Aspects Of Evil Research Articles

Researcher entanglements and the problem of evil

Researchers can learn much from engaging with the complexities of evil. This article details how I felt enmeshed in a process where I was both seeing, and in some ways contributing to, aspects of evil while researching in prison. The context for this study was a high-security prison establishment recently scarred by three high-profile incidents that merged terror with violence. By introducing examples from my fieldwork, I explore various ways in which ‘researcher entanglements’ emerged. I argue that the real danger of evil is that it leads to moral righteousness and toxic cycles that are hard to break.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE NOVELS OF TA DUY ANH FROM CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS PERSPECTIVE

By considering Crime and Punishment as the hidden principle of creating a hyperreality full of Evil, Ta Duy Anh has impressively posed and dealed with Crime and Punishment in his novels. Through revealing aspects of Evil and Crime, the writer has portrayed Evil, pointed out its nature and showed the difficulty in its both recognizing and eliminating. From seeing Crime as a sign of Evil to perceiving the bulge of a hidden protagonist in postmodern hyperreality, Ta Duy Anh has expressed his own conception and solution of Crime and Punishment. Explained from the creative consciousness of an artist and from Good - Evil and Good - Beauty, Ta Duy Anh has touched human aspiration, using Punishments, self-punishing with Repentance, or seeking the salvation of Beauty to eradicate evils.

НАДЦІННІСТЬ ЗЛА ТА ЙОГО ОНТОЛОГІЧНІ ВИМІРИ У ФІЛОСОФІЇ Ж. БАТАЯ


 
 
 Aspects of evil are revealed as the aesthetic inspiration of art, mainly of literature, and of the natural necessity of the existence of evil as the basic plane of being. It is explored the idea of death as a manifestation of evil and the need for death to develop life. G. Bataille discloses the philosophy of death through a system of sacrifice of the best achievement in accordance with the religious beliefs of ancient peoples. The Christian model of rejecting the death of an innocent victim and the Protestant ethic of accumulating wealth are defined by the philosopher as an unnatural phenomenon and a threat to life. It is stated that man perceives death through the prism of exclusively evil and, unlike an animal, scrolls death through the process of knowing good and evil. Attention is paid to identifying evil as the primary need for good. The question of suffering, the creator of which the philosopher defines God, is explored. In the same context, the essence of God is revealed as well as the role of the Devil in becoming God as the absolute of good. Evidence has been shown to be a necessary value that promotes communion with God.
 
 

Evil History: Protecting Our Constitution Through an Anti-Originalism Canon of Constitutional Interpretation

This review assesses three recent books on the subject of originalism. Each approaches the question of originalism from a different angle. None of the books confronts the raw challenge to the authority of the framers leveled by Justice Thurgood Marshall in his speech upon the bicentennial of the United States Constitution. Marshall argued that the founding generation was too morally compromised, too bereft of information we now have as a result of the existence and experiences of millions of Americans since the close of the 18th century, and too imperfect in their efforts to design a sustainable government, to justify the devotion to their perspective originalism demands. In the face of this critique, originalism, which is a devotional doctrine, and originalists, its devotees, nevertheless insist that we should obey the founding generation and ignore, among other things, the “the reality that a nation putatively based on the principle of human equality was actually a prison house in which millions of Americans had virtually no rights at all.” Drawing on this and other more complete descriptions of our history, this review demands that advocates for an originalist methodology confront the full brunt of our past, both good and evil. The failure to do so has deep moral, political, sociological and legal ramifications. “Law writes the past, not just its own past, but the past for those over whom law seeks to exercise its dominion.” To the extent that law writes a past that covers-up, papers-over, ignores or subverts the evil aspects of history, it engages in abuses that we would condemn if perpetrated by other nations as denial. As a methodology, this review rejects originalism as a presumptively justifiable methodology. It goes further. It proposes a canon of constitutional construction that would proscribe the use of originalism in any of its variants unless certain prophylactic historical facts are established or negated by the proponents of any form of originalism. Broadly speaking, this canon would require any party in any litigation or legal dispute seeking to offer or rely upon the perspective of the founding generation in any dispositive fashion to demonstrate that the clause or clauses to be interpreted and the history to be deployed bears no supporting relationship to the evils of our national past and would not further principles underlying those evils. Specifically, such a canon would require proponents of the originalism methodology to demonstrate that adopting originalism in a case would not support or extend original principles that perpetuated the institution of slavery, supported the expulsion and mass extermination of Native Americans as a national policy, buttressed the terrorism of Redemption upon the collapse of Reconstruction, entrenched the political and personal subjugation of women and children, or permitted the use of governmental force to suppress political speech in the forms present during any of the historical periods from which the evidence is drawn. If the proponents of originalism are not able to overcome this burden, they must rely upon the many methodological approaches to constitutional interpretation that are not originalism, that have developed over the course of American history, and have been embraced and incorporated into our law as a matter of historical practice.

Contorted Images

ABSTRACTThe paper uses Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem and the author’s work with a patient who survived Idi Amin Dada’s reign of terror in Uganda to explore the parasitic, distortive, and corrosive aspects of evil.

Evil in the philosophy of Karl Marx

While a considerable secondary literature revolves around the issue of whether Marx believed that the concepts of “justice” and “injustice” – and hence, by implication, other comparable moral terms as well – had any non-relative meaning, there is really no doubt that a strong moral vision, with emphasis on the evil aspects of the capitalist system as a system of exploitation, undergirded all of his writings, particularly Capital. In understanding the extent to which recognition of evil pervades Marx’s mature thought, the centrality to his analysis of the notion of “exploitation” deserves emphasis. From an historical perspective, it is useful to recall efforts at Marxist-Christian dialogue that occurred during the post-World War II era. Two French philosophers who flourished in the latter part of the Twentieth Century, Michel Henry and Jacques Derrida, deserve special notice for their religious or quasi-religious interpretations of Marx’s philosophy, which in the final analysis can be seen as a critique of profound evil in the world even though it contains nothing resembling a conventional system of ethics. Nor does it, contrary to common assumptions about it, offer a guarantee of a “happy ending” to history. Marx’s greatest contribution to thinking about evil may lie in his insight into the profound immorality of the principle guiding the system of capitalism, both in his day and ours, to wit, that the pursuit of material self-interest is supremely good.

Evolution, the Origin of Human Persons, and Original Sin: Physical Continuity with an Ontological Leap

Evolution, the Origin of Human Persons, and Original Sin: Physical Continuity with an Ontological Leap

Narrating Diaspora in Edwidge Danticat's Short-Story Cycle The Dew Breaker

A short-story cycle consisting of nine interconnected stories, Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker (2004) uncovers and creatively maps a Haitian American world whose traumatic experiences remain lar...

Aspects of Evil in Traditional Murder Ballads

Traditional, or folk, ballads deal with common themes, often “leaping” over some details of plot and character while “lingering” on others, with the result that songs passed down orally through generations often appear in many variants. This paper will examine several songs from Martin Simpson’s 1976 debut album, Golden Vanity. I will trace their historical origins and argue that even some ancient ballads still speak to audiences today.

Aspects of Evil

