Platonic And Augustinian Answer To The Question Of Evil And God

Midterm essay

Explain the Platonic and Augustinian answer to the question of evil and God. Make sure to account for the method through which these two paradigms attempt to address both questions.

Provide your own assessment of their methods; are they valid or invalid and why or why not?

God and evil, a hot debate topic dating since the beginning of mankind. From the ancient Greeks with Plato passing through the Romans with Saint Augustine and to our current days, a topic with no clear-cut answer. The question of God and evil is a debatable subject of confusion as no real stated answer could be provided and questioning our existence is the source of most of our beliefs. Augustine and Plato both had different views and attacked the subject in different methods and reached each their conclusion through diverse manners. After the discovery of God, the problem of evil always arises, and this will be shown later on. As we explore the paradigms proposed by those two great authors, through their books Confessions and The Republic, we will attempt to reach a clearer understanding of the topic.

Plato did not directly state that his book; The Republic tackled the debate of God and evil. He implicitly talked about the way to reach what’s idealistically good. Shown in the simile of the cave (514a-520a), the Greek philosopher showed in this wise allegory of Socrates’ life how we should reach Goodness in life. For Plato, Goodness is the cause for real knowledge, the reason, and truth that Socrates reached. Plato’s goal is to stop us from thinking that these shadows are the truth and start searching for the real forms and objects in the world of reality. We as humans are only living in a world of appearances and illusion, and we should look deeper and risk thinking outside of the box which is the cave. Through this allegory, Plato criticizes somehow humans and their limitations in their vision of life. The light symbols the truth that is shone upon us, making us think that the shadows we see are all that there is to life. We should not fear to leave the cave, Plato wants us to go and search for the truth in the world of reality verbalizing a definite description of the Good is beyond his power. That is why he only used an analogy to explain himself; he is to reason and the forms: “objects of reason”, as the sun is to vision in the world of appearances. This ideal world that Plato names the form of the Good refers to God the higher power creator of this Goodness. The appearances in our world are only a shadow of the truth.

These next few sentences reported by Plato in The Republic show how we can reach God’s truth: “Socrates agreed with the democrats that ‘living well’ both individually and collectively was the highest aim: this was the goal enshrined in the Greek word eudaimonia, which means ‘happiness’ in the sense of overall flourishing and well-being. The crucial question was: how does one achieve eudaimonia? Traditionally, the answer was by cultivating virtue. […] But the four leading, or ‘cardinal’, virtues were broadly ethical: they comprised wisdom, courage, self-discipline, and justice, while others included such qualities as piety and magnanimity.” (page 26). Here Plato links this with the idea of justice, “it could mean broadly what is right”. Going back to the previously mentioned virtues, for Plato the way to reach the Goodness of Justice is if “each of the virtues is then redefined in relation to this hierarchy. Wisdom is the rule of reason; courage is the virtue of appropriate indignation; self-discipline and justice consist in harmony among the elements, with self-discipline resulting from their mutual agreement that reason should rule, and justice from each element’s restricting itself to its proper task. Justice as psychic harmony is achieved when a person’s actions are governed by his or her reason, which in healthy people is the part of the soul with which they identify their sense of self.”

The Republic links between psychology, knowledge, and metaphysics, which is the study of the world’s fundamental structure. These three are what helped Plato find the truth he accorded to life when it comes to God and evil. We are born with concepts of things that are abstract that we find in objects we encounter and recognize in real life. The world of ideas is the truth and the “real reality” for Plato, anything further than the physical world we live in. This principle could be applied to the idea of God and evil and the Goodness we witness in life. In conclusion, Plato proved that for him God is all the Goodness and after analysis, we figure out that for him the absence of Good which is the lack of justice is evil.

Augustine’s view on the subject of God and evil, and his manner of tackling it is different but not unrelated to the Platonic view. As opposed to Plato, the saint explicitly addresses the topic. He is skeptical and shows us his struggle at accepting God at the beginning of his confessions. He goes through his doubts on Manichaeism by questioning everything, he employs skepticism reminding me of Descartes’s later way of figuring things out to eliminate all unfounded principles from his rhetoric. Augustine experienced the religion of duality in his quest for his truth. He settles for the idea that “Those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise of him, because all who look for him shall find him, and when they find him, they will praise him” (book 1, chapter 1). So, at this point for Augustine, he considered the existence of God as being valid. For him, after many internal debates, God exists; God is good; God is omnipotent; God is omniscient, but how does evil exist then? Evil exists in the world. Everything was created by his God creator of all Goodness, so how come something evil like our sins were created by Him. He reflects as his past sins as a child and asks himself how God can be within him and coexist with the evil things he does.

His questioning turned into the source, the genesis, of the problem of evil, and as always, he guides us through his thought process. He concludes that God did not actually create evil and that evil technically does not exist, it is just the absence of Good. Augustine referred to books of the Platonists, translated from the Greek into Latin as he said in His Confessions (book 7, chapter 9), to give his point of view on his approach to God and evil. Empirical reasoning was found not to be enough for Augustine, and so turning to old platonic novels was a must, he tried opting for a black and white view of life. Anything was either Good or evil. Finally, Augustine came out from his Manicheism and went back to skepticism in his beliefs and inward contemplation to finally believe that to witness and experience God, we should have faith in Him. Augustine’s conclusion is that evil is an absence of good because God cannot create something bad and he reached this conclusion after he reflected on his past life and how it could be considered as sinful, and after questioning his standing and beliefs and finally how, materialistically, God can create and be present in objects and humans and all his creations.

