The defense of necessity, also known as the “choice of evils,” reflects popular moral intuitions and common sense: sometimes, breaking the rules is the right—indeed, the only—thing to do in order to avoid a greater evil. Citing a classic example, mountain climbers may break into a cabin to wait out a deadly snow storm and appropriate the owner’s provisions because their property violations are a lesser evil compared to the loss of life. At the same time, this defense (...) contradicts the fundamental principles of criminal responsibility in that it authorizes violation of rights of innocent bystanders. By allowing the mountain climbers to override the property rights of the cabin owner, the defense effectively forbids the cabin owner to use force in response—a different rule would perpetuate violence. This outcome is at odds with the basic criminal law doctrines. There is no general duty to rescue in Anglo-American law. Yet, by forbidding the cabin owner to use force, the defense of necessity essentially imposes on him the duty to forego his interests in favor of those of the mountain climbers. The paper explores the origins and boundaries of the defense of necessity. It argues that the existing public and private theories of necessity are unsatisfactory and concludes that a viable theory of necessity should be able to explain why it is sometimes permissible to override individual rights of citizens without their consent or fault. (shrink)

In “On the Abolition of All Political Parties,” Simone Weil poses the hypothetical predicament of a person who is intent on solving highly complex mathematical problems but is flogged every time the answer he arrives at is an even number. The person will oscillate between his genuine desire for the truth and the painful cries of his body. “[I]nevitably,” Weil writes, “he will make many mistakes—even if he happens to be very intelligent, very brave and deeply attached to the truth.” (...) She then asks: “What should he do?” Weil’s answer may surprise many readers, even though she claims it is “simple.” If possible, “he must run away” from those who wield the whip. It would have been best, she avers, had he avoided these associations in the first place. Elsewhere in her writings, Weil openly endorses the argument for the lesser evil, justifying active, potentially violent, resistance instead of a pacifist ethic of refusal. This essay analyses the tension between Weil’s ethic of “running away” and her acceptance of the lesser evil. (shrink)

-/- Unde malum? What is evil—if it is anything at all—and whence does it arise? Is evil just badness by another name? Is it the inevitable “shadow side” of the good? Or is it more substantial: an active, striving force that is opposed to the good in a Star Wars, Manichean kind of way? -/- Does evil always originate in the causal powers of nature? Is it sometimes based in the choices of moral agents? Or, perhaps most disturbingly, does evil (...) sometimes have its source in something non-human and impersonal—a malevolent tendency in the universe not just to general winding-down but also to outbreaks of targeted hellishness? -/- Finally, what is radical evil, and how does it differ from other kinds of evil? -/- These are some of the key metaphysical questions that philosophers have raised concerning evil. The goal of this entry is to provide a taxonomy of the most prominent answers: the main theories of evil’s kinds and origins on offer in the western philosophical tradition. This is meant to supplement the discussion in the entry on the concept of evil, although Section 1 begins with some conceptual and semantic issues. -/- Section 2 introduces two key distinctions that are then further developed in Sections 3 and 4. The first distinction has to do with the kinds of evil: insofar as evil is anything at all, is it a deep metaphysical feature of things, or is it always (or at least sometimes) merely an empirical phenomenon? The second distinction has to do with the origins of evil: is evil ever (or always) based in entirely natural phenomena, or does it sometimes (or always) have a moral or supernatural origin? -/- Sections 5 through 7 consider some puzzling cases of hard-to-categorize evils: systemic evil; symbolic evil; and so-called “radical” evil. (shrink)

While the metaphysical aspects of Proclus' theory of evil have recently been studied by a number of scholars, its ethical implications have largely been neglected. In my paper I am analysing the moral consequences that Proclus' concept of evil has, at the same time using the ethical perspective to throw more light on Proclus' ontology. Most importantly, I argue that the difference between bodily and psychic evil is much more substantial that it might seem from On the Existence of (...) class='Hi'>Evils alone. Though both kinds of evil are characterized by their 'parasitical existence' , evil in bodies is unavoidable, resulting from a wide network of cosmic corporeal interactions that no partial being can ever have control of. Psychic evil, on the other hand, is a product of human choice and is independent of external circumstances, depending wholly on the soul's ability to keep its proper vertical hierarchy. In this regard it is evil in a much more serious sense of the word, being actively caused rather than just passively suffered. In the last section of my paper I throw further light on this more dangerous kind of evil, showing it as resulting from an essential bi-dimensionality of human beings. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to solve the problem of the existence of evil in a world created by an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent God. I conclude that evil exists because God wanted to create moral creatures. Because choice is necessary for morality, God created creatures with enormous capacities for choice—and therefore enormous capacities for evil. Material creatures are subject to pain and death because, for such creatures, moral choices are deeply serious. The laws that underlie the material world (...) and from which material life arises are such that, from their workings out on a planet that can support life, natural evils happen. (shrink)

