Search

Muslim philosophers commonly endorse a version of the so-called 'privation theory of evil' (PTE), according to which all essential evils consist in the non-existence of an entity or privation of a deserved perfection. In this article, I first provide a short sketch of PTE based on clarification of its main conceptual components. Then I examine the main reasons for the truth of PTE offered by Muslim philosophers and show that none of them is sufficiently plausible. Finally, I investigate the most significant objections against PTE and criticize the proposed responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Philosophy / Roczniki Filozoficzne is the property of John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, I highlight three objections to vice-based accounts of moral evil: (1) the worry that vice-based accounts of evil are explanatorily inadequate; (2) the worry that even extreme vice is not sufficient for evil; and (3) the worry that not all vices are inversions of virtue (and so vice-based accounts will struggle to explain the "mirror thesis"). I argue that it is possible to respond to these objections by developing a vice-based account of evil that draws on insights from virtue (and vice) epistemology. In this way, I seek to defend the strategy of understanding evil in terms of vice, and to provide guidance on how best to develop such an account. I also briefly consider what vice-based accounts of moral evil might imply about evil in other normative domains where it is common to talk of virtue and vice, including the possibilities of epistemic evil and aesthetic evil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I sketch, both in broad outlines and in selected details, the new, richer picture of von Hildebrand's account of moral evil as it emerges from my discovery of extensive materials in von Hildebrand´s Nachlass at the Bavarian State Library in Munich dealing with the "roots of moral evil". These manuscripts and typescripts, the critical edition of which will be published at the same time as this article or shortly thereafter, show that von Hildebrand´s account of moral evil is much richer, more nuanced, and complex than the one we can glean from the final section of Ethics, his magnum opus in moral philosophy. In this article, I also aim to situate von Hildebrand´s analysis of the roots of moral evil in the context of both Christian religious thought and the Western philosophical tradition. Von Hildebrand was, to be sure, an heir to both of these traditions, despite the thrust of his phenomenological method to "bracket" all extant theories and turn "back to the things themselves". The mind-boggling feature of the tension between von Hildebrand´s existential rootedness in the Catholic tradition and his methodological distance to it, including the Aristotelian–Thomist philosophy, is the following: On one hand, he claims that the two ultimate roots of moral evil are pride and concupiscence, which sounds perfectly traditionally Christian. On the other hand, however, he strips these concepts of most of their traditional connotations and endows them with the meaning they acquire in the context of his phenomenological analyses. The intriguing result of this approach is the transformation of religious or moral theological concepts of pride and concupiscence into descriptive phenomenological categories which encompass an almost inexhaustible wealth of various subspecies and subordinate forms of moral evil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of evil in a world created by God raises very difficult questions to answer. Under the inspiration of Thomistic philosophy, in this article we face this problem first of all "from below", trying to understand the meaning of physical evils in living nature, especially in animals (pain, aggressive interactions). Secondly, in thinking of the enormous amount of moral evil in the human world, we consider the biblical faith in original sin as illuminating. We examine some points of Thomas Aquinas in this regard, especially his thesis that the physical cosmos is not affected by original sin and that the loss of man's primitive happy situation involves a contradiction between his spiritual aspirations and his mortal nature subject to limits and suffering. This situation is remedied by the help God gives man through his ordinary Providence, which includes a personal struggle against evil, and above all through his salvific plan which we know thanks to the biblical faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing inspiration from Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and Thomas Aquinas, and in support of the definition of evil as the privation of being or goodness, this article proposes a complementary definition of evil. It argues that evil can be defined as the non-advancement of being, appetite, or natural inclination toward its proper perfection or completion. First, it explains what this definition entails, elaborates on its implications, and defends its plausibility. Second, it discusses typical objections to the privation account and shows how defining evil relative to appetite can help overcome them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a literary analysis of the existential dilemmas and psychological traumas of the characters in Mihaela Perciun’s novel, Cenușă rece. The sources and the chain of causality that marked the destinies of the characters from the perspective of moral evil are particularly highlighted. We have shown that moral deviations and the constraint of freedom of conscience are what can create both social dissensions and identity fractures over time. By using black humor, the author illustrates an upside-down world, wicked and with values followed only on a declarative level, thus managing to offer us a full picture of this society. It also analyzes the drama of three generations of women and how the male character, Tudor Cocargea, marked their existence by one moral slip he committed. Thus, we found that the characters, although they are blood relatives, are devoid of affection and totally unknown to each other.

