Suffering and tragic situations have always been a part of human experience. This volume features essays from varying philosophical views on responses to tragedy, suffering and evil.
Suffering and tragic situations have always been a part of human experience. This book features essays from varying philosophical views on responses to tragedy, suffering and evil.
Many conflicting strategies for addressing such situations have been proposed in response to such tragedies. Both Stoic acceptance and cathartic lament have been advocated. Embracing skepticism—especially religious skepticism—about the goodness of reality has been one response. While some religious adherents have responded with theodicy, others have claimed that theodicy trivializes the significance of tragedy. Anger, activism, fatalism, prayer, hope, mourning, patience, and simple silence have all been proposed as responses to the tragic. The chapters in this volume explore the patterns, habits, and beliefs that constitute virtuous responses to tragedy. Virtuous in this context refers to excellent character—both moral and intellectual character—in response to the tragic.
Virtuous Responses to Suffering, Tragedy, and Evil will appeal to researchers and graduate students working in virtue ethics, philosophy of religion, theology, and ancient philosophy.
Introduction Section I: Communal Responses to Suffering, Tragedy, and
Evil
1. Tragic Lessons in Moral Suffering and Healing
2. Hope for Others as a
Good Common Project
3. Grieving as a Virtuous Response to Feminicidio
4. Love
Thy "Enemy-Neighbor": Affective Polarization and Martin Luther King Jr.'s
Notion of Agape Section II: Individual Responses to Suffering, Tragedy, and
Evil
5. Virtues that Mitigate the Deprivations of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
6.
Political Injustice and the Limits of Anger as a Response to Tragedy
7.
Platonic Sense and Tragic Sensibility
8. Fatal Resignation Section III:
Religious Responses to Suffering, Tragedy, and Evil
9. The Problem of
Mourning
10. Lament as a Virtuous Response to Tragedy
11. The Virtue of
Patience, Tragedy, and Theodicy
12. Suffering We Would Choose (So God Would
Choose for Us)
13. Spiritual Surrender and Suffering. Index
Eric J. Silverman is Professor of Philosophy at Christopher Newport University. His interests include ethics, philosophy of religion, and interdisciplinary work in psychology. He is the author, editor, or coeditor of seven books including: Sexual Ethic in a Secular Age: Is There Still a Virtue of Chastity?, Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays About Heaven, and The Supremacy of Love: An AgapeCentered Vision of Aristotelian Virtue Ethics.
