Abraham J. Heschel's Concept of Divine Pathos

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was a Polish-American rabbi, theologian, and philosopher who was born in Warsaw, Poland. He was a descendent of rabbis on both sides of his family. After receiving a traditional yeshiva education, he was ordained a rabbi before earning a doctoral degree at the University of Berlin in 1933. He had a second rabbinic ordination at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin in 1934. He taught at the Hochschule until 1937, when he was appointed as head of the central organization for Jewish adult education in Germany and the Jüdische Lehrhaus (Jewish House of Learning) in Frankfurt, but he was deported by the Nazis to Poland in 1938. He left Warsaw for London in 1940, and he arrived in the United States later that year. His mother and three of his four sisters were victims of the Holocaust. He taught for five years at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and he then became Professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City, where he taught from 1945 until his death in 1972. 

      Heschel participated in the American civil rights movement, and he was a friend of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with whom he marched in the third Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. He also participated in the peace movement against the war in Vietnam. He was an advocate of interfaith dialogue, and he played an important role as an official observer at the Second Vatican Council, urging the Catholic Church to promote mutual understanding and respect between Catholics and Jews and to condemn antisemitism. He was also an outspoken advocate for the rights of Jews in the Soviet Union.

      Heschel's many writings included Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (1951), The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (1951), Man's Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (1954), God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1955), The Prophets (1962), and Who is Man? (1965).

      In The Prophets (1962), Heschel discusses such biblical prophets as Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk. He says that they are more than messengers from God. They are also witnesses to the divine pathos. The divine pathos is that God is concerned about us and thus is affected by what we do or fail to do.

      For Heschel, God is not an impersonal, impassive, or indifferent being. God may be distressed or wounded by the misdeeds and thanklessness of those whom he has redeemed.¹ God can express his love, anger, disappointment, forgiveness, or mercy in response to our failings and transgressions. Thus, the divine pathos is both a disclosure of his concern and a concealment of his power.²  

       Heschel believes in a God of love, compassion, mercy, and justice. The role of the prophet is therefore to communicate to us God's expectations, laws, and commandments, to warn us against disobedience to God's will, to call us to repentance, and to give voice to God's approval, concern, anger, disappointment, and forgiveness. The role of the prophet is also to plead for us to God, acknowledging our transgressions, expressing our repentance, and asking for God's forgiveness. The role of the prophet is also to call us to righteousness and justice.

      Heschel also believes in a God who can feel both joy and anguish, both happiness and sadness, both anger and forgiveness. The God of pathos is a God who shares not only in our joys and delights, but also in our sorrows and disappointments, as well as in our suffering and vulnerability. The God of pathos is a God who can feel what we feel. He is a God who has emotions and who is emotionally engaged with us.

      The God of the philosophers is completely indifferent, says Heschel, but the God of the prophets is completely concerned. The fundamental experience of the prophet is therefore "a fellowship with the feelings of God, [and] a sympathy with the divine pathos."³ 

      The prophet is not only a witness to the divine pathos, he is also a poet, preacher, statesman, social critic, and moralist.⁴ He is a person who stands before God (Jeremiah 15:19) and who is sent to us by God. As a messenger, he delivers God's word to us, but as a witness he gives us testimony that the word is divine.⁵

      The testimony of the prophet is not always heard or appreciated by us. It's a recurring complaint by the prophets that those who have eyes do not see, and that those who have ears do not hear (Jeremiah 5:21, Ezekiel 12:2, Isaiah 43:8).⁶ However, God can open our minds and hearts. The word of God never ends, and no word is God's last word.⁷

      Heschel says that God is slow to anger, and that he has patience with us. ("The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love," says Psalm 103:8.) God's anger is subject to his own will, and it has an instrumental function, insofar as its purpose is to reveal to us that he is displeased by our offenses, and that he calls us to repent. As the prophet Micah says,

"Who is a God like thee, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger for ever because he delights in steadfast love...Thou wilt show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as thou hast sworn to our fathers from the days of old." (Micah 7:18-20).