Copyright of Cauriensia: Revista Anual de Ciencias Eclesiásticas is the property of Instituto Teologico San Pedro de Alcantara de Caceres and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Violence, one of today's problems, appears in many areas of our lives. In general, violence occurs in wars between countries, civil wars, social events, in our daily work areas, in schools, and even in our homes. Violence inflicts excellent physical and psychological wounds on people. Recently, studies on violence have increased, but it cannot be said that these studies are sufficient. It is necessary to plan activities to prevent violence, to put these plans into practice, and to help heal the physical and psychological wounds of people subjected to violence. Incidents of violence are caused by free-willed people's misuse of their will. Therefore, in our study, we consider violence as a morally evil problem. Philosophers have classified existing evils in various ways. The most common of these are natural evil and moral evil. Moral evil includes the wrong actions of an individual with free will. According to theistic belief, God is omnipotent and absolute good. The coexistence of the omnipotent God of theistic belief and evil in the world has caused the existence of evil to be seen as a problem. Theists' effort to reconcile the world's evils with the existence of a perfect God is called theodicy. According to the free will theodicy, evils occur at the levels of the universe that include free will; that is, this theodicy is aimed at freeing God from the responsibilities of the existence of evil. In our study, we discussed the free will theodicy and soul-making theodicy, which includes a human will from theodicy. In this theodicy, God created humans free initially, but humans chose evil with their free will and turned away from perfection. In the soul-making theodicy, another theodicy we will discuss, God created humans at a cognitive distance from himself. This distance gives man the possibility of fundamental freedom before God. In soul-making theodicy, humans are initially immature, imperfect beings. People reach moral maturity by overcoming the tests and difficulties in this world. That is why God created humans with free will. In this theodicy, the world is not a place to live in pleasure and happiness. If this world becomes a place to experience pleasure and happiness, this will go against the laws of nature. In such a world, ethical concepts lose meaning and cannot complete moral development. If we consider these two theodicies over the issue of violence, both theodicies are insufficient to solve violent incidents. The virtues taught through these theodicies are not taken into account by people, and people turn their will to evil again. The maturation of people who mislead their will is also incomplete. Immature souls bring violence with them. In the face of the inadequacy here, we can benefit from the love theodicy. In love theodicy, the tolerance of love and human love is at the forefront. The peace and love that comes with love are the beauties brought by the love theodicy. Being measured and balanced is achieved through love. The theodicy of love helps one restrain one's excessive anger. The responsibility aspect of the love theodicy enables people to mature. The theodicy of love reveals people's feelings of cooperation, beauty and truth. A person who is full of love, thanks the maturity he has reached, loves and respects people and gets rid of feelings of hatred. The theodicy of love can guide preventing violence and finding permanent solutions. This article examines the role of love theodicy as a solution to violence. The theodicy of love is essential because it uses the impressive power of love against violence, transforms life into love, respect and tolerance, and also increases love between people. Our aim in this article is to offer solutions to violent incidents based on the essence of love theodicy, to look at them from different philosophical concepts and perspectives, and to enrich these perspectives with examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence of human wickedness in the world is so transparent that no rational person can dispute its reality. This paper approaches the question of the human person from an African philosophical perspective and explores the relation between the apparently free-acting human being and God conceived as the creator