The anxious believer: Macaulay’s prescient theodicy

Recent feminists have critiqued G.W. Leibniz’s Theodicy for its effort to justify God’s role in undeserved human suffering over natural and moral evil. These critiques suggest that theodicies which focus on evil as suffering alone obfuscate how to thematize evil, and so they conclude that theodicies...

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Auteur principal: Hernandez, Jill Graper (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2013
Dans: International journal for philosophy of religion
Année: 2013, Volume: 73, Numéro: 3, Pages: 175-187
Sujets non-standardisés:B philosophy of religion
B Feminism
B divine perfection
B Leibniz
B Evil
B Theodicy
B Civil Rights
B Early modern philosophy
B problem of evil
B Moral Evil
B God
B Catherine Macaulay
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Résumé:Recent feminists have critiqued G.W. Leibniz’s Theodicy for its effort to justify God’s role in undeserved human suffering over natural and moral evil. These critiques suggest that theodicies which focus on evil as suffering alone obfuscate how to thematize evil, and so they conclude that theodicies should be rejected and replaced with a secularized notion of evil that is inextricably tied to the experiences of the victim. This paper argues that the political philosophy found in the writings of Catherine Macaulay (1731–1791) can serve as a support to Leibniz’s larger claims and can also offer a more concrete, situated notion of evil that escapes the contemporary feminist critique. Macaulay’s work on natural and moral political evil, especially, will be presented as an early modern precursor to feminism, which defends divine perfection and a pre-established harmony in the face of political evil. I then identify three unique theodicical arguments in Macaulay’s work: the pragmatically beneficial defense, the eschatalogical defense, and the redemptive defense.
ISSN:1572-8684
Contient:Enthalten in: International journal for philosophy of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s11153-012-9365-2