      Heschel also says that in God

"There is no dichotomy of pathos and ethos, of motive and norm. They do not exist side by side, opposing each other; they involve and presuppose each other. It is because God is the source of justice that his pathos is ethical; and it is because God is absolutely personal...that this ethos is full of pathos. Pathos, then, is not an attitude taken arbitrarily. Its inner law is the moral law; ethos is inherent in pathos."⁸

      The divine pathos is an attitude expressing God's concern, rather than an essential attribute of his being.⁹ It is an expression of God's will and a manifestation of his freedom. It is therefore both a paradox and a mystery.¹⁰ While it manifests God's freedom, it also calls into question his self-sufficiency. If God were absolutely self-sufficient, then he would have no need for us or for the world. Because he is concerned about us, however, he is unwilling to stand aloof from us. He cares about us, and the role of the prophet is therefore to articulate and proclaim this divine pathos.¹¹

      The divine pathos also calls into question the ontological presupposition that God is immobile and immutable. If God were immobile and immutable, then he wouldn't be affected by our conduct, and he wouldn't be susceptible to pathos, because he would be wholly absolute in his being.

      Heschel defends himself from the charge of anthropomorphism (ascription of human attributes to God) or anthropopathism (ascription of human emotions to God) by saying that attributing absolute concern and unconditional love to God isn't attributing human characteristics to God, but rather attributing to God characteristics that are more divine than human.

      Moreover, he says that "the notion of God as a perfect Being is not of biblical origin."¹² To say that God has no emotions, because emotions are affective states that are displayed by humans, is to try to anesthetize him. The anesthetization of God would reduce him to a mystery whose will is unknown to us, and who has nothing to say to us.¹³ But God does indeed care about us, and thus the prophets had to use anthropomorphic language in order to convey a reality that transcends the limits of language.

       It should be noted that the terms logos, ethos, and pathos may be used to refer to three different rhetorical strategies or modes of persuasion, as described by Aristotle. While logos is an appeal to reason, ethos is an appeal to the speaker's authority, and pathos is an appeal to the emotions.

      Heschel notes that in modern usage, the words "pathos" and "pathetic" also convey the idea of something sorrowful or pitiable, so the sense in which he uses the word "pathos" differs from its most common meaning in modern usage.
      The nature and meaning of the divine pathos may be a mystery, but the prophet Amos says,

"Surely, the Lord God does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants, the prophets. The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?" (Amos 3:7-8).

      And the prophet Micah says,

"But as for me, I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me forth to the light; I shall behold his righteousness" (Micah 7:7-9).

      Is the God of pathos then a tragic God? If we, through our transgressions, fail to show God that we are grateful for all that he has given us, then is God's unconditional love for us both tragic and sublime? A suffering God is also a tragic God. His pathos may arise from his tragic suffering.

      But if we can be redeemed, then perhaps the human situation and the situation in which God calls us to return to him are not ultimately tragic. Perhaps our recognition of his concern for us and our faith in him are his ultimate triumph. Perhaps our redemption from our misdeeds and our partnership with him in our struggle for peace and justice are his ultimate victory.

FOOTNOTES 

¹Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: HarperCollins, 1962), p. 39.

² Ibid., p. 299.

³Ibid., p. 31.

⁴Ibid., p. xxii.

⁵Ibid., p. 27.

⁶Ibid., p. 241.

⁷Ibid., p. 247.

⁸Ibid., pp. 290-291.

⁹Ibid., p. 297.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 299.

¹¹Abraham J. Heschel, Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951), p. 244.

¹²Heschel, The Prophets, p. 352.

¹³Ibid., p. 354.

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra ("Heroic March" or "Heroic Progress" sutra) is a Mahayana Buddhist sutra that Śramaṇa Paramiti (Dharma Master Paramiti) brought back from India to China, where he translated it into Chinese at Chih Chih Monastery in Guangzhou in 705 CE. The original Sanskrit text is not extant. Since the 8th century CE, many commentaries on it have been written, including those of Chan Master Han Shan (Hānshān Déqīng, 1546-1623) and more recently the  Venerable Masters Xuyun (1840-1959), Yuanying (1878-1953), and Hsuan Hua (1918-1995). 

