Does the Universe Have a Moral Status? Drew Dalton on Evil, Entropy, and the Fire Worth Walking Into

Apr 25, 2023

What if the pursuit of absolute good is itself the source of evil?

It is the carefully argued, rigorously developed central thesis of one of the most original philosophers working in continental philosophy today. And it is the question at the heart of this intellectually demanding (and personally meaningful) conversations.

The guest is Gwendolyn's dear friend from grad school, Drew Dalton.

Drew M. Dalton: professor of English at Indiana University, formerly professor of philosophy at Dominican University, PhD from the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven (where he and Gwendolyn were graduate school colleagues), author of Longing for the Other: Levinas and Metaphysical Desire (Duquesne University Press), The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the Absolute (Bloomsbury), and The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism (Northwestern University Press). He is one of the few contemporary philosophers building a systematic, original philosophical framework from the ground up. And that framework begins, unflinchingly, with evil. 

Dalton argues that the pursuit of an absolute good inevitably leads to evil, and that the only defensible ethical position is what he calls "ethical resistance": conceiving of the good negatively, as a mode of resisting the possibility of absolute evil, rather than as a positive ideal to be achieved. The historical evidence for this claim is not hard to find. Every atrocity in human history has been committed in the name of something absolutely good, a pure race, a classless society, a holy land, a perfect order. Dalton uses examples from social and political history to demonstrate how concepts of the absolute good have been used to justify oppressive systems globally. 

But Drew's argument goes deeper than politics. In metaphysics, he argues for a "metaphysics of decay" based on the thermodynamic revolution in contemporary material sciences, specifically the second law of thermodynamics and entropic decay, from which he develops an account of being as something which is "unbecoming." The universe, on this account, is not neutral. It is not indifferent. It is, in a precise philosophical sense, oriented toward dissolution. And that orientation has profound consequences for how we think about meaning, morality, and the possibility of the good. 

What we explore in this episode:

• The "tyranny of the absolute": Dalton's argument that any concept of absolute good, when pursued without resistance, becomes a source of oppression, violence, and evil.
• The moral status of the universe: whether reality itself can be evaluated in moral terms and what the answer means for how we live.
• The metaphysics of entropic decay: how the second law of thermodynamics, speculatively extended, produces a philosophical account of being as "unbecoming" and what that means for ethics.
• The "aesthetics of escape": Dalton's argument that art's primary function is not to help us see truth but to "carry us away" from what he calls the "moral horror" and "torment" of existence, and why guilty pleasures and escapism are "existentially necessary palliatives." 
• What it feels like to have this conversation with a friend, someone whose intellectual history you share, whose books you have watched develop from ideas into arguments into published philosophy, and what that connection makes possible in a recorded conversation
• Why Rudy's jaw dropped more than once, and what that tells you about the depth this episode reaches
• What the examined life looks like when it takes evil seriously as a philosophical starting point rather than a problem to be solved.

Note: Drew Dalton has since published The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism (Northwestern University Press, 2023) — the most complete statement of the philosophical framework discussed in this episode. His essay "Reality is evil" was published in Aeon in August 2025. This episode is the conversation that preceded both.

Good Is In The Details is hosted by Gwendolyn Dolske, Ph.D. and Rudy Salo — a philosophy, books, and ideas podcast exploring the examined life in the spirit of Socrates.

Learn more about Professor Dalton: Bio and Books

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