An existentialist response to the problem of evil a la Jorge Portilla

Abstract

From the thought of mid-twentieth-century Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla (1919–1964), I develop a three-prong existentialist response to the problem of evil. One prong is granting that a version of the problem of evil is successful: no theodicy is credible while beholding innocent suffering. A second prong involves an affective engagement with evil that facilitates a loving human flourishing grounded in solidarity with sufferers, compassion, loving self-sacrifice, and taking responsibility for one’s own culpability. The final prong is the capacity of this affective engagement with evil to permit a belief in God as an existential commitment to a suffering God as a transcendental ideal of self-sacrificing love that guides one’s perpetual project of self-creation.

Introduction

Jorge Portilla (1919–1964) was a member of an influential group of mid-twentieth-century Mexican philosophers known as ‘the Hyperion group’.¹ This group of philosophers emerged in a formative period of the history of Mexican philosophy: a transition from a dominant Eurocentric model of philosophical inquiry – in which philosophical currents originating in Europe were taken as de facto exemplars demarcating the nature and role of philosophical discussions in Latin America – to a more autochthonous and authentic mode of philosophizing. Several members of this group produced philosophical works of lasting significance. Leopoldo Zea (1912–2006) arguably towered over every other member of this group,² but members like Emilio Uranga (1921–1988) and Luis Villoro (1922–2014) have also received international recognition for the quality of their work (Hurtado and Sanchez 2020). It is only recently that Portilla has received some of the attention that his works richly deserve (see Sánchez 2012; Gallegos 2013; and Garcia Torres 2023a, 2024). Most of this attention has been focused on Portilla’s main work Fenomenología del relajo, but some minor works of Portilla have also received some scholarly attention (Gallegos and Sanchez (2020), and Garcia Torres 2025). The present article is focused on one of these minor works (‘Dostoevsky and Saint Thomas’, hereafter ‘DT’); in DT, Portilla contrasts Thomas Aquinas and Fyodor Dostoevsky and their take on the problem of evil – the potential challenge to belief in God given the fact of evil, or suffering. In DT, Portilla argues that Fyodor Dostoevsky’s literary genius – in his masterpiece The Brother Karamazov (BK) – enables readers to enter two radically different affective states ³ which disclose radically different aspects of the world, and which permit readers to engage with evil in seemingly inconsistent ways. On the one hand, Ivan Karamazov presents the problem of evil in such a way that the reader can’t but accept Ivan’s conclusion: no theodicy can be accepted in good faith while beholding the suffering of the innocent; the only authentic response is to refuse to participate in any scheme purchased with innocent suffering.⁴ On the other hand, Alyosha Karamazov’s response to evil, Portilla argues, enables readers to enter an affective state of compassion that facilitates solidarity with sufferers and taking responsibility for one’s own culpability and participation in evil. Portilla recommends Alyosha’s affective state as ultimately superior in terms of agency,⁵ or engagement with the world in which we find ourselves, and in terms of authenticity and taking responsibility for one’s own culpability.

The goal of the present article is not purely exegetical, however. I also develop an existentialist response to the problem of evil that synthesizes the main ideas Portilla articulates in DT and some of the main ideas Portilla develops elsewhere, including his Fenomenología. The resulting existentialist response to the problem of evil is thus firmly planted in Portilla’s thought but also goes beyond what Portilla explicitly wrote.

The three-pronged existentialist response to the problem of evil advocated here is the following. One prong is granting that a version of the problem of evil is successful: no theodicy is credible while beholding innocent suffering. A second prong involves an affective engagement with evil that facilitates a loving human flourishing ⁶ grounded in compassion, solidarity with sufferers, loving self-sacrifice, and taking responsibility for one’s own culpability. The final prong is the capacity of this affective engagement with evil to permit a belief in God as an existential commitment to a suffering God as a transcendental ideal of self-sacrificing love that guides one’s perpetual project of self-creation.

Here is the plan. In the second section, I highlight the distinctive philosophical methodology employed by Portilla’s engagement with the problem of evil by briefly contrasting it with what I call a ‘traditional model’ in Western philosophy – a model according to which human speculative reason is the ultimate guide for engaging with the problem of evil. In the third section, I present Portilla’s understanding of how human reason and different affective states enable humans to attain truth. In the fourth section, I present Portilla’s response to the problem of evil in DT. Finally, in the fifth section, I develop the adumbrated three-prong existentialist response to the problem of evil.

The problem of evil in the traditional model

The distinctiveness of Portilla’s take on the problem of evil can be elucidated by contrasting it with what I take to be the dominant model for dealing with this problem in Western philosophy. In what I call the ‘traditional model’ in Western philosophy, the problem of evil is an argument. The proponent of this argument reasons from the existence of evil, or suffering, to the conclusion that an omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good God does not or cannot exist (see Mackie 1983, Ch. 9). The goal of advocates of this argument is to get interlocutors to understand something about reality, namely the non-existence of God. This is the reasonable position, they insist.

