“Thoughtlessness can be more dangerous than malice; we are more often threatened by self-serving refusal to see the consequences of conventional actions, than by defiant defiant desires for destruction. But whether they are restrained by cowardice by something noble, most people refrain from acting those desires out.” p.xii
“History, said, Bayle, is the history of the crimes and misfortunes of the human race. A God, who could have created a world that contain fewer crimes and misfortunes, and chose not to do, so, seems nothing but a giant criminal himself.” p.18
“The Newton of the mind, […], would answer King Alphonso’s objection that God’s design is flawed. It is for this reason that Liebnitz had promised that the causal connections between moral and physical evils now hidden will be made manifest of the progress of science. Suffering that seems entirely random, hence liable to make us doubt God’s goodness, would be shown to be the effect of something sin we had secretly committed. Moreover, suffering would be shown to be its self the cause of some greater good, so the network of causality now party traceable throughout the physical universe will be seamlessly extended to the moral one. If this seems far-fetched, imagine how implausible a connection between the phases of the moon, and the motions of the tides must have seemed.” p.31
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blog malevolence philosophy Arendt Bayle evil Freud Hegel Hume Kant Leibnitz Marquis de Sade Marx mass murder moral evil natural evil Nietzsche Pope Rawls reason Rousseau Schopenhauer Susan Neiman theodicy Voltaire
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