Theodicy stands accused of adopting a too-detached perspective when theorising about the potential justifications for the evils of the world. As part of the process of constructing a theodicy, we are encouraged to step back from our down-to-earth moral perspective and try to see the big picture. We are encouraged to look at the world as if from a God’s-eye view. How else can we understand God’s reasons for permitting the evils of the world except by trying to see things from His perspective?
But there is something morally problematic about adopting this detached perspective, or at least something problematic about insisting that we detach ourselves from our down-to-earth moral perspective.
Objectivity
Ordinarily, this criticism depends upon the essential inappropriateness of morally theorising at that detached perspective. Such a perspective runs the risk of being callous and insensitive, for one, but also denies us access to the important subjective elements that we might think are essential to any moral perspective at all.
Theodicy claims that to see more clearly, we need to step away from our loves, our connections, our emotions, our past and present, our place in the world, and all that informs our values. According to theodicy, in theory, these are all corruptions of our moral perspective; they cloud our thinking about the deep moral workings of the universe.
But these things are what make our moral perspective, are they not? These things are what make us human. There is something inhuman, in the worst sense of the word, about a moral perspective that speaks and calculates as if from no place within the moral world. It is the objectivity characteristic of an object, monstrously impartial, ruthless, and indifferent.
Why is this inappropriate? Imagine someone taking that attitude in the presence of a moral atrocity: ‘Sure it seems bad now but let’s try to see the big picture!’ And if we asked how they could remain so unaffected by the horror in front of them and bring themselves to take such an objective view, they reply, scornfully: ‘Your subjective human emotions are clouding your judgement.’
This has echoed tones of a comic-book villain, or of ‘I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that’, or some similarly terrifying amoral android about which might be warned: ‘It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!’ (That was from The Terminator, in case you weren’t sure.)
To insist on retaining a detached perspective to moral atrocity is not the behaviour of a paragon of moral understanding; it’s a sign of a profound lack of moral engagement.
A Theoretical Exercise
Of course, this doesn’t happen. It would be a mistake to think that theodicy is actively engaged in the presence of moral atrocities. Theodicy is a theoretical exercise, and it happens in a theoretical space where detachment is possible and reasonable in a way that would it not be in normal life.
The point, therefore, is not so much that it would be inappropriate to adopt this detached perspective in the presence of moral atrocity, because this is not what theodicy does. The point is that something important is lost in adopting this detached perspective. What is lost is a sense of moral engagement and the access to moral reality afforded by that engagement.
Can moral thought be accurate and true if it is not engaged? If, in order to see things more clearly, you detach yourself from the pain and suffering, the injustice, the violation suffered in the moment by a particular individual, a moral reality captured and fully expressed by a perspective that is crying out in anguish, a cry that prompts a recognition and response in you that ‘this ought not to be’, what is it you are trying to see more clearly?
In turning away from that particular perspective, it seems more that you are doing everything you can not to see the moral reality that is staring you in the face. And not just this particular moral reality, but all such moral realities. It seems more that you are trying to look everywhere but to the most obvious and profound moral realities we can access.
How accurate and true can any moral thinking be when it is so wilfully detached from any kind of sincere moral engagement?
Moral Necessity
The question is more obvious in the case of the morally impossible. The nature of moral necessity is that a recognition of it compels a necessary moral responsiveness: you cannot turn a blind eye, and you cannot look away to see things more clearly because nothing can be clearer.
That theodicy insists on stepping back and distancing itself from such a recognition, in order to see more clearly, only shows that it does not recognise any moral necessity in the first place. And the problem is not just that this is done but that it is deliberate. Theodicy insists that, in a theoretical space, we must overrule our moral engagement with the world and try to make the impossible possible. But if we are sincere in our recognition of moral necessity, we know this cannot be done.
Theodicy’s morally problematic status is exposed in this way. In insisting that we adopt a detached perspective in the face of the morally impossible, to look away and step back to see the bigger picture, theodicy reveals itself to lack any kind of moral perspective worth having. It shows itself to have lost contact with moral reality and to have chosen that loss of contact. It thinks a moral perspective is more true the less it is engaged with the world. It wants to detach itself from the reality of the worst moral atrocities, showing itself unwilling to see them for what they are, and that it can do so only shows that it is incapable of recognising the morally impossible.
Moral Claims
In normal running, if someone were to claim that in order to really understand the moral status of genocide or child abuse, you need to step back and ignore the individual stories or the perspectives of the victims, looking instead to the big global and societal picture, I would think such a person has shown themselves to lack any perspective worth listening to. Their perspective is not more accurate for their detachment, but less; their detachment has not clarified their thinking, but clouded it. I’m not sure such a perspective could see the truth, let alone speak it.
To be clear, that is if they are making a moral claim. If they were making a political or economic claim then things would be different. But if we are discussing the moral status of a particular thing, citing economic or political reasons exposes a lack of moral understanding and/or responsiveness, such as when people defended slavery on the grounds of economic necessity.
Even if people used economic reasons to argue against slavery, it would be a case of ‘right answer, wrong reasons’. The wrongness of slavery couldn’t be accurately captured in the claim that it is bad for the economy, just as that wrongness cannot be countered by the claim that it is good for the economy. It doesn’t matter if either claim is true; neither is morally relevant.
If you think that the economic consequences are a legitimate reason for or against such practices, then you show that you have not understood something important about the morally impossible. Surely we would recognise slavery to be wrong even if it were good for the economy, and perhaps made even worse because it would be good for the economy, because whilst there is something terribly unjust about people being enslaved, that injustice is only added to when other people profit from it.
The analogy with theodicy ought to be clear. Regardless, it is clear that theodicy is making a moral and not a political or economic claim.
Read more: The Problem of Evil as an Ethical Problem
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