The concept of evil

Philosophy

Volumn 79, Issue 308, 2004, Pages 185-214

  Singer, Marcus G ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

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EID: 33748370553     PISSN: 00318191     EISSN: 1469817X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0031819104000233     Document Type: Review

References (65)

1. Dr. Robert L. Simon, 'Serial Killers, Evil, and Us', National Forum, Phi Kappa Phi Journal 80(4), Fall 2000, p. 24
2. The New Columbia Encyclopedia (4th edn; New York, London: Columbia University Press, 1975), p. 908
3. I have quoted this explication, from Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms (Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 1968, 1984, p. 303) nearly in full because it is so especially perspicuous. I am not supposing that in philosophizing one is replicating a dictionary. Occasionally, recourse to a good dictionary, especially an analytical dictionary, can throw considerable light on a seemingly intractable problem of interpretation
4. A. C. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare (1st edn, 1920; 3rd edn, London: Macmillan, 1929), p. vii
5. Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (1874; 7th edition: London: Macmillan, 1907)
6. Essays on Ethics and Method (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 62, 252
7. Kant's discussion of 'the radical evil in human nature', in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793), is mainly in Book One, chapters 1-4 (transl. by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, 1934; Harper Torchbooks, 1960) pp. 15-49
8. There is also some discussion of evil in the posthumous Lectures on Ethics, available in definitive form in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, ed. by Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind, translated by Peter Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
9. and in The Metaphysics of Morals, transl. by Mary Gregor (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
10. This distinction is, oddly enough, highlighted in a cartoon in which an attorney says to the judge: 'Your Honor, may I point out to the court that my client pleaded guilty to wrongdoing but not evildoing' (Arnie Levin, The New Yorker, 17 December 2001, p. 76.)
11. Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1907; 2nd edn, 1924)
12. Philip Blair Rice, On the Knowledge of Good and Evil (New York: Random House, 1955)
13. Richard Taylor, Good and Evil: A New Direction (New York: Macmillan, 1970)
14. John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (New York: Random House, 1994), is called a 'nonfiction novel'
15. Josiah Royce, Studies of Good and Evil (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1898, 1906)
16. cf. chap. 4, 'The Knowledge of Good and Evil', pp. 89-124
17. (reprinted from International Journal of Ethics 4 (1893)
18. D. W. Gotshalk, Patterns of Good and Evil: A Value Analysis (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1963), p. 96; the optimism of Gotshalk's remark is simply baffling; it amounts to saying that every cloud has a silver lining - even a tornado cloud and the mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb explosion
19. Roy Baumeister, Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1997)
20. Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil (New York: Random House, 1998)
21. Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) a valuable recent contribution to this topic, presents a view of evil quite different from mine
22. The April 2002 issue of The Monist (vol. 85, no. 2)
23. is devoted to discussions of evil and the Winter 2003 issue of Hypatia (vol. 18, no. 1), is a special issue on 'Feminist Philosophy and the Problem of Evil'
24. There is an interesting review of Baumeister by Leonard Berkowitz in Contemporary Psychology 43 (May 1998): 317 ff
25. Berkowitz has a more extensive discussion of the subject in 'Evil is More Than Banal: Situationism and the Conception of Evil', Personality and Social Psychology Review 3 (1999): 246-53
26. Daniel Haybron, 'Moral Monsters and Saints', Monist 85 (2), April 2002, p. 279
27. Quoted by Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker, 11 March 2002, p. 87; the expression 'excitable conservative impresario' is Hertzberg's
28. This event has been memorialized in a play, The Laramie Project, by Moises Kaufman and the Members of Tectonic Theater Project (New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 2001), available on a video. Given the interest this play has excited, it appears that some good has come out of this evil action after all. This point was actually made by Matthew Shepard's father, Dennis Shepard, when he said in retrospect, 'Matt's beating, hospitalization and funeral focused worldwide attention on hate. Good is coming out of evil' (p. 85). The good coming out of it, however, does not balance out the evil
29. The monstrous event of 7 June 1998 in Jasper, Texas, has been definitively discussed by Dina Temple-Raston in A Death in Texas (New York: Holt, 2002), a superb piece of reporting and investigating, very illuminating. Her subtitle is also noteworthy: 'A Story of Race, Murder, and a Small Town's Struggle for Redemption'. The following passage is especially poignant: '"I don't think Mr King [father of Bill King, one of the perpetrators] believed Bill did it until about a week before the trial", said Sonny Cribbs months later. "Sometimes you don't have to be a racist to end up raising one. This was hard for everyone, not just Mr King, to admit."' (p. 227). One curious thing here is the qualification 'sometimes'
