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The Problems with Evil

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Contemporary Political Theory Aims and scope

Abstract

The concept of evil has been an unpopular one in many recent Western political and ethical discourses. One way to justify this neglect is by pointing to the many problems with the concept of evil. The standard grievances brought against the very concept of evil include: that it has no proper place in secular political and ethical discourses; that it is a demonizing term of hatred that leads to violence; that it is necessarily linked with outdated notions of body and sexuality; and that it only hinders rather than aids our ability to understand. I shall seek to argue in defence of the concept of evil against these charges. The upshot of this argument is that the language and concept of evil has a justified and important role to play in political and ethical discourses.

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Notes

  1. Hannah Arendt's work is an important exception.

  2. There have been a number of recent attempts to offer conceptualizations of evil that explicate how a moral evil differs from a moral wrong. However, I do not rely on any particular conceptualization of evil here. But see, for example, Claudia Card (2002), Paul Formosa (2007a), Eve Garrard (1998), John Kekes (2005), Adam Morton (2004), Marcus Singer (2004), and Arne Vetlesen (2005).

  3. Garrard (2002, 43) claims that the terms ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’ ‘seem deeply inadequate to the event, and so we reach for some more powerful term of condemnation: we say that the Holocaust was evil’. Daniel Haybron (2002, 260) likewise argues that ‘such tepid language’ as ‘wrong’ ‘seems terribly inadequate to the moral gravity of’ the Holocaust.

  4. From now on, when I use the term ‘demonize’, I mean ‘demonizing at its worst’, for it is only at its worst that we think of those we demonize as inherently evil.

  5. For this reason Konrad Lorenz goes so far as to call humanity's ‘ability to demonise his opponents more serious than the invention of weapons’ (Fogelman, 1993, 172).

  6. But, of course, there were historical and ideological reasons (and not just psychological ones) why it was the Jews, and not some other group, that were ‘chosen’. Arendt (1967) explores these issues.

  7. An ‘in-group’ is a group one is in, and an ‘out-group’ is a group one is not in.

  8. Henry Staten (2005, 12) argues that it is because we have a picture of ‘the evil one as the alien’ that 9/11 was described in terms of evil, whereas the mass murderers at Columbine, as they were perpetrated by ‘us’ and not ‘them’, were characterized in the public forum, not in terms of evil, but in terms of ‘a failure of society’. In other words, situational factors, such as the ‘failure of society’, only enter into explanations of the actions of ‘us’ and not ‘them’.

  9. There is at present a tendency among (some or even many) Western people to view all Muslims as ‘evil’ and bent on our destruction, just as there is a tendency among (some or even many) Muslim people to view all Westerners as ‘evil’ rich capitalists, bent on unjustly exploiting them and profiteering from their misery. Both images, in combination with a fear that one's identity is being threatened, breed demonization, even though such images are largely inaccurate and such fears are largely without foundation. For a similar view, see Morton (2004, 65–68).

  10. It is for this reason that Peter Singer (2004, 2, 193, 207–209) thinks that ‘many American Christians see their own nation as carrying out a divine mission’. It is important not to overlook the bitter irony that the same groups that Bush labels ‘evil’ think themselves to be good, and America, driven solely by ‘pleasure and material interest’, to be the embodiment of evil (Wong, 2006, 126–127).

  11. Of course, my intention here is not to somehow equate Hitler and Bush — my point is only that they both use similar imagery and employ ‘evil’ in a Manichean and demonizing sense.

  12. Schmitt (1996, 36) argues that if we degrade ‘the enemy into moral and other categories’ we are thereby ‘forced to make of him a monster that must not only be defeated but also utterly destroyed’. Schmitt instead tries to conceptualize the political in terms of ‘friends and enemies’. We should not demonize our enemies — they are our foes, and not inhuman monsters. But while one's foes may not be inhuman, one is under no ethical constraints in how one ‘gets rid of them’.

  13. On the importance of situation in explaining and predicting human behaviour, see John Doris (2002) and Morton (2004).

  14. Freud (2004, 61) writes: ‘Their neighbour is not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to take out their aggression on him, to exploit his labour without recompense, to use him sexually without his consent, to take possession of his goods, to humiliate him and cause him pain, to torture and kill him. Homo homini lupus [Man is a wolf to man]’.

  15. Kekes (2005, 171) claims that a similar account has, in various forms, ‘been defended, among others, by Hobbes, Butler, Kant, Bradley, and Freud’. More recently, we can add Morton (2004) and Midgley (1984) to this list.

