On the Problem of Evil: Being Evil & Willing Evil

"Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"
— Epicurus

Among the most enduring questions in theology and philosophy is the Problem of Evil. It strikes with particular force within the Abrahamic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—where God is defined as omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent. If God is all-good and all-powerful, why is there evil at all?

This classic formulation is not merely about metaphysical contradiction, but about the deeper structure of reality and moral freedom. While many traditional theodicies have tried to exonerate God by pushing the burden of evil onto human will, Hegel offers a subtler and more radical view: evil as finitude attempting to masquerade as the infinite. This is not merely a moral failing but a metaphysical tension at the heart of freedom itself.

Evil as Arrested Finitude

Traditional Christian thought often casts evil as a privation—not something in itself, but the absence of good. Hegel preserves this view but gives it a twist. Evil is not just an absence but a self-halting finitude, a moment where a limited good attempts to elevate itself into absoluteness. It is, in a way, a good that comes too early, stays too long, or claims too much.

Take the analogy of cancer. A cancer cell is still a cell—it follows its laws, it functions, it even "thrives." But it thrives in contradiction. It grows in a way that undermines the organism that gives it life. In the end, its victory is its own death. Evil functions similarly: it parasitizes the Good, borrows its vitality, but undermines the totality that makes any good possible.

Moral evil, in particular, takes root in the illusion of the self's independence. It posits the part (the particular self, the individual good) above the whole (community, reason, Spirit). It is a misordering of goods, not the pursuit of what is purely bad.

Ontological vs Moral Evil

We often talk about moral evil, evil as willful wrongdoing. But what of ontological evil—evils that do not stem from conscious intention? Natural disasters, diseases, even the sheer fragility of life—these are evils without agency.

Hegel's system allows us to think these through. Ontological evil is intelligible only in relation to the Good: not simply as harm, but as that which halts or hinders the becoming of the higher Good. For instance, a body destroyed by cancer is not just harmed, but prevented from actualizing its higher function—freedom, consciousness, Spirit.

In this way, Nature itself can be seen as evil relative to Spirit, since it is the domain of necessity, contingency, and unfreedom. Nature is a realm of diremption, of things that are external to themselves, lacking self-determination. Yet Nature is not evil in itself—it is evil only when it is taken as final, when it blocks the ascent to Spirit, the realm of free rational self-consciousness.

The Evil of Innocence

Strangely, even innocence—commonly celebrated as a kind of moral purity—can be a form of evil. How? Because innocence, particularly when imposed or preserved, denies a being’s ascent to freedom. A child must outgrow their innocence not to fall, but to rise into the sphere of ethical life. To deny that development, even in the name of protecting the child, is to do evil.

An animal is not evil; it acts out of instinct and is bound within its finitude. But a human arrested at the level of animal instinct—by nature, society, or even divine intervention—suffers evil done unto them, for they are denied the very capacity that defines their essence: the freedom to think and to choose.

This is why, for Hegel, the true tragedy is not that humans are evil by nature, but that their Natural side tempts them to mistake themselves as merely finite beings. When the Natural overrides the Spiritual, evil arises.

To Be Evil Is To Misuse the Good

Evil never creates from nothing. It misuses what is already good—freedom, knowledge, desire. It is the good in the wrong order. Self-care becomes selfishness. Group loyalty becomes xenophobia. Rational calculation becomes manipulation. Evil has no substance of its own; it is an ill-deployed good that forgets its place in the totality.

Hegel's framework does not merely address the moral blame of individual actions. It reveals a metaphysical structure of disorder, where partial goods try to isolate themselves from the whole in which they have meaning. The very condition of moral freedom—choice—includes the possibility of misalignment. And this misalignment is not irrationality but partial rationality, logic severed from the Absolute.

Freedom, Evil, and the Divine

Why would a benevolent God allow such a structure? Hegel's answer is complex, but profound: Because freedom is the highest good. And freedom requires the possibility of error, of evil. A world of innocent angels acting only on instinct or divine impulse would be a world without freedom, and thus, ultimately, without Good.

In the Abrahamic religions, humans are often said to be evil by nature. Hegel agrees, but reinterprets the phrase: our Natural aspect—instinctual, contingent, particular—is the seat of temptation. Our essence, however, is Spirit—free, self-determining, rational. Evil occurs when we mistake the former for the latter, when we absolutize what is contingent, and particularize what is universal.

Conclusion: The Fate of Evil

Evil is powerful, but it is not absolute. It cannot sustain itself indefinitely, because it draws its being from what it undermines. It is a contradiction in action, and like all contradictions, it must be resolved—either through its destruction or its transformation.

And this is the true hope of Hegel's thought: that evil, no matter how entrenched, carries within it the seeds of its own undoing. In recognizing its finitude, and rejoining the movement of the Good, even the worst evil can be sublated—aufgehoben—into something higher.

Evil, then, is not a final mystery, but a finite distortion—real, deadly, even necessary—but ultimately destined to perish in the light of Spirit.