      Most of the Śūraṅgama (Shurangama) Sutra consists of a dialogue between Buddha and his disciple Ananda before an assembly of bhikkhus (monks), arhats, and bodhisattvas. The Buddha's teachings in the sutra include discourses on the illusory nature of phenomena, the unreality of the self, the sources of misconceptions about the nature of reality, and the path to enlightenment.

      The Buddha explains that all phenomena are manifestations of mind, and that they have no inherent existence. They do not exist inherently because they are not self-caused or self-existent. All phenomena depend on causes and conditions of existence, and they are therefore empty of self-existence. They appear to exist inherently, but their appearance is illusory. The way they appear to us is not the way they are in true reality. 

      Emptiness (sūnyatā) is the true nature of all things. Emptiness (voidness) is also a door to liberation. It is the realization of the illusory nature of all existence, and the realization that all things are empty of inherent existence and self-nature.

      All phenomena (things, dharmas) arise from conditions and cease because of conditions. Thus, they are devoid of self-nature, and they lack any real, permanent, or essential attributes that would distinguish them from other phenomena. They do not exist on their own, and they are all interdependent.

      All phenomena are actually like flowers in the sky, illusory appearances that we misperceive because of our ignorance,

      The three meditative studies (or expedient practices) that lead all Buddhas in the ten directions¹ to enlightenment are śamatha (the meditative study of all as void or immaterial), samāpatti (the meditative study of all as unreal), and dhyāna (the meditative study of the mean between delusion and enlightenment). This threefold study aims to remove ignorance, and its most suitable point of departure is the One Mind (which is the source of both delusion and enlightenment).² 

      Meditation (dhyāna) is also one of the six pāramitās (perfections). The six pāramitās are generosity (dāna), moral conduct (sīla), patience (kṣānti), perseverance (viriya), meditation (dhyāna), and wisdom (prajñā). 

      The six perfections are practiced in order to cross over from the shore of mortality (saṃsāra, the karmic cycle, the cycle of birth and death) to the other shore (nirvāṇa, the cessation of saṃsāra).³ Nirvāṇa (the cessation of desire or craving) is also the extinction of the three poisons or unwholesome roots: rāga (greed or sensuality), dvesha (hatred or aversion), and avidya (ignorance or delusion).⁴ 

      When we cling to the illusory body and mind made up of the five aggregates, we fail to know the One Mind or True Mind. The five aggregates are form (rūpa), sensations or feelings (vedanā), perceptions (saṃjñā), mental formations (sanskaras), and consciousness (vijñāna).

      The five aggregates form the illusory self or ego, and they include everything that we experience in the mental and physical world. Each of them may be an object of clinging, and each may also be a source of falsehood and delusion. While clinging to them causes suffering, dissolving them leads to enlightenment.

      Clinging or attachment to the illusory self or ego may be coarse (when it arises from discrimination related to the sixth and seventh consciousnesses) or subtle (when it arises from the store of previous experiences that give rise to the illusory perception of an ego).⁵ 

      The eight consciousnesses are the six sense consciousnesses (the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and mental consciousnesses), the deluded consciousness (kliṣṭamanovijñāna), and the storehouse consciousness (ālāyavijñāna), which is the basis of the other seven.

      Wrong views, such as belief in the reality of the self or ego, belief in permanence and annihilation, and denial of the law of causality are causes of suffering (dukkha). The four mistakes or misapprehensions are mistaking impermanence for permanence, mistaking suffering for happiness, mistaking something having no identity for something having an identity. and mistaking something impure for something pure.

