Philosophy- The Problem of Evil - Essay Example

Evil can be defined as anything which is morally wrong, inhuman, or brings destruction to life and liberty. The idea of evil can be applied to thoughts, actions, persons or even objects. There is an accepted relationship between good and evil that one can not exist without the other and often both are objective viewpoints and faces of the same coin. At the surface, it is a simple concept which even children will understand that evil is representative of actions and deeds which hurt other people but in theological terms it is often seen a problem that requires explanations (Surin, 2004).

I believe in the position forwarded by Nash (1994), who suggests that being certain of God’s existence is not central to the understanding of why evil exists or prevails. In the fourth chapter of his book, he outlines the idea of freewill and how the existence of human beings gives them the power to perform their actions as they choose. While God allows evil to occur, God does not condone it and the concept of justice is as attached to the idea of evil as the theme of reward is connected with the idea of moral behavior.

Rene Descartes was a famous French philosopher who took a different approach to define the problem of evil. He has been called the father of modern philosophy because of his thoughts on reason and the existence of the self. His primal work on the concept of evil is considered to be Meditations on First Philosophy which is fundamentally a search for the truth. In Meditations, Descartes seeks out facts which a person can arrive at without any doubt. Like a skeptic, he considers everything and doubts everything which can be doubted even his own senses as if he is being fooled by a dream created by a supremely powerful evil entity.

While dreaming is not explored in his works, the concept of an evil entity is examined in some detail. He considers deception to be the embodiment of evil because evil functioning as