The Firmest Grasp of the Real: Barth on Original Sin

Abstract

Any attempt seriously to probe the phenomena of human wickedness soon runs into a problem: we seem to find it extraordinarily difficult to describe evil as that which we can and do perpetrate. 'Many men seem perfect strangers to their own characters ... There is plainly in the generality of mankind, an absence of doubt or distrust, in a very great measure, as to their moral character and behaviour; and likewise a disposition to take for granted, that all is right and well with them in these respects.' So writes Bishop Butler in the remarkable tenth sermon in the Rolls Chapel, 'Upon Self-Deceit'. To say, as Butler does, that we are commonly incapable of piercing through the illusions we entertain about our characters, is not only to say that a person's ability morally to engage with wickedness is dependent upon their ability to acknowledge failure in themselves. It is also to say that the difficulties of dealing with the topic of evil lie less in accounting for its origins than in offering a description of it as action undertaken not just by others but by ourselves