Abstract

Since ancient times, the problem of evil has attracted intellectual minds in China probably as strongly as any other philosophical issue. One might reasonably take the view that particular ways of argumentation on this topic shaped the spiritual portrait of any major period of thought in Chinese history. The present essay investigates some crucial shifts in China’s coming to terms with evil in the course of the last one hundred years. The focus is put on Chinese readings of Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Mikhail Bulgakov.