“Whatever is, is right”:
The Problem, Defence, and Justification of Evil (and God?) in Literature
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
“Whatever is, is right,” Alexander Pope optimistically concludes in An Essay on Man (1733-34). Yet, the European optimism and faith in an orderly universe governed by a maximally good, maximally knowing, and maximally potent deity was severely shaken – and irrevocably shattered, for some – by the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. Why would a benevolent God permit, or worse inflict, such staggering scale of pain, suffering, and destruction whilst the devout citizenry attended an All Saints’ Day Mass in churches across the city? Indeed, why would a perfect and all-loving being allow evil (natural or moral, banal or radical, voluntary or involuntary) to exist and persist in the world? Perhaps the world is imperfect due to the incompetence of the Maker despite His best intentions? Understandably, these questions and doubts rippled through the minds of ordinary Christians and extraordinary thinkers alike, bringing the problem of evil to the fore of Enlightenment concerns and thoughts. However, the all-too-human cry for a justification of evil antedates the advent of European modernity and is a recurrent feature of world literature. In this unit, we begin our study of the problem by looking at Hebrew wisdom literature, in particular the Book of Job. At the centre of the book is a philosophical debate about the justness of a divinely ordered universe and the purpose of a morally virtuous life; yet more interestingly, it reframes the theological and ethical problem as a fundamentally epistemological one. That is, what is just depends, critically, on what we know. Nevertheless, the emotional force of human suffering in Job gains a heightened amplitude in Voltaire’s poem “The Lisbon Earthquake: An Inquiry into the Maxim, ‘Whatever Is, Is Right’” (1756), while the intelligent (though unintelligible) design thesis is challenged by David Hume in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). In response, we will consider the Augustinian approach to theodicy in Gottfried Leibniz’s Theodicy (1710), where he defends our evil-filled world as the best possible world, and the Irenaean approach to theodicy in John Hick’s “An Irenaean Theodicy” (1981), where he argues for the developmental value of moral evil in the world. After navigating these philosophical meditations on the problem of evil, we shall scrutinise its dramatic representation and transgressive enactment in Christopher Marlowe’s in(famous) and influential tragedy, Doctor Faustus (1604). Besides eviscerating Catholicism, Reformation, and Renaissance humanism, the eponymous hero’s wilful rejection of God and willing compact with the devils is as unsettling as it is provocative – troublingly, what if religion, judgment, and providence pose the greatest harm to humans and to human freedom? Our tentative engagement with the problem of evil concludes with an in-depth analysis of John Milton’s masterwork, Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books (1667, 1674). The length and scope of Milton’s epic poem is vast to say the least. For our purpose, we will pay close attention to Books I, II, IX, X, and XII, as we examine the rebellion of Lucifer, the War in Heaven, the Temptation of Eve and the subsequent Fall of Man, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden within the framework of the poet’s literary theodicy. Ultimately, all these works compel us to ask: Can God and evil coexist? Can sentient creatures ever feel at home in the world?
READING TEXTS:
I. Primary
“Book of Job.” The Bible. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 4th ed., Oxford UP, 2010, pp. 726-771. (ISBN 978-0-19-528960-2) (3rd, 4th, or 5th edition is acceptable, read before class)
Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Rpt. in The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, edited by Michael L. Peterson, U of Notre Dame P, 2017, pp. 59-77.
Leibniz, Gottfried. The Theodicy. Rpt. in The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, edited by Michael L. Peterson, U of Notre Dame P, 2017, pp. 50-58.
Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus, edited by David Scott Kastan and Matthew Hunter, 2nd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2023. (ISBN 978-1-324-04386-7)
Milton, John. Paradise Lost, edited by Gordon Teskey, 2nd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2020. (ISBN 978-0-393-61708-5)
Voltaire. “The Lisbon Earthquake: An Inquiry into the Maxim, ‘Whatever Is, Is Right.’” Rpt. in The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, edited by Michael L. Peterson, U of Notre Dame P, 2017, pp. 25-30.
II. Secondary
Chignell, Andrew. “Evil, Unintelligibility, Radicality: Footnotes to a Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers.” Evil: A History, edited by Andrew Chignell, OUP, 2019, pp. 18-42.
Hick, John. “An Irenaean Theodicy.” Rpt. in The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, edited by Michael L. Peterson, U of Notre Dame P, 2017, pp. 262-273.
Plantinga, Alvin. “Supralapsarianism, or ‘Felix Culpa.’” Rpt. in The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings, edited by Michael L. Peterson, U of Notre Dame P, 2017, pp. 363-389.