Evil Bytes

[dianna]

On the Origin of Evil

James M. West

http://fsb.zedge.net/scale.php?img=NC8yLzMvMS8xLTYxMDIwNDAtNDIzMTQ4MS5qcGc&ctype=1&v=4&q=81&xs=620&ys=383&sig=c1f0e2b236929e89c0a267ef564b0d81c7ce1c58


There are people out there who insist that evil has its ultimate origin in God, the supreme Being. They reason that if God is really supreme, and all powerful, and all-wise, then there is no way that evil could exist unless God allowed it for a purpose. According to this view, even the Gnostics have failed to recognize the contradictions in their own myths, which represented the efforts by Gnostics to separate God from evil. The Gnostics were notorious for the way they established a chain of intermediaries between God and the world. The purpose was to show that evil began somewhere down the chain from God; where some lower agent fell into error and introduced evil into the universe. The Gnostics are accused of foolishness and self-delusion, because they fail to see that this very chain of intermediaries goes straight back to the supreme Father himself.

We Gnostics are accused accordingly of self-deception and of failing to grasp one of the greatest and most sublime of all mysteries: which is that God himself introduced evil in order to teach us about the value of goodness. After all, how could we know the evil of the Holocaust unless there actually was one for us to know? Or how could we know the evils of child rape and kiddy porn, unless these heinous crimes were realities for us to know? And how could we ever condemn the evil of nuclear weapons; unless we know what nuclear weapons are? Supposedly we are blessed by God because we now know what these things are; and maybe have been victims of these evils ourselves…

How God has blessed us! Isn't this a wonderful thing that God has done for us? – that he has initiated us into the mysteries of wickedness? Oh the wonderful depths of the Father and his knowledge!

Of course the issues are really not as simple as this. I have my own reasons for doubting that God is the source of evil; and for me this is a matter of gnosis at its deepest level. In this article I will share my thoughts as to why evil does not originate from the supreme Being. And I would like to explain, in the light of Gnostic wisdom, why the above proposition is not the best explanation for the paradox of how a good God and “evil” can both exist at the same time.

For a Gnostic the question of whether evil comes from God is not simply a question of intellectual debate or dialectics. That sort of debate is more applicable to the question of whether this world, and the Human race, are the product of a supreme Being. Before we can discuss the origin of evil we really must consider and reason logically on the question of whether this world is from the hand of a supreme Being.

In my view, the notion that this world was created by a supreme Being is wishful thinking. We would all love to believe that we are from the hand of some supreme and wise God. But the facts at hand point to a prospect which is much less flattering.

If this world was really created by some supreme and perfect God then it seems to me that this world, and the Human race, should reflect these attributes accordingly. But the ugly truth is that our so-called “civilized” world emerged from three or four dozen centuries of wars in which numerous tribes robbed, raped and murdered each other in their quests for survival.

To make matters worse, we Humans today, in spite of our ‘progress’, still don’t know where we came from or why we are here. Our religions offer their doctrines and fables; and scientists offer their theories – but there is no unified consensus on the question. The Human race as a whole has no natural or innate knowledge of its origin or why it exists. If Humans discover the answers at all, it is only through a difficult process of soul searching. This is not something that most Humans have a natural, conscious awareness of. Most Humans are not inclined to know themselves. In Western culture there is an entire industry – known as psychiatry – which is dedicated to helping people figure themselves out. This is very strange indeed.

As a race we have no innate sense of purpose. We are unable to live in harmony with each other, or our inner-selves, or with the natural environment. We don’t understand our own bodies and how to care for them. There is something about us Humans that is unnatural and artificial. We never seem to fit into the Earth's environment; and are constantly at odds with it. The more advanced we become technologically, the greater the probability of self annihilation, possibly through war, or tampering with genetics and viruses, or because of pollution. We Humans can be compared to some genetically altered virus which has infected the Earth’s surface.

And then there is the future. What is the future of the Human race? Do we have a practical vision or goal for the future – aside from the easy saying that “God” or “evolution” will provide? The fact is, as a civilization, and as a race, we Humans have no practical vision or goal for the future. And again, this is a result of the fact that the Human race has no natural understanding of its own identity and purpose. So how can anyone define what the future is? If you approach the Fundy Christians, they will tell you that the future will bring Christ’s Kingdom, and that Jesus will ‘fix’ everything. The Atheists will tell you that Humanity’s future will be determined by evolution (not very re-assuring!). The Muslims will tell you that the future will bring a world dominated by Allah and ‘His’ obedient Muslim servants. The Jews in turn envision a world where YHWH rules, and Israel dominates the world. The “New World Order” people believe that the world’s problems will be solved with the imposition of a UN world government and global “Free Trade” which will solve everyone’s problems. (In the case of the latter group, money, power and cronyism are the answers to everything.) And the Communists imagine that someday they will control the world, and provide all the answers…

My point is that Humanity has no unified sense of itself, or its purpose for existence, or its origin. The origin of evil on Earth can be traced to Humanity’s fundamental ignorance regarding itself. Most Humans don’t really know within themselves why they are here. So they just focus on surviving, competing, ****ing, and engaging in the never-ending game and business of war. Each culture has its own religious explanation for Human existence: and none of these religious traditions agree. Nor do these traditions provide any practical solutions for anything.

The question now is am I really obligated to believe that this is all simply the providence of a supreme Being? Can this be proven? I think the answer is no. Why should I be expected to believe that the supreme Being is the author of ignorance and chaos? And, why should I be expected to believe that a supreme Being should benefit from something like this? (I think my argument here is applicable to atheists too. Why should I be expected to believe that “evolution” produced this chaos we call the Human race? Is there a precedent for this? I think the activity of some deviate intelligence is a valid theory that may explain this enigma.)

I think that simple, consistent logic dictates that this world is the expression of some lesser intelligence which is in turn at odds with itself. To proclaim this world and Humanity as evidence of a supreme Intelligence is to believe the improbable and the illogical. I also believe that such a proposition is dangerous because if a supreme Good God is responsible for the existence of this world, and the manifold evils herein, then this constitutes an obscuring of clear definitions for good and evil. It amounts to believing that that which is purely Good somehow produced evil. To believe such a thing is immoral, illogical and is spiritually degrading. To embrace such an ideal is a poor choice; especially when the thesis can never be airtight anyway.

This unsound opinion is also very dangerous because it opens the way for the idea that evil can be used to achieve a ‘good’ purpose. This is the foundation of Machiavellian philosophy. And it is the creed of all tyrants like Hitler, Stalin and Bush in their pretensions to solve the world’s problems. This is also the creed of the God of the Old Testament: “I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7) and also “The Lord has made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Proverbs 16:4).

Indeed we know a tree by its fruit.

The early Gnostics were unique among the religious traditions in that they refused to impute any form of evil to the supreme Being. And they wrote their myths with the purpose of explaining the paradox of how a good God and an evil cosmos could exist at the same time, and why. They didn’t base these myths on a scientific knowledge as we know it. They used images and symbols from the religious traditions of their day in order to explain why goodness does not hold sway over evil in the world. (We must remember also that the ancient Gnostics lived in a time where violence, poverty and suffering existed at a level that few of us have seen today. I shudder to think of some of the evils that these people either witnessed or endured.)

The Gnostic myths appear in the form of two main themes or motifs. The older and more primitive theme expresses the notion that this material world was created by certain fallen angels who rebelled against the good Father. The Savior is sent from the Father in order to bring gnosis to those good souls who share some essence in common with the Father. Irenaeus attributed this motif to Saturninus, Cerinthus, Marcelina, Basilides and Carpocrates (Against Heresies, 1.24-26). According to this scenario evil came into existence because of the angels. The God above it all will save the good people and destroy the cosmos.

And then there are the schools associated with Valentinus, the Sethians, and the Naassenes. They developed the myth of Sophia, which was based on the “wisdom” parables in Proverbs 8 and 9, and the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon. According to this scenario “Wisdom” is identified as an “Aion” (an alternative title for a “god” among the Greeks; used most often in reference to Chronos/Saturn). This Aion in turn resided in a perfect archetypal realm that was called the “Pleroma” in Gnostic jargon. (The latter term was derived in part from the words attributed to Paul in Colossians 2:9, “For in Him dwelleth the pleroma of the Godhead bodily.” Irenaeus reports that the Gnostics construed this passage to mean that Jesus represented the Pleroma in person (ibid. 1.3.4).

Wisdom, or Sophia, resided in this Pleroma with other Aions. And all of these Aions in turn were the progeny of one supreme Aion of Aions. This concept of an archetypal realm was based on Plato’s concept of the primeval archetypes on which the material cosmos was created, and by which order was brought to the primeval, material chaos. Thinking in the context of Plato the Gnostics introduced the notion that this chaos came into existence as the result of error by Sophia: which is to say that chaos and evil came into existence as a result of a disruption of the primeval order. This is described symbolically as a futile desire by Sophia to be like the Father. This desire leads her into error, and causes her to conceive a miscarriage. In the Valentinian myth this miscarriage is ejected from the Pleroma and accounts for the existence of Plato’s primeval chaos, from which the cosmos was created. (Platonism does not assign an origin to chaos, but maintains that it existed from eternity. In contrast, the Gnostics believed that chaos, and evil, originated from a breach in the primeval order as symbolized by the Sophia myth; e.g. the Gnostic treatise The Apocryphon of John; see Marvin Meyer, Nag Hammadi Scriptures, pg. 114f.)

Sophia’s miscarried metaphysical goo becomes the substance from which the material cosmos and the souls of Humans, angels and gods were created. Evil exists in this cosmos as the result of Sophia’s misguided passion and error. The purpose of the myth is to convey the idea that both the cosmos and evil came into existence through error, and not through the will of a supreme Being. Let us here note this plain statement from the Gospel of Philip: “The world came about through a mistake” (NHC: II, 3.75; M. Meyer, ibid., pg. 179).

I know that others will say that if the supreme Being is truly supreme then he must have allowed evil. But this is speculation. And it depends on the unsound idea that evil has its ultimate origin in Good. And at this point I could appeal to simple logic: It is illogical for me to believe that Good can produce evil. Good may produce error, and from error, evil proceeds. But there is no reason why I should believe that evil has a direct origin from Good. The Gnostic mythos is based on this simple formula, and for this reason they used the concept of intermediaries in their myths. Hence from God came goodness, from Sophia came error, and from error came evil. Some people think the Gnostic myth is a scandal and a form of self-deception. But is this really any worse than the claim made by some that evil came out of Good? I think the latter proposition is far worse and is a gross error. To believe such a thing is to embrace an opinion that is logically and ethically perverted.

But again there are those people out there who want to believe that God has it all under control; and that only a stupid and weak God would allow evil without willing it. In my opinion this approach is symptomatic of those people who desire to believe in a “personal” god who has it all under control. But in reality there really is no evidence that God has it all under control. If God has this world under control then he has shown himself to be a corrupt and incompetent ruler indeed.

To embrace such logic, and to jump to such conclusions that God is weak or stupid is to engage in rude speculation that is unworthy of a true Mystic or Gnostic. The true Gnostic understands that God is sublime. God is not about power: God is about consciousness: perfect consciousness. There is nothing physical about it. What I refer to here is part of the experience of gnosis. Perfect consciousness has no connection with evil and has no need for it. The goal of the Gnostic is to tap into this perfect consciousness and to join with it.

