A fundamental problem of the Western philosophical tradition, the justification for the existence of evil in the world is an inexhaustible theme for the philosopher. Particularly topical at a time when the direct and indirect effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic are sparing no one, the form of this questioning has evolved over the course of philosophical revolutions. This article attempts to look back at the end of the 18th century to extend the words of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin from a reinterpretation of the Kantian’s perspective on evil and suffering. By adopting a perspective that is both philosophical and literary, it is possible to demonstrate how the concept of unity, understood in the light of Beauty, reveals itself as an irremediable, but justified, cause of suffering experienced by humans. From his novel Hyperion, Hölderlin would offer us a tacit theodicy which, without denying the epistemological criteria of Kantian philosophy, would rather slip from it, as well as from any exclusively philosophical justification for the existence of evil and suffering attempted since modernity.