This traditional model permits a multiplicity of possible moves as responses to the problem of evil. It is permissible, say, to deny or modify a premise on God’s omnipotence and argue that evil exists because God cannot prevent it, say because conditionals of human freedom do not make such possibility feasible for God (see Plantinga 1977). It is also permissible to deny or modify a premise on God’s omniscience and argue that evil exists because God could not have foreseen its occurrence, say because the future is non-existent and thus unknowable (see Hasker 2017). It is even permissible to argue, as sceptical theists do, that humans are not in an epistemic position to know at least one of the premises in the problem of evil, so believing its conclusion is unwarranted (see Wykstra 2017). The goal of proponents of these responses is to get interlocutors to understand something about reality, say the compatibility of God and evil. Even sceptical theists argue that the reasonable position is to suspend judgement in these matters.

Something that is not permissible, in this model, is to appeal to one’s affective states. That one desires for God to exist, that one longs for suffering to have an ultimate purpose, that one wishes for reality to be ultimately fair, and so on, are simply not relevant considerations for assessing the problem of evil. Even Hume, who regarded human reason as ‘the slave of the passions’ (Treatise 2.3.3.3/415),⁷ appeals to reasons in his assessment of the problem of evil (Dialogues).⁸ The traditional model is thus a well-established way of engaging with this fundamental problem in Western philosophy.

Part of what grounds the permissibility or impermissibility of the adumbrated responses, in this model, is an assumption regarding a sharp epistemic distinction between reason and affective states. The assumption, roughly put, is that reason is the faculty that enables humans to assess evidence, formulate arguments, and ultimately understand truths: reason is human’s best epistemic guide to reality. Thus, when a philosopher engages with the problem of evil seriously, she uses her reason. Affective states, by contrast, are perfectly acceptable objects of philosophical scrutiny and investigation, but themselves carry no epistemic credibility: that an affective state favours or suggests a particular belief is ultimately orthogonal to proper philosophical investigation and the acquisition of truth, in this model. Human reason epistemically reigns.

Portilla’s engagement with the problem of evil does not play by the rules of this traditional model. As we shall see shortly, Portilla rejects the sharp epistemic distinction between reason and affective states. In so doing, Portilla’s approach opens a range of ways of engaging with the problem of evil not sufficiently appreciated by those who have developed their philosophical methodologies purely within the bounds of the traditional model.

Jorge Portilla on reason and affective states

Portilla is a relentless supporter of human reason. For example, he harshly criticizes thinkers who degrade human reason – including Thomas Mann, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche (Portilla [1962] 1984). Portilla writes: ‘But it is not hard to see that a philosophy that eliminates reason and dialogue as ultimate, with them it eliminates its own standing [jerarquía] and opens the doors to its own degradation’ (Portilla [1962] 1984, 191). Portilla also chastises several variations of historicisms and relativisms as ‘abandonments of reason which in reality’ are just ways of failing to engage in ‘serious thinking’ (DT 172). He even worries that transgressions of ‘serious thinking’ undermine the prospects of trans-cultural communication and ultimately international peace (DT 172). Portilla is thus a champion of human reason as a means of trans-cultural communication, international peace, human flourishing, and as a means for attaining truth.

For Portilla, the use of ‘speculative reason’ (DT 177) provides thinkers with ‘the pure form, the logical structure’ of thought which is ‘stripped of all affective content’ (DT 178). Thus, pure speculative reasoning can only take place within a state of ‘perfect serenity of spirit’ (DT 169). Furthermore, for Portilla, people engaging in pure speculative reasoning are not necessarily in a better position to acquire truth than people who are in other affective states. This is partly because Portilla accepts two conceptions of truth: (i) truth as correspondence between truth-bearers like sentences and thoughts, which are linguistically conceptually constructed, and truth-makers like entities possessing intrinsic properties which are not linguistically conceptually constructed,⁹ and (ii) truth as disclosure of being.¹⁰ For Portilla, disclosure of being is more existentially important than mere correspondence between truth-bearers and truth-makers, for the former is more intimately connected to human agency: it is within affective states that aspects of the world show up, or are disclosed, as meaningful in human experience, and thus facilitate human action (DT 180). And, for Portilla, facilitating human agency is at the heart of ‘all authentic philosophy’ (F 16/MS 127; see Garcia Torres 2023a). Additionally, agents often cannot simply serenely think their way into the disclosure of being facilitated within other affective states, nor is this disclosure reducible to mere data upon which pure speculative reason can bestow epistemic significance by converting this disclosure of being into correspondence between truth-bearers and truth-makers (DT 179). For Portilla, both types of truths are epistemically acceptable. Portilla contrasts Dostoevsky’s and Aquinas’s treatment of the problem of evil thus: ‘while one introduces all possible affectivity that can be annexed … the other confines himself to thinking’ (DT 179, emphasis in original). Importantly, these different treatments of the problem of evil do not imply an epistemic priority of the latter: ‘The point here is not that of arguing in favor of the supposed objectivity of the theologian and against the subjectivity of the artist. One is as objective as the other’ (DT 179). It is not unreasonable to read ‘objective’ here to mean that both Aquinas’s and Dostoevsky’s methods have epistemic credibility – that is, both are justifiable methods for attaining truth.