Personally, I believe this perfect consciousness is identical with the Light that certain people have encountered in so-called “out of body” experiences. This is the unknown God that true Gnostics have encountered. I believe this is also the source of those experiences, or visions, which were known among ancient mystics as the “Vision of the Divine.” This is the Vision of the Light of the Good God. This is the good God that awaits us once our earthly lives have crumbled into dust. For the Gnostic, to know this God is to know peace, and to know that good will ultimately prevail in the end to matter how ugly and how evil this world becomes. If you have seen this Light then you are a Gnostic in Truth. You share a portion of the divine nature, and by nature you will be saved from this world, and from death. You beheld the Vision because the Light is aware of your existence and has revealed itself to you.

This is the unvarnished Gospel of Gnosticism.

Getting back to the subject in question: those who know the Light know that there is no evil in God, in Perfection. The world we know is imperfect, and is plagued by evil. This world is evidently the product of an imperfect consciousness which has revealed itself, and struggles with itself, through the existence of the Human race. Gnostic wisdom tells us that we are capable of redemption because our Sentience originates from the highest and finest substance. We can discover that redemption, that hope, by seeking within ourselves. The Light appears to those who seek self-understanding and maturity. And this in turn is relevant to the most important reason that we must not attribute evil to the Light: because it is a wrong conception of God that will obscure the Vision: and will lead us into communion with the lesser god instead – and the seeker will remain enslaved.

Remember above all else that no evil comes from God. Those who maintain base conceptions of God will seek and find according to their own distortions. –jw


http://www.aeonbytegnosticradio.com/2010/03/on-origin-of-evil.html

[dianna]

What if God Is the Evil One?
[On the Abrahamic God and Stockholm Syndrome]

http://themetapicture.com/media/cool-quote-Epicurus-God-evil-able.jpg

In the spirit of gnostic exegesis ...


How does anybody know God is more moral than Satan? If it’s because the bible says so, then that is arbitrary and followers of the bible are basically just listening to God saying “I’m the good one, follow me.” If it’s due to observing actions and judging god’s actions to be better, then can’t we just use those standards to judge our actions, making god unnecessary? Besides, Satan hasn't even bothered authoring a book and telling his side of the story.

What if God was actually the evil one and Satan was in fact good? After all, God is responsible for 250 million deaths, while Satan is responsible for only 10, all of which God commanded of him. If something bad happens like an earthquake or a Tsunami, we tend to call it 'an act of god' not an 'act of the devil'. Why?
It beggars my belief that millions of 'believers' claim that god is good, when the 'evidence' from his alleged behaviours and teachings is so comprehensively the opposite. Throughout the bible there are numerous accounts of god dishing out divine punishment by way of genocide, plagues, ethnic cleansing, and the like. If the bible were the word of god, then god supports infanticide, slavery, torture genocide and all manner of death destruction and suffering. I do not know of any mention of the devil being blamed for such things.

Just take the Crucifixion as an example - the foundation of the Christian religion. This is nothing less than a human sacrifice, and purportedly to allow sinners to go free of punishment for their sins. What father would have his own son, a 'good man' by all accounts, brutally tortured and murdered so that 'bad' people could be let of their crimes? If the answer is that god loves us all and wants us to be forgiven why did he not just do that? Why insist on a bloodthirsty Crucifixion first?
God is clearly a tyrant. He has committed many acts of evil, and somehow managed to amass an incredible following. That means God must be the ultimate deceiver. He has painted Satan as the deceiver to disguise his own faults and gain worshipers in a classic manner.

If the tyrannical dictator can condemn the good guy and convince enough people, he can get away with much evil. This is a ploy commonly used by skillful politicians and anyone who seeks personal gain at the expense of others.
Furthermore, Satan purportedly rebelled against this evil tyrant, even though he was greatly outnumbered and faced an omnipotent being. That, according to our common beliefs, (as we praise military heroes who sacrifice themselves for the good of their nation) is not only admirable, but makes Satan a martyr.

The only thing that Satan is accused of doing 'wrong' was encouraging the naive Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. Is knowledge a bad thing? Surely not. Knowledge has enabled mankind to cure infectious diseases, perform life saving surgery, feed the hungry, rescue victims of natural disasters in helicopters, lifeboats and the like.
God, who would deny us this knowledge, has, according to believers, punished the whole of mankind in perpetuity for this 'original sin', as well as punishing all species of snake for ever more by removing their legs! God, who supposedly can cure all these things by invoking miracles chooses not to, except for a few demonstrations of his alleged power by curing one leper victim - rather than eliminating leprosy, he will feed 5,000 with a loaf and a fish but will not eliminate starvation and hunger, make a blind man see but leave countless others still blind etc etc .

God is no more than a terrorist, that is why his followers are said to be 'god fearing'. His followers must surely be evil at heart because they believe that we all (including themselves) would be incapable of being good, moral people unless we learn to 'fear' this tyrant and do his bidding, like Abraham who was terrorized to the brink of killing his own innocent son for fear of god's wrath. How cruel and sadistic was that? OK so god let him off at the last minute, but if a human being did what god was supposed to have done in the Abraham story he or she would end up in prison, or maybe a psychiatric hospital.

What is it in the human psyche that facilitates such a mass delusion and failure of objectivity? Maybe the desire to a happy afterlife is so overwhelming that we (well the religious 'believers' at any rate') turn a blind eye to god's overwhelming propensity for evil. And isn't that selfish and evil in it's own way? Just as many ordinary Germans did not speak out against Hitler and the Nazis' in the years leading up to and during the second World War for fear of risking their own necks. It's clear that all religious people suffer from Stockholm syndrome since a common theme I have noticed in the Western religions is the idea that our earthly existence is one of suffering and only in death can we find release from this suffering, through salvation. But we can’t intentionally escape this suffering early (i.e. commit suicide), because that’s a sin. So we’re stuck in this world, one where we are doomed to suffer, until we are given the sweet release of death. Seems like a captive situation to me.

The underlying premise of Stockholm syndrome is the captor convinces the captives that he is capable of ending their life and is willing to do so, the captives believe it is safer to align with their captor and endure their captivity than to resist and face death. How does this compare to Christianity? Two words: Pascal’s Wager. Being God-fearing is a staple of classical Christian practices, and even outside of those religions, most religions (including all Western religions, to my knowledge) include something in their dogma about how being a believer in that religion is the only way to achieve salvation, and all who deny that religion, regardless of how they lived their lives and whether they were a moral person, will face eternal damnation. As such, it’s better to believe in a potentially non-existing deity for the chance at salvation than to reject that deity and risk damnation. The captives’ motivation to live outweighs their impulse to hate the person who created their dilemma. The idea of personal tragedy as a “test of faith” serves as testament to the legitimacy of this analogy.

Another characteristic of Stockholm Syndrome is the captives view the captor as being benevolent simply by virtue of his lack of malevolent actions, and are willing to overlook malevolence on the captor’s part if some kindness is shown. I don’t think this one is exclusive to the Christian God. How many of you have ever heard the phrase, “Count your blessings”? One of the important teachings of Christianity (and many religions, I would imagine) is to be thankful for what you have, rather than wanting more or wanting to have fewer of the things you don’t want. Now, someone who has had nothing but misery in their life would probably find it hard to believe in a loving God, just as someone who is held captive by a captor who is constantly tormenting them will grow to hate their captor. But just as captives focus on the brief showings of benevolence by their captor, so Christianity teaches its followers to be thankful for the blessings their Lord has given them, rather than resentful of him for the things that he has denied them or taken away. In the world's poorest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes of $2,000 or lower -- the median proportion who say religion is important in their daily lives is 95%. In contrast, the median for the richest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes higher than $25,000 -- is 47%. [http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx]

But even more than that, a big focus on Christian worship is being thankful for the things you still have, the things the Lord hasn’t taken away. Things like your family, your eyesight, your health—the things most people take for granted. This is one of the main points that lead me to consider the analogy between faith and Stockholm syndrome, because in a captive situation, captives begin to mistake a lack of abuse for kindness and develop feelings of appreciation for this mercy, which they perceive as actual benevolence, much like how religious people perceive not losing the things that are important to them as a blessing from their God. This is why believers have to construct miracles out of perfectly explicable natural events. This happens every time there is a tragedy or near tragedy of any kind, anywhere in the world. Take the batman shooting for example. 14 people died, 50 wounded, but somehow this tragic event yielded "miracles." Captain "Sully" Sullenberger pilots a distressed plane to land safely on the Hudson River in New York City with no deaths, and it's a miracle from God. Perhaps, just perhaps, God brought that plane down, and Satan saved it like an invisible Superman, or God sent that gunman into the theatre, but Satan saved all the people he could.

I’m not suggesting that being thankful for the things we haven’t lost is a bad thing; I’m just pointing out that it bears a striking resemblance to what happens in a real-life captive situation (Stockholm syndrome). In real life, we consider Stockholm syndrome to be a paradox, a defence mechanism against an undesirable situation. In other words, it is considered irrational. The lucid opinion to hold is resentment towards your captor, not affection. So why isn’t the same judgement applied to faith? If we accept the dogmatic elements discussed above as true, why isn’t in considered lucid to resent such a God, rather than praise him?

Satan is the only deity who truly stands for free will. God threatens us with punishments for not adhering to his wishes. But Satan tells us that we should enjoy our lives and be happy and free to do what we think is right.

If I believed in any kind of deity, I would most certainly worship Satan, become his devout follower and take up his noble fight against tyranny. Satan stands for justice, according to the biblical story, if you read it objectively. If only the story were true, he would be one of the greatest heroes in history, fighting what he surely knew would be a losing battle, but doing so for the sake of the greater good and to provide an example to the rest of us.

Just as the United States rebelled against British rule and gained their own freedom, Satan fought for freedom for all angels. Unfortunately, he lost the battle, which is a real tragedy.

All hail Satan! The true savior.

[Calz]

Gnostic wisdom was all but wiped away ... this is something to pay great attention to.

Thanx dianna :)

[dianna]

A very un Howard, Howard Stern ...

part I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cau9sCcPPc

part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x_i-CwkZu4

[CD7]

What if God Is the Evil One?
[On the Abrahamic God and Stockholm Syndrome]

In the spirit of gnostic exegesis ...




wow that was quite an interesting read! Many great points were brought up that bring up the absurdity of what we believe as a culture or a race. The conditioning from cradle to grave could ever be underestimated...programming has powerful effects.

I just found reading this excerpt a bit challenging because of the underlined program of what I/we are brainwashed to think of as "god' or the "devil"
I could personally believe such a smear campaign...this type of behavior has reverberated throughout humanity since kingdom come!! Always a dualistic center with two beings set in different camps. Were copying someone-- ive seen so many examples of people doing this to other people many times in every day life!

However because this is so pervasive and seemingly connected to a larger pattern. I would like to think differently in non-dualistic terms--to perhaps move away from such a destructive behavior. I wouldn't then want to switch from now god is "evil" and satan's my hero...Im so done with these label games

Just whoever's [name here] Truly FREE HUMANITY AND EVERYTHING ON THE GLOBE...I don't care what or who your called!!


Thanks for the thread, as always very intriguing :)

[Calz]

What if God Is the Evil One?




... by the name of Enlil???

[dianna]

John Eberts

The Concept of Evil




http://creativedisease.com/credimedia/credisketches/philosophy4evil-holtek.gif



In principle, the concept of evil and its close relationship to suffering would not present a problem were there no concept of the good. The philosophical problem of evil has been addressed throughout the ages in both philosophy and religion's most fundamental writings. Hinduism, for example, treats all reality monastically. Evil only appears evil, yet it participates in the good of cosmic reality of the divine.