      The two inversions are (1) the wrong use of a clinging mind, which people mistake for their own nature, and (2) attachment to causal conditions, which screen the basically bright essence of consciousness. The non-rising of these inversions is the Tathāgata's (The Enlightened One's) true state of samādhi (meditative absorption or concentration).⁶ 

      Delusion can be caused by mistaking birth and death, arising and ceasing, beginning and ending for reality. Thus, delusion leads to transmigration through illusory realms of existence. When the discriminating mind is mistaken for self-nature, the true mind of enlightenment is screened and obscured by delusion.⁷

      The Eternal Mind or One Mind is beyond birth and death, and it is the common source of all Buddhas and all living beings.⁸ It transcends all dualities and all discriminations regarding the appearances of things. Thus, the subject and the object, the self and the nonself, "is" and "is not," being and nonbeing, existence and non-existence, thisness and thatness are all unreal and illusory.

      The Buddha ties six knots in a flowered cloth, symbolizing the obstructions that can block the path to enlightenment, and he explains that both tying and untying the knots (delusion and liberation) come from the same cause, the mind.⁹ The six knots represent the six sense organs (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and mind) that can be sources of illusion. The six entrances of illusions into the mind are the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the intellect. If we disengage the sense organs and disentangle the knots that obstruct our path to enlightenment, then we realize that all phenomena are void.¹⁰ 

      Bodhisattvas (enlightened beings) remain in harmony with all beings in the ten directions. They work for the welfare of all living beings, and before their own liberation, they set their mind on freeing others. Their own enlightenment and their enlightenment of others are therefore free from contradiction. Their preaching is free from all clinging (upādāna), and their teaching reveals the non-duality of all Dharma doors.¹¹

      Of the ten highest stages of bodhisattva attainment, the last stage is that in which the bodhisattva provides sheltering clouds of compassion for all those who are suffering and are seeking nirvāṇa. This is the stage of Dharma clouds (Dharmamegha).¹²

      The Buddha always responds to the needs of others, like the tide that never fails to rise and fall.¹³ Thus, he rescues others from suffering, ensuring their liberation and attainment of enlighenment.

FOOTNOTES

¹The ten directions are north, south, east, west, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest, up (above), and down (below).

²The Śūraṅgama Sūtra, with commentary (abridged) by Chan Master Han Shan, translated by Upāsaka Lu K'uan Yu (Charles Luk) (London: Rider & Company, 1966), pp. 3, 116.

³Ibid., p. 242.

⁴ Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014).

⁵The Śūraṅgama Sūtra, translated by Upāsaka Lu K'uan Yu, pp. xviii-xix.

⁶Ibid., pp. 13-14.

⁷Ibid., p. 14.

⁸Ibid., p. 19.

⁹Ibid., p. 117.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 121.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 168-169.

¹²Ibid., p. 172.

¹³Ibid., pp. 146-147.

The Mind of God

As a final assignment in the philosophy of religion class I took this semester, we were given the task of writing a paper in the format of a medieval disputation. This is my paper.

Whether there are ideas in the mind of God?

      Objection 1. To attribute mental properties to God may be to describe God as having human properties, and thus to engage in anthropomorphic thinking. If we describe God as having ideas, then we inevitably attribute human thinking and reasoning processes to the way in which God exists. Any conception we may have of thinking and reasoning processes inevitably reflects the way in which humans engage in thinking and reasoning. We don't really know what non-human thinking and reasoning may consist of or what form it may take.

      Objection 2. To describe God as having a mind may be to attribute some kind of executive agency to God's mind over the rest of his being. It may also lead to the question of wheher God is a mind or merely has various attributes or faculties of mind.

      Objection 3. A plurality of ideas in the mind of God may be contradictory to God's unity, insofar as these ideas may be contradictory to one another or may include disparate conceptions of objects, persons, or things. The unity of divine ideas would therefore seem to include a plurality of conceptions of the world, and if God is the One, then he would also include the Many. The unity of divine ideas would have to include a plurality of constituents, which may be contradictory to God's not being constituted by various elements or parts.

      Objection 4. If we suppose that God has a mind, then we may be imposing limits upon what God can will or cause to happen. If God's powers are truly beyond our understanding, then he may transcend all concepts of mind, and he may have supramental powers beyond any that we can imagine.

