Hi everyone. Another essay here on answering the question"What is man?" with definitions from Descartes and Plato. This was done in second year so I hope it helps!
The tradition of western philosophy began in ancient Greece with the Presocratic philosophers. These Presocratics had an immense curiosity in having an understanding on what the ultimate nature of reality consisted of. It wasn’t until the Sophists began their teachings that this line of philosophical inquiry moved from focusing on the cosmos and the world around us to looking at the importance of the human being. This can be seen clearly in the famous statement by the sophist Protagoras in his claim:
“Man is the measure of all things, of things that they are, that they are, and of things that they are not, that they are not”.
This shift in philosophical focus was to be the teaching which Socrates, and later his student Plato, would reply to in their own teachings. The prime focus of human beings was on the soul, which Socrates believed was the source of all truth. It was Plato, however, who made the distinction between the soul and the body and this was the beginning of the concept of dualism. This concept has been accepted, modified and tweaked by scholars and philosophers all throughout the years in the western philosophical tradition and it has played a key part in the study of Philosophical Anthropology. In discussing this dualism, it is not uncommon to pair Plato with Rene Descartes as they were two of the most eminent dualists of the western tradition. Both philosophers attempt to answer the question “What is man?” by arguing that we consist of something incorporeal, whether one calls it 'mind' or 'soul', which for the time being is somehow united with a body that is part of the physical world. Both identify the self, the `I', with the incorporeal member of this combination. Both hold that the mind or soul will survive the demise of the body. Both may be understood as holding that the mind or soul can exist altogether independently of body, though Plato may have changed position on this point, as I will discuss later. Both are concerned with the immortality of the soul. In this essay I shall focus on the separability of mind or soul from body to answer the question mentioned previously, “What is man?”, in Plato's Phaedo and Phaedrus and Descartes' Meditations.
Before I go much further, I shall give a word on some of the terms used. Several times already I have used the words 'mind or soul' as if the words meant the same, which of course they do not. Plato consistently speaks of the soul, but not so with Descartes. In his preface addressed to the theologians at the Sorbonne in his Meditations, Descartes claims that he will prove the immortality of the soul.# He is using the church's label for the doctrine, but it is doubtful that what he thought he could prove is what the church means by the phrase. In a more philosophical context, Descartes explicitly distinguishes mind from soul, reserving 'soul' for that which animates the body. In this sense of 'soul' he either denies that any such principle exists or reduces it to a physical configuration.
In the question posed, “What is man?”, Descartes’ philosophy basically labels man as a thinking thing. I shall now describe how Descartes came to make this claim.
As a philosopher, Descartes sought to know only truths which are absolute, unquestionable and indubitable. To discover a firm foundation of absolute certainty upon which to build a new system of knowledge, Descartes chose a method of methodological doubt, which is to doubt everything. This requires that anything which has the slightest ground for doubt be accepted as cancelling out any claim of certainty.
To do this, he began by assessing all the previous knowledge gained by humans but quickly realised that it would be a near-impossible task to analyze all the knowledge of mankind, so instead, he opted to examine how all this knowledge was gained. He arrived at the conclusion that all human knowledge and supposed “truths” had been obtained empirically (through the senses). In other words, everything we know, we have learned through the senses.
However, as Descartes was well aware, the senses are not infallible. The senses can be tricked by illusions, be they optical, auditory or otherwise, and according to the rules of his methodological doubt, this is grounds enough for cancelling out all knowledge gained by them as absolute truth or certainty. In one clean swipe, Descartes labelled all prior human knowledge as untrustworthy.
At this point in his Meditations, Descartes felt he had gone too far by essentially saying that nothing exists, or at least, we cannot be sure of anything’s existence. However, it is here that Descartes made a claim that there must be at least one thing he can be certain of, one absolute truth from which others may be derived. Descartes’ claim here was that he existed, or more famously put: “Cogito ergo sum.”