of the world and the ultimate cause of the human being. The paper will proffer answers to the following question: to what extent can the human being be absolved of blame for the evil they perpetrate in a world conceived in African traditional religion and thought as the creation of a high deity who could have foreseen the negative bent of human nature and should have made human nature inclined to goodness all of the time? The paper will make novel contributions to the debate about human nature in African philosophical discourse by recasting the human being as a homo melancholicus, or melancholy being, whose evil inclination in the world can best be understood in the context of a tragic vision of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Beytulhikme: An International Journal of Philosophy is the property of Beytulhikme: An International Journal of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), 20. yüzyılda yaşamış Yahudi kökenli bir Alman yurttaşıdır. Onun, Nazi Partisi’nin II. Dünya savaşı esnasında güttüğü antisemitist politikanın etkisiyle şekillenen kötülük tasavvuruna, politik ve ahlâkî içerikte telif ettiği pek çok çalışmasında rastlamak mümkündür. Ona göre, yaşadığı toplumda Alman ırkından olmayanlara karşı benimsenen totaliter politikanın insanca gerekçelerle açıklanması mümkün değildir. O, bu bağlamda, yapılan kötülükleri ifade etmek için radikal kötülük ifadesini kullanmıştır. Ancak çok geçmeden, bu kötülüklerin icrasında bilfiil görev alanların bu konudaki fiillerini bir görevin icrası olarak telakki etmeleri, Arendt’in kötülük kavramını bir başka kavramla daha nitelendirmesine neden olmuştur: sıradanlık. Bu çalışmada, onun kötülük meselesiyle ilgili olarak kullandığı radikal kötülük ve kötülüğün sıradanlığı kavramlarının, klasik kötülük problemi teorilerinden ayrıştığı yanlar analiz edilecektir. Ayrıca totaliter yönetim şeklinin sebep olduğu radikal kötülük fikrinin din felsefesine etkisi ve bu disiplin içerisinde nasıl konumlandırılacağı sorgulanacaktır. Araştırmalarımız neticesinde, Arendt’in kötülük problemine getirdiği yeni bakış açısının, klasik anlamdaki kötülük algısına ve kötülük kavramının kapsamına yeni katkılarda bulunduğu sonucuna ulaşılmıştır.

Two recent atheistic arguments from evil have made much of natural evil and the suffering of animals in their case contra theism. The first argument is that of James Sterba. Sterba's argument is an incompatibility argument premised on the claim that there are actual events logically incompatible with the existence of God. The second is that of Michael Tooley, who erects his argument in part on the claim that failing to prevent the suffering of animals cannot be justified by appeals to the great value of regular and predictable laws of nature, nor to the desirability of divine hiddenness. This article examines the arguments of Sterba and Tooley and contends that both are self-undermining. Each of the arguments employs premises that provide reason for thinking that other premises found in their arguments are false. Prior to a discussion of the two arguments, we explore the nature of incompatibility arguments, and examine three assumptions that lurk in the background of discussions of the problem of evil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Beytulhikme: An International Journal of Philosophy is the property of Beytulhikme: An International Journal of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The existence of evil in a world created by God raises very difficult questions to answer. Under the inspiration of Thomistic philosophy, in this article we face this problem first of all “from below”, trying to understand the meaning of physical evils in living nature, especially in animals (pain, aggressive interactions). Secondly, in thinking of the enormous amount of moral evil in the human world, we consider the biblical faith in original sin as illuminating. We examine some points of Thomas Aquinas in this regard, especially his thesis that the physical cosmos is not affected by original sin and that the loss of man’s primitive happy situation involves a contradiction between his spiritual aspirations and his mortal nature subject to limits and suffering. This situation is remedied by the help God gives man through his ordinary Providence, which includes a personal struggle against evil, and above all through his salvific plan which we know thanks to the biblical faith.