Evil is necessarily a relative term, its meaning becomes dependent on the kind of good which it negates or excludes. The problem which arises is the presence of contradictions on experience. The terms good and evil seem to be contradictory. The hypothesis resulting: How can we sense reality in such a way as to account for its seemingly contradictory manifestations of good and evil?

If one looks at evil as an incomplete good, we begin to have a basis for philosophic inquiry. One aspect or group of aspects may be offensive (Evil) whereas the whole is good. The problem that results is that from incompleteness alone, the goodness of the complete cannot be inferred; some implied goods are in turn parts of an evil whole. This demonstrates that the proposed view can be granted only partial validity.

Evil, if seen as a necessary segment needed to serve an unknown good is conceivable but how can we know that the unknown is good? If in fact we have this unknown, does this unknown good make the known evil less evil for man? "The difficulty of accepting evil as a necessary ingredient of reality leads directly to concepts of malevolent supernatural forces. If evil need not be and should not be, if things have somehow gone wrong and evil has intruded into a world which could have been free from it, who could have been responsible" (Cavendish, 1993, p. 3ff Since evil is seen as lying outside of man's human capabilities, its origin must he outside of the human domain. This origin therefore must reside in some supernatural manifestation, either the gods and goddesses of forgotten realms or the devils and demons of established religions. "At a deeper level, the powers of evil have not been thought out as much as recognized. ...evil impulses which stir and whisper in the brain may feel alien to the person ... as if they have been insinuated into his consciousness by something from outside" (Canvendish, 1993, P. 3).

Yet what if these assumptions on evil are erroneous, if in fact evil, and the sinister aspects of evil are just an illusion? The reality of evil may in essence be the product of the inner workings of the mind, projected into conscious reality. The collective unconscious of Jung, although a psychological type, contains a definite psychological nature with a language. Images, symbols and fantasies are the vocabulary of the language of the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious manifests in culture as a universal motif with our degree of attraction. In describing the collective unconscious, Jung stated that it consisted of mythological motifs or primordial images which he referred to as archetypes. Archetypes are not a priori ideas, but "typical forms of behavior which, once they become conscious, naturally present themselves as ideas and images, like everything else that becomes a content of consciousness" (Jung, 1969a, par. 435). The archetype's presence is felt as numinous that have a profound spiritual attribute. This mythological manifestation in turn must be given some meaning by the individual. "But, the discovery of meaning is at the same time an experience attended by numinosity and accompanied by a sense of the awesome, the mysterious and the terrifying which always connected to an experience of the divine, in whatever lowly, unacceptable, obscure or despised form it may appear" (Samuels, et al. 1987, p. 92).

Jung described numinosum as "a dynamic agency or effort not caused by an arbitrary act of will. On contrary, it seizes and controls the human subjects, who is always rather its victim than its creator. The numinosum — what ever its causes may be — is an experience of the subject independent of his will. ... The numinosum is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness" (Jung, 1969b, par. 6).

The fact remains that evil has presented the twentieth century with the same questions that have perplexed humanity form the beginning of time: 'From whence did it originate?'

In man's attempt to progress, he has ignored the basic aspects of his humanity. Good and evil have become just another by-product of our technological society, an illness that's roots are no longer important. Society has projected all its negative side effects as the cost one must pay for advancement. Material success is justified at the expense of ethics and morality. Yet the question stills remains if evil is caused from within or by some supernatural force. If in fact it is mankind that has perpetuated the evils of the world, then to heal humanity one must first heal man.

Evil Defined over Time

Throughout the centuries, the enigma of evil has occupied the main stage in the human experience. Evil knows no boundaries of time and space.

"There has probably never lived a human being who did not at some time in his life wonder why the world, for all its beauty and wonder, should also be so replete with grief, sorrow, conflict and with madness" (Anders, 1994, .p. 2). In mans search to find the answers for these human frailties the concept of evil evolved. "For thousands of years, in other words, man has attempted to solve the mystery of evil by means of myth, legend, and philosophical speculation, leaving his progeny with little more than a legacy of lies and empty conjecture" (Anders, 1994 p. 2).

Dr Paul Carus states that there are no religions in the world where pain, misery or destruction are not represented by some demon or monster the shadow of darkness or evil (1996). In Egyptian literature we find Seth, Bess and others that represent the dark powers. In Buddhism Mara the tempter is the personification of evil. The Chaldeans see chaos (Tiamat) as an evil monster. The tension between the existence of evil and the concept of good has plagued philosophers and theologians through out time. In their attempt to define evil they developed three types of evilness in the universe. First, there is natural evil, the natural world and its fallen state. Second, there is moral evil. This type of evil is the result of the will of moral being. Finally, according to Peterson, there is metaphysical evil, consisting of the Devil and demons (1986). Every great writer of literary fiction has his or her own definition of evil and how he or she alone decides it will be presented to the reader. The evil represented in a novel may be as flagrant as murder or rape as in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov or as the psychological manipulation of another character as in Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

"Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a novel in which his protagonist and other characters are confronted by an almost endless array of emotional and moral choices that the reader must ultimately define as good or evil" (Northrup, 1977, p. 225). To create the fingering, ever ominous theme of moral and psychological dilemma cast upon his characters, Thomas Hardy introduces the human attributes of greed, lust, pride, philosophical ideas and religion. He uses themes that require the reader to take a critical look at the character's situation, the character's thought process and its impact of the character's decision making.

In order to better understand the concept of moral and physical evil, it must first be defined and separated from natural evil. Natural evil refers to events linked to natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes. Moral and psychological evil refers to the "evil things that people do to each other and themselves" (Alloway, 1974, p. 214). Natural evil can be easily explained away by relying on religion or natural forces of the universe. Moral and psychological evil are not that easy to rationalize. Human beings make choices that affect every person around them. As Hardy has so aptly pointed out in Tess of the D'Urbervilles these are moral and psychological choices which can lead to not only physical, but psychological destruction as well. As Lyall Watson explains in his novel Dark Nature, "My intuition is that 'evil', for all its dark and threatening aspects, is inevitable a sort of black hole in nature" (1995, p. 24). As Rousseau puts it: "God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil.... [a]ll wickedness comes from weakness. The child is only naughty because he is weak; make him strong and he will be good; if we could do anything we should never do wrong" (Rousseau, 1986, p. 5 p. 33). That the failure is internal is expressed in Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, many [but not all] Christians, and Spinoza in modem terms it is expressed by Norton and Midgley (Kekes, 1990). "As Rousseau says, our weakness is the cause of the evil we do" (Kekes, 1990, p.125).

Kant refers to the predisposition of human nature, which he divides into three forms. According to Kant, the first is the predisposition for one to satisfy his basic physical and psychological. The second is the rational evaluation of one's satisfaction of the basic and culturally conditioned needs in relation to one's happiness. Kant's third predisposition is to submit his will to the moral law. "All of these predispositions are not only good in negative fashion (in that they do not contradict the moral law); they are also predispositions toward good (they enjoy the observance of the law). They are original, for they are bound up with the possibility of human nature. Man can indeed use the first two contrary to their ends, but he can extirpate none of them" (Kant, 1960, p. 23).

Although Kant indicates that the individual's natural inclination is for good, he also makes it clear that there is also "...the propensity to evil in human nature..." (Kant, 1960. p. 23). The good according to Kant is acquired whereas the evil is brought upon ourselves. "Evil is possible only as a determination of free will, and since the will can be appraised as good or evil by means of its maxims, this propensity to evil must consist in the subjective ground of the possibility of the deviation of the maxims from moral law" (Kant, 1960, p. 24).

Therefore, individuals have a propensity to good, but through the exercise of free will one chooses between good and evil. "Kant believes that human nature is basically good evil arises because we choose to subordinate our moral predisposition to that of self love" (Kekes, 1990, p.131).

In Kant's synthesis, then man is not corrupt. He is "...still capable of improvement. for man, therefore who despite a corrupt heart yet possess a good will, there remains hope of a return to the good from which he strayed" (Kant, 1960, p. 39). Evil then becomes a condition of the soul, which is in part a result of its unbalanced and incomplete quality. The incompleteness is a result of mans inability to keep the ego in balance with his true inner self. The extension of the ego is seen as the individual is being immersed in self love. This self love is in reality a state of emptiness in degree, an emptiness in inner being, a shadow (self love) and no reality of the soul itself This evil state then is a state which is negative, relative and transitory. It implies the absence of completeness, which is acquired during the souls evolutionary process, the knowing self.

The metaphysical concept of evil concerns the contradiction between the religious assumptions in the good and omnipotence of God or supreme essences, and the reality of evil experienced in the world. The classification of the religions of the world addressed this problem with three possible solutions. The first is seen in the teachings of Hinduism, where a monistic approach is offered according to which the phenomenal world is but an illusion or Maya. It is in Maya that evil exists — an evil which is only illusionary. In the Western world we see a mirror image of this concept in the teachings of Christian Science. "Evil is but an illusion, and it has no real basis. Evil is a false belief'( Eddy, 1934, p. 480:23,24). This may address the problem of evil, but makes no attempt to solve it. It leaves its consequences as unexplained. The second explanation is seen in Persian Zoroastrianism, where we find a dualistic approach to good and evil centered in two deities Ahura Mazdah and Angra Mainyu. Zoroastrianism expresses this concept in its most extreme form as Cosmic struggle between these deities. This approach to the concept of good and evil is not unique. Plato's Timaeus use this dualistic approach as does J.S. Mill in 'Attributes', Three Essays in Religion (1874) and Edgar Brightman in his A Philosophy of Religion (1940, chap. 8-10) The third explanation is found within Christianity. "In the first centuries of Christianity there raged a battle over the integration of evil into the image of God" (Ribi, 1989, p. 26). For an answer to this anomaly Christianity developed a distinctive combination of monism and dualism, a dualism which is posed as ethical within the framework of metaphysical monism. "Beneath the surface of monotheism lies a concealed dualism of good and evil, and beneath that, even a polydemonism" (Ribi, 1989, p. 26). In this attempt, the early Christian writers hoped to answer the main objection created by the introduction of evil in the world. "To many, the most powerful positive objection to belief in God is the fact of evil" (Hick, 1982, p. 330).

The problem of evil creates a theoretical problem. "If God is perfectly loving, he must wish to abolish evil; and if he is all powerful, he must be able to abolish evil. But evil exists; therefore God cannot be both omnipotent and perfectly loving" (Hick, 1982, p. 330). In answer to this problem, one can accept that God is not powerful enough to create a world that does not contain evil, or he may state that God created only good so that evil must have been generated by some other power. He may still find this inadequate and may state that God is all powerful but morally imperfect and made a decision to create an imperfect Universe. Most Christians would find this solution objectionable in the fact that it ignores the basis of religious belief "Thus the problem of evil is both real and acute. There is a clear prima facie case that evil and God are incompatible — both cannot exist" (McClosky, 1982, p. 315).

