Moral Evil

Contents

CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction ‘‘Evil’’ and Evil 1 Defining Evil 4 Four Models of Moral Evil 8 Chapter One Evil versus Goodness: Satan and other ‘‘Evildoers’’ 23 The Standard View of Evil 23 Manicheanism and the Idea of Satan 27 The Manichean Theological Tradition 33 Evil Naturalized 38 Evil and the Apocalypse 43 ‘‘Evil Genes’’ 48 The Manichean Model under Scrutiny 53 Chapter Two Evil as the Good in Disguise: Theodicy and the Crisis of Meaning 67 ‘‘With or Against, but Not Without’’ 68 The Great Conundrum 72 Theodicy Simpliciter: The Innovation of Gottfried Leibniz 77 The Educative Theodicy: From Job to Irenaeus and Lactantius 83 The Free Will Theodicy 95 Theodicy under Scrutiny: Some Broader Issues 101 v v i C O NT E N TS Chapter Three Evil as ‘‘Evil’’: Perspectivalism and the Construction of Evil 117 Beyond Convention 117 Subjectivism 120 Nietzsche 124 The Intellectual Legacy of Nietzsche 129 Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and Perspectivalism 138 Positive Psychology 145 Is Evil Illusory? Model Three under Scrutiny 147 Chapter Four Evil as the Absence of Goodness: Privation and the Ubiquity of Wickedness 164 Evil and Character 164 Evil in the Mind of Augustine: The Will and Difficult Freedom 170 Broadening Augustine’s Account of Evil 180 Neo-Augustinians 192 The Privation Account under Critical Scrutiny 197 Chapter Five Evil as Inaction: Augustine, Aristotle, and Connecting the Thesis of Privation to Virtue Ethics 207 Overcoming Evil Situations 207 Aristotle, Self-Deception, and the Will 217 The Privation Thesis, Virtue Ethics, and the Case of Fukushima 226 The Connection between Augustine and Aristotle under Scrutiny 232 Undoing Wickedness 237 Evil: Our Problem 245 Bibliography 255 Index 271 ...