From this it is reasonable to conclude that Portilla thinks that at least some affective states are as epistemically credible as pure speculative reason. I wish to use the expression ‘affective attunement’ to designate these affective states with epistemic credibility. I borrow this phrase from Francisco Gallegos’s interpretation of Jorge Portilla (2020). Gallegos does not speak about epistemic credibility, but his use of the word ‘attunement’ highlights ways in which some affective states enable agents to be in contact with aspects of the world. By an affective attunement Gallegos means ‘a dynamic but structured affective space within which individuals can take up a wide variety of postures and strategies … a way of dealing with the particular concern that organizes the emotional life’ of a group in some fashion (Gallegos and Sanchez 2020, 64, emphasis added). Importantly, these affective attunements are not ‘colored lenses’ that distort the way we perceive objects in the world (Gallegos 2017); rather, they are complex structures that refine our ability to make sense of ourselves and our place in the world (Gallegos 2020, 54 f). That affective attunements disclose being makes sense given Portilla’s existentialist phenomenology – a commitment to taking the way in which phenomena appear to first-person experience as philosophically foundational; for Portilla, to point out that something shows up in experience is to point out the ultimate level of philosophical analysis, the ultimate court of appeal of philosophical plausibility (F 31–32/MS 140). Thus, for Portilla, affective attunements are emotionally loaded ways of being in contact with aspects of the world that are epistemologically credible precisely because they facilitate disclosure of being.

Thus, Portilla thinks that the sharp epistemic distinction undergirding the traditional model for dealing with the problem of evil is faulty. The claim here is not that all affective states have equal epistemic credibility, nor that pure speculative reason can never be used to settle questions that arise within various affective states or even adjudicate across these. The claim here is merely that at least some affective states are epistemically relevant for addressing this problem, for these affective states permit aspects of the world to be revealed in human experience that are both relevant for assessing the problem of evil and not easily accessible via pure speculative reason. We turn to this topic next.

Portilla on the problem of evil

Portilla on Aquinas’s presentation of the problem of evil

In DT, Portilla contrasts Aquinas’s and Dostoevsky’s presentations of the problem of evil. Portilla insists that at a general level, these thinkers provide the same argument: ‘this conjunction of propositions says exactly the same thing … the argument is the same one, proposed from radically opposed perspectives’ (DT 178). Portilla further claims that Aquinas and Dostoevsky provide the same response: ‘the solution of Saint Thomas … is the same as that of Dostoevsky’ (DT 180). This answer is that God permits evil to bring greater good out of it (Summa Theologiae 2006, I, q.2, a.3, ad 1). Portilla maintains that bringing together these disparate thinkers illustrates the core perennial Christian response to evil: ‘there is a unity that is perhaps not a unity between Saint Thomas and Dostoevsky, but the profound unity of the Christian experience that refracts itself in distinct worlds and distinct men’ (DT 179).

Portilla’s primary concern in DT, however, is not this purported perennial unity, but rather the ‘radically opposed perspectives’ (DT 178) from which the problem of evil is addressed by these different thinkers. On the one hand, ‘the five lines in the Summa Theologica give us the pure form, the logical structure, deprived of all affective content’ (DT 178). Aquinas is using pure speculative reason in alignment with what I have called ‘the traditional model.’ Portilla continues: ‘Saint Thomas … in expressing pure significations … assigns to us [readers] the role of purely thinking men, of mere contemplators … He does not introduce his sentiments and his decisions but remains a pure expositor of the conceptual game’ (DT 178). Aquinas reasons in ‘perfect serenity of spirit’ (DT 169).

Portilla clearly thinks that engaging with the problem of evil using pure speculative reason is epistemically legitimate, for, addressing Aquinas and Dostoevsky, Portilla insists: ‘One is as objective as the other’ (DT 178). Yet, Portilla assigns a type of existential priority to Dostoevsky’s emotive-phenomenological method: part of this existential priority involves making inadequate the interjection of pure speculative reason into the affective states generated by Dostoevsky’s method: ‘It is not worth to reproduce here this reply [Aquinas’s] which will look weak before the emotive strength of the question posted by [Ivan] Karamazov’ (DT 180, emphasis added). Portilla’s point is that regardless of how persuasive Aquinas’s answer may be while reasoning with ‘perfect serenity of spirit’ (DT 169), such responses of pure speculative reason are existentially phenomenologically powerless before the emotive force of Ivan’s presentation of the problem of evil. Portilla continues: ‘This can seem unconvincing, and, without a doubt, for one who has had a vivid and profound experience of evil, it would have an aspect of metaphysical subtlety more than a serious answer to the argument’ (DT 180).