In Christianity, the goodness and the greatness of God and the reality of evil are affirmed, but the origin of evil is still a mystery. "Whatever is relegated to the unconscious, whatever is without some kind of representation in consciousness, threatens to become a demon" (Ribi, 1989, p. 3 0). One affirmation is through Theodicies. A theodicy is a rational attempt by theists to exonerate God as the source of evil. Basically, these attempts try to modify one or more of the problems of evil. There are two different foci that could be viewed in this situation. The first one is those who modify the nature of God. They believe that God is limited, and evil is a reality. This view is known as Process theology and is found in liberal Protestantism and liberal Judaism. This view sees God as finite and in the process of struggling with evil. The other view is from those who re-define the nature of evil. These people see evil as being good. Evil and suffering bring out the good in people; therefore, evil is good. They also believe that evil comes from Satan. This results in dualism, which teaches that good and evil are equal. These are two different views, but both are considered a solution in the problem with evil (Silvester, 1981). Christians give many reasons why God has allowed evil, even if the reasons are a mystery of their own. "Every communication with the divine and every religious feeling comes to consciousness only via the psyche. The psyche is thus the bearer of the imago dei (image of God), although we are not in a position to affirm scientifically what causes this image" (Ribi, 1989, p. 20). Christianity and other religions usually have five basic answers to the question concerning evil. The first one is that there is not a God at all. This a common answer, but not a 'Christian' answer. The next answer is that evil is not actual. In other words, everything evil that has been done has brought some good somewhere and somehow. The next solution is that evil is just one big mystery. These are the people that feel that evil should not be questioned. Then there is the solution that God is not in fact all powerful. God has many enormous powers, but there are powers that roam the earth that God has no control over. The last solution is that God is not always entirely good, God, Eke humans can also have a negative side (Silvester, 1981). "Theodicy, as many modem Christian thinkers see it, is a modest enterprise, negative rather than positive in its conclusions. It does not claim to explain, nor to explain away, every instance of evil in human experience, but only to point to certain considerations which prevent the fact of evil (largely incomprehensible though it remains) from constituting a final and insuperable bar to rational beliefs in God" (Hick, 1982, p. 3 31).

Christian rationale has always considered evil in its relations to human freedom and responsibility. Since man is a finite center, he possesses relative freedom, which in turn makes him/her a self-directing agent responsible for his/her decisions. "Free Will is not a constant or a priori quantity; rather it is that libido charge that is at the free disposal of consciousness" (Jung, 1969a, p. 201-204).

Evil — A Theoretical Foundation

At this point it becomes necessary to lay a foundation for the discussion of evil in purely theoretical terms.

If one begins with the Pythagorean Y which signified choice (Free-Will), it becomes evident how the concept of good and evil takes on meaning. The central stem concept of good and evil takes on meaning. The central stem separates into two parts: one section flowing to the right and the other section flowing to the left. The right branch signifies Divine Wisdom and the other symbolizes Earthly Wisdom. Man (Being) in his growth (Becoming) symbolizes the central stem of Y. It is at the junction of the branches, where man must choose or not choose his path. The left-hand path follows the dictates of mans lower nature (Earthly Plane) — which leads to stagnation or remaining at the same level of development. The right-hand path, signifying Divine Wisdom, leads to the ultimate regaining of unity with the superior sphere or Totality.

Given that individuals are governed by the Law of Free Will, in that every person has absolute freedom of choice and that decisions on those choices make an individual responsible for the results, then individuals, if they were not meant to make mistakes, would not subscribe to the Free Will system. It is the existence of Free Will which helps one to grow. "Free Will is mankind's main tool in each incarnation for learning lessons for evolvement" (Bletzer, 1986, p. 844).

The solution to the inquiry of good and evil then lies in the understanding about the truth in human nature. According to Robert Ellwood in theosophy — "Human nature has a destiny that is only tangential to external nature, though at present painfully intertwined with it" (Ellwood, 1986, p.151).

The Stoic Chrysippus maintained that good and evil being contrary, both are necessary since each sustains the other. The idea is not that good and evil were created in some past time in static form, but that their growth is a continuous process, a continuous process and evolution from imperfection to perfection, from worst to best. Therefore, one cannot say that beings are essentially evil, they are merely less perfect or evolved. We now begin to see the gradient of imperfection. If one is on a certain level, then everything below that level must be imperfect, less desirable. To lower 'standards or submit to desires is then a loss of perfection and therefore becomes a state of evil.

The state of evil therefore becomes a state of imperfection in growth. "Imperfect beings living in an imperfect state because of their imperfect evolutionary unfolding, or their imperfect development — while this is so; giving constant hope to imperfect beings to grow better, nevertheless hearken: this does not mean that imperfect things or beings are essentially good" (Purucker, 1973, p.154). In reality, one can rationalize on a conscious level '"evil' thoughts, actions, or lack of actions, yet karmic law requires justification. Karma adjusts each effect to its cause. It gives back to each individual the actual consequences of his own actions. We become responsible for these actions, and karma impartially returns their results to us.

Whenever imperfection imbalance is produced in the self, there is no quantitative duration for this experience; each is dependent upon the individual. Therefore, "evil abstractly consists of transitory states or conditions — however long they may last — in which monads pass during certain phases of their endless peregrinations upwards and outwards" (Purucker, 1973, p.155).

Within this context, Karma is seen as the law of readjustment which even works to restore equilibrium in the physical and harmony in the moral world. Karma is then the limitation set for individuals at their present level — the level at which we have to speak of "choice" between alterations. Individuals then must make choices — certain of these become constructive — thus future oriented, while others are destructive or evil. To refuse to move forward and grow is stagnation. Evil is essentially the refusal to move toward evolvement. "It is to accept the repetitive inertia of past choices as inevitable or too powerful to oppose. It is to succumb to karma, instead of using what the past has produced..." (Rudhyar, 1981, p. 48).

Within the individual resides the human being species seed or the pattern of a perfect human being. This essence motivates the human fife cycle and becomes one of the perpetual evolvement towards totality. The whole of nature is one, a unity. Man therefore becomes the inner universe, the essence of being, becoming — unfolding to unite with the whole in an unending progression from imperfection to perfection.

'Any being who or which is insufficiently evolved to have brought out divinity from within itself, at least to some degree, can be called "evil"| by comparison with beings much more perfect" (Purucker, 1973, p. 551).

The development of this principle becomes evident through the following: taken the relative positions of good and evil, the first consideration to be examined is the absolute value of each. Since good is not and cannot be an absolute value due to the law of free will, and that if good was absolute, its opposite evil must also be absolute; they become offsets and balances in nature, one being relative to other, arising out of the conflict of wills.

That the polarity of opposites is important can be demonstrated, considering that without the positive aspect we would not have a scale to judge the negative. The law of free will and the law of polarity are dependent, one upon the other. If man did not have the ability to make or not to make choices, he would not need alternatives. Therefore polarity would have no function. Man would no longer need opposing principles and each contrasting principle would not need to contain the potential of the opposing principle. Since all would be ruled by a universal force of determinism, no one could be other than what he is. Therefore, individuals would be justified in their actions, decisions, and fife cycles resulting from the premise that for them there could be no other. In maintaining this structure, one's actions could not be compared to another because such a comparison would be non-existent. As a result of determinism, the Being (man) would have a structure, a blur print, if you like, to follow. Since this structure would be the only existence, therefore an opposition of polarity could not exist since non-being cannot create being. "What is permanent must remain forever the same. It is what it is, and to become something other than this would involve the contradiction that it became what it is not" (Popkin and Stroll, 1956, p. 71). The changing world, therefore, must become that which the permanent world is not. The only aspect of the universe, if determined, is that it exists. In reality then, the changing aspect (polarity) cannot be part of existence since it does not belong to the real unchanging aspect (determined) and must, therefore, be non-existence. As William James insisted in his essay on "The Dilemma of Determination," there are striking features of our moral experience which can be known only if we assume that men are free agents (Free Will). The attribution of responsibility for our actions makes no sense if we are governed under the law of determinism. If one is predetermined to act in a given manner then responsibility for that action is not his, and the action can therefore not be judged on any standards available. The individual therefore would be incapable of manifestation, for as long as there is manifestation, there is imperfection.

"To illustrate: Take any one of us, a human being, we are beings in manifestation, therefore we are imperfect, and throughout beginningless and endless time we shall in various hierarchies and in different degrees of imperfection, on lower or on higher planes, be running the external cyclical round of developing and unfolding ever more and more" (Purucker, 1973, p.157).

Polarity therefore becomes imperative for if imperfection is a given, so then must its counter part, perfection, be a given.

Free will and the concept of evil take on a new meaning. Although free will always allows the individual the opportunity to change their future course, this does not mean acting contrary to the future because that is an impossibility. Free will allows one to modify their own conduct in regards to that future which is the unity with totality.

Growth then is seen as the manifestation of the interplay between the polar opposites good and evil. "If a complete human being is a feeling being, then evil must be allowed to exist for this feeling nature of ours to live and grow" (Stanford, 1981, p.10). Since man (Being) is in a constant state of flux (Becoming), due to the nature of the human being species seed then all events become manifestations of a basic oneness. This does not imply that all things are equal. Opposites are abstract concepts belonging to the realm of thought and as stated earlier concerning good and evil relative.

When one becomes aware of good, he must out of necessity also be aware of evil. The ancient Chinese philosopher Chu Hsi believed, "good and evil have no existence in themselves, but are terms applied to things according to their advantage or injury to oneself or to mankind" (Standford, 1981, p. 7).

One who wishes to grow may be placed in a situation of pain and suffering, which to some may seem evil. However for that individuals growth it is a necessary good. One must be aware of the relativity and polarity of all o

pposites. These experiences of good and evil, pleasure and pain, are not experiences belonging to different categories. They are only two sides of the same reality, oppositions of the phenomenon, manifestation of the interplay of the two.
It becomes necessary therefore to see polarity as the weights placed upon the dynamic balance of karma. For true growth is not to strive for good, for good's sake, or to eliminate evil; it is rather following the path of balance. One must strive to maintain the balance between opposites. They are never static but a dynamic interplay between two extremes. Nietzsche stated that the individual could not become conscious of the beautiful and the good without also having a conscious development of ugly and evil. In reality therefore, "Evil is purposeful inaccuracies of fife activity; man-made decisions about another individuals evolutionary growth experience, one unfolding in his or her path according to their own speed, but not in accord to another person's lifestyle or opinion" (Bletzer, 1986, p. 218). Evil therefore becomes the Maya, or self-created illusion, by which we five. This does not deny that it exists, albeit it exists as an illusion.

Evil and Human Nature

The fundamental aspect of human nature is good, and it is evil which makes it

corrupt . that the fundamental goodness of human nature is necessarily connected with the capacity to choose; and that human worth is thus possessed equally by all moral agents" (Kekes, 1990, p.125). This position was supported by Kant during the seventeenth century. As Rousseau put it "God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil... Wickedness comes from weakness. The child is only naughty because he is weak; make him strong and he will be good; if we could do anything we should never do wrong." (1986, pp. 5, 33), Kant and Rousseau opened the doorway to hope in their philosophical inquiries. "The scheme of things is essential good, there is a rational and moral order in reality, and we human beings, in our uncorrupted state, are part of this rational and moral order. Evil comes from our failure to conform to it. The source of this failure may be internal or external to human agents" (Kekes, 1990, p.125). The failure as noted earlier is due to internal agents. Kant would agree that evil is a corruption of one's individual nature.

The Christian rationale has always considered evil in its relations to human freedom and responsibility. Since man is a finite center, he possess relative freedom which in turn makes him/her a self-directing agent responsible for his/her decisions. "Free Will is not a constant or a priori quantity; rather it is that libido charge that is at the free disposal of consciousness" (Jung, 1969a, p. 201-204).

