Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man

                                               Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man 

Blog Prompt: How does An Essay on Man reconcile the belief in a divinely ordered universe with the existence of evil and seeming disorder in the world? Do you find these arguments believable? Why or why not?

     Alexander Pope’s theodicy An Essay on Man is written in poetic form and provides two faith based arguments to support his belief in God’s knowing omnipotence and man’s necessary “submission to Providence” (89). The overarching argument that Pope makes is based upon his teleological assertion that man has a natural position within the order of the “universe” and is therefore unknowing of the processes that exist external to man’s position. Pope makes the argument that due to man’s lack of awareness outside of his position it is unreasonable to question God’s motives. To question such unknowing motives Pope asserts would be questioning God’s judgment and the order of God’s creation; “There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man: And all the questions (wrangle e’er so long) Is only this, if God has placed him wrong?” (91).

     Pope’s second faith based argument to support his theodicy is that man defines morality and order according to his own perspectives. Pope asserts that when man tries to use his value systems to question God’s motives he is asserting that his judgment is positionally superior to God’s; “The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice of his dispensations” (90). To support this argument Pope makes the assertion that the natural world itself does not follow rules of morality, or man’s conceptions/desire for controlled order, and if this moral order does not exist in the natural world man has no basis for questioning God’s motives; “The absurdity of conceiting himself this final cause of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not met in the natural” (90).

     Pope’s theodicy concludes by reasserting that man’s submission to his position within the universe is essential because man is ultimately unknowing, and therefore moral expectations based upon this unknowing (that question God’s motives) ultimately dishonor God’s judgment; “All Chance, Direction, which thou cast not see, All Discord, Harmony not understood: All partial Evil, universal Good: And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right” (90). Personally I do not find these arguments believable because they are based in religious belief and do not make sense outside of faith based logic.

 

Works Cited

Pope, Alexander. An Essay on Man. The Norton Anthology World Literature. Ed. Martin Puchner, et al. 3rd ed. Vol. D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2012. 344-351. Print.