St. Augustine's Problem of Evil

I know it's been a long time, but won't go into the details. Lethargy and inertia are the main culprits. This is an essay I submitted as an assignment for my humanities course - Introduction to European Philosophy. I must say that trying to understand other people's philosophies, keeping in mind the timeline, is rather engrossing.


The problem of evil has been a longstanding problem in the history of philosophy. To quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable for anyone to believe in the existence of God”. In simple terms, if God exists, why is there so much evil in the world. This essay is to understand St. Augustine’s approach and interpretation of the problem of evil, but for that, we first need to understand what the problem is.
To understand this self contradiction, we first need to define the term God. God has been interpreted in many ways since time immemorial by different schools of thought, and broadly we can divide them into two categories. One is a straightforward interpretation, adopted by most of the religions, that God is an omnipotent, omniscient being, whose existence is to satiate the basic human beliefs that good wins over evil, truth over lies. The other definition of God is a metaphysical one, where God is the prime cause for everything in this world, the driving force, and the ultimate reality to which we cannot apply our concepts and perceptions of the world. Now the problem of evil arises in the first definition of God, and very simply it can be stated as follows – If God exists as an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being-
1. He knows of the existence of evil because he is omniscient.
2. He is powerful enough to remove all evil.
3. He would want to remove all evil, because he is morally perfect.
4. Hence, evil should not exist, because God would have removed it.
However, that is not the case, thus bringing a huge question mark in front of the existence of God or rather, proving that God doesn’t exist! Thus the problem of evil puzzles many.
St. Augustine’s views revolved around the basic fact that without good, there is no evil – without darkness, there is no light. One analogy he used for this is as follows-
What happens to vices when they are not in the human body? Evil is not something that is fully real but something that is dependent on something more real, for there can’t be any disease (evil) without a body (good).
Initially, when Augustine was associated with the Manicheans, he perceived evil as a tangible material substance, with its foul and shapeless mass. However, as he increasingly distanced himself from the Manicheans over the years and embraced Christianity, he formed a view that God, who is supremely good, created all things, and though they are not supremely good, they are good when taken individually. But taken together, they are really good, because they encompass the universe which is a creation of God. In other words, evil doesn’t exist in the physical world. This transition is explained in detail.
According to the Manicheans, good and evil existed in this world individually, and it was the fight between good and the evil, and the balance between them which resulted in any action, or physical consequences. Everything that happened in this world was for maintaining the balance between good and evil. This was the first point where Augustine disagreed with the Manicheans. He said that the very fact that there is a struggle between the good and the evil shows that God isn’t omnipotent, something he very vigorously believed in. That evil could, in some way, spoil the clean white clothes of God was absolutely unacceptable to him. Also, since God created everything, he would not have created any evil, because he was supremely good.
The next point where he disagreed with the Manicheans was when they said that it was not your material substance that was doing the evil. Rather, it was more like your material substance was suffering from evil. So you had no control over your sins, as everything was part of the cosmic balance. Augustine was a strong advocate of free will, saying that humans were responsible for all their actions. The major difference in this theory and the Manichean’s theory is that while Manicheans point to God as the source of evil, Augustine points to himself as the reason for all his sins, as a result of his free will. This was a radical departure from the Manicheans, and eventually he left the unorthodox Manichean sect for the more orthodox Christianity, under the Bishop of Milan. Augustine says, "when I willed or did not will something, I was utterly certain that none other than myself was willing or not willing" -- that is, that any evil that came about as a result of his actions was his fault alone, as he was the one who made the decisions that preceded and resulted in the wrongdoing. However, this raises the even more difficult question that why is it that we have the power to reject good and adopt evil. Why has God given us such a power, when he would have wanted good all over the place in the universe? It is here that we get to know Augustine’s actual views on evil, and how he perceived it. He first asserts that anything that can be evil is good, because only good things will be liable to corruption. If something is not good, there will be nothing to corrupt. If evil were a substance, then it would have had to been good, and since evil as a substance cannot have any good associated with it (as Manicheans said), it cannot exist as something tangible.
In conclusion, St. Augustine says that his earlier theory of evil was built on flimsy grounds, and it pointed fingers at God’s omnipotence and omniscience, something that he believed in. Hence evil, instead of being something tangible, should be something more corporeal, and rather than being the complete opposite of good, it is just a lesser good. Also, God is supreme, and all the evil in the universe arises from us, due to the power accorded in us by God in the form of free will.
In my humble opinion, I concur with Augustine’s theory in saying that Manicheans’ theory of evil was wrong. Also, all evil in the world arises out of free will. But according to me, this is unavoidable because good cannot exist in this world without evil. At one point of time, one will face a choice between a good and a lesser good, and the moment that happens, the lesser good will be termed as evil. It is impossible that good is uniformly spread over the world – such an extreme utopia doesn’t exist. However, I agree with the Manicheans when they say that every action is a result of the struggle between good and evil, with a minor difference. It is not that good is fighting against evil, it’s just an individual who has to choose between good and evil, and the struggle in the thought process behind that decision.



