(Radical) Evil & (Redemptive) Suffering?
This is a tale of two contentious and contestable concepts: radical evil and redemptive suffering. I've gone a few rounds on these internally, and I just wrote a paper for Coles that addressed some of what I want to shop around here. So while this is not quite off the cuff, needless to say this is all DRAFT/BETA quality. While these may seem to be very different concepts, both concern the meaning of pain and suffering. My basic argument is that the usual deployments of these concepts are counterproductive, and that use of the former ought to be abandoned altogether and the latter largely limited. To make this case, I'll define the concepts, problematize them, and then suggest a constructive gesture.
First, radical evil. The concept, of course, originates with Kant (see Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone). It is the necessary subjective precondition of freedom and autonomy. In order for humans to be free in the terms Kant sets out, one must not only be free not to do the good - or to do less than the good (i.e. the traditional Christian privative view of evil), one must also be free to choose evil in itself as one's "maxim. That is, one must be able to assert evil as one's guiding principle and stated objective. In subsequent literture and contemporary discourse, this takes on a slightly different inflection; especially in the aftermath of Auschwitz whose scale (both scope and severity) has been deemed qualitatively unique and historically singular. For the sake of present discussion, this latter definiton is in view. Namely, radical evil is the doing of evil as an end in itself (i.e. not in service of some greater good, or in aversion of some greater evil) and the inflicting of suffering for its own sake (i.e. sadism).
Thus, radical evil is that which must be avoided at all cost, hence the twin-dictum of the Shoa: "Never forget; never again." While these are indeed worthy aims, they are profoundly problematic. First, as Badiou and Milbank (among others) observe, this gives evil the logical, ethical, and ontological priority. This inverts the traditional Christian account of evil as privative. That is, the Good now becomes the absence of evil; the right to non-suffering. Second, and I think more importantly, radical evil transposes the sources/causes of evil into a suprahuman and transcendental register which actually debilitates resistance to the very evil that is to be avoided at all costs. Because of the horror of "modern extreme evil" (Milbank), any mundane or ordinary explanation is deemed both inadequate and obscene. Rather than being seen as the result of a "political sequence (Badiou), the Shoah remains ineluctable. And thus, irresistible. Thus, radical evil serves to distract from the mendacity of the mundane, or as Arendt puts it, "the banality of evil"; the ways in which even radical evil is/must be seen as (the consequence of) our action. (Think of the rhetoric of "the axis of evil," "operation infinite justice," "operation enduring freedom," etc.)
Now redemptive suffering. This strikes me as a concept so often invoked as to be meaningless. Everything from a migraine to MLK is described as redemptive suffering. The basic sense seems to be whatever suffering is under discussion is somehow meaningful beyond itself in such a way as to be justified by a greater good. Though not explicitly stated, this seems related to what is usually termed the "eschatological" view of theodicy and a correlative commitment to insisting this is "the best of all possible worlds." This too is problematic on a number of counts: 1) It implicitly (if not explicitly) suggests God (in)directly causes/allows suffering for the purposes of moral pedagogy; 2) This also makes the suffering itself intrinsic/necessary, rather than an accident/consequence of sin and the fall; 3) Such loose usage doesn't seem to comport with the biblical witness concerning "taking up one's cross" and having a "koinonia in Christ's suffering."
This being said, I suggest a typology based on the criteria of: 1) intrinsic/extrinsic relation between suffering and redemption; 2) causal/chronological relation between suffering and redemption; 3) self-consciousness of the suffer; and, 4) historial and/or eschatological horizon of meaning. This, I think, works out as follows:
Type | In/Ex-trinsic | Causal/Chronological | Consciousness | Horizon of Meaning
Subjective | Extrinsic | Accidental/Posterior | N/A | Personal
Intersubjective | Instrinsic | Intentional/Prior | Self-Conscious | (Inter)Personal/Eschatological
Redemptive 1 | Intrinsic | Intentional/Prior | Self-Conscious | Proclamational/Eschatological
Redemptive 2 | Intrinsic | Intentional/Prior | Unwitting/Anonymous | Eschatological
Liberative | Intrinsic | Intentional/Prior | Unwitting/Anonymous | Historical
Now inasmuch as this chart/typology is not self-interpreting, let me offer examples that can flesh this out:
SUBJECTIVE suffering is that which is usually called "natural evil." That is, the evil, pain, and suffering endemic to the human condition after the fall; for instance, cancer. While God might act redemptively in such circumstances, this action is extrinsic to the suffering itself (i.e. God's working need not be predicated on suffering). It is after and accidentally related to the circustances of suffering. The suffering is not self-consciously undertaken. And its horizon of meaning is limited to the personal.
