process of evolution. Through the numerous lives and the different experiences, suffering from the consequences of one's own behavior, an individual learn from the spiritual lessons. In the times of the cosmic crises, when evil prevails in the world, Vishnu incarnates in the figure of avatar to win over evil and to restore the blocked evolution. Although evil is defeated, it still cannot be entirely uprooted from the physical world. The salvation for man is possible only after dissolving personal ego and having enlightened oneself, transcends to the sphere of dualism.

scholarly journals A Historical Outline of Byzantine Philosophy and Its Basic Subjects

2018 ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Katelis Viglas
Keyword(s):  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Relative Autonomy ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Conceptual Realism ◽  
Historical Outline ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Point Of Departure

The article seeks to present an overview of the history of Byzantine philosophy. It takes its point of departure in the most important factors that influenced and shaped the Patristic thought. Subsequently, the paper considers the relative autonomy of Byzantine philosophy and offers a brief profile of major philosophers that contributed to the stream in the period from 9th to 15th century. From the numerous subjects that were taken into account by the most prominent Byzantine philosophers, the article discusses such issues as: the view of God, the problem of ‘conceptual realism’, the relationship between such ‘disci  plines’ as logic, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and philosophical anthro  pology. Furthermore, such questions as the place of man in the world, the scope of their freedom and the problem of evil are also touched upon here. The paper concludes with some remarks on the develop  ment of Byzantine philosophy after the fall of Byzantium.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document