The concluding chapter summarizes the main argument of the book. It emphasizes the specificity and particularity of systems. It also repeats the insight that religion and systems theory belong in the humanities because the response to systemic dissonance requires the conscious attention of participants in the system. However, the responses are not predetermined by the nature of the dissonance and can take a variety of forms. Finally, the basis for comparing religion, is not the similarities among phenomena but the role of the systemic mitigation within specific systems.

Should central banks favour green assets in their operations? This question has caused an intense debate in the Euro area and the UK, focussed on corporate bond portfolios purchased by the Eurosystem and the Bank of England. It has been argued that their initial purchases supported economic activity that was not consistent with the stated targets of the EU and the UK governments to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Sustainability issues are not a primary objective for central banks, and their independence could be damaged by exceeding their remits. Nevertheless, the risks arising are highly relevant to their existing primary objectives. Furthermore, central banks and all other institutions must do what they can if society is to deal with the growing existential threat. That draws on their secondary objectives. We argue that: (1) Not only is it permissible for a central bank to be involved in climate mitigation activities, but existing mandates require it. (2) The expansion of central bank balance sheets gives room for more action. (3) All market operations are in scope. (4) Central bank staff do not need to make capital allocation choices between businesses. (5) There is no trade-off with monetary policy objectives.

This chapter begins with an interpretation of the final sections of the ‘Spirit’ chapter of the Phenomenology. Here, Hegel diagnoses the paradoxes of Kantian theodicy before going on to elaborate, in a highly allegorical idiom, how he envisages overcoming the dichotomy between divine and human standpoints that plagued his Leibnizian and Kantian predecessors. By developing the thesis that evil is a structural possibility of rational self-conscious, the culminating dialectic of ‘conscience’ posits an essential relation between human freedom and the historicity of the good; the ideal of conscience, of a unity between natural and ethical wills, is their continually coming apart. The chapter then moves away from the Phenomenology to elaborate the resulting picture of Hegelian theodicy in its own terms, drawing also on Hegel’s preface to his Philosophy of Right. Hegelian theodicy stands revealed as reconciling us to reality by fulfilling a primarily diagnostic function, resolving our theodical puzzlement by explaining its mistaken, but intelligible, origins. To bring out the specificity of this view of Hegel’s project, the chapter ends by contrasting it with two recent alternatives, Michael Rosen’s ‘right Hegelian’ and Robert Brandom’s ‘left Hegelian’ interpretations.

This chapter identifies key features of Leibnizian theodicy in order to bring out its historical peculiarity and significance. To this end, it distinguishes between the surface form of Leibniz’s project, which exhibits typical traits of traditional explanatory theodicy, and its underlying motivational structure. The latter can be seen as arising from a confluence of three currents: the articulation of a perceived threat to the adequacy of creation, an extreme variety of theological and metaethical intellectualism, and a rationalist understanding of goodness. Elaborating this gap between surface form and motivational structure shows Leibniz to have a transitional status: while viewing God as an absolute explanatory and metaphysical principle, Leibniz begins to liberate criteria of goodness, rendering them principles of reason to which even the divine will is subject and by which his creation can be judged. Exploring the resulting tension helps us appreciate the novelty involved in his reconfiguring theodicy as a juridical enterprise, that of putting God on trial.

Following Allen Wood, Leibniz’s theodicy can be seen as both totalitarian – it claims that divine wisdom informs every single part of creation – and wholesale – it proves this only in general terms. This chapter explores the criteria Leibniz considers to be criteria of goodness and how he argues, in wholesale fashion, for their instantiation. Leibniz’s criteria can be divided into two categories: metaphysical, which concern properties and features of being as such, and anthropocentric, which bear on the morality and happiness of human beings. What unites them is an overarching conception of goodness as rational intelligibility: a maximally good world provides a maximal number of actual opportunities for rational creatures to appreciate its goodness and thereby perfect themselves. Closer attention to Leibniz’s handling of criteria, however, reveals a danger that anthropocentric ultimately dissolve into metaphysical criteria, the practical into the theoretical. As a result, Leibniz’s project is threatened with dialectical contradiction: the existential concerns that govern his theodicy’s underlying motivation cannot be articulated in the theoretical terms of its execution.

This chapter begins by setting out various axes along which to categorise different kinds of theodicy. In particular, it is useful to distinguish between the kind of puzzle to which a theodicy responds and the kind of solution it proposes; between theodicies with theoretical and theodicies with existential motivations; and between theodicies that offer defences of religious doctrines and theodicies that endeavour to explain how those doctrines should be understood. With this framework in place, the chapter outlines certain central traits of the theodicy tradition prior to Leibniz, in order to bring out the historical peculiarity and radicality of Leibniz’s own enterprise. A brief look at the example of Augustine allows us to make two further crucial distinctions: between the project of explaining how God can be causally implicated in evil and that of addressing the apparent inadequacy of creation; and between theodicies that begin with fixed axiological criteria and those that think the nature of goodness must be gradually revealed.

Recent years have seen great strides in the deepening of our understanding of how sustainability factors – in particular those related to environment, society, and governance (ESG) – may act as drivers of financial risks, and therefore are of relevance to institutions responsible for oversight of the financial sector. This chapter reviews these arguments in the context of the progressive inclusion of sustainability factors in microprudential regulation of the banking sector. New rules at international (Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, Network for Greening the Financial System), regional (European Union), and individual jurisdiction levels require that banks include ESG considerations in their governance. How such rules are implemented on the ground is contingent on the regulatory oversight architecture, that is, how the responsibility for different objectives and financial sectors is repartitioned between different public authorities, as well as the broader institutional framework in which the latter operate. The chapter analyses from this perspective practices of microprudential supervisors in the EU (European Banking Union, Hungary, Sweden) and beyond (Brazil, United Kingdom) that are seen to be leaders in the trend, with a view to distilling the institutional factors shaping the ‘greening’ of supervision with regard to scope of prudential sustainability concerns and the instruments used. Four out of the five studied jurisdictions have delegated banking supervision to the central bank, which is interesting, not least given the significant heterogeneity of financial supervision models globally. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of the comparative analysis with regard to legitimacy (e.g. market overreach) and institutional implications (e.g. need for development of accountability, institutional design) of micro-prudential supervision and regulation, in particular with regard to central banks.