Proponents of the view which I call ‘moral antitheodicy’ call for the theistic discourse of theodicy to be abandoned, because, they claim, all theodicies involve some form of moral impropriety. Three arguments in support of this view are examined: the argument from insensitivity, the argument from detachment, and the argument from harmful consequences. After discussing the merits of each argument individually, I attempt to show that they all must presuppose what they are intended to establish, namely, that the set (...) of premises advanced in any given theodicy will be untenable. I conclude by discussing what uses there might be for the moral critique of theodicy, if it cannot be used to ground a global rejection of theodical practice. (shrink)

Antitheodicy objects to all attempts to solve the problem of evil. Its objections are almost all on moral grounds—it argues that the whole project of theodicy is morally offensive. Trying to excuse God’s permission of evil is said to deny the reality of evil, to exhibit gross insensitivity to suffering, and to insult the victims of grave evils. Since antitheodicists urge the avoidance of theodicies for moral reasons, it is desirable to evaluate the moral reasons against theodicies in abstraction (...) from the intellectual reasons for and against them. It is argued that the best known theodicies such as those based on soul-making and free will are guilty of moral faults as alleged. But Leibniz’s best of all possible worlds theory, often thought to be the most morally offensive ‘Panglossian’ theodicy, is morally blameless because it excuses God by the absolute impossibility of his choosing any world better than the present one. Theodicy should not be conceived of as a search for greater goods which may excuse God’s permitting evils. From the divine point of view, creation is an upfront choice between scenarios—in modern parlance, a Trolley problem rather than a Transplant problem. In cases of forced choice among scenarios, it is morally improper to criticize one who chooses the best. (shrink)

A theodicy is the attempt to discern God's reasons for permitting evil, whereas the antitheodicy view rejects all such attempts outright. This chapter explores two sets of arguments that could be offered in support of antitheodicy. The first group of arguments concerns the morality of theodicy, and seeks to show that theodicy‐making conflicts with or undermines central aspects of morality – for example, the motivation to fight against gratuitous evil. The second group of arguments point out nonmoral (e.g., (...) conceptual or metaphysical) failings in theodicy, such as the unduly anthropomorphic notion of God usually at work in theodicies. (shrink)

The article reviews different antitheodicies in response to Toby Betenson’s article “Anti-Theodicy”. Antitheodicies involve rejecting the position that God or meaning exist only, if evils have justifying morally sufficient reasons. The article builds on Betenson’s division into moral and conceptual antitheodicies and his characterization of antitheodicies as a metacritique of the problem of evil. Moral antitheodicies are problematic, as they do not address the key conceptual issues and might end up in question-begging or moralism. Dissolving the problem of evil requires (...) a conceptual antitheodicy that exposes its presuppositions as speculative metaphysics. Religious conceptual antitheodicies help to focus on different ways of sense-making that do not fall into theodicism. (shrink)

This book defends antitheodicism, arguing that theodicies, seeking to excuse God for evil and suffering in the world, fail to ethically acknowledge the victims of suffering. The authors argue for this view using literary and philosophical resources, commencing with Immanuel Kant's 1791 "Theodicy Essay" and its reading of the Book of Job. Three important twentieth century antitheodicist positions are explored, including "Jewish" post-Holocaust ethical antitheodicism, Wittgensteinian antitheodicism exemplified by D.Z. Phillips and pragmatist antitheodicism defended by William James. The authors argue (...) that these approaches to evil and suffering are fundamentally Kantian. Literary works such as Franz Kafka'sThe Trial, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, are examined in order to crucially advance the philosophical case for antitheodicism. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 278 - 292 Responding to Zachary Braiterman’s and Daniel Garner’s ideas on post-Holocaust religious thought, the author proposes a new model of relationships between theodicy and antitheodicy in which divine perfection is no longer privileged as the single key factor. Building on Peter Berger’s and Clifford Geertz’s treatments of the problem of evil, it is suggested that focusing on meaning-making and tradition can result in a stratified view of theodicy–antitheodicy more able (...) to engage with the dynamics of several well-known thinkers associated with religious responses to the Holocaust. (shrink)

Under an ‘antitheodicy’, I understand any attempt to show the principal impossibility of a morally respectable and rationally convincing theoretical answer to the theoretical problem of evil which is understood as a problem of consistency and rational coherence between propositions. In this paper, I will analyse the concept of rationality which is presupposed at least in some strands of antitheodicy. A. Gleeson’s ‘A frightening love. Recasting the Problem of Evil’ presupposes a dichotomy between an engaged-existential and a detached-impersonal (...) kind of philosophical thinking which are respectively characterized by a stress on authenticity and the acknowledgement of particularity and contingency in the first case and by precision, logic, provability and an instrumental understanding of rationality in the second case. The second kind of reasoning which underlies all theodicies is inapt for dealing adequately with the real problem of evil. I try to show that the dichotomy of impersonal objective and existentially subjective kinds of philosophy is not a contradictory one but leaves out a broad field in-between which can be characterized as ‘informal reasoning’ and which allows a morally sensitive answer to the theoretical problem of evil which is not isolated from the ‘real’ problem of evil. (shrink)

Within the philosophy of religion, there are several different views on what to consider the discipline’s most fundamental topic. The answer that you offer at the meta-level is often more important than the concrete answers you, in the next stage, offer to that question which you have identified as the question to attend to. The identification serves, namely, as a hermeneutical principle for understanding and addressing other topics within the discipline. As regards analytic Anglo-American philosophy of religion, there has, for (...) a long time, been a general agreement that the fundamental topic that philosophers of religion should attend to is God’s existence.... (shrink)

