The worst of all possible worlds

Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 · 1860Life swings between suffering and boredom.

What it claims

The world is not the work of a wise and good God.

Why

Suffering is real and no happiness cancels it; a world with uncompensated suffering would have been better not to exist.

In short

"The worst of all possible worlds" is an argument by Arthur Schopenhauer (The World, II, ch. 46; Parerga II, § 149) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: atheism). Its claim: The world is not the work of a wise and good God. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The World, II, ch. 46; Parerga II, § 149

Valid with an implicit premise

Schopenhauer's answer to Leibniz. To provoke him, he "proves" that our world is the worst possible: a little worse, and it could no longer exist. But his real argument lies elsewhere, and it differs from Hume's problem of evil. He does not only say that God should have prevented evil. He says that no happiness, however great, can buy back a single suffering. So a wise and good creator would never have launched such an enterprise: the world comes from a blind will.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a world where all the other premises are true and yet it would not be better for it not to exist: for instance if freedom, beauty or the world's order have a value not counted in pleasure and pain. A good creator might then have wanted it.

Valid with P4, which Schopenhauer does not state but assumes when he proposes to draw up the balance of joys and sufferings. The whole force of the argument lies in P2 and P3: they aim directly at believers' best defence, Leibniz's "greater good". If a single suffering can never be bought back, no greater good justifies evil. That is why the objections attack P2 (evil would only be a lack), P3 (a good can outweigh an evil) or P4 (value is not measured by pleasure and pain). The "proof" of the worst of worlds plays on the word "possible" (possible = able to last): it is an ironic retort to Leibniz, not the heart of the argument. Finally, the argument only proves that the world does not come from a wise and good God. That its source is a "blind will", as Schopenhauer says on the same page, comes from his metaphysics, not from these premises.

Analogy. An organiser plans a giant party: a thousand guests will have fun, but one will be tortured in the cellar. Schopenhauer says: the joy of the thousand does not cancel the torture of the one, and a good person who sees everything in advance does not throw that party. Leibniz would answer that the world is not a party, and that we do not know the overall plan.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Augustine (evil is only a lack of good) 421 · attacks premise 2

Evil is not a positive thing: it is a privation of good, as illness is a lack of health. Everything that exists is good insofar as it exists. So God did not create evil, and he would not allow it in his works if he were not so powerful and good as to bring good even out of evil.

Schopenhauer replies

Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer sees it as metaphysics' greatest absurdity: it is exactly the reverse. Evil is the positive, what makes itself felt; it is the good, happiness, that is negative, the mere end of a desire or a pain.

The debate goes on (our summary) An Augustinian would answer that they are not talking about the same thing. Schopenhauer describes what is felt: yes, pain makes itself felt. Augustine speaks of what evil is: a wound is felt very strongly, but it remains the lack of an intact body. Feeling a lack positively does not make evil a created thing.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Augustine describes what evil is (the lack of a good), Schopenhauer what is felt (pain is positive). An Augustinian would say that strongly feeling a lack does not make it a created thing; Schopenhauer answers that it is the good that is negative. The core disagreement: is it what is felt or the nature of things that says what evil is? An open point.

Leibniz (the greater good) 1710 · attacks premise 3

The best choice is not always the one that avoids evil: an evil may be bound up with a greater good. A general prefers a great victory with a slight wound to a state with neither wound nor victory. The world is judged as a whole, not suffering by suffering.

Schopenhauer replies

Schopenhauer

That thousands lived in happiness never cancels the anguish and death agony of a single one; and my present well-being does not undo my past sufferings. In the same chapter he calls "lame excuse" Leibniz's idea that evil sometimes brings about good, and adds, ironically, that the Theodicy is itself the proof: its only merit is to have given rise to Voltaire's Candide.

The debate goes on (our summary) A Leibnizian would answer that "compensating" does not mean "erasing". No one claims the wound disappears; the claim is that the whole, with the wound, is better than the whole without it. Refusing any comparison makes any choice impossible, even for a human being.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Schopenhauer refuses that one suffering be compensated by the happiness of other beings; Leibniz judges the world as a whole. A Leibnizian would answer that compensating is not erasing. The core disagreement: can different lives be added and compared to judge a world? The same point is discussed in Hume's argument from evil, where Schopenhauer is cited. An open point.

Objection anticipated by Schopenhauer (the optimist) attacks premise 4

Open your eyes: the world is beautiful, with its mountains, valleys, rivers, plants and animals. And it is wisely ordered: the planets do not collide, land and sea stay apart.

Schopenhauer replies

Schopenhauer

The world is not a peep-show to be looked at from outside. These things are beautiful to look at, but to be one of them is quite another matter. As for the world's fine order, it is only the minimum condition for any world to last.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Schopenhauer answers that beauty seen from outside is not what those who make it up experience, and that the world's order is only the condition for its lasting. The core disagreement: is the world judged from a spectator's point of view or from that of the living? An open point.

Nietzsche 1886 · attacks premise 4

Measuring the worth of things by pleasure and pain is staying on the surface. Hedonism, utilitarianism or pessimism: these are "foreground", naive ways of thinking. What matters is not suffering less, but what suffering makes it possible to create. Nietzsche began as Schopenhauer's disciple before breaking with him.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1886, after the author's death (1860).

Where the debate stands (our summary)Nietzsche refuses to measure value by pleasure and pain: for him, suffering can be the price of what creates value. Schopenhauer had been dead since 1860 and could not answer. An open point: no measure of value is accepted by all.

In the same family · The problem of evil

Evil is not a thing: privation and free willAugustine of Hippo