The absence of good ( la, privatio boni), also known as the privation theory of evil,
is a
theological
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
and
philosophical doctrine that
evil, unlike
good, is insubstantial, so that thinking of it as an entity is misleading. Instead, evil is rather the absence, or lack ("
privation
Privation is the absence or lack of basic necessities.
Child psychology
In child psychology, privation occurs when a child has no opportunity to form a relationship with a parent figure, or when such relationship is distorted, due to their treatm ...
"), of good. This also means that everything that exists is good, insofar as it exists;
and is also sometimes stated as that evil ought to be regarded as ''nothing'',
or as ''something non-existent''.
It is often associated with a version of the
problem of evil
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encyclope ...
: if some things in the world were to be admitted to be evil, this could be taken to reflect badly on the
creator of the world, who would then be difficult to admit to be
completely good.
The merit of the doctrine in serving as a response to this version of the problem of evil is disputed.
History
Ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophy
The doctrine is sometimes said to be rooted in
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
. While Plato never directly stated the doctrine, it was developed, based on his remarks on evil, by the
Neoplatonist philosopher
Plotinus, chiefly in the eighth
tractate
A tractate is a written work dealing formally and systematically with a subject; the word derives from the Latin ''tractatus'', meaning treatise.
One example of its use is in citing a section of the Talmud, when the term ''masekhet'' () is used i ...
of his First
Ennead
The Ennead or Great Ennead was a group of nine deities in Egyptian mythology worshipped at Heliopolis: the sun god Atum; his children Shu and Tefnut; their children Geb and Nut; and their children Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. The Ennead ...
. The following quotation from that tractate, in which evil is described as ''non-being'', illustrates this:
As these are real beings, and as the first Principle is their superior, evil could not exist in such beings, and still less in Him, who is superior to them; for all these things are good. Evil then must be located in non-being, and must, so to speak, be its form, referring to the things that mingle with it, or have some community with it. This "non-being," however, is not absolute non-being. Its difference from being resembles the difference between being and movement or rest; but only as its image, or something still more distant from reality. Within this non-being are comprised all sense-objects, and all their passive modifications; or, evil may be something still more inferior, like their accident or principle, or one of the things that contribute to its constitution. To gain some conception of evil it may be represented by the contrast between measure and incommensurability; between indetermination and its goal; between lack of form and the creating principle of form; between lack and self-sufficiency; as the perpetual unlimited and changeableness; as passivity, insatiableness, and absolute poverty. Those are not the mere accidents of evil, but its very essence; all of that can be discovered when any part of evil is examined. The other objects, when they participate in the evil and resemble it, become evil without however being absolute Evil.
Ancient and medieval Christian thought
Neoplatonism was influential on
St. Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Af ...
, with whom the doctrine is most associated. Augustine, in his ''Enchiridion'', wrote:
Also, in his ''City of God'', he wrote:
Through the influence of Augustine, this doctrine influenced much of
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
thought on the subject of evil. For instance,
Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...
famously proved, in Book III of his ''
Consolation of Philosophy
''On the Consolation of Philosophy'' ('' la, De consolatione philosophiae'')'','' often titled as ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' or simply the ''Consolation,'' is a philosophical work by the Roman statesman Boethius. Written in 523 while he ...
'', that "evil is nothing".
The theologian
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the ''Corpus Areopagiticum'' or ...
also states that all being is good, in Chapter 4 of his work ''The Divine Names''.
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
concluded, in article 1 of question 5 of the First Part of his
''Summa Theologiae'', that "goodness and being are really the same, and differ only in idea".
Early modern philosophy
The philosopher
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
also agreed with the doctrine, when he said: "By ''reality'' and ''perfection'' I mean the same thing" (''
Ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
'', part II, definition VI).
He clarified this definition in the preface to part IV of the same work:
Perfection and imperfection, then, are in reality merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from a comparison among one another of individuals of the same species; hence I said above (II. Def. vi.), that by ''reality'' and ''perfection'' I mean the same thing. For we are wont to refer all the individual things in nature to one genus, which is called the highest genus, namely, to the category of Being, whereto absolutely all individuals in nature belong. Thus, in so far as we refer the individuals in nature to this category, and comparing them one with another, find that some possess more of being or reality than others, we, to this extent, say that some are more perfect than others. ..
