Questions Raised by "The New Thinking"

In Franz Rosenzweig's essay, "The New Thinking" (Das Neue Denken, 1925), he distinguishes between the philosophical way of thinking about the essence of things and the unphilosophical way of thinking about their appearance in everyday reality. He calls the unphilosophical way of thinking "common sense" (das gemeine Denken), and he describes how the new (unphilosophical) way of thinking (the new philosophy) differs from the old (philosophical) way of thinking (the old philosophy).

      Rosenzweig says that while the old philosophy stands still and becomes fixed on the essence of things, the new philosophy "does nothing other than turn the "method" of common sense into the method of scientific thinking."¹ While "the old [way of thinking] poses the problem of whether God is transcendent or immanent, the new [way of thinking] tries to say how and when God turns from the distant to the near God and again from the distant to the near one."² While the old philosophy seeks timeless truths, the new philosophy knows "that it cannot know independently of time."³ 

      Can the difference between the new and the old philosophy be interpreted as the difference between the practical and the theoretical? Or as the difference between the scientific and the speculative? Or as the difference between the concrete and the abstract, the intuitive and the analytical, or the material and the spiritual? What other kinds of binary oppositions may possibly be established by the distinction between the new and the old philosophy, and what other kinds of issues may we have to resolve if we privilege one over the other?

      Perhaps we may also need to clarify how the distinction between the new and the old philosophy can be made more helpful than that between practical and theoretical philosophy or that (generally unhelpful distinction) between analytic and continental philosophy.

      We may also need to be very careful about the use of the term "common sense." What seems like common sense to one person may not seem like that to another. Just because an idea, attitude, or opinion is commonly shared doesn't mean it's true. Can common sense really be defined? What makes something a matter of common sense? Is common sense merely a matter of consensus or mutual agreement? What about false or spurious consensus in which people share inaccurate or false ideas due to their having cognitive, social, and cultural biases? What makes a matter capable of being resolved by common sense, and when does its resolution require critical thinking?

FOOTNOTES

¹Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Rosenzweig"s "The New Thinking", edited and translated by Alan Udoff and Barbara E. Galli (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999), p. 83.

²Ibid., p. 82.

³Ibid., p. 83.

The Intentionality of Evil

Augustine, in the Confessions, (397-400 CE, Book VII), says that free will may be the source of evil, insofar as it may cause us to do evil things. Since God is good (and indeed is goodness itself), God is not the source of any evil. Everything that God created is good, but unlike God, every created thing is changeable and corruptible. God has created every substance, and every substance is good, but every substance is destructible or corruptible. Evil cannot therefore be a substance, because if it were, it would be good. Evil is rather a non-being of the good, and it has no being in anything that God has created.

      However, this theory (which describes evil as an absence of the good, and which is known as the privation theory of evil) doesn't seem to recognize that there is something active in evil, and that evil is something embodied, expressed, intended, or committed by a moral agent. Evil may therefore have some embodiedness, expressivity, intentionality, or capability of being performed or committed.

      To say that evil is the absence of good is like saying that hate is the absence of love or despair is the absence of hope. However, some people may be unloving without being hateful, and some people may be unhopeful without being despairing. Some people may be unloving by being indifferent, just as some things (like apples, oranges, or tomatoes) may be lacking in goodness by being indifferent. It also seems that some people or things may be neither good nor evil, neither loving nor hateful, neither true nor false, neither right nor wrong. So the absence of one doesn't mean the presence of the other (the absence of goodness doesn't mean the presence of evil, the absence of love doesn't mean the presence of hate, and so on).

      If evil were not something done by a moral agent or the evildoer had no moral agency, then we couldn't hold them morally responsible for the evil acts they committed.

      So-called "natural evils" (like earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and diseases) are therefore misnamed. They may properly be called natural catastrophes, calamities, or disasters, but they're not properly moral evils. They lack intentionality, and they have no moral dimensions in themselves, unless they're caused by someone or something evil. Of course, they may have tragic and devastating consequences for their victims, but that doesn't make them morally evil, unless their causes can be traced to moral agents who can rightly be held responsible for them.