In this doubting, Descartes can only say that that which is doing the doubting is what exists and for him, it was obviously the mind. Now that Descartes has discovered a certainty in selfhood, he has identified his self to rationality (this is because of the possibility of doubting the body exists but one cannot doubt the mind exists, therefore they are one and the same), or as Descartes sometimes calls it, as I’ve previously said, in a more religious context, the soul. Here, we finally arrive at Descartes’ definition of what man is. As the only certain aspect of a human is their mind (as opposed to the dubitable body), Descartes is calling man a thinking thing.
Despite the similarities between Plato and Descartes’ philosophies regarding the soul, and it’s importance in describing what man is, there are differences also. Where Descartes equates man with the intellect, or the soul, Plato claims that man is composed of two entities: The soul and the body.
In his argument, Plato claims that the body is a physical thing, being from this world and that the soul is spiritual, from some other-worldly plane of existence. Since the physical world around us is mutable and imperfect, there must also exist a perfect place of the Good or the Forms as Plato calls them.
Souls originate and pre-exist in the world of the forms and as they are eternal, they have lived through an infinite number of lifetimes and have the all the knowledge in the world.
Plato had definite ideas explored in Phaedrus on how the soul enters the body. It is for him an end of a journey, a journey which begins with the procession of winged charioteers being drawn by two horses (the souls of the gods and mortals) travelling to reach the absolute truth.
The gods naturally effortlessly pass on through to this realm, while we mortals experience great difficulty. Those among us unable to glimpse the wonders of this realm in its full truth and glory lose strength in their wings and plunge unhappily earthwards, to be trapped into a body, forgetting what they had learnt.
This body is the human body in the first incarnation, however if one is not sufficiently enlightened by the end of the physical body’s life to be worthy enough to ascend to the World of the Forms, then the soul keeps reincarnating in various bodies until they finally reach the fullness of the truth. These can include animal form as well as human.
Plato describes the soul as having three elements: Reason (or the intellect), the spirited and the appetitive. As an aid to describe the nature of the soul, Plato uses the analogy of a charioteer with two horses, one white horse on the right and one black horse on the left, with each of these three representing a separate element of the soul.
The appetitive element, which includes all the myriad desires for various pleasures, comforts, physical satisfactions, and bodily ease. There are so many of these appetites that Plato does not bother to enumerate them, but he does note that they can often be in conflict even with each other. This element of the soul is represented by the ugly black horse on the left. The spirited, or hot-blooded, part, i.e., the part that gets angry when it perceives (for example) an injustice being done. This is the part of us that loves to face and overcome great challenges, the part that can steel itself to adversity, and that loves victory, winning, challenge, and honour. (Note that Plato's use of the term "spirited" here is not the same as "spiritual." He means "spirited" in the same sense that we speak of a high-spirited horse, for example, one with lots of energy and power.) This element of the soul is represented by the noble white horse on the right. Lastly, the intellect, our conscious awareness, is represented by the charioteer who is guiding (or who at least should be guiding) the horses. This is the part of us that thinks, analyzes, looks ahead, rationally weighs options, and tries to gauge what is best and truest overall.
As we have seen in both Plato and Descartes, in their search for the meaning and definition of what man is, they have both brought the philosophical enquiry to focus on the concept of the soul. Both philosophers claim that the soul is seperable from the body. I shall end by comparing some of the wider purposes of their arguments. Plato offers the argument of the Phaedo as, inter alia, an example a way of thinking that loosens the human soul's attachment to its body. “Since the attachment reflects the soul's misunderstanding of the true nature of happiness, the Phaedo argument, for those who enter into it, is an exercise in soul-saving.”
By contrast, what Descartes discovers when he discovers his reasons for declaring the mind separable from the body is entirely different from the intellectualization he himself undergoes in order to reach the proof. And he cannot overtly, even if he is inclined so inwardly, claim this refinement as a sort of soul-saving without running foul of the religion of his time.
Although their philosophies are similar, there are differences. The key difference however, from which all others follow, lies in Plato's acceptance and Descartes' rejection of the assumption that the soul (or the intellect) is identical with what animates the body.
