NAME: DAMIAN FRANCIS UDOMA

REG NO: CS/22/1347

DEPARTMENT: COMPUTER SCEINCE

FACULTY: SCEINCE

COURSE: INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

COURSE CODE:GST 102

ASSIGNMENT: A REVIEW OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL IN CHAPTER

FOUR OF TOWARDS IGBO METAPHYSICS BY EMMANUEL M. P.
EDEH, C.S.SP.
TABLE OF CONTENT
An Igbo understanding of evil

The cause of evil

A possible reconciliation of evil with goodness and causality of God

 The Problem of evil
Even though the Igbo’s regard being as the “Good that is,” They are not so naïve as to believe that
there are no evil in the world. Hence the Igbo’s are concern with the perennial problem of moral and
physical evil. They believe that GOD courses good things to all being, Why Destruction of man to man,
self destruction of moral evil? This is question that has harassed most thinkers; St Thomas articulated
the problem in this way;

God must not be either powerful or all-good, in either ways HE would not be God. For reason such as
these, some people, with Dostoevsky` Ivan Karamazov, have been led to deny the existence of God, the
modern progress in technology has created new resources like biomedicine that endeavor physical evil.
Not with standing, the problem of evil with anguish, guilt, nothingness, failure or despair.

An Igbo understanding of evil: Evil is a phenomenon common to all people of the world, It is
present at all levels of being sin against other human being and God. The question is how does Igbo’s
understand these and other instances of evil?

“Omanani” is an inherited pattern of thought and action that are mysterious. For the Igbo’s an evil is
regarded as an offense against “omanani” even natural catastrophes,

Among the traditional Igbo’s evils that afflict human being are seen as affliction or illness that comes
to their victims as punishments from the ancestors, the guardian of law and order.

Whether an evil is an offence against anyone or anything, whether it is an occurrence among the
living, the dead or the gods, the Igbos see it as a removal of an aspect of the well-being and
completeness of “omenani”.

Accordingly the Igbos way of life emphasizes ‘closeness’. There is a closeness in living because each
person ‘belong to’ others in turn, ‘is belonged to by’ adopting the ‘closeness’ or’ belonging’ an Igbo
becomes immersed in the culture’s spiritual substance, love, and by love he acquires a fulfillment as a
person beyond or mere individuality. When, therefore, a person commits a societal pr moral offense, he
is in effect regarded has having severed himself from his closeness, thereby stepping out-side, as it were,
the spiritual substance of the culture and running the risk of not fulfilling himself as a person.

The most important point here is that an evil, be it committed by an individual or a group, is the
concern of the whole community. The community does not leave the delinquent in isolation. He is
always recognized as an indispensable part of the whole. Yet the evil is not condoned, and the culprit is
not hidden away or helped to escape. Rather, the whole community comes out to eradicate evil.

From the igbo idea of community, founded love brother- hood, it is easy to discern that for the Igbos any
evil is considered such because it features the ultimate whole life, it causes to break existential unity
  The cause of evil: in the general, evils can be grouped under their categories namely,
physical evil in the universe, physical evil in man, and moral evil in man or any personal being.
However, regardless of the category to which an evil belong, the Igbo’s locate its proximate
cause within the realm of the evil spirit, the sea god and the wind god are important to know
the Igbo idea of the cause of evil the sea god feared all the gods. When these gods send flood,
the lives of men were destroyed. Hence the diviners, the fortune-tellers and the members of
esoteric organization devoted to occult phenomena, play a important role in Igbo’s society
because they commune with this evil
The sea, to the Igbo’s, is a special cipher-script, a special language expressing the transcending of
being. It makes life acceptable by presenting it as a symbol of good and evil, it is also a symbol of good,
the reality of human existence.

For the Igbo’s, the wind symbolizes the power of “wiping away” evil. The sacrifices made to avert
and avoid a possible approach or subtle establishment of evil spirits`

However, like the sea God, the wind God is also e paradoxical element, doing both good and evil.
When it assumes the foam of a tornado, it blows furiously and tends to knock down everything in its
way, houses and fruit trees. These in their turn may cause more harm by striking straying animals or
human being. The wind God can bring down, in an undesirable quantity, the rain which destroys houses,
leaving so many people homeless.

