Why is there evil?

Of all the mysteries of reality—and there are many—it is the starkest: Why does evil exist? This video is the beginning of a series exploring the different answers philosophers have given to this most existentially forceful of all questions. I enumerate the different kinds of answers and briefly gesture to their assumptions, but I save an in-depth consideration for videos of the near future.

• Four kinds of answers:
  • Possibility 1: there is some purpose for evil
    • Big assumption: intelligent agent with control over everything (i.e., God)
    • Big question: Is such a purpose even possible?
  • Possibility 2: the existence of evil is always an effect of prior, often seemingly unrelated evil actions
    • Big assumption: law-like connection between a person’s actions and what they suffer
    • Big question: How do we explain seemingly undeserved suffering?
  • Possibility 3: the existence of evil is absurd
    • Big assumption: absurd things are possible
    • Big question: How can we accept that evil is absurd if we don’t accept that answer for anything else in the universe?
  • Possibility 4: evil doesn’t exist
    • Big assumption: absence of explanation proves nonexistence
    • Big question: How do we explain the phenomenology of evil (i.e., the way evil appears real to us)?
• It seems like there should be a corresponding question of why good things happen, though we don’t usually ask it
• Evil is a one kind of existential shock that begins us philosophizing