← All problems

Descriptive

Evil with no culprit

On the axis: The problem of evil · a natural disaster

Free will excuses the evil humans do; but the earthquake, disease, the pain of animals are no one's fault: what then remains to absolve the creator?

Philosophers' positions

Leibniz

Major
100
0
0
0
Justification

Evil is not a positive reality that God would have produced, but a privation, a limitation inherent in every finite creature (metaphysical evil), from which follow suffering (physical evil) and fault (moral evil). God does not will evil, he only permits it when it is the condition of a greater good in the economy of the whole. This is the theodicy, the word Leibniz coins to justify God against the argument from evil: he turns the objection around by showing that a world with no evil at all would be less perfect than ours, and so unworthy of a wise creator. The position is resolutely justificatory rather than tragic or rebellious.

Theodicy

Anchors: Voltaire · Leibniz · Rousseau