Friday, May 13, 2011
College Essay: "Causality In Aristotle"
Hi everyone. Here's an essay I did in second year on causality in Aristotle. Hope it helps!
Aristotle’s approach to metaphysics stemmed from his criticism of Plato’s teachings of the forms. Plato’s theory had attempted to bridge the gap between the two dominant philosophical thoughts at the time in the nature of reality; that of Parmenides, who claimed that the universe was a solid and unmoving sphere of being and that of Heraclitus, who held the notion that the universe is in complete and total flux. Aristotle taught Plato’s teachings at his school, the Lyceum but he also taught to criticise them. In this essay, I will look at Aristotle’s theory of causality in beings and the world, the origins of this theory and criticisms for it.
First however, a word must be said on the terminology used in Aristotle. Although Aristotle disagreed with Plato’s theory, he used some of the same terminology as him. Aristotle makes a clear distinction between between matter and form, as did Plato, but claims that this distinction can only be made rationally, in the mind, and not in actuality, in the world around us. For Aristotle, the form of an object is what it is, insofar as to say that if a person was to refer to an object by it’s name, e.g. a bird or a tree, they are naming it’s form. The form is the things essence, or nature. It is related to the thing’s function. An object’s matter is what is unique to that object. All birds and trees have the same form (or function) but no two have the same matter. For Aristotle, an object with both form and matter is called a substance.
According to Aristotle, a substance must also have accidents, that is, the features of the substance which are not essential for it be what it is. The essence, or form, is what is essential (to be human, one must be rational, so rationality is part of the human essence; but although every human either has hair or is bald, neither harness nor baldness is essential to human nature, therefore a person’s hair can be considered an accident.)
Aristotle attempted to address the problem presented in the theories of both Heraclitus and Parmenides, by reinterpreting matter and form as potentiality and actuality. Aristotle believed that every being had potential but the nature of this potential can only be known when it is actualized. Potential, in Aristotle, can be examined in four different ways. There is the potential that is inherent in a being from the moment of it’s creation, there is the potential which a being can acquire over time, there are active potentials or the potentiality of a being to do something and there are passive potentials, the potentiality of a being having something done to it or for it to receive an action.
The famous example Aristotle gives is that of an acorn. The acorn’s physical structure contains within it the possibility of it’s developing over time into an oak tree, and that goal, that form of the oak tree is the acorn’s actuality. However, according to Aristotle, potential alone is not enough for actualization. Potency must be actualized. In the case of the acorn, it will not just spontaneously actualize itself and become an oak tree. There needs to be a cause for it. The potency can only be actualized by a being that possesses the act which corresponds to the potency in question. According to Aristotle, this theory applies to all beings. This notion means that the world around us is a unified structured of beings with potential, actualizing each other. There is a sense of the Parmenidean unity here but also that of Heraclitean flux. This idea can be compared to a system of cogs in a machine. A cog, on it’s own, has the potential to turn, but only when there is another, moving, cog attached to it will the first one begin to turn also. Everything needs each other to be actualized. Each individual substance is a self-contained, teleological system. Notice that a substances essence doesn’t change but it’s accidents do.
In order for a being to have it’s potential actualized, there must be a reason for this to happen, or a cause. In Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Aristotle claims that we can only have knowledge of a thing when we can grasp it’s cause. Ft1. Aristotle analyzed all substances in terms of four causes. These are the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause and the final cause.
