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What Milbank describes as "postmodern Kantianism" (in Zizek, Nancy, and others) wants to take evil seriously, which means "positively." They do not think Augustine's theory adequately accounts for modern evil, complaining that the Augustinian account's weakness left Europe open to the possibility of radical evil.
Milbank suggests on the contrary that this position, not the Augustinian privatio, leaves open the possibility of infinite evil. He suggests that postmodern Kantians view "the alternative good/evil in pre-ontological terms as entirely prior to the distinction between infinite and finite." This means that a finite will can will a kind of infinite good, but it also has some more disturbing consequences.
For Schelling, God is good not because He is good but because He wills to be: "God's goodness also is a loving decision." But that decision is made over-against the abstract possibility that He might choose evil. And, if good/evil is prior to infinite/finite, then the possibility of infinite evil presents itself in a way that it cannot in the Augustinian view: God is infinite Being; Being is good; therefore, God is infinitely good, and cannot possibly be evil.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 05:37 PM
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