XII—The Ethical Problem of Evil

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 124 (3):253-276 (2024)
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Abstract

I introduce a distinct challenge to religious belief: the Ethical Argument from evil. By this argument, paradigmatic forms of religious practice constitutively involve failures of ethical acknowledgement with respect to the reality of evil. I show how standard discussions of the problem of evil, as a purely logical or epistemic issue, abstract away from its fundamentally ethical dimensions. Drawing on an analogy with Moore’s paradox, I argue that the Ethical Argument presents a genuine theoretical problem, not merely a practical or pastoral one: the problem of how religious devotion can be compossible with properly acknowledging the reality of evil. I further argue that, in order properly to address this problem, the philosophy of religion needs to take a phenomenological turn. To illustrate this approach, I focus on the case of thankful prayer and draw out from Kierkegaard’s writings a religious ideal of unconditional gratitude. Developing the relevant notion of a failure of ethical acknowledgement in terms of two vices—wishful self-deception and spiritualized self-absorption—I show how Kierkegaard’s account can help us to assess whether expressions of religious devotion are objectionable on these grounds.

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Daniel Watts
University of Essex

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References found in this work

The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism.William L. Rowe - 1979 - American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (4):335 - 341.
Evil and omnipotence.J. L. Mackie - 1955 - Mind 64 (254):200-212.
The Problem of Evil.Peter van Inwagen - 2007 - Philosophical Quarterly 57 (229):696-698.
Recent Work on the Problem of Evil.T. Dougherty - 2011 - Analysis 71 (3):560-573.

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