The philosopher Paul Ricoeur evil not as a theological question, but as an existential and moral challenge requiring a response. In The Symbolism of Evil (1960), he argues that evil cannot be fully grasped through rational or propositional logic. Instead, it is best understood through myth and symbolism, which reveal the human experience of fault, guilt, and alienation.
"As a species," David Bentley Hart observes, "we learned to tell stories about the gods long before it ever occurred to us to tell stories about ourselves... It was a very long time indeed before we began to realize that we had tales to tell from which the gods might be absent, or at least within which they could remain safely hidden, without rendering the narratives incoherent."
Of those ancient days, our stories tended to events 'before our time', and often 'outside' or 'above' time or, as we like to say, "Once upon a time ... "
These stories – these histories – are far different narratives than 'histories' in the sense in which we use the term now, by which we compose "records of our remembered adventures in ordinary time" to cite Hart again, and the key here is the word 'remembered', a term which covers, if you'll allow, a multitude of sins.
Despite the rigours and limits of 'history' as we define it today, the most natural narrative idiom for making sense of our place in the world remains myth. We spin stories ...
And what sets Ricoeur apart is he investigates not the content of our myths, but the way in which our narratives – all our narratives – are attempts to encompass meaning, those meanings being the narratives of our lived experience.
In the following, rather than essay to preserve 'myth' from contemporary reductive and insipid definition, I will replace it with the term 'narrative', one that carries less irrelevant baggage.
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Ricoeur identifies four major narratives of evil that reflect how cultures have historically interpreted evil:
1] Cosmogonic narrative (eg. the Babylonian Enuma Elish) – sees evil as a primordial chaos co-eternal with good, prior even to the gods.
2] Adamic narrative – centers on human responsibility, where evil originates from a voluntary misuse of freedom, not external forces.
3] Tragic narrative (eg. Oedipus) – portrays evil as an inescapable fate, where the individual is both guilty and victim, often due to divine deception.
4] Exiled soul narrative (eg. Orpheus) – frames evil as a loss of origin and belonging, a wandering from one's true self.
Ricoeur regards the Adamic narrative as the most ethically significant because it engages human agency directly. Such evils arises not from an external force, but from a "servile will" – freedom that chooses self-enslavement. Guilt, unlike suffering, is not merely a consequence of, but a self-acknowledgment of, one's own bad choice.
The human condition, according to Ricoeur, is fundamentally fallible – marked by a "disproportion" between our finite existence and our infinite aspirations. This is not a sign of inherent evil, but of potential for moral failure.
(In the four narratives, the idea of immortality, the quest for eternal life, directly in the Cosmogonic and the Adamic, and implicit in the Tragic and the Exiled. Likewise Exile and Return, or the Outward / Inward, and so on.)
In Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology (1985), Ricoeur rejects theodicy – the attempt to justify God in the face of evil – as philosophically and spiritually inadequate. Instead, he calls for a "response" to evil, not a "solution."
"As a species," David Bentley Hart observes, "we learned to tell stories about the gods long before it ever occurred to us to tell stories about ourselves... It was a very long time indeed before we began to realize that we had tales to tell from which the gods might be absent, or at least within which they could remain safely hidden, without rendering the narratives incoherent."
Of those ancient days, our stories tended to events 'before our time', and often 'outside' or 'above' time or, as we like to say, "Once upon a time ... "
These stories – these histories – are far different narratives than 'histories' in the sense in which we use the term now, by which we compose "records of our remembered adventures in ordinary time" to cite Hart again, and the key here is the word 'remembered', a term which covers, if you'll allow, a multitude of sins.
Despite the rigours and limits of 'history' as we define it today, the most natural narrative idiom for making sense of our place in the world remains myth. We spin stories ...
And what sets Ricoeur apart is he investigates not the content of our myths, but the way in which our narratives – all our narratives – are attempts to encompass meaning, those meanings being the narratives of our lived experience.
In the following, rather than essay to preserve 'myth' from contemporary reductive and insipid definition, I will replace it with the term 'narrative', one that carries less irrelevant baggage.
+++
Ricoeur identifies four major narratives of evil that reflect how cultures have historically interpreted evil:
1] Cosmogonic narrative (eg. the Babylonian Enuma Elish) – sees evil as a primordial chaos co-eternal with good, prior even to the gods.
2] Adamic narrative – centers on human responsibility, where evil originates from a voluntary misuse of freedom, not external forces.
3] Tragic narrative (eg. Oedipus) – portrays evil as an inescapable fate, where the individual is both guilty and victim, often due to divine deception.
4] Exiled soul narrative (eg. Orpheus) – frames evil as a loss of origin and belonging, a wandering from one's true self.
Ricoeur regards the Adamic narrative as the most ethically significant because it engages human agency directly. Such evils arises not from an external force, but from a "servile will" – freedom that chooses self-enslavement. Guilt, unlike suffering, is not merely a consequence of, but a self-acknowledgment of, one's own bad choice.
The human condition, according to Ricoeur, is fundamentally fallible – marked by a "disproportion" between our finite existence and our infinite aspirations. This is not a sign of inherent evil, but of potential for moral failure.
(In the four narratives, the idea of immortality, the quest for eternal life, directly in the Cosmogonic and the Adamic, and implicit in the Tragic and the Exiled. Likewise Exile and Return, or the Outward / Inward, and so on.)
In Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology (1985), Ricoeur rejects theodicy – the attempt to justify God in the face of evil – as philosophically and spiritually inadequate. Instead, he calls for a "response" to evil, not a "solution."
