Q&A: The Renewed Argument from Evil
The Renewed Argument from Evil
Question
With God’s help,
Rabbi wants to distinguish between natural evil and human evil (natural evil: God could not have made a better framework, and human evil: it is human beings’ fault—free choice).
But in practice, human evil also does not arise out of nowhere; rather, most of it comes from the fact that the morally proper thing is not clear to human beings, and they are effectively compelled in this. So it turns out that most human evil is also not really by choice. (Perhaps choice exists only in a dilemma of inclination versus value, whereas most evil comes from uncertainty about the values themselves.)
But here one certainly can imagine a system in which it would be clear to human beings what is proper and right to do, and the ideas would shine forth more clearly.
Answer
I don’t think so. Usually human evil is the result of choosing evil, not of mistaken perceptions. But of course it is hard to measure this.
One can say that where a person is mistaken, that is natural evil and not human evil, and nature or the Holy One, blessed be He, is responsible for that. I raised something like this argument regarding the difference between an unintentional killer and an intentional murderer in column 436.
Discussion on Answer
Instilling bad values in us is also changing the physics. There are brain changes here, and there is also intervention in our choices and our natural processes. You gain nothing.
I mean that it would be possible to instill good values and not bad ones (as you wrote, perhaps that was a mistake).
But if so, how would that fit with the understanding of the synthetic a priori, which does not derive from the plane of the brain but from the intellect?
I didn’t understand a word.
I think that a lot of evil comes from mistaken perceptions, and if so then apparently, as you answered, this is natural evil.
But one should note that our perceptions do not come through the materialistic plane, as in the problem of the synthetic a priori.
And here one can already think quite simply that the Holy One, blessed be He, could have instilled values in us in a better way.
That is, He could have prevented evil without eliminating choice (exactly as the choice between inclination and value would remain).
And therefore the problem of evil returns in full force.