      Furthermore, all evils are moral evils. Evil is a moral category. There are no "natural evils," properly speaking. Describing natural events like hurricanes and earthquakes as disasters or misfortunes rather than evils isn't to try to reduce evil to disaster or misfortune, it's rather to distinguish between them. To describe natural events as natural evils may be to make a kind of category-mistake or to engage in a kind of naturalistic fallacy.

      The intentionality of evil consists in its being directed at persons or things, and in its being expressed in an agent's intentional states. Thus, it may be expressed in an agent's motives, desires, attitudes, actions, and the consequences of their actions. 

      An agent may have an intention to do evil and then actually do evil, but they may also have an intention to do evil and then do nothing. They may also do evil without having had a prior intention to do so. So the intentionality of evil isn't always expressed as intentionally evil actions. It may also be expressed as intentional states of mind (such as desires, attitudes, purposes, and goals) that are evil.

      Another way of describing the intentionality of evil may be to say that evil is willful or has a volitional character. Malevolence is involved in evil. This isn't to say that the evildoer always has some clearly defined goal toward which they are aiming or some clearly defined effect they intend to produce by their actions. But bad will (the will to do evil), as well as evil motives and intentions, and the lack of concern and empathy for others, are integral to acts of evil.

      This also isn't to say that evil is some kind of malevolent force that's engaged in a struggle with the forces of good or that there's some kind of Manichean struggle between good and evil that takes place in humanity and throughout the universe.

      But there couldn't be an "evil genius" (or for that matter, a criminal mastermind) anywhere in the world unless evil had a volitional or intentional character.

      For something to be evil is much worse than for it to be wrong. Wrong actions may not be evil, but evil actions are always wrong, and not merely wrong, but extremely or egregiously beyond the limits of morally acceptable behavior. Indeed, evil actions are so beyond the limits of morally acceptable behavior that the evildoer may seem to have ignored, subverted, rejected, or abandoned any accepted standards of right and wrong.

      Thus, it would be very callous and insensitive to say merely that "It was wrong for Robespierre to have sent thousands of innocent people to the guillotine," as if he merely made a mistake or tactical error, rather than "It was evil for Robespierre to have sent thousands of innocent people to the guillotine," recognizing his true moral depravity and culpability.

      Kant (1793) says that a person who is evil not only performs evil actions, but also performs actions with the conscious knowledge that they are evil and does so on the basis of evil principles. The capacity for evil may then be determined by weakness of the will to follow generally accepted moral principles, as well as by the propensity to mix immoral motives or values with moral motives or values, and the propensity to adopt evil principles.¹

      Kant, in discussing the origin of evil in human nature, says that we may originally be innocent and without any predisposition toward evil. However, the predisposition toward the good may be corrupted by the adoption of evil maxims or principles. There may be some hope of moral improvement for us, however, if despite having been corrupted, we still have some good will.

      Claudia Card (2002) describes evils as "foreseeable intolerable harms caused by culpable wrongdoing."² Thus, evils have two basic components: (intolerable) harm and (culpable) wrongdoing, neither of which is reducible to the other.³ The severity of the harm and the magnitude of the wrongdoing may determine the degree to which someone or something is evil. Culpability may take the form of intending to cause intolerable harm, being willing to cause harm in the course of pursuing some otherwise acceptable aim, or failing to attend to the risks involved in a particular action or mode of conduct.⁴ Culpability may also take the form of intentional ignorance or disregard of the possible effects of a particular mode of conduct.

      Marcus Singer (2004) argues that evil acts are so horrendously bad or immoral that no ordinary decent human being could conceive of themselves as doing them. Those persons who knowingly perform or order such acts are evil, as well as those who remain indifferent to such acts when they are performed by others, and who take no action when something could be done to stop or prevent them.⁵

      Singer also says that evil acts arise from evil motives or intentions.⁶ Thus, the intention to deliberately inflict unnecessary pain or suffering on others is evil. Acts of wanton cruelty, willful infliction of pain or suffering on sentient beings, and cruelty inflicted because the perpetrator enjoys inflicting it, are evil. And those who engage in a pattern of such conduct are evil.⁷ 

