Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology

Lawrie Reznek's Evil or Ill? is one of the most recent attempts to shed light on the insanity defense and render it compatible with widely accepted moral and juridical precepts. As such, it is a useful instrument with which to consider current thinking at the interface of law and psychiatry. Though partly successful, Reznek's book nonetheless rehearses any number of common confusions on the part of those who seek to distinguish between moral defects and mental or psychological incompetence. In addition, Reznek's analysis fails to provide a coherent means by which to identify, let alone explain, what renders actions and actors "evil" or, for that matter, "ill." The conflation of what is desirable (in the moral sense) with what an actor might desire (in the psychological sense) is one source of confusion. Moreover, neither moral philosophy nor the incorporated moral resources of the rule of law have ever been taxed by the sorts of occurrences Reznek offers as instances of "evil." Finally, in accepting uncritically a Davidsonian account of reasons as causes, Reznek (as with many others) ignores the serious limitations of such a theory when advanced to account for the class of actions the law is designed to evaluate.