El mal en el pensamiento moderno : Una historia alternativa de la filosofía

Can a world in which the innocent suffer make sense? Can we still believe in divine power or human progress if we create a taxonomy of evil? Is evil profound or banal? In this seminal work, Susan Neiman argues that these questions propelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers, from Leibniz to Hegel, sought to defend the Creator in a world where evil exists. Inevitably, that effort, combined with the work of writers such as Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade, eroded faith in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed that God had been murdered. It also produced the distinction between natural evil and moral evil that we now take for granted. Thus, contemporary philosophy considers the Holocaust the ultimate moral evil, and Neiman concludes that two basic positions run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands that we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands we do not. Beautifully written and deeply captivating, this book tells the story of modern thought as an attempt to confront evil and brings philosophy closer to anyone interested in questions about life and death, suffering and meaning.