If you are a theist, and you agree with an ethical perspective that is happy to talk about moral necessity, then the argument of the previous chapter will leave you with a dilemma: Either ‘evil exists’, by which we mean that there are things in this world that categorically ought not to be, or evil does not exist, meaning nothing is that categorically ought not to be; whatever is, is right, or at least could be alright.
If there are things in this world that categorically ought not to be, then it would be morally necessary for a good God to prevent these things from happening; it would be morally impossible for Him to do otherwise. If He does not prevent these things from happening, then He permits the morally impossible, participates in a moral tragedy, and cannot be wholly good. He would be guilt-ridden and grief-stricken or else morally callous. The only way God can be considered wholly good is if there is nothing that categorically ought not to be. God is only good if the morally impossible does not happen.
A theist looking to defend the goodness (and existence) of God must therefore argue that the morally impossible does not happen. Everything that happens can be justified by a morally-sufficient reason. I think this goes against intuition, but perhaps I’m just too sensitive.
How could a theist argue that the morally impossible does not happen? There seem to be two options. The first option is to show how the permission of all evils can be morally justified: God has good reason to permit all the evils of the world. To do this is to construct a ‘theodicy’, meaning a justification of the ways of God. The second option is not to show how the permission of all evils can be morally justified, but only to suggest that, for all we know, they could be. This is the route of ‘sceptical theism’. Either way, the goal is to show that nothing is morally impossible, that everything is possibly permissible.
Sketch of a Theodicy
I’ll give a brief sketch of a theodicy. It will only be a sketch; you will have to go and consult the literature to find these theodicies fully and better expressed in all their glorious technical detail.
We are asking why a good God allows bad things to happen. There are classically two answers to this question: a) It’s good for us, and/or b) it’s our fault.
Bad things are good for us because they give us the opportunity to be better people. And we would choose to be better people, if we could.If we lived in a world of pure pleasure and happiness, with no pain or suffering, we would have no reason or inclination to do or be any better. We would have little inclination to do anything at all, in fact. We could just lounge about in our blissed-out state. This is not a state that is conducive to the development of virtue. Given the absence of any negative states of affairs whatsoever, it would be difficult to see how virtue could even be possible. Virtues emerge when we encounter and overcome pain and suffering, or moral vice. But in a world without pain or suffering, there would be nothing to overcome and no possibility of moral vice. Virtue is redundant in such a world, and in being redundant has no value. Why bother trying to be better? Everything is already as good as it can be.
But we know, at least since Socrates, that once we understand what virtue is then we see that it is more valuable than pleasure and freedom from pain. We understand that it’s more important to be better than it is to feel better. Pleasure and freedom from pain might be nice, but they are of no great worth. They are shallow, superficial, lightweight; they lack any deep and meaningful value. They are nothing to be proud of. A life dedicated to pleasure and the ignorance of virtue might be one that we envy but it is not one that we can admire. A world without pain or suffering is a world as good as it can be, but it is also a world as flat and as trivial as it can be; it has no depth, no weight, or heights. It is a world without meaning.
Wouldn’t you rather be courageous than cowardly? Wouldn’t you rather be compassionate than cruel? Wouldn’t you rather be wise than foolish? But a cowardly and cruel fool can experience just as much pleasure as a courageous and compassionate sage, and is probably more inclined to avoid pain. Recognising virtue to be of greater value, we would choose to be virtuous even if it is the more painful road. But if we do value virtue above pleasure, why would we be willing to trade the more valuable in exchange for the less valuable? Because that is what we would get in a world without pain or suffering: we would trade the great prize of virtue for the trifling compensation of pleasure and freedom from pain.
The world is better, therefore, with some pain and suffering, because such a world allows us to be virtuous. It also allows us to be vicious, of course: it would hardly be possible to be cowardly if there were nothing to fear, or cruel if there were no pain to inflict. This vicious possibility presents us with a serious choice: are we to be good or evil? All virtue after this question becomes even more valuable because it will be freely-chosen virtue. It is not virtue that you fell into, or inherited; it is virtue that you have earned by your own choices and efforts. But in order to earn it, you must face the choice, and that means there must be the real possibility of vice. Virtues that are freely chosen, earned from our own efforts, are things we can really be proud of. They make us worthy as human beings. But the only way we can achieve these great things is by living in a world of pain and suffering and temptation and vice. Living in such a world literally makes our souls what they are. A soul-making theodicy says that the destination is worth the journey.
Why can’t the journey be a bit easier? It would not be the same if the journey were easier, because the value of the achievement is in part granted by the difficulty of achieving it. The value of the achievement comes from the fact that you have hard-earned it. Would you want everything to be easy? Would you want everything handed to you on a plate? What would there be to celebrate in having what you have not earned? You would be like a spoilt child boasting about their inherited wealth.
God, like Socrates, wants us to be morally and spiritually virtuous. He understands that, to be of real worth, this needs to be earned. But the way must be hard for the virtues to be hard-earned. And it is hard to live in such a world, but what is achieved is valuable precisely because it is hard. As Kierkegaard said, it’s not that the way is narrow, it’s that the narrowness is the way. If the way were broad and easy, it would not mean all that much to travel along it, and it would be no great achievement to reach the destination. As Spinoza said, everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare: if it were common and easy, there would be little to celebrate in its achievement. It is only because it is difficult that it is worth anything at all.
