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Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy

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"Evil in Modern Thought" is a well-written and thought-provoking review of Western philosophy's struggles with the problem of Evil. Susan Neiman views this problem "as the guiding force of modern thought." Recognizing the controversiality of her contention she sub-titles her book, "An Alternative History of Philosophy." Neiman takes us along on her philosophical journey into the writings of important 17-20th century Western thinkers. She groups these thinkers under chapter titles that neatly summarize their attempts at understanding evil. While presenting the salient features of their ideas, she asks them questions you'd want to ask yourself.

Neiman states that what constitutes evil has changed - evil today stands for "absolute wrongdoing that leaves no room for account or expiation." The author asks: "How can human beings behave in ways that so thoroughly violate both reasonable and rational norms"?

Chapter 1, "Fire From Heaven" includes the thinkers who stole God's fire for man: Leibniz; Pope; Rousseau, Kant; Hegel and Marx. We start with the words of an 11-th century Castilian king embodying man's growing urge to independent thinking: "If I had been of God's counsel at the Creation, many things would have been ordered better." At first, faith reigns supreme; we meet Leibniz, who thinks God has ordered all things for the best. His work, the "Theodicy" attempts the conformity of faith with reason. But the poet, Pope, nudges God aside with:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is Man.

Rousseau was the first thinker to treat the problem of evil as a philosophical one. He states evil "is a catalog of mistaken acts that can be rectified in the future." Knowledge, not penance is needed. His account of evil was naturalistic because it required no reference to supernatural forces or sin.

Kant followed through on Pope by setting limits to mortal reasoning about God: questions about God and his purposes are out of bounds and speculating on
God is idolatry; he believed in the existence of a "Moral Law" that is supreme - and that we are duty-bound to obey. Purpose is not in nature but in Reason (we define our purposes).

For Hegel and Marx there are forces at work that drive humanity - not God but the force of History (Hegel) toward greater freedom and knowledge and the forces
of human creative work (Marx). Mankind must take responsibility for the world rather than explain it. God is man (Marx). Hegel wanted to eliminate the contingent; perhaps he epitomized, better than any other philosopher, man's quest for certainty.

Chapter 2, "Condemning the Architect" posits that God's creation is flawed. We are introduced to Bayle; Voltaire; Hume; de Sade and Schopenhauer. Voltaire railed against a benevolent world-view that tried to explain away the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 in which several thousand people died. Bayle said faith requires a crucifixion of the intellect and that God is responsible for all evil - Reason thus leaves God condemned. We commiserate with Voltaire's plaint: "we miserable little animals have the right to wonder about our misery!"

When we reach David Hume we're told the emperor has no clothes: reason is not up to the task its been assigned (reasoning about God and evil is doomed to frustration).

And what to make of de Sade: an original thinker who wrote violently pornographic works - and who rather than merely state that man is capable of horrifying and despicable acts, bestowed upon us horrifying human specimans as though to show God himself what his "wonderful" creation was capable of. As Neiman states: "he tried very hard to stop at nothing." And by doing so, he condemned the Creator himself: for how could a benevolent God create creatures the likes of those de Sade depicted.

Chapter 3, "Ends of an Illusion" recounts the condemnation of man's religious-based rationalizations by branding them anti-life (Nietzsche) and infantile (Freud). The Promethean Nietzsche thought the problem of evil was not given, but created by those unequal to life. He sought to revise our concept of guilt away from the Christian to something nearer and more accepting of the contingencies of life. Freud's view can be summarized as, "Attempts to seek some kind of sense in human misery are fueled by childlike fantasies. The need for a metaphysics is an obsessional neuroses."

When we arrive at the end of our journey, in Chapter 4, "Homeless" we seem bereft of hope. We are called to account with the horrors of the 20th century -Communism, Fascism, Stalinism, Islamism which have given us two unprecedently destructive world wars, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Holocaust and September 11. Philosophy has shut the door on further idealisms and can only peer dumbfounded at what Hegel's heirs have wrought. We cannot innocently walk past the death camps and philosophize as before. We can never go back to where we started; but have we reached a dead-end?

