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XIII Biennial Colloquium of the Rousseau Association FACING THE EPICUREAN
DILEMMA: José Oscar de Almeida
Marques The
great earthquake of 1755 in Lisbon caused 15,000 deaths and immense devastation.
As it took place on the All Saints Day, destroying churches full of people,
it brought about another earthquake in the optimistic mind-set of the times,
dominated by the belief in a watchful and benevolent God looking after his
creation. If God could prevent such disaster, why didn’t he do it? And how
can he be a benevolent being if he let so many innocent people perish? The
existence of evil seems to imply, according to the old Epicurean dilemma, that
God either is not omnipotent or is not a benevolent master. Voltaire’s Poème
sur le désastre de Lisbonne, and Rousseau’s Lettre à Monsieur de
Voltaire are two important attempts to provide philosophical answers to the
questions raised by the disaster. Voltaire’s alternative is to refuse the optimistic
“all is well” philosophy of Leibniz and Pope, and proclaim that genuine and
not only apparent evil is indeed loose on Earth. Rousseau undertakes the more
arduous task of defending Providence, and manages to present some original
considerations based on his idea of human liberty. In
spite of a seemingly clear-cut opposition between the authors, a closer
analysis shows that their disagreement is not so radical as it might at first
appear, and that both sides are more interested in the practical consequences
of their proposals than in a dry reenactement of old metaphysical and
theological discussions. |