So why does a good God allow bad things to happen? Because it’s good for us, because it makes us better people, and because it’s more important to be better than it is to feel better.
But if this is God’s plan, why isn’t the plan going better? Why aren’t we all being better people? Why does a good God allow us to do such bad things?
Because God has given us freedom, and it’s up to us what we do with that freedom. And because it’s up to us, the responsibility is ours. It’s our fault when we go wrong. In giving us the freedom to choose between virtue and vice, when we choose vice, there’s nothing God can do about it because our decisions are our decisions, not His. He could, presumably, take our decision away from us, but then He would be robbing us of our freely-chosen virtue, which is the most valuable thing we could have. We can hardly complain if He leaves us with the most valuable thing we could have. We have been given the option of living in a world of perfect virtue and yet we continually choose otherwise. We can hardly complain for getting what we choose.
We apply these lines of reasoning to the evils of the world and infer, as hard as it may be, that all evils can be justified by these morally-sufficient reasons. Consequently, nothing is morally impossible.
Sketch of Sceptical Theism
I’ll give a brief sketch of sceptical theism. It will only be a sketch; you will have to go and consult the literature to find this view fully and better expressed in all its glorious technical detail.
We are asking why a good God allows bad things to happen. If we are not going to answer with a theodicy, then there is another answer available: we don’t know.
But we should not be surprised that we don’t know. Although we have familiarity and little difficulty using moral concepts, we should recognise that our ability to know and understand the deep moral workings of the universe is very limited, especially compared to God’s. God is omniscient; He has all the knowledge. By comparison, we really do not. It’s difficult to quantify our lack of knowledge because, clearly, we don’t know how much we don’t know. But let’s take an example of something we do know and understand and use all the time without difficulty, like our words. We know what we’re talking about when it comes to talking our own language, surely? And yet, most of us don’t know half the words in our native language, and even the most advanced linguist is very unlikely to understand more than 0.01% of the available human languages. If we don’t even fully know something as close to us as our own language, could any of us be surprised when we come across things in the world that we can’t understand? And languages are human creations; how much more complicated is a universe! If an omniscient God created the universe, can we be surprised when His reasons work in ways that are beyond our understanding?
There are other examples of things we know how to use even though we can’t see the reasons for their working. I can use a computer, for example, but I don’t really understand how a computer works. I don’t really understand how, when I press these keys, letters appear on the screen and then get ‘saved’ in some kind of immaterial form that can be copied and transported to another computer anywhere in the world. I understand about 1s and 0s, and circuits and electricity and microchips, and that logic plays an important role in there, but my understanding is confessedly shallow. If you asked me to build a computer from raw materials, and not just assemble one from pre-made parts, I wouldn’t have the first clue what to do. And a computer is a pretty basic thing, compared to a universe. If I cannot get my head around the deep workings of something as simple as a computer, why on earth would I expect to understand the deep moral workings of the universe?
But if I cannot expect to understand the deep moral workings of the universe, how can I be surprised when I fail to fully explain those workings?
That I cannot see any morally-sufficient reason to permit the evils of the world is hardly surprising. Would I expect to see those reasons, if they were there? Imagine someone who doesn’t understand how to play chess not being able to see a winning move. Would their inability to see it give you any reason to believe that a winning move isn’t available? Of course not. If there were a winning move available, the ignorant chess player wouldn’t be able to see it because they don’t understand how to play chess. So that they can’t see any winning move means absolutely nothing in terms of whether there is a winning move to be found. Presumably a more experienced or more skilled player might see things differently. If anything, the person who doesn’t play chess would probably assume there is a winning move available – most games of chess are won, after all – but they just can’t see it because they don’t understand the game. That is, the inference goes in exactly the opposite direction. An acknowledged lack of understanding gives you some reason to doubt your perception.
Imagine talking to someone who speaks a language that you don’t understand. They are making noises and gestures but you can’t make a single bit of sense of what they’re saying. Would you infer from this that they are talking nonsense? Would you infer that because you cannot see any meaning in their words, there is no meaning in their words? Of course not. You’d only think they were talking nonsense if you were in a position to understand what they were talking about in the first place. The natural reaction otherwise is simply to acknowledge that you don’t understand and leave it at that. If anything, when someone is talking to us in a language that we don’t understand, we assume they are talking meaningfully and we don’t understand because we don’t speak their language. An acknowledged lack of understanding gives you some reason to doubt your perception; in this case, quite a strong reason.
Sceptical theism works in a similar way. We look at the evils of the world and we fail to see a reason why they should be permitted. But we also acknowledge that God is in a position to know a great deal more about these things than we are. Our knowledge is extremely limited by comparison, to such an extent that we probably wouldn’t be able to understand the big picture, even if it were shown to us. If God had a reason to permit all the evils of the world, would we expect to see it? Like someone who doesn’t know how to play chess wouldn’t expect to see a winning move, or someone who doesn’t speak the language wouldn’t expect to see meaning in a foreigner’s words, we, as finite creatures, wouldn’t expect to see the deep moral workings of the universe. It’s beyond us. That we can’t see any reason why these evils should be permitted therefore doesn’t tell us all that much about whether there is a reason, just like the ignorant chess player can’t infer that there is no winning move, and the inadequate linguist can’t infer the foreigner is talking nonsense. If anything, like the ignorant chess player and the inadequate linguist, we might assume there is a reason and we can’t see it because we don’t understand. The inference could go in the opposite direction. An acknowledged lack of understanding gives you some reason to doubt your perception.
