An agent-based approach to the problem of evil

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 127-139

  Zagzebski, Linda ^a  

^a LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 53349107732     PISSN: 00207047     EISSN: 15728684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF00136244     Document Type: Review

References (20)

1. A well-known example is Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).
2. See, for example, papers by Marilyn Adams, such as 'Redemptive Suffering: A Christian Solution to the Problem of Evil', in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment, edited by Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), and
3. 'Problems of Evil: More Advice to Christian Philosophers', Faith and Philosophy 5 (1988): 121-143.
4. Often only the second clause of the premise is used since it is the motivation to eliminate evil that does the primary work in generating the dilemma rather than the motivation to produce good.
5. See Michael Slote in 'Virtue Ethics and Democratic Values', Journal of Social Philosophy 24/2 (Fall 1993): 5-37, and '
6. Agent-based Virtue Ethics', forthcoming in Moral Concepts, Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Others like Christine Swanton and Philip Pettit have adopted this usage. Julia Annas has used 'agent-centered' for something similar, but that terminology risks confusion with the usage by Samuel Scheffler in a totally different context.
7. See Slote, 'Virtue Ethics and Democratic Values', op. cit., for an application in political philosophy. I am working on the application of agent-based ethics to a range of concepts in normative epistemology in Virtues of the Mind, in preparation. Louke Siker is working on the use of virtue theory, including agent-based virtue theory, in environmental ethics.
8. In a note that appeared in the second edition (1864) of Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill makes the evaluation of the motive completely independent of the evaluation of the act. This note was dropped in succeeding editions, but the implausibility of Mill's claims as well as his failure to give a unitary account of morality that can handle both the motive and the act is worth noting. The note ends as follows: 'The morality of the action depends entirely upon the intention - that is, upon what the agent wills to do. But the motive, that is, the feeling which makes him will so to do, if it makes no difference in the act, makes none in the morality: though it makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent, especially if it indicates a good or a bad habitual disposition - a bent of character from which useful, or from which hurtful actions are likely to arise' (Chap. II, n. 3)
9. See Michael Stocker, 'The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories', Journal of Philosophy 73/14 (12 August 1976): 453-466;
10. Larry Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980);
11. Susan Wolf, 'Moral Saints', Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 419-439.
12. It is interesting to compare this theory with that of Robert Adams in 'Divine Command Metaethics Modified Again', Journal of Religious Ethics 7 (Spring 1979): 66-79, where he adds the stipulation that what is right is what would be commanded by a loving God.
13. Micheal Slote has suggested to me that we might see this as a theory based more on the New Testament, while traditional Divine Command theory is more naturally interpreted as having its basis in the Hebrew Scriptures. The human analogue of Divine Command theory is the idea that something is good for a child because the parent says so, and young children are expected to accept this as an explanation of morality adequate for their level of understanding. The human analogue of an agent-based theory says that something is good/acceptable for a child because a loving parent is motivated to command, accept, or tolerate it from the child. On this view will is treated as a derivative part of the psyche. Older children are expected to accept this in virtue of their trust in their parents, which is to say, they trust internal properties of their parents, particularly their understanding and motivation of love.
14. James Ross has another way of comparing the creativity of God to that of the artist. He likens God's creative acts to that of an improvising jazz musician who creates beauty out of his own nature without knowing in advance how it will turn out.
15. It could be argued that if any of these reasons were the parent's motivation she would be treating her child as a means to an end - the end of producing good. If so, premise (1) conflicts with the Kantian Categorical Imperative. I am not taking this approach myself, but it does suggest an alternative line of argument for rejecting premise (1) in the derivation of the alleged inconsistency between the existence of evil and the existence of God.
16. Bernard Williams, 'Persons, Character, and Morality', in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
17. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, 2nd edition (London: Macmillan; New York: Harper and Row, 1978).
18. I thank Michael Slote for this point.
19. This objection was made to me by John Hick.
20. I presented the general idea of the solution of section III in response to a paper by William Rowe at a conference in Claremont in 1989 on the work of John Hick. The exchange was subsequently published in Problems in the Philosophy of Religion, edited by Harold Hewitt, Jr. (London: Macmillan, 1991).