293-294) The Minor Evil is Necessary for the Major Good...

293-294) The Minor Evil is Necessary for the Major Good Muslim Philosophers in their study of the problem of evil commonly appeal to a classification which they historically traced to Aristotle.

According to this classification the situation of any given creature, in virtue of being good or evil, could not exceed five possibilities: 1) being totally good; 2) being good in the majority of cases and evil in the minority of cases; 3) being equally good and evil; 4) being good in the minority of cases and evil in the majority of cases; and 5) being totally evil.

Avicenna explores these five possible situations as follows: Things in the [faculty of] estimation are either [(a)] things which, if [reckond in the] estimation as exiting, cannot but be absolutely evil; [(b)] things whose existence [consist] in being good, it impossible for them to be evil and deficient;[(c)] things in which goodness predominates if their existence comes to be, anything but this being impossible for their natures; [(d)] things in which evilness predominates; or [(e)] things in which the two states are equal.

(Avicenna, 2005, pp. 345-346) Considering each of these possibilities separately, Muslim philosophers come to conclude that only the first and the second possibilities could be actualized by God. This claim seems enough clear as to the first kind. In their view, the incorporeal intellects ( al-oqul almujarradah ) are instances of the first kind; they are pure good ( al-khayr al-mahdh ) without any evil aspects and God do create these intellects.

As to the second kind, it is argued that God, in spite of its minor evilness, should create it. The reason is that if God refrain from creating this kind of existents, then the result is that a major good will be prevented just because of its minor evil and this seems not to be a wise act. Since God is absolutely wise, He should permit the realization of the second kind too. The corporeal objects in the natural world are usually classified within this kind of beings.

Fire is a very common example; in the most cases it has valuable benefits for human beings and even for other beings, but it happens in a few cases that leads to some privation and in effect, it becomes an (accidental) evil. But what should we say about the remainder possibilities? According to Islamic philosophy, God is wholly good and absolutely wise and benevolent and it sounds reasonable that such a God never creates a totally or mostly evil thing.