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EVIL AND SUFFERING by Louis Lavelle

EVIL AND SUFFERING

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Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 1963
Publisher: Macmillan

To make a study of evil and suffering, certainly a subject of universal concern to all men, an abstract and removed from reality as this book does is a feat in itself. But perhaps it was deliberate. Even so, the result of this ""achievement"" cannot help but be the opposite of what must have been planned by the author. The exposition confuses rather than clarifies. Louis Lavelle expends his efforts in the direction of analyzing wickedness in such a way as ""to prove beyond doubt"" that there is a bond impossible to break between suffering and evil. He further stresses that the wicked man's first objective is to make others suffer. (This is as close to an example as the book offers). Certainly moralists and trained philosophers will find the book worth studying. But it will have to be studied with great pain by the untrained. This is truly a disappointment.