In 1791, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), one of the preeminent German philosophers of the Enlightenment, addressed the problem of evil in an essay titled, “On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy.” In it, Kant categorizes theodicies into three general approaches:
First, a theodicy can argue that what mankind considers to be “evil” is not, in fact, evil;
Second, a theodicy can excuse God for the existence of evil on the ground that evil could not be prevented because of the requirements/limitations inherent in creating beings like man;
Third, a theodicy can assert that evil is the result of a being other than God.
Kant concludes that—insofar as any of these theodicies aims at theoretical knowledge about God—each fails to conclusively answer the problem of evil, due to the limitations of finite human reasoning. However, these same limitations on human reasoning also mean that man cannot definitively demonstrate that the problem of evil lacks a solution.
Excerpts from “On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy”
By “theodicy” we understand the defense of the highest wisdom of the creator against the charge which reason brings against it for whatever is counterpurposive in the world. – We call this “the defending of God’s cause,” even though the cause might be at bottom no more than that of our presumptuous reason failing to recognize its limitations. This is indeed not the best of causes, yet one that can be condoned insofar as (aside from that self-conceit) the human being is justified, as rational, in testing all claims, all doctrines which impose respect upon him, before he submits himself to them, so that this respect may be sincere and not feigned.
Now for this vindication it is required that the would-be advocate of God prove either that whatever in the world we judge counterpurposive is not so; or, if there is any such thing, that it must be judged not at all as an intended effect but as the unavoidable consequence of the nature of things; or, finally, that it must at least be considered not as an intended effect of the creator of all things but, rather, merely of those beings in the world to whom something can be imputed, i.e. of human beings (higher spiritual beings as well, good or evil, as the case may be).
The author of a theodicy agrees, therefore, that this juridical process be instituted before the tribunal of reason; he further consents to represent the accused side as advocate through the formal refutation of all the plaintiff’s complaints; he is not therefore allowed to dismiss the latter in the course of the process of law through a decree of incompetency of the tribunal of human reason (exceptio fori), i.e. he cannot dismiss the complaints with a concession of the supreme wisdom of the author of the world, imposed upon the plaintiff, which would immediately explain away as groundless even without examination, all doubts that might be raised against it; he must rather attend to the objections, and make comprehensible how they in no way derogate from the concept of the highest wisdom by clarifying and removing them. – Yet there is one thing he need not attend to, namely a proof of God’s wisdom from what the experience of this world teaches; for in this he would simply not succeed, since omniscience would be required to recognize in a given world (as gives itself to cognition in experience) that perfection of which we could say with certainty that absolutely none other is possible in creation and its government.
Now whatever is counterpurposive in the world, and may be opposed to the wisdom of its creator, is of a threefold kind:
1st. The absolutely counterpurposive, or what cannot be condoned or desired either as end or means;
2nd. The conditionally counterpurposive, or what can indeed never co-exist with the wisdom of a will as end, yet can do so as means.
The first is the morally counterpurposive, evil proper (sin); the second, the physically counterpurposive, ill (pain). – But now, there still is a purposiveness in the proportion of ill to moral evil, if the latter is once there, and neither can nor should be prevented – namely in the conjunction of ills and pains, as penalties, with evil, as crime. It is of this purposiveness in the world that one asks whether, in this respect, everyone in the world gets his due. Consequently, yet a
3rd kind of counterpurposiveness must be thinkable in the world namely the disproportion between crimes and penalties in the world.
The attributes of the world-author’s supreme wisdom against which these [three kinds of] counterpurposiveness stand out as objections are, therefore, likewise three:
First, the holiness of the author of the world, as law-giver (creator), in opposition to the moral evil in the world.
Second, his goodness, as ruler (preserver), in contrast with the countless ills and pains of the rational beings of the world.
Third, his justice, as judge, in comparison to the bad state which the disproportion between the impunity of the depraved and their crimes seems to indicate in the world.*
The case against those three charges must be presented, therefore, along the three above mentioned kinds [of counterpurposiveness], and must be tested against their validity.