      The term "evil," according to Singer, may be applied not only to persons, intentions, motives, and conduct, but also to institutions, practices, arrangements, agencies, endeavors, and programs.⁸ The nature of the evil act may be determined by (1) whether the evildoer knows it to be evil and does it because it is evil, (2) whether the evildoer knows it to be evil and doesn't care that it is evil, (3) whether the evildoer judges it to be evil when it is inflicted on themselves or people whom they care about, but not when it is inflicted on others or people whom they don't care about, (4) whether the evildoer knows it to be evil, but does it anyway for the sake of convenience or expediency, (5) whether the evildoer knows it to be evil but considers it to be for the sake of some greater good, and (6) whether the evildoer doesn't believe it to be evil, but in fact believes it to be good. It may be difficult in practice to determine which of these motives predominate in a given evil act.⁹ 

      Literary personifications of evil include Dante's Satan, Milton's Lucifer, Goethe's Mephistopheles, Shakespeare's Iago, Hawthorne's Chillingworth, Melville's Ahab, Dickens's Uriah Heep, Stoker's Dracula, Stevenson's Mr. Hyde, and Wilde's Dorian Gray. Some of the traits shared by some of these characters include their deviousness, dishonesty, unscrupulousness, predatoriness, treachery, mercilessness, cruelty, and thirst for vengeance or retribution. Perhaps their most evil traits may also include their enjoyment of their immoral or criminal behavior and their lack of conscience or remorse. Thus, evil may be characterized by a focal cluster or generalized constellation of traits.

FOOTNOTES

¹Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book One, "Concerning the Indwelling of the Evil Principle with the Good, or, on the Radical Evil in Human Nature" [1793], translated by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, online at

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/religion/religion-within-reason.htm

²Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 3.

³Ibid., p. 4.

⁴Ibid., p. 20.

⁵Marcus G. Singer, "The Concept of Evil,"in Philosophy, Vol. 79, No. 308 (April 2004), p. 196.

⁶Ibid., p. 196.

⁷Ibid., pp. 197-198.

⁸Ibid., pp. 189-190.

⁹Ibid., pp. 205-206.

OTHER RESOURCES

Augustine, The Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1997).

Hume and Augustine, on the Problem of Evil

In Part 10 of Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779), Demea (a devout religious believer), Philo ( a sceptic), and Cleanthes (a philosopher) discuss the nature and existence of God by considering the problem of evil.

      Philo says that nothing brings us closer to a sense of religion than the presence of human misery and suffering (Part 10, paragraph 2).

      Demea, however, says that much of this misery and suffering is self-caused, since human beings themselves are responsible for such problems as oppression, injustice, violence, war, treachery, and fraud (Part 10, paragraph 12).

      Philo says that God's moral attributes, such as justice, benevolence, and mercy, cannot be inferred from human moral attributes. If God is omnipotent, then God has not willed that all human beings be happy, because so many are unhappy. He has also not willed that human beings be free of misery and suffering, since they are so often subjected to misery and suffering (Part 10, paragraph 24).

      Cleanthes replies that if God is willing to prevent evil but is unable to, then he is not omnipotent. However, if God is able to prevent evil but is unwilling to, then he is malevolent. But if God is both able and willing to prevent evil, then why doesn't he do so? (Part 10, paragraph 25).

      Demea replies that God may rectify present evil in the future (Part 10, paragraph 29).

      Phio says, however, that human happiness may always be exceeded by human misery. But why should there be any human misery at all? Is it God's intention that there be misery in the world? If it is, then God is not benevolent. If it is not, then why has God decided to allow misery and suffering to exist? (Part 10, paragraph 34).

      Philo concludes that there is no view of human moral attributes by which we can infer divine moral attributes There is no way to discover by reason the true nature of God's benevolence, power, and wisdom, which can only be discovered by faith (Part 10, paragraph 36).

      Augustine considers the problem of evil in "On Free Will" (391-395 CE), a dialogue between Augustine and his friend Evodius. He explains that God is good and therefore does not do evil. However, God may punish those who do evil.¹ God gave human beings free will, because without it, they wouldn't be capable of acting rightly or wrongly. If there were no free will, reward for right actions and punishment for wrong actions would be unjust.²

      Freedom of the will is good in itself, but it may be misused. Thus, evil may be caused by misuse of free will, and by the pursuit of evil ends.