Kant and others in their philosophical inquiries of evil have just touched the edge of the concept of evil and man's relation to it. In the study of Kabbalah literature, a break-through to this relationship was slowly accomplished. It is the Being-man, the inner self which is in a constant state of becoming (growth), self-induced and independent of creation. The essence of man is contained in man. The potential for free will has given man (Being) a path or options of paths and Being must choose individually. Upon this choice the basis of man's growth or regression is dependent. The growth or stagnation is self fulfilled by the individual. The spirit of creation doesn't interfere, but allows one to make the decision on his own. If the individual makes a decision not in accordance with the perfection of creation the individual must re-learn or relieve this incident. It is through this process that the individual is made whole again in accordance with the perfection of creation. This is the process of becoming.

Man is the inner universe, the essence of being (creation), becoming and unfolding to unite with the whole in an unending process till perfection and union are achieved. In a discussion of the relative position of good and evil in man's unfoldment, the first consideration to be made is the absolute value of each.

Since good is not and cannot be an absolute value in creation due to the consideration of free will, an alternative must exist which becomes known or identified as evil. The converse is that absolute evil cannot exist, for then there would be no concept of good. Based on this fact, a neutral ground must exist, a ground of balance and harmony. This neutral ground must, by the knowledge of free will, contain the potential for both good, which yields growth (Becoming), and evil, which is stagnation or non-Becoming. Man, having the capacity of choice, becomes responsible for his decisions. In so much as we are given a process of free, will we also as a result of that free will become responsible for the direction we take in its application.

Since the essence of man is the human species seed, and its intention as potential is Becoming, it must in reality move or evolve to a higher state. Man cannot be less than that from which he began. "There is no single substance in the world whether it be that which we experience through the senses or that which we perceive through the mind, that is not comprised or contained in the creator or origin. Which is to say, in the 'seed'" (Berg, 1983, p. 25).

Just as a child grows and learns through trial and error, the essence of man due to the possession of free will must grow through trial and error. If man was predestined, the concept of good and evil could not exist. For to have one's destiny totally laid out would preclude action; therefore, we could not choose to be 'good' or regress and choose evil. Man would be polarized in a position which could not be judged due to the fact that control was not given to him.

Since life is not linear in nature, going from one point to another, with no deviations (pre-destined), man alone becomes the creator of his own destiny. Because of man's limited nature, his rational mind, he cannot see the full pattern of unfoldment but only his relative position in time. The mind, working in a logical/rational fashion, must have neat little compartments of classification. Therefore what is judged by the individual becomes the definition of good and evil. As a result of this, an understanding of man's position in relation to his fellow man (society) must be established.

To accomplish this, one must devise standards and norms by which the world becomes more understandable. Since man (Being) is in a constant state of flux (Becoming), due to the nature of the human species seed, this Becoming cannot exist in a state of evil. Rather it resides in a state of change, moving from one level to another. Evil then can only be seen as a blockage to Becoming or as a barrier to the growth potential. "According to Zohar, evil can never be part of this universe, this world view of evil would then imply that the Creator of the Light and Vessel must, of necessity, be inclusive of this characteristic called evil" (Berg, 1983, p. 98).

It is then man who must decide his future. If man has free will then he chooses his own fulfilment or denies himself the same. In this framework, does man thus create Being and Non-Being within the same thought? If man has one, man must either acknowledge or deny the other. Being is the unfoldment of the human species potential, which is oneness with the whole. This reality to be that which we were, which is true essence, the good that is all potential and reality. Non Being then becomes the negation of one's potential, a movement away from the good or a movement to evil.

If man is the creator of his own reality through choice, then all that is created must be accepted. In denial, one would in fact deny existence. To deny self is to deny existence. Therefore, to choose, one must have existence and that existence must be reality, even if it exists only in the moment of thought. Man must accept the reality which he creates, and to deny that reality or the outcome of that reality fife loses all meaning. What results then is man's categories of good and evil based upon the premise that it is one's choice that creates the existence of this polarity.

Human evolvement requires the maximization of good and the minimization of evil. "The Enlightenment is correct in its view that we can depend only on ourselves, and Christianity is correct in its view that we are weak vessels" (Kekes, 1990, P. 236). There is a reaction to all positive and negative thoughts and deeds. "All acts of evil stem from the root of unfulfillment" (Berg, 1981, p. 80). Good begets good; evil begets evil (Law of Attraction). This concept becomes clear when one looks at the symbolism interwoven in the story of Adam's fall. The Tree of Life in Kabbalistic literature is seen as a spiritual ladder. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is considered the middle pillar of the ten Sefiroth. This Spiritual ladder is made up of the ten Sefiroth which are in essence a ladder for Spiritual growth (Becoming) It was from the Tree of Knowledge that Adam was instructed 'do not eat or you shaft surely die' (Genesis). The problem in grasping a true understanding of this event results in the translation of the word Knowledge. In Hebrew the word translated is death, a literal translation of the word meaning 'to join.' From this translation, we now understand that this middle pillar was a tree of 'joining' which has far reaching implications. To the Kabbalist, Adam knew the difference between good and evil, but with the eating of the fruit he became joined to good and evil. Until this act, evil or its concept was outside or apart from mans nature. Once joined, it became a part of man's nature. The Self of Adam became attached to the physical world. "God is all powerful and beyond our understanding of good and evil" (Sheinkin, 1986, p.130). It is through our individual free will that man, from his divine essence, became joined to the base matter of the world. In that choice, man opened the door of his being to good and evil. It is a loss of God on the rational level a feeling of isolation that must be negated. The inner being of man, the soul so to speak, is separated from man the rational being. Man must remove these false walls of separation and again commune with his Higher Inner mind or Cosmic Consciousness. Man must move from the lower base consciousness of his earthly attachments to a higher level of consciousness the God Head.

It is the high level of consciousness where a Universal oneness will take place and the illusion of evil will fade. Evil then becomes man's baseness, his denial of his higher self. It is man's inability to comprehend that God is within, not an abstract concept locked outside the realms of reality. Through inner development of the Cosmic Consciousness, man and God are one and evil loses its power. "Epicureans, Skeptics and Stoics therefore reject the idea of Cosmic good and evil in form of strictly human responsibilities, explaining evil either as an illusory, a mere human construct, or the futile endeavor to thwart the will of the one" (Russel, 1988, p.158).

But if "goodness involves the presence of due perfections, which actually exist within whatever is perfected; but presence and actual existence are co-terminous with being and reality; therefore, the former is simultaneously also an increase in the latter" (Sweeney, 1965, p.167). Given the concept of evil, which has been previously stated as an absence of good, this would mean that there is a loss of perfection. "But absence and nonexistence are co-terminous with non-being and unreality; therefore, evil is also co-terminous with non-being or unreality. Accordingly, to become more evil is simultaneously a decrease in being and reality, as well as in perfection" (Sweeney, 1965. p.167).

Given this definition, then evil becomes equivalent to imperfection in perfection. With Christian Science, evil is a nothing, an absence. Yet even being nothing it affects its subject. "Metaphysics teaches us that in God the distinction between essence and existence is a distinction rationis, a purely ideal distinction, but that in all created objects there is a real distinction between them" (Jacques, 1948, p. 65).

Plotinus outlined the results of joining good and evil in his explanation of descending into matter and becoming an individual man. "Because something else other than the all [--the sum total of true reality] added itself to you, you became less by the addition, for the addition did not come from real being [you can not add anything to that], but from that which is not, you have become a particular person by the addition of non-being" (Armstrong, 1953, p.160).

The road back to oneness, to becoming truly real, occurs only when man totally identifies with the One, the One whom he was separated from when Adam joined with the concept of good and evil. This can only be accomplished by the development of the Higher Self.

Evil then becomes not an aspect of sin, but a separation, a disunion from the One.

Evil — The Final Analysis

"If there is one human experience ruled by myth it is certainly that of evil. One can understand why: the two major forms of experience — moral evil and physical evil — both contain an enigmatic element in whose shadow the difference between them tends to vanish" Eliade, 1987, p. 199).

Moral evil can be seen as the by-product of man's actions, his self love. To overcome this, man has to look within. Man has lost touch with the inner self, the divine essence which is God, which can only be united with oneness by the act of Becoming Evil then becomes a personal responsibility that an individual must overcome from within. The existence of evil is in a sense a blockage of ones true Being. This blockage will not allow the individual conscious mind to realize the Higher Self or Cosmic conscious (God-Mind). Negativity brings only negativity, a stagnation of the growth process. "As Christ stated, 'Know the truth and the truth shall set you free,' he was referring to the realization of Oneness with the Creator through which the negativity vanishes. At the same time, one's conscious mind is able to receive the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN within, or in other words, experience the conscious reality of your Spiritual Self" (Masters, Vol.1 1989, p. 2-3).

One cannot doubt the psychological fear of terror or the unknown. Society has substituted what man creates within himself for an unknown evil that exists externally. Although no man feels that he initiates evil, he feels that he inherited the legacy of an ancient evil handed down from one generation to another. Until man realizes that evil is created from within the confine of the collective unconsciousness, he will never be free. Only through the development of the inner self, man's cosmic consciousness, can the shadows of darkness and evil be brought to light. In that moment of realization, man will begin his unfoldment to his higher self. When the mind or consciousness of the individual relinquishes its hold on the physical world and becomes one with the cosmic consciousness, harmony and balance result.



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Problem of Evil: Soul-Making



The soul-making theodicy rests on the idea that God allows evil to exist because the existence of evil is a necessary condition for individuals to develop or complete their moral souls.

We need to learn what morality is about and we need to develop the proper virtues. We cannot learn these in a vacuum nor do we know morality a priori. The suffering of others is, the theodicy argues, essential for individuals to learn these lessons about morality and virtue. Without the opportunities offered by suffering and evil, individuals would not have the chance to develop or demonstrate moral virtues, like compassion or courage.

The theodicy can be summarized as follows:

A world of moral individuals is a good thing.

Individuals have to learn how to be moral.

Suffering and evil are necessary in order to learn how to be moral.

God desires to create a world of moral individuals.

God must therefore allow suffering and evil in order to bring about the good of a world of moral individuals.



theodicy
θɪˈɒdɪsi/
noun
1.
the vindication of divine providence in view of the existence of evil.
"the question of theodicy"


There are a number of problems with this theodicy.

The main problem comes in the third proposition above: that suffering and evil are necessary in order to learn how to be moral. Surely this is not true of all moral virtues or concepts. The virtue of independence is not developed as a response to suffering: it’s developed out of a need for relying on one’s own judgment and action. One might also consider the amount of non-human suffering that exists and what connection this serves for the development of moral character.

Also, there is plenty of suffering and evil that does not seem to teach us any unique lessons. Showing compassion can be praiseworthy; but surely we can learn this without two-year olds dying from cancer or tornados ripping through towns every summer. And just what did we learn from the Holocaust that we didn’t know already? We didn’t know that mass murder was evil and needed the Nazi’s reign of terror to learn this?

One might argue, well supported by the evidence of post-Holocaust genocides, that mankind has not taken this lesson to heart. But this also undermines the theodicy. God’s goal, ex hypothesis, is to create moral individuals and he allows evil to allow us to learn the moral lessons we are supposed to learn. But if this is not working, then shouldn’t the tactics change? And so wouldn’t God’s failing to change tactics be a kind of moral failure? If a parent decides to beat his children to teach them how to behave properly, and comes to see that this doesn’t work, but continues to beat his children, then we would conclude that the parent is engaging in evil. And, moreover, even if the tactic did work, we still should not tolerate this in the parent. There are more humane ways to teach children how to behave properly.