Although Greek virtue theory, Kantian ethics, and utilitarianism contend that evil and moral tragedy can be avoided, my paper will argue that our recognition of their inevitability provides the only means toward taking full moral responsibility for one’s agency. It is especially tragic to observe that wrongdoing is often inescapable. An agent may have overriding moral reasons to pursue one course of action over another, and yet in making the morally best choice the individual nevertheless transgresses a moral value. (...) My paper will argue that recognizing the inevitability of evil and moral tragedy and the connection between them provides the resources for diminishing them both. Conversely, faith in the ability of reason and decency to conquer evil leads to tragedy. To deny the inevitability of evil and moral tragedy is to deny essential features of moral life. Such a denial clearly leads to an inability to respond to others in the face of evil and tragedy. The proper response to the inevitability of evil and moral tragedy is not the fabrication of an abstract moral principle that denies their existence, but inquiry into their nature. (shrink)

Schelling’s views of evil in Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom is usually thought of as a radicalization of Kant’s argument for the propensity to evil in human nature in Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason. In this paper, I argue that Kant does not provide a full transcendental deduction for the ground of evil in human nature because this would give a rational reason for there to be evil, Schelling provides a theological–metaphysical reconstruction of Kant’s argument (...) by providing a non-rational ground for evil and the difference between Kant and Schelling lies in how they conceive of the actualization of the ground of evil—through intelligible deed or protohistorical choice—which has repercussions for how they think of conversion. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that if the libertarian free will defence were seen to fail because determinism were seen to be true, then another solution to the problem of evil would present itself. I start by arguing that one cannot, by consideration of agents' choices between morally indifferent options, reach any conclusion as to these agents' moral qualities. If certain forms of consequentialism were false, determinism true, and if there were a God who chose to create this universe, then (...) His choice would have been between such options. Consideration of the general nature of the universe God putatively chose to create would not then license any conclusion as His moral qualities. (shrink)

Theism can be defended against the Philosophical Problem of Evil, provided one rejects the Principle of Perfectionism, without relying on the Greater Good Defence or, unless one is a libertarian, the Free-Will Defence.A corollary of the All Good Possible Worlds Defence and the No Best Possible World Defence, is that God’s goodness need not determine God’s choice to create. The reasons, if any, which God has are relevant to the Theological Problem of Evil but not to the Philosophical Problem (...) of Evil. (shrink)

Long neglected, Schelling’s 1809 Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom has been the subject of renewed contemporary interest with scholars linking it to debates in ontology, psychology, and social philosophy. This paper argues, however, that its fundamental importance lies in bringing to our attention the way in which our moral categories are grounded in conceptions of metaphysics. To do so, it suggests that Schelling focuses on two questions: first, does evil have positive being? And second, why do some (...) individuals commit evil acts while others do not? In response to the first, Schelling criticises Augustine’s insistence that evil entails a privation of being by developing an original account of metaphysics and, by extension, evil that insists that being entails an autopoietic process whereby a dark, chaotic, differentiating abyss expresses itself in actual, empirical being. By associating evil with this dark abyss, Schelling holds that ‘evil’ not only has actual being but forms the differentiating foundation of actual existence. This brings him to the second question, namely, why some individuals choose to actualize this dark abyss while others do not. In contrast to Kant’s appeal to an unknowable noumenal decision that can subsequently be altered, Schelling suggests that the choice of evil is an unconscious one that cannot subsequently be changed. The paper concludes by raising two critical questions about Schelling’s analysis relating to the determinism inherent to his account of moral choice and whether it, in fact, actually explains why some moral agents choose evil and others do not. (shrink)

The problem of evil is generally taken as evidence for atheism. However, some philosophers can be referred as a sign that this is not necessarily so. For example, one of the leading philosophers of contemporary philosophy of religion, Paul Draper, for whom one can say that the problem of evil is a big problem by looking into the works he brought to the literature, defines himself as an agnostic. Draper does not argue that evil directly supports or justifies agnosticism, but (...) rather that it does not have the power to justify atheism on its own. According to him, the evidence presented for and against theism and atheism leads to a balance between these two stances. The balance here does not mean that the evidence creates a fifty percent probability for both parties and makes a choice difficult as a result, but rather that an evaluation of all the evidence opens the way for an ambiguity that makes it difficult to choose between the two. He states that none of the available evidence is sufficient to decisively establish the truth of neither theism nor atheism; and that neither theism nor atheism/naturalism is true. However, while some evidence raises the possibility that theism is true over naturalism whereas others justify atheism by supporting naturalism. So, this kind of ambiguity justifies agnosticism as the true doxastic stance to adhere to. If the problem of evil was sufficient in terms of evidential power for Draper, he would have to be an atheist, not an agnostic. In an atmosphere where the problem of evil is generally associated with atheism, how Draper grounds agnosticism and why the problem of evil cannot necessarily be considered as a justification for atheism by and only itself is the main focus of this article. Thus, this study aims to reveal why the problem of evil cannot necessarily be a justification for atheism, as a result of a critical reading of Draper’s studies on the problem of evil and agnosticism, as well as the studies in the literature that deals with the discussion and criticize Draper. Likewise, in order to illustrate Draper’s argument regarding the grounding of agnosticism decisively, this study will briefly touch on the discussions of the grounding of agnosticism, and conclude that Draper’s move from “the problem of evil to agnosticism” is more rational than any transition from “evil to atheism”. (shrink)