So what might the answer be to Neiman's opening question: "How can human beings behave in ways that so thoroughly violate both reasonable and rational norms"? As de Sade's writings reveal, we should analyze the mind's capacity for extreme levels of anger: in de Sade's case, he spewed vitriol against the idea of a benevolent God, Hitler viciously scapegoated the Jews, bin Laden despises America and wants to make Islamism the dominant force in the world. Hitler's and bin Laden's powers to instill fanatical hatred in followers was and is terrible to behold. This anger, coupled with human aggrandizement, and the fires of fanaticism feeds off itself like a feedback loop that continuously increments its energy levels until the person spins out of any rational orbit, tosses aside the "Moral Law" and willingly commits, justifies and revels in the most horrifying acts.

"Evil in Modern Thought" is a compelling inquiry into the problem of evil and will certainly stimulate your own thinking on the subject while increasing your understanding of what some of the greatest minds in Western philosophy said on the subject.

The concept of evil has occupied a significant place in philosophy throughout the history of man's thinking. Dr. Neiman has written a very interesting book that explores the problem of evil as considered from early modern thinking to the present.

The question is, of course, how do you reconcile an omnipotent, benevolent Deity with the existence of evil. She starts the discussion with Leibnitz who felt that God considered all possible worlds, and decided that the one we have is the best one possible. Evil was divided into two types: natural evil that encompassed the cruelties of nature (floods, earthquakes, droughts, etc.) and moral evil i.e. those acts that we humans are responsible for. Pierre Bayle and Voltaire eagerly tore this idea to shreds. Rousseau came along and said that man, and not God was responsible for all evil, as man had become corrupted through the progress of civilization.

Neiman goes on to discuss the thoughts of Hume, Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche, Feud, and even the Marquis de Sade. Then she delves into the topic of the Holocaust, and September 11. Of particular interest here is the thoughts of Hannah Arendt on the Holocaust, and her reflections during the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. Arendt feels that the vast majority of those involved in the Holocaust, Eichmann included, had no malicious intent in what they did. They merely performed assigned tasks, and did not really have the evil impulses that might be found in one of de Sade's novels. Evil truly had become banal, a merely boring activity of a bureaucracy. September 11th did provide evidence of evil intent, however. Those involved were determined to destroy innocent human lives.

At this point one has to wonder whether Evil as a philosophical issue has become obsolete. Arendt's reaction to evil (and Freud's too) pointed out psychological issues, and my feeling is that our study of the topic should move on to the examination of the individual and social psychology, and the cultural factors that examine our species' seeming propensity to engage in acts of "moral" evil. Author Neiman also asks the question of whether Philosophy can go any further with this topic.

One outstanding book that covers this topic is "Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century" by Jonathan Glover. He explores how humans become desensitized to evil; how we are able to dispassionately "kill from a distance." A government can decided to drop bombs on people; missiles are fired that do the task. Yet no one involved actually is engaged in any close up killing of another human.

Other books to consider are "Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty" by Roy Baumeister; "The Roots of Evil", by Ervin Straub; "Why They Kill", by Richard Rhodes; and "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People", by John Conroy. These books all explore the psychology of evil behavior.

A final comment. This book can be read and enjoyed by that ubiquitous "educated layman", but an interest in the topic of western philosophy would be helpful, as would some memory traces of what you learned in Philosophy 101.

This is the kind of book you want to buy for all your friends so you can argue about it. It's the kind of book you want to get an extra copy of so your spouse can read it at the same time and you can talk your way through it. It's the kind of book that will be a required text of most philosophy 101 classes in ten years' time, and the one text you reread ten years after graduating. It is witty without being glib, accessible without being remotely condescending. It's both brilliant and brave because it dares to remind us why anyone was interested in philosophy in the first place and why we need it.

This book offers an extraordinary odyssey for the mind: Neiman gives us a grand tour of western philosophy, from the book of Job to Hannah Arendt, from Albert Camus via Rousseau and Sade, but does not explore these authors with the standard queries of philosophy (epistemology or metaphysics). Neiman examines how these various authors have raised what are perhaps the most burning questions of our times: Why do we suffer? What is evil?
This is an exhilarating book which philosophers and non-philosophers alike can only enjoy.

