{"id":11143,"date":"2010-11-08T10:28:31","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T10:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/11\/08\/why-evil-cant-be-an-illusion\/"},"modified":"2010-11-08T10:28:31","modified_gmt":"2010-11-08T10:28:31","slug":"why-evil-cant-be-an-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/11\/08\/why-evil-cant-be-an-illusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Evil Can&#8217;t Be an Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Suppose evil is an illusion. Then the illusion of evil is itself evil, a non-illusory evil, whence follows the falsity of &#39;Every evil is an illusion.&#39;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Or is that too quick? Then permit me some exfoliation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">1. Every evil is illusory. (Assumption for<em> reductio ad absurdum<\/em>)<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">2. The illusion that there are evils is not itself an illusion: it is&#0160;real. (See subargument A <em>infra<\/em>)<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">3. The illusion that there are evils is itself evil. (See subargument B <em>infra<\/em>)<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Therefore<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">4. There is an evil that is not illusory, namely, the illusion that there are evils.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Therefore<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">5. (1) is false: it is not the case that every evil is illusory. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><em>Subargument A<\/em>: The illusion or false seeming that there are evils, qua false seeming, is either nothing or something. If nothing, then it cannot be the case that every evil is illusory. (After all, evil must have some entitative status, however exiguous, &#0160;if &#0160;&#39;illusory&#39; is to be predicable of it.) If, on the other hand, <\/span><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">the illusion or false seeming that there are evils is something, then this false seeming, though nonveridical, exists in people&#39;s minds and is as real as can be. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><em><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><em>Subargument B<\/em>: The illusion that there are evils, which subargument A shows to be real qua false seeming, is itself evil because it is false and deceptive. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">One of the metaphysical problems of evil is that, while evil cannot be an illusion, as I have just demonstrated, it cannot be fundamentally real either, as such luminaries as Augustine and Aquinas clearly saw.&#0160; Evil has a strange &#39;in-between&#39; status, an ontologically derivative status. This is what the classical doctrine of evil as <em>privatio boni<\/em> is supposed to capture. That doctrine, though, <a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2010\/11\/evil-as-privation-and-the-problem-of-pain-part-two.html\" target=\"_self\">we have seen <\/a>to be&#0160;problematic. But progress has been made in better understanding the question, What is evil?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Suppose evil is an illusion. Then the illusion of evil is itself evil, a non-illusory evil, whence follows the falsity of &#39;Every evil is an illusion.&#39; Or is that too quick? Then permit me some exfoliation. 1. Every evil is illusory. (Assumption for reductio ad absurdum)2. The illusion that there are evils is not itself &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/11\/08\/why-evil-cant-be-an-illusion\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why Evil Can&#8217;t Be an Illusion&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-and-evil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}