ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth century the philosophers were discussing the problem of evil and the justice of God. Leibniz had published his Theodicy in 1710 and Alexander Pope the Essay on Man in 1734. In turn, the geologists were confronting their ideas about the formation of the earth’s crust. The scientists could hardly refute the biblical theories such as that of the Great Flood and the conception that all natural disasters were a divine punishment for people’s sins. After 1755 the Lisbon earthquake, which was interpreted by the apocalyptic believers as a new divine punishment for the sins of a European metropolis, confronted with the enlightened philosophers. Voltaire wrote the Poem at the Disaster on Lisbon to criticize Leibniz and the principle, as formulated by Pope, that: “Whatever is, is right”. This Poem was critically replied by J.J. Rousseau. This chapter argues how this confrontation shaped the modern “problem of evil” around a natural catastrophe and its consequences. On the other hand, the response to the earthquake coming from the Portuguese Prime Minister, the Marquis of Pombal, is the first big example of a new understanding of natural disasters as “public catastrophes”. The ideas of prevention based in a new definition of risks, were essential in the urban planning implemented for the reconstruction of Lisbon after the 1755 earthquake. All these new conceptions and actions opened to risk the path towards modernity.
