Theodicy

Theodicy was not yet dead, however. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) thought philosophical efforts at theodicy had failed only because they did not see history philosophically. Properly understood, history is "the true theodicy." Like other nineteenth-century accounts of necessary progress, he did not deny the reality of evil. Evil qua evil is a necessary moment in the unfolding of spirit. For Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) feudalism was a necessary stage in human history. For Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) the competition that led to the "survival of the fittest" was the best promise for a bright future.

In response, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) developed his philosophical "pessimism," a deliberate reversal of optimism. This is not the best of all possible worlds, but the worst, a mindless machine of self-inflicted suffering, among whose cleverest devices are precisely the philosophical theories of teleology and progress. All efforts to make life bearable only make things worse. The only hope is to deny the will to live. Schopenhauer claimed that his pessimism made it like Buddhism, a mistaken equation that persists to this day.

In turn, thinkers as varied as Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, and Karl Barth argued for views that acknowledged the impossibility of canceling out the evils of the world and yet affirmed the world. But these views are no longer theodicies—or at least do not claim to be. What makes it possible for us to resist pessimism is not reflection on the experienced order of the world but will (Nietzsche), temperament (James), or grace (Barth).

Contemporary debates.

Debate on theodicy has come to be dominated by two very different tendencies. There has been a revival of philosophical theodicy among analytic philosophers of religion, who have moved from attention to the "logical problem of evil" to the "evidential problem of evil." Alvin Plantinga has revived the important distinction between the "defense" of a view against objections and the far more demanding philosophical establishment of that view, which he calls "theodicy," and which he thinks we can do without. On the other hand, the very desire to do theodicy has been condemned as irreligious or ideological. "The disproportion between suffering and every theodicy was shown at Auschwitz with a glaring, obvious clarity," wrote Emmanuel Levinas (p. 162).