Acknowledgements-
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
www.everything2.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.google.com
History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell


p.s. My latest addiction is the DOS Game Zatacka, or Achtung Die Kurve

Should IITs be expanded?

Read this-

IITs to introduce medical and law courses

Kapil Sibal’s recent announcements as the HRD minister have evoked a lot of response, especially from the student community. First of all, I would like to say that compared to Arjun Singh, he seems a lot better and for once I think we will see more of people-centric decisions than caste or vote bank appeasing ones.
Coming to the announcement of IITs to become universities offering medical, law and other courses, I feel that it is unnecessary more than useful/harmful. I mean, it won’t do any harm, but it won’t do any good either. Just associating with the IIT doesn’t mean that the quality of the courses will by default be good. Besides, it’s an Indian Institute of Technology and if the above move takes place, we would have to rename it. (though that is of least concern possible)

The logic behind this move seems that since IIT is a premier institute when it comes to engineering, people will automatically think that a law (purely for the sake of example) course from an IIT is also good and hence we can go on creating top-level courses for each discipline by just offering it in an IIT. This is flawed according to me, and I can give an example for that. IIT Madras offers a 5-year MA course, through the entrance exam HSE. Currently, only a small fraction of the students studying humanities (students mainly studying in South India) write this exam, even though I am sure that this course is pretty good. The reason that it is not popular is because it will take some time for its reputation to build. Its first batch is yet to pass out. The same applies to what the HRD Minister is suggesting – even though it will be offered from a premier institution, any course will take some time to become popular among students as one of the best in the country. If this is the case, then you need not club it with IIT as a university – you can as well start a new college or like IITs, a number of colleges for, say medicine or law (for which you can increase the number of National Law Schools, which are to law as IITs are to engineering). The reason for saying that IIT should offer courses is pretty much bunk, is what I am trying to say. Instead of starting new IITs all over, the government can do a favour to students by starting medical colleges on the lines of IITs, because I remember even when I was in 10th, people intending to go to the medicine field were meticulously told by family and friends, that the number of colleges in the country is low, but on the other hand engineering students are always told –“kahin pe to ho hi jaayega” (which translates to – “you will get into some college or the other”) because of the surplus engineering colleges in the country. That is the reason why engineering has become the foremost option in any parent’s mind when it comes to their child’s career.

When I was discussing this with my friend, he argued that this decision was good because slowly people will start treating humanities and commerce students on par with science students. This is pretty baseless according to me because of two reasons. One, this consequence is based upon the assumption (rather fact) that parents of students today are crazy just about the brand IIT, whatever the course may be. And two, I agree commerce and humanities are treated with disdain and there is an urgent need to remove this bias, but I feel this is not the right way. For example, would you compare a literature or economics student from Oxford or Cambridge with an engineering graduate from MIT or CalTech? You simply cannot, because they are just different, as different as apples and oranges. We should aim for a similar educational structure with world-class institutions established for all fields. Does MIT have a bachelor’s course in literature? If it has, would you be as awed as you would be of an engineering graduate from MIT? So instead of offering other courses in IITs, let us create new premier institutes for these courses. In fact, this should have been done long ago. If they are anyway planning to open new IITs, they can instead open IIMSs (Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, for example) instead.

Even in terms of infrastructure, the present IITs are almost exploding with students, struggling to cope with the increase in intake of students every year. I have the privilege of living in the campus of an IIT myself, and I have seen and appreciated the flora and fauna of the campus. In most of the cities where IITs are situated, the IIT is located in one of the greenest areas of the city. Expanding an IIT would mean that a lot of trees would have to be cut down, as a result of which an IIT loses one of its charms.

Bottom line is, instead of exploiting the people’s love for the word IIT by opening a lot of them, why don’t you try diverting it to IIMS or NLS? This will do good to a lot of students who would have otherwise ruined their life taking up engineering simply because there aren’t enough opportunities for them to pursue their higher studies in the field of their choice in a premier institute.