This volume contains papers that represent Leibniz’s early thoughts on the problem of evil, centering on a dialogue, the Confessio philosophi, in which he formulates a general account of God’s relation to sin and evil that becomes a fixture in his thinking. How can God be understood to be the ultimate cause, asks Leibniz, without God being considered as the author of sin, a conclusion incompatible with God’s holiness? Leibniz’s attempts to justify the way of God to humans lead him (...) to deep discussion of related topics: the nature of free choice, the problems of necessitarianism and fatalism, the nature of divine justice and holiness. All but one of the writings presented here are available in English for the first time. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 The Cry of Rachel -- Maritain's 1942 Marquette Aquinas Lecture -- Maritain's The Person and the Common Good -- Camus's The Plague -- ch. 2 Joy -- Being as the Good and the Eruption of Willing -- Being and Philosophical Psychology -- An Ordinary Knowledge of God and Metaphysics -- Metaphysics as Implicit Knowledge -- Being and the Intellectual Emotions -- ch. 3 Quandoque Evils -- Aquinas's Rationale for the Corruptible Order -- The (...) Corruptible Order and Quandoque Evils -- Bracketing Quandoque Evils between Goods -- A Caveat in Understanding the Subject of the Consequent Good -- The Effect of Human Providence upon the Frequency of Quandoque Evils -- ch. 4 Natural Corruptions -- Death as a Natural Corruption -- Natural Corruption as Nondefinitive -- Ambiguity of "Praeter Intentionem" and "Per Accidens" -- God and the Evil of Punishment (Poena) -- Other Interpretations -- Abraham and Isaac -- Conclusion -- ch. 5 Preliminaries to Aquinas and the Contemporary Discussion -- C.G. III, 71: "If Evil Exists, God Exists" -- William Rowe on Cosmological Reasoning -- De Ver. X, 12, ad 10m: "If not God from Justice, then God from Some Other Effect" -- Summary of Aquinas on the Existence of Evil -- A Strategy -- ch. 6 The Thomist and the Contemporary Discussion: Personalist Theodicies -- Marilyn McCord Adams and "Horrendous Evils" -- William Hasker: Personal Satisfaction and World Approval -- John Hick: Creation as a Gymnasium for the Development of Our Virtues -- David Ray Griffin and the Denial of Genuine Evils -- The Brothers Karamazov -- Thomistic "Natural Desires" of the Human Person -- ch. 7 The Thomist and the Contemporary Discussion: Cosmological Theodicies -- Diogenes Allen and Suffering as an Experience of God -- David Hume and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, X and XI -- William Rowe and "Pointless Evils" -- J. L. Mackie and Further Objections to a Cosmological Theodicy -- Mackie's Fourth Criticism and Aquinas on the Causality of Human Choices -- Aquinas and Plantinga -- The Avoidance of Determinism -- The Avoidance of Divine Culpability -- A Thomistic Free Will Defense? -- Richard Swinburne: Nature as a Necessary Display Case for Our Knowledge of Good and Evil -- Bruce Reichenbach: Developing Plantinga and Swinburne -- ch. 8 Conclusion and Comparison to Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump -- Brian Davies's Apophatic Treatment of the Evil Problem -- Eleonore Stump and the Love of God -- The Consolation of Rachel. (shrink)

This paper discusses the views of three medieval thinkers—Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus—about a specific aspect of the problem of evil, which can be dubbed ‘the Lucifer problem’. What was the object of the first evil choice? What could entice a perfectly rational agent placed in ideal circumstances into doing evil? Those thinkers agreed that Lucifer wanted to be happier, but while Anselm thought that that was something Lucifer could achieve by his natural powers, Aquinas held that (...) it was not naturally possible for Lucifer to be happier, even though it was something he could obtain supernaturally. By contrast, Scotus posited that what Lucifer wanted was beyond what was logically possible, i.e. to be as happy as God (or to be God’s equal). An interesting consequence of Scotus’s hypothesis is that God could have done nothing to make Lucifer’s evil choice less likely. (shrink)