Following this line of reasoning allows us to be sceptical about our perception of the morally impossible. Consequently, we are free to say that, possibly, nothing is morally impossible.
Both theodicy and sceptical theism can conclude that the morally impossible does not happen. Theodicy offers us a justification for all the evils of the world, thereby eliminating the morally impossible from its view of the world. Sceptical theism does not offer us a justification, but does offer us a reason to doubt our moral perception, thereby eliminating the morally impossible from its view of the world.
The Failings of Theodicy and Sceptical Theism
Both theodicy and sceptical theism have been thoroughly criticised elsewhere. I won’t repeat those criticisms excessively, only sufficiently. I will focus on theodicy shortly, but to highlight only the most obvious failings of sceptical theism: It’s very difficult to stop sceptical theism sliding into a more widespread moral scepticism. Ultimately, this would be morally paralysing. If sceptical theism says that ‘for all we know’ what seems bad is in fact for the best, then how are we to ever judge anything as bad? For all we know, anything we judge to be bad is not, in fact, bad. And for all we know, everything we judge to be good is not, in fact, good. We are not in a position to understand the deep moral workings of the universe, after all, so how can we be expected to be reliable judges on these matters? It would be rational to withhold judgement, in light of our ignorance and epistemic limitations. But that means we cannot make any moral judgements at all, and that is hardly a desirable outcome and not particularly conducive to virtue.
The problem is worse than this, in fact. If, as sceptical theism has it, everything bad might be for the best, we are presented with a difficult decision when we encounter something that appears to us to be bad and preventable. Should we prevent the bad thing? What if, for all we know, this bad thing is necessary for some greater good thing, or necessary for the prevention of some even worse thing? It would be very regrettable if we intervened, prevented the bad thing, and thereby caused something even worse. Perhaps, in preventing this small bad thing, we deny someone the opportunity to develop their virtue. We’d be robbing them of the most valuable thing imaginable! And we certainly don’t want that. All things considered, perhaps we shouldn’t prevent the bad thing. We are not in a position to understand the deep moral workings of the universe, after all, so how can we be expected to be reliable judges on these matters? We should let it happen, trusting God’s judgement over our own.
But this leads to the absurd situation in which we ought never to prevent anything bad when we can, which is hardly a virtuous attitude.
These are old criticisms and much debated. Nothing much depends on them for me or my purposes. For my purposes, the more significant problem with sceptical theism is what might follow from it for the meaningfulness of our moral judgement. These issues will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, but to foreshadow: For moral judgement to be meaningful, it must have limits; a shape is defined by its edges and boundaries and so a shape must have edges and boundaries. Sceptical theism, like all unrestrained forms of scepticism, tells us to doubt the most basic certainties we have; and not just some of them, but all of them. It tells us to think the unthinkable. But if I do this then I lose my footing.
I know that child abuse is wrong. I understand that as clearly as I understand the meaning of the terms involved. If child abuse is not-wrong then I no longer understand what ‘wrong’ means. I say it is unjustifiable; I say it is not the kind of thing that can be excused or made-good; I say it is morally impossible, something that categorically ought not to be. This judgement is an edge or a boundary or a cornerstone of my moral judgement; it shapes my moral world; it is a moral necessity. But sceptical theism asks me to doubt my judgement in this and in all cases, saying: it might be that, sometimes, child abuse is justified. But if I do as I am asked, I lose that cornerstone of my moral judgement and with that the shape of my moral world, the boundaries that determine its meaning, and so I no longer understand what you are asking me to do. To change a moral judgement? But the claim that child abuse is sometimes justified is not something that I would understand to be a moral judgement: it’s wrong to justify child abuse. You don’t ask me to change my moral judgement but to abandon it entirely and replace it with something else, something I don’t recognise as anything that can be called ‘moral’. You may as well ask me to keep doing ordinary arithmetic on the assumption that one plus one does not equal two.
The failings of theodicy have been well-documented elsewhere, by others and by me. Again, it’s not my intention to repeat myself excessively here. My task is to show how theodicy and sceptical theism fail specifically in the case of the morally impossible.
As a rule, the question will always be one of moral limits. Specifically: are there any? The nature of the morally impossible or morally necessary is that it specifies some moral limits. The nature of denying the morally impossible or morally necessary is therefore to deny that there are any moral limits. But shouldn’t there be limits to our moral thinking? Shouldn’t there be some things that we ought not to consider? Aren’t there some moral beliefs that are not open to doubt, and ought not to be, because doubting these beliefs shows us to have lost our moral minds?
Moral Insensitivity
Theodicy stands accused of being morally insensitive. Theodicy does not take the evils of the world seriously enough, attempting always to downplay and diminish and claim that things are not as bad as they seem. In the construction of theodicy, routine examples are used such as trips to the dentist, cars breaking down, or discordant music. You will rarely find a theodicy explicitly discussing the worst evils in the world. Not many theodicists are willing to explicitly defend the value of child abuse or genocide. They stick to the easy cases. But there is no getting around the fact that if theodicy offers a justification for the permission of all evils in the world, then it offers that justification for the hard cases as much as for the easy. In doing so, theodicy draws a comparison between these easy examples and the worst evils in the world, as if they were morally comparable.
