Finitude and Evil. Towards Jean Nabert

Abstract

Nabert’s understanding of the finitude–evil relationship is somewhat puzzling in that it assumes – contrary to the view rooted in centuries-long tradition – that finitude is conditioned by evil, not vice versa. Nabert argues for his view by presenting an in-depth analysis of existential conditions for the possibility of doing evil. He underscores that although we have a sense of free will, it turns out to be illusory since we are unable to identify the underpinnings of our actions. Nabert claims that inability to capture them, however, does not constitute the most essential condition of the ability to do evil. This condition, as it seems, must be sought in the original dissonance, which constitutes our existence and occurs between “empirical self” and “pure self” – that is in “fundamental alienation”. All limitations that make us are secondary to the evil generated by this dissonance, and it is in this sense that evil precedes finitude. In order to challenge the said primacy of evil over finitude, one might have to expand the meaning of finitude, accepting that fundamental alienation can also qualify as finitude. But in this case, too, one would be left with the question of the specific type of evil (indicated by Nabert in his Le Désir de Dieu) consisting in refusing to make an effort to overcome fundamental alienation. It follows that this refusal can be seen as a factor not only escalating this alienation but, ultimately, as its constituent.