I. Against the complaint over the holiness of the divine will for the moral evil which disfigures the world, God’s work, the first vindication consists in this:
(a) There is no such thing as an absolute counterpurposiveness which we take the trespassing of the pure laws of our reason to be, but there are violations only against human wisdom; divine wisdom judges these according to totally different rules, incomprehensible to us, where, what we with right find reprehensible with reference to our practical reason and its determination might yet perhaps be in relation to the divine ends and the highest wisdom precisely the most fitting means to our particular welfare and the greatest good of the world as well; the ways of the most high are not our ways (sunt supris swa iura [those on high have their own laws]), and we err whenever we judge what is law only relatively to human beings in this life to be so absolutely, and thus hold what appears counterpurposive to our view of things from so lowly a standpoint to be such also when considered from the highest. – This apology, in which the vindication is worse than the complaint, needs no refutation; surely it can be freely given over to the detestation of every human being who has the least feeling for morality.
(b) The second alleged vindication would indeed allow for the actuality of moral evil in the world, but it would excuse the author of the world on the ground that it could not be prevented, because founded upon the limitations of the nature of human beings, as finite. – However, the evil would thereby be justified, and, since it could not be attributed to human beings as something for which they are to be blamed, we would have to cease calling it “a moral evil.”
(c) The third rejoinder, that even conceding that it is really a matter of what we call moral evil, a guilt resting on the human being, yet no guilt may be ascribed to God, for God has merely tolerated it for just causes as a deed of human beings: in no way has he condoned it, willed or promoted it – this rejoinder incurs one and the same consequence as the previous apology (b)…: namely, since even for God it was impossible to prevent this evil without doing violence to higher and even moral ends elsewhere, the ground of this ill (for so we must now truly call it) must inevitably be sought in the essence of things, specifically in the necessary limitations of humanity as a finite nature; hence the latter can also not be held responsible for it.
II. With respect to the complaint brought against divine goodness for the ills, namely the pains, in this world, its vindication equally consists
(a) in this: It is false to assume in human fates a preponderance of ill over the pleasant enjoyment of life, for however bad someone’s lot, yet everyone would rather live than be dead,… But surely the reply to this sophistry may be left to the sentence of every human being of sound mind who has lived and pondered over the value of life long enough to pass judgment, when asked, on whether he had any inclination to play the game of life once more, I do not say in the same circumstances but in any other he pleases (provided they are not of a fairy world but of this earthly world of ours).
(b) To the second vindication – namely, the preponderance of painful feelings over pleasant ones cannot be separated from the nature of an animal creature such as the human being… – the retort to this is that, if that is the way it is, then another question arises, namely why the creator of our existence called us into life when the latter, in our correct estimate, is not desirable to us…
(c) The third way of untying the knot is supposed to be this: God has put us here on earth for the sake of a future happiness, hence out of his goodness; yet an arduous and sorrowful state in the present life must without exception precede that hoped-for superabundant blessedness – a state in which we are to become worthy of that future glory precisely through our struggle with adversities. – But, that before the highest wisdom this time of trial (to which most succumb, and in which even the best is not happy about his life) must without exception be the condition of the joy eventually to be savored by us, and that it was not possible to let the creature be satisfied with every stage of his life – this can indeed be pretended but in no way can there be insight into it; in this way one can indeed cut the knot loose through an appeal to the highest wisdom which willed it. but one cannot untie the knot, which is what theodicy claims to be capable of accomplishing.