In this article, I sketch, both in broad outlines and in selected details, the new, richer picture of von Hildebrand’s account of moral evil as it emerges from my discovery of extensive materials in von Hildebrand´s Nachlass at the Bavarian State Library in Munich dealing with the “roots of moral evil”. These manuscripts and typescripts, the critical edition of which will be published at the same time as this article or shortly thereafter, show that von Hildebrand´s account of moral evil is much richer, more nuanced, and complex than the one we can glean from the final section of Ethics, his magnum opus in moral philosophy. In this article, I also aim to situate von Hildebrand´s analysis of the roots of moral evil in the context of both Christian religious thought and the Western philosophical tradition. Von Hildebrand was, to be sure, an heir to both of these traditions, despite the thrust of his phenomenological method to “bracket” all extant theories and turn “back to the things themselves”. The mind-boggling feature of the tension between von Hildebrand´s existential rootedness in the Catholic tradition and his methodological distance to it, including the Aristotelian–Thomist philosophy, is the following: On one hand, he claims that the two ultimate roots of moral evil are pride and concupiscence, which sounds perfectly traditionally Christian. On the other hand, however, he strips these concepts of most of their traditional connotations and endows them with the meaning they acquire in the context of his phenomenological analyses. The intriguing result of this approach is the transformation of religious or moral theological concepts of pride and concupiscence into descriptive phenomenological categories which encompass an almost inexhaustible wealth of various subspecies and subordinate forms of moral evil.

The various categories of moral evil associated with some contemporary extremists' religious ideologies have continued to raise fundamental questions about the purpose of religion in human life the world over. In Nigeria, the Northeastern region has recorded the worst form of moral evil in recent years due to religious extremism. Therefore, this essay explored the phenomenon of religious extremism to underscore how it has occasioned large-scale moral evil in North-eastern Nigeria. Data were obtained from existing literature, media reports and observation of the contemporary religious situation in the Northeastern region. Historical, content, critical and constructive methods of analysis were utilized for data interpretation. Two major religious extremist sects (Boko Haram and ISWAP) are largely responsible for most of the moral evil in north-eastern Nigeria. These two extremist groups have continued to abduct, dehumanize, displace and kill innocent people across the northeastern region in the name of God. This paper submits that religious extremists should eschew violent extremism and embrace the philosophy of peace, love and tolerance in the practice of their religious beliefs for the common good of all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Beytulhikme: An International Journal of Philosophy is the property of Beytulhikme: An International Journal of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The doctrine of original sin serves as a major challenge to apologetic theological reflection. The challenge is more demanding in times of the widespread scientific worldview, which renders biblical accounts on human evil less credible and questions the rationalization efforts produced by ancient and medieval theology. Recent developments in scientific anthropology offer a chance to better approach human negativity. So far, theologians have tried in the last years to apply those advances to update that doctrine, although not to the point which could lessen its mystery. Original sin expresses a general state of human frailty, whose origins escape scientific analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tetkik is the property of Oku Okut Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Life on Earth has long been plagued by global calamities: pandemics, environmental disasters, climate change, and species extinctions. Humans have been witnesses and even victims of some of these; too often, we have contributed to the problem. Some people draw a direct causal link between those catastrophes and the third chapter of Genesis: our sinful nature and original sin. But perhaps we should also consider drawing another link coming from the first chapter of Genesis in which human beings are commanded to subdue and have dominion over a very good creation that had change, innovation, exploitation, and even death built into it. Humans were not yet up to that task: we were never omnipotent nor omniscient. But God wanted us to learn how to fill that role, and Jesus again redirected us into it when he inaugurated the arrival of the Kingdom of God on Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Kant’s writings, we can discover four key moments in the realization of moral freedom: i) The original possibility of being free, ii) The act described by Kant as radical evil, iii) The opposite act, that is, an inner conversion to good, and, finally, iv) The long process of the self-development of virtue extending to immortality. There are further issues such as the double concept of moral evil, and practical temporality. Moral freedom is originally located (and presupposed in Kant’s transcendental deduction) in the individual, her decisions, and the maxims or principles that guide her actions, even though a community (as both a „kingdom of ends” and social reality) provides the scope wherein all this takes place and its socially and historically-situated shapes. This paper tries to systematize these crucial stages of Kant’s moral philosophy with the focus on the concept of virtue.