Portilla concludes that Dostoevsky’s presentation of the problem of evil cannot be answered by Aquinas’s use of pure speculative reason. And it is Dostoevsky’s presentation of the problem of evil that takes centre stage in DT. We turn to this topic next.

Portilla on Dostoevsky’s presentation of the problem of evil

Portilla’s discussion of Aquinas’s engagement with the problem of evil is thus best understood as a foil against which the power of Dostoevsky’s presentation of this problem can be more readily appreciated. Dostoevsky, Portilla argues, does not limit himself to presenting ‘the pure form’ (DT 178) of the problem of evil; instead, Dostoevsky ‘Obliges us to contemplate the world from various points of view … [he] shows us the world through characters committed in decisive and radical ways to things, to men, and to the absolute’ (DT 170, emphasis in original). It is through characters like Ivan Karamazov and Alyosha Karamazov that Dostoevsky invites readers to enter different affective attunements which disclose different aspects of the world not readily available otherwise, and which have crucial implications for philosophical engagement with the problem of evil.

Portilla cites large parts of Ivan’s speeches to allow readers to enter Ivan’s affective state. Ivan, Portilla writes, ‘is going to take a journey around the world in order to show certain facts that make it unacceptable as a Divine Universe, which is ultimately going to make God’s existence unacceptable’ (DT 174). Following Dostoevsky, by ‘Divine Universe’ Portilla means a universe containing an eternal harmony as the culmination of history in which all hearts will be satisfied, all crimes will be redeemed, everything will become pardonable, and all evil ultimately will become justified (DT 173). This Divine Universe is part of a theodicy, or an account that aims ‘to justify the ways of God to men’ (Paradise Lost, I 25–26). According to Portilla, Ivan is going to make any theodicy impossible: Ivan ‘is not going to argue directly regarding [God’s] existence. He is going to do something with much greater gravity: he is going to show an aspect of the world with such force that nobody, not even Christian Alyosha, will feel capable of answering’ (DT 174).

Ivan sees himself as a collector of stories of human atrocities, but in making his case before Alyosha, Ivan focuses on the evil perpetrated upon innocent children (Dostoevsky 1879–1880 [1975], II.V.IV). Ivan notes that some people ‘took pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother’s womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mother’s eyes. Doing it before the mother’s eyes was what gave zest to the amusement’ (Dostoevsky 1879–1880 [1975], II.V.IV). From examples like these, Ivan justifiably concludes that ‘People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel’ (Dostoevsky 1879–1880 [1975], II.V.IV). As Portilla sees it, Ivan’s stories enable him to reach a ‘decisive intuition’ (DT 175) by ‘showing an evil that cannot be rescued by any theory’ (DT 177). Ivan thus ‘with the greatest respect’ returns ‘his ticket’ to God: Ivan renounces his participation in the Divine Universe that purchases eternal harmony with innocent suffering (DT 177). Portilla insists that Ivan’s success depends in part on his ability to present evil with a background of innocence: ‘Evil is bearable with a background of culpability’ (DT 177); but ‘With a background of innocence, evil reveals itself with all its irrationality and it becomes unbearable [insoportable]. It appears precisely as evil; as something unjustifiable, unintelligible, absurd’ (DT 177, emphasis in original).

Portilla thinks that upon entering Ivan’s affective state the reader must accept Ivan’s conclusion: ‘After this, there is no point in much discussion. One returns one’s ticket with the greatest respect’ (DT 177). This is a significant concession on Portilla’s part: while in the grip of Ivan’s affective state, no theodicy is credible. Instead, while beholding innocent suffering, the only authentic response is to refuse to participate in any scheme that is purchased with innocent suffering. Portilla goes further; he even claims that many proposed theodicies are often inauthentic attempts to escape confronting Ivan’s ‘decisive intuition’ (DT 175) of innocent suffering: ‘Placed before evil, man tries to escape by explaining it. Deep down this attempt at explanation lies an escape, a turning away of the eyes’ (DT 177, emphasis in original).

Despite Portilla’s unequivocal acceptance of the power of Ivan’s rendering of the problem of evil, Portilla is compelled to respond. Portilla’s response includes an attempt at a defeater – a consideration that aims to undercut the justification of a particular belief – aimed at Ivan’s entire affective state. The second element in Portilla’s response is the articulation of a superior alternative affective engagement with evil, one embodied by Alyosha. Let’s consider these elements of Portilla’s response to the problem of evil in turn.