      The natures of things created by God are good, but they may be weakened or corrupted by stronger or more corruptible natures. Human nature in itself is good, but it may become less good or be corrupted by vice.³

      Human beings are free to show good or bad will toward one another, and to act rightly or wrongly toward one another. They may (or may not) act in accordance with the common good. Evil may be caused by acting for a perceived private good, rather than for the public good. Good is a turning of the will toward the common and unchangeable good, but evil is a turning toward private and changeable goods.⁴ Good is also a turning toward God, but evil is a turning away from God.

      Pierre Masson (2000) examines Augustine's position on the problem of evil, noting that Augustine held that since God is good, evil does not come from God.⁵ Moral evil comes from human beings, because they have free will and therefore can do good or evil things.⁶ Natural evil may be caused by natural catastrophes, diseases, physical or psychological sufferings, and other natural phenomena, but the question of why God created a world in which there are natural evils is not fully answered by Augustine, says Masson.⁷

      Thus, some possible explanations for why God allows evil and suffering to exist may include:

1. God isn't omnipotent, and he doesn't have the power to end evil and suffering.
2. God, as a sign of his love, suffers with us when we experience pain and suffering.
3. God allows evil and suffering to exist because he gave human beings the power to end evil and suffering.
4. Good has the power to overcome evil, truth has the power to overcome falsehood, justice has the power to overcome injustice, and freedom has the power to overcome oppression.
5. God has enabled us to express our love and compassion for all who are experiencing pain or suffering.
6. If evil didn't exist, then good wouldn't exist. If falsehood didn't exist, then truth wouldn't exist. If injustice didn't exist, then justice wouldn't exist.
7. God loves us, but he doesn't control us. God loves the world, but he doesn't control the world. God is in charge of things, but he isn't in control of things. In order to resolve problems related to evil and suffering, we must seek God's help, support, guidance, grace, and redemption.

FOOTNOTES

¹Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, edited and translated by Peter King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 3.

²Ibid., p. 32

³Ibid., p. 99.

⁴Ibid., p. 70.

⁵Pierre Masson, "Augustine and the Problem of Evil," in The Problem of Evil: An Intercultural Exploration, edited by Sandra A. Wawrytko (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), p. 44.

⁶Ibid., p. 44.

⁷Ibid., p. 45.

OTHER RESOURCES

David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, edited by Dorothy Coleman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Aquinas's Proofs for the Existence of God

Thomas Aquinas says in "The Treatise on the Divine Nature" that God's existence can be known not only by faith, but also by reason. In order to show that God's existence can be known by reason, he gives five proofs.

      His first proof is that whatever is moved is moved by something else. The chain of movement must lead back to a first mover, and the first mover is God.

      His second proof is similar to the first. Nothing can be the cause of itself. Every cause may be caused by something else, so there must be a first cause of things, and the first cause is God.

      His third proof is that not all being can be merely possible, some being must be actual. But there could not have been any actual being without some other being necessary for it to become actual. The chain of necessary being must lead back to some being necessary through itself, and this necessary being is God.

      His fourth proof is that among all things, there can always be found one thing that is more true, more good, more perfect, etc than some other thing, but there must also be one thing that is the most true, most good, most perfect, etc. of all things, and which is the greatest in being. This being, which no other being can be greater than, is what we call God.

      His fifth proof is that everything is governed by something else and acts for the sake of some end. The end toward which things move is governed by something that is intelligent, and so there must be some intelligent being by whom all things are governed or directed toward an end, and this intelligent being is God.

      The first proof is called the argument from motion. The second proof is called the argument from causation. The third proof is called the argument from contingency. The fourth proof is called the argument from degree or gradation. The fifth proof is called the argument from design (or the teleological argument). 

