PHIL1003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Logical Possibility, Natural Evil, Moral Evil
Theodicies for the Problem of Evil
• Is evil a necessary (casual) means to an end?
o For God to create any nature, there must be laws of nature. Pain is
the inevitable result of a lawful system
o Perhaps suffering is the unfortunate outcome of a set of natural
laws, even including pain, that are necessary for an ordered
universe
• 3A. Evil makes the world more valuable/beautiful in an aesthetic sense
(perhaps like a painting? Who would be the viewer? God? Implications of
a God who allows suffering for his/her own aesthetic enjoyment?)
• 3B. Evil makes the world more valuable in a moral sense (the progressive
overcoming of evil by good is valuable)
▪ Pain & misery (natural evil) = 1st order evil
▪ Pleasure & happiness = 1st order good
▪ Virtue = 2nd order good
▪ Cruelty, callousness, cowardice = 2nd order evil/moral evil
o Idea is that 1st order evil is necessary for 1st order good
o Pain & misery + virtue > pleasure & happiness (no virtue & no
natural evil)
o Perhaps Gods aim is not to minimize first order evils or maximize
first order goods, but rather to maximize second order goods
o Is virtue more valuable than pleasure?
▪ Why suppose that virtue is more valuable than pleasure or
happiness? Perhaps God prefers virtue but we dont all have
the same taste?
• But dont we as a matter of fact consider virtue more
valuable than hedonistic pleasure?
▪ One might claim that even if virtue is not intrinsically better
than happiness, the quality of happiness one can gain from
doing virtuous deeds exceeds that of any other venture. The
best happiness logically represents virtue.
• It can be conceded that some pain (natural evil) is
logically needed to experience higher-quality
pleasures, whether from virtuous or other
achievements
▪ The problem is whether it accounts for the sheer amount of
natural evil and the existence of 2nd order evils such as
moral evil e.g. cruelty, callousness, cowardice
• The Freewill Theodicy
o Perhaps we can introduce a 3rd order good – freewill
o Claims that we are mistaken to attribute moral evils directly to
God
o God created humans with freewill, and moral evil arises from these
freely chosen actions by human beings
o Freewill, for the purposes of theism, must involve the capacity to
choose between two or more options in a non-deterministic or
non-random way
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
