Suffering and Evil as Privation

[tonyrey]

Maybe it only appears more “positive” to you, when in fact more pain is “increasingly” going to the negative end of the spectrum where one goes farther from the good more and more.

Even moral evil seems to be “increasingly” evil the farther it goes from the moral standard. For example, we can say it’s at least morally neutral if there’s no amount stolen (which is even relatively good). If you steal 1,000 bucks, it’s a moral evil. If you steal 10,000, it’s worse. 1,000,000 is even weightier. It seems that evil is positively increasing, but in fact, it also means that one is going farther from the moral neutral where “no amount should be stolen.”

Similarly, the physical neutral/good is a pain-free state. The greater the pain, the more one is farther from/deprived of a pain-free state (the standard good).

Irrefutable!

 

[tonyrey]

I would just like to add that I think things merely because they are experienced in an extreme do not indicate they are really realities as opposed to privations. My heat example attempted to show this.

With suffering I think when we experience a great deal of suffering we are really experiencing a lack of much of what should be present and this ‘feels’ like a great deal of suffering but in reality it is just a lack of a great deal of goods. Just like when we are really cold we feel positive coldness because we are used to a certain amount of heat, and the absence of this heat is startling and easily sensed but that doesn’t make it a “reality.”

So if we continue on my peace of mind example:
I could be going for a job interview. Say as I am driving I realize I forgot a breathmint and had garlic the night before. I realize there is a coffee stain on my shirt. Then I become distracted and start thinking of all the things the interviewer could ask that I would not know the answer too. As my heart starts racing I park my car and I see someone leaving the building who apparently jsut got interviewed who looks very happy and like maybe he got offered the job. I begin to think of “what will I do if this job doesn’t work out??? where will I turn next?? What about little johnny at home who needs a special tutor that’s costing us soo much? What will my wife think…how will I tell her?”
As I walk in the job interview, surely I am experiencing tons of anxiety…but really I think we can look at all of these as lack of peace of mind about future—even though sensibly I FEEL really anxious, in reality I think its just so many uncertainties makes me feel uncomfortable…

i won’t go into trying to show each of my examples in the job interview are really lack of peace of minds but I’ll just use two to make my point:

There is no reason why a reality shouldn’t be a privation! It is a false dilemma.

 

[Psychlo]

I would say personally that even defining evil as “privation” is saying more than can be said. Evil is never by itself seen, though it evinces itself either as a devil or an angel of light… In other words, it is adaptable. It can take on diverse forms but is itself invisible. It is not this or that, neither something high or low. It merely uses these imagined devices. In that, evil mimics the supreme being in its multifarious use of devices and attendant forms. That is how deep and far-reaching the deception truly extends.

 

[tonyrey]

I would say personally that even defining evil as “privation” is saying more than can be said. Evil is never by itself seen, though it evinces itself either as a devil or an angel of light… In other words, it is adaptable. It can take on diverse forms but is itself invisible. It is not this or that, neither something high or low. It merely uses these imagined devices. In that, evil mimics the supreme being in its multifarious use of devices and attendant forms. That is how deep and far-reaching the deception truly extends.

All the most precious things in life are also intangible. Grace is never seen but it is the most powerful force there is because it is an expression of divine love.

 

[sw85]

In Thomistic thought, evil (by which I mean physical evil and moral evil) is a privation, a lack of some proper good. For the most part, this seems to me to make sense. I have trouble, however, seeing how suffering is a privation. Sure, the unhealthiness of someone with cancer, say, considered as an evil consists in a privation of the proper, healthy order of the body. But how is the suffering itself a privation? Pain seems to be a very positive reality, not merely lack of due order or proper good. How does this fit in with the theory of evil as a privation?

Given the existence of evil (i.e., given the Fall), pain and fear are positive, but contingent, goods. Without them there would be little incentive to preserve our own lives.