The Problem of Evil and Frédéric Bastiat’s Revision of Modernity

Abstract

This paper seeks to show Frédéric Bastiat’s views against the backdrop of his epoch. He lived in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the period when the rationalistic paradigm was submitted to a revision. In line with this paradigm, the social order is constructed above all on the foundation of institutions. Hence the ideas to construct new social communities deprived of private property, communities that live in conformity with an imposed and prearranged model.

Bastiat criticises such ideas and points instead to the natural forces of progress inherent in each individual human being and in natural communities that this being established. The French thinker refers – unlike Rousseau – on the one hand to the fact of evil and imperfection, and on the other to our inherent drive towards good and perfection, i.e. our perfectibility. Evil and imperfection of human nature are our driving and creative forces. On the way to progress, planned by the Creator, the individual is governed by the principles of responsibility and solidarity, and seeks to integrate the areas of knowledge and faith. The communities that individuals establish result from their struggle against evil in all dimensions.