THE CITY

Winter 2015
ultimate reality is good. Rather, evil is simply a part of the fabric
of life to be expected and coped with by those who have a realistic
assessment of things.
Before concluding this sketch I want to underscore the reality that
powerful streams in modern thought undermined moral evil no less
than natural evil. Indeed, the move to neutralize natural evil as bad
stuff that just happens, with little if any moral significance, spread
to human actions as human beings increasingly saw themselves as
entirely continuous with the natural order. Particularly as human
beings came to be viewed as entirely physical beings determined by
natural laws like everything else, so called moral evil was viewed
more and more as simply another unfortunate fact about the fabric
of reality.
HOLDING FAST TO THE PROBLEM
The urgent question that remains, however, is whether neutralizing
evil in this fashion and dissolving the problem of evil along these lines
is a gain or a loss. Neiman speaks eloquently of the deeply divided
condition of those who live in the wake of those streams of thought
that attempt to naturalize evil, but cannot give up moral judgments.
Lisbon ought not to have happened, but it did. Accepting this
came to seem a minimal sign of maturity, and Voltaire’s long
lament about the earthquake appeared but an elegant version
of the child’s curse at the chair over which he stumbled.
Neither earthquakes nor chairs are properly viewed as objects
of outrage because neither contains any moral properties
at all…. For those who refuse to give up moral judgments,
the demand that they stop seeking the unity of nature and
morality means accepting a conflict in the heart of being that
nothing will ever resolve. 13
Neiman leaves us with disquieting choices indeed. We can give up
the sort of moral judgments that generate the traditional problem
of evil, and quit insisting that the world ought to be a different sort
of place than it is. We can be mature adults who are no longer under
13
Ibid., 267-268.
57