3 posts tagged “evil”

I've been reading Robert Solomon's The Joy of Philosophy for the past two weeks. In this book, he discusses a multitude of topics, ranging from the too-analytic nature of contemporary philosophy to rationality and the emotions. I've entered the chapter in which he discuss tragedy. Naturally, the problem of evil comes up. To me, he has an interesting take on the so-called "problem", yet a practical one. I like it.

Contrary to the way it is usually framed, I want to suggest that the Problem of Evil has little to do with belief in the existence of God or in an afterlife. Camus was an atheist, and yet it was the Problem of Evil, the presence of human suffering, that violated his innate sense of justice and fairness, that evoked his dramatic concept of "the Absurd." Nietzsche was also an atheist ("by instinct," he tells us in Ecce Homo), but it is neither God nor Heaven as such that draws his heaviest fire. It is rather the cheap and petty use of theology to deny or rationalize suffering rather than face up to it and, like the ancient Greeks he adored, make something of it--if not something beautiful, then at least something meaningful. To challenge the Problem of Evil, we must, rather, remind ourselves of the contingency of our good fortune and how unreasonable we are to deny the inevitability of misfortune and the finitude of our lives. As Bernard Williams writes, "There is a problem of evil only for those who expect the world to be good." We thus call into question those abuses of God and the idea of an afterlife that block our deepest emotional responses by assuring us, against all evidence, that our suffering is well worthwhile.

 “It is the weak nature of man that urns for explanations outside of the self. They create foolish, yet ingenious, concepts to explain good and evil, justice and injustice, love and hate. But, why? Why do they do this? Because man does not wish to be held responsible. Responsibility implies accountability, not to some supernatural concept, but to humanity itself; for it is far worse to answer to humanity than to answer to man’s worst creation—one is realized within finite time, the other is not. Consequentially, it is worse to understand that yourself is the foundation for evil, that you are to blame for the negative implications of your choices and actions on yourself and others, that you are the source of greed, hate, injustice, prejudice, cruelty, racism, addiction, animosity, corruption, insensitivity, hostility, murder, and poverty, among other things. And not because of some original sin, but because of humans’ inability to control emotions and their proceeding actions and consequences, because of man's selfishness. Does this mean that man is innately evil? Not at all. Does this mean that man is innately good? Not at all. Man is simply man: neither purely evil nor purely good, but capable of doing the most gruesome, inhuman acts, possible, as well as the most precious, selfless acts imaginable, and everything in between. To realize this is to realize that the problem of evil is not a problem; for humans are the foundation for and create evil. Thus, the problem is not evil, but the concept. If one lets go of the concept, one sees the truth: Humanity is the foundation of everything—wisdom, knowledge, injustice, good, evil, and, most importantly, love.”

Society is a dialectic phenomenon in that it is a human product, and nothing but a human product, that yet continuously acts back upon its producer. Society is a product of man. It has no other being except that which is bestowed upon it by human activity and consciousness. There can be no social reality apart from man. Yet it may also be stated that man is a product of society. Every individual biography is an episode within the history of society, which both precedes and survives it. Society was there before the individual was born and it will be there after he has died. What is more, it is within society, and as a result of social processes, that the individual becomes a person, that he attains and holds onto an identity, and that he carries out the various projects that constitute his life. Man cannot exist apart from society. The two statements, that society is the product of man and that man is the product of society are not contradictory. They rather reflect the inherently dialectic character of the societal phenomenon. Only if his character is recognized will society be understood in terms that are adequate to its empirical reality.