BRING IT ON!!
I found this book so cogent and lucid that I couldn't put it down. And look forward to a second read. It isn't philosophy lite, but it can't be, given the subject. For a serious
reader both the style and the substance is a feast for the mind and spirit. Evil in Modern Thought manages to convey the rich complexity of modern philosophy and the childlike wonder that is it's cornerstone.

This is a very good book. It actually is a philosophy book in that it makes one think about the fundamental: Is there a purpose? It does this by describing how philosophers over the last 300 years have defined and explained suffering and evil. I had not read many of the authors but Neiman is able to frame up their thoughts in the text without too much trouble. I made a couple of sidetrips to the dictionary and some other reference sources but not many. For the authors I had read, I found her observations new and interesting. Some key themes that bounced around are:
-Is there an inherent conflict between the idea of an omnipotent God and a benevolent God?
-Is a moral choice truly moral if the person knows that there is a specific reward or punishment tied to it? So, is the only universe where free will can truly be free one where nothing can be proved?
-How much of our moral views might really be more related to psychology?
-What is the role of intention in evil? Natural disaters were considered an evil at one time but were defined away. Is being a bureaucrat within a structure that causes suffering intentional evil or not?

What I feel is missing from the book is a treatment of how non-western religions and philosophies have dealt with the problem. Including a Buddhist perspective would have been a good addition. However, because Neiman framed her discussion up the way she did, it's not failure, it's just a choice. Maybe she will deal with it elsewhere.

This book has rekindled my own dormant interest in philosophy and I now have a short list of the other books I want to read as follow-ups.

This is a very good book. If you have ever wondered "How can a good God allow such evil in the world?" or "Given that there is such evil in the world, if there is an all-powerful God, that God must be evil", then this book will be interesting for you. It takes you through the centuries-long philosophical attempts of reasonable people to make sense of evil in the world.

That said, this is not an easy book to read. It is written for an audience familiar with philosophy, as part of the larger conversations of philosophers. It isn't an introduction to philosophy.

It is readable, with patience and a good dictionary, by an ordinary reader without a degree in philosophy. And it is worth the time and effort.

There are already many books about 9/11, but I have read nothing that manages to be so relevant and so historically sharp. Evil in Modern Thought puts 9/11 in the context of three centuries of thinking about evil, and revitalizes our thinking about both of them. This book is not only deep and informative; it gives you courage.

Nieman argues that philosophy, historically speaking, is not about epistemology, as most of the textbooks claim, but that philosophers from Descartes (Leibniz) all the way into the 20th century had a different view in mind. No less than eminent New Testament scholar NT Wright has recommended this book as outstanding in surveying the issues and making the case for the thesis that theodicy is the centerpoint of philosophical questioning in the 17th through the 20th centuries. To quote him, from his own book on "Evil and the Justice of God," Wright calls Nieman's book "brilliant." (See page 20) Having read the book and been absolutely appreciative of her argument, and the clarity with which she makes her case, I have to say that Wright's judgment is correct (as I am convinced that most of his judgments are). Buy the book, its worth it.

I am not a philosophy student, but I have read some philosophy texts in the past. In light of the current world condition, I thought this book would give some interesting insight into how we view evil, and our struggle to comprehend it. It does do that, and very well in some places, but this is anything but an easy read.
As the other reviewer mentioned, you'll want to read this with your spouse so you can talk your way through it. I contend that you'll need to talk your way through it, or at least take notes, to be able to follow Ms. Neiman's writing style. Too often phases and ideas are introduced many paragraphs before they are defined. You are often left wondering as to the pertinence of a fact to the discussion at hand until it is revealed many pages further on.
If you are at all interested in the ideas behind evil, and the way it has been viewed throughout recent history, this book is a worthy addition to your library. But I hope you have a quiet place and some patience, for the style of this book is abominable.