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ABSTRACT
I argue that we should emancipate the problem of evil and suffering from theodicist assumptions that lead to a chronic non-acknowledgment of the sufferers’ experiential point of view. This also entails emancipating the problem of evil and suffering from the need to consider the so-called argument from evil. In the argument ‘from’ evil, evil and suffering are seen as pieces of empirical evidence against theism. This presupposes understanding theism as a hypothesis to be tested in an evidentialist game of argumentation. Such a presupposition already fails to acknowledge the depth and variety of both religious and nonreligious approaches to living with evil and suffering. One way of cashing out what moral antitheodicism amounts to is to analyze theodicism as a failure of recognizing others’ suffering. Furthermore, one way of cashing out what this mis- or nonrecognition amounts to is to analyze the unforgivability of evil. Focusing on recognition and forgiveness here can be understood as an attempt to show that there is something seriously wrong with mainstream analytic philosophers’ of religion preoccupation with the argument from evil. In contrast, an ethically proper response to evil and suffering emerges from a serious consideration of recognition, forgiveness, and the unforgivable.
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Notes
1. On religious recognition and its history, see, e.g. Saarinen (Citation2016).
2. In philosophical and political debates on recognition (e.g. Honneth Citation2005; Taylor Citation1995), a major issue is how various groups of victims and/or marginalized sufferers can be heard, and how they can ‘define themselves’ or construct their identity, political status, and distinctive perspective in their own ways. This entire debate may be reevaluated on the basis of the ability of theories of recognition (Anerkennung in German) to account for experiences of evil and suffering.
3. Moral criticism of theodicies has fortunately been presented at least since Voltaire’s critique of Leibniz in Candide, and it has reemerged in contemporary ethics and philosophy of religion (see, e.g. Bernstein Citation2002; Gleeson Citation2012; Tilley Citation1991; Trakakis Citation2008; as well as Knepper Citation2013). However, my antitheodicism is considerably more radical – both methodologically and substantially – than the available moral critiques of theodicies, because it is transcendental; moral critics of theodicism usually do not formulate their criticism as a transcendental argument to the effect that theodicism violates the necessary conditions for the possibility of occupying a moral perspective.
4. This strong claim must, again, be put forward as a transcendental thesis, not as a factual or empirical claim about anyone’s (theodicists’ or antitheodicists’) ability versus inability to engage in moral deliberation. It concerns the necessary conditions for the possibility of the moral perspective.
5. Furthermore, at the meta-level, we may also speak about the self-reflective failure to recognize (acknowledge) (v) the impossibility of ever fully acknowledging the other’s suffering (or the suffering other), in the sense of (i)–(iv).
6. A notable exception is Verbin (Citation2010), who deals with forgiveness in relation to the Book of Job, among other things.
7. I can offer no close scholarly reading of Jankélévitch here. See, for various relevant perspectives on his theory of forgiveness, Udoff (Citation2013), and cf. Kivistö and Pihlström (Citation2016), chapter 3.
8. Jankélévitch’s view on forgiveness seems to quite deliberately blur the distinction between the transcendental and the transcendent, which should in a Kantian context be kept sharp.
9. Note that I have in this paper provided no exact definition or characterization of the relation between recognition and forgiveness. What I have suggested is that a certain kind of antitheodicist understanding of forgiveness (and unforgivability) at a transcendental level – dealing with the very possibility of the moral perspective – is crucial to our ability to recognize other human beings and their otherness. A great deal of further work on the conceptual relations between recognition, forgiveness, unforgivability, and antitheodicism will still have to be done.
10. I am grateful to two anonymous referees for helpful critical comments, as well as the audience of the European Conference in the Philosophy of Religion (Uppsala, August, 2016), at which this paper was presented. Special thanks are due to Ulf Zackariasson, the main organizer of the conference, and especially Sari Kivistö, with whom I have continuously worked on the issue of (anti)theodicy. Furthermore, regarding recognition and antitheodicy, I have benefited considerably from various discussions with Heikki J. Koskinen, Panu-Matti Pöykkö, and Risto Saarinen. This research has been conducted within the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence, ‘Reason and Religious Recognition’, at the Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki, Finland. The topic of this essay is more comprehensively discussed in Kivistö and Pihlström (Citation2016), chapter 3.
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Sami Pihlström
Sami Pihlström (PhD, University of Helsinki, 1996) is, since 2014, professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He was previously, among other things, the Director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (2009–2015). He is currently the President of the Philosophical Society of Finland and Vice-Chair of the Research Council for Culture and Society at the Academy of Finland. For further information on publications and academic profile, see https://tuhat.helsinki.fi/portal/en/person/spihlstr.