So, suffering and evil are not necessary conditions for moral development. We can learn morality without being subjected to evil. Moreover, intentionally subjecting one to evil in order to teach them a lesson seems monstrous. There are other ways to teach the lesson and such lessons often don’t work any way.

Another important problem with this theodicy is that it makes a fetish out of suffering. If morality depends on the existence of suffering, then if there was no suffering, we would have to create suffering just to have morality. This strikes me as perverse. Suffering should not be a moral primary; it is secondary to the primary concern of morality: learning how to best live one’s life.

This also leads to a new paradox. The idea here is that morality needs suffering to develop virtues like compassion. But if there was no suffering in the world, would we need the virtue of compassion? It seems like the virtues that are most likely to be pointed to as being developed in response to evils are the virtues that are only needed because there are evils in the world. This undermines the theodicy because if God didn’t allow the evil in the first place, we wouldn’t need those virtues and so we would have no need to learn them by experiencing evil.

One common response to this is that these virtues are needed for the next world, for heaven, or for some deeper relationship with God. A problem with this move is that this is wholly arbitrary speculation. How can anyone know this? One could just as easily argue that one cannot get into heaven without being able to play badminton. And even one could know this, it doesn’t justify the evil. Consider again the parent who beats his children to teach them to behave. The fact that his goal is a good thing doesn’t justify his means. One should wonder about the justice of God if he creates the world in such a way that the only way to get to his kingdom is to have to learn virtues that rely on experiencing evil.

Shawn Klein, Problem of Evil Series
http://www.philosophyblog.com/search/label/Problem%20of%20Evil

[dianna]

Leibniz on the Problem of Evil

[or ... unbeknownst to Leibniz, an argument for the gnostic demiruge ...]

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There is no question that the problem of evil vexed Leibniz as much as any of the problems that he engaged in the course of his philosophical career. This is manifest in the fact that the first and the last book-length works that he authored, the Philosopher's Confession (written at age 26 in 1672) and the Theodicy (written in 1709, seven years before his death) were both devoted to this problem, as well as in the fact that in the intervening years Leibniz wrote numerous short pieces on related issues––many of which may be found in Gr and will soon be available in English translations currently being undertaken by R. C. Sleigh, Jr.–– and one full-length work, the Dissertation on Predestination and Grace (DPG), which was only published in 2011. The fact that the Theodicy was the only book-length treatise that Leibniz published during his lifetime provides further evidence of the significance that he attributed to the topic. It is therefore appropriate that it has now become an interpretive commonplace that Leibniz's concern with the problem of evil was central to his overarching philosophical concerns throughout his philosophical career. [See Rutherford (1995) and Antognazza (2009).] Leibniz's approach to the problem of evil became known to many readers through Voltaire's lampoon in Candide: the link that Voltaire seems to forge between Leibniz and the extravagant optimism of Dr. Pangloss continues––for better or worse––to shape the popular understanding of Leibniz's approach to the problem of evil. In this entry we examine the two main species of the problem of evil that Leibniz addresses. The first, “the underachiever problem,” is raised by a critic who would argue that the existence of evil in our world indicates that God cannot be as knowledgeable, powerful, or good as traditional monotheists have claimed. The second, “the holiness problem,” is raised by the critic who would argue that God's intimate causal entanglements with the world make God the cause of evil. God is thereby implicated in evil to the detriment of his holiness.

1. Various Versions of the Problem of Evil in Leibniz

2. The Underachiever Problem

3. The Holiness Problem

Before examining Leibniz's views on the problem of evil, it is necessary to do some stage-setting in order to locate just what sort of problem Leibniz thought evil presented. Consideration of any present-day introductory textbook of philosophy reveals that the problem of evil in contemporary philosophy is standardly regarded as an argument for atheism. The atheist contends that God and evil are incompatible, and given that evil clearly exists, God cannot exist. Some philosophers, conceding that the claimed incompatibility in the foregoing argument is too strong, contend, nevertheless, that even if the existence of God and the existence of evil should prove to be compatible, the existence (or duration, or amount, or pervasiveness) of evil provides us at the very least with compelling circumstantial evidence that God does not exist.

Framed in this way, the “atheistic problem of evil” invites certain sorts of responses. In particular, it invites the theist to explain how a being that is omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent can allow evil to exist. Present-day responses to the problem of evil therefore focus largely on presenting “theodicies,” that is, reasons why a perfect being does or might permit evil of the sort (or duration, or amount, or distribution) that we find in our world to exist.

When we consider, however, the works of medieval philosophers who address the problem of evil, the “atheistic problem” is not to be found. Since these figures believed that the arguments of natural theology demonstrated the existence of God, the problem that evil presented for them was different from that engaged by present-day philosophers. In present-day terminology, medieval philosophers did not engage the “evidential” problem of evil: rather, they engaged the “aporetic” problem of evil, in order to try to resolve the apparent logical incompatibility between God's attributes and the existence of evil. [On the distinction between these problems, see Adams and Adams (1990), pp. 1–3.] The problem, therefore, was taken to be that of explaining the compatibility of the existence of evil with divine moral purity or holiness. These philosophers believed that God is the author of everything that exists, and given that evil is one of the things that exists, it might seem that God is therefore the author of evil. And if an agent is an “author of evil,” he is therefore implicated in the evil and cannot be morally pure or holy. Thus, God cannot be morally pure nor holy. Let's call this version of the problem of evil the “holiness problem.” Before moving on, it should be noted that in light of the fact that Leibniz and his predecessors shared a commitment to God's existence, one might think that their approach to the problem of evil begs the question against the atheistic critic who charges that the existence of evil provides evidence that God does not exist. But this issue simply did not arise for Leibniz and his predecessors, given their antecedent belief in God's existence, and therefore it is inappropriate to charge these philosophers with begging the question.

Traditional theists held––and present-day theists still do hold––that God is the “author” or cause of everything in the cosmos in at least three different respects, so discussions of the holiness problem often branch off in three correspondingly different directions. First, God is regarded as the creative cause of everything in the cosmos. Everything that exists contingently is brought into existence by means of the creative activity of God. Second, it is held that God is the conserving cause of everything that exists. So God not only creates every created being, but every created being that continues to exist does so in virtue of God's continuously maintaining it in existence. Third, every action caused by a created being requires direct divine activity as concurrent cause. So every whack of a hammer, every strike of my fingertip on the keyboard, every tug of a magnet on a piece of iron, requires not only that the created being act, but also that the creator act concurrently with the created being in order to bring about the particular effect of the cause in question. [For a classic exposition of these various modes of divine causal involvement see St. Thomas Aquinas, Disputationes de Potentia Dei, Q.3, a.7, resp.]

Given that on this traditional account, God is intimately intertwined with the workings of the cosmos, the holiness problem seemed all the more intractable. In light of the intimate connections between God and the created world, the problem is not just that God created a world that happens to include evil, but that God seems to be causally (and thus morally) implicated in, for example, every particular act of murder, every earthquake, and every death caused by plague. Consequently, responses to the holiness problem sought to explain not only how God could remain holy despite having created a world such as ours, but also how he could remain holy despite conserving the world in existence and causally cooperating with all the events that occur in it.

In light of the fact that Leibniz lived in between these two eras, eras in which evil was taken to present different problems for the monotheistic philosopher, we are immediately led to wonder what sort of problem he sought to address. Leibniz expends a great deal of effort attempting to solve the holiness problem, but he also takes up something akin to the atheistic problem. It would be anachronistic, however, to claim that Leibniz was engaged with the atheistic problem, for in his time the existence of evil was taken to be an argument for an unorthodox form of theism rather than an argument for atheism. Thus, for example, a group of thinkers collectively known as the “Socinians” held, among other things, that the existence of evil was not incompatible with God's existence, but that it was incompatible with the existence of an omniscient God. The Socinians therefore held that God must not be omniscient, and that he must at the very least lack knowledge of future contingent events. [For Leibniz's view on the Socinians see Theodicy 364 (H343; G VI 318) et passim. More details on Socinianism can be found in Jolley, c.2, and Maclachlan.]

We might then characterize the problem raised by atheists in our own century and by the Socinians, to cite just one example from the seventeenth century, more broadly as the “underachiever problem.” According to the underachiever problem, if the sort of being that traditional monotheism identifies as God were to exist, the existence of this world would represent a vast underachievement on his part: therefore there is no such being. Atheists take this conclusion to prove that there is no God; the Socinians take it to show that God is not the sort of being that the traditional theist supposes him to be.

Although Leibniz is concerned about the underachiever problem, it is the Socinian, and not the atheistic, version of the problem that he engages. The winds of atheism had not reached the gale force proportions that they would in succeeding centuries. Consequently, this stronger conclusion was not yet taken as a serious, or at least the main, threat presented by the existence of evil.

It is important to distinguish between these versions of the problem of evil since we cannot understand Leibniz's treatment of evil in a given text until we know what problem it is that he means to be addressing in that text. Having set the stage in this way, we can now consider Leibniz's solutions to the problem of evil: we first consider the underachiever problem, and then turn to the holiness problem.

2. The Underachiever Problem

The core of Leibniz's solution to the underachiever problem is straightforward. Leibniz argues that God does not underachieve in creating this world because this world is the best of all possible worlds. Many thinkers have supposed that commitment to the claim that this world is the best of all possible worlds follows straightforwardly from monotheism. Because God is omnipotent and omniscient, nothing can prevent him from creating the best world, and his omnibenevolence obliges him to create the best world. So the created world is the best world.

Leibniz's reasoning to this conclusion does not, however, follow this straightforward path: among other things, this reasoning is not cogent as it stands. A number of seventeenth-century figures recognized that God would not be obliged to create the best world if there were no such thing as the best world. There would be no best world if the series of possible worlds formed a continuum of increasingly good worlds ad infinitum. And if there is no best world, God cannot be faulted for failing to create the best one since to do so would be as impossible as, say, naming the highest number. There is no such number of course, and likewise no such world. So while God may be obliged to create a world that has at least some measure of goodness, he cannot be obliged, on this view, to create the best. And therefore it might be the case that God simply chose arbitrarily to create one of infinitely many morally acceptable worlds. [This line of argument was common among certain Jesuit scholastics of the period. For discussions of this issue, see, for example, Ruiz de Montoya, Commentaria ac Disputationes in primam partem Summae Thologicae S. Thomae. De voluntate Dei et propiis actibus eius, Lyon 1630, disp. 9 and 10, and Diego Granado, Comentarii in primam partem Summae Theologicae S. Thomae, Pont-a-Mousson, 1624, pp.420–433.]

Leibniz was aware of this argument denying God's obligation to create the best, but he was firmly committed to rejecting it, in virtue of a central principle of his philosophical system, the Principle of Sufficient Reason. According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, for any state of affairs, there must be a sufficient reason that explains why that state of affairs and not some other state of affairs obtains. When it comes to our world, then, there must be some reason that explains why it, and not some other world, obtains. But there can be no such reason if it is the case that the goodness of worlds increases ad infinitum. Leibniz therefore concluded that there can be no infinite continuum of worlds.