30. Philip Hallie, 'Cruelty', Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. by Lawrence C. and Charlotte B. Becker (New York and London: Garland, 1992), I: 229, 230, 231; (2nd edn; London and New York: Routledge, 2001), I: 360, 361, 362
31. Cf. Hallie's book Cruelty (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1982
32. revised edn of The Paradox of Cruelty [Wesleyan University Press, 1969]); the encyclopedia article, however, provides a sharper and more concise account
33. See also Ordinary Vices, by Judith Shklar (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984)
34. esp. chap. 1, 'Putting Cruelty First', pp. 7-44
35. Much has been written on the Holocaust. Berel Lang, Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990; 2nd edn, Syracuse University Press, 2003)
36. is a particularly valuable philosophical discussion (written, unfortunately, in a rather dense style). In his 'Reintroduction', in the 2nd edn, Lang summarizes his reasons for preferring to speak of the Nazi Genocide rather than of The Holocaust, though he recognizes that 'the chances of displacing that term are slight' (p. xii). See also the article 'The Holocaust', by Steven T. Katz, in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), vol. 4, pp. 495-9
37. Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 8
38. Raymond Lamont-Brown, in Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Samurai (1997; London: Cassell, 1999)
39. refers in passing to 'such outrages as the "1937 Rape of Nanking" where, on 13 December 1937, Taisho (General) Iwane Matsui, Commander-in-Chief of the Central China Area Army, unleashed his forces to slaughter and maim about 300,000 Chinese' (p. 12)
40. As I mentioned in the text, the Rape of Nanking wasn't hidden; it was fully reported in The New York Times and other papers. (Chang, pp. 144-6.) The world at the time simply wasn't interested, perhaps because it was Orientals who were being tortured and slaughtered by other Orientals. On the other hand, it is not in the least evident what could have been done to stop it
41. Cf. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, by William L. Shirer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960), esp. pp. 663-5, 967-74
42. and Shirer's A Native's Return 1945-1988 (Boston, Toronto, London: Little, Brown and Company, 1990), pp. 26-31
43. George Fitch, quoted in The Capital Times (of Madison Wisconsin), 30 October 1998, 11A, emphasis added. The source is unimportant; what matters is the thing said
44. Barbara Kirwin, a forensic psychologist, in The Mad, The Bad, and The Innocent: The Criminal Mind on Trial (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977; New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1997), claims that 'There is no doubt ... that the notorious serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer were both psychopaths. They were not crazy; they were evil' (p. 25, Harper edn); and that 'To equate evil with madness is tantamount to the medieval thinking that saw mental illness as demonic possession' (p. 95). She does not define evil, though we can infer that 'psychopathic criminals - who, though basically lacking a conscience, are able to conform their conduct to the law but choose not to ...' (p. 24) are evil
45. The distinction between psychosis and psychopathy is made explicit by Jonathan Kellerman in Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children (New York: Ballantine, 1999). Kellerman argues that criminal psychopaths are not psychotic or mentally ill, even though psychiatrists are trained to conceive of them under the category of mental illness. They are human beings who lack any sense of right and wrong, have no capacity for empathy or sympathy, are incapable of feeling remorse or even understanding what it is, though they can act as though they do
46. Homer A. Watt, Karl J. Holzknecht, and Raymond Ross, Outlines of Shakespeare's Plays (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1941), pp. 166-7, italics added. The authors actually use some of Shakespeare's language in describing Iago: 'outwardly "a man ... of humanity and trust", but actually a ... villain without conscience; a "viper", an "inhuman dog", of cold, egoistic ... evil' (p. 166)
47. Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung's Golden Hours (1922; London: Jonathan Cape, 1926)
48. the quotation is the title of chapter 1 of Bramah's Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (London: The Richards Press, 1928)
49. William March, The Bad Seed (New York: Rinehart, 1954)
50. Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (London, 1886)
51. Eric T. Olson, 'Was Jekyll Hyde?', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66(2), March 2003: 328-48, is a discussion of this very question
52. A reviewer for The Atlantic Monthly characterized The Bad Seed as '... an impeccable tale of pure evil ...'; the nature of 'pure evil' is left for the reader to discern