An attempted defeater

Portilla grants that Ivan manages ‘to make evil appear chemically pure, without any trace of the justifications or theories of speculative reason’ (DT 177). Amid Ivan’s affective state: ‘the very idea of God turns out to be contradictory … and hope in a provident God turns out to be almost ridiculous; a childish thing in bad faith’ (DT 177–178). In the grip of this affective state, no response is feasible.

Because no response is feasible within Ivan’s affective state, Portilla attempts to undercut the justification of the entire affective state from without. Portilla attempts a defeater predicated upon the indignation central to Ivan’s affective state: ‘Ivan’s indignation before human suffering is an attitude that excludes him’ (DT 180) from engaging with evil in the world. Portilla continues: ‘[Ivan] does not participate [in the world] but rather returns his ticket “with the greatest respect.” He permits the question of evil to be formulated between the world and its Creator as if he himself had nothing to do with one or the other’ (DT 180). Thus, there is an element of bad faith in Ivan’s posture after all, claims Portilla, for the attitude of indignation that Ivan adopts exculpates Ivan from participation in evil too easily.¹¹ In his effort to reveal evil in a background of innocence, Ivan has failed to recognize his own culpability, Portilla insists, and Ivan’s conclusion is thus tainted with inauthenticity. Portilla does not explicitly state that such a stain of inauthenticity in Ivan’s affective state undercuts its epistemic legitimacy, but I consider this a clear implication of Portilla’s discussion. Ivan’s affective state is predicated upon false pretenses of innocence, and is thus more prone to distort, than it is to disclose, aspects of the world relevant for assessing the problem of evil, Portilla’s response implies.

I think that there is something insightful in Portilla’s characterization of indignation as often involving inauthentic detachment from one’s own culpability, or even a self-deceptive image of oneself possessing ‘a good conscience’ which, Portilla insists, is often ‘nothing but the most costly and dangerous of illusions’ for to protect this righteous self-image people often ‘are capable of augmenting evil for others immensely’ (DT 181). Indignation often masks one’s participation in evil and hides one’s culpability from oneself; this seems painfully correct. Yet, as a defeater, Portilla’s response is too facile. If successful, it would prove too much, including that indignation before innocent suffering is always inauthentic. Surely that is not the case. Further, even if Ivan’s affective state does involve a failure to take responsibility for his participation in evil, Ivan’s point can be reintroduced without such stain. Surely one can become indignant in the face of innocent suffering while recognizing one’s own culpability, and the force of Ivan’s affective state would resurface without any taint of inauthenticity. Further, Ivan’s basic question can be reintroduced at a scale in which the questioner is in fact detached from culpability: could one, in good faith, consent to the creation of a world in which innocent suffer to atone for evil? This question is not a question about how best to respond to concrete evil in one’s experience, but whether one can, in good faith, enter a scheme of action in which goods are purchased with innocent suffering. It is worth noting that Alyosha himself says ‘no’ to a question along these lines raised by Ivan (Dostoevsky 1879–1880 [1975], II.V.IV). Importantly, Portilla says nothing to answer these types of questions in which the questioner is in fact detached from culpability, questions about the justification of creating worlds in which innocent suffering atones for evil.

Alyosha’s affective engagement with evil

Portilla criticizes Ivan’s affective state in part because it leads to resignation, to failure to engage with the world, to returning one’s ticket. Portilla contrasts Ivan’s attitude with Alyosha’s: ‘Before the problem of evil, Christian Alyosha is not indignant, but he takes responsibility for his participation in culpability and affirms universal co-responsibility’ (DT 180–181) for evil. Alyosha’s attitude, Portilla continues, is one of participating in the world ‘with both tickets: his and Ivan’s, and he goes to Siberia with Demetry to expiate the patricide that Ivan has instigated’ (DT 180). Portilla concludes: ‘The authentic Christian does not return his ticket but pays for it’ (DT 181) even though ‘The price, the paradoxical and mysterious price, is the spilled blood of the innocent … the Christian accepts culpability and expiation’ (DT 181).

Alyosha himself enters Ivan’s affective state, upon hearing Ivan’s stories, and does not know what to say to Ivan: Alyosha has no theodicy to offer in the face of innocent suffering. In the grip of Ivan’s affective state, not even Alyosha can defend his Christian beliefs; and, in fact, Alyosha himself refuses to accept a Divine Universe purchased with innocent suffering (Dostoevsky 1879–1880 [1975], II.V.IV). Nonetheless, after Alyosha snaps out of Ivan’s affective state, he engages lovingly with suffering: Alyosha kisses Ivan (Dostoevsky 1879–1880 [1975], II.V.V). While Ivan wishes to escape a world in which the innocent suffer, Alyosha expresses solidarity with sufferers, including Ivan, and takes responsibility for his own culpability (Dostoevsky 1879–1880 [1975], II.V.IV; II.V.V; III.VII.IV). What moves Alyosha is not abstract questions about justice, but the concrete suffering before him. That he in fact finds himself in a world full of suffering makes compassion, solidarity, and loving self-sacrifice salient to Alyosha, and questions of innocence, culpability, and even of theodicy simply recede to the background. The former are more existentially pressing in Alyosha’s affective state. Alyosha’s affective engagement with evil forgoes any self-righteous detachment from culpability and instead embodies compassion, solidarity, and self-sacrifice before concrete suffering. For Portilla, Alyosha’s affective attunement is superior to Ivan’s in two important regards: greater authenticity, for Alyosha does not lie to himself about his own culpability, and greater engagement with the world in which Alyosha finds himself.