      Aquinas's first three proofs are cosmological arguments (arguments regarding the nature of the universe). He is critical of the ontological argument (proposed by Anselm, whom he doesn't mention) that God is that than which nothing greater than can be thought, and that therefore God exists because if God existed only as a thought in the mind and not in actual reality, then something else could be greater than God, which would be impossible. Aquinas says it isn't self-evident that God is that than which nothing greater can be thought, and that some people may not necessarily think of God in this way. Furthermore, even if God were that than which nothing greater than can be thought, this would only confirm God's existence in the world of thought and not in the world of actual reality.

      All of Aquinas's proofs are based on the premise that the chain of movement, causality, necessary being, comparative quality, or intelligence cannot be infinite and must have an end, and that when we arrive at the end of the chain we arrive at God. But if the universe is infinite, then there may be an infinite number of movers, causes, necessary beings, comparative qualities, and intelligences, and by definition there isn't any place where infinity ends. Thus, to say that there is God, under the premises adopted by Aquinas, is to say that the universe ends somewhere, and that it is not infinite. And indeed, Aquinas says in Question 7 of the Treatise, on "Divine Infinity," that God is absolutely infinite, but no created thing is absolutely infinite.

      Whether the universe is actually finite or infinite may be both a metaphysical and a scientific question, and one for which we're still seeking an answer.

RESOURCES

Anselm, Proslogion, translated by M.J. Charlesworth (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979.

Thomas Aquinas, "The Treatise on the Divine Nature," in Thomas Aquinas: Basic Works, edited by Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2014), pp. 36-49.

Weaknesses of Pascal's Wager

One of the most famous arguments for belief in God is Pascal's Wager. But it has several weaknesses that limit its persuasiveness and coherency.

      Pascal says that we're usually more persuaded by reasons we discover for ourselves than by reasons given by others to persuade us (Section I, 10). So his wager that we have more to gain from believing in God than from disbelieving in God is a rational argument that has an inherent weakness insofar as it's less likely to convince us than if we had discovered it for ourselves.

      He also says that we can know truth through reason or sensory experience, but the passions of the soul can sometimes disturb the senses and cause us to have false impressions (Section II, 84). Isn't his wager, to some extent, an appeal to emotion (and therefore to the passions of the soul), intended to persuade us to believe in God by making us fearful of what we might lose if we don't believe in God? He says that we should, by diminishing our passions, convince ourselves of the existence of God, but isn't he to some extent calling on us to be moved by our passions?

      At the same time, he claims that by faith we can know that God is (that God exists) without knowing exactly who or what God is. The existence of God cannot be proved by reason, because God is infinitely incomprehensible to us (Section III, 233). But if we can only know by faith that God exists, then why is Pascal trying to persuade us by rational (and perhaps emotional) argument? If knowledge of God is not within the power of human reason, then why should knowledge of the necessity of belief in God be within the power of human reason?

      Pascal also claims that if we accept his wager and believe in God, then we will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, generous, sincere, and truthful. But he doesn't show why all these moral virtues should necessarily follow from belief in God, because we may truly believe in God and yet through our own faults and weaknesses fail to demonstrate many or all of these virtues fully and consistently.

      His argument for the necessity of the wager is that atheists and agnostics are inherently unhappy, because they are estranged from God (Section III, 194). He says that they are negligent in seeking the truth, and that when they attack religion, they are attacking something they know nothing about. They have also failed to recognize the importance of knowing what constitutes the immortality of the soul, and they have likewise failed to understand that this matter is of such supreme importance that no one can avoid confronting it. The refusal to seek the truth about God's existence is, in his view, to be content with neglectfulness and ignorance.

      Pascal holds it to be a moral duty for all those who doubt God's existence to seek the truth of whether God exists or does not exist. But he doesn't allow for the rationality of those who see God's existence as something that ultimately can be neither affirmed nor denied, and who regard God's existence as a mystery that cannot be objectively investigated. Nor does he actually show why the indifference of some individuals to the question of God's existence should leave them objectively any worse off than anyone else. He doesn't consider the possibility that they may be morally virtuous without believing in God, because from his standpoint, no one can attain salvation without having faith in God. Thus, his wager that God exists is subjectively justifiable, but objectively unnecessary.

RESOURCES

Blaise Pascal, Pensées [1670], translated by W.F. Trotter (New York: E.F. Dutton, 1958).