This essay gives a close reading of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in light of Schelling's discussion of theodicy as teleology. The article raises the question of the connection between ethics and time, and it argues that ethical categories are really temporal ones, so much so that it would make little sense to posit a choice between good and evil as if there were two simultaneous options. Instead, the story of Oedipus shows us how Thebes is always to precede if one (...) is to reach Colonus, that evil precedes and enables the good. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:110 DAVID HUME'S INVISIBLE HAND IN THE WEALTH OF NATIONS THE PUBLIC CHOICE OF MORAL INFORMATION Introduction The thesis I shall defend is that there are systematic aspects of Adam Smith's economics which make little sense when read in isolation from a literature in which David Hume provides the signal contributions. Consequently, parts of Hume's own work are stripped of meaning, isolated as they are from later developments. (...) The puzzles about Smith's analysis which I find illuminated by Hume's are the following: 1. Why does Smith both defend the importance of economic growth for the material of well-being of the working class and claim that property originates as spoil, impoverishing the working class? After all, in the classical system the existence of property is one requisite for economic growth. 2. Why does Smith exalt the assumption of self-interested behavior in private activity but claim that irrationality dominates the political process? 3. Why does Smith deny the importance of benevolence in Wealth of Nations and insist on the importance of morality Sentiment morality in Theory of Moral its?3 The three questions have a common feature: they are related to the question of how public goods are provided. The particular public good in question is the institution of private property. As with all true I am obligated to the Center for Study of Public Choice for generous support of my research. Suzanne Levy gets the credit for the extent to which this approaches English. I have benefited from acute comments from Charles Rowley and Charles Griswold. The errors and obscurities which remain are solely my responsibility. Ill public goods, society considered as a whole benefits from having such an institution, but each individual considered separately can gain by anti-social behavior.4 Public goods provide a considerable difficulty for any social institution; neither competition in the market nor government requests that individuals reveal how much they wish to be taxed are certain to be efficient. There are aspects of the classical economic analysis which stress the importance of moral information as a partial solution to the public goods problem. By "moral information" I only require that the theory is employed as a guide and that if an individual acts contrary to the theory, this choice is not cited as "falsifying" the theory. Rather, something is said to be "wrong" or "wicked" about the choice.6 Much of modern economic analysis assumes that individuals have perfect information; this postulate rules out any significant role for moral information in the provision of the public goods. To avoid assuming away such a role for morality, we will drop the perfect information assumption and then examine if we can make sense of the classics' attack on the public goods problem. Of course, the specification that individuals see their own interests very poorly is consistent with Smith's general approach. The technique employed below is to look at the issue which Hume and Smith addressed as a problem in modern economics. The key difficulty is to determine under what conditions moral information could guide individuals with very imperfect perceptions to maximize their utility. In particular, suppose we find that moral guidance tells an individual how efficiently to produce. Is this morality self-enforcing or are resources required to persuade people to act in accord with these teachings? If resources are required, we will not pay much attention to just how this persuasion 112 is provided, e.g., whether we tell people that theft is "evil" or whether we hang a few thieves. General production theory tells us we probably will do both, but this is a separate issue. The argument to be advanced is that moral information has self-enforcement properties in private activities but these properties are missing in public activities. In this account, then, real resources will be required for implementing the morality. This consideration in turn raises an interesting issue. If the government expends these resources, what reason is there to believe that they will be provided to serve the public interest and not the interest of the government? Is it possible that the government can prosper by keeping people ignorant or by giving them advice... (shrink)

This is a useful edition of Augustine's classic, De Libero Arbitro, which stood at the beginning and guided so much of the subsequent medieval scholastic thought on the problems of evil, free will, and God's foreknowledge and contingency. Hackstaff's introduction performs the task of filling in the historical background to Augustine's thought quite commendably.—E. A. R.

Hume after arguing for the compatibility of liberty and necessity, a view now known as soft determinism or compatibilism , noted that it is not ‘possible to explain distinctly, how the Deity can be the mediate cause of the actions of sin and moral turpitude’. It seems that Hume is correct if the explanation must show specifically why an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity must permit certain actions that to human reason seem to be unnecessary evils. On the other hand (...) if such specifity is not required, the soft determinist who also happens to be a theist can argue that it is possible that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds even though the reason for any specific apparent evil cannot be known. If seemingly evil choices are free in the soft determinist's sense but determined by an omnipotent and omniscient deity, then either that deity is not omnibenevolent or that deity has determined the world to have the maximum possible goodness through including seemingly evil choices in the scheme of things. Consequently if, as the traditional theist believes, the creator is omnibenevolent as well as omnipotent and omniscient, the occurrence of seemingly evil choices are necessary for maximizing the goodness of the whole. (shrink)

