An Essay on Man: Evil for Good? Good for Evil?

All partial evil, Universal Good

-Alexander Pope

(An Essay on Man ln. 292)

The existence of “evil” has always been at odds with the concept of an omnipotent divine force. Such a dichotomy has spawned a rich literary tradition addressing the battle of “good” versus “evil”. Ancient thinkers such as Plato attributed the disorder and “evil” within the world to something Other than God. Other philosophers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, believe that concepts such as “good” and “evil” are nothing more than ideas conjured by humans to disassociate the nothingness that is the reality of being.  A differing opinion lies with Alexander Pope and his contemporaries. They espoused a divinely ordered system in which humankind is not able to see beyond their given station in a great chain of order (ranging from the lowest of lifeforms up to God). As Pope writes in An Essay on Man, “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, / Whose body Nature is; and God the soul” (Pope, lns. 267-268). Being limited by their own position within the chain humankind cannot understand the purpose which the concept of “evil” plays in the grander scheme of things. Pope postulates that mankind’s understanding of “evil” is essentially a teleological argument. Meaning that the outcome or goal of evil is not comprehensible by humankind but nonetheless serves some greater unknown purpose. By allocating evil into this category Pope is able to justify the existence of an anthropomorphic deity harboring supreme “goodness” and their subsequent allowance of “evil”.

First turning an eye to the ancient world we will take a look at how the ancient Greeks answered the question of why “evil” exists. Plato addressed this issue in Book II of the Republic attributing the existence of “evil” to something outside of God. Plato states, “Since [God] is good he cannot be responsible for everything, as is commonly said,” furthermore, “He and he alone must be held responsible for the good things, but responsibility for bad things must be looked for elsewhere and not attributed to God” (Plato 48). The locus of this “other” place isn’t directly addressed by Plato, nonetheless he was decidedly satisfied with such an answer.

Other, more contemporary thinkers, decided that concepts such as “good,” “evil” and even God are hollow and only come into being due to the thoughts and dispositions of man. Such thinkers believe that it was humankind which first created a dichotomy between “good” and “evil”. Furthermore, humankind has quite often created anthropomorphic figures embodying one or the other (for instance God and Satan). The infamous 19th century thinker Friedrich Nietzsche noted this phenomenon in many of his works including in On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense. In the work he posits that, “[people] are deeply immersed in illusions and dream-images; their eyes merely glide across the surface of things and see ‘forms’; nowhere does their perception lead to truth” (Nietzsche pg. 765). An argument can be made that the concepts of “good” and “evil” are illusions helping people to justify the various emotional states associated with happenings of their lives. People believe that certain actions are “good” or “evil” for a myriad of reasons but such thoughts are shattered when a wide array of cultures and time periods are exposed by the work of anthropologists. Both “good” and “bad” are subjective terms created by various societies throughout time.

            In Nietzsche’s work Human, All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits he flips the notions of “good” and “evil” on their head showing how they can be framed in a subjective way. He writes, “Is good perhaps evil? And God only an invention and subtlety of the devil? Is everything, in the last resort, false? And if we are dupes are we not on that very account dupers also? Must we not be dupers also?” (Nietzsche ch. 3). Perhaps it is humankind who has created the distinction between “good” and “evil”, order and disorder, right and wrong, etc.. If “good” and “evil” can be framed in opposing ways who is to say what exactly is “evil”?

With these two options in mind we can now think about Alexander Popes’ idea as a differing point between these two theories. Instead of Plato’s ambiguous “evil Other” and Nietzsche’s human-made mirage Pope offers a third option for the existence of “evil”.

Pope espouses that within the scope of our link we cannot begin to fathom the other links of the great chain. It is with this in mind that the notion of “evil” is transformed into something that appears to be “evil” when viewed through a human lens—but may be serving some larger purpose when viewed macroscopically. Pope, in his work An Essay on Man, alludes to this in the following lines:

So Man, who here seems principle alone,

Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,

Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;

‘Tis but part we see, and not a whole. (Alexander Pope, lns. 57-60)

The labors of humankind are only a small piece of the grand scheme and what we do here on earth may only be a small cog in the universal machine. By doing so he releases humankind from the burden of “evil” and allocates this idea to one of many forces at work within universe. It is a cog which helps propel the universal machine ever-forward into the future; for the greater good of all.

            Pope’s argument can appear rather similar to that of Plato’s in its final form. Both place the existence of “evil” outside the concept of God. Though Pope’s allows for “evil” to serve a purpose that can’t be understood from the position of humankind. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere between these three thinkers. Maybe the notion of “evil” is just an idea conjured by a young species desperately attempting to make sense of the reality in which they find themselves; and the things which they deem to be “evil” are actually the stumbling blocks leading to a greater good further down the road.

Works Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human A Book For Free Spirits. Trans. Alexander Harvey.             Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1908. N. Pag. EPUB File.

---. On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.  The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism.                          Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010. 765. Print.

Plato. Republic. The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. 2nd ed.                   New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010. 45-76. Print.

Pope, Alexander. An Essay on Man. The Norton Anthology of World Literature: Shorter Third                        Edition, Two- Volume Set. W.W. Norton. Ed. M Puchner. 2012. 90-97. Print.