One might be tempted to resist Leibniz's argument by saying that even according to the view on which there is an “infinite continuum of good worlds,” there is something that can serve as the sufficient reason for existence of this world, namely, God's decree that this world be actual. But such a response, Leibniz observes, would merely push the problem back, because the Principle of Sufficient Reason applies to free choices just as it applies to any other event or state of affairs. Thus, we would have to provide a sufficient reason for God's choice of this world instead of some other world on the continuum of morally acceptable worlds. And it seems that such a sufficient reason cannot be given on the infinite continuum of good worlds view. Note that the sufficient reason cannot be derived from some feature or fact about the world that is actually chosen, for this would raise the obvious question: Why did this feature in particular serve as the sufficient reason for God's choice? The only possible answers, it appears, would be: (a) Because God arbitrarily selected that feature as the one he would favor in deciding which world to create; or (b) Because that feature made that world better than all its competitors. But notice that neither of these answers is acceptable. The first is inconsistent with the Principle of Sufficient Reason. The second is incompatible with the hypothesis at issue, that there is no “best world.”

One might think that declaring this world to be the best possible world does not constitute a valid response to the underachiever problem. Indeed, such a response might be taken to provide the basis for a new underachiever argument along the following lines:

If God were all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, then this world would be the best possible world.
But surely this world is not the best possible world.
Thus, God is not all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.
Leibniz believes, however, that there was overwhelming evidence that the conclusion of this argument was false. He therefore must take one of the two premises in this argument to be false. Given that he himself is committed to the first premise, he must reject the second premise. And this is precisely what he does.

What reason, Leibniz asks, does the critic have for thinking that (2) is true? When Leibniz addresses this issue, he usually has the critic say something along the following lines:

Surely this world is not the best possible world since we can easily conceive of possible worlds that are better. Take some token instance of suffering: the tragic bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. Surely a world without that event would be better than the actual world. And there is no reason why God couldn't have created the world without that event. Thus, this is not the best possible world. [See Theodicy 118–119 (H 188–191; G VI 168–172).]
Leibniz's response to this sort of criticism comes in two stages. First, Leibniz says that while we can think of certain token features of the world that in and of themselves might be better than they are, we do not know whether it is possible to create a better world lacking those features, because we can never be certain of the nature of the connections between the token events in question and other events in the world. If we could improve or eliminate the token event in question without otherwise changing the world, we might well have a better world. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing whether such a change to the token event would leave the world otherwise unchanged, or might instead make things, on balance, worse. [See Theodicy 211–214 (H 260–2; G VI 244–7) and Gr, p.64f., for examples of this sort of response.]

Second, examples such as these are deceptive because they presume that God utilizes standards of world goodness that he may not in fact use. For example, it may presume that a world is good only if each part taken in isolation is good (a standard, we have seen, that Leibniz rejects), or it might presume that a world is good only if human beings enjoy happiness in it.

Leibniz argues in numerous texts that it is parochial to think that human happiness is the standard whereby the goodness of worlds is to be judged. A more reasonable standard, according to Leibniz, would be the happiness of all sentient beings. But once we admit this, it may turn out that the amount of unhappiness in the created realm is quite small, given that for all we know, the sentient beings on Earth might constitute a very small percentage of the sentient beings created by God. Here Leibniz includes not only preternatural beings such as angels, but also the possibility of extraterrestrial rational beings [Theodicy 19 (H 134–5; G VI 113–4)].

There is disagreement among Leibniz scholars about the basis for judging the goodness of worlds. Various scholars have defended one or more of the following:

The best world is the one that maximizes the happiness (i.e., virtue) of rational beings.
The best world is the one that maximizes the “quantity of essence.”
The best world is the one that yields the greatest variety of phenomena governed by the simplest set of laws.
There is scholarly dispute about whether Leibniz believed that the maximization of the happiness or virtue of rational beings is one of the standards by which God judges the goodness of the world. [For supporters of this claim see Rutherford, c.3; Blumenfeld, Brown; for detractors see Russell, p. 199, Gale.] It is unlikely that Leibniz believed that (1) alone was the true standard of goodness of the world in light of following comment on an argument advanced by Bayle:

the author is still presupposing that false maxim … stating that the happiness of rational creatures is the sole aim of God. [Theodicy 120 (H 192; G VI 172)]
In part, the dispute over this standard hangs on whether or not (1) is compatible with the more metaphysical standards embodied in (2) and (3), since it is these more metaphysical standards that Leibniz seems to endorse most consistently. In some cases, Leibniz writes as if the standard of happiness is fully compatible with the more metaphysical criteria. For example, within a single work, the Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz entitled Section 5 “What the rules of the perfection of divine conduct consist in, and that the simplicity of the ways is in balance with the richness of effects,” and he entitled Section 36: “God is the monarch of the most perfect republic, composed of all minds, and the happiness of this city of God is his principal purpose.” So Leibniz seems to advance both standards (1) and (3) in the same work [For another example, see R p. 105 (K X pp.9–10)]. In other places however, he writes as if they compete with one another [See Theodicy 124 (H 197–8; G VI 178–9).]

Whatever position one comes to hold on this matter, Leibniz often points to the more metaphysical standards as the ones God utilizes in assessing the goodness of worlds. But there is further controversy over exactly which metaphysical standard, (2) or (3), Leibniz endorses. In general, Leibniz holds that God creates the world in order to share his goodness with created things in the most perfect manner possible [Gr 355–6]. In light of the fact that created beings, in virtue of their limitations, can mirror the divine goodness only in limited respects, God creates a variety of things, each of which has an essence that reflects a different facet of divine perfection in its own unique way. Since this is God's purpose in creating the world, it would be reasonable to think that maximizing the mirroring of divine goodness in creation is the goal that God seeks to achieve. And this in fact is one of the standards Leibniz seems to endorse. We might call this the “maximization of essence” standard. Leibniz seems convinced that the actual world meets this standard and that creatures are to be found that mirror the divine perfections in all the sorts of ways that creatures can do this. Thus, there are creatures with bodies and creatures without, creatures with freedom and intelligence and creatures without, creatures with sentience and creatures without, etc. [See, for example, MP pp. 75–6 and 138 (G VII 303–4 and 310).]

In some texts, however, Leibniz frames the standard of goodness in what some have taken to be a third distinct way. In these places he argues that the goodness of a world is measured by the ratio between the variety of phenomena that a world contains and the simplicity of the laws that govern that world. Here Leibniz emphasizes the fact that the perfection of a world that maximizes the variety of phenomena it contains is enhanced by the simplicity of its laws since this displays the intelligence of the creator who created it.

Some scholars have argued that one or the other of these two more metaphysical standards represents Leibniz's settled view on the true standard of goodness [Gale, for example]. Other scholars have argued that, in the end, the two standards are not exclusive of each other. [See Rutherford, cc.2–3 and Rescher, c.1 for two very different ways of harmonizing (2) and (3).]

Regardless of which of these interpretations is correct, if these are the standards by which God judges the world's goodness, it becomes much more difficult to defend the claim that this is not the best possible world. We can use standard (3) to illustrate. In order, for example, for God to eliminate the Oklahoma City bombing from the world, what would be required in order for him to do so? There are presumably a number of ways in which this might be done. The most obvious would involve miraculous intervention somewhere in the chain of events leading up to the explosion. God might miraculously prevent the explosives from detonating, or he might eliminate the truck and its contents from the world. But this sort of miraculous intervention would require that the laws governing the the world become more complex. Consequently, Leibniz, and others who share this view of what the goodness of a world consists in, such as Malebranche, think that miraculous intervention is generally repugnant and would require vastly outweighing goods to result from a miraculous intervention in order for such an intervention to be permissible. [See Theodicy 129 (H 192–3; G VI 182).]

In any event, Leibniz holds that we are simply unable to know how changing certain events would change the world's capacity to meet the standards of goodness described in (2) and (3). Thus, according to Leibniz, we are not justified in claiming that this world is not as good, all things considered, as some other possible world. According to Leibniz, then, the underachiever problem cannot get off the ground unless the critic is able to defend the claim that this world is not the best possible world. It should be noted that Leibniz's approach to the underachiever problem thus seems be immune to the line of criticism pressed by Voltaire in Candide, namely, that it is obvious that this world is not the best possible world because there are so many manifest evils in it. Leibniz does not believe that each individual event is the best possible event, and he does not think that it is possible for finite minds to demonstrate that every individual event must be a part of the best possible world: rather, he believes that the world as a whole is the best possible world. (That said, it should be noted that there is considerable scholarly controversy as to whether Voltaire's target in Candide is indeed Leibniz: it has been claimed, for example, that the “optimism” lampooned in Candide is closer to that of Pope (see Rutherford (1995); on the general reception of Leibniz in France, see Barber (1955)].) In any event, on Leibniz's view, our inability to know how changing certain events in the world would affect other events and our inability to know how such changes would affect the overall goodness of the world make it impossible to defend the claim that the manifest evils in the world constitute evidence that this is not the best possible world.

3. The Holiness Problem

Far less scholarly attention has been devoted to Leibniz's treatment of the holiness problem, if only because this conception of the problem has only recently been recognized by Leibniz scholars. As noted above, the main problem here is that God's character seems to be stained by evil because God causally contributes to the existence of everything in the world, and evil is one of those things. [For two recent treatments see Sleigh (1996) and Murray (2005)]

The standard solution adopted by medieval thinkers was to deny an assumption of the preceding argument, namely, that evil is “something.” Evil was claimed not to have any positive reality, but to be a mere “privation” or “lack” of being. On such a view, evil has no more reality than the hole in the center of a donut. Making a donut does not require putting together two components, the cake and the hole: the cake is all that there is to the donut, and the hole is just the “privation of cake.” It therefore would be silly to say that making the donut requires causing both the cake and the hole to exist. Causing the cake to exist causes the hole as a “by-product” of causing a particular kind of cake to exist. Thus, we need not assume any additional cause for the hole beyond that assumed for the causing of the cake.

The upshot of our pastry analogy is this: given that evil, like the hole, is merely a privation, it requires no cause (or as the medievals, and Leibniz, liked to say, it needs no “cause per se”). God does not “causally contribute to the existence of evil” because evil per se is not a thing and therefore requires no cause in order to exist. And since God does not cause the existence of evil, God cannot be causally implicated in evil. Thus, the holiness problem evaporates.

Early in his philosophical career, Leibniz, like other seventeenth-century philosophers, scoffed at this solution to the holiness problem. In a short piece entitled “The Author of Sin,” Leibniz explains why he thinks the privation response to the holiness problem fails. Leibniz argues that God is the author of all that is real and positive in the world, and that God is therefore also the “author” of all of privations in the world. “It is a manifest illusion to hold that God is not the author of sin because there is no such thing as an author of a privation, even though he can be called the author of everything which is real and positive in the sinful act” [A.6.3.150].

Leibniz explains why he takes this response to be a “manifest illusion,” through the consideration of an example. Suppose that a painter creates two paintings that are identical in every respect, except that the one is a scaled down version of the other. It would be absurd, Leibniz remarks,

… to say that the painter is the author of all that is real in the two paintings, without however being the author of what is lacking or the disproportion between the larger and the smaller painting… . In effect, what is lacking is nothing more than a simple result of an infallible consequence of that which is positive, without any need for a distinct author [of that which is lacking]. [A.6.3.151]
So even if it is true that evil is a privation, this does not have as a consequence that God is not the author of sin. Given that what is positively willed by God is a sufficient condition for the existence of the evil state of affairs, in virtue of willing what is positive in some state of affairs, God is also the author of what is privative in that state of affairs. [A similar early critique is found at A.6.3.544].

Leibniz therefore sought to develop a different strategy in order to clear God of the charge of being the author of sin. In the Philosopher's Confession, his most significant treatise on evil aside from the Theodicy, Leibniz claims that although God wills everything in the world, his will with respect to goods is decretory , whereas his will with respect to evils is merely permissive. And Leibniz argues that God's permissive willing of evils is morally permissible if and only if such permission of evil is necessary in order for one to meet one's moral obligations..

