Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy

by Franklin Perkins

That bad things happen to good people was as true in early China as it is today. Franklin Perkins uses this observation as the thread by which to trace the effort by Chinese thinkers of the Warring States Period (c.475-221 BCE), a time of great conflict and division, to seek reconciliation between humankind and the world. Perkins provides rich new readings of classical Chinese texts and reflects on their significance for Western philosophical discourse.

Genres: Philosophy, China

328 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2014

Reviews

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frank Perkins argues that if the classical problem of evil in the European tradition can be seen as the difficulty of simultaneously maintaining three points:

1. An ethics that defines the good in anthropocentric terms
2. The recognition that the world itself is not good in those same terms
3. The belief in a being that is responsible for the world and is good in those same terms

we can see an analogue of this problem emerge in the works of Chinese philosophers of the Warring States period. But the tricky part is that if we only check if these philosophers can contribute to the original question, then given that the fundamental conceptions are quite different from those of European philosophers, we might not end up with much. And even if we did, we would miss an opportunity to appreciate these works in their own context, and through that maybe even change the question.

Perkins delivers an excellent book which manages to weave in and out of the works of Mozi, Laozi, Mengzi, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi, in a way that illuminates the problem of evil while centering the Chinese context.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perkins was spurred to write this book as a complement to Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought. Perkins goes deep and wide in investigating discussions in classical Chinese philosophy that are at least somewhat analogous to treatments of the so-called problem of evil in modern Western thought. What I miss in the book is a precise and succinct proposal of what constitutes the "problematic" of evil in classical Chinese philosophy, within the terms of which the agreements and disagreements between specific discussions are bound. Neiman very clearly pointed to Pierre Bayle as the figure in early modern Western thought who distilled the implied premises with which any (Western) treatment of evil had to deal; Perkins offers some important parallel discussion, but it does not come to clear focus. Very often, his eye for detail reveals to the reader many trees, while failing to help them see the forest.