Finally, after taking into account the methods through which these two paradigms attempt to address both questions and when contrasting Plato’s and Augustine’s way of answering their questions about God and evil we realize that Plato searches for perfection to show what God is whilst Augustine takes God as the creator of all good for granted from which derives perfection.

As for my assessment of these two methods, I think that both of them could be labeled as valid, but certainly very different. While Augustine takes us on a wild skeptic ride to find the answers, he holds our hand through the process guiding us to his answers. One could easily feel manipulated by such a method and must ask himself: are these conclusions truly what I think or has my identity merged with Augustine and I simply appropriated his beliefs? This is where Plato’s method of choice shines brighter. Through presenting us with a short story he keeps us hooked in his rhetoric. We can’t help but imagine ourselves in the positions of the different agents in the allegory. We question what we would have done should it have been us in that allegory. Would we have believed the person who escaped? Would we have come back as the person who escaped? What Plato is promoting here is for our rhetoric to shine as he takes a backseat. There is no answer given that truly explains the allegory since it is up to personal interpretation. This is due to the very essence of an allegory. By reaching our conclusions we are more satisfied and convinced of the seemingly independent process Plato has taken us on rather than Augustine’s hand holding methods.

Relate this question to contemporary debates about naturalism (analogous to Manicheism) and objective morality (analogous to the question of justice).

What is “naturalism”? “Naturalism,” has many meanings, but, for the topic of this essay, it is the definition related to nature, that is to say with the physical world and laws. “Metaphysical naturalism,” means that nature is all there is and that there is no divine power like God. Here, metaphysical naturalism is opposed to Manicheism. In the old days, we might have spoken of “materialism” rather than naturalism but with the discovery of sciences, naturalism sounds technically more correct.

When it comes to the existence of evil and naturalistic worldviews, the first problem consists of the fact that it is not evident that naturalistic worldviews have the resources to account for the very existence of evil states of affairs. The definition of evil states of affairs suggested above entails the existence of objective moral values and objective moral truths: those states of affairs are evil that, although they entail suffering, are not morally excusable. Therefore, to be able to address the obtaining of some states of affairs as evil, the naturalist has to accept that there are objective moral values or at least he has to accept that there are objective moral norms that can be used to classify the obtaining of a state of affairs as evil. But the naturalist can only account for these if he rejects the assumption that the natural sciences, which are merely descriptive, are the only way to obtain knowledge. Therefore, either the naturalist has to bite the bullet and to claim that there are no evil states of affairs – which, by all means, is absurd as part of a worldview to live by – or has to assume that there is objective morality. Based on the assumption of objective morality, however, it seems as if no further problem of evil could be formulated for naturalistic worldviews: prima facie there is nothing in a naturalistic worldview that seems likely to be troublesome when connected to the existence of evil: the naturalist can accept that indeed nature and free will are causes of evil in the world. He can argue that it is up to us to reduce the suffering caused by free will and by nature. He can argue that those who suffer from evil are indeed in an unfortunate situation. He can argue that there is no ultimate reason whatsoever why we are living in a world that is open to the existence of evil: there cannot be an ultimate reason for this because a reason would presuppose a supernatural and personal creator of the world who acts for this reason in creating the world. Prima facie, then, naturalistic worldviews do not seem to have a problem of evil. However, although on naturalistic worldviews no problem of evil can be stated that is structurally analogous to the problems of evil discussed in the context of Christian worldviews, the naturalist is troubled by a far bigger problem: he cannot elaborate a satisfying theory of evil. That is, naturalism cannot deal with the existence of evil in the way needed for naturalism to be a plausible worldview to live by. On naturalistic premises, because there is no life after death and no God, there cannot be atonement for the suffering endured in this life. All suffering from evil is, metaphysically and morally, in vain. One of the existentially most troublesome facts, on naturalistic worldviews, therefore, cannot be accounted for in a way that enables the naturalist to find an intelligible place for evil in the world at all.

Now, based on the assumption that apart from the existence of evil both Christian and naturalistic worldviews have good arguments supporting their overall case as worldviews to live by, the existence of evil turns out to be an argument for the implausibility of naturalistic worldviews when compared to the plausibility of Christian worldviews. In contrast to naturalistic worldviews, Christian worldviews have a theory of evil that enables them to address the suffering from evil in a way ‘that puts evil in its place’. And it is not only the hope for an eternal life that motivates the Christian’s theory of evil. The very concept of objective morality suggests that the intelligibility of objective morality presupposes that, ultimately, justice will be done and that those who suffer from evil will be brought into a state in which their suffering is atoned for. Since, however, this is not what we observe in this world, the belief that there is a life after death where this state will be established is a strong and rational feature of the possibility of moral life and therefore a plausible feature of a moral worldview to live by. As Kant says: “Morality in itself constitutes a system, but happiness does not, except insofar as it is distributed precisely in accordance with morality. This, however, is possible only in the intelligible world, under a wise author and regent. Reason sees itself as compelled either to assume such a thing, together with life in such a world, which we must regard as a future one or else to regard the moral laws as empty figments of the brain, since without that presupposition their necessary success, which the same reason connects with them, would have to disappear. Hence everyone also regards the moral laws as commands, which, however, they could not be if they did not connect appropriate consequences with their rule a priori, and thus carry with them promises and threats. This, however, they could not do if they did not lie in a necessary being, as the highest good, which alone can make possible such a purposive unity.”