Like many of the Cocoon's readers, or so I suspect, the COVID pandemic has taken a bit of a toll on me. Social distancing, teaching online, and worrying about loved ones have all left me exhausted, and so I've tried to fill my time with healthy distractions, such as recording music, reading for pleasure, and catching up on some television series and films I never got around to seeing. Anyway, one of my distractions has been to read a bit more widely in philosophy than I normally do, and it occurred to me that it might be fun to run a thread on the most interesting philosophy you've read recently, and why. I'll try to kick things off, and hope some of you choose to chime in with your own examples down in the comments section.
Although I don't normally read a whole lot in the philosophy of religion, one article that caught my eye recently is Dylan Balfour's, "Second‑personal theodicy: coming to know why God permits suffering by coming to know God himself", which is forthcoming in the International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion. Although I think it's only fitting to share Balfour's paper here, given that he's a first-year (!) PhD student at Edinburgh and this is a blog focusing on early-career philosophers, I really wanted to share his paper because I think it's great, displays a wonderful amount of epistemic integrity, addresses a problem that has always been very dear to my heart, and provides a solution to that problem that coheres pretty well with my own rather odd path through life. Let me first say a few things about Balfour's paper before I say why I personally find the answer he gives to the problem of evil oddly compelling.
Balfour's paper begins by noting that some 'anti-theodicists' have argued that theodicies (attempts to reconcile God's existence with the existence of evil) are fundamentally misguided, displaying a kind of intellectual and moral hubris. Although I've always wanted a good theodicy myself (more on this below), I've also long been sympathetic to the idea that theodicies are problematic. One of my favorite papers here is Nick Trakakis's 2008 paper, "Theodicy: The Solution to the Problem of Evil, or Part of the Problem?". Anyway, Balfour then uses some of Eleonore Stump's work on two types of knowledge (propositional vs. non-propositional knowledge) and her interpretation of the Book of Job to argue that second-personal, non-propositional knowledge of God–knowing God (and God' love) through direct personal acquaintance, which Balfour later argues can be achieved through personal suffering–provides a compelling theodicy that does not fall prey to the hubris problem.
Now, I know what you're probably thinking: you're probably deeply skeptical of this answer. As I explain below, if this is your reaction, then I don't blame you, not in the slightest! But let me say a couple of things about it. First, one of the things that I deeply admire about Balfour's paper is that he fully recognizes these epistemic limits. Balfour admits that that a non-theist will be totally unmoved by the argument (regarding it as question-begging). He also admits that theism and claims to second-personal experience of God could be completely false–the kind of nonsense that New Atheists take belief in God and religion to be. Why, then, after recognizing all of this does Balfour take his answer to be a promising one? The short answer is that, for the person who has had the kind of second-personal experience he discusses, it is a kind of 'transformative experience'–one that can help one see God, Scripture, the world, and the nature of suffering itself in a new way, provided one chooses to.
I expect that many of you probably find this terribly inadequate–and, like I said, if you do, I don't blame you. But let me try to explain why it moves me (and hence, why I like the paper so much). I was raised in a household without religion. My grandfather was staunchly opposed to belief in God and especially organized religion, and my parents both ended up 'godless hippies', as it were. All throughout childhood, I found religion perfectly baffling. I once attended church with the family of a childhood friend, and was bored to tears. Little changed as I grew older. As I grew into my teenage years and into my early and late twenties, I considered myself to be a New Atheist. Whenever religion came up, I argued–vehemently–that belief in God is epistemically and morally irresponsible (given all of the harms that poorly-founded beliefs and organized religion have visited on the world). I did made these arguments even while my parents, oddly enough, both started attending a Universalist church in their old age. I distinctly remember a dinner conversation, for instance, when I castigated them for it. I was very much my grandfather's grandson, as it were.
Despite all of this, I had always been fascinated by the problem of evil. The summer after my junior year in high school, I took a summer course at Stanford entitled "Philosophy and Literature", taught by a young Taylor Carman (Columbia University) no less. It was my first taste of philosophy, and a fascinatingly unique one at that: we read Voltaire's Candide, Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and other 'canonical and non-canonical' literature, which Carman related to perennial philosophical problems. The problem of evil transfixed me, as even though I didn't believe in God, the very existence of evil was a problem. Why should I be glad to be alive in a world with so much senseless evil? Anyway, although I wrote my paper on the problem of evil, I never found what I took to be an adequate solution to it–and when, in my early collegiate years, I experienced the death of a dear family member, I became angry at the world: the problem of evil plagued the deepest recesses of my soul.
What happened next is rather odd. Over the next dozen years or so, I was still a 'godless heathen', as it were. But, as my life went on, I went through some terrible times. Are there people who have it far worse than I did? Of course. All things considered, I have had quite a privileged existence. I would be the first to recognize that. But, for all that, I've suffered…a lot. Life pushed me to the brink. But then I had the luck and privilege of falling in love. The person I fell in love with was born and raised a Christian. She wasn't a devout Christian or anything like that. She didn't even attend church when I met her. But falling in love with her saved me, in ways that words can never suffice to explain. Yet, despite the wonderful and luck and privilege of falling in love with a wonderful person, I still faced some very difficult times–some of them serious health issues, others related to my then-flailing career. Anyway, after half a lifetime of struggling to find my way in the world, my wife suggested that we try going to church. I think she sensed that I needed something. She was right. As down as I was (more or less all of the time), attending church for the first time in my life was a revelation. It gave me an hour of silence each week to reflect on life, the world, who I was, the many mistakes I made, how I could try to do better–and get down on my knees and pray to the cosmos (I still wasn't a 'believer') for some hope. And, oddly enough, our wonderful priest's homilies routinely moved me, speaking to the things I was struggling with. And then I began to read scripture, especially the Book of Job. I read and re-read Job repeatedly. Job's wailings about life and the world seemed to me my own. And Job's eventual meeting with God (and God's speech) seemed to me simultaneously magnificent and baffling.
Anyway, at a few moments in my life here and there–whether it is in silent prayer, witnessing acts of kindness and love, or experiencing it–I've felt like I had the kind of second-personal experience of God that Balfour's paper discusses. In part because of those experiences, at some point I simply decided to take a Kierkegaardian leap of faith: I decided I would believe in God–not because my philosophical evidence told me to, but because my heart told me so. As Wittgenstein put it,
[F]aith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can say: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: It is love that believes the Resurrection. We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection; holds fast even to the Resurrection. What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption.
The problem of evil still deeply afflicts me, as in my experience it does many believers. There are still times–many times–when I struggle with the existence of evil. And yes, I still very much do have doubts about whether God really exists, which (for reasons we need not get into) I nevertheless believe to be consistent with faith. And yes, I still have deep concerns about organized religion. The point is simply that, to whatever extent I've ever felt like the problem of evil has any answer at all, it has been those moments of second-personal experience when, despite the world's horrific evils, it seemed to me that I could see God's presence in the world and somewhere in people's hearts–in the love that we are capable of, despite (or perhaps because of?) the suffering this world throws at all of us.
This, at any rate, is why I found myself moved by Balfour's paper–and why I wanted to share it here. What philosophical work(s) have you read recently that deeply interested or moved you? Why?
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