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An Axiological-Trajectory Theodicy

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Abstract

I develop a new theodicy in defense of Anselmian theism, one that has several advantages over traditional and recent replies to the Problem of Evil. To make my case, I first explain the value of a positive trajectory: a forward-in-time decrease in ‘first-order-gratuitous’ evil: evil that is not necessary for any equal-or-greater first-order good, but may be necessary for a higher-order good, such as the good of strongly positive axiological trajectory. Positive trajectory arguably contributes goodness to a world in proportion to the magnitude of this trajectory, and worlds that contain first-order-gratuitous evil thereby have the potential to contain a strongly positive trajectory. This would arguably explain why God would permit first-order-gratuitous evils: he may be indifferent between a world with no first-order-gratuitous evil (and thus a flat trajectory) and a world with some first-order-gratuitous evil but a strongly positive trajectory. Next, I answer the most salient objections to this theodicy. Finally, I explain how this theodicy is superior to some common theodicies.

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Notes

  1. Mackie (1955: 200) and Rowe (1979: 335), on the first pages of their landmark articles, indicate that they are targeting Anselmian theism.

  2. Most philosophers are at-least-sympathetic to the core of the Problem of Evil; cf. Bourget and Chalmers 2014: 476. I assume that if most philosophers are atheists, then at-least-most philosophers are at-least-sympathetic to the Problem of Evil.

  3. A first-order good is a good that is not in itself about distributions or magnitudes of goodness or evil; see below.

  4. Strictly speaking, Leftow (2013) could count as what I’m calling a ‘radical,’ not a ‘theodicist,’ but I view him as at theodicist because he is explaining why it would be morally imperfect for God to prevent some evils. In any case, not much turns on this distinction in the rest of my paper.

  5. In Mackie’s (1955), he argues that God would have prevented any evil at all. Therefore, he regards all evils as gratuitous.

  6. Perhaps the world itself is a Moorean organic unity. Moore (1993 [1903]: 78 ff.). I am grateful to an anonymous referee for noting this.

  7. Compare Ross’s (1939: 138) two worlds.

  8. If positive trajectory in well-being across a life is important (cf. Kazez 2007: 74 ff.), then this may provide a third reason to suspect that positive trajectory of a world is axiologically valuable. I lack the space to explore this possibility here.

  9. To be sure, there are well-known riches-to-rags stories, such as in Greek tragedies. However, philosophers usually view the value of these not in esthetic terms per se, but in didactic terms (Aristotle, Poetics, 1449b). The lives themselves aren’t good, and do not clearly contribute to the goodness of the world, but our inspecting such lives makes the rest of us more virtuous. Still, this would presumably be a value of a rags-to-riches world as well.

  10. An Anselmian God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect, among other properties. See, e.g., Anselm 2001 [1077–78]: ch. V. His moral perfection would lead him to want to actualize the overall-best set of values. I do not need to take a position here on whether these values are ultimately commensurable or reducible to each other; all I need is that esthetic goodness is genuinely valuable.

  11. If it’s ever permissible to spend money on art instead of on famine-relief, then, I think, we can say that the values are commensurable. Cf. Singer 1972, and Kagan 1989: 3 ff. on moral options: points at which it is at-least-permissible to do what is non-optimific. I say ‘most’ philosophers because presumably, nearly all deontologists, plus some consequentialists (e.g., scalar consequentialists (Norcross 1997)), will believe in options.

  12. See e.g. Henderson et al. for a defense of nonconciliation or steadfastness.

  13. Penner 2006; Howard-Snyder and Howard-Snyder 1994; Rowe 2004: 112. If no-best-world or other a priori atheological arguments are sound, then my theodicy is otiose anyway. And if the Problem of Evil can be rebutted by adverting to a non-traditional Anselmianism (Almeida 2012), then my theodicy is also otiose. Therefore, I set aside such concerns. There are of course interesting reasons to dispute this assumption, or at least its alleged implications (Murphy 2017), but I lack the space to discuss them here, especially given that they would likely obviate my theodicy anyway.

  14. Strictly speaking, if the amount of first-order-gratuitous evil in these moments decreases in the right way, the total may be finite, in the way that 1 + ½ + ¼ + … = 2. But this is a priori very improbable.

  15. Galor and Moav 2007; Galor and Moav 2005; World Bank Group 2017; World Bank Group 2016: 12.

  16. Cf. the examples in Huemer 2015: § 3.

  17. E.g. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U. S. 483 (1954); Davis 1984; Langley 1999; Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003).

  18. See e.g. Pinker 2011.

  19. Democracy in which a high proportion of the citizenry is eligible to vote is rare historically. See e.g. Dahl et al. 2003; Huntington 1996.

  20. Again, see also Norberg 2016 for a useful survey of all the ways in which the world is on a positive axiological-trajectory.

  21. Data from Bourget and Chalmers (2014: 479) note a strong positive-correlation between consequentialism and naturalism, and data on the survey site they link confirm the negative correlation between theism and consequentialism.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to editors and anonymous referees for this journal for their very helpful comments. I would also like to thank attendees at the 2017 meeting of the Alabama Philosophical Society for their comments on this paper. Finally, I would like to thank Rachel Rupprecht for her comments.

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    Thomas Metcalf

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Metcalf, T. An Axiological-Trajectory Theodicy. SOPHIA 59, 577–592 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-00747-7

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