ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals an antinomy in existentialist Gabriel Marcel's conception of evil, and argues that Marcel's view of feeling of hopeful existence is better understood by working through the antinomy. It maps out Marcel’s conception of evil onto his fundamental distinction between problem and mystery. The chapter shows that the distinction creates effective methodologies for dealing with evil in world (the problem approach and the mystery approach). A different approach to evil recognizes that there are concrete structural conditions that allow evil to indistinctly and inarticulately threaten us, as a mystery. Primary reflection would be an appropriate method of dealing with suffering if evil functioned solely at level of other problems. The illumination of the self that can be revealed through active reflection of mystery is itself a product of secondary reflection. The antinomy between problem of evil and mystery of evil is not one to be solved, then, but is one to be dissolved through an encounter with hope.
