The Beasts that Perish: The Problem of Evil and the Contemplation of the Animal Kingdom in English Thought, c. 1660--1839 (2005)
Roedell, Christopher Andrew (Author)
Georgetown University
Olesko, Kathryn M.
Edition Details: Advisor: Olesko, Kathryn M.
Physical Details: 331 pp.
Language: English
In this study I attempt to show how theodicy , or the reconciling of the Creator's omnipotence and benevolence with the existence of physical suffering and other evils, played a perennial and often crucial role in shaping English ideas respecting nonhuman animals roughly from 1660, when the Royal Society was founded in London, to 1839, when Charles Darwin first fully formulated his theory of evolution by natural selection. Specifically, I trace how predation, and the magnitude of the suffering that was thought to be generated by the preying of one beast upon another, was a problematic phenomenon for generations of English thinkers insofar as the misery of innocent creatures struck them as difficult to reconcile with the supreme goodness of the Almighty. This dissertation is intended to contribute to our understanding of how English intellectuals from the Restoration to the early nineteenth century sought to present nature, and particularly the living world, as a normative as well as a physical entity: When predation, and the unmerited suffering it was deemed to cause, threatened to undermine the idea that the order of nature was a perfect reflection of the power and goodness of the Supreme Being, English naturalists and theologians adopted a variety of rhetorical and philosophical strategies as they strove to vindicate both the moral qualities of the Creator and the moral attributes of the natural order he had established. Charles Darwin, in common with many of the English naturalists who preceded him, was anxious that the order of nature should be envisaged in a way that confirmed, if not the moral character of the Creator, then at least the positive moral qualities of the natural order itself. Darwin was deeply troubled by the seeming contradiction between the supposed benevolence of the Creator, whose moral attributes the order of nature should presumably reflect, and the violence and suffering that the preying of one beast upon another was observed to generate; and Darwin's desire to resolve that contradiction is palpable throughout his writings on evolution by natural selection, from his notebook-entries of the 1830s down to the Origin of Species and beyond.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 66/10 (2006): 3767. UMI pub. no. 3193309.
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