Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T23:14:46.023Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Moral critique and defence of theodicy

Winner of the 2013 Religious Studies Postgraduate Essay Prize

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2013

SAMUEL SHEARN
SAMUEL SHEARN*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, 34 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LD, UK e-mail: samuel.shearn@theology.ox.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this essay, moral anti-theodicy is characterized as opposition to the trivialization of suffering, defined as the reinterpretation of horrendous evils in a way the sufferer cannot accept. Ambitious theodicy (which claim goods emerge from specific evils) is deemed always to trivialize horrendous evils and, because there is no specific theoretical context, also harm sufferers. Moral anti-theodicy is susceptible to two main criticisms. First, it is over-demanding as a moral position. Second, anti-theodicist opposition to least ambitious theodicies, which portray God's decision to create as an ‘all-or-nothing’ scenario, requires a moral commitment to philosophical pessimism. Thus anti-theodicists should not be quick to take the moral high ground. However, this should not encourage theodicists, since theodicies may well be self-defeating in so far as they attempt to provide comfort.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 439 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, M. M. (1999) Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Adams, M. M. (2012) ‘Ignorance, instrumentality, compensation and the problem of evil’, Sophia (forthcoming), [online]. Available at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11841-012-0346-9 [accessed on 1 March 2013].Google Scholar
Adorno, T. W. (1973) Negative Dialectics, Ashton, E. B. (tr.) (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Benatar, D. (2006) Better never to have been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buber, M. (1970) I and Thou, 3rd edn, Kaufmann, W. (tr.) (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark).Google Scholar
Davis, S. T. (2001) ‘Critique of D. Z. Phillips’, in Davis, S. T. (ed.) Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy new edn (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox), 167–170.Google Scholar
Davis, S. T. (2004) ‘Truth and action in theodicy: a reply to C. Robert Mesle’, American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, 25, 270–275.Google Scholar
Dostoevsky, F. (1993) The Karamazov Brothers, tr. with an Introduction and Notes by D. McDuff (London: Penguin).Google Scholar
Forrest, P. (2010) ‘Why Richard Swinburne won't “rot in hell”: a defense of tough-minded theodicy’, Sophia, 49, 37–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gawronski, I. & Privette, G. (1997) ‘Empathy and Reactive Depression’, Psychological Reports 80, 1043–1049.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodin, R. E. (2009) ‘Demandingness as a virtue’, Journal of Ethics, 13, 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, D. B. (2005) The Doors of the Sea: Where was God in the Tsunami? (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmanns).Google Scholar
Hick, J. (2007) ‘D. Z. Phillips on God and evil’, Religious Studies, 43, 433–441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hick, J. (2010) Evil and the God of Love, Reissue (London: Palgrave Macmillan).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janaway, C. (2000) ‘Schopenhauer's pessimism’, in Janaway, C. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 318–343.Google Scholar
LaCapra, D. (1999) ‘Trauma, absence, loss’, Critical Inquiry, 25, 696–727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDuff, D. (1993) ‘Introduction’, in Dostoevsky, F., The Karamazov Brothers, tr. with an Introduction and Notes by D. McDuff (London: Penguin), xiii–xxix.Google Scholar
Mackie, J. L. (1990) ‘Evil and omnipotence’, in Adams, M. M. & Adams, R. M. (eds) The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 25–37.Google Scholar
Marquard, O. (2003) ‘Entlastungen: Theodizeemotive in der neuzeitlichen Philosophie’, in Marquard, O. (ed.) Zukunft braucht Herkunft: Philosophische Essays (Stuttgart: Reclam), 124–145.Google Scholar
Nielsen, K. (2008) ‘Linguistic philosophy and “the meaning of life”’, in Klemke, E. D. & Cahn, S. M. (eds) The Meaning of Life: A Reader, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 203–219.Google Scholar
Phillips, D. Z. (2004) The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God (London: SCM Press).Google Scholar
Plantinga, A. (1990) ‘God, evil, and the metaphysics of freedom’, in Adams, M. M. & Adams, R. M. (eds) The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 83–109.Google Scholar
Sachs, C. B. (2011) ‘The acknowledgement of transcendence: anti-theodicy in Adorno and Levinas’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 37, 273–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheffler, S. (1986) ‘Morality's demands and their limits’, The Journal of Philosophy, 83, 531–537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, S. M. (2009) ‘Theorizing theodicy in the study of religion’, in The Religion and Culture Web Forum, Chicago Divinity School. [online]. Available at: www.divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/112009/Theorizing%20Theodicy%20.pdf [accessed 1 March 2013], 1–20.Google Scholar
Simpson, R. M. (2009a) ‘Moral antitheodicy: prospects and problems’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 65, 153–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, R. M. (2009b) ‘Some moral critique of theodicy is misplaced, but not all’, Religious Studies, 45, 339–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Søvik, A. (2008) ‘Why almost all moral critique of theodicies is misplaced’, Religious Studies, 44, 479–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Søvik, A. (2011) ‘More on moral critique of theodicies: reply to Robert Simpson’, Religious Studies, 47, 383–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stiver, D. R. (2005) ‘Still too high a price? Ivan's question in the light of contemporary theodicy’, in Barnhart, J. E. (ed.) Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Talent (Lanham MY: University of America Press), 25–39.Google Scholar
Surin, K. (1986) Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Sutherland, S. (1977) Atheism and the Rejection of God: Contemporary Philosophy and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Trakakis, N. (2008) ‘Theodicy: the solution to the problem of evil, or part of the problem?’, Sophia, 47, 161–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Inwagen, P. (2005) ‘The problem of evil’, in Wainwright, W. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 188–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, R. (1996) ‘Redeeming sorrows’, in Phillips, D. Z. (ed.) Religion and Morality (London, Palgrave Macmillan), 132–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar