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The nature and source of evil II



I believe it was Bertrand Russell who asked: if there is a "problem of evil" why is there not a "problem of good"?

His answer was that there is a problem of evil only for those whose premises make evil seem anomalous.  

Following up that thought: If I believed that the world is the creation of the evil Cthulhu, designed to make us miserable and mad, why are there good and joyful moments?  Why does Cthulhu let Bach's music slip through into ontology? Why are we allowed to take and feel such pride in our child's growth and accomplishments, if we are supposed to be miserable? My guess is that different Cthulhu-ists have different opinions.

Schopenhauer's Will might be thought to raise the same question.  But he might say that the Will preserves its own existence by preserving our generational cycles, so allowing the pride of parenthood is a necessary price the Will must pay to continue to have humans whom it can torture. As to music? it may have played a role in human reproduction on numerous occasions, BUT I think that is not especially true of the music Schopenhauer admired, so perhaps for him there is a genuine problem of good, and especially of the beautiful, here.   Beauty slips through into ontology against the will of the Will. 

 Auguste Comte, founder of positivism, would have said that there can be no real (scientific) problem of either good or evil, and we humans ought to give up, are already embarked on the project of giving up, on the premises that seem to create either -- theological or metaphysical. 

I should probably now give my own view.  

There is some validity to the old Platonic take, but (and  this is a big But) we have to think of the Form of the Good not as a substance, much less as an old guy on a cloud in the sky, but as a process, and we can (with Whitehead) call the relevant process prehension. We can fittingly worship prehension, considered as touching, gathering together, connecting etc.

From prehension comes the emergence of mind (from prehension to comprehension) and, so, value.  Evil may fittingly be understood as stuff that hasn't yet been prehended by other stuff, hasn't yet been incorporated into an organic whole.  A cancerous tumor is an example.  A negligent driver, having a disastrous moment of inattention in the seconds before a fatal accident, is precisely a failing to prehend/comprehend the oncoming traffic. 

Evil, contrary to pessimists, is secondary. It can be understood once the primary fact of good is understood.   


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