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Evil, fallenness, and finitude—three concepts that typically draw a crowd whenever they are discussed. One may actually consider them supplemental analogies to Kant's postulates of freedom, God, and immortality, since they, too, appear to function as necessary propositions for human contemplation. Certainly, if one grants any credence to the notion of a philosophia perennis, then the above three ideas surely make the list, given that no one would accept anecdotally that any human individual ever did, does now, or ever will exist without at some point reflecting seriously on mortality, the disjunction between the ideal and the real, and the jarring implications of the ubiquity of corruption and violence. Indeed, reflections on these themes supply the paradigms that shape the substance of human culture, religion, art, and literature.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-57087-7_1

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