III. To the last charge, namely against the justice of the world’s judge,** is replied:
(a) The pretension that the depraved go unpunished in the world is ungrounded, for by its nature every crime already carries with it its due punishment, inasmuch as the inner reproach of conscience torments the depraved even more harshly than the Furies. – But in this judgment there obviously lies a misunderstanding. For here the virtuous man lends to the depraved the characteristic of his own constitution, namely, a conscientiousness in all its severity which, the more virtuous a human being is, all the more harshly punishes him because of the slightest indiscretion frowned upon by the moral law in him… – If that charge shall be further
(b) refuted by this: It is indeed not to be denied that there is absolutely no relation according to justice between guilt and punishment in this world, and in the ways of this world one must often witness with indignation a life led with crying injustice and yet happy to the end; this is not, however, something inherent in nature and deliberately promoted, hence not a moral dissonance, for it is a property of virtue that it should wrestle with adversities (among which is the pain that the virtuous must suffer through comparison of his own unhappiness with the happiness of the depraved), and sufferings only serve to enhance the value of virtue; thus this dissonance of undeserved ills resolves itself before reason into a glorious moral melody – the objection to this solution is that, although these ills, when they precede virtue or accompany it as its whetting stone, can indeed be represented as in moral harmony with it if at least the end of life crowns virtue and punishes the depraved; yet, if even such an end (as experience thereof gives many examples) fails against sense to materialize, then the suffering seems to have occurred to the virtuous, not so that his virtue should be pure, but because it was pure (and accordingly contrary to the rules of prudent self-love); and this is the very opposite of the justice of which the human being can form a concept for himself. For as regards the possibility that the end of this terrestrial life might not perhaps be the end of all life, such a possibility cannot count as vindication of providence; rather, it is merely a decree of morally believing reason which directs the doubter to patience but does not satisfy him.
(c) If, finally, an attempt is made at the third resolution to this disharmonious relation between the moral worth of human beings and the lot that befalls them, by saying: In this world we must judge all well-being and ill merely as the consequence of the use of the human faculties according to the laws of nature, in proportion to the skill and the prudence of their application, and also in proportion to the circumstances they accidentally come by, but not according to their agreement with supersensible ends; in a future world a different order of things will obtain instead, and each will receive that which his deeds here below are worthy of according to moral judgment – [if this is said,] then this assumption too is arbitrary. Rather, unless reason, as a faculty of moral legislation, is pronouncing a decree in accordance with this legislative interest, it must find it probable, according to the mere laws of theoretical cognition, that the way of the world determines our fates in the future just as it does here, according to the order of nature…
Now the outcome of this juridical process before the forum of philosophy is this: Every previous theodicy has not performed what it promised, namely the vindication of the moral wisdom of the world-government against the doubts raised against it on the basis of what the experience of this world teaches – although, to be sure, as objections, so far as our reason’s inherent insight regarding them goes, neither can these doubts prove the contrary. But again, whether in time yet more solid grounds of vindication will perhaps be found for the indicted reason – for absolving it not (as hitherto) merely ab instantia – this still remains undecided; if we do not succeed in establishing with certainty that our reason is absolutely incapable of insight into the relationship in which any world as we may ever become acquainted with through experience stands with respect to the highest wisdom, then all further attempts by a putative human wisdom to gain insight into the ways of the divine wisdom are fully dismissed. Hence, in order to bring this trial to an end once and for all, it must yet be proven that at least a negative wisdom is within our reach – namely, insight into the necessary limitation of what we may presume with respect to that which is too high for us – and this may very well be done.
For in the arrangement of this world we have the concept of an artistic wisdom – a concept which, in order to attain to a physico-theology, is not wanting in objective reality for our speculative faculty of reason. And we also have in the moral idea of our own practical reason a concept of a moral wisdom which could have been implanted in a world in general by a most perfect creator. – But of the unity in the agreement in a sensible world between that artistic and moral wisdom we have no concept; nor can we ever hope to attain one. For to be a creature and, as a natural being, merely the result of the will of the creator; yet to be capable of responsibility as a freely acting being (one which has a will independent of external influence and possibly opposed to the latter in a variety of ways); but again, to consider one’s own deed at the same time also as the effect of a higher being – this is a combination of concepts which we must indeed think together in the idea of a world and of a highest good, but which can be intuited only by one who penetrates to the cognition of the supersensible (intelligible) world and sees the manner in which this grounds the sensible world. The proof of the world-author’s moral wisdom in the sensible world can be founded only on this insight – for the sensible world presents but the appearance of that other [intelligible] world
– and that is an insight to which no mortal can attain.
