ABSTRACT
Though Ivan's speech in The Brothers Karamazov is frequently cited as a classic statement of the challenge evil poses to theism, a central feature of this challenge has been largely neglected in philosophical treatments of the problem of evil. The challenge that I have in mind is posed in the following passage, a passage in which Ivan pushesAlyosha to confront the question of whether any goods could possibly counterbalance the horrendous suffering of a fiveyear-old child that has been savagely tortured by its parents.
