PHL5040 The Problem of Evil
Reading, discussion and writing dealing with evil, defined as undeserved suffering or harm. The problem is what can philosophy say about the collective evils of wars, the slaughter by weapons of mass destruction, state acts of genocide and terrorism as well as countless individual acts of murder and cruelty? Some explanations of evil argue an irresolvable division between good and evil, to evil as the absence of good and the condition of human freedom, to theodicies that explain God's ways to sustain a non-tragic worldview. Modern philosophies attempt to find prescriptions to conquer or endure evil in the processes of history, economics, psychology and ethics and these explanations run the gamut from "radical evil," to "beyond good and evil" and contrasts between "the banality of evil" and the paralysis of moral reflection confronted by the relativity of evil.