Two recent atheistic arguments from evil have made much of natural evil and the suffering of animals in their case contra theism. The first argument is that of James Sterba. Sterba’s argument is an incompatibility argument premised on the claim that there are actual events logically incompatible with the existence of God. The second is that of Michael Tooley, who erects his argument in part on the claim that failing to prevent the suffering of animals cannot be justified by appeals to the great value of regular and predictable laws of nature, nor to the desirability of divine hiddenness. This article examines the arguments of Sterba and Tooley and contends that both are self-undermining. Each of the arguments employs premises that provide reason for thinking that other premises found in their arguments are false. Prior to a discussion of the two arguments, we explore the nature of incompatibility arguments, and examine three assumptions that lurk in the background of discussions of the problem of evil.

Copyright of Oriens is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Can panentheism cope with the problem of evil? This problem is often understood as one for classical theists, who maintain that the cosmos, together with its evils, was created by an all-powerful and benevolent God. For classical theists need to reconcile the world’s evils with divine creation. But corresponding problems re-emerge for theologies of both pantheistic and panentheistic kinds. Thus a problem arises for panentheists, with their teachings about a close relation between God and the cosmos. The closer the relation, the more intense the problem. Thus panentheists who regard the world as necessary to or part of God must hold that its evils are likewise necessary to or part of God. I explore in this paper whether panentheism can overcome the corresponding problem. This exploration involves sifting different varieties of panentheism. While for some varieties the problem is insoluble, this turns out to be less so for others, which retain central features of classical theism, while stressing interaction between God and the created world. In particular, grounds will be offered for holding that the version of panentheism put forward by Jürgen Moltmann and by Arthur Peacocke is defensible and can overcome this problem.

The sense of evil in the world encourages debate on its objective existence. Attempts to grasp the phenomenon of evil are undertaken in a number of intellectual perspectives, including metaphysical, epistemological and axiological investigations within the field of philosophy. The thought of Mieczysław A. Krąpiec constitutes an attempt to derive conclusions in the discourse on evil, in order to answer the question of the presence of metaphysical, physical and moral evil in the world. This paper quite ambitiously aims to present the essence of Krąpiec's views on moral evil. An analysis of these views seems crucial due to their considerable impact on Polish existential Thomism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beyond religious concepts, in order to strengthen moral exigencies and the promise of metaphysical or practical compensation, morality could be interpreted as abstract. In the absence of moral goodness, everything is, in fact, allowed. This is the premise on which this research is based. Moral good and moral evil are fluctuating concepts and are the effect of individual actions, messages and ideas of specific processes determined by will, creativity or imagination. The concept of theatre, like the one directly related to the art of the actor, aims precisely at the idea of consent and the Grotowskian idea, taken from Artaud, of ”piercing” the human nature. In addition, the audience is invited to make the effort to find out the truth about themselves. Both the good and the evil that we can recognize in the proximity of art, result from the way in which our inner make-up adapts to the experience of meeting the ”other one”. Hence the moral goodness-moral menace polarity. The art of the actor, as a concrete element, is firstly linked to the unique human nature and then, indirectly, through the transmitted emotional elements, to the necessary and universal moral law. This is why the only valid theatrical ”ideology” is represented by the metaphysical human knowledge. When the actor processes and then transmits and the audience lets themselves be ”pierced” – Grotowskian specific term – by the emotion transmitted by this higher court, only then the freedom of having honest self-interrogative hopes can be born. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present in which terms the question of hope appears in Kant's book about religion. This purpose is based on the Kantian claim that the book Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone is the domain in which it answered the question "What may I hope?". From the examination of discourse central of this written, it is concluded that Kant presents an assessment of the plausibility of the question "What may I hope?", investigates the foundations from which hope is made possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]