Anyone sensitive to the horrors of these ‘hard cases’ could not allow themselves to draw this comparison. Perhaps we can justify sending our children to the dentist and can offer a morally-sufficient reason in defence of the pain suffered at the dentist’s hands, but wouldn’t we hesitate (to put it extremely mildly) to offer a defence of the pain suffered at the hands of the child abuser? Should we override this hesitation as irrational over-sensitivity, safe in the knowledge that both the evils of the dentist and the evils of the child abuser are morally comparable and justified by the same set of morally-sufficient reasons? It stretches our moral conscience to say so. I would say it stretches it to breaking point. Our moral sensitivity will not allow that comparison to be drawn.
Anyone who draws that comparison reveals themselves to lack this moral sensitivity. And so this is what theodicy stands accused of, since this is what it does. It is only possible to construct a theodicy if you are willing to treat all evils as comparable under the same category: raw material for soul-making, or outweighed by the value of free will. But not all evils are created equal and some are unequal enough to give us reason to pause. Again, I feel I’m putting it extremely mildly. Shouldn’t we hesitate to offer a justification for genocide? What would it say about us if we did not hesitate, or else hesitated but then overruled our moral sensitivities? What is it that we are trying to be if we were to do this: morally or intellectually virtuous? Is a justification for genocide recognisable as a picture of virtue? Can it be? What genocide-apologist have you ever looked at and thought: ‘There goes a virtuous person.’
The accusation of moral insensitivity becomes clearer if we talk in terms of the morally impossible. In being something that ‘categorically ought not to be’, there can be no justification for it: that is part of its categorical nature. To offer a justification is therefore to deny its morally impossible status. The answer to the question: ‘Should child abuse be permitted?’ would not be ‘categorically, no’, but ‘it depends’. But if you deny the morally impossible nature of the morally impossible, you reveal yourself to lack the moral responsiveness necessitated by moral necessity. And given that theodicy covers all conceivable evils, this amounts to a rejection of the morally impossible as such. Which is hardly surprising, given that this was the horn of the dilemma that theodicy has chosen to escape the logical problem of morally-impossible evil.
The morally problematic status of theodicy is exposed in exactly this way. From a certain ethical perspective, we look at the world and identify some things that categorically ought not to be; we identify the morally impossible. Theodicy corrects our perception and insists that, contrary to moral appearances, nothing is morally impossible. Everything is permissible. But in normal running, if someone were to offer a moral justification for genocide or child abuse, I would think moral insensitivity to be only the most visible of their failings.
Detached Perspective
Theodicy stands accused of adopting too detached a 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 it is claimed there is something morally problematic about adopting this detached perspective, or at least something problematic about insisting that we adopt this detached perspective and therefore that we detach ourselves from our down-to-earth moral perspective.
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.
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?
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.
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 could not 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. Both claims would undersell it and 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.
Consequentialism, Unrestricted
A collection of accusations revolve around theodicy’s being either covertly or overtly consequentialist or instrumentalist in its moral reasoning. This is more obvious in the case of the soul-making theodicy. This theodicy says that the end, of having a morally and spiritually virtuous soul, justifies the means, of living in a world of pain and suffering. Whilst it might be difficult to see at the time, in the final analysis we would judge the benefit to be worth the cost. It’s for this reason that theodicy appeals to examples such as going to the dentist. This is a clear case where the end, of good dental health, justifies the means, of temporary discomfort in the dentist’s chair. Extrapolating from this case, we infer that many if not all instances of suffering might be nothing more than a short-term investment for a longer-term gain. They are all capable of being justified on consequentialist grounds. As long as the consequence is worth the cost, and as long as the consequence is realised, then there is no problem. Theodicy tells us that God has a plan, that the consequence of that plan is worth the cost, and therefore God will achieve His plan by any means necessary. There is a problem here, though, because we would not normally endorse such an unrestricted consequentialism, and it’s particularly unusual for theists to do so. Are there no limits on what can be permitted in order to reach our goal?
Some of the costs that are required for this goal involve the suffering of others. This raises another problem: The suffering of others becomes useful for us. It helps us to achieve our goal, because our goal is to become better people and the suffering of others helps to make us better people. If all that really matters is that we achieve our goal of moral and spiritual virtue, and that goal is to be achieved by any means necessary, then it seems, paradoxically, that we should want others to suffer so that we have more raw material for our soul-making. We should be disappointed to live in a world with less suffering, because it gives us less opportunity for growth. Our own suffering might be something we can bring ourselves to sign-off on, on consequentialist grounds, as being a cost that is worth bearing for the greater benefits that come from it. But can we see the suffering of others in the same way? To do so would involve, as D. Z. Phillips said, ‘the objectionable instrumentalism in which the sufferings of others are treated as an opportunity for me to be shown at my best. Ironically, if I think of their sufferings in this way, I am shown at my worst.’
The morally problematic status of theodicy is shown in this way. There is something wrong in seeing the suffering of others as being, ultimately, a good thing, because it is instrumentally useful for me and my purposes. Can their suffering be made good on the grounds that it is useful for me? It misses the point to say so. Their suffering harms them, not me; or at least if it harms me then it does so only indirectly and I cannot lay claim to it. I am not the victim of their suffering. But if I am not the victim of their suffering, and their suffering is helping me achieve my purposes, then the cost is theirs but the benefit is mine. And so there can be no untainted benefit for me if that benefit only comes at the cost of someone else’s harm. My gains are made ill-gotten by this, and if I am virtuous I would understand that ill-gotten gains are not gains at all.