  16. Arendt argues that radical evil is perpetrated through a three-step process (Formosa, 2007d, 718–720). This process involves the killing of the juridical person, who is the bearer of rights, the moral person, who can make free moral choices, and finally by removing any remaining trace of uniqueness, individuality and spontaneity.

  17. Kekes (2005, 80) argues: ‘the reason why the threat of envy cannot be eliminated from moral life is that differences in excellences and talents, skills, and admirable characteristics will persist as long as there are human beings, people will go on taking pride in their excellences; and they will continue to feel badly about their deficiencies’.

  18. Freud (2004, 164) would agree. He claims that: ‘there is no such thing as “eradicating evil” [because] the deepest essence of human nature consists in instinctual impulses which are of an elementary nature’ and which can presumably sometimes lead to evil.

  19. This is, of course, not to say that we cannot reduce the amount of evil in the world. And one important way to do this is to reduce the prevalence of evil-encouraging situations and challenge the demonization of others wherever it rears its ugly head.

  20. This differentiates between associational and non-associational groups. See John Rawls (1999, 482).

  21. One problem that I cannot address here is which acts count as evil. Of course, what one person or group sees as an atrocious act of evil might be seen by others as justifiable revolutionary action. However, the crux of this disagreement revolves around, not evil, but moral justifiability, and so cannot be dealt with here. An act that is very harmful is not evil if it is morally justifiable and therefore not wrong.

  22. For the idea that evil is intrinsically ‘mysterious’ and ‘beyond rational explanation’, see Thomas Cushman (2001, 80) and Morton (2004, 2). Inga Clendinnen (1999) argues that references to evil take us beyond the domain of the human to somewhere ‘sinister and metaphysical “beyond the moral pale” … and therefore beyond the possibility of human understanding’ (Garrard, 2002, 323).

  23. Richard Bernstein (2005, viii) argues that such ‘evil talk’ is not a use but an ‘abuse of evil’, as it is deployed to ‘obscure complex issues, to block genuine thinking, and to stifle public discussion’.

  24. We find variants of this basic view in the works of Boethius, Augustine and Aquinas, and it is prevalent among many other Christian and Neo-Platonist thinkers (Gillespie, 2006).

  25. Boethius (2001, 102) likens vicious men to various beasts who lack human personality. Vicious people are literally ‘metamorphosed by vices’ so that ‘you can no longer judge’ them to ‘be a human being’. Vicious men are like wolves, or dogs, or foxes, or filthy sows, not humans.

  26. Character is used here in the Kantian sense of a firmness of principle. For a discussion of Kant's concept of evil characters, see Patrick Frierson (2006).

  27. But such fascination should never turn into a mere fascination. A similar point is raised by Jennifer Geddes (2001, 7) who argues that: ‘Evil has taken on a glamorous sheen… We the viewers of such evil become anaesthetised such that our questions take the form of curiosity, rather than concern’.

  28. Whether this leads to ‘shame at being a human being’ is another question — see Arendt (1994, 131). Robert Nozick (1989, 238) thinks that it does.

  29. This is not to say that responses to large-scale evils should only be punitive, for to punish all those complicit in a large-scale evil, such as the Holocaust, would be neither feasible nor beneficial. Equally, though, to punish no one over such an evil would be inappropriate. The nature of this balance, especially when reconciliation is thrown into the mix, is not easy to resolve.

  30. Steven Aschheim (1997, 137) quotes Scott Montgomery, who argues that the Nazis have been ‘transformed from historical truth into icons… The Nazis have been given a disturbing purity, a kind of sacred uniqueness, even a mystifying grandeur of depravity that finally gives back to them certain qualities of myth they sought for themselves’.

  31. As Cushman (2001, 92) notes: ‘Western passivity in the face of the media images of the war [in Bosnia] was actually an active force because it clued in Serbian forces to the fact that they could engage in future destructive actions with impunity’. On the failures of the West in regard to Rwanda, see Philip Gourevitch (1998).

  32. Theodor Adorno (2003, 60) wonders whether ‘the day will come when discussions will take place about whether some new monstrous act falls within the definition of genocide; whether nations have a right to intervene, a right of which they have no real wish to avail themselves; and whether, given the unforseen difficulties in applying the term in practise, the whole concept of “genocide” should not be deleted from the statutes’. Unfortunately, in relation to recent events in Rwanda, Adorno's fears have become reality. Jonathon Glover (2001, 122) notes that: ‘there is a legal obligation to take action against genocide and the Clinton administration was worried about this [in Rwanda]. State Department officials were instructed not to use the word “genocide” about Rwanda’.

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Formosa, P. The Problems with Evil. Contemp Polit Theory 7, 395–415 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2008.17

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