MODERN THEODICIES

In her book Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman argues that the root of the problem of evil can be found in the fact that the world is not as it ought to be. Around us, we see needless suffering, callous and thoughtless cruelties, monstrous atrocities, unjust punishments and so much more which makes us cry out: This ought not to have happened! Once we utter this cry, Neiman thinks that we are ‘stepping onto a path that leads straight to the problem of evil’. That is, once we admit that reality is not as it ought to be, that it contains numerous evils which are inflicted upon (innocent) people, we are faced with how we should react and respond to this world.

Should we despair at the imperfection of our world and resign ourselves to a hopeless situation where the innocent suffer and our social world is ridden by numerous evils? Or is there a way out? Is there a way to explain and account for the evil in our world?

Here the problem of evil becomes a problem of intelligibility. We want to know and understand why the world is structured as it is; we need to find reasons of why it does not measure up to the way it ought to be. The implicit belief here is that the world is, indeed, intelligible, that we can make it intelligible, that it is not obscure to our reasoning capacities.