Many of us who are not totally unrestricted consequentialists would think there is something wrong with God achieving His plan by any means necessary. There ought to be limits on what can be justified by a consequentialist cost-benefit analysis. Ordinarily these limits are determined by questions of justice, by questions about what is right and not only about what is good. It might be ‘good’ if you can save a town from a riot and all the destruction that follows, but it is not ‘right’ to do so by convicting someone you know to be innocent. We should not convict innocent people even if the consequences are better. Possibly, we should not convict innocent people especially when the consequences would be better by doing so, if, by that, we are using the innocent person for our own benefit; because there is something unjust about convicting an innocent person, but there is something more unjust about profiting from it and considering ourselves righteous and justified for doing so.
Does God acknowledge these right-based limits? Are God’s means to the ends of soul-making restricted in any way? It’s difficult to see how, given the range and extent of suffering and injustice that is already seen as part of the soul-making plan. We might ask: if these are within the restrictions, what is left without?!
Perhaps we are not in a position to know what sort of restrictions God is operating under, but we could at least settle on a compromise that, even if God’s means-ends reasoning is restricted in some way (that we can’t see), the moral objection to theodicy is that it is not restricted enough. Some things happen that ought not to happen and cannot be made good by a consequentialist appeal to the end justifying the means. There ought to be restrictions on using the violation of innocent children as a character-building exercise, for example. Even if good characters were built that way, it wouldn’t be right to do so.
The case is clearer with the morally impossible. It is difficult to see how the concept could be compatible with an unrestricted consequentialism. The identification of something that ‘categorically ought not to be’ does not come with the caveat ‘unless you can get something really good out of it’. Our previous examples of child abuse, genocide, and slavery are natural examples here. It doesn’t matter how much good comes of these things, that good can’t make them right. Imagine someone justifying genocide on the basis of the genetic improvements to the future human race, or of having extra living space. Imagine! ‘But aren’t these good consequences?’, they might say. That is hardly the point. ‘But what if these good consequences outweighed the costs, in the long run?’ Would that make a difference? Does the wrongness of genocide hinge upon the question of whether or not it works out for the best in the end? How could it? It is truer to say it is wrong regardless of the long-term consequences, not made wrong because the consequences happened to be bad, and certainly not made right because the consequences happened to be good.‘But what if God knows these good consequences outweigh the costs?’ That doesn’t change the nature of the consequentialist justification. If we find it objectionable as such, regardless of the outcome, without knowledge of the outcome, why would it be any different with knowledge of the outcome? Unless we abandon our objection to an unrestricted consequentialism, God’s knowledge doesn’t change anything. Our rejection of a consequentialist justification wasn’t conditional on it having bad consequences, or good consequences, and so how could it make any difference to know which it is?
To escape the moral problems of instrumentalism and consequentialism, theodicy would have to show either that its means-ends reasoning is in some way sufficiently restricted in terms of what is right, or else it does not, in fact, depend on a means-ends reasoning at all. The first route will come up against the problem of all currently-known evil and suffering being, as it stands, fair game for means-ends justification, which certainly seems to be very unrestricted indeed; we can at least say this is not nearly restricted enough, which is much the same problem: it’s not right, even if it were good. The second route would abandon the central pivot point around which all the heavy lifting of theodicy turns. If this evil and suffering does not serve a purpose, then what is the point of it?
Theodicy, especially in its soul-making form, is forced to commit to a too-unrestricted consequentialism and cannot help but slide into an objectionable instrumentalism. It inherits the moral problems of both.
Means-Ends Reasoning
Related to the generic problems of instrumentalism and consequentialism is a distinctly Kantian problem of using human beings as a means to an end. That we ought not to do this is a famous expression of Kant’s Categorical Imperative: We must always treat human beings as an end-in-themselves and never only as a means to an end. This acts as a categorical limit on the ways we are permitted to treat one another. We can treat people as a means to an end only if we also respect their humanity and the limit that it imposes on us. So I can hire someone to do a job but I cannot make them my slave.
This is a profoundly important moral insight and not one that is confined to its Kantian expression. But, perhaps unfortunately, it has become so strongly associated with its Kantian expression that it’s now difficult to separate the baby from its Kantian bathwater. Even if we are only talking about ethical bathwater, few people are avowed Kantians; fewer still are Kantians about the rest. But we do not need to be Kantians to accept his point. All we need is to accept some parts of his argument. The parts we need are found scattered across the whole Kantian system, traceable back through from his philosophy of religion, through his ethics, to his metaphysics. I think the point is important enough to warrant plunging into this murky bathwater, or at least be willing to dip a toe. I apologise to those immersed in these deep waters, because I can only dip a toe and take disgraceful short cuts. There is so much more than I can cover here. If you do not know about these greater depths already, I hope you will go and learn about them. It’s a fool’s errand to offer a rushed summary of the argument, and a wise man would fear to try, but I will have a go.
It might be that few of us are avowed Kantians, but most of us would accept that a human being acts as a peculiar kind of limit to our will. I can do what I want to an object, like a stone or a car or a piece of fruit, especially if I own the object, but I can’t treat people however I want. An object doesn’t feel or think, it has no desires, no purposes, no aims or ends. I cannot frustrate a stone or thwart its purposes; I cannot harm a stone. But a person is different. A person can feel, can suffer, can want and desire. A person can have aims and ambitions. I can harm a person. A person can say ‘please don’t’, and this gives me a reason not to.
