What Happened to Evil?

This chapter explores the reasons why the problem of evil was ignored in twentieth-century mainstream philosophy. It first examines the belief that the problem of evil is a religious problem and argues to the contrary that while the problem of evil is one of the major impulses behind the development of religion, religion is not the source of the problem of evil. It then argues that the problem of evil is the driving force behind most of modern philosophy. Special focus is given to nineteenth-century philosophy, which was often largely ignored in the analytic tradition precisely because it was so focused not only on understanding but also solving the problem of evil. While sometimes expressed in secular form as a claim about progress in history, the problem of evil plays a central role in the work of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche, each of whose work is briefly explored with reference to that role.