"It is widely assumed, contrary to fact, that theism necessarily involves the two assumptions which cannot be squared with the existence of so much suffering, and that therefore, per impossibile, they simply have to be squared with the existence of all this suffering, somehow"
About this Quote
Kaufmann slices into a familiar debate move: people argue against God by attacking a packaged version of theism that many believers don’t actually hold. The opening jab - “widely assumed, contrary to fact” - signals his target isn’t suffering itself but the intellectual laziness around it. He’s calling out a caricature: that theism automatically entails two tidy premises (think omnipotence plus perfect benevolence, or a world engineered for human comfort) which, when placed next to cancer wards and massacres, produce an instant contradiction.
The phrase “per impossibile” is doing quiet work. It’s not devotional Latin, it’s a philosophical alarm bell: if you insist those assumptions are mandatory, you’ve already set the problem up so the theist must perform a rhetorical magic trick - “they simply have to be squared… somehow.” That “somehow” drips with skepticism toward apologetics that feel like patch jobs, not explanations. Kaufmann’s subtext is methodological: before you demand a solution to the problem of evil, specify what kind of God-concept you’re talking about and why it’s the one that allegedly “follows” from theism.
Context matters. Kaufmann, a mid-century interpreter of Nietzsche and critic of dogmatic religion, wasn’t trying to rescue orthodox faith so much as rescue argument from straw men. He’s challenging both sides: atheists who treat “theism” as a single doctrine with standard axioms, and theists who accept that framing and then contort themselves to reconcile it with “so much suffering.” The sting is that a debate can look decisive while being logically misfiled.
The phrase “per impossibile” is doing quiet work. It’s not devotional Latin, it’s a philosophical alarm bell: if you insist those assumptions are mandatory, you’ve already set the problem up so the theist must perform a rhetorical magic trick - “they simply have to be squared… somehow.” That “somehow” drips with skepticism toward apologetics that feel like patch jobs, not explanations. Kaufmann’s subtext is methodological: before you demand a solution to the problem of evil, specify what kind of God-concept you’re talking about and why it’s the one that allegedly “follows” from theism.
Context matters. Kaufmann, a mid-century interpreter of Nietzsche and critic of dogmatic religion, wasn’t trying to rescue orthodox faith so much as rescue argument from straw men. He’s challenging both sides: atheists who treat “theism” as a single doctrine with standard axioms, and theists who accept that framing and then contort themselves to reconcile it with “so much suffering.” The sting is that a debate can look decisive while being logically misfiled.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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