INTERSUBJECTIVE suffering is mundane suffering undertaken out of love for neighbor. It is undertaken self-consiously/intentionally and the redemptive element is intrinsic to the suffering itself. Its meaning is personal, interpersonal, and eschatological in that it has the quality of witness. E.g. bone marrow donor.
REDEMPTIVE 1 is the traditional/biblical notion of suffering for the sake of Christ, the gospel, the kingdom. This is suffering occassioned by speech or action that is explicitly and intentionally witness. This would be persecution in the traditional sense, and also actions of civil disobedience aiming at social justice. E.g. traditional martyrdom, or Civil Rights demonstrators.
REDEMPTIVE 2 (and this is one that I wonder about) is a suffering occasioned by confrontation with the powers and principalities, without being undertaken on confessional grounds - explicit or implicit. That is speech and actions which inherently bear witness to the kingdom, and/or stand agains the powers and thus are taken up into the horizion of eschatological significance.
LIBERATIVE suffering is what might be considered "secular" redemptive suffering. That is suffering untertaken intentionally and self-consciously in the interest of a cause. This is the same as redemptive suffering (1), but limited to the horizon of history and may. or may not have eschatological significance.
In summary, redemptive suffering (in the technical/scriptural sense) is that which is undertaken self-consciously and intentionally on behalf of others as a means of witness (perhaps even unwittingly), it is intrinsically and necessarily related to the Immediate (personal, interpersonal, historical) and ultimate (eschatological) redemption achieved in/through it, and has eschatological significance beyond the individual.
First, radical evil. The concept, of course, originates with Kant (see Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone). It is the necessary subjective precondition of freedom and autonomy. In order for humans to be free in the terms Kant sets out, one must not only be free not to do the good - or to do less than the good (i.e. the traditional Christian privative view of evil), one must also be free to choose evil in itself as one's "maxim. That is, one must be able to assert evil as one's guiding principle and stated objective. In subsequent literture and contemporary discourse, this takes on a slightly different inflection; especially in the aftermath of Auschwitz whose scale (both scope and severity) has been deemed qualitatively unique and historically singular. For the sake of present discussion, this latter definiton is in view. Namely, radical evil is the doing of evil as an end in itself (i.e. not in service of some greater good, or in aversion of some greater evil) and the inflicting of suffering for its own sake (i.e. sadism).
Thus, radical evil is that which must be avoided at all cost, hence the twin-dictum of the Shoa: "Never forget; never again." While these are indeed worthy aims, they are profoundly problematic. First, as Badiou and Milbank (among others) observe, this gives evil the logical, ethical, and ontological priority. This inverts the traditional Christian account of evil as privative. That is, the Good now becomes the absence of evil; the right to non-suffering. Second, and I think more importantly, radical evil transposes the sources/causes of evil into a suprahuman and transcendental register which actually debilitates resistance to the very evil that is to be avoided at all costs. Because of the horror of "modern extreme evil" (Milbank), any mundane or ordinary explanation is deemed both inadequate and obscene. Rather than being seen as the result of a "political sequence (Badiou), the Shoah remains ineluctable. And thus, irresistible. Thus, radical evil serves to distract from the mendacity of the mundane, or as Arendt puts it, "the banality of evil"; the ways in which even radical evil is/must be seen as (the consequence of) our action. (Think of the rhetoric of "the axis of evil," "operation infinite justice," "operation enduring freedom," etc.)