P.S. I have never intended to discriminate between students of any stream/discipline or treat a law/commerce/humanities student with contempt. Please don’t treat this as the high-handed rant of an IITian, just treat this as a commoners viewpoint on such a move. If this has caused offence to anyone, I apologize.

Quizzes

Before I had come here, quizzes meant a lot of fun. A guy asking random stuff about some guy who did something which is completely unrelated to what he eventually became famous for, was awesome fun for me, and I could participate (or watch) a quiz all day long. In 11th and 12th, I used to surf all these online quiz blogs, and I, along with a friend (and later another friend) started one here, though it died very soon, because of the pressure of studies in the latter half of 12th. Fortunately, here I have a lot of opportunities to pursue this passion of mine. But all this is history. Now, tell me that a quiz is coming up, and instead of jumping up and down with joy, googling, wikiing (and rereading the H2G2), I will probably ask you if you are sure, and then again, and then again............. and after that, when I am positively sure that you are right, I will remove the dust off my books, pick them up and start studying, stop sleeping in class, and ....... oh yeah, before all this, I might even die of a heart attack. You see, quizzes here refer to the periodic tests that they conduct to see how much we suck at a particular subject, and then give the best grade to those who suck the least. Honestly speaking, that’s not true for all subjects, but for most of them, this is the case. As you might have guessed by now, this post is coming from a guy who is in the middle of his quizzes, and has screwed up his first one badly.
I am not so much against the concept of 'quizzes', as I am against the way some subjects are taught here. I agree that a student of engineering might require knowing the basic concepts of quantum chemistry, but according to me, the professors just breezed through the syllabus, and I can assure you that more than half the people here would have just mugged up the formulae, vomited it out and forgotten all of it by now. And this is by no means an accusation, because I too am part of that fraction of the population. So basically, we spent 3 hours every week for 2 months, just to remember it for the end semester exams. I don't get the point of doing this.
But I can't blame this on anyone, because obviously the teachers teach with the purpose of making every student understand the concepts. It is probably our fault that we don't get it, and more importantly, we don't let them know that we haven't got it. No feedback reaches the teachers and hence batch after batch are made to recite Hamiltonians and what not, like parrots, and forget it soon.
Another interesting phenomenon that I have noticed after coming here, is that majority of the people lose the motivation to study almost completely. I mean, after slogging for 2 years preparing to get into this place, people completely lose interest in studies after coming here. I know that it's very clichéd, but it’s true. The popular reason is that once you come here, you have run out of the mental stamina that you put in for clearing JEE and you want to enjoy your life, and hence studies take a backseat. However, I don't agree with this reason. First of all, I don't think that something called mental stamina exists, and I don't think that you can get tired of studying after doing it for 2 years. That people want to enjoy life after coming to college, is also a lame reason because you can easily enjoy the availability of facilities and opportunities for extra-curricular activities here without it affecting your grade card, and there are pretty good living examples here in some of our seniors. The real reason for the drop in this motivation, I think, is the basic structure and method of academics. There is a very major and fundamental difference in the style of teaching in college and school – spoon feeding. Whether you like it or not, you must agree that we were spoon fed concepts, problems, theorems, their proofs and all, in school. However, here you are required to do a lot of homework on your concepts. In school, careful attention is almost enough to understand everything. In college, listening in a class carefully is not enough (doesn’t imply that you sleep, like I do). You have to do a lot of homework and come to class, or go back to your home and do a lot of reading. But the most crucial point here is that no one tells you all this. You are supposed to get it, like you are supposed to get the stuff they teach. Here, students lose out. Early on, due to lack of this knowledge, students start appearing lost in class, and then finally lose interest in the subject. This leads to students losing interest in academics, and just turning into high quality parrots.
I might be sounding like a big and monstrous hypocrite now as I, even after knowing all this, sleep in class and am not interested in some subjects. I won’t even try to defend myself. I caught on to this line of thought somewhere towards the end of last semester, and since then, I have been trying to develop a genuine interest in class, but in some subjects, am failing miserably. I intend to correct this as soon as possible, so as to make my stay here in college easier, and much more fun.

DISCLAIMER: All the views expressed in the post are solely of the author, and any suggestion/criticism/opinion/brick-throwing/hurling abuse is welcome in the comments section.
P.S. If you find this post weird, I tend to be philosophical like this at times, especially after I have done badly in a quiz. Don’t worry; I will be back to normal in a few days (assuming I don’t screw up any more quizzes).