Is Life a Kind of Test?

To answer that question with Yes is to assent to a certain cosmic model. God sets the creature a test—e.g., that tree in Paradise. Humanity fails. Humanity is expelled from the Garden. We’re now undergoing the second test. Succeed: heaven. Fail: hell.

No. I’m not trying to belittle the Judeo-Christian-Muslim faiths—or any other. The great myths can be (and are) understood in very sophisticated ways. A more sophisticated rendition of that model is to view God creating humans and giving them free will. Without it, surely, they would be little more than automata (as Descartes, for instance, described animals). Are animals undergoing some kind of test? Surely they are not. They do not have any kind of choice. Therefore free will is an integral element of the model, indeed sufficient to support a test-model. We don’t need paradises, forbidden fruit, temping snakes, expulsions, or any other of the vividly painted machinery of the creation myth. The mere presence of genuine agents, thus agents with consciousness and free will, is good enough. For that model to work we don’t even need a material realm. There are angels within these traditions, said to be pure spirits—but also endowed with freedom. And, sure enough, some of them rebelled. Let me introduce you to Lucifer. The only environment they require is that of Mind.

The more subtle aspects of that question begin to emerge at this point. The creation of free agents, as such, does not automatically mean that God intends to test them. The intention clearly is that the agents will have choice. And with that power of self-determination given, all that flows from it is, of course, necessarily known by an omniscient Creator. Therefore God gives his creatures freedom, and other necessary concomitant abilities, like consciousness—and the rest is up to the creature. Here also rises another ghost, the Problem of Evil. Does the gift of free agency mean that God approves all of the evil that such agency produces when it abuses its freedom? This conundrum creates another question: Is knowledge equivalent to approval? No. Obviously not. We create all kinds of new “freedoms” legislatively—knowing full well that some will abuse them; knowing that does not demand omniscience; therefore penalties are also put in place for abuse, or let’s just call them consequences. Acts have consequences. That is also inherent in the concept of choice.

Let’s look at that word more closely. Choices are directional—in a kind of higher dimension. Choosing the good leads to light, development, and greater powers; choosing the bad leads to darkness, deterioration, loss of powers. If all choices had the same consequences, freedom of will would lose all meaning.

Is Life a Kind of Consequence? Well, that question may be closer to the truth if we take life to mean life here on earth. If I make the wrong kind of choices and find myself in a desolate space—and an angel with a flaming sword blocks the way back—well, that’s a problem, isn’t it. But am I being tested? Not in the least. I’m just experiencing consequences, limits. I can make better choices the next time I act. If I experience this life as a test, one cause of it might well be that I, ah, volunteered, manner of speaking.

The Ghost Who E'er Denies

Contradictions inhere in evil. We picture it as powerful, often as superior in intellect, but when we look at evil closely, analytically, comprehensively, it turns out to be pathetic, limited, deficient, and contemptible. The philosophers’ definition of evil as the absence of good turns out to be narrowly correct. Let’s take a moment to examine that contradiction—power and absence—before turning to other aspects of this subject.

Genuinely powerful phenomena have a neutral character: tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, mudslides. We know them to be innocent of the least intention. They represent release of energy. Droughts that come when the rains fail and devastate the land represent the opposite, denial of energy. Droughts also lack intentions; they are conditions, not real denials of anything.

But the power we associate with evil is also simply energy. But those who release or deny it are people who have what nature lacks: intention. What we mean by that word, strictly speaking, is a fusion of will and consciousness. When consciousness is missing we’re dealing with instinct. The tiger may “intend” to eat, but it has no awareness whatsoever that its victim is just another “tiger” in a different form.

People are capable of evil because they innately know—and the more sophisticated they are the more certain we can be that they do—that what they intend will cause harm to others; but they do not care. Innate knowledge and choice of action contrary to it is of the very essence of evil. If we deny this innate knowledge, we cannot really hold people responsible. Conscience must be an absolute, must be really present—or to put it more sharply must have been present at some point and then been consciously overstepped—before evil is possible. And the knowledge that I talk about is the real sort of thing, not a conceptual structure but something fused with a feeling best rendered as empathy. To harm others knowingly shows an absence of empathy, and in the philosophical “absence of good,” the real absence is that of empathy. It is a hardening of the heart. This hardening, however, does not deprive the evil-doer of power; it redirects this power to an evil expression.

It intrigues me that the personification of evil—as Mephistopheles—achieves an ambiguous but yet heroic status in Goethe’s Faust as the nineteenth century dawns (1808). It is from Faust that my post’s title comes, rendered in the same beat Goethe used, I am the ghost who e’er denies (Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint). The Enlightenment is then already in the past, and the devil is now promoted to the status of God’s agent provocateur. Mephistopheles becomes a more interesting figure than Faust; Faust wins in the end; we like this sort of story; it means the cake and eating it too.

