THINKING DEEP
The Suffering Equation
Some groups of people suffer more than others — and there is a better way to understand why.
In The Beginning…
Although the view I put forward in this article is in no way religious, I suppose it does owe a debt to religion, in a sense. This is because it stems from a well-known critique of religious stories about suffering that involve God. The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume famously asked (regarding God):
Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil? ¹
This question, which was perhaps initially an open question dating back as far as the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, was eventually used as an argument against the existence of God (aka the modern “problem of evil.”)
But the existence of God is not the topic of this post. Rather, it is the concept that ability (which I further divide into aspects of power and knowledge) and benevolence / malevolence are relevant to evil that is…
