The aim of this thesis is to summarize Pareyson's investigation into the problem of evil in his book Ontologia della libertà. Il male e la sofferenza (Ontology of freedom, evil and suffering). Pareyson's discourse severs the ties with previous philosophical methods, which were based on logic, and establishes the hermeneutics of myth, the sole possible way of grasping the ontological dimension of the problem. This hermeneutics leads him to the realisation that evil has its roots in freedom and God, who is Himself the absolute freedom, which chose its own being and good instead of evil. To have been able to do this freely, it was necessary for it to have an alternative – evil. After having chosen the good, evil has been retained in God, latent, as a past that was never the actual present. Man, however, was not able to realise his freedom except in a negative way. He saw his freedom as Divine and has thus awakened evil that had been latently sleeping in God, brought it into the world, and caused suffering not only to all of humanity but also to God himself. The key concept is the thinking "beyond good and evil", where both evil and the good, which are inseparable in freedom, are propelled by same energy. Pareyson attempts to break down the univocal interpretational notion of evil and reach beyond in order to find a place for it in the human understanding of life. The latter is closely associated with suffering, which serves both as punishment and redemption for sin and a place of solidarity between God and man.
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