      Reply to Objection 1. If God is a being with infinite powers, then we would assume that he is capable, to an infinite degree, of everything that human beings are capable of, such as thinking, reasoning, knowing, willing, and other acts of mind. We would also assume that he is capable of being addressed as a divine person, and that as such he has divine personhood. We would also assume that he is capable of entering into a personal relationship with us, and that his being for us is therefore to some extent relational in nature.

      Augustine says in the Eighty-Three Different Questions (De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, 388-396) that the original or principal forms of things, which Plato called ideas, are eternal and unchangeable, and that they are contained in the divine intelligence or mind. These divine ideas do not come into being or pass away, but everything that does come into being or pass away is formed in accord with them. And everything that comes into being has its being by participating in them.¹

      Thomas Aquinas says in the Summa Theologiae (1265-1273) that if the world was made by God acting through his understanding, then there had to have been ideas or forms in God's mind, in the likeness of which the world was made.² Divine ideas are the exemplar causes of all things.³ The exemplarism of divine ideas consists in the fact that all things in the world God created are likenesses or examples of ideas that he had in his mind before he created them.

      Aquinas also says in the Disputed Questions on Truth (Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, 1256-1259) that an idea is nothing but the exemplary form (of whatever is created by God.)⁴

      If God is omniscient, then he must have a mind. If God is infinite, then his mind must also be infinite. If God's mental faculties are infinite, then he must be capable, to an infinite degree, of perception, intuition, reasoning, thinking, memory, imagination, judgment, understanding, and other acts of cognition that we may not be aware of or be able to comprehend.

      While we may not be able to say anything with certainty about what God's mind is or what is in God's mind, we may attempt to determine what would have to be true if God does indeed have a mind.

      If God has a perfect mind, then he also has perfect thoughts, ideas, intentions, desires, reasoning, judgment, emotions, and other cognitive faculties.

      While God may know every thought in our minds, he doesn't think our thoughts, because he doesn't have any wrong or imperfect thoughts. We can only know God's thoughts insofar as he reveals them to us.

      God knows things that we cannot know. He knows what we know and what we don't know. He knows what we will know and what we will never know.

      J.I. Packer (1993) argues that if God is omniscient, then he knows everything about everything, all the time. He knows everything that has happened, everything that could have happened but didn't happen, everything that is presently happening, everything that could happen but won't happen, and everything that will happen. If we remember that God is always aware of us, then we may be reassured that we've not been forgotten by God, but we may also be reminded that we can't hide ourselves or conceal our mistakes or errors from God.⁵

      Linda Zagzebski (2013) argues that if God is omniscient, then he must also be omnisubjective (capable of knowing the conscious experience of every conscious being). He is therefore capable of perfect empathy, because he knows exactly what it feels like for someone to experience life in the way they experience it.⁶

      God not only knows everything about the world he created, he also knows everything about all possible worlds he could have created.

      Are all ideas in God's mind actually perfect ideas? Why then did God create an imperfect world if he knew all its imperfections before he created it?

      The world may have been a thought in God's mind before he created it, but in its subsistence it must be more than that, because there is evil and corruption in the world, but no evil or corruption in God. So the world in its subsistence must have some other existence than in the mind of God.

      The existence of ideas in the mind of God is incompatible with physicalism as it is understood in the philosophy of mind. The theory that mental properties are reducible to physical properties (reductive physicalism) or that they at least depend or supervene on physical properties (nonreductive physicalism) is incompatible with the existence of ideas in God's mind, since God has no physical attributes or properties. If God had physical attributes or properties, then he would be governed by the laws of physics, which would be incompatible with his having created a universe governed by the laws of physics.

      The existence of divine ideas may also be incompatible with some non-physicalist theories of mind. Thus, it may be incompatible with substance dualism (the theory that the mental and the physical are two different substances), since God isn't a substance that can belong to other substances. It may also be incompatible with property dualism (the theory that the mental and the physical are two different kinds of properties that can belong to the same substance), since divine ideas aren't properties that can belong to substances having physical properties. It may also be incompatible with emergentism (the theory that mental states  may emerge from physical states without being reducible to them), since divine ideas don't emerge from anything other than God.

