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ABSTRACT
Any religious worldview, understood in the sense that ‘life has a purpose’, has to face the problem of evil. The problem of evil has been particularly intensively discussed in the Aristotelian–Scholastic–Christian tradition. The most popular solution has been to deny that anything truly evil actually exists. It is hard to conceive why an omnipotent and perfectly good God would allow evil to appear. Yet, Western culture has been and still is full of imagery of absolute demonic evil. I suggest that this strained dialectic could be best approached by radically rethinking the nature of evil and the theological context in which it has traditionally been thought. In his middle period works, Friedrich Schelling offers a pantheistic framework which gives extensive resources for thinking about evil. Schelling’s account is well balanced and innovative at least in two respects. It does not explain away the inscrutable presence of evil, but it neither completely renounces theoretical speculation of the origin of evil. Second, Schelling’s metaphysics anticipate Nietzsche’s fundamental critique of the ‘life-denying’ character of Western metaphysics and ethics. However, while sharing much of the critical aspects of Nietzsche’s thought, unlike Nietzsche, Schelling does not end up in atheism and moral relativism.
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Notes
1. Van Inwagen, Problem of Evil, 17.
2. Neiman, “Problem of Evil,” 27.
3. Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought, 326.
4. Van Inwagen, Problem of Evil, 7.
5. In this respect, a very similar argument has been presented in Mathewes 2006, but Mathewes adopts a theoretical framework completely opposite to mine, namely, the Augustinian tradition.
6. One could argue that Schelling actually represents the Christian theistic tradition and is not a pantheist like Spinoza, for Schelling evidently identifies himself as Christian (1992, 95) and conceives God as personal (ibid., 74–75) and omnipotent (ibid., 50). However, his understanding of these terms is peculiar to the extent that it is possible to interpret Schelling even as an atheistic thinker (see e.g. Žižek 2007). In my view, Schelling is best understood as a pantheist who is genuinely religious but whose concept of divinity stems from esoteric traditions such as Lurianic Kabbalah rather than any variety of generally acknowledged Christianity (see McGrath 2012).
7. Lawrence, “Philosophical Religion,” 13; Norman and Welchman, “Introduction,” 1; and Ostaric, “Introduction,” 3.
8. Norman and Welchman, “Introduction,” 2.
9. Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise, 6.
10. Wirth, “Introduction,” 6.
11. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 4.
12. Wirth, Conspiracy of Life, 34.
13. Schelling, Freedom Essay, 10.
14. Ibid., 11.
15. Ibid., 13.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 23.
19. Schelling, Freedom Essay, 32.
20. Ibid., 33.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., 32.
24. Ibid., 34.
25. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 151.
26. See note 19.
27. Ibid., 22.
28. Schelling, Ages of the World, 55–56.
29. Schelling, Freedom Essay, 34.
30. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 138–9.
31. Bowie, Schelling and Modern Philosophy, 1–12; Freyberg, Schelling’s Freedom Essay, 111–18; Norman and Welchman, “‘Introduction,” 6–11; and Wirth, “Introduction,” 6.
32. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 131.
33. Ibid., 123.
34. Ibid., 184.
35. Schelling, Freedom Essay, 89 (brackets my addition).
36. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 184.
37. Schelling, Freedom Essay, 42.
38. Snow, End of Idealism, 166.
39. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 186.
40. Lawrence, “Schelling’s Metaphysics of Evil,” 168.
41. Alford, What Evil Means, 99.
42. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 181.
43. Lawrence, “Schelling´s Metaphysics of Evil,” 169.
44. Ibid., 175.
45. In his Evil and the Augustinian Tradition, Charles Mathewes offers an analysis of modernity similar to Lawrence’s reading of Schelling. According to Mathewes, modernity cannot face evil in a constructive way (evil is either demonized or reduced away) because of its deep-seated presupposition of ‘subjectivism’. However, while Schelling traces these problems partly back to St. Augustine, Mathewes argues the precise opposite that a deeper reflection of the Augustinian elements of our contemporary thought would work as a cure to fundamental tensions of modernity regarding evil.
46. Schelling, Freedom Essay, 45.
47. Ibid., 44.
48. Ibid., 47.
49. See endnote 43.
50. Jung, “Fight with the Shadow,” 174–80.
51. Lawrence, “Schelling´s Metaphysics of Evil,” 169–70.
52. Schelling, Freedom Essay, 89.
53. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 123.
54. Ibid., 139.
55. Norman, “Schelling and Nietzsche,” 90–91.
56. McGrath, Dark Ground of Spirit, 128–31.
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Olli Pitkänen
Olli Pitkänen is a doctoral student at the University of Jyväskylä. His PhD thesis argues for the relevance of a metaphysical conception of evil in contemporary philosophy. Pitkänen is interested in metaphysics, moral philosophy and philosophy of religion with a special emphasis on esotericism and evil. His latest articles have appeared in Philosophical Approaches to Demonology (2017) and the journal Social Sciences and Political Thought.