According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (‘PSR’), every fact has an explanation for why it obtains. If the PSR is true, there must be a sufficient reason for why God chose to create our world. But a sufficient reason for God’s choice plausibly necessitates that choice. It thus seems that God could not have done otherwise, and that our world exists necessarily. We therefore appear forced to pick between the PSR, and the contingency of creation and divine (...) choice. I show that a third option remains open, and thus that it is possible to preserve the contingency of creation and divine choice even while endorsing the PSR. My solution depends on the coherence of a restricted modal realism. On this modal realism, there is more than one possible morally optimal created world, and for each such world there is an existing possibility in which God creates that world. (shrink)

Diane Vaughan’s popular book, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA, advances a thesis that I termed the “cog in the machine manifesto”: since the Challenger disaster was the result of the determined, mechanistic movement of the parts of the organizational system; once the mechanism was set in motion, the disaster was inevitable, and could not have been prevented. In order to expose the fallacies of the cog in the machine manifesto, I consider an alternative umbrella (...) thesis and four sub-theses. The umbrella thesis proposes that the causes of the Challenger disaster were the lack of an overall 'safety first' ethos, and irresponsible choice and poor decision-making practices in the lead up to and including the final risky decision. The four sub-theses are as follows: (1) the widespread justification that one always faces inherent risk when one operates in the realm of risky technology (a thesis foreshadowed by Vaughan’s book) is an illicit and misleading justification when one considers that there is no binding necessity to employ the risky technology; (2) the real culprit is not so much "risky technology," which locates the risk in the technology, but "risky assessment," which locates the risk in the decision to employ technology while not basing that decision on known safe designs and continued use on performance data; (3) the decision to choose an Orbiter without a passenger and crew abort system is proof in and of itself of a lack of a "safety first" management priority; (4) an analysis of the fateful eve of the Challenger launch teleconference launch decision makes it impossible to construe it as a banal, routine and inevitable organizational mistake. A careful examination of the “cog in the machine manifesto” and similar frameworks that purport to explain moral disasters will reveal that the language of risky technology, organizational complexity, and inevitable accidents is deeply pernicious and should thus be avoided at all costs. (shrink)

Risk, ethics and compliance requirements are a daily reality for most organisations. Regulators and stakeholders (including employees) demand more of most organisations, from equality, to anti-corruption, to supply chain ethics. Start-ups stutter and unicorns crash to earth when they get risk wrong. What should be done? Where should you start? How can risk management enable, not hinder, the organization's strategic goals? This book answers these questions -- rightsizing risk for every organization -- using frontline-tested tools, tips, and techniques. Whether you're (...) a purpose-driven changemaker or just struggling to comply with a seemingly unending stream of regulation, we will make risk work for you. (shrink)

Humans must take moral and criminal responsibility for making a free choice between good and evil, according to Chŏng Yakyong, and this view was influenced by Matteo Ricci. Choosing to commit an evil action means committing a willful crime, so one must take responsibility for this action in the form of punishment. However, unintentional wrongdoings can be forgiven. For example, a man stealing to survive or killing a robber in order to live should not be punished, because these individuals (...) have no choice but to do so. Those claims of Chŏng are his own creation, not influenced by Ricci or Confucianism. By contrast, the idea that a child’s intentional hiding of his father’s crime should not be punished because of the child’s duty of filial piety was influenced by Confucianism. However, a large crime committed by a child on the basis of filial piety, such as committing murder to rescue one’s mother, only lends cause for commutation. Unlike Chŏng, Ricci regarded a child’s act of stealing bread to feed his family as an action of evil rather than an act of filial piety, since theft is an evil action. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Kant’s understanding of the universality of radical evil is best understood in the context of human sociality. Because we are inherently social beings, the nature of the human community we find ourselves in has a determinative influence on the sorts of persons we are, and the kinds of choices we can make. We always begin in evil. This does not vitiate responsibility, since through reflection we can become aware of our situation and envision ourselves (...) as members of a different community, one with different expectations, making genuine virtue possible. This understanding of radical evil helps to make sense of Kant’s high regard for the church in Religion. (shrink)

The immediate purpose of this article is to examine Hannah Arendtʼs analysis of Adolf Eichmann in order to point out the groundlessness of her argument that evil, whether in the person of Eichmann himself or in general, can be treated as banal. The wider purpose of this article is to divest any argument that is based on the concept that evil is banal, ordinary, or trivial of any valid grounding. To develop the immediate purpose, the article begins with a close (...) analysis of the word ‘banal’ in the context of discussions of evil to highlight the immense (and dangerous) power of language. It discusses plausible reasons for Arendt’s choice of ‘The Banality of Evil’ as part of the subtitle of her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. It then addresses two major questions: How did Arendt obtain the impression of the banality of Adolf Eichmann in the first place? What are the consequences of considering evil as trivial? The argument is made that Arendt communicated, regardless of her intention, that evil was trivial. Moreover, Arendt’s description of evil as banal and trivial directly contradicts evidence that Arendt presented in Eichmann in Jerusalem. The article then turns to address the widespread adoption of Arendt’s account in the prominent literature on Eichmann and the Holocaust as a ‘thoughtless’ move, pointing out that this is precisely the kind of perverse account of evil that such subtle and evil mind as Eichmann’s would want us to entertain. To introduce its wider purpose, the article concludes with a discussion of the pernicious consequences of equating evil with banality and of the need to abandon definitively this point of view. The argument is made that ordinariness is not and should never be an excuse for crime, for doing so is akin to inviting evil into our homes and shrugging our shoulders upon its entrance. (shrink)

