Comparing Three Twentieth-Century Philosophical Antitheodicies

This paper compares three twentieth-century examples of antitheodicist thought in the philosophy of religion (and, more generally, ethics): William James’s pragmatism, D.Z. Phillips’s Wittgensteinianism, and Emmanuel Levinas’s post-Holocaust ethical reflection on suffering. It is argued that all three—despite their enormous differences, given that the three thinkers discussed come from distinct philosophical traditions—share the fundamental antitheodicist argument according to which theodicies seeking to justify God’s reasons for allowing the world to contain horrible evil and suffering amount to morally problematic, or even immoral, failures to acknowledge other human beings and their meaningless suffering. Furthermore, it is suggested that this antitheodicist line of thought shared by all three is based on a Kantian transcendental analysis of the necessary conditions for the possibility of occupying a moral perspective on the world

Epistemology · Pragmatism · The Holocaust · Theology · Transcendental number · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Theology and Philosophy of Evil · War, Ethics, and Justification

• The Problem of Evil

  Peter Van Inwagen•The problem of evil•2006

  Incluir item

• Theodicies as Failures of Recognition

  Open Access•Sari Kivistö, Sami Pihlström•Religions•2017

  Incluir item

• Mediated Recognition and the Categorial Stance

  Open Access•Heikki J Koskinen•Journal of Social Ontology•2017

  Incluir item