Abstract

This article reconstructs and evaluates Josiah Royce’s treatment of the problem of evil. I begin with an explanation of how Royce understands Job’s situation in the biblical account to be representative of the human predicament with respect to God and evil . Next, I assess Royce’s account of three relatively familiar responses to the problem of evil he means to reject , and then I provide an analysis of his own proposal for addressing the problem . In the final section of the paper, I raise four objections to Royce’s idealist theodicy