As for the terms ''good'' and ''bad'', they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things one with another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that mourns; for him that is deaf, it is neither good nor bad. Nevertheless, though this be so, the terms should still be retained. For, inasmuch as we desire to form an idea of man as a type of human nature which we may hold in view, it will be useful for us to retain the terms in question, in the sense I have indicated.
Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
adhered to the doctrine as well, and employed it as part of his
theodical argument that the actual world is the
best of all possible worlds.
Late modern religion
The doctrine is also held by the
Baháʼà Faith
The Baháʼà Faith is a religion founded in the 19th century that teaches the Baháʼà Faith and the unity of religion, essential worth of all religions and Baháʼà Faith and the unity of humanity, the unity of all people. Established by ...
.
ʻAbdu'l-Bahá
ʻAbdu'l-Bahá (; Persian language, Persian: , 23 May 1844 – 28 November 1921), born ʻAbbás ( fa, عباس), was the eldest son of Baháʼu'lláh and served as head of the Baháʼà Faith from 1892 until 1921. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was later C ...
stated to a French Baháʼà woman:
Criticism
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
criticized the doctrine in his essay ''The Elements of Ethics'':
Sorrow
Pain
Pain is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, ...
and sorrow, mentioned by Russell in the quote above, are popular alleged counterexamples. The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Eac ...
article on "The Concept of Evil", written by philosopher Todd Calder, also says that "it seems that we cannot equate the evil of pain with the privation of pleasure or some other feeling. Pain is a distinct
phenomenological
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
experience which is positively bad and not merely not good."
Thomas Aquinas, a proponent of the privation theory,
argued against this opinion in his ''Summa Theologiae'':
..supposing the presence of something saddening or painful, it is a sign of goodness if a man is in sorrow or pain on account of this present evil. For if he were not to be in sorrow or pain, this could only be either because he feels it not, or because he does not reckon it as something unbecoming, both of which are manifest evils. Consequently it is a condition of goodness, that, supposing an evil to be present, sorrow or pain should ensue.
Opposition between appearances
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
believed that, while the doctrine is true of concepts of the understanding, it is nevertheless false about the world as it appears to the senses. In a remark to the section of the ''
Critique of Pure Reason'' entitled the "Amphiboly of the Conceptions of Reflection", he criticized the
Leibnizian
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
school of philosophy for not acknowledging this possibility of merely phenomenal opposition:
The principle: "Realities (as simple affirmations) never logically contradict each other," is a proposition perfectly true respecting the relation of conceptions, but, whether as regards nature, or things in themselves (of which we have not the slightest conception), is without any the least meaning. For real opposition, in which ''A − B is = 0'', exists everywhere, an opposition, that is, in which one reality united with another in the same subject annihilates the effects of the other—a fact which is constantly brought before our eyes by the different antagonistic actions and operations in nature, which, nevertheless, as depending on real forces, must be called ''realitates phaenomena''. General mechanics can even present us with the empirical condition of this opposition in an à priori rule, as it directs its attention to the opposition in the direction of forces—a condition of which the transcendental conception of reality can tell us nothing. Although M. Leibnitz did not announce this proposition with precisely the pomp of a new principle, he yet employed it for the establishment of new propositions, and his followers introduced it into their Leibnitzio-Wolfian system of philosophy. According to this principle, for example, all evils are but consequences of the limited nature of created beings, that is, negations, because these are the only opposite of reality. (In the mere conception of a thing in general this is really the case, but not in things as phenomena.) In like manner, the upholders of this system deem it not only possible, but natural also, to connect and unite all reality in one being, because they acknowledge no other sort of opposition than that of contradiction (by which the conception itself of a thing is annihilated), and find themselves unable to conceive an opposition of reciprocal destruction, so to speak, in which one real cause destroys the effect of another, and the conditions of whose representation we meet with only in sensibility.
References
{{reflist
Good and evil
Metaphysics of religion
Systematic theology
Bahá'à belief and doctrine