Just a heads up to let folks know that Peter van Inwagen's latest work on the argument from evil is finally available in print as The Problem of Evil. The book is the product of van Inwagen's 2003 Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of St Andrews. If you'd like to get a feel for what van Inwagen thinks of the argument from evil you might check out his appearance last year on Philosophy Talk.
Maybe some enterprising contributor with more time than your humble host would like to coordinate an online reading group for this book.
Technorati Tags: university of st andrews, reading group, online reading, peter van inwagen, humble host, gifford lectures, enterprising, philosophy
Technorati Tags: university of st andrews, reading group, online reading, technorati, peter van inwagen, gifford lectures, humble host, enterprising, philosophy
Matt,
I've read through a few chapters (and skimmed several others) in the recent book (I didn't read the stuff on 'beasts'). I'd have to look closer, but in general it does not look substantially different from his no-minimal-amount-of-evil-necessary argument. I'm not crazy about that argument, as I posted here once before.
Still the lectures are terrifically well written.
I finished this book last week. Like Mike Almeida said, it is terrifically well written and could easily be read within a few days. PvI leaves a lot of the technical points in the endnotes, but even then, they aren't all that technical.
Some interesting highlights in this book include, I'd say, the way in which he thinks of the problem(s). For instance, he rejects the widely held distinction of the logical problem vs the evidential problem. Rather, he settles for a global argument (i.e. look how much evil there is in the world; this much evil doesn't seem compatible with an all-powerful loving God) and local argument (e.g., Rowe's fawn case) distinction.
Personally, I thought the most interesting lecture was his third lecture regarding what it means for a philosophical argument to be a success (or failure). He discusses this because his thesis of the book comes down to this: the problem of evil is a failure (though there is no single problem). Anyway, I thought this book was worth the read - like the rest of his material.