Now redemptive suffering. This strikes me as a concept so often invoked as to be meaningless. Everything from a migraine to MLK is described as redemptive suffering. The basic sense seems to be whatever suffering is under discussion is somehow meaningful beyond itself in such a way as to be justified by a greater good. Though not explicitly stated, this seems related to what is usually termed the "eschatological" view of theodicy and a correlative commitment to insisting this is "the best of all possible worlds." This too is problematic on a number of counts: 1) It implicitly (if not explicitly) suggests God (in)directly causes/allows suffering for the purposes of moral pedagogy; 2) This also makes the suffering itself intrinsic/necessary, rather than an accident/consequence of sin and the fall; 3) Such loose usage doesn't seem to comport with the biblical witness concerning "taking up one's cross" and having a "koinonia in Christ's suffering."
This being said, I suggest a typology based on the criteria of: 1) intrinsic/extrinsic relation between suffering and redemption; 2) causal/chronological relation between suffering and redemption; 3) self-consciousness of the suffer; and, 4) historial and/or eschatological horizon of meaning. This, I think, works out as follows:
Type | In/Ex-trinsic | Causal/Chronological | Consciousness | Horizon of Meaning
Subjective | Extrinsic | Accidental/Posterior | N/A | Personal
Intersubjective | Instrinsic | Intentional/Prior | Self-Conscious | (Inter)Personal/Eschatological
Redemptive 1 | Intrinsic | Intentional/Prior | Self-Conscious | Proclamational/Eschatological
Redemptive 2 | Intrinsic | Intentional/Prior | Unwitting/Anonymous | Eschatological
Liberative | Intrinsic | Intentional/Prior | Unwitting/Anonymous | Historical
Now inasmuch as this chart/typology is not self-interpreting, let me offer examples that can flesh this out:
SUBJECTIVE suffering is that which is usually called "natural evil." That is, the evil, pain, and suffering endemic to the human condition after the fall; for instance, cancer. While God might act redemptively in such circumstances, this action is extrinsic to the suffering itself (i.e. God's working need not be predicated on suffering). It is after and accidentally related to the circustances of suffering. The suffering is not self-consciously undertaken. And its horizon of meaning is limited to the personal.
INTERSUBJECTIVE suffering is mundane suffering undertaken out of love for neighbor. It is undertaken self-consiously/intentionally and the redemptive element is intrinsic to the suffering itself. Its meaning is personal, interpersonal, and eschatological in that it has the quality of witness. E.g. bone marrow donor.
REDEMPTIVE 1 is the traditional/biblical notion of suffering for the sake of Christ, the gospel, the kingdom. This is suffering occassioned by speech or action that is explicitly and intentionally witness. This would be persecution in the traditional sense, and also actions of civil disobedience aiming at social justice. E.g. traditional martyrdom, or Civil Rights demonstrators.
REDEMPTIVE 2 (and this is one that I wonder about) is a suffering occasioned by confrontation with the powers and principalities, without being undertaken on confessional grounds - explicit or implicit. That is speech and actions which inherently bear witness to the kingdom, and/or stand agains the powers and thus are taken up into the horizion of eschatological significance.
LIBERATIVE suffering is what might be considered "secular" redemptive suffering. That is suffering untertaken intentionally and self-consciously in the interest of a cause. This is the same as redemptive suffering (1), but limited to the horizon of history and may. or may not have eschatological significance.
In summary, redemptive suffering (in the technical/scriptural sense) is that which is undertaken self-consciously and intentionally on behalf of others as a means of witness (perhaps even unwittingly), it is intrinsically and necessarily related to the Immediate (personal, interpersonal, historical) and ultimate (eschatological) redemption achieved in/through it, and has eschatological significance beyond the individual.
posted by DWL at 11:08 PM
5 Comments:
Derek, I can't claim to have understood everything that you wrote, but it sure looks interesting. Hopefully I'll have time to read it more carefully. But I do have a question for you: do you think that one can hold the privation theory without also holding the ontology that it has traditionally assumed? I ask, simply because Prof. Huetter pointed out that Barth couldn't do privation, because he wouldn't accept the analogy of being. So, I guess what I'm really asking is, what are your metaphysical inclinations these days?
