The Problem of Evil, or the Great Plan of Misery

The main gate at Auschwitz, through which two million victims passed.

We heard a lot about the Great Plan of Happiness last weekend. What about the Great Plan of Misery? Or, in the classical formulation of the problem of evil, what accounts for the existence of evil in a Universe governed by a benevolent God? You will learn plenty about philosophy's struggle with this problem in Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosphy (Princeton Univ. Press, 2002). Her discussion of the philosphical problem is framed by two events that overwhelmed the moral apparatus of their respective eras: the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and the 20th century's Auschwitz. I can't possibly do this dense and illuminating book justice in a short blog post, but I'll certainly recommend it to the philosophically inclined reader.

In a long first chapter, Neiman reviews those philosophers who defined and struggled with the problem of evil: Leibniz, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. That problem, simply stated, is that it is difficult or impossible to affirm all three of the following claims about the world, so one of them must therefore be rejected. Tough choice.

1. Evil exists.
2. God is benevolent.
3. God is omnipotent.

Neiman recasts the problem for the philosophers who struggled with it as that of reconciling natural evil (harmful events in the world) with moral evil (bad or harmful acts or choices of humans). This focuses on the crux of the problem: the relation of natural and moral evil. Lightning striking a man walking down the street on a cloudy day seems like an example of natural evil, but if he had beaten his children, kicked his dog, and recklessly run over a hapless pedestrian that morning, it might appear that justice was in fact served. It's the undeserved suffering of innocents that drives the problem: when bad things repeatedly happen to good people.

Rousseau, for example, argues that man is naturally good and that evil exists because of human institutions: "Man is born free, and is everywhere in chains." To reduce evil in the world, he would have us change human institutions and modify education in order to promote this natural human goodness. His call for religious tolerance and faith in God's Providence, grounded in natural theology, seems rather banal in the 21st century. But in the 18th century it got his books burned (for attacking the creeds) and earned him the scorn of his fellow philosophers (for affirming Providence). Nevertheless, Rousseau changed the course of the debate. Neiman observes (at p. 44-45):

Kant saw Rousseau's view as revolutionary as much because it allowed us to state the problem of evil as because it offered solutions. The task was to determine a relation between moral and natural evils, or risk acknowledging that the world has no justice or meaning. Rousseau was the first to assert a relation without calling it a punishment, hence the first to see a solution that doesn't depend on miracle.

You can see how this goes — the more you dig into the problem, the deeper it gets. In Chapter Two, Neiman discusses thinkers who take a different tack: Bayle, Voltaire, Hume, and Schopenhauer. Rather than arguing that evil is simply an appearance that can somehow be creatively reconciled with goodness and justice, these philosophers affirm that evil surely exists in the world (sometimes even revel in it) and then courageously face the devastating consequences that follow. These philosophers were not system builders; instead, they were keen observers who accepted the primacy of facts over theories and systems. Ah, stubborn facts.

Anne Frank, writer. Died of typhus at age 15 while imprisoned at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

A short Chapter Three covers Nietzsche and Freud. Chapter Four considers Auschwitz and the death of traditional theodicy in the 20th century, as well as the development of what we might call secular theodicy, the attempt to find meaning in suffering apart from God's purposes. Neiman discusses Camus, Arendt, critical theory, and Rawls in this last chapter. The emergence of secular theodicy and renewed discussion of the problem of evil in recent years is one result of the slow dawning of the moral lessons to be drawn from the Holocaust. The moral and cultural shock that September 11 has delivered to the West has lent some urgency to the discussion. In simple terms, the problem of evil remains stubbornly and surprisingly relevant despite the widespread rejection of God and the traditional categories of analysis previously applied to the problem. So thinkers are now struggling to redefine the problem of evil and fashion terms and categories that allow discussion of the problem in the 21st century. You will get all this, and more, from Neiman's fine book.

Are Mormons insulated from this discussion? Is the problem of evil irrelevant from the Mormon perspective? Hardly. The fact that many Mormons seem tempted to tell the widow of a good man who dies young or the parents of a child who dies in a tragic accident that it is all part of God's Great Plan of Happiness strikes me as almost surreal. It certainly shows we haven't really thought through the problem of evil using the resources at hand, both scriptural and secular. I think it is more decent and humane to admit that tragic events do really happen in this world, then mourn with those who mourn. If there is meaning to be had, it is not that God and angels ratify such tragic events but that they do not. I'm afraid God is just not as involved with the Universe as we would like Him to be. So the problem of evil is still with us, even us Mormons. The challenges of understanding natural and moral evil and of choosing how to respond are as real and live for Mormons as for anyone else. I think we would make more progress by reading Rousseau and Voltaire (along with your scriptures) than by watching Glenn Beck or Michael Moore. Serious problems deserve serious commentators.

Comments

[Blake]

Mormons have done a great deal of serious reflection on the problem of evil. You might want to check these:

http://blakeostler.com/docs/JSmith&ProblemofEvil.pdf

http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=1644

I'll assume that you're familiar with them since you quote them here:

http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2008/07/modern-responses-to-the-problem-of-evil/

[Mark D.]

Mormons are not insulated from this problem if any interpret "omnipotent" in absolute terms. Of course most Mormons, if pressed, will admit there are exceptions to that interpretation.

So once you admit that there are some exceptions, the question remains: Are there evils that God could mitigate without impairing his other objectives, that he nonetheless does not?

I don't think so. But if you have a belief in near (cost free, economists need not apply) absolute power, you are likely to be somewhat at a loss to come up with a convincing explanation of non-intervention in a large number of cases.

[Eric Nielson]

I think that coming up with some type of 'equation' for God's intervention would be a marvelous invention for the thinker tinkerer.

[Dave]

Thanks for the links, Blake. Maybe I'll visit the topic again after reading some of the LDS material.

[Mark D.]

I don't think we have anywhere near enough information to make such estimates, and even if we did an actor with free will isn't necessarily going to follow what we might expect all the time anyway.

[Trevor]

The problem is different for LDS.

God's 'omnipotence' is constrained by:
1. He himself must be obedient to eternal laws (Alma 42:13; Mormon 9:19)
2. His granting of agency to man (2 Nephi 10: 23)
3. His work and glory depending on the presence of evil (2 Nephi 2:11; D&C 29:39)