Consider the case of the production a marble statue. The material cause is what the being, or in this the case the marble statue is made from. The marble is not only the material out of which the statue is made, it is also the subject of the change to result in the statue. The formal cause is essence or the form of the statue which the marble is striving to become. This form, or essence, exists in potentiality in the marble itself and both in the mind of the sculptor. The efficient cause can be explained as that which brings about the change in the object. In the case of the slab of marble to become a statue, Aristotle would not name the sculptor or his chisel as the efficient. When the sculptor chips away at the marble and is shaping the marble into a statue, Aristotle claims that this is only a manifestation of the knowledge the sculptor has of carving statues and in particular, how to carve this one. It is this knowledge that Aristotle claims is the most sufficient explanation of the efficient cause. The fourth cause is the final cause and this can be seen as the purpose for which the statue is built, e.g. to decorate the Parthenon. The final cause can also be seen as the initial cause. The process of producing a statue from marble, or any other act for that matter will only get under way if there is a motive behind it, driving it through all other causes. Being the first of the causes, it moves the efficient cause which in turn drives the material cause and the formal cause. The final cause, although it is the initial one, it is the final one in execution.
The four causes show that Aristotle is offering a teleological explanation for the production of the statue with reference to a goal point which does not depend on psychological concepts such as beliefs or desires. This provides Aristotle with a teleological model for studying natural processes whose explanation does not involve beliefs, desires or anything of the sort. Aristotle does not psychologize nature because his study of the natural world is based on a teleological model that is consciously free from psychological factors.
Although Aristotle believes that the process of shaping the statue is the efficient cause of the statue’s production, Aristotle believes there are cases where the beliefs and desires of the sculptor in question are important. For example, a particular statue may become more favourable or prominent in the eyes of those regarding it because it is recognized as the greatest work of a sculptor who has both mastered and applied his skills in sculpting with his own unique style. It is in this case that Aristotle believes it is appropriate to include the particular beliefs and desires of the sculptor and makes room for these when he says that we should look “for general causes of general things and for particular causes of particular things” FT(Phys. 195 a 25–26).
Aristotle goes on to add a specification to his four causes by claiming that the form and the end often coincide. Here, Aristotle puts forward the slogan “it takes a man to generate a man” FT(Phys. 194 b 13). What he means by this is that the generation of a man can only be understood by the end of the process; a fully developed man. A fully developed man is specified by the form of a man. Not only is the fully developed man the final product of the generation, it is also what initiates the whole process. For Aristotle, the ultimate moving principle responsible for the generation of a man is a fully developed living creature of the same kind; that is, a man who is formally the same as the end of generation.
According to Aristotle, a lot of his predecessors, such as Parmenides and Heraclitus, recognized only the material and the efficient cause. This explains why Aristotle is not content with saying that formal and final causes often coincide, but he also has to defend his thesis against an opponent who denies that final causality is a genuine mode of causality. In the case of an opponent who denies there is final causality in nature, Aristotle shows how an opponent who claims that material and efficient causes are enough to explain natural change do not account for the characteristic regularity. However, despite the fact that Aristotle argues that a study of nature which omits final causality cannot account for crucial aspects of natural change, he is only offering a defence for final causality, not a proof that there are final causes in nature. Aristotle’s defence is to ask the opponent why things in nature appear with apparent regularity, e.g. why all people’s teeth grow with sharp incisors at the front and blunt molars at the back. In the example of the teeth, Aristotle argues that because they are suitable for biting and chewing food the person takes in, there must be a real causal connection between the formation of the teeth and the needs of the animal. If it was by pure coincidence that the teeth develop this way, it does not explain the regularity in which it occurs in nature. Once Aristotle has established his defence, he goes on to discuss the role of the material cause. Although he is unable to state precisely what material processes are involved in the development of teeth but he recognizes that certain material process have to take place in order for the teeth to grow the way they do. There is also more to the formation of the teeth than the material process but without it, these other causes cannot take place. Matter is recognized as a hypothetical necessity. By so doing Aristotle acknowledges the explanatory relevance of the material processes, while at the same time he emphasizes their dependency upon a specific end.
Through a critical examination of the use of the language of causality by his predecessors and with a careful study of natural phenomena, Aristotle elaborated his theory of causality by building explanatory principles which are specific to the study of nature. Although Aristotle's theory of causality is developed in the context of his science of nature, its application goes beyond the boundaries of natural science. Aristotle is not only seeking wisdom but wishes to clarify what kind of wisdom he seeks and conceives that this wisdom is the science of substance or a science of being.