Portilla’s response to the problem of evil

Portilla’s response to the problem of evil thus involves two elements. After acknowledging that pure speculative reason is existentially powerless within Ivan’s affective state of indignation before innocent suffering, Portilla attempts to defeat the epistemic credibility of Ivan’s affective state itself. Ivan’s indignation is falsely predicated upon distancing Ivan from his own culpability; this element of bad faith thus epistemically taints the entire affective state, Portilla argues. The second element in Portilla’s response is what he takes to be the perennial Christian response to evil, as exemplified by Alyosha: compassion and solidarity with sufferers and taking responsibility for one’s own culpability and participation in evil. The true Christian, Portilla claims, does not seek to evade a world with innocent suffering, and does not adopt an attitude of self-righteous indignation before the existence of evil, but willingly engages in loving acts of self-sacrifice to atone for the evils of self and of others. Such affective engagement with evil has the additional perks of authenticity – no self-deception about one’s own innocence – and greater engagement with the world in which true Christians find themselves, Portilla claims.

An existentialist response to the problem of evil

I wish to develop a three-pronged existentialist response to the problem of evil, a response developed from the works of Portilla. We can now better appreciate the first two prongs. The first prong is accepting that Ivan’s affective state is ultimately unanswerable. This amounts to the acceptance that, while beholding innocent suffering, aspects of the world disclose themselves such that believing in a providential plan, a loving Creator, and so on, seem like ‘a childish thing of bad faith’ (DT 178). Part of this prong also involves the recognition that Portilla’s attempted defeater fails, and that no other defeater seems to be in the offing. Importantly, to grant this is not to settle whether the problem of evil triumphs in its ‘pure form’, while using pure speculative reason. Whether, say, Aquinas’s answer to the problem of evil is adequate while reasoning with ‘perfect serenity of spirit’ (DT 169) is left unsettled here and is strictly orthogonal to the proposed existentialist response. Yet, this first prong is quite a concession, for it amounts to accepting that one version of the problem of evil is ultimately triumphant. Despite this concession, there is still space for two positive elements in this existentialist response.

The first positive element, and second prong of this response, I borrow directly from Portilla; this is the agential superiority of Alyosha’s affective attunement: human agency is augmented in Alyosha’s affective state in ways that it is truncated in Ivan’s detached indignation state; Alyosha’s affective attunement of compassion facilitates solidarity with sufferers, greater engagement with the world, taking responsibility for one’s own culpability, and a type of loving human flourishing predicated upon willingness to engage in loving acts of self-sacrifice to atone for the evil of self and of others.

The second positive element, and third prong of this existentialist response, is the capacity of Alyosha’s affective state to facilitate a belief in God as an existential commitment to a suffering God as a transcendental ideal of self-sacrificing love that guides and structures one’s perpetual project of self-creation. Portilla himself does not propose something along these lines in DT or elsewhere. However, Portilla does defend several ideas that can be recruited, and modified a bit, to develop this third prong. We turn to this next.

Portilla on self-creation and transcendent values

In alignment with classical existentialist phenomenology, Portilla postulates a radical freedom that is ontologically prior to the self: ‘Freedom would experience itself, for the first time, upon encountering the first consciousness of an obstacle and [freedom] would realize itself for the first time upon overcoming it’ (F 61/MS 167).¹² For Portilla, then, the self is not a substance upon which freedom inheres, as in traditional Aristotelian metaphysics; but, following Sartre, Portilla thinks that the self emerges out of acts in which freedom realizes itself. It is these philosophical commitments about freedom and the self that enable Portilla to think that human existence ‘is something like a melody that whistles itself, that invents itself, writing itself into the notebook of being’ (Portilla 1984, 109). Portilla elaborates on his account of self-creation thus:

On a concrete level, we construct our being from non-being; we construct our being out of a creation of possibilities whose foundations sink into uncertainty of a future, of an arrival; we construct our being from an uncertain and empty temporal enclosure and through an act of projection that is the originary movement begetting human existence. Our existence is a project, in the double sense of scheme and thrownness, the first outline of which we trace in the non-being of the future. (CM 129/S 186–187)

For Portilla, then, freedom realizes itself in acting, and the self emerges out of one of these free acts, namely the act of projection ‘in the double sense of scheme and thrownness’ (CM 129/187). All of this is in alignment with classical existentialist phenomenology.

