Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2019)
Cartesian goodness and the problem of evil.
Abstract
The aim of this article is to provide a foundation for one of the variants of a sceptical response to the arguments from the evil by means of the analysis of the notion of the perfect goodness of God. It is shown that the contemporary arguments from the evil are usually based on the notion of the moral goodness of God. It is proposed to analyse this notion through the conceptual framework of philosophy of action. It is shown that the arguments from the evil assume the existence of flawless moral reasons for the elimination of the monstrous and unreasonable evil. Further, it is argued that the identifi cation of flawless reasons for a certain action demands an opportunity to compare the reasons for this action and the reasons for alternative actions. But the opportunity to compare the reasons for the alternative actions that are available to God is radically limited in human beings. This limitation is due to the absence of practical access of the evaluating subject to a range of possible grounds of God, where under the practical access one implies the ability to perform those actions which are conditioned by certain reasons. Thus, it is metaphysically impossible for the person to create the world where there would be no evil or to create an individual with such freedom of will that would not be capable of leading to the evil. Further, the principle of the expertise is introduced, in which the tenability of the procedure of balancing the reasons for a certain action in a certain domain of activity depends on the degree of the practical access of the balancing agent to this particular sphere of activity. Therefore, the larger practical participation of the agent in the sphere of activity correlates with more success of results of evaluating the reasons, where success means the identifi cation of better objectives and best actions that are needed to achieve these aims. The principle of expertise along with the radical limitation of the practical access to the probable grounds of God allow one to suppose that the defi nition of fl awless reasons for God’s actions do not have a tenable epistemic foundation. Accordingly, the statements that the evil in the world provides flawless reasons for God’s intervention are not totally justifi ed.
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