What accounts for this difference? Why can I do what I like to a stone but not to a person? For Kant, the answer lies in the nature of these things. The nature of a stone is to be an object: it has no subjective consciousness, it does not think or feel, and so it is governed only by the laws of nature. It is a thing, only. A person, on the other hand, thinks and feels and is aware of itself: it has subjective consciousness. Because of this it can think about what it is doing. And because it can think about what it is doing, it can respond to reasons of thought and not just the physical process of cause and effect. A person is more than just a thing. A person can make a choice.
We know this because we are persons, and being a person forces us to accept certain realities. That we are things that think, for example, is something we cannot help but recognise – it being famously self-justifying in a ‘I think, therefore I am’ kind of way – and it is this that in part defines us as persons and not only objects. But Kant moves further than Aristotle’s rational animals and Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. The great insight of Kant’s metaphysics is that the limits of my world are determined by my nature. As a thinking thing, my world can only be as a thinking thing can think it.
There are limits to what can be known and experienced, and these limits are determined by me; or rather, by my nature. I am a human being, physical and embodied, with five senses and a capacity for rational thought. I can know only what such a thing can know: that is, only what is accessible to the senses or to the powers of rational thought. I cannot know what I am not able to know, and what I am able to know is determined by the abilities of my human nature. I can reflect on these abilities and categorise them, and in so doing I would identify the limits of knowledge. All that I can know would fall within these ‘categories of understanding’; everything that falls without is beyond me and must be excluded from my picture of the world because it is literally nothing to me. I cannot go beyond what my nature allows.
I cannot conceive of a world without space, because ‘space’ is how I arrange the outer world of physical objects. I cannot think of an ‘object’ without defining its location and edges in spatial terms. I define an object in space, but space is not itself an object: space is the way I think about objects. This is a fact about me and my nature and the nature of my human way of thinking.
I cannot conceive of a world without time, because ‘time’ is how I arrange my inner world of thoughts. I cannot think of a thought without locating the experience in the present moment, placing it in a sequence that moves from the inaccessible past that has been, to the inaccessible future that has yet to be. I have memories of the past, and I have imaginings of the future, but all my thoughts are always located in the ‘now’. They cannot be otherwise; I cannot be anywhere but the present moment. I define my experience of thinking in terms of time. This is a fact about me and my nature and the nature of my human way of thinking.
I cannot conceive of a world without the laws of reason, because those laws are a precondition for my thinking coherently at all. Cause and effect, substance and quantity, necessity and possibility, the impossibility of true contradiction; these are all definitive of the way that I think, as an embodied thinking thing. I cannot know a non-spatial, non-temporal, non-rational world. That is not something an embodied thinking thing is able to know.
My world is my world, because my nature determines what the world is like for me. If I have eyes then I live in a world of light. If I have no eyes, no way of detecting light, and no one is in a position to tell me differently, then light is a meaningless concept for me.
But choice is not a meaningless concept for me. I understand what it means to think and deliberate and choose. This suggests that I have a capacity to think and choose, and this is central to my understanding of what I am as a person and not just an object like any other object. I can think and choose; a stone cannot.
Were it not for this capacity to think and choose, I would be much like a stone. The stone and I inhabit the same physical world, after all. I understand, because I observe, that I am constrained by the laws of nature like any other physical thing. Like a stone, I cannot choose not to be held to the earth by gravity, for example. These laws of nature appear to be regular, fixed, and deterministic. They are knowable and predictable. Under the laws of nature, if I drink alcohol then I will get drunk. I know this, and there’s really nothing I can do to stop the biological processes being what they are and acting as they do. It’s a deterministic and so inevitable process, subject to the laws of cause and effect; a domino effect. If I drink alcohol, then the biological dominoes will fall, and if I drink enough then I will too. I cannot choose to drink alcohol and avoid the effects of doing so. I cannot escape my nature. But I do get to decide whether to drink alcohol. I know that if I drink I will experience the effects, but I know that I can avoid the effects by not drinking. This seems like a choice that I can make. From my perspective, this seems like a free choice.
An object would not have this luxury. This marks a clear difference between me and it. As a person, I view myself under two aspects: on the one hand, I am a physical object, constrained by the laws of nature; on the other, I am a thinking and freely-choosing subject. This is my nature, as I see it, and my world is determined by my nature. My world is the world of a person amongst objects: I can choose to drink the drink and get drunk, but the drink cannot choose not to be drunk. But my world is also the world of a person amongst other persons. Everything I realise about myself I also realise applies to any other thinking thing. Other people, too, are living as a person in a world of persons and objects. They too can and must choose how to think and act. I can ask them and they can refuse. I can appeal to their reason. I cannot ask a stone to move, because it cannot respond to reasons.
Human beings live in a world of reasons and not just physical causes and effects. For Kant, this is what separates us from mere ‘things’ and makes us more than just a thing. It is this that defines our humanity. To treat a human being as if it were a mere thing is therefore to deny its humanity. Is there anything wrong with this?
Kant says yes. It’s straightforwardly contradictory, for a start: you recognise something as a person, not only an object, yet treat it as if it were only and object and not a person. So which is it, a person and not only an object, or an object and not a person? It cannot be both. A man would be judged insane if he were to talk to a stone as if it were a person; is it any less insane to treat a person like an object? It is showing a disconnect with reality in either case.