One of Portilla’s noteworthy departures from this otherwise mainstream existentialist phenomenological story is his postulation of transcendent values. Transcendent values loom large in Portilla’s account of self-creation, and human agency more generally. Portilla writes: ‘all human life is steeped in value. Wherever we turn our gaze, value gives sense and depth to reality… Value underscores and organizes the things in the world’ (F 32/MS 140). It is value that guides human agency, for ‘All our acts are ordered toward the realization of some value’ (F 33/MS 141). For Portilla, values guide human agency by providing the goal towards which actions are directed, and by providing the ‘sense’ that unifies a collection of movements into an intelligible action. A collection of things ‘such as gestures, bodily attitudes, words, laughter’, and so on, ‘does not mean anything if it is abstracted from its sense’ (F 18/MS 128). Rather, ‘A behavior is understood through its sense’ (F 18/MS 128), and at least for ‘responsible action[s]’ value is ‘the only thing [that] give[s] sense to action[s]’ (F 85/MS 188; see Garcia Torres (2023a) for more details). An example can help: ‘At the fiesta, the value to be attained is joy. [The fiesta’s] sense is to actualize joy’ (F 37/MS 146). For a complex social arrangement to be unified into a collective venture that is a fiesta: ‘it is necessary for the participants to maintain a behavior regulated by that vital value [joy]’ (F 37–38/MS 146).

These general points about value and human agency also apply to self-creation, for Portilla. He provides the following example:

Getting dressed hurriedly in the morning, drinking a cup of coffee in a rush, walking down the street in long strides, and, perhaps running, distressed, after a bus that barely stops to let me get on – [these] are nothing but the external signs of my determined (intentional) pointing toward the constitution of my own ‘punctual being.’ If after all of this, I finally do arrive on time to the office at the hour stipulated by a set of rules, and breathe a sigh of relief, then, am I punctual yet? It is evident that this is not the case. It is simply that today I got to work on time. (F 33/MS 141)

Punctuality is the transcendent value that guides and combines a collection of other acts – like drinking a cup of coffee in a rush and walking down the street in long strides – into a meaningful whole that is striving to be punctual. For Portilla, ‘My punctuality is but the ideal unity of all my actions geared towards it’ (F 33/MS 142, emphasis is original). More generally, value serves as a ‘guide’ or ‘direction and limit’ of ‘valued self-constitution’ (F 33/MS 142), and as such value gives unity to the self in time; the self emerges, as a value-creating-self, out of a collection of acts freely chosen and regulated by a given transcendent value.

Furthermore, for Portilla, valued self-constitution not only gives unity to the self in time, but it also enables the self ‘to reach a certain fullness’ (F 32/MS 141), for values appear to human consciousness ‘as something that things themselves are lacking’, as ‘an appeal by things themselves to my action, for the world to finish perfecting itself and to reach a certain fullness’ (F 32/MS 141). Value, then, appears to human consciousness as promise-of-fulfillment. Something similar applies to self-creation: ‘value can also appear as a demand, as a need to fill a void in the very centre of my existence. It appears then as a norm of my self-constitution, as the perpetually elusive and evanescent indication of what my being ought to be’ (F 32/MS 141). For Portilla, values phenomenologically show up as guides-for-and-promises-of-self-fulfillment, guides for the self ‘to finish perfecting itself and to reach a certain fullness’ (F 32/MS 141). For Portilla, then, values phenomenologically show up as promises-of-self-fulfillment by being perpetual norms or guides for self-constitution that provide the senses that can unify the otherwise scattered self in time.

Transcendental ideal of self-sacrificing love

The third prong of my proposal is a type of belief in God allowed by Alyosha’s affective attunement. My goal here is not to provide an interpretation of Alyosha’s faith based in either Dostoevsky’s or Portilla’s texts. Instead, my goal here is to isolate a type of belief in God as an existential commitment permitted by Alyosha’s affective engagement with evil: Alyosha believes in God in a way akin to the way in which social reformers believe in Justice or lovers believe in Love; these are transcendental ideals that structure their actions in the world and that guide their practices of self-creation.

Portilla himself does not speak about ‘transcendental ideals’. However, he does write that: ‘All values, when grasped, appear surrounded by an aura of demands … that bring them from their pure ideality towards the world of reality’ (F 18/MS 129, emphasis added). For Portilla, ‘the world of reality’ is ‘the objective realm of the lived experiences’ (F 18/MS 129); and ‘the value never comes to attain definite being’ (F 37/MS 145) in this realm of lived experiences, for values ‘cannot attain … stability and solidity … [their] evanescent reality has required the support of multiple generosities [i.e., freedoms], and it rests on this support’ (F 37/MS 145). Thus, for Portilla, transcendent values go from being grasped ‘in their pure ideality’ towards being actualized and attaining an ‘evanescent reality’ in the realm of lived experience.

