Open End is a research seminar series run by the Centre for Philosophy of Religion, focusing on work-in-progress by members of staff and occasional visiting speakers. All are welcome.
Theodicy without Harm: Disputing the Morality Premise of Anti-Theodicy
Seyma Yazici, Assistant Professor, Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University
Monday, 18 May 2026
1.30 pm – 3 pm
Room 144, ERI building, University of Birmingham
Abstract: This paper contests the anti-theodical moral demotivation argument, which posits that practice of theodicy should be entirely abandoned due to its purported morally harmful consequences. Accordingly, since in theodicies all evil states of affairs serve the end of attaining greater goods, they cannot be ultimately harmful and cannot be considered as genuinely evil. If an action is not genuinely evil, one cannot have moral motivation fight against it. Thus, this perspective about evil undermines our moral motivation. I will argue that the anti-theodical moral demotivation argument fails and hence it doesn’t force the theodicist to give up the idea of greater good, nor does it diminish her moral motivation to fight against evil.
Firstly, I will outline the connection between the concept of the greater good and theodicies, as well as the relationship between ultimate harm and genuineness of evil, and the role this connection plays in moral motivation as set forth by the anti-theodicist. Then, I argue that the anti-theodicist’s stance on the nature of moral motivation is ambiguous. In other words, it is unclear whether the argument assumes a Humean or non-Humean theory of moral motivation and whether it makes an empirical or conceptual claim. Regardless of how we interpret the argument, I contend that it has problems.
Next, I criticize the relationship between the concepts of harming and genuineness of evil as postulated by the anti-theodicist, claiming that it does not align with our moral intuitions and moral experience. To do that, I examine prominent accounts of harm and I conclude that the theodicist could employ one of the following strategies to challenge the plausibility of this relationship: a) to argue that the anti-theodicist’s assumed account of harm (the counterfactual comparative account, CCA) is inadequate, or b) appeal to an alternative account, such as Shiffrin’s (non-comparative account, NCA) or Hanser’s (harms as losses of basic goods, LBG). Alternatively, given the absence of a unified, morally, and philosophically satisfying account of harm, c) they could reject the anti- theodicist’s connection between genuine evil and harm altogether. More plausibly, d) the theodicist can endorse a pluralistic approach to the nature of harm, claiming that there are serious and genuine instances of harm that fit one account or another.
