Transcript Why Is There Evil?

Good and Evil
• For Plato, the good is transcendent.
• The hedonist tradition identifies good with
pleasure and happiness, and evil with pain
and suffering.
• For many, evil is a profound mystery.
Good and Evil
Why Is There Evil? —Fyodor Dostoevsky
The three propositions in the traditional formulation of
the problem of evil:
1. God is all-powerful.
2. God is perfectly good.
3. Evil exists.
How can these be reconciled?
Good and Evil
Why Is There Evil? —Fyodor Dostoevsky
The central question raised by Ivan
Karamazov is:
How could a good God permit evil?
Good and Evil
Sophie’s Choice —William Styron
A classic moral dilemma: Either actively
condemn one of your children to death, or
by refusing to choose have both killed.
What should Sophie have done?
Good and Evil
From Cruelty to Goodness —Philip Hallie
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Institutionalized cruelty is the worst kind.
Cruelty can be defeated.
Kindness could be the ultimate cruelty.
Good and Evil
Wickedness —Stanley Benn
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Pathological wickedness occurs when a
person makes evil his or her highest value.
A crude chauvinist or jingoist can be
considered a wicked person.
Evil is any object, property, or happening
about which it is both intelligible and correct
to say that it would be a better state of
affairs if those things did not exist or occur.
Good and Evil
Beyond Good and Evil—Friedrich Nietzsche
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Anything that enhances the Will to Power is
good.
Christian morality is a slave morality.
The first principle of our humanism is that
the weak and the failures shall perish.
Good and Evil
On the Origin of Good and Evil
—Richard Taylor
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If we had no desires, good and evil would
not exist.
The rules and practices that either promote
cooperation toward meeting our desires or
resolve interpersonal conflict are right rules
and practices.