The Problem of Evil in Hume's Dialouges on Natural Religion and "Candide"

Hume, Voltaire and the Problem of Evil The presence of evil and suffering in the world has raised questions in the philosophy of religion for centuries. The traditional understanding, held by Christians since it was fully developed by Augustine, is that of original sin. The belief is that man is born evil, as a result of the transgression of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. At the moment of sin evil entered the …

…respect, Candide is a typical work of the Enlightenment. To attack fundamental principles and to shine the light of reason into the void of medieval dogma was one of the major themes in the work of the philosophes. Hume achieves a similar effect by using natural and moral evil as an argument in his work, too. What follows from works such as these is a re-examination of personal philosophies of life when faced with evil.