Like the sea, the wind is a mysterious god. Wind god, therefore, symbolizes an all-power of God
over being.

Our remarks concerning this two element of god, the sea and the wind, afford a comprehensive
knowledge of causes of physical evil in the universe. Bad spirits are agent of human being to commit
morals evil. However, also good servant of god. These are ready and willing to cause man to do good
thing, although these god have power over evil spirit, they respect the freedom of man hence they do
not compel him from evil to do good. Hence it seems most likely that Igbo’s will subscribe to the idea
that some morals evil are caused proximately by men themselves since they can choose to do evil by
handing themselves to the evil spirit.

Two basic things to be noted here are: first, neither of the element gods causes evil alone. Thus we
do not have enough reason to conclude that evil is caused in the process of causing god, in other word,
evil is intended indirectly while good is intended directly.

The second thing we may note that the element-god and the evil spirit are proximate causes of evil.
But who or what is the remote cause or causes? We have enough reason that God could be regarded as
the remote cause of evil since his the creator of all good and evil spirit and the element god are
extension of his power. Granted this, the question is: how can we reconcile evil with the goodness and
causality of God?
 A possible reconciliation of evil with the goodness and causality of God : it must be
admitted that from our consideration of the element god there is no clear indication regarding
the Igbo idea of how on how to reconcile the fact that God who is all good could cause evil, at
least remotely, by creating being who cause evil.

The Igbo’s have sense reality that is hierarchically structured. Regularly an occurrence is considerable
not in isolation but in relation to its place within the hierarchy. The way the community abandoned in
his evil. Rather, the community take all the steps to eradicate the evil in order to safeguard the integrity
and well-being of the whole. We have seen that for the Igbos there is a greater good in whole. Which is
normally regarded as having the element of Holiness and mysteries about it? The Igbos think that evil as
evil is not what it should be, something that makes the wholes, the unity of life in community, less than
what it should be. The fact that igbos regard evil as the fractures of this whole indicate that for them
evil is evil cannot be caused on its own, but can be caused only as part of effort to preserve the unity of
the whole. These Igbos express this in a way of saying that one does not go out of one way as part of the
struggle to preserve the whole.

As far as proximately causing evil is concern God cannot be said to be seen as the remote cause by evil
because of the chi-na-eke, the one-one-who-is-creating. As chi-na-eke he is the cause of all being. Thus
the Igbos says:

Chukwu kelu ife nine

|god created all|

Chukwu bu isi mbido ife nine

|God is the beginner [cause] of all being|

Since he is the cause of all beings, he must be the cause of proximate causes of evil, namely, element
gods, evil spirit and so o. Hence God can be said to be said to remote cause evil.

In what sense can God be the remote cause of evil? Can he remotely cause of evil? Judging from what
we have seen of the Igbos idea of the proximate causes of evil, we can conclude neither that God is
remotely causes evil nor the century. This ambiguity arises from the fact that if we say that God, in
creating remote causes of evil, create them not as evil but as good, the question remains: what of evil
spirit

The Igbos spirit where not created as evil but as good, but during the course of their existence they
turned evil

The possible way of reconciling the presence of evil in the world with God’s goodness and causality is to
realize:

That God does not cause evil proximately,

 CONCLUSIONS: There are diverse philosophical thoughts about the problem of evil which manifest in
human affairs, thereby bringing suffering and pain. For the Yoruba, Esu which is a spiritual agent has
existed with Olodumare, the Supreme Being who is inherently good. In Yoruba thought, moral evil is
more dominant, and evil comes as a result of wrong actions by human, except for natural disasters.
Mystical powers are not evil in themselves but become evil when used by human.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1). Edeh, E., Towards Igbo Metaphysics. Chicago: Loyola University Press. 1985.

2). Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Trans, John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (New York:
Harper & Row, 1962)pp. 22-.

3). Izibili, M., “African Traditional Approach to the problems of Evil in the World; Studies of Tribes
and Tribals” Department of Philosophy, Ambrose Alli University, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2009.4). Kasomo, D.,
“An investigation of sin and evil in African Cosmology”. International Journal of Sociology and
Anthropology, vol. 1, 2009.

5). Mbiti, J., African Religious and Philosophy. London: Heinemann.1969.