Preventing suffering

Theodicies according to which sufferings make possible greater moral goods are often subjected to this objection: If so, why should we prevent sufferings?

I am not near to having a full answer to the question. But I think this is related to a question everyone, and not just the theist, needs to face up to. For everyone should accept Socrates’ great insight that moral excellence is much more important than avoiding suffering, and yet we should often prevent suffering that we think is apt to lead to the more important goods. I don’t know why. That’s right now one of the mysteries of the moral life for me. But it is as it is.

Famously, persons with disabilities tend to report higher life satisfaction than persons without disabilities. But we all know that accepting this data should not keep us from working to prevent disability-causing car accidents. While higher life satisfaction is not the same as moral excellence, the example is still instructive. Our reasons to prevent disability-causing car accidents do not require us to refute the empirical data suggesting that persons with disabilities lead more satisfying lives. I do not know why exactly we still have on balance reason to prevent such accidents, but it is clear to me that we do.

Mother Teresa thought that the West is suffering from a deep poverty of relationships, with both God and neighbor. Plausibly she was right. We probably are not in a position to know that affluence is a significant cause of this deep poverty, but we can be open to the real epistemic possibility that it is, and we can acknowledge the deep truth that the riches of relationship are far more important than physical goods, without this sapping our efforts to improve the material lot of the needy.

Or suppose you are witnessing Alice torturing Bob, and an oracle informed you that in ten years they will be reconciled, with Bob beautifully forgiving Alice and Alice deeply repenting, with the goods of the reconciliation being greater than the bads in the torture. I think I should still stop Alice.

A quick corollary of the above cases is that consequentialism is false. But there is a deep paradox here that cuts more deeply than consequentialism. I do not know how to resolve it.

Here are some stories, none of which are fully satisfying to me in their present state of development.

Perhaps it is better if humans have a special focus on the relief of suffering and improvement of material well-being of the patient. An opposite focus might lead to an unhealthy condescension.

Perhaps it has something to do with our embodied natures that a special focus on the bodily good of the other is a particularly fitting way for humans to express love for one another. While letting another suffer in the hope of greater on-balance happiness might be better for the patient, it could well be worse for the agent and the relationship. Maybe we should think of what Catholics call the “corporal works of mercy” as a kind of kiss, or maybe even something like a sacrament.

Perhaps there is something about respect for the autonomy of the other. Maybe others’ physical good is also our business while moral development is more their own business.

I think there is more. But the point I want to make is just that this is not a special question for theism and theodicy. It is a paradox that all morally sensitive people should see both sides of.

Coming back to theodicy, note that the above speculative considerations may not apply to God as the agent. (God cannot but condescend, being infinitely above us. God is not embodied, except in respect of the Incarnation. And we have no autonomy rights against God, as God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.)

Van Inwagen on evil

Peter van Inwagen argues that because a little less evil would always serve God’s ends just as well, there is no minimum to the amount of evil needed to achieve God’s ends, and hence the arguer from evil cannot complain that God could have achieved his ends with less evil. Van Inwagen gives a nice analogy of a 10-year prison sentence: clearly, he thinks, a 10-year sentence can be just even if 10 years less a day would achieve all the purposes of the punishment just as well.

I am not convinced about either the punishment or the evil case. Perhaps the judge really shouldn’t choose a punishment where a day less would serve the purposes just as well. I imagine that if we graph the satisfaction of the purposes of punishment against the amount of punishment, we initially get an increase, then a level area, and then eventually a drop-off. Van Inwagen is thinking that the judge is choosing a punishment in the level area. But maybe instead the judge should choose a punishment in the increase area, since only then will it be the case that a lower punishment would serve the purposes of the punishment less well. The down-side of choosing the punishment in that area is that a higher punishment would serve the purposes of the punishment better. But perhaps there is a moral imperative to sacrifice the purposes of punishment to some degree, in the name of not punishing more than is necessary. Mercy is more important than retribution, etc.

Similarly, perhaps, God should choose to permit an amount of evil that sacrifices some of his ends (ends other than the minimization of evil), in order to ensure that the amount of evil that he permits is such that any decrease in the evil would result in a decrease in the satisfaction of God’s other ends. If van Inwagen is right about there not being sharp cut-offs, then this may require God to choose to permit an amount of evil such that more evil would have served God’s other ends better.

The above fits with a picture on which decrease of evil takes a certain priority over the increase of good.