Early Modern Women and the Problem of Evil: Atrocity and Theodicy by Jill Graper Hernandez (review)

The philosophical contributions of women from the early modern period are receiving renewed, even if overdue, attention. This follows a sustained effort on the part of a number of philosophers during the past quarter of a century to excavate and examine these contributions in a serious manner. An early and influential example is Margaret Atherton's Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period (1994). Ongoing efforts include philosopher-run projects such as Ruth Hagengruber with the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists (Paderborn University), Andrew Janiak with Project Vox (Duke University), Christia Mercer with the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy (Columbia University), and Lisa Shapiro with New Narratives in the History of Philosophy (Simon Fraser University). Jill Graper Hernandez's Early Modern Women and the Problem of Evil adds to these efforts and their corresponding benefits, both by bringing to the fore the work of a number of women philosophers from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth and by accentuating those contributions that specifically pertain to one of the most monumental and vexing challenges to theism: the problem of evil. Hernandez's book demonstrates that by attending to the work of these women we discover an approach to the problem of evil arguably underappreciated in the much-celebrated work of their male contemporaries—most notably, Leibniz's Theodicy (1710)—but which impressively anticipates a version of the problem very much in play today. As such, the book is a must-read for philosophers of religion and those who specialize in early modern philosophy, certainly, but also for individuals working in areas such as religious studies, women's studies, history, theology, and early modern literature.

Traditional formulations of the problem of evil allege that the fact of evil, or suffering, is incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God (or that it constitutes evidence against the reasonableness of belief in such a being). Theistic responses have often taken the form of theodicies, or stories that purport to reconcile the existence of God and the presence of evil in the world. Some theodicies have been thought to fall short on account of failing to explain concrete evils, opting instead to conceive of evil as an abstract, logical category. Leibnitz's attempt to justify God's allowance of evil on the grounds that the actual world is, overall, the best possible world constitutes a notable eighteenth-century example. While perhaps not offering anything like a sustained argument against the theodicy, Voltaire's Candide (1759) famously pokes fun at Leibniz by demonstrating how unsatisfying an answer he offers—particularly when held up to real life instances of profound and in some cases horrific suffering.

In chapter 1, Hernandez argues that the traditional theistic approach to the problem of evil does not simply reside in a neglect of concrete evil, but rather in a failure to respond effectively to a category of concrete evil identified in the work of Marilyn McCord Adams as horrendous evil and in later work by Claudia Card as atrocious evil. According to Card, atrocious evils are "reasonably foreseeable, intolerable harms produced (maintained, supported, tolerated, and so on) by culpable wrongdoing" (2002, cited in Hernandez 2016, 2). Speaking as a theist herself, Adams argues that theists' "propensity for generic solutions—our search for a single explanation that would cover all evils at once—has permitted us to ignore the worst evils in particular and so to avoid confronting the problems they pose" (1999, cited in Hernandez 2016, 5).

Belonging to the class of atrocious evils, Hernandez tells us, are such systemic, immoral practices and institutions as "racial cleansing, rape, genocide, bombings of children, and hate crimes" (2). The intolerability of these owes to the harm's depriving the victim of that which is typically necessary for a bearable and decent experience or set of experiences. Importantly, such harms would seem to be within the capabilities...