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ABSTRACT
Under an ‘antitheodicy’, I understand any attempt to show the principal impossibility of a morally respectable and rationally convincing theoretical answer to the theoretical problem of evil which is understood as a problem of consistency and rational coherence between propositions. In this paper, I will analyse the concept of rationality which is presupposed at least in some strands of antitheodicy. A. Gleeson’s ‘A frightening love. Recasting the Problem of Evil’ presupposes a dichotomy between an engaged-existential and a detached-impersonal kind of philosophical thinking which are respectively characterized by a stress on authenticity and the acknowledgement of particularity and contingency in the first case and by precision, logic, provability and an instrumental understanding of rationality in the second case. The second kind of reasoning which underlies all theodicies is inapt for dealing adequately with the real problem of evil. I try to show that the dichotomy of impersonal objective and existentially subjective kinds of philosophy is not a contradictory one but leaves out a broad field in-between which can be characterized as ‘informal reasoning’ and which allows a morally sensitive answer to the theoretical problem of evil which is not isolated from the ‘real’ problem of evil.
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Notes
1. Antitheodicy is different from the critique of particular atheistic arguments from evil and theistic defences and theodicies qua single arguments, which could be labelled particular theodicy critique. Let me mention in passing that I use ‘theodicy’ in a wide sense which includes not only theodicies but also defences and sceptical responses to the antitheistic argument from evil and also the critique of particular defences and theodicies or sceptical responses qua particular argumentative moves.
2. My usage resembles Nick Trakakis’ use of the term and is wider than Joseph Roth’s one.
3. Pihlström, Pragmatic Pluralism, 130f.
4. Gleeson, A Frightening Love, VIII.
5. Ibid., IX.
6. Ibid., 28; cf. also page 57.
7. Ibid., 56.
8. Ibid., 28.
9. A universally correct answer to a problem is ‘binding on all properly informed and rational agents under ideal conditions’; ibid., 100.
10. Ibid., 28–30.
11. Ibid., 57.
12. Ibid., 41.
13. Ibid., 27.
14. Ibid., 48.
15. Ibid., 29.
16. Ibid., 48.
17. Therefore, average people can safely and even should hand over the discussion of this problem to the experts, in this case, analytic philosophers of religion.
18. Gleeson, A Frightening Love, 86.
19. As theodicies don’t recognize the pointlessness of evil which ‘is essential to its horror’, they are self-defeating; ibid., 151.
20. Ibid., 30f.
21. Ibid., 44.
22. Ibid., 59, cf. also the following quote: ‘it admits the relevance of contingent It gives important scope to forms of individual judgement’; ibid., 29; both italics not in the original.
23. Ibid., 29.
24. Ibid., 80. According to this moderate version, the personal mode of thinking fulfils the conditions of an ideal judgement which include the demand of correct factual information, rationality and logical validity besides a moral criterion and the existential criterion of scrutinizing ones spiritual demeanour. According to Gleeson’s official version, nobody ‘is exempted from any of the criteria of ideal judgement’ (Ibid., 96). He only rejects the ‘thin conception of the resources a being needs to reach this correct judgement on the problem of evil’ (Ibid., 86) due to its heavy stress on technical–theoretical virtues which renders existential criteria irrelevant. His own attempt to face the existential problem of evil which is based on a contrast of morality and love exhibits virtues which belong to the class of the first condition of an ideal judgement.
25. Ibid., 3.
26. This means denying the connection between understanding truth and the attempt to live it out in one’s life (Ibid., 95).
27. There is no single sentence or section in Gleeson’s book I can refer to in order to justify my interpretation. But passages are scattered throughout the whole book and especially his critique of theodicies which are best interpreted in the light of an exclusivistic reading of the existential mode of reasoning; for example, compare Gleeson’s rejection even of any aspiration to neutrality (Ibid., 28). Another case in point is Gleeson’s repudiation of ‘objectifying’ discourse which is characterized inter alia by a technical ideal of truth which comes down to the denial of even the most minimal form of a correspondence conception of truth; cf. ibid., 86–8. But the main reason for my interpretation of an equivocation between two conceptions of the existential mode of reasoning is the fact that only the exclusivistic reading of Gleeson’s existential thinking can justify his wholesale rejection of any attempts at theodicies. An inclusivistic reading allows for a fierce critique of some attempts to defeat the problem of evil/argument from evil but doesn’t justify Gleeson’s reluctance to attempt at an outline of a ‘rich’ dealing with the problem of evil which integrates at least some aspects and insights of the standard analytic discussion of the argument from evil.