Phil (et al),
I think I can hold subscribe to the analogia entis as Huetter defines it via Aquinas. Which he points out is official doctrine, whereas Barth's inflated understanding is Scotist. As I just finished Milbank's Theology & Social Theory, that is my operant understanding. And I think that comports with Huetter.
That is to say, the analogy of being is NOT as Barth(ians) fear a "complete conceptual and/or salvific knowledge of God apart from revelation," but instead a deeply mediated/mediating dependence on God in which all creation/creatures participate. As to the full range of epistemological implications, that is still hazy to me. But, what I take to be important metaphysically is this: 1) All being participates in and depends on God's being, therefore 2) Harmonious difference and peace are the deepest logic of creation, yet 3) This is known and/or knowable only via the triune God's own communion, which means 4) It is known/knowable only through divine self-presentation i.e. natural theology is/can be precluded in the totalizing sense that Barth(ians) fear.
But metaphysics aside, here's what I'm getting at (with apologies to Ellen Davis and Quohelet): Meaning(less), Meaning(less), all (evil & suffering) is meaning(less).
That is, radical evil insists certain extreme forms of evil, pain, and suffering can have no meaning becuase to ascribe meaning would be a failure of theodicy. In other words, it is perverse to suggest that the Shoah or the rape of a young girl is meaningful in the sense of contributing to a greater good or being part of the best of all possible worlds. It also appeals to transcendental (i.e. supra-historical/human causes) explanations.
The problem with this is that it makes such evil irresistible in that it has no causal sequence that can be identified in advance. That is, we cannot recognize the "state of exception" operant with Gitmo and Abu Ghraib as the same as that of the Reichstag Fire and Exception Acts. We cannot regonize a pedophilic rapist as a (hyperextension and sickening) epitomization of our own (selve's and culture's) eroticization of youthful feminine bodies. Thus such evil and its perpetrators are exocised as "them" - something and someone to cast out, rather than penitently recognized as"us" - the consequence/result of our own actions to be confessed and corrected.
On the other hand, casual talk of redemptive suffering too easily presumes that all suffering, pain, and evil are unproblematically caught up in the drama of salvation. In so doing, it trivializes real suffering; and especially the sort traditionally associated with martyrdom. While cancer is awful, it is not the same as being killed for the faith. It also, inadvertantly but inevitably, makes the suffering necessary in that it becomes treated as a pedagogical vehicle for sanctification. God gave.let you have cancer so that you would learn patience and trust.
This is the difference in the rendering of Romans 8.28: God works all things for good, or in all things God works for good. The former suggests God is the cause of the situation and its consumation; God gives/allows suffering in order to grow us in faith. The latter leaves the cause of the suffering alone - and more specifically denies its (onto)logical priority, and merely promises that God is present in suffering and at work. This is, I think an important distinction; both "esoterically" (with respect to theology, theory, and philsopophy) and pastorally with respect to counselling and comforting those who are in pain and grief.
Thus in the first case (radical evil) the problem is denying the historical meaning of suffering with respect to sin. In the second (redemptive suffering) the problem is self-inflating the significance of one's own pain absent any explicit and intrinsic relation to proclamation and witness.
Is the inherentness of witness within redemptive suffering 2 an act of the faithful or the merely human and is redemptive suffering 2 religion-free language?
In fact, I am going to go ahead and say (since you preface this by calling it a draft) that I think you need to articulate the differences between the middle three types. I will use quotes from you to show the ambiguity:
How is "suffering undertaken out of love for neighbor" not "action that is explicitly and intentionally witness"? How is "suffering undertaken out of love for neighbor" not "occasioned by confrontation with the powers and principalities"? Why are the unwitting only given the ability to suffer against and not suffer for?
I also think that the difference between redemptive suffering 2 and liberative suffering should also become clearer: which "suffering undertaken intentionally and self-consciously in the interest of a cause" is not "a suffering occasioned by confrontation with the powers and principalities"?
I'm only pushing you to clarity, Derek. I think the aim of the argument is right and important, but I think the descriptions of the types can be made tighter.
