Research Project based on: Evil in Modern Thought

authored by Susan Neimanwith a focus on Kant and Rousseau

Project by Tom Bury

• The inevitable question, Why would God (all powerful, eternal, and omniscient) create a world with evil in it and allow the innocent to suffer?

The concept of a cycle of punishment for sin through the infliction of suffering, by God, becomes a traditional belief

Original Sin?

Doctrine of Optimism

• All evils in this world will eventually lead to the greater good, even if we cannot understand the connection.

• This view has an inherent flaw, it can be interpreted as: trying to stop evil means you are stopping it from doing the greater good, or preventing its “true” purpose.

• Potentially breads inaction and complacency

Natural disasters as punishment?

• Rousseau did not think so. He divides “evil” occurrences into two categories• Natural evil vs Moral evil• Natural evils have no meaning, they

are a part of the natural order• Moral evils are solely human failings

Rousseau

• Evil developed slowly through out human history

• Shift from natural state of man to “civilized society” creates the opportunity for evil to come into being.

• Society is not inherently evil

Rousseau

• God ordered world so perfectly he gave humans the means to combat evil

• Requires education and return to a more natural state

• General Providence: World rewards/punishes virtuous acts or sins naturally through its supreme order. Does not require Gods direct intervention (miracles).

Immanuel Kant• “Kant’s most central discovery was the

discovery that we are, necessarily, ignorant. Questions about God and His purposes, the nature and sense of Creation, thus the materials for thinking about the problem of evil, are all out of bounds” (Neiman 62).

• God is unintelligible, but human nature strives to make God intelligible despite this.

Kant and Morality

• Kant claims the unintelligibility of God is necessary to preserve moral action.

• If we had Gods knowledge (knew the causal link between virtue and happiness and action/reward) then humans could do nothing without thought toward reward or punishment

• “we would do nothing but move for carrots and sticks” (Neiman 68).

Rousseau and Kant on faithBoth maintain that faith is necessary in order to keep humans striving. Kant: “The knowledge that we often fail, and that the world fails to work with us, may lead to despair only faith can heal” (Neiman 66).Rousseau: “there must be a reward and punishment in another world, or the miseries of this one would be too much to bear” (Neiman 41).

Rousseau and Kant

• Rousseau: Evil is a human construct that developed over time (rejects original sin), humans have the means to eliminate it.

• Kant: God is unintelligible, while this may cause us consternation because the human condition is to try to apply reason to everything, it is necessary that we are ignorant in order to preserve morality and good intentions.

At odds with their own beliefs?

• Both Rousseau and Kant suffered from the same uncertainty that plagues all people. Kant identified the innate desire within us to make sense of God through the application of reason and the futility of such an attempt.

• Kant accepted this as a truth but still attempted to console others and himself that our ignorance was necessary to preserve free will and morality. Advocates for good intentions and right actions despite our ignorance.

• Rousseau argues for a natural order of providence, claims evil is an unintended consequence of human society. Evil comes from us, so we can combat it if we have the proper knowledge. Wants to spur human action.