Aristotle’s approach to metaphysics stemmed from his criticism of Plato’s teachings of the forms. Plato’s theory had attempted to bridge the gap between the two dominant philosophical thoughts at the time in the nature of reality; that of Parmenides, who claimed that the universe was a solid and unmoving sphere of being and that of Heraclitus, who held the notion that the universe is in complete and total flux. Aristotle taught Plato’s teachings at his school, the Lyceum but he also taught to criticise them. In this essay, I will look at Aristotle’s theory of causality in beings and the world, the origins of this theory and criticisms for it.
First however, a word must be said on the terminology used in Aristotle. Although Aristotle disagreed with Plato’s theory, he used some of the same terminology as him. Aristotle makes a clear distinction between between matter and form, as did Plato, but claims that this distinction can only be made rationally, in the mind, and not in actuality, in the world around us. For Aristotle, the form of an object is what it is, insofar as to say that if a person was to refer to an object by it’s name, e.g. a bird or a tree, they are naming it’s form. The form is the things essence, or nature. It is related to the thing’s function. An object’s matter is what is unique to that object. All birds and trees have the same form (or function) but no two have the same matter. For Aristotle, an object with both form and matter is called a substance.
According to Aristotle, a substance must also have accidents, that is, the features of the substance which are not essential for it be what it is. The essence, or form, is what is essential (to be human, one must be rational, so rationality is part of the human essence; but although every human either has hair or is bald, neither harness nor baldness is essential to human nature, therefore a person’s hair can be considered an accident.)
Aristotle attempted to address the problem presented in the theories of both Heraclitus and Parmenides, by reinterpreting matter and form as potentiality and actuality. Aristotle believed that every being had potential but the nature of this potential can only be known when it is actualized. Potential, in Aristotle, can be examined in four different ways. There is the potential that is inherent in a being from the moment of it’s creation, there is the potential which a being can acquire over time, there are active potentials or the potentiality of a being to do something and there are passive potentials, the potentiality of a being having something done to it or for it to receive an action.
The famous example Aristotle gives is that of an acorn. The acorn’s physical structure contains within it the possibility of it’s developing over time into an oak tree, and that goal, that form of the oak tree is the acorn’s actuality. However, according to Aristotle, potential alone is not enough for actualization. Potency must be actualized. In the case of the acorn, it will not just spontaneously actualize itself and become an oak tree. There needs to be a cause for it. The potency can only be actualized by a being that possesses the act which corresponds to the potency in question. According to Aristotle, this theory applies to all beings. This notion means that the world around us is a unified structured of beings with potential, actualizing each other. There is a sense of the Parmenidean unity here but also that of Heraclitean flux. This idea can be compared to a system of cogs in a machine. A cog, on it’s own, has the potential to turn, but only when there is another, moving, cog attached to it will the first one begin to turn also. Everything needs each other to be actualized. Each individual substance is a self-contained, teleological system. Notice that a substances essence doesn’t change but it’s accidents do.
In order for a being to have it’s potential actualized, there must be a reason for this to happen, or a cause. In Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Aristotle claims that we can only have knowledge of a thing when we can grasp it’s cause. Ft1. Aristotle analyzed all substances in terms of four causes. These are the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause and the final cause.
Consider the case of the production a marble statue. The material cause is what the being, or in this the case the marble statue is made from. The marble is not only the material out of which the statue is made, it is also the subject of the change to result in the statue. The formal cause is essence or the form of the statue which the marble is striving to become. This form, or essence, exists in potentiality in the marble itself and both in the mind of the sculptor. The efficient cause can be explained as that which brings about the change in the object. In the case of the slab of marble to become a statue, Aristotle would not name the sculptor or his chisel as the efficient. When the sculptor chips away at the marble and is shaping the marble into a statue, Aristotle claims that this is only a manifestation of the knowledge the sculptor has of carving statues and in particular, how to carve this one. It is this knowledge that Aristotle claims is the most sufficient explanation of the efficient cause. The fourth cause is the final cause and this can be seen as the purpose for which the statue is built, e.g. to decorate the Parthenon. The final cause can also be seen as the initial cause. The process of producing a statue from marble, or any other act for that matter will only get under way if there is a motive behind it, driving it through all other causes. Being the first of the causes, it moves the efficient cause which in turn drives the material cause and the formal cause. The final cause, although it is the initial one, it is the final one in execution.