1. Comparing the weight of different evils is highly problematic; neither a positivist, interpretive account nor an exclusively aspirational account is satisfactory. 2. Alexander is correct that choosing a lesser evil is sometimes a mandate, not a mere permission, but the point has wider application than he indicates. 3. Is a choice of lesser but not least evil justifiable? Alexander’s affirmative answer is only partially convincing. 4. Alexander endorses a striking claim: the very notion of a reckless belief (...) or reckless mistake (as to the factual grounds for a justification) is incoherent. This claim is insupportable, but the flaws in his argument demonstrate the complexity of the concept of reckless belief, especially in the context of justification defenses, where the probabilistic aspect of the distinction between permissible and impermissible risk-taking is especially salient. 5. Alexander aptly notes that the legislatively preclusion doctrine (which denies application of the lesser evils defense) creates a fundamental tension between legal actors’ power to articulate the content of the defense and the democratic pedigree of the criminal law. I conclude that genuinely democratic principles can be served by permitting juries considerable latitude to recognize a defense when the legislature has not yet had occasion to formulate an exception, or even, in some cases, by authorizing de facto civil disobedience. (shrink)

The man who is isolated over against God is as such rejected by God. But to be this man can only be the choice of the Godless man himself. The witness of the Community of God to every individual man points in this direction: that this choice of the Godless is null and void, that he belongs to Jesus Christ from eternity and thus is not rejected, but rather chosen by God in Jesus Christ, that the reprobation which (...) he deserves on the basis of his wrong choice is borne and removed by Jesus Christ; that on the basis of the true, the Divine choice he is chosen for eternal life with God. The promise of his election will determine him as a member of the Church to become himself a carrier of its witness to the whole world. And the revelation of his rejection can determine him only to believe in Jesus Christ as Him by whom it is borne and removed. (Fourth of Karl Barth's "main theses" on God's Election of Grace in his Dogmatic II/2). (shrink)

Physicists Brian Greene and Max Tegmark both make variants of the claim that if the universe is infinite and matter is roughly uniformly distributed, then there are infinitely many “people with the same appearance, name and memories as you, who play out every possible permutation of your life choices.” In this paper I argue that--while our current best theories in astrophysics may allow one to conclude that we have infinitely many duplicates whose lives are identical to our own from start (...) to finish--without either further advances in physics or advances in fields like biology, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Greene’s and Tegmark’s claims about the ways in which our duplicates lives will differ from our own are not a consequence of our best current scientific theories. Rather, I argue that Greene and Tegmark’s conclusions rely on philosophically imprecise usages of the language of “possibility.”. (shrink)

Against the charge that Kant's doctrine of radical evil is inconsistent and alien to his practical philosophy, my aim is to show its necessity within the critical system. First, I undermine the alleged vacuity of Kant's notion of evil by showing that, already in the Groundwork, an evil will is the necessary conceptual correlate of a good will. "Good" and "evil" characterize the agent's form of willing and represent the source of value of right and wrong actions. Then, I show (...) how the doctrine of radical evil derives from Kant's notion of evil. That evil lies at the level of an individual Gesinnung is the result of Kant's radicalizing the use of transcendental freedom. That there is a propensity to evil in the whole species is the result of Kant's naturalizing the principles of his moral psychology. Although Kant is not clear about this distinction, the consistency of his doctrine depends on indicating that an "evil Gesinnung" and the "propensity to evil" are not equivalent concepts. Rather, they refer to different units of moral analysis, the individual and the whole species, and represent a failure to comply with different types of moral obligation: the duty to realize the good and the duty to realize the highest good. The correlation between units of moral analysis and types of obligation explains the isomorphism that Kant detects between them, as well as their logical independence, without which the individual's choice of Gesinnung would be analytically contained in the species' choice of moral nature . Finally, to account for the problem of moral self-constitution I argue for the necessity of assuming a transcendental volitional structure, the unity of acknowledgement or "I will". At the different levels of analysis, this structure organizes the will's manifold intentions according to unifying principles that allow it to recognize them as its own. Although Kant does not mention it, the "I will" is a necessary assumption to account for the continuity of choice and for its possible imputation to an agent. (shrink)