This paper investigates Wittgenstein's remarks on happiness and harmony in the context of Wittgensteinian antitheodicy. Philosophers of religion inspired by Wittgenstein's philosophy often criticize theodicies seeking to justify apparently meaningless evil and suffering within God's overall harmonious plan. The paper analyses Wittgenstein's early views on happiness as harmony with the world, examining whether they are incompatible with an antitheodicist approach abandoning the very project of theodicy by acknowledging a certain kind of disharmony. However, antitheodicy may also, at the (...) transcendental meta-level, be considered a “harmonious” way of “seeing the world aright,” which raises a reflexive problem for any Wittgenstein-inspired antitheodicy. (shrink)

I argue that we should emancipate the problem of evil and suffering from theodicist assumptions that lead to a chronic non-acknowledgment of the sufferers’ experiential point of view. This also entails emancipating the problem of evil and suffering from the need to consider the so-called argument from evil. In the argument ‘from’ evil, evil and suffering are seen as pieces of empirical evidence against theism. This presupposes understanding theism as a hypothesis to be tested in an evidentialist game of argumentation. (...) Such a presupposition already fails to acknowledge the depth and variety of both religious and nonreligious approaches to living with evil and suffering. One way of cashing out what moral antitheodicism amounts to is to analyze theodicism as a failure of recognizing others’ suffering. Furthermore, one way of cashing out what this mis- or nonrecognition amounts to is to analyze the unforgivability of evil. Focusing on recognition and forgiveness here can be understood as an attempt to show that there is something seriously wrong with mainstream analytic philosophers’ of religion preoccupation with the argument from evil. In contrast, an ethically proper response to evil and suffering emerges from a serious consideration of recognition, forgiveness, and the unforgivable. (shrink)

Why do bad things happen, why is there suffering in the world? The problem of evil poses a serious threat to the idea of God as an omnipotent, omniscient and absolutely good being since it had been first articulated. The existence of horrible natural disasters and moral abominations continues to be one of the strongest arguments for atheism. Consequently, attempts of absolving God of the charge are legion: theodicies belong to the essential repertoire of traditional Christian theology and phi...

Jewish tradition presents a variety of theodicies. Job and some Talmudic passages apparently reject the notion that all suffering is punishment for sin, even though it is also taught, ostensibly to the contrary, that a sufferer should react by mending his or her ways. The tradition also allows a large enough scope to natural law to allow for a soul‐making theodicy, according to which suffering occurs naturally and the negative value of suffering is outweighed by the positive value of opportunities (...) for the sufferer and others to exercise virtues. It can also admit a theodicy that stresses the sufferer's ability to achieve, through suffering, closeness to God. Finally, antitheodicies – theistic views, often existentialist, that oppose constructing theodicies – collapse into soul‐making theodicies. Thus, soul‐making theodicies have a home in Judaism, though they are from the only explanation of suffering in Jewish tradition. They afford the most promising theodicy for Jewish thought. (shrink)

Several recent critiques of theodicy have incorporated some form of moral objection to the theodical enterprise, in which the critic argues that one ought not to engage in the practice of theodicy. In defending theodical practice against the moral critique, Atle O. Søvik argues that the moral critique (1) begs the question against theodicy, and (2) misapprehends the implications of the claim that it is inappropriate to espouse a theodicy in certain situations. In this paper I suggest some sympathetic emendations (...) for Søvik's theodical apologetic, but I argue against Søvik's claim that the moral critique of theodicy is altogether irrelevant. (shrink)

I reply to seven objections to anthropomorphic theism: (1) That anthropomorphic theism is idolatrous. In reply I rely on the concept/conception distinction. (2) That faith requires certainty. In reply I argue that full belief may be based on probable inference. (3) That the truly infinite is incomprehensible. In reply I distinguish two senses of knowing what you mean. (4) "You Kant say that!" In reply I distinguish shallow from deep Kantianism. (5) "Shall Old Aquinas be forgot?" In reply I discuss (...) the simplicity of God. (6) What those garrulous mystics say about the ineffable. In reply I argue that mystics should be anthropomorphites. (7) Antitheodicy. In reply I distinguish the community of all agents from the community of finite frail agents. (shrink)

The problem of suffering crucially focuses on meaninglessness. Meaningful suffering—suffering having some “point” or function—is not as problematic as absurd suffering that cannot be rendered purposeful. This issue is more specific than the problem of the “meaning of life” (or “meaning in life”). Human lives are often full of suffering experienced as serving no purpose whatsoever – indeed, suffering that may threaten to make life itself meaningless. Some philosophers—e.g., D.Z. Phillips and John Cottingham—have persuasively argued that the standard analytic methods (...) of philosophy of religion in particular ought to be enriched by literary reading and interpretation, especially when dealing with issues such as this. The problem of evil and suffering can also be explored from a perspective entangling literary and philosophical approaches (Kivistö & Pihlström, 2016). This double methodology is in this paper applied to the problem of evil and suffering by considering an example drawn from Holocaust literature: Primo Levi’s work is analyzed as developing an essentially ethical argument, with a philosophical-cum-literary structure, against theodicies seeking to render suffering meaningful. By means of such a case study, I hope to shed light on the problem of meaningless suffering, especially regarding the moral critique of “theodicist” attempts to interpret all suffering as meaningful. (shrink)