Are some people born evil, or are we all capable of evil acts? In episode 167 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about all things evil. They think through the characterization of evil in Disney films, Leibniz’s best of all possible worlds theory, the conflation of evil with badness, and Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. How does Manichaeism attempt to resolve the problem of evil? Is evil simply the lack of good in the world? And does the concept of evil still have relevance in an age of secular ethics or is the concept too weighed down by its own theological past? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss evil people and how we might categorize them.
Works Discussed:
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Hannah Arendt, “Nightmare and Flight”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Paul Formosa, “The Problems with Evil”
Paul Formosa, “A Conception of Evil”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy
Gavin Rae, Evil in the Western Philosophical Tradition
Highlight: Leibniz on Evil
Leibniz argued that we live in the best of all possible worlds
Overthink also references this in our podcast branding: the best of all possible philosophy podcasts
He coined the term theodicy (also the title of his book) which is a defense of God’s justice by seeking to explain the existence of evil in this world
Leibniz preserves God’s omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence and says the world still has evil because there are glitches in the universe
God gave us the best world of what was possible to give
Despite theodicy’s influence, Ellie & David also discuss its limits in the episode! What do you think about Leibniz’s theory?