      The existence of divine ideas may also be incompatible with panpsychism (the theory that all constituents of reality have mental or proto-mental properties), insofar as panpsychism sees mental or proto-mental properties as belonging to physical matter (unless it takes a pantheistic view and sees divine ideas as belonging to physical matter).

      However, the existence of divine ideas may be compatible with some forms of idealism (the theory that the world depends upon the mind for its reality, and that the world is not real independently of mind). Thus, it may be compatible with Platonic, subjective (Berkeleyan), transcendental (Kantian), and absolute (Hegelian) idealism, although perhaps not with pluralistic (Leibnizian) idealism (insofar as the latter sees reality as consisting of a plurality of monads or minds). From an idealist standpoint, reality consists of mind, spirit, or ideas, and the world isn't real independently of them. Thus, the reality of the world is ideal rather than material, and the world is only real insofar as it represents or consists of ideas.

      Reply to Objection 2. If God is the first cause of things and not an effect of some other cause, then his mind doesn't have a causal effect over his being. His mind therefore doesn't have an executive function with regard to his way of being. And if he's capable of acting as well as willing, then he's not merely a mind, he's also an actor or agent who can direct (or not direct) the world according to his will.

      Since we can only know what's in God's mind by what he reveals to us, we can't otherwise say or know anything about the nature of God's self-consciousness. God's consciousness of his own infinite being is beyond our finite powers of understanding. God knows everything about himself, as well as everything about the entire universe.

      Aquinas says that God perfectly understands and comprehends himself. God knows everything about himself, and everything about things other than himself.⁷

      John Duns Scotus says in his Ordinatio (1300-1304) that God also knows himself as three persons, and that God's unity therefore includes a plurality of persons. (Duns Scotus cites Matthew 28:19, which says that Jesus said to his disciples, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.")⁸ God's oneness and unity is shown by his having infinite intellect, infinite will, infinite goodness, infinite power, absolute infinity, necessary being, and omnipotence.⁹ God could not have all these attributes unless he were one and an absolute unity.

      Duns Scotus also says that God not only has determinate knowledge of all things, including their conditions of existence, he also has certain, infallible, and immutable knowledge of all things, including their conditions of existence.¹⁰

      Reply to Objection 3. Aquinas says that the plurality of ideas in God's mind isn't contradictory to his unity, since God's understanding of those ideas is unitary. It isn't contradictory to God's unity that he knows or understands many things. What would be contradictory to his unity would be if his knowledge or understanding were formed by many things.¹¹

      Reply to Objection 4. If God's mind is infinite, then there isn't any real distinction between his having infinite mental powers and his having supramental powers. There are no limits to what he can do or cause to happen. He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. His infinite mind transcends any concepts we may have of what a mind is or how it functions.

FOOTNOTES

¹Augustine, Eighty-Three Different Questions, translated by David L. Mosher (Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1977), p. 81.

²Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part One, Question 15, Article 1, translated by Alfred L. Freddoso, 2024, p. 129, online at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques15.pdf

³Ibid., Part One, Question 44, Article 3, p. 351, online at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques44.pdf

⁴Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, Question Three, Article 3, translated by Robert W. Mulligan (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), online at https://isidore.co/aquinas/QDdeVer3.htm

⁵J.I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), pp. 31-32.

⁶Linda Zagzebski, Omnisubjectivity: A Defense of a Divine Attribute (Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2013).

⁷Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part One, Question 14, Article 3, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso, 2024, p. 110, online at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques14.pdf

⁸John Duns Scotus, The Ordinatio of Blessed John Duns Scotus, Volume 1, On Revelation and Theology, Book One, Second Distinction, Second Part, translated by Peter Simpson, 2022, pp. 205-206, online at https://www.aristotelophile.com/Books/Translations/Ordinatio%20I.pdf

⁹Ibid., p. 197.

¹⁰Ibid., Book One, Thirty-Eighth Distinction, Single Question, p. 711.

¹¹Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part One, Question 15, Article 2, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso, p. 131, online at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques15.pdf

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 says in his Confessions (397-400 CE, Book VII) 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).