53. Felix Adler, An Ethical Philosophy of Life (New York: D. Appleton, 1919), p. 172. Adler continues: 'Remember the career of a Caesar Borgia, the extermination of the Caribbean Indians by the Spaniards, the outrages on women perpetrated during the present war, the exploitation of human labour practiced on a large scale among the civilized nations. That the blackest crimes may be committed with a full knowledge of the horrible consequences to the victims seems hardly to admit of doubt. Evil is known as evil'. (Cf. pp. 180 and 327.)
54. What I have referred to as a 'saying' is of course a line from a poem, Milton's Paradise Lost, bk. 4, 1. 108: 'So farewell hope, and, with hope, farewell fear, / Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost, / Evil, be thou my Good.'
55. The speaker is Satan, hence this aim is Satanic. (I have here incorporated some passages from my 'Gewirth, Beyleveld, and Dialectical Necessity', Ratio Juris 13(2), June 2000, p. 190.)
56. John Kekes, 'Evil', Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward Craig (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), II: 463-6
57. Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler (cited supra, note 8), p. 208, reporting on an interview with Berel Lang. Rosenbaum's book, something of a tour-de-force, is a tremendous job of research and interpretation, but it is not so much an attempt at 'explaining Hitler' as 'explaining explaining Hitler', thus more like 'metaexplaining Hitler', since it concentrates on discussing the myriad - and mutually incompatible - attempts to explain Hitler that had appeared up to that time
58. There is an analogy here to what Alex Ross has called 'the morally inane comments of Karlheinz Stockhausen, who called the destruction of the World Trade Center a Luciferian masterpiece - "the greatest work of art imaginable"' (New Yorker, 8 October 2001, p. 80). A twisted view if there ever was one, characteristic of a moral idiot. On the other hand, if one abstracts from the destruction, the killing and the wounding and the human misery entailed, and just observes the event on a screen as something disembodied, it may be thought to have a certain beauty. Perhaps this is an example of 'the art of evil'. Evil can be addictive, another factor adding to its insidiousness
59. Stanley Benn, 'Wickedness', Ethics 95 (July 1985): 795-810, at p. 796
60. Benn distinguishes different forms of wickedness, which he labels self-centered wickedness, psychopathic wickedness, conscientious wickedness, heteronomous wickedness, and malignant wickedness. I have made use herein of his discussion of the latter, and have adopted his term 'malignity' (pp. 805-9). Malignant wickedness is evil done in full knowledge that it is evil and because it is evil, and this is what I take malignant evil, unalloyed evil, to be. Benn also refers to it as 'unalloyed wickedness', and argues effectively that it is not impossible for someone to do something for the reason that it is wicked or evil. On wickedness, cf. Mary Midgley, Wickedness: A Philosophical Essay (London and New York: Routledge, 1984)
61. For all his sophistication, Rosenbaum does exhibit some naïvety in being surprised that, as he puts it, 'even an atheist [can] have little hesitation in using the word "evil"' (p. xxi), a consequence no doubt of what I have called 'obvious theological connections'. Susan Sontag, in Illness as Metaphor, claims that 'we have a sense of evil but no longer the religious or philosophical language to talk intelligently about evil. Trying to comprehend "radical" or "absolute" evil, we search for adequate metaphors' (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), p. 85. Sontag was writing about illness - primarily syphilis, tuberculosis, and cancer - and not about Hitler and Genocide; nonetheless, although this claim is intriguing, I regard it as philosophically naïve. On the other hand, at the time she wrote her book philosophical discussions of evil had not yet emerged from the Dark Ages. Still, if she had ventured, she might have discovered the requisite language herself. It has been available all along
62. John Grote, Treatise on the Moral Ideals, edited by J. B. Mayor (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1876), p. 517. Grote died in 1866, and this book, incomplete and in some disarray at the time of his death, was prepared for publication posthumously
63. 'The Terror' is an apt appellation, akin to 'The Reign of Terror', which refers to the terror prevailing in France from early 1793 to mid-1794. Since then there have been other reigns of terror, some lasting for a shorter period of time - Rwanda -, others lasting a lifetime. One who wants more detail on the Argentine Terror can find it, in all its horror - unexplained kidnappings and disappearances, wanton torture by indiscriminate beatings, brutal incarceration in cells in which one could neither stand up nor lie down nor comfortably sit, and the application of electric prods to the genitals (to mention just some of the devices used) - described in Jacobo Timerman's remarkable book Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981). Timerman observed it - experienced it - and was enabled to survive to write about it. Similar atrocities were carried out at about the same time in Chile, under the murderous regime of General Pinochet
64. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: The Viking Press, 1963), p. 231
65. Cf. the following: 'Apparently some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided only that they occur far enough away to pose no personal threat' (Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 221)