One other small detail: your inclusion of Arendt's "banality of evil" seems out of place because I feel like that is the rubric which we (Americans) look at the Nazi bureaucratic machine. Eichmann is the type-preeminent for Nazism, not Goebbels. The mundanity of Eichmann (in the consciousness I am reading this and you are arguing against) does not add up to Auschwitz i.e., Eichmann's culpability plus all of the other actor's culpability does not add up to Auschwitz, and so there is an ontological evil involved. I think the use of mathematics to answer evil is also important for the side I am devilishly advocating and it is a point I think you can (and should) address. Radical evil (in many places) is the unaccounted for.
Ever read David Bentley Hart's book about the tsunami, "The Doors of the Sea?" I am finishing it now. Your question is his subject. Interesting because it has an immediate context and examines various responses to evil from an Orthodox perspective.
Glad to hear you like Milbank's Social Theory. I just received it from Amazon and plan to tackle it during my travels. Do you know anything about "Radical Orthodoxy?"
Well, as usual, Wilson has sharpened the issues under present discussion. I will try to elucidate the distinctions between Redemptive 1, Redemptive 2, and Liberative. Then offer examples. And finally address his specific questions.
REDEMPTIVE 1: Suffering directly occassioned by explicit proclamation (word and deed) is redemptive suffering - traditional persecution and martyrdom. It is intentional, on behalf of others, confessional and intrinsicly related to witness. Its significance is both (inter)personal and historical, and more importantly eschatological.
(NOTE: I think the on behalf of others and confessional is a fuller expression and parsing of two concepts I previously called "consciousness".)
REDEMPTIVE 2: Suffering directly occassioned by word and deed, intentional, on behalf of others, non-confessional, but nonetheless eschatologically significant.
LIBERATIVE: Identical to Redemptive 2, but lacks eschatological significance.
It seems to me MLK or Romero are obvious examples of Redemptive 1. Inasmuch as it seems that one is clear, I will leave it at that.
The thing I wonder about is wether or not certain collectives (classes, cohorts, demographics) might not implicitly bear witness in that their social location on the underside of the powers and principalities. That is, if whiteness, mammon, and patriarchy are powers and principalities, is then blackness, poverty, and/or femininity (at least in part) implicitly proclamatory? And if so, do they then have an inherent eschatological significance in that they are proleptic of another way of being human that pulls through into the age to come. (TWO CAVEATS: 1) This is not to suggest any substantive essentialism; these could be contingent social sedimentations and formations. and 2) Nor is this to suggest that ALL aspects of such cohorts pull through to the age to come.)
Liberative suffering would then seem to be suffering that achieves certain historically significant desiderata (for which there may or may not be Christian warrant) that nonetheless are not considered to pull through to the eschaton.
For instance, one might consider same sex civil rights (including unions) to be a less punitive and inhumane (on Christian grounds) and advocate them while maintaining that such relationships do not carry through to the age to come. In a less controversial domain, we can support free exercise of religion while maintaining that in the age to come the triune God is vindicated as the true God.
Now Wilson's specific questions/concerns:
I don't think Redemptive 2 is "religion-free" language. I just think it places non-confessional words and deeds within an eschatological perspective. It is not, by the way, to suggest that such persons are therefore any sort of "anonymous Christians."
I think R2 has a for and against quality. But, I don't think suffering on someone's behalf is inherently or intrinsicly redemptive. One might self-givingly suffer on behalf of someone for quite evil purposes. For instance one might endure torture out of loyalty to a comrade while doing so for reasons of hiding a genocide.
As mentioned above, the R2/LIB distinction has to do with eschatological significance. There are forms of righteous suffering on behalf of others that may not have any significance beyond the horizon of history. (I'll note here that with this type as with all of them, the ascription or denial of eschatological significance is a judgment call, and is subject to error and ambiguity.
I am not sure why you are averse to the "banality of evil" bit. I think that when rhetoric deploys radical evil and cognate tropes and concepts, the result is to unequivocally identify oneself, one's comrades, and one's cause as good and one's foes as evil. Additionally, it suggests that such evil is the singular act of a few, rather than the aggregate of the ordinary acts of the many. And, as mentioned previously, it makes evil a sui generis phenomenon which in principle cannot be resisted preventatively, but can only be responded to after the fact.
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