The Refusal of Theodicy

Abstract

Abstract Ours has been a theodicean age, persuaded that evil is a secondary phenomenon subordinated to a greater good. This chapter provides a brief history of theodicy from Irenaeus to Hegel, contrasting it with its opposite, the Augustinian tradition, and locating neoliberal culture within it. It then identifies various strains of present-day theodicy, focussing at length on cognitivism, neuroscience, and contemporary psychology. In contrast to the contemporary theodicies, Coetzee insists on particularity, responsibility, and gravity, attentiveness and sensitivity rather than anaesthesia; on lucidity, however likely to provoke incomprehension or worse. With reference to the two texts in which he especially focuses on the morality of the human-animal relation, the chapter shows how far Coetzee’s ‘imaginative reason’ entails an art of aporiae, enigmas, ambiguities, and complexities resistant to the bland categories and empty positivities of the modern Panglosses. This art harbours radical doubts about the meaning of humanity.