One important version of the problem of divine freedom is that, if God is essentially good, and if freedom logically requires being able to do otherwise, then God is not free with respect to willing the good, and thus He is not morally praiseworthy for His goodness. I develop and defend a broadly Molinist solution to this problem, which, I argue, provides the best way out of the difficulty for orthodox theists who are unwilling to relinquish the Principle of Alternate (...) Possibilities. The solution is that the divine essence includes the property of transworld goodness: i.e., for any possible morally significant choice that God could have faced, if God had actually faced it, God would have chosen to will the good. This view makes coherent the otherwise paradoxical theological intuition that it is within God’s power to do something evil, but He would not ever do such a thing. (shrink)

Could we plausibly believe in the fundamental tenets of classical liberalism and, at the same time, support the state’s raising of immigration barriers? The thesis of this paper is that if we accept the main tenets of classical liberalism as essentially correct, we should regard immigration barriers as essentially illegitimate. Considered under ideal conditions, immigration barriers constitute an unjustified infringement on individuals’ ownership rights, since it is difficult to identify a purpose that such an infringement could have that would outweigh (...) the disadvantages created by eliminating important competitive pressures on governments. Considered under nonideal conditions, the problem is, roughly, that immigration barriers cannot be seen as the choice of a lesser evil in the face of either an expected extension of the redistributive state or an expected threat on liberal institutions. On the contrary, since they relax the constraints faced by governments, immigration barriers should be seen as a major contributor in creating the conditions for the perpetuation of the sort of political arrangements that classical liberals resist. If individual sovereignty is to be protected, the sovereignty of the state over a particular territory should not include a prerogative to determine who is to inhabit it. (shrink)

Philosophers of religion divide neatly into two camps on the problem of evil: those who think it fatal to the concept of a loving God and those who do not. The latter have established a wide array of defensive positions down through the centuries, but none that has proved impregnable to sceptical attack. In his new book Mr Hick wisely abandons these older fortifications and falls back on highly mobile reserves. Not for him the ‘Fall of Man’ thesis, with its (...) unexplained choice to give up finite perfection; nor the Plotinian principle of plenitude, evil being an inevitable petering out of God's goodness; nor the ‘aesthetic’ gambit where the horrors of life constitute mere ‘shadows’ designed to highlight the beauty of creation; nor the ‘cosmic Toryism’, as someone called it, of Leibniz's ‘best of all possible worlds’; nor even, one might say gratefully, the gaseous obscurantism of Karl Barth's ‘das Nichtige’. All of these defences, and others besides, Mr Hick lumps together under what he calls ‘the majority report’ in Christian theodicy: the Augustinian tradition or type. In place of these venerable ramparts Hick elects the more fluid defence afforded, he thinks, by Irenaeus, Eastern Christianity and, in modern times, by Schleiermacher and a few contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

Most properties have comparatives, which are relations. For instance, the property of width has the comparative relation denoted by `_ is wider than _'. Let us say a property is reducible to its comparative if any statement that refers to the property has the same meaning as another statement that refers to the comparative instead. Width is not reducible to its comparative. To be sure, many statements that refer to width are reducible: for instance, `The Mississippi is wide' means the (...) same as `The Mississippi is wider than most rivers'. But some statements that refer to width are not reducible: for instance, `Electrons have zero width' is not. A property is not reducible to its comparative if it has absolute degrees, and specifically an absolute zero. A property's comparative relation places things in an order from those that have the property least to those that have it most. If there is an absolute zero point somewhere in this ordering, the property is not reducible to its comparative. For width, there is an absolute zero at one end of the ordering, so width is not reducible. The property of goodness is reducible to its comparative, betterness. In particular, there is no absolute zero of goodness. Things are ordered by betterness – some things are better than others – but nothing is absolutely good or absolutely bad. This is an exaggeration. In certain applications, goodness does have absolute degrees of a sort, and an absolute zero. For instance, it makes sense to say an event is good, and another event bad. These are absolute degrees of a sort, but they are themselves reducible to betterness. To say an event is good simply means the event is better than what would otherwise have happened. The goodness of lives has a different sort of absolute zero. Lives are ordered by betterness; some lives are better than others. We can make sense of the question `Where in this ordering is the division between lives that are good and those that are bad?' The division between good and bad lives is again reducible to betterness. To say a person's life is good means it is better that the person should continue living, rather than that she should die. Or it may mean it is better that her life should be lived rather than that it should never have been lived at all. As it is often put: a good life is a life worth living. Derek Parfit appears to attach a different sense to the idea of a good life. He appears to mean a life that contains a preponderance of good things (such as pleasure) over bad things (such as pain). If a life contains no good things and no bad things, it has zero goodness in this sense. In this sense, absolute goodness and the absolute zero of goodness are not reducible to betterness. However, this is a naturalistic sense of goodness, and it is subject to the open-question objection. If a life contains no good things and no bad things, it is an open question whether it has zero goodness. It might, for instance, be a bad thing that this life should be lived. In discussing the evil of death, some philosophers seem to have been searching for an absolute goodness that is not reducible to betterness. Thomas Nagel speaks of an asymmetry between what is good about life and what is bad about death. But if a person's life is good, that only means it would be better that she should continue living than that she should die. And if a person's death would be bad, that only means it would be worse that she should die than that she should continue living. So there can be no asymmetry. (shrink)

