Francis Berger
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Berdyaev On The Origin Of Evil

11/7/2020

8 Comments

 
Taken from Nikolai Berdyaev's Freedom and the Spirit:

Pure monism and pure dualism do not understand and therefore reject the mystery of freedom; they regard evil from an exterior point of view without grasping its inward origin.

Either evil finally disappears or it appears as a force completely outside and apart from the human spirit. But if evil cannot be regarded as having its source in God, and if outside God there is no other source of being, how can the phenomenon of evil be explained.

How can this dilemma be resolved?

To the Christian way of thinking neither monism nor dualism is right, and it has its own peculiar solution of the problem of the origin of evil. For Christianity this question is connected with that of freedom and cannot be solved apart from it.

Indeed monism and dualism both involve the denial of freedom, and are thereby incapable of comprehending the phenomenon of evil. The interpretation of the mystery of evil through that of freedom is a suprarational interpretation and presents reason with an antinomy.

The source of evil is not in God, nor in a being existing positively side by side with him, but in the unfathomable irrationality of freedom, in pure possibility, in the forces concealed within that dark void which precedes all positive determination of being.

Thus evil has no basis in anything; it is determined by no possible being and has no ontological origin. The possibility of evil is latent in that mysterious principle of being in which every sort of possibility lies concealed.

The void is not evil, it is the source of every kind of life and every actualization of being. It conceals within itself the possibility of both evil and of good. An initial, irrational, and mysterious void lies at the heart of the whole life of the universe, but it is a mystery beyond the reach of logic. 


Thoughts? 
8 Comments
a kullervo
11/7/2020 20:21:41

Greetings,

Mr. Berdyaev excerpt: arguably an honest attempt at nailing the "mystery beyond the reach of logic", boiled down to fancy wordplay.

The "wise" (those who have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and use "human agency" as a cilice to torment themselves and others) cannot help themselves but to try to understand God, so they can either pledge their allegiance or downrightly deny Him.
The "not-wise" (those who try, consciously or unconsciously, to lessen the effects from said bittersweet fruit) will strive to enjoy what they have, while they have it.
If God, then God's above all. Can one believe He's taking sides?
If not-God (void?), then nothing makes sense, "anything goes and nothing matters" (thank you, J.H. Kunstler), day and night are but random events arising from a (finite? Infinite?) set of possibilities. And yet, through our senses we can perceive cycles - are we fooling ourselves?

(I'm aware - and I'm not proud of it - that my way of expressing God depicts Him as some sort of Cosmic Watchmaker; I'm working on it, more or less conscious of the fine line between Sainthood (a/k/a Enlightenment) and madness, and the blurred line between "being dumb" and "being poor in spirit".)

Cheers

Reply
Francis Berger
11/8/2020 10:26:21

@ a kullervo - God as a Cosmic Watchmaker is a deist concept with which I feel no affinity because (among many other things) it places far too much emphasis on the objective world and, subsequently, objectifies Man and creation.

For a brief and insightful overview of Berdyaev's thoughts on the primacy of freedom, I highly recommend the following essay by Richard Cocks (I'll probably link this essay on the blog as a post as well). The essay covers many of the points you have addressed in your comment:

https://voegelinview.com/nikolai-berdyaev-the-primacy-of-freedom/



Reply
a kullervo
11/8/2020 22:18:35

Dear Sir,

Once again, please accept my gratitude for your words.

There's one, and only one, useful thing a person can learn during a lifetime, and that is how to avoid becoming overwhelmed by fear; if achieved, a peaceful inner life ensues. Usually, it's a task with a steep learning curve and which, most of the times, one ends up having to tackle alone.

My comments are only words, mere travelling notes from a moth on its journey towards the Flame.

Cheers

Ingemar
11/7/2020 22:22:46

I think Augustine's formula--that evil is a willful motion towards the negation of Being--is still the best explanation.

Reply
Francis Berger
11/8/2020 10:10:19

@ Ingemar - Berdyaev would agree with you - a willful motion towards the negation of Being is evil - but this a definition of evil rather than an explanation of its source. According to Berdyaev, the ultimate source of evil - the ultimate source of everything - is freedom. This supports Augustine's explanation - after all, from where would the "willful motion towards the negation of Being' arise if freedom did not exist?

Reply
Ingemar
11/8/2020 14:41:15

Hence the liberals'/atheists' constant attempts to disprove freedom of the will; it destroys the possibility of evil.

Yet if you get rid of free will, you get rid of liberalism as well.

Liberals cannot conceive the possibility of a person choosing NOT being a liberal, so they contrive scenarios that deny illiberals agency; such as declaring dissenters mentally incompetent, like the Soviets, or the whole "false consciousness" that Marx and Sartre bandied about.

Francis Berger
11/8/2020 17:35:40

@ Ingemar - Yes. Without freedom, the only good that can exist is compelled "good", which is anything and everything but good.

Reply
Francis Berger
11/9/2020 20:53:34

@ a kullervo - That's a good point about fear. In my experience, the spiritual tends to end at the exact point fear begins.

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