It should be noted that Leibniz does not think that the permission of evil is morally justified on the grounds that such permission brings about a greater good that may not otherwise be achieved. Such an explanation, according to Leibniz, would make it the case that God would violate in the the Biblical injunction “not to do evil that good may come” [Causa Dei 36 (S 121; G VI 444)]. Leibniz therefore claims that the evil that God permits is a necessary consequence of God's fulfilling his duty (namely, to create the best world). Leibniz characterizes (morally permissible) permission as follows:

P permits E iff:
P fails to will that E
P fails to will that not-E
P brings it about that the state of affairs S obtains by willing that S obtains
If S obtains then E obtains
P knows that (4)
P believes that it is P's duty to will S and that the good of performing one's duty outweighs the evil entailed by E's obtaining
[This account is distilled from A.6.3.129–131]

This, Leibniz believes, resolves any holiness problem that might arise in so far as God is considered as the creator of the universe. However, after writing the Philosopher's Confession, Leibniz became increasingly concerned that a tension might arise in his account when it was applied to the holiness problem in the context of concurrence. Recall that traditional theists held that God was not only creator and conserver of all created things, but that God also was the concurrent cause of all actions of created things.

There were heated debates in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries concerning the nature of divine concurrence. The dispute centered on the respect in which God concurred with the free acts of creatures. This was an especially pressing problem for the obvious reason that positing too close a connection between God and created beings in cases where moral evils are committed runs the risk of implicating God in the evil, thus raising the holiness problem all over again. This debate often focused on a certain type of proposition and on what made this type of proposition true. The propositions in question are called “conditional future contingents”, propositions of the form:

If agent S were in circumstances C and time t, S would freely chose to f.
Propositions of this form were particularly important in discussions of philosophical theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries because it was believed that it was necessary that God know propositions of this type in order to exercise providential control over the free actions of created beings. In order to exercise providential control over free actions in the created world, God must know precisely how each such being will choose to act in each circumstance in which it will find itself. If God, for example, did not know what Eve would choose to do when confronted by the serpent, or what I would choose to do when confronted with a tuna sandwich, God could not know in advance the order of events in the universe he deigns to create.

But how does God know whether or not a token proposition of this type is true? In general, disputants in this period held that there are only two possible answers to this question. God knows that a token proposition of this type is true either because he wills that that proposition be true, or he knows that proposition to be true because something independent of his will makes it true, and God, in virtue of his omniscience, therefore knows it to be true. Following recent scholarship, we will call the first view the “postvolitional view” (since the truth of the proposition is determined only after God wills it) and the latter view the “prevolitional” view (since the truth of the proposition is independent of what God wills). In his early writings on the topic, Leibniz seemed inclined to postvolitionalism. So take the token proposition:

If Peter were accused of consorting with Christ during Christ's trial, Peter would deny Christ.
The early Leibniz holds that this type of proposition is true because God decrees that it would be true: that is, God decrees that Peter would deny Christ under these circumstances [see C 26–7 and Gr 312–3]. Furthermore, those who held this view generally held that it was in virtue of divine concurrence that God makes the proposition true in the actual world. So, in virtue of causally influencing Peter at the moment of his decision, God brings it about that Peter denies Christ in these circumstances.

This view obviously faces a number of difficulties. For our purposes, the most pressing one is that it seems to undercut Leibniz's solution to the holiness problem based on permission. For if the above proposition is true because God wills that it be true, then it would seem that God wills that Peter sin, and if he wills that Peter sin, he cannot merely permit it, in light of condition (1) of the definition of permission given above. Consequently, it appears that Leibniz must abandon his initial answer to the question of “what makes conditional future contingents true” and adopt the alternative answer.

The alternative answer also raises problems. What does it mean to say that the truth of the proposition is determined independently of God's will? Defenders of this view usually hold that the human will cannot be determined. When an agent chooses freely, nothing can “determine” or “cause” the choice, for otherwise the ehoice would not be free. Thus, for those who defended this view, the answer to the question of “what makes conditional future contingents true” ought to be “nothing.” For if something made future contingents true, then that thing would determine the choice, and the choice would not be free.

Given his commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, however, Leibniz could not endorse such a view. Does Leibniz, then, have an answer to this question that will rescue him from the holiness problem? There is scholarly disagreement about this issue. Some have held that Leibniz is obliged to hold the postvolitional view despite the difficulties that it raises for him. [See Davidson (1996), Sleigh (1994).] Others have held that Leibniz tried to forge a third alternative in order to avoid this seemingly intractable dilemma. [See Murray (2005); for an alternative to Murray (2005), see Cover and Hawthorne (2000)]. I will close by considering the latter suggestion.

According to Leibniz, free choice in humans is brought about through the activity of the human intellect and the human will working in concert with each other. The intellect deliberates about alternatives and selects the one that it perceives to be the best, all things considered. The intellect then represents this alternative to the will as the best course of action. The will, which Leibniz takes to be an “appetite for the good,”, then chooses the alternative represented to it as containing the most goodness [Theodicy, 311 (H 314; G VI 300–1].

On this view, it appears that there are two ways in which I might exercise “control” over my acts of will. First, I might be able to control what appears to me to be the best course of action, all things considered. That is, I might control the process of deliberation. Second, I might be able to control which alternative is presented to the will as containing the greatest good. Leibniz seems to accept both of these possibilities. In certain passages, he argues that by engaging in some sort of moral therapy, I can control which things appear to me to be good, and thus control the outcome of my deliberations. In other passages, he seems to say that while the will does “infallibly” choose that which the intellect deems to be the best, the will nevertheless retains the power to resist the intellect because the intellect does not “cause” the will to choose as it does. [Concerning the first strategy, see, for example, Reflections on Hobbes, 5 (H 396–7; G VI 391–1). For more on this aspect of Leibniz's view of freedom see Seidler (1985). Concerning the second strategy see, for example Theodicy 282 (H 298–300; G VI 284–5).]

Both suggestions face difficulties. Consider the first. How might I go about engaging in “moral therapy”? First, I would have to choose to do something to begin to bring about a change in how I see things. But of course I can make a choice to do this only if I first deliberate about it and see that making this change is the best thing for me to do. But did I have control over this process of “coming to see that a change is the best thing for me to do”? It seems that I may have control here only if I have control over the actions that led me to see things this way in the first place. But do I have control over those actions? If the answer is yes, it is only because I had control over my prior deliberations, and it looks as if this will lead us back in the chain of explanation to certain very early formative stages of my moral and intellectual life, stages over which it is hard to believe I had any control. It therefore seems that this line of reasoning will be difficult to sustain.

Let us consider the second alternative then, according to which I have control because the will is never “causally determined” to choose that which the intellect deems to be best in those circumstances. Leibniz holds that the will is not causally determined in the act of choice but merely “morally necessitated.” There is scholarly disagreement about the interpretation of this phrase. Some think it just means “causally necessitated.” But if this is right, it appears that God, who establishes the laws of nature, determines how creatures act, and this leads us back to the suggestion that Leibniz was a postvolitionalist in these matters. As we noted above, this is a troubling position for Leibniz to adopt since it seems to undermine his response to the holiness problem. [For various positions on the nature of “moral necessity,” see Adams, pp. 21–2, Sleigh (2000), Murray (1995), pp. 95–102, and (1996), esp. Section IV].

Others have held that moral necessity is a philosophical novelty, invented to explain the unique relationship between intellect and will. On this view, the will infallibly follows the determination of the intellect, without thereby being causally determined. Leibniz sometimes hints at this reading, as in the following example derived from Pierre Nicole:

It is considered impossible that a wise and serious magistrate, who has not taken leave of his senses, should publicly commit some outrageous action, as it would be, for instance, to run about the streets naked in order to make people laugh [Theodicy 282 (H299; G VI 284)]
Here, the wise magistrate is not causally determined to refrain from streaking to make people laugh. Instead, he just considers streaking to be so unseemly that “he can't bring himself to do it.” Something about his psychological constitution prevents him from seeing this as something that he might actually do, even though there is surely some sense in which he nevertheless could do it.

If we allow Leibniz to locate control over actions in a will that is only morally necessitated by the intellect, is there a way for him to avoid the postvolitional/prevolitional dilemma discussed earlier? The answer is not obvious. One would have to say that the will's infallibly choosing in accordance with the deliverances of the intellect is a fact whose truth is independent of God's will, while also saying that the deliverances of the intellect provide a sufficient reason for the will's choice. If this can be done, Leibniz may have a way of avoiding the difficulty posed by conditional future contingents.

However we might think these questions should be resolved, Leibniz himself appears to have thought that the prevolitional route was the one to take. He does not think that God makes it the case how human beings would act if they were created; rather, Leibniz believes God "discovers" in the ideas of the possibles how human beings would act if they were created [on this topic see Sleigh (1994).] [Leibniz speaks of these truths about how human beings will act as “limitations” that prevent God from making them, and the world that contains them, more perfect. In the end, it is these limitations, Leibniz argues, that prevent there from being a better world than the actual one. [On the notion of “limitations” see AG 60–2, 11, Theodicy 20 (H 86–7; G VI 114–5), Causa Dei 69–71 (S 128–30; 457–8).] If this interpretation is correct, then we might think that the permission strategy will work as a solution to the holiness problem both when it comes to defending God as creator and as concurrent cause of all effects in the cosmos.

Interestingly, however, Leibniz comes to favor, in later life, the scholastic “privation” view that he rejected in his earliest writings on the problem of evil. [See, for example, Theodicy 20, 30, 153 (respectively, H 86–7, 91–2, 219–20; G VI 114–5, 119–20, 201.] Leibniz's conception of privation in general, and the relation between his earlier and later views on the topic, has recently received a sustained and searching examination in Newlands (forthcoming), to which readers interested in the topic are directed.

The issues that arise in thinking about Leibniz's views on the problem of evil have only in the past couple of decades begun to receive the sustained scholarly attention that they deserve in virtue of their manifest significance for Leibniz. In the last few years in particular––probably not coincidentally, the three-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Theodicy was celebrated in 2010––considerable interpretive attention has been devoted to the details of Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil and related topics. [Rateau (2008) is the first book-length treatment of Leibniz's work on the problem of evil; the essays in Rateau (2011) and Newlands and Jorgensen (forthcoming) are devoted to particular topics related to Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil.] Given the fact that Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil draws on medieval sources and also was taken as a target by later writers such as Voltaire and Kant, renewed interest in Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil, combined with the resurgence of interest in contextual history of philosophy, have inspired recent work on the general historical significance of Leibniz's work on the problem of evil that seeks to illuminate later approaches to the problem of evil as well as the nature of the problem of evil itself. [See, inter alia, Larrimore (2004), Neiman (2002), and the essays in Rateau (2009).] In light of the fact that new translations of Leibniz's central texts devoted to the problem of evil have either only relatively recently been published (CP) or are in process––a new edition and English translation of the Theodicy, by Sean Greenberg and R. C. Sleigh, Jr., is well underway and under contract with Oxford University Press–and given that other new texts, like DPW, that bear on this nest of issues may well be discovered, there is reason to expect that this topic will continue to be an active area of Leibniz scholarship, and therefore that any conclusions about Leibniz's views on the problem of evil must, for now, remain tentative and subject to revision.

Bibliography:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/



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