All theodicy should truly be an interpretation of nature insofar as God announces his will through it. Now every interpretation of the declared will of a legislator is either doctrinal or authentic. The first is a rational inference of that will from the utterances of which the law-giver has made use, in conjunction with his otherwise recognized purposes; the second is made by the law-giver himself.
As a work of God, the world can also be considered by us as a divine publication of his will’s purposes. However, in this respect the world is often a closed book for us, and it is so every time we look at it to extract from it God’s final aim (which is always moral) even though it is an object of experience. Philosophical trials in this kind of interpretation are doctrinal; they constitute theodicy proper – which we can therefore call “doctrinal?” – Yet we cannot deny the name of “theodicy” also to the mere dismissal of all objections against divine wisdom, if this dismissal is a divine decree, or (for in this case it amounts to the same thing) if it is a pronouncement of the same reason through which we form our concept of God – necessarily and prior to all experience – as a moral and wise being. For through our reason God then becomes himself the interpreter of his will as announced through creation; and we can call this interpretation an authentic theodicy… I find such an authentic interpretation expressed allegorically in an ancient holy book.
Job is portrayed as a man whose enjoyment of life included everything which anyone might possibly imagine as making it complete. He was healthy, well-to-do, free, master over others whom he can make happy, surrounded by a happy family, among beloved friends – and on top of all of this (what is most important) at peace with himself in a good conscience. A harsh fate imposed in order to test him suddenly snatched from him all these blessings, except the last. Stunned by this unexpected reversal, as he gradually regains his senses, he breaks out in lamentation over his unlucky star; whereupon a dispute soon develops between him and his friends – supposedly gathered to console him – in which the two sides expound their particular theodicy to give a moral explanation for that deplorable fate, each side according to its particular way of thinking (above all, however, according to its station). Job’s friends declare themselves for that system which explains all ills in the world from God’s justice, as so many punishments for crimes committed; and, although they could name none for which the unhappy man is guilty, yet they believed they could judge a priori that he must have some weighing upon him, for his misfortune would otherwise be impossible according to divine justice. Job – who indignantly protests that his conscience has nothing to reproach him for in his whole life; and, so far as human unavoidable mistakes are concerned, God himself knows that he has made him a fragile creature – Job declares himself for the system of unconditional divine decision. “He has decided,” Job says, “He does as he wills.” [Job 23:13]
There is little worthy of note in the subtle or hypersubtle reasonings of the two sides; but the spirit in which they carry them out merits all the on the contrary, speak as if they were being secretly listened to by the mighty one, over whose cause they are passing judgment, and as if gaining his favor through their judgment were closer to their heart than the truth.
Their malice in pretending to assert things into which they yet must admit they have no insight, and in simulating a conviction which they in fact do not have, contrasts with Job’s frankness – so far removed from false flattery as to border almost on impudence – much to his advantage. “Will you defend God unjustly” he asks. “Will you give his person (special] consideration? Will you plead for God? He shall punish you, if you secretly have consideration for persons! – There will be no hypocrite before him!” [Job 13:7–11, 16]
The outcome of the story actually confirms this. For God deigned to lay before Job’s eyes the wisdom of his creation, especially its inscrutability. He allowed him glimpses into the beautiful side of creation, where ends comprehensible to the human being bring the wisdom and the benevolent providence of the author of the world unambiguously to light; but also, by contrast, into the horrible side, by calling out to him the products of his might, among which also harmful and fearsome things, each of which appears indeed to be purposively arranged for its own sake and that of its species, yet, with respect to other things and to human beings themselves, as destructive, counterpurposive, and incompatible with a universal plan established with goodness and wisdom. And yet God thereby demonstrates an order and a maintenance of the whole which proclaim a wise creator, even though his ways, inscrutable to us, must at the same time remain hidden – indeed already in the physical order of things, and how much more in the connection of the latter with the moral order (which is all the more impenetrable to our reason). – The conclusion is this: Since Job admits having hastily spoken about things which are too high for him and which he does not understand – not as if wantonly, for he is conscious of his honesty, but only unwisely – God finds against his friends, for (as conscientiousness goes) they have not spoken as well of God as God’s servant Job… [O]nly sincerity of heart and not distinction of insight; honesty in openly admitting one’s doubts; repugnance to pretending conviction where one feels none, especially before God (where this trick is pointless enough) – these are the attributes which, in the person of Job, have decided the preeminence of the honest man over the religious flatterer in the divine verdict.
