Volume 16, Issue 1, Spring 2011
Truth, Reality and Religion New Perspectives In Metaphysics
Terrance Walsh, S.J.
Pages 89-116
Bonum est causa mali
a problem and an opportunity for metaphysics in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Hegel
How to explain the existence of evil if being by its very nature is good? My paper examines an interesting and perhaps significant parallel between two
exponents of the metaphysical tradition usually thought to stand widely apart, Thomas Aquinas and Hegel. I argue that Hegel’s system shares certain features of
Aquinas’ convertibility thesis (S.T. I, 5, 1), that upon closer inspection will yield a set of interesting reflections not only about the problem of evil, but also about
the limits and possibilities of metaphysical method. I discuss Aquinas’ thesis of the convertibility of being and good and how it determines his treatment of evil.
I then construct a Hegelian version of convertibility and argue that Hegel’s system fails for similar reasons to provide a satisfactory account of the problem of evil.
This leads to my central question: should the inadequacy of traditional approaches to evil call for a reversal or abandonment of metaphysics, or invite a deeper
reflection about reality that would not subsume the world’s darkness under what Hans Blumenberg once called “metaphysics of light”?