Modern Philosophy

• Bayle → important for reviving and resetting the problem of evil in the modern world

  • cant make sense of resolutions for problem of evil

• known in town as adapt in argumentation

  • parents couldnt afford to take him to university

• attended university of tel in frnace + convertts to catholicism

  • church was excited

• after college → better in arguing than before → has consequences since france was mostly catholic

  • fleed to geneva → returns to france 1675 → edict of mantees (religious political edict that made it easy to live in countries)

• 1679 → published first book

• after bayle came back → bayle starts writing against religious intolerance

  • skeptic → extreme liberal

• dictionary → 1679 → second one 1702

• bayle → important for european enlightenment → forming debates 18th century

• Manicheans → group of hagans

  • og → group of people that thought the world we see is a product of an internal battle between good and evil

  • generally → any kind fo world view that world has two sources → good place and an evil place or good principle and an evil one

  • manacheists → they are dualosts

    • good principle and bad principle

  • standard monotheism → monist

    • good principle

    • melissus

1. What according to B, is a bad argument for Manicheaism? Whats a better one?

   • contraries are opposites in nature → bad → can only be explained by appeal to God

   • better argument → existence of evil in addition to good

2. Which side of the debate has which strength?

   • manacheists → good and bad principle

   • standard monotheism → good principle

3. What two things does every good theory need?

   • distinct ideas

     • well defined concpets; coherent

     • a priori

   • account for experience

     • a posteriori

   • A priori truth → indpenedent of experience; independent to the state of the world

     • 2+2 =4 4

   • A posteriori → dependent on the state of the world/experience

     • to see if true or false → look at the world

4. What two kinds of evils does Bayle mention

   • moral evil

     • arises from wrong doing → hurt someone steal, break promise

   • physical evil

     • natural human suffering/pain

5. What issue does Zoroaster raise for Melissus?

   • Zoroaster → how can a perfect God author any evil in the world

     • one of those perfections must not be trie

6. How does Melissus respond?

   • God authored human beings as fine and good; they misused their freedom by committing moral evil

7. How does Zoroaster challenge Melissus’s response?

   • if god gave us freedom → he wouldve known that people would do wtv they wanted

     • doesnt seem perfect as he let this happen

   • God doesnt know about the future → future is not yet to be

     • god wouldnt know for sure that wed abuse our freedom and commit moral wvil

     • if thats true → still mustve known that it was possible for us to mess up

     • setting us up to commit moral evil

   • challenges monothiest idea →

     • look at paulicians footnote*

8. Which side of the debate does Bayle take?

   • manichaeism is false; standard monoteism is true

Lecture 2

1. there exists an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing god

2. this god created everything that exists

3. evil exists

   • therefore this god created evil

Validity

• an argument is valid if the truth of all of its premises guarantees the truth of its conclusion

Soundness

• an argument is sound of its valid + all of its premises are actually true

1. God made us free

2. We misued this freedom to commit moral evils

3. God didnt force us to do that, but he brings about physical evil in response , in order to being about justice

Lecture 3

• Modern day germany

• Leibniz

  • born to educated elite family

• studied scholastic philosophy

• turned doen job to become a diplomat for roman empire

  • Leibniz sent to france

• meets an important modern philosopher espinoza

• returns back to medium sized city in germany and stays there as a librarian

• known as great optimist

  • he is a metaphysical rationalist → world can be understood

• atomism (leibniz)

  • world is a bunch of irreducible things

  • a lot of smaller things that make up world

  • independence to one another

  • no real internal relation

• - Holism

  • world is on unified thing

  • world is interconnected

• Rationalism - Empiricism

  • epistemology/ theory of knowledge

• rationalist → knowledge boils down to ideas and the intellect

  • pure thought independent of your sesnes

• empiricism → knowledge boils down to perceptions in the senses

  • perception w senses

• Rationalism - Irrationalism → dispute in metaphysics (theory of fundamental realtiy)

  • rationalism → nature of the world

    • the world is fundamentally intelligable

    • the world can be made sense of

  principle of sufficient reason → for anything, if the PSR applies to it, there is a sufficient reason or it is intelligible that thing being as it it

  • there is a reason the thing is the way that it is

  • irrationalist → cant be made sense of

    • world is fundamentally unintelligible

    • world is a mystery

    • about the character of the world itself

• for leibnz → reason for everything in the world

• Der Satz vom grund

  • question → why is there something rather than nothing

  • Why this world rather than anything else or nothing at all

1. there exists an all good, all powerful all knowing god

2. this God created all that exists

3. evil exists

• this god created evil

  • Bayles thought process

1. there exists an all, good, all-knowing, all powerful god

2. this god createed this world

• this world must be the best of all possible worlds

• Leibnz agrees with this → God wouldnt have those qualities if he didnt make the best world of all worlds

• Syllogism → argument w 2 premises or assumptions

  • 2 arguments w conclusion

• Prosyllogism → arguing for a premise

  • 1st premise → major

  • 2nd premise → minor

• Objection → A + B = C

  • how do I know that a is true

• Prosyllogism → D + E = A

1. Which objection posses the most serious challenge to leibnizs theodicy?

   • 
     

2. Which objections seems weakest?

• Human beings are given free will → misuse it through moral evil → God punishes us w physical evil to bring about justice

Lecture 4

1. Look back at an objection you found compelling. Read Leibnizs response or “answer” to it.

   • 
     

2. Does his reponse resolve/defeat the objection?

   • 
     

3. What do you find most confusing about the reading

Problem of Evil

•     Explaining where evil comes from → what is the origin of evil?

• Monotheistic form

  • how could an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God create/permit evil?

• Resolution: A story about where evil comes from or a story about how were confused that theres evil at all

Theodicy

• attempt to resolve the monotheistic problem of evil

• justisying Gods ways/the character of the world

1. Whoever produces all that is real in a thing is the cause of that thing

   1. “real” → positive only existence

      1. god

   2. “real” → positive and privative (negative) existence

      1. when you cut paper in half theyre both still real

2. God produced all that is real in sin

   1. So, God is the cause of Sin