28. I borrow this phrase from Basil Mitchell who spoke of theological ping-pong.
29. Gleeson, A Frightening Love, 13
30. For the qualification ‘impersonal’ cf. ibid., 127f.
31. Ibid., 13. I interpret his ‘inhuman in the worst sense’ as meaning ‘inhumane’. Gleeson doesn’t give any reason for his claim but only for the different and weaker claim that the God’s eye point of view is irrelevant. One could reconstruct an argument for this claim which would go in the following way: As the God’s eye point of view leads to a kind of morality which isn’t ‘worth the cost’; ibid., 12. But exactly that is disputed by the proponent of the at least regulative ideal of a God’s eye point of view. Therefore, such an argument would be question-begging.
32. For a short explication and defence of an ideal observer theory compare, e.g. Taliaferro, ‘God’s Eye’, 76–84.
33. Not even the idea that the victims of evils will (or better: should) retrospectively give their consent would change this verdict: ‘The important point is simply that whatever we might think in a remote (and frankly, fantastic) future, it remains the case that we morally cannot now conceive children and send them to Auschwitz. To say that a future, retrospective consent would trump this when it comes to what we or God should do just is to abandon the human view in favour of the ideal observer’s’; Gleeson, A Frightening Love, 14.
34. Ibid., 14.
35. Plato, ‘Euthyphro’, 4e, transl. Woods and Pack. Socrates’ questions should pause either theodicists or antitheodicists.
36. Take for example John Henry Newman’s idea that Anglicanism is the via media between wrong extremes and therefore the legitimate custodian of the patristic tradition, which didn’t withstand his continued historic research.
37. In the centre of the talk of the Grand Inquisitor to Jesus, we can find the old man’s confession: ‘I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it is Thou or only a semblance of Him, but tomorrow I shall condemn Thee and burn Thee at the stake as the worst of heretics’; Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov; transl. Garnett, 274. Ivan closes the story of the Grand Inquisitor with the sentence ‘The kiss [he has been kissed by Jesus; OJW] glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea’. (Ibid., 289; italics added.)
38. Cf. McPherson, ‘Cosmic Outlooks’, 197–215; cf. also J. Cottingham’s response to Thaddeus Metz’ secular fundamentality theory of meaningfulness; Cottingham, ‘Theism and Meaning’, 55ff.
39. McPherson, ‘Cosmic Outlooks’, 197.
40. The following characterization of worldviews is deeply indebted to the work of Otto Muck and Winfried Löffler.
41. These criteria roughly correspond with Frederick Ferré’s four criteria of metaphysical systems; Ferré, Language, Logic and God, 162f.
42. This kind of coherentism is inspired inter alia by the work of Nicholas Rescher, the early Laurence Bonjour, Thomas Bartelborth and Susan Haack’s foundherentism.
43. This is a theoretical kin of Aristotle’s phronesis.
44. As far as I know the name goes back to Rod Sykes, Sykes, ‘Soft Rationalism’, 51–66 and was positively appropriated by William Abraham; Abraham, An Introduction, chapter 9.
45. Wynn, Emotional Experience, XI.
46. Ibid.
47. To cut a long story short: Peter is subjectively justified in believing that his dog Fido is ill if Peter has reasons for believing that Fido is ill corresponds to objective epistemic norms or criteria and is therefore epistemically blameless even if Fido isn’t ill or Peter’s belief that his belief that Fido is ill corresponds to objective epistemic norms or criteria is wrong.
48. Joas, Die Sakralität der Person, 13.
49. This text is a revised version of a paper delivered in a short paper session at the conference of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion in Uppsala 2016. I would like to thank the participants of that short paper session for their helpful questions and suggestions. I am especially grateful to Timo Koistinen, Sami Pihlström, Panu-Matti Pöykkö and Hami Verbin and to two anonymous referees. I also want to thank Åke Wahlberg for his not only linguistic assistance.
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Oliver J. Wiertz
Oliver J. Wiertz is a professor of philosophy at Sankt Georgen Graduate School for Philosophy and Theology, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. He received a doctorate in theology from Sankt Georgen School and a doctorate in philosophy from Goethe-University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. His research focuses on epistemology and analytic philosophy of religion. He has published articles on the rationality of religious faith, the theistic concept of God, the problem of evil, religious plurality and religious violence.