Abstract

Neiman develops this history in three chapters. Like traditional accounts of philosophy in the modern period that divide philosophers into two groups, the rationalists and the empiricists, Neiman divides modern philosophers into two camps, but on her view these camps are distinguished by whether they take evil to be “intelligible” and are therefore willing to write theodicies of one form or another to demonstrate that it is. Among those who do, she counts Leibniz, Pope, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx. She devotes her first chapter to a discussion of their views. Among those who do not, she counts Bayle, Voltaire, Hume, Sade, and Schopenhauer. She devotes her second chapter to a discussion of their views. In a third chapter, she brings the historical discussion to an end with separate discussions of the views of Nietzsche and Freud. She then turns in a final chapter to a discussion of the influence of the problem of evil on twentieth-century philosophy. This chapter focuses on the work of Camus, Arendt, the Critical Theorists, and Rawls. There is a great deal of interesting material in these historical sketches. Neiman does a good job in showing how the problem of evil is connected to a number of seemingly unrelated positions taken by these philosophers and she is equally good at tracing certain, somewhat obscure, ideas and topics from one philosopher to another. Her discussions of Rousseau and Kant are particularly good, allowing the reader new insights on the nature of the problems they addressed and the connection between the two. Other sketches, such as those of Nietzsche and Rawls, are, however, less illuminating.