A Fundamental Oversight in Theodical Debates?

The problem of evil has often been split into the theoretical and pastoral problems. Analytic philosophers of religion want to bracket out pastoral considerations whereas continental philosophers, and many anti-theodicists, argue that more attention needs to be paid towards the pastoral problem of evil. However, in all of this debate, it is often assumed that there is just one understanding of what it means to engage in theoretical or pastoral discussion.

Upon closer reflection, there are at least four ways in which philosophers have wanted to frame this theoretical v. pastoral divide. This has lead to much confusion and equivocation in theodical debates.

For my BA thesis, I decided to approach this problem and try to provide a taxonomy of this debate and present a ideal framing for theodical debates going forward. Since then (about a year ago), I have then been trying to get this paper published.

During this time, I submitted this paper to three journals, each noting the relevance and importance of this topic, but providing a wide range of criticism, some more justified than others (of course, that is from a personal perspective which is inevitably biased). Either way, I set myself the task to constantly improve this paper, and finally, after one long year of revisions, submissions, and edits, I have finally gotten this paper accepted in Agatheos, the new iteration of the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion (the last one went predatory).

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A quick summary of this paper (I have copied and pasted the abstract):

This paper argues that the distinction between theoretical and pastoral problems of evil has often been used equivocally across theodical literature. This has hindered clear communication, productive disagreement, and methodological rigour. I begin by providing a taxonomy of the varying characterisations before arguing that the distinction between first-person and third-person methodologies provides the most robust and productive characterisation. While this is a prominent characterisation, I show that its implementation has been incomplete, and provide methodological guidance for both sides of the distinction. On the theoretical side, both the problem of evil and its theodical responses must be re-structured on third-person grounds without first-person interference, with any first-person factors appropriately converted before informing theoretical evaluation. On the pastoral side, the problem requires a rigorous methodology to engage with first-person concerns regarding God and suffering. Given the phenomenological tradition’s established methodology for studying first-person experience, it provides the strongest grounds for future pastoral inquiry. Closer attention to the methodological demands this characterisation imposes on both sides would advance theodical debate by providing the clarity it has lacked.

I would highly recommend you to check this paper out! I think it is quite important for theodical debates and has the potential to fundamentally defeat the theoretical problem of evil. Indeed, when my friends often ask me what my most controversial philosophical take is, I reply to them by saying I think that the theoretical problem of evil is long solved (if understood appropriately, cough, according to this paper), but all the weight lies on the pastoral problem of evil which has not been sufficiently engaged with. Indeed, I think many theodicists want to say the same thing but fundamentally lack the intuitive support when they make such an apparently bold claim.

Well, what next?

If this paper’s thesis succeeds, which I hope reading the paper would convince you that it does, then it would suggest that we need to spend more time trying to work out what a phenomenological/ first-person problem of evil would look like. Btw, I use phenomenological here both in its academic tradition (aka continental philosophy) sense and its more colloquial (study of phenomena/ that is experience) sense.

Well, that is the task that I am going to try to set myself for my MPhil thesis, which would hopefully engage both with the phenomenological tradition and with the theodical tradition, bringing together my training in both continental and analytic philosophy.

In other words, I will start learning French, probably end up in Paris quite a bit, and start reading the post-modernists.

In other words…

Is Josh Yen going through a performative male era?

Well…

That is truly something that Josh Yen himself is yet to decide.

Anyhow, that’s enough rambles from me now! I am flying back to Hong Kong tomorrow from Japan.

Please check out the pre-print of the article that I have put up on phil papers, I will, of course, update you when the article finally comes out:

https://philpapers.org/rec/YENOTC