The four causes show that Aristotle is offering a teleological explanation for the production of the statue with reference to a goal point which does not depend on psychological concepts such as beliefs or desires. This provides Aristotle with a teleological model for studying natural processes whose explanation does not involve beliefs, desires or anything of the sort. Aristotle does not psychologize nature because his study of the natural world is based on a teleological model that is consciously free from psychological factors.
Although Aristotle believes that the process of shaping the statue is the efficient cause of the statue’s production, Aristotle believes there are cases where the beliefs and desires of the sculptor in question are important. For example, a particular statue may become more favourable or prominent in the eyes of those regarding it because it is recognized as the greatest work of a sculptor who has both mastered and applied his skills in sculpting with his own unique style. It is in this case that Aristotle believes it is appropriate to include the particular beliefs and desires of the sculptor and makes room for these when he says that we should look “for general causes of general things and for particular causes of particular things” FT(Phys. 195 a 25–26).
Aristotle goes on to add a specification to his four causes by claiming that the form and the end often coincide. Here, Aristotle puts forward the slogan “it takes a man to generate a man” FT(Phys. 194 b 13). What he means by this is that the generation of a man can only be understood by the end of the process; a fully developed man. A fully developed man is specified by the form of a man. Not only is the fully developed man the final product of the generation, it is also what initiates the whole process. For Aristotle, the ultimate moving principle responsible for the generation of a man is a fully developed living creature of the same kind; that is, a man who is formally the same as the end of generation.
According to Aristotle, a lot of his predecessors, such as Parmenides and Heraclitus, recognized only the material and the efficient cause. This explains why Aristotle is not content with saying that formal and final causes often coincide, but he also has to defend his thesis against an opponent who denies that final causality is a genuine mode of causality. In the case of an opponent who denies there is final causality in nature, Aristotle shows how an opponent who claims that material and efficient causes are enough to explain natural change do not account for the characteristic regularity. However, despite the fact that Aristotle argues that a study of nature which omits final causality cannot account for crucial aspects of natural change, he is only offering a defence for final causality, not a proof that there are final causes in nature. Aristotle’s defence is to ask the opponent why things in nature appear with apparent regularity, e.g. why all people’s teeth grow with sharp incisors at the front and blunt molars at the back. In the example of the teeth, Aristotle argues that because they are suitable for biting and chewing food the person takes in, there must be a real causal connection between the formation of the teeth and the needs of the animal. If it was by pure coincidence that the teeth develop this way, it does not explain the regularity in which it occurs in nature. Once Aristotle has established his defence, he goes on to discuss the role of the material cause. Although he is unable to state precisely what material processes are involved in the development of teeth but he recognizes that certain material process have to take place in order for the teeth to grow the way they do. There is also more to the formation of the teeth than the material process but without it, these other causes cannot take place. Matter is recognized as a hypothetical necessity. By so doing Aristotle acknowledges the explanatory relevance of the material processes, while at the same time he emphasizes their dependency upon a specific end.
Through a critical examination of the use of the language of causality by his predecessors and with a careful study of natural phenomena, Aristotle elaborated his theory of causality by building explanatory principles which are specific to the study of nature. Although Aristotle's theory of causality is developed in the context of his science of nature, its application goes beyond the boundaries of natural science. Aristotle is not only seeking wisdom but wishes to clarify what kind of wisdom he seeks and conceives that this wisdom is the science of substance or a science of being.
College Essay: "God's Existence: The Problem Of Evil"
Hi guys. Here's the last of my first year essays with one concerning the problem of evil in philosophy of religion.
