Moral Evil Research Paper

Alexx Zachary

Medieval Phil/Lit

Moral Evil

Moral evil was an issue that weighed heavily on the minds of the people of the Medieval period. Philosophers and poets alike attempted to address and understand the problem of moral evil, scrutinizing the roots of evil and the effects of evil on the body and, more importantly, on the soul. Of the philosophers that the period produced the views of St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Boethius on the problem of evil are perhaps the most notable. From the literary side of the spectrum, the problem of evil is addressed heavily in Beowulf.

Philosophers of the Medieval period struggled with the problem of evil - specifically, the existence of evil brought a question to the fore: if the world was created by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, then how was it that evil existed? To further complicate the matter, a second question branched off of the first as individuals pondered over whether or not God was ultimately the cause of evil. If God created everything, and evil exists as part of everything, then God, logically, had created evil. But this presented yet another issue, in that if God had knowingly created evil, then he could not truly be all-good. And it is these concerns that philosophers addressed.

St. Augustine recognized that the solution to the problem of evil could be found in the definition of "evil." The aforementioned logical premise was rooted in the supposed notion that evil was a thing and what Augustine set out to prove was that evil was not, in fact, a thing and therefore had not been created by God. In order to reach the desired conclusion, Augustine had to show that there was evidence proving the existence of God. This proof was required for yet another premise - if ex...

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...n the topic of happiness. Perhaps one of the most significant issues addressed was the problem of evil, including the roots and cause of evil. Important philosophical figures such as St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Boethius sought to answer this question and came to conclusions that were in agreement with one another. All three philosophers defined evil as a lack or turning away from goodness, and this was considered to be linked to the free will given to humans by God, who was not responsible for evil. The Beowulf poet also wove a discussion of moral evil into the epic, evil linked to denying/ turning away from the cultural practices observed by the warrior culture in the period. Grendel was a worse offender than his mother, and she more than Unferth. Beowulf, on the other hand, represented the moral goodness to whom the villains of the story could be compared.