But to treat a human being only as a means to an end is to treat it as if it were only an object or a thing to be put to use. It is to show yourself to misunderstand – or rather, fail to sufficiently respect – the distinctly human nature of a human being. This is self-contradictory, because you cannot help but recognise this distinct nature in yourself: you recognise that you are not only a thing to be put to use. And you can also recognise that other human beings are no different from you. But if you recognise the reason in the former case, with yourself, then you should recognise the reason in the latter case, with other people. You are not merely a thing to be put to use, and neither are they, so to treat them as if they were collapses into incoherence.
So far the mistake is a rational mistake only. But Kant pushes further and says that this ‘humanity’ (that is present in and definitive of persons) is of absolute value and that we have a categorical duty to respect and value it. It is not only a rational failing to treat human beings as if they were only objects, it is also a moral failing.
Human beings do not only think and choose: we also value things. We have aims and ambitions, desires and aversions, likes and dislikes. We govern our behaviour by reasons directed towards the satisfaction of these ‘ends’. None of these ‘ends’ necessarily have value beyond our valuing them. I want a piece of cake, I like to sit in the sun, I want to write a good book, I like certain comedians because I find them funny, but this is just me. These are subjective preferences. There’s nothing to say anyone else ought to align their values with mine or recognise them as being important. All we must recognise is the bare fact that we, as persons, value things. If I recognise you as a person, then I recognise that you value things too. None of these things are necessarily of value, but that you have a capacity to value is necessarily something that I must accept.
Is there anything that is necessarily of value? Is there anything objectively valuable? Kant says that humanity, in ourselves and in others, is objectively valuable. This is because whilst all our individual valuings might be subjective, none of them would be possible without our capacity to value. As such, nothing has any value if there is no capacity to value. And therefore the capacity to value is a necessary precondition for anything being of value at all. If there is anything that can be considered universally or objectively valuable, then, it will be the source of all value, what makes any value possible, which is the capacity to value. And this is precisely what in part defines a human being: a thinking thing with a capacity to value.
A human being is objectively valuable because it is not only something that values – something that has ‘ends’ – it is the source of all value, a necessary precondition of value, becoming objectively or universally valuable and an ‘end in itself’.
This is not the only route to this conclusion, but it does help to demonstrate the way that our humanity, understood as the capacity to think and value and be responsive to reasons, can act as a limit to our will. There are other routes. If I value something, and want that thing, there are certain choices I cannot coherently make in pursuit of it. I cannot pursue something in a way that removes the necessary preconditions for it; I cannot cut off the branch on which I’m sitting (and expect to remain sitting on it). To illustrate: I cannot pursue a trivial want by choosing to do something that seriously endangers my life, for example. My continued existence is a necessary condition for the satisfaction of any desire, so to throw it away in an attempt to get what I want is self-defeating (quite literally). It follows that I ‘ought not’ jump onto the train tracks as a train approaches in order to pick up a £5 note. This is not a hypothetical imperative, of the form ‘you ought not jump on the train tracks if you want to spend the £5 note’, but a categorical imperative, because there is no ‘if’ about it: you cannot spend that £5 note when you are dead, or do anything else for that matter. Self-preservation acts as a categorical limit to our will, in all cases except those morally tragic cases where the weight of reasons weighs heavy enough to outweigh this categorical duty. If there were a child on the tracks instead of a £5 note, for example, I might reasonably say ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I stood by and did nothing’.
But if these reasons show self-preservation to be a categorical duty for me to myself, then they will do likewise for any thing that thinks and values and responds to reasons: that is, these reasons will apply universally to any human being. The reasons themselves become universal. They are reasons that all human beings must recognise. If I recognise the power these reasons have in myself, I must recognise this in others. And so, categorically, I must not kill. I must not enslave. I must not deprive another of their capacity to think and choose and value. I must respect their humanity for their sake, just as I must respect my own humanity for my sake, because humanity is objectively valuable as an end-in-itself.
It ought to be clear by now how this relates to theodicy and the morally impossible. According to the stories of theodicy, we are placed in a hostile and unforgiving environment where we are subjected to terrible pain, suffering, injustice, and often premature death, all in pursuit of some grand plan. It is judged that the ends justify the means. But we are the means to this end. Theodicy treats human beings as if they were mere things to be put to use, cogs in a machine, not deserving of a say in the means of production. In being subject to these univocal laws of creation, human beings are fundamentally no different from stars and planets, stones and bacteria. Can I say that my capacity to choose has been respected when I never had a say in the matter, not even given an option of opting out?
What choice is the child given when they are abused? How could we say that their humanity is respected? And why speak only of innocent children, when it is often the accumulation of terrible experiences over a longer life that goes to break a human being. What sense can it make to say that someone has their autonomy respected when they are subject to a genocide? Could any of us say that we could have chosen to endure these atrocities better? The most that theodicy can say is that they were useful.
How could any of us universalise these means-to-an-end? Could we choose to place ourselves in their shoes, grateful for the opportunity for soul-making? Could we make that choice for all? If you were to choose on behalf of humanity, could you choose for the child to be abused?
We do not have to be avowed Kantians to accept that there is something terribly wrong with theodicy’s attitude to human beings. Its attitude is to treat people and their sufferings as if they were only things to be put to use, something that serves a purpose.