Evil is everywhere. We see it on the news, we experience it everyday in different ways and we partake in it whether it is by choice or otherwise. For the purposes of discussion in this essay, I will look at the question raised over the co-existence of evil and God and rationalisations raised by philosophers over the years.
The problem of evil was concisely argued in J.L. Mackie’s article ‘Evil and Omnipotence’ as follows: In its simplest form the problem is this :
God is omnipotent ; God is wholly good ; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions : the theologian, it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three.
Simply put, if God is omnipotent, he can do anything. If God is all good as well as omnipotent , then he can eliminate all evil. But then what of the apparent evil in the world? Does it not prove God’s non existence?
. Theism would appear to be quite foolish if this were the case. One of the main responses to the problem. One of the main lines of argument in defence of God and evil’s co-existence is based in the premise of free will. The argument is as follows:
1. Evil done by people is done out of their own free will.
2. Free will is a good thing.
3. God cannot control what people do out of free will (or else it would not be free will).
4. The goodness of God giving us free will is greater than the evil done with it.
This argument claims that God cannot control what people do as they have free will. Personally, I see this as a contradiction to God’s omnipotence. If there was something that God could not do, regardless of what it was, he would not be the omnipotent God of classical Theism. However, this is not the only ‘free will’ based defence.
Another defence comes from John Hick in his book Evil and the God of Love. Hick basically says that if God called people into existence with no possible way of not being aware of his existence, then we would no be able to choose to believe in and follow God. Thus, the universe we are in would be morally static. If God only makes his existence to us vague, then we may make the choice of following Him or not. Those who don’t can cause the evils which are only there as challenges to overcome and learn from.
The main problem raised by evil is that it’s co-existence with God seems to hold a contradiction which can only be resolved in conceding that one of the two doesn’t exist. However, instead in God, what if we considered the non-existence of evil?
Thomas Aquinas has been the leading figure in argument based in the unreality of evil. According to Aquinas, evil is not a positive quality you can ascribe to something or someone in the same way that you can call a table metallic or a window transparent. Instead, the word evil is only used to represent the lack of good. Along this line of thought, Aquinas holds that God can only create what is conceivably possible. If evil is not an actual thing that can exist, then God cannot create it or allow it to be in the world of His creation. Evil’s reality is only the cause of a certain good missing at any time.
All the defences above seem to be rationalising the co-existence of God and evil in the world but what part does good play? Where is the role of all the good in the world mentioned? What about the role of charities, aid organizations and just acts of good will?
If people have free will, then they are free to choose to act with good or evil intentions. Seeing as how there are two possibilities here, should there not be an equal amount of good done in the world than evil. If so, all the evil in the world would morally be cancelled out by the good, leaving the goodness of free will untouched. To think of it mathematically, we could equate the good in the world to a positive number, evil as a number of equal value but negative and free will as another positive number because it is good. If all of these were added together, the sum would be a positive number, equal to the value we ascribed to free will. Would this not also rationalise the problem of evil and God’s existence?
By this line of argument, God allows there to be evil in the world to balance out the good. This state of balance is essential in the operation of the universe as everything that exists must have an opposite. Light has dark, up has down, back has front, matter has anti matter…each existing thing in the universe can only exist with respect to it’s opposite. If something had no opposite, it wouldn’t exist. Therefore is there was no evil, there would be no good. And since God is all good and allows good, there must be evil. Is this not a valid argument?
For as long as the concept of God has been considered and analysed, so has the concept of evil. As I have discussed, some philosopher’s, such as J.L. Mackie have claimed that evil is strong evidence against God’s existence. Others, such as Hick, state that evil is necessary for God’s existence and then there are those of the same school of thought of Aquinas who believe that evil doesn’t even exist, only God and good. There are many other possible discussions that can arise from any one of these beliefs such as what constitutes something to be “good”, “evil” or even the definition of the terms “omnipotent”, “omniscient” and “omnibenevolent” but I will not digress with these topics as they are trivial to this concise essay.
