Speaking of Evil

George W. Bush famously said that “We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name”. Here I will briefly discuss the implications of simplifying the complex issues of international conflict and politics to such a level as well as the relevant moral and ethical issues surrounding this stance. The use of such sweeping terms such as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as policy-defining pillars in a secular society such as the United States of America might seem difficult to justify and understand. I will argue, however, that the notion of absolute evil has always been present in the American psyche, barely covered by secular mentality and contemporary conventions, and that the attacks on America that happened in 2001 have served to revive in their society and politics the image of Satan. By ‘Satan’ I mean not so much the fallen angel of Christian mythology, but the personification of evil, whose most marked characteristic is precisely its changeable nature. In the next few paragraphs I will draw upon the work of Richard Kearney, Andrew Delbanco, Peter Singer, and Jean Baudrillard, amongst others, in order to analyse the ethical, practical and political reasons and consequences of the policies adopted after those fateful attacks. I will also attempt to shed some light onto why the policies adopted by the Bush White House –which have continued to prove extremely unpopular amongst the international community – have been accepted in a seemingly unquestioning manner by a large proportion of the American population.

Ethics & International Affairs, 2002

In the aftermath of the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, the categories of “good” and “evil” have come to dominate the rhetorical response of the U.S. government. This article investigates the implications of using the concept of “evil” as a major public policy rationale. The article focuses on the Bush Administration's attempts to frame its policy around this term in the current campaign against terrorism, but also considers recent uses of the term in the growing literature on war crimes, genocide, and domestic repression. Because the concept of evil has deep roots in various theological understandings, we examine its religious meanings (largely within the Christian tradition) and the problems that arise when applying it in the secular context of government policy. In assessing these problems, we focus on Hannah Arendt's efforts to comprehend the evils of totalitarianism within a secular perspective.We argue that in contemporary policy discourse, “evil” i...

The Spanish journal of psychology, 2010

The term evilness started to become popular in social psychology after the publication in 1999 of the special issue edited by Arthur G. Miller, "Perspectives on evil and violence". It is usually used to define behaviors that are extremely and strongly harmful. However, the concept is still imprecise and needs to be empirically delineated. This article attempts to answer the following questions. What is evilness? What is the difference between aggression and evilness? We conducted several studies with three goals: to analyze how laypersons and experts define evilness, to verify whether laypeople distinguish between different intensities of evilness, and to determine the dimensions that predict aggression and evilness. The results offer preliminary answers to the three questions.

2010

Moral Evil in Practical Ethics, 2018

This paper examines a neglected issue within recent philosophical discussions of a secular concept of evil. The notion of 'political evil' seeks to explain the profound normative social influence that malevolent ideologies have on the behaviour of individuals and the development of their characters. The recent scholarship on secular evil focuses on either evil acts and/or evil persons/characters largely ignoring the social dimension or context in which large scale evils such as genocide occur. A concept of political evil better explains the warping of the moral landscape that takes place, providing the normative framework within which genocide, wide spread torture and mass murder occur. The paper argues that a notion of political evil is an important part of our moral vocabulary without which we cannot adequately understand or describe horrific events such as the Holocaust from a normative perspective.

The concept of evil has been an unpopular one in much political and ethical thought of the twentieth century. There are undoubtedly a number of historical reasons for this. However, there has been of late an ever increasing number of articles and books that have once again taken the concept of evil seriously. Is this movement to be applauded or abandoned? One way to justify and argue for the abandonment of such projects is by pointing to the many problems with the concept of evil. It was surely because of some of these problems that the concept of evil fell out of favour in the first place. 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 too overloaded with metaphysical, cultural and theological baggage to be of any use; that it is a demonising term of hatred that leads to violence; that it is necessarily linked with outdated notions related to body and sexuality; that it only hinders rather than aids our ability to understand; and that it is an ‘irrational’ concept which only ‘mystifies’ and ‘obscures’ discussions of political and ethical issues. In other words, it is either unethical, unpolitical, imprudent, or no longer relevant to use the concept of evil. 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.

Hypatia, 2003

This essay expresses ambivalence about the use of the term “evil” in analyses of terrorism in light of the association of the two in speeches intended to justify the United States’ “war on terrorism.” At the same time, the essay suggests that terrorism can be regarded as “evil” but only when considered among a multiplicity of “evils” comparable to it, for example: rape, war crimes, and repression.

In light of the persistence of discourses of atrocity in the post-Holocaust era, and with the resurgence of talk of evil that followed 11 September 2001, it is clear that the idea of evil still possesses a powerful hold upon the modern imagination. Yet, the interplay of evil and the political imaginationin particular, how different images of evil have shaped the discourses and practices of international politicsremains neglected. This article suggests that evil is depicted through three contending images within international politicsevil as individualistic, as statist and as systemicand their corresponding forms of collective imaginationthe juridical, the humanitarian and the political. It argues further that the dominance of the juridical and, to a lesser extent, the humanitarian imagination obscures our ability to imagine and respond to political evils of structural or systemic violence. Drawing on the example of global poverty, this article contends that the ability to portray and critically judge systemic evils in international politics today depends upon enriching our narratives about indefensible atrocities and reimagining our shared political responsibilities for them.

This paper examines a neglected issue within recent philosophical discussions of a secular concept of evil. The notion of 'political evil' seeks to explain the profound normative social influence that malevolent ideologies have on the behaviour of individuals and the development of their characters. The recent scholarship on secular evil focuses on either evil acts and/or evil persons/characters largely ignoring the social dimension or context in which large-scale evils such as genocide occur. A concept of political evil better explains the warping of the moral landscape that takes place, providing the normative framework within which genocide, wide spread torture and mass murder occur. The paper argues that a notion of political evil is an important part of our moral vocabulary without which we cannot adequately understand or describe horrific events such as the Holocaust from a normative perspective.