Neiman, Susan. Evil in Modern Thought

Susan Neiman attempts to reconceptualize the history of modern philosophy as revolving around the problem of evil, instead of revolving around epistemology and a desire to ground representations. If philosophy is concerned with “the intelligibility of the world as a whole” (8), and evil threatens our sense to make sense of the world, then it is sensible to “reorient the discipline to the real roots [evil] of philosophical questioning.” (13)

Neiman puts forward three main arguments to support her claim. Firstly, organizing the history of philosophy around the problem of evil instead of around epistemology is more inclusive: it comprehends a larger number of texts and represents the authors’ stated intentions more faithfully (7). Secondly, because the problem of evil forms a link between metaphysics and ethics, it is better suited to conceptualize the history of philosophy (8). Thirdly, different responses given to the problem of evil can help us understand who we have become since the Enlightenment (10); specifically since the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

The Lisbon earthquake serves as the starting point of Neiman’s project because it shook the contemporary conceptualization of ‘evil’ as harm to humanity, be it natural or moral. The huge loss of life led to a shift away from theodicy, and so “the sharp distinction between natural and moral evil that now seems self-evident was born” (3). She compares the Lisbon earthquake—or rather, the resulting rise of modern consciousness—to Auschwitz, for the latter “can be said to mark its [modern consciousness’] ending” (4). Hence “the two events have been left to stand as symbols for the breakdown of the worldviews of their eras” (8), and serve as guideposts for demarcating Neiman’s project.

The book’s stated aim—to provide an alternative history of modern philosophy—is sweeping, and hence Neiman needs to limit her project. To do so, Neiman not only strictly positions her project between the Lisbon earthquake and Auschwitz, as discussed above, but delimits her discussion to the ideas of a relatively small number of well-known philosophers. Furthermore, she does not attempt to define evil or dictate our response to it, but rather she traces how our changing understanding of the problem of evil changes our understanding of ourselves. The book is written for a broad audience: no formal philosophical training is needed to follow her arguments, hoping to attract both professional philosophers and those who are not, and thus she has kept “notes and other scholarly apparatus to a minimum.” (13)

Evil in Modern Thought’s first chapter focuses on the gradual failure of theodicy in explaining evil, discussing Leibniz, Pope, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and Marx; united in their diversely expressed attempts at finding reason and justification behind the world’s appearances. Chapter two traces the philosophical reaction to the decline of theodicy, discussing Voltaire, Hume, Marquis de Sade and Schopenhauer and their defense of the claim that it is reality which produces the problem of evil, and hence life itself must be justified. Chapter three analyzes two thinkers—Nietzsche and Freud—who reject not only the thinkers from chapter one who claim reality is not what it seems to be; but also those found in chapter two, who claim it is. By doing so, these two thinkers “turned the problem of evil into a problem about us.” (206)

Chapter four focuses on “what is new about contemporary evil” (239), discussing Camus, Arendt, Critical Theory and Rawls, and two events: Auschwitz and 9/11. It is due to these latter two that chapter four is the most relevant to perpetrator studies, although the problem of evil in general, and our ever-developing understanding of it, should be productive for many in the field, too.

Author of this entry: Martijn Loos.

Neiman, S. Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton University Press, 2002.