In the previous chapter I quoted John Kekes as a representative of the humanist explanation of value. This is allied, in Facing Evil, to the belief in naturalism which he also describes as part of ‘our modern sensibility’.

Kekes thinks, correctly in my view, that evil presents a problem to such a mentality no less great than it does to the traditional Christian account of moral experience. There is, as he puts it, a ‘secular problem of evil’. In the last chapter I was concerned to reveal the inadequacies of the humanistic element in ‘our modern sensibility’ in dealing satisfactorily with the reality of evil as a challenge to moral endeavour, despite Kekes's best efforts. But there is another dimension on which we must also deal with evil – namely its explanation: why it happens. Is it true that, faced with some of the appalling occurrences we find perpetuated against, and by, human beings, ‘the best approach to understanding their causes is scientific’? ‘Our modern sensibility’ as described, accurately, by Kekes, has in fact two components, humanism and naturalism.