I reply to an article in the ACPA Proceedings of 2001 by John Crosby in which he challenged the position that evil as such is a privation. Each of his arguments attempts to present a counterexample to the privation position. His first argument, claiming that annihilation is evil but not a privation, fails to consider that a privation need not be contemporaneous with the subject suffering the privation. Contrary to his second argument, I explain that the repugnance of pain is (...) consistent with its being good in the appropriate context. Against his third argument I contend that he mistakenly supposes that a choice’s being opposed to the good is incompatible with its being evil because of a disorder. I conclude by briefly reviewing one central argument for the privation position and contrast it with Crosby’s arguments, which, in addition to their other problems, fail to specify any intensional content, beyond repugnance in the case of pain, for the concept of evil. (shrink)

The idea of moral evil has always held a special place in philosophy and theology because the existence of evil has implications for the dignity of the human and the limits of human action. Andrew M. Flescher proposes four interpretations of evil, drawing on philosophical and theological sources and using them to trace through history the moral traditions that are associated with them. The first model, evil as the presence of badness, offers a traditional dualistic model represented by Manicheanism. The (...) second, evil leading to goodness through suffering, presents a theological interpretation known as theodicy. Absence of badness—that is, evil as a social construction—is the third model. The fourth, evil as the absence of goodness, describes when evil exists in lieu of the good—the "privation" thesis staked out nearly two millennia ago by Christian theologian St. Augustine. Flescher extends this fourth model—evil as privation—into a fifth, which incorporates a virtue ethic. Drawing original connections between Augustine and Aristotle, Flescher’s fifth model emphasizes the formation of altruistic habits that can lead us to better moral choices throughout our lives. Flescher eschews the temptation to think of human agents who commit evil as outside the norm of human experience. Instead, through the honing of moral skills and the practice of attending to the needs of others to a greater degree than we currently do, Flescher offers a plausible and hopeful approach to the reality of moral evil. (shrink)

Social evil is any pain or suffering brought about by game-theoretic interactions of many individuals. This paper introduces and discusses the problem of social evil. I begin by focusing on social evil brought about by game-theoretic interactions of rational moral individuals. The problem social evil poses for theism is distinct from problems posed by natural and moral evils. Social evil is not a natural evil because it is brought about by the choices of individuals. But social evil is not (...) a form of moral evil because each individual actor does not misuse his free will. Traditional defenses for natural and moral evil fall short in addressing the problem of social evil. The final section of this paper discusses social evil and virtue. I begin by arguing that social evil can arise even when individual virtue is lacking. Next, I explore the possibility of an Edwardsian defense of social evil that stresses the high demands of true virtue. In this context, I argue that social evil may arise even when all the participants are truly virtuous. The conclusion of this paper is that social evil is problematic and provides new ground for exploring the conceptual resources of theism. (shrink)

“The Trolley Problem” is the name Judith Jarvis Thomson has given to a difficult problem in moral philosophy and legal theory. The problem arises by considering a series of cases, all of which involve a choice of evils. Many, but not all of these cases, involve an out-of-control trolley about to run over a group of five people. In each case we are asked for our intuitive judgment as to whether it would be permissible to save the five (...) people at risk when doing so would require the death of, or the imposition of a high risk of death on, another human being. (shrink)

Jim Sterba’s Is a Good God Logically Possible? looks to resurrect J. L. Mackie’s logical argument from evil. Sterba accepts the general framework that theists seeking to give a theodicy have favored since Leibniz invented the term: the search for some greater good provided or greater evil averted that would justify God in permitting the type and variety of evil we actually observe. However, Sterba introduces a deontic twist, drawing on the Pauline Principle (let us not do evil that good (...) may come) to introduce three deontic side constraints on God’s choice of action. He then splits the possible goods into four categories: first- vs. second-order goods, goods to which we have a right, and goods to which we do not have a right. He argues that his deontic constraints rule out each combination, thereby showing that no God-justifying good is on offer. To defuse the argument, I draw on a pair of ideas from Marilyn McCord Adams: (i) God is outside the bounds of morality, and (ii) God can defeat evils by incorporating them into an incommensurately valuable friendship with each human. Properly appreciated, these show that the new logical argument relies on a false premise that is not easily repaired. (shrink)