Abstract
The existence of evil in the world has been a problem to man ever since his alienation from nature; that is, it is seemingly inherent in the human condition. It found its first great poetic expression in the Greek tragedies and in the Book of Job. The renewal of critical rationalism toward the end of the seventeenth century led to a reopening of the question of evil, along with many others. It seemed central to thought about the nature of the universe, man’s place in it, his destiny, his morality.
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Notes
Translated by R. H. Popkin and Craig Brush in Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary (Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1965), pp. 147–50. Copyright © 1965. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
Austin Farrer (ed.), Theodicy; essays on the goodness of God, the freedom of man, and the origin of evil, trans. E. M. Huggard (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952), pp. 57–61, 128–29, 131, 132. Reprinted by permission of Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., London, England.
Tobias Smollett (ed.), The Works of Voltaire; a contemporary version with notes, revised and modernized with new translations by William F. Fleming, introduction Oliver H. G. Leigh (New York: E. R. DuMont, 1901).
R. A. Leigh (ed.), Correspondance complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1965), vol. IV. Translated by the editor.
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© 1969 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Crocker, L.G. (1969). The Problem of Evil. In: Crocker, L.G. (eds) The Age of Enlightenment. The Documentary History of Western Civilization. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00369-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00369-3_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
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