POE- Part 2 (David Hume)

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher that lived in the 18th century. He was known as a an economist, historian, and philosopher. While he contributed greatly in each of these areas, most of Hume’s influence that can be felt to this day was from the field of philosophy. Hume’s work on the design argument (teleological argument), Miracles, and determinism vs. free are still studied to this day and his effects in these areas can be seen all over the vast field of philosophy. However, Hume’s formalizing the problem of evil from its varied and rudimentary forms is what we will be focusing on in this section.

Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (book XI), develops four critiques (he calls them circumstances) of the universe and poses “problems” with the different facets of the design and nature of the universe. His four circumstances taken from his Dialogues are as follows (and paraphrased by me due to the difficulty of 17th century English):

 Why is there any pain at all, and not just a diminution (lessening) of pleasure instead? Even though pain acts as a stimulant for nature to preserve itself, why couldn’t pains of hunger, thirst, etc. be substituted for just a small diminution of pleasure which would still prompt them to seek the object necessary to their subsistence?

 Why should the world be governed by natural laws instead of by divine intervention in particular circumstances that would take away some evils? Surely God could intervene in certain points of history in order to eliminate all evil and produce all good?

 Why the frugality in the distribution of gifts or abilities for things in nature to avoid predation? Why not create fewer animals and endowed them with more faculties for their happiness and preservation?

 Why the inaccurate workmanship of all the springs and principles of the great machine of nature when it appears that certain parts of the universe that seem to not serve any purpose could be removed without producing a visible defect or disorder in the whole?

While each of these circumstances were important in the development of the problem of evil, in part X in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, we see a pessimistic look at life culminate into one of the most famous philosophical reflections on God and the problem of evil: “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

I'm not going to take the time to answer any of these at this time. If anyone is interested on my thought on how each of them are answered, I'd be happy to send them to you or post it as a different post. The quote from book X is what has been the focus for many years and is what was turned into "the" logical problem of evil by J.L. Mackie.

What we see in book XI with the four circumstances is a representation of the turn of knowledge from outward to inward. Without spending time on the epistemic gap that Hume created and it's influence on Immanuel Kant i would like to acknowledge that with knowledge turned inward (the subjective turn to the self), the problem of evil becomes formalized. Whereas there were reasons given in the past about the origination and reasons for evil, almost all of them were unknowable according to Hume because they dealt with religious "ideas" and not substance or sensory data. What is noticeable about Hume's circumstances is that each of them deal in one way or another with the felicity (happiness) of man or animal and this felicity is treated as the highest attainable good. This idea is very problematic for Hume.

What Hume has done is give the catalyst for the logical problem of evil which J.L. Mackie formalizes in the early 1900's. Hume put a name and some philosophical swagger behind the problem of evil.

J.L. Mackie formalized the problem of evil (namely the quote from book X) into what he considered a logical contradiction for the God of Christianity. We will be discussing him next.