It is thus intelligible to speak about transcendent values in their pure ideality, for Portilla. I wish to use the expression ‘transcendental ideal’ to speak about a transcendent value in its pure ideality – that is, when it is grasped by an agent but not yet actualized in the world of human experience. Transcendental ideals, then, when grasped by agents, appear surrounded by an aura of demands, prior to, and independently of, their being actualized in the world of lived experience.

The main move for this subsection is to regard a suffering God as a transcendental ideal of self-sacrificing love that phenomenologically shows up in Alyosha’s affective attunement as a perpetual guide for self-constitution that gives meaning and ‘ideal unity’ to Alyosha’s actions in the world, and ultimately enables Alyosha’s self to attain unity and ‘fullness of being’ in time.

Again, Portilla himself never advocates for something along these lines. He does, however, gesture in this general direction in the following remarks: ‘[Alyosha] knows that the path that leads to fullness of being and reconciliation is not a logical exercise, but the path that was traced in human memory, as its highest possibility, as an unsurpassable model, in the history recounted in the Gospel’ (DT 181, emphasis in original). In this passage, Portilla clearly intends this ‘unsurpassable model’ to serve both (a) as a guide for Alyosha’s perpetual project of self-creation and (b) as a path towards a certain fullness of being or self-realization. Portilla himself is likely building much more into his conception of the perennial Christian response to evil than an existential commitment to a transcendental ideal of self-sacrificing love; for instance, Portilla is likely including a doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth as the historical embodiment of such an unsurpassable ideal.¹³ In this article, I wish to steer clear of any such robust Christian theological doctrines. What matters for my purposes is merely that a suffering God, as a transcendental ideal, phenomenologically shows up in Alyosha’s affective attunement of compassion as a guide for perpetual self-constitution and as a promise-of-self-fulfillment. An existential commitment to such a transcendental ideal is thus facilitated by Alyosha’s affective engagement with evil.

A clarification on the ontological status of transcendent values in Portilla’s picture is in order. Is Portilla committed to, say, a type of Platonism or Kantianism about value? I think that Portilla’s texts do not settle these types of questions, and that this is by design, for these questions are secondary to the existential questions that interest Portilla: ‘What matters is to find out the way in which a value manifests itself in spontaneous consciousness, independently from its ontological or metaphysical quality … it interests us little to know whether values are entities that float beyond being’ (F 31/MS 140). Portilla’s methodology implies a sharp distinction between metaphysical questions about the nature and ontological status of values and existential questions about the way in which values appear to human experience in everyday living. The former types of questions are questions for pure speculative reason and are less existentially pressing than the latter types of questions. What matters, from Portilla’s existentialist phenomenological perspective, is that value can be grasped in its pure ideality, prior to its creation in the world of lived experience, and that this phenomenological fact is theoretically independently of any theory about the nature and ontological status of value – be that Platonism, Kantianism, or some other alternative.

This metaphysical neutrality of phenomenological description has important implications for the existentialist response advocated here. It means that this response neither requires, nor precludes, a robust version of theism: the transcendental idea of self-sacrificing love appealed to in the third prong need not imply a Being that ‘float[s] beyond being’ (F 31/MS 140) or a God that has existence independently of its being grasped as a transcendental ideal that structures or guides human perpetual projects of self-creation. My proposal can be extended in either direction but requires neither.

Conclusion

Jorge Portilla was a mid-twentieth century Mexican philosopher whose work was situated in the middle of a formative period in the history of Mexican philosophy: a transition from a Eurocentric model of philosophical inquiry to a more autochthonous and authentic mode of philosophizing. Most of the recent scholarly attention on Portilla’s work has centred on his primary work, Fenomenología del relajo. In this article, I have focused on one of Portilla’s minor works, one dedicated to the problem of evil. From the thought of Portilla, I have presented an existentialist response to the problem of evil. There are three elements to this response: (i) the concession that a version of the problem of evil is successful: no theodicy is credible while beholding innocent suffering; (ii) the agential superiority of a compassionate engagement with evil that facilitates loving human flourishing grounded in solidarity with sufferers, loving self-sacrifice, and taking responsibility for one’s own culpability; and (iii) the capacity of an affective engagement with evil to permit a belief in God as an existential commitment to a suffering God as a transcendental ideal of self-sacrificing love that guides one’s perpetual project of self-creation.

Part of the project of this article is predicated upon the intrinsic value of the history of philosophy: better understanding the players and ideas that shaped the history of philosophy, including the history of Mexican philosophy, is a worthwhile enterprise. The significance of the existentialist response to the problem of evil advocated here, however, should be of interest beyond that of historical scholarship. This response, I think, is a credible contender that merits inclusion in philosophical conversations engaging with the problem of evil.