The Faust figure appears to have been a real person who styled himself Magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus Junior. In his own time, the early sixteenth century, he was uniformly denounced as a charlatan, alchemist, moving about with a performing horse, a dog, familiar and evil spirits, and in league with the devil who eventually carried him off. In all of the earlier literary works based on Faust, the magician reaches a bargain with the devil, benefits for a set number of years with all kinds of rewards, but in the end is carried off to hell. Thus Encyclopedia Britannica informs me—and thus also end of story. In Goethe’s Faust we encounter the blessed transformation to modernity—at least if we view the story from a distance. Faust enjoys the powers that he bargains for but at the end is—saved! saved in part by the pleadings of the virtuous Gretchen, whom he seduces, gets pregnant, and who, in turn, drowns her illegitimate child—but she is saved and enters heaven anyway. There, in a role that evokes Dante’s Beatrice in Heaven, she intercedes for Faust. And all ends well.

But does it? In the earlier tales, the high sophistication, towering intellect, and all those other things Goethe lavishes on Faust do not produce the transformation. The absence of empathy corrupts. In the long run things always end badly. It might be time, again, to write another Faust, in modern dress. Ah, if only I had the energy, the poetry—and the years left for the labor—I might attempt it myself. That being beyond me, I invite a kindred spirit to do this necessary task.

Oh, yes. Perhaps I’d better define what “kindred spirit” means. It means a spirit of the new times, now in process of gestation. In those times it is Gretchen that matters, and who gives a fig for Faust. A kindred spirit will not give a dime for Faust’s ever so exalted soul if his will is bent the wrong way round. The poet will see him enter hell and wait for the doors to slam shut. And leave judgment to the Almighty.

The Wise on Evil

The Buddha found the roots of evil in desire, which makes sense. If I don’t ever want anything I’ll never experience conflict. But this observation can be rendered in milder form as well. In an environment where resources are very ample and accessible and people are few in number, the sum total of evil is bound to be less than in a very complex and crowded environment where resources are limited and indeed artificially designed to extract effort to obtain. In a vast, rich society such as ours, no sooner does a baby arrive than some parents already begin to scheme to get it into an elite kindergarten when it’s old enough. Desire rises, waves of it tower up, and the whole civilization behaves like a vast, standing tsunami of desire, millions all yelling, me, me, me. Everything’s in conflict, from social items on my calendar, to getting a word in edgewise, and it just goes on.

In a way the Buddha’s is a fundamental insight because it anchors evil in the subjective experience and leaves out all detail. Neither free will, nor time, nor yet discernment of different kinds of goods are present here, and conflicts between them. The source of desire is left unmentioned. Socrates focus on ignorance, suggesting that whatever people do they view as good; evil deeds therefore arise because apparent good is chosen over real; here it is hard to find a place for the notion of a troubled conscience prospective or otherwise. Plotinus, for whom reality is an emanation from the Ultimate and thinning out with distance, as it were, the material realm is the lowest and least containing genuine being. Hence evil is linked to the material dimension. Augustine echoes this; evil is non-being or, better yet, a privation of being. Free will and knowledge converge in Ockham. Evil for him was failure to do what what we’re obliged to do. That failure is only possible if we know both, can distinguish between them, and are free to choose. But desire is also implicit in it; why would we avoid our obligation if avoiding were not more desirable.

All of these snippets throw varying amounts of light on a vast subject. I’m cribbing here from the Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion’s article on Evil—which doesn’t mention Aristotle or Aquinas. Among moderns it mentions Schelling, of whom I’ve read nothing, and Berdyaev, whom I’ve read very carefully. Berdyaev is a half-forgotten modern apostle of free will.

A distillation of the wise does produce an interestingly strong balsamic vinegar. Desire is rooted in matter most of the time or can be linked back to the presence of others when in manifests it unwholesome but mental forms like dominance and envy, to name two. But is it evil to desire wisdom? I suspect the Buddha might have thought so. Awareness is fundamental. Animals follow their desires without the least tinge of guilt. And an awareness of time is present in it—in that the greater good we are obliged to choose (Ockham) may lie as yet unborn and hidden by the future. Socrates touches upon the paradox of good—namely that once we know it is irresistible. And here concepts like Augustine’s come in handy because he suggests that knowledge is not quite enough if we are a kind of blend of being and not-yet being, a kind of ghost in the solid eternities of matter.