Better, I think, are the attitudes of an older time, long before theodicy emerged. The attitude of Boethius, who would say that you have been given everything you need to think and choose and endure in this world, even in the worst of times. The attitude of Augustine, who would say that it is no lack of respect to allow you to suffer, but precisely out of respect for your freedom that you must suffer the consequences of your choices. These attitudes call us not to excuse or justify suffering and injustice, but to endure it like philosophers should. These attitudes are more respectful of our Kantian autonomy.
Given the Kantian ‘categorical’ background, the moral objection to theodicy as treating people only as a means to an end is clearly applicable to the morally impossible. In this case, theodicy does not just deny the morally impossible, but does the morally impossible when it violates the categorical imperative to respect humanity, in your own person or in others, always as an end in itself. If there is any weight whatsoever to this duty, then theodicy falls heavily under it. And if the goal of theodicy is to offer a morally-sufficient reason for the permission of evil and suffering, but theodicy can only reach its goal by appealing to a morally-insufficient way of reasoning, then theodicy cuts off the branch on which it sits. It pursues its end in a way that removes the necessary preconditions for it. In this way, theodicy is its own categorical refutation.
Denying the Morally Impossible
There is a final morally-problematic feature of theodicy and sceptical theism that is particularly relevant to my purposes. Whilst it is morally objectionable to deny the morally impossible for various reasons, as we’ve seen in the criticisms outlined in this chapter (and elsewhere in the anti-theodicy literature), it is also morally impossible to deny the morally impossible. This is so regardless of the reasons for doing so and regardless of any particular way of doing it, with or without sensitivity, from a detached or engaged perspective, appealing to consequentialism or not, treating people as a means to an end or not. If we acknowledge the reality of the morally impossible, then we acknowledge it as something that cannot be denied. That is the nature of necessity. The same would be true of recognising a necessary mathematical or logical truth: in being necessary, it cannot be denied; it is not possible that it is possibly false. In a moral context, the nature of moral necessity and of necessitated moral responsiveness is that we cannot justify the unjustifiable or excuse the inexcusable. But theodicy cannot help but do this because it must do this, and therefore theodicy ought to be seen as morally impossible per se by anyone who accepts the reality of the morally impossible.
Again, this is not a particularly revelatory statement, since we began this chapter by pointing out that theodicy (and sceptical theism) must deny the reality of the morally impossible in order to preserve the goodness and existence of God, as part of a consistent set of beliefs when faced with the logical problem of morally-impossible evil. We cannot be surprised when theodicy does exactly what it set out to do. But it is important to recognise the cost of it doing so. In excluding the possibility of the morally impossible, theodicy denies that there are limits to moral thinking. The dangers and difficulties of this will be explored in the next chapter.
And again, just to reiterate, whether or not the morally impossible actually happens is not the point. The point is whether we judge that the morally impossible happens, whether we acknowledge it as real. It is a question about ourselves. And so if you acknowledge your own recognition of the morally impossible, you cannot deny that without being inconsistent with yourself.
What the moral objections to theodicy show is that a consistent theistic position on the problem of evil is morally problematic to anyone who acknowledges the morally impossible. This is not to say that there are not consistent theistic positions on the problem of evil, only that they come with a certain moral cost. Specifically, they come at the cost of denying the morally impossible.
Similarly, I’m sure there are consistent positions on the dropping of an atomic bomb over civilian populations: it ended the war, saving lives, etc. But these positions are morally problematic to me, because I acknowledge the categorical duty not to incinerate the children of our enemies in order to preserve the lives of our soldiers. The categorical nature of that duty means there is no consistent position available whereby dropping that bomb could be morally justified, because you cannot justify the unjustifiable. If it is done, if it must be done, it is done as part of a moral tragedy whereby the doing of the morally impossible is unavoidable. In such a case, perhaps the morally impossible must be done, but it cannot be celebrated or lauded as the ‘right’ thing to do. It is necessary, but equally necessary is the guilt and shame that must follow from doing what we know ought not be done. You cannot admire or worship anyone who did such a thing; you can only pity them for their misfortune of being put in such a terrible position. Perhaps they can be forgiven but it seems to me that that might depend on their attitude. Are they remorseful, for example? Do they recognise the gravity of what they have done? Do they acknowledge themselves to be evildoers, even if they were in a position such that they had no choice? Do they recognise the categorical nature of their violation? Do they say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I’m sorry, but…’? And in any case it wouldn’t be my place to forgive on someone else’s behalf.
To my mind, an eagerness to justify or excuse the morally impossible shows that there is a lack of recognition of the gravity of the matter. It shows a lack of remorse. Forgiveness is more difficult in that case.
Conclusion
Any response to the problem of evil, understood as a logical problem about the morally impossible, is left in a bind. If it chooses to escape the dilemma on the horn of denying the morally impossible, it will necessarily incur the moral cost of doing so. The response will become morally objectionable. If the moral objections outlined in this chapter mean anything at all, then it would be wrong, morally wrong, for theodicy to respond to the problem of evil as it does. And you shouldn’t do what is morally wrong. So you shouldn’t construct or endorse theodicy. Far from defending the truth of it, you should hope it isn’t true.
But if the theist does not construct or defend a theodicy, then they are left with only one other option to preserve the consistency of their belief, which is to reject the ethical perspective that gives rise to any talk of moral necessity. Do not only deny that the morally impossible happens, deny that it is a meaningful concept. Reject the very notion of moral necessity. It’s to this option that I now turn.
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