The faith, however, which sprang in him for such a vexing resolution of his doubts – namely merely from being convicted of ignorance – could only arise in the soul of a man who, in the midst of his strongest doubts, could yet say Job 27:5–6): “Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me, etc.” For with this disposition he proved that he did not found his morality on faith, but his faith on morality: in such a case, however weak this faith might be, yet it alone is of a pure and true kind, i.e. the kind of faith that founds not a religion of supplication, but a religion of good life conduct.
Concluding Remark
…This leads to yet the following brief reflection on a big subject, namely sincerity, which is the principal requirement in matters of faith, as contrasted with the propensity to falsehood and impurity which is the principal affliction of human nature.
One cannot always stand by the truth of what one says to oneself or to another (for one can be mistaken); however, one can and must stand by the truthfulness of one’s declaration or confession, because one has immediate consciousness of this. For in the first instance we compare what we say with the object in a logical judgment (through the understanding). whereas in the second instance, where we declare what we hold as true, we compare what we say with the subject (before conscience). Were we to make our declaration with respect to the former without being conscious of the latter, then we lie, since we pretend something else than what we are conscious of. – The observation that there is such an impurity in the human heart is not new (for Job already made it; yet one is tempted to believe that attention to it is new to the teachers of morality and religion, one so seldom finds them making a sufficient use of it despite the difficulty associated with a purification of the dispositions in human beings even when they want to act according to duty… [I]f someone says to himself (or – what is one and the same in religious professions – before God) that he believes, without perhaps casting even a single glimpse into himself – whether he is in fact conscious of thus holding a truth or at least of holding it to some degree – then such a person lies. And not only is his lie the most absurd (before a reader of hearts0: it is also the most sinful, for it undermines the ground of every virtuous intention. It is not difficult to see how quickly these blind and external professions (which can very easily be reconciled with an internal profession just as false) can, if they yield means of gain, bring about a certain falsehood in a community’s very way of thinking…
FOOTNOTES:
*These three attributes, none of which can in any way be reduced to the others – as, for instance, justice to goodness, and so the whole to a smaller number – together constitute the moral concept of God. Nor can their order be altered (as by making benevolence, for instance, the supreme condition of world creation to which the holiness of legislation is subordinated) without doing violence to religion, which has this very concept for foundation. Our own pure (hence practical) reason determines this order of rank, for if legislation accommodated itself to benevolence, its dignity would no longer be there, nor a firm concept of duties. Indeed the human being wishes to be happy first; but then he sees, and (though reluctantly) accepts, that the worthiness to be happy, i.e. the conformity of the employment of his freedom with the holy law, must in God’s decision be the condition of his benevolence, and must, therefore, necessarily precede it… For under divine rule even the best of human beings cannot found his wish to fare well on divine justice but must found it on God’s beneficence for one who only does what he owes can have no rightful claim on God’s benevolence.
** It is remarkable that of all the difficulties in reconciling the course of world events with the divinity of their creator, none imposes itself on the mind as starkly as that of the semblance in them of a lack of justice. If it comes about (although it seldom happens) that an unjust, especially violent, villain does not escape unpunished from the world, then the impartial spectator rejoices, now reconciled with heaven. No purposiveness of nature will so excite him in admiration of it and, as it were, make him detect God’s hand in it. Why? Because nature is here moral, solely of the kind we seldom can hope to perceive in the world.
Immanuel Kant, “On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy,” trans. George di Giovanni, in Religion and Rational Theology, trans. & ed. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1996), 19–37.