Evil is everywhere. We see it on the news, we experience it everyday in different ways and we partake in it whether it is by choice or otherwise. For the purposes of discussion in this essay, I will look at the question raised over the co-existence of evil and God and rationalisations raised by philosophers over the years.
The problem of evil was concisely argued in J.L. Mackie’s article ‘Evil and Omnipotence’ as follows: In its simplest form the problem is this :
God is omnipotent ; God is wholly good ; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions : the theologian, it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three.
Simply put, if God is omnipotent, he can do anything. If God is all good as well as omnipotent , then he can eliminate all evil. But then what of the apparent evil in the world? Does it not prove God’s non existence?
. Theism would appear to be quite foolish if this were the case. One of the main responses to the problem. One of the main lines of argument in defence of God and evil’s co-existence is based in the premise of free will. The argument is as follows:
1. Evil done by people is done out of their own free will.
2. Free will is a good thing.
3. God cannot control what people do out of free will (or else it would not be free will).
4. The goodness of God giving us free will is greater than the evil done with it.
This argument claims that God cannot control what people do as they have free will. Personally, I see this as a contradiction to God’s omnipotence. If there was something that God could not do, regardless of what it was, he would not be the omnipotent God of classical Theism. However, this is not the only ‘free will’ based defence.
Another defence comes from John Hick in his book Evil and the God of Love. Hick basically says that if God called people into existence with no possible way of not being aware of his existence, then we would no be able to choose to believe in and follow God. Thus, the universe we are in would be morally static. If God only makes his existence to us vague, then we may make the choice of following Him or not. Those who don’t can cause the evils which are only there as challenges to overcome and learn from.
The main problem raised by evil is that it’s co-existence with God seems to hold a contradiction which can only be resolved in conceding that one of the two doesn’t exist. However, instead in God, what if we considered the non-existence of evil?
Thomas Aquinas has been the leading figure in argument based in the unreality of evil. According to Aquinas, evil is not a positive quality you can ascribe to something or someone in the same way that you can call a table metallic or a window transparent. Instead, the word evil is only used to represent the lack of good. Along this line of thought, Aquinas holds that God can only create what is conceivably possible. If evil is not an actual thing that can exist, then God cannot create it or allow it to be in the world of His creation. Evil’s reality is only the cause of a certain good missing at any time.
All the defences above seem to be rationalising the co-existence of God and evil in the world but what part does good play? Where is the role of all the good in the world mentioned? What about the role of charities, aid organizations and just acts of good will?
If people have free will, then they are free to choose to act with good or evil intentions. Seeing as how there are two possibilities here, should there not be an equal amount of good done in the world than evil. If so, all the evil in the world would morally be cancelled out by the good, leaving the goodness of free will untouched. To think of it mathematically, we could equate the good in the world to a positive number, evil as a number of equal value but negative and free will as another positive number because it is good. If all of these were added together, the sum would be a positive number, equal to the value we ascribed to free will. Would this not also rationalise the problem of evil and God’s existence?
By this line of argument, God allows there to be evil in the world to balance out the good. This state of balance is essential in the operation of the universe as everything that exists must have an opposite. Light has dark, up has down, back has front, matter has anti matter…each existing thing in the universe can only exist with respect to it’s opposite. If something had no opposite, it wouldn’t exist. Therefore is there was no evil, there would be no good. And since God is all good and allows good, there must be evil. Is this not a valid argument?
For as long as the concept of God has been considered and analysed, so has the concept of evil. As I have discussed, some philosopher’s, such as J.L. Mackie have claimed that evil is strong evidence against God’s existence. Others, such as Hick, state that evil is necessary for God’s existence and then there are those of the same school of thought of Aquinas who believe that evil doesn’t even exist, only God and good. There are many other possible discussions that can arise from any one of these beliefs such as what constitutes something to be “good”, “evil” or even the definition of the terms “omnipotent”, “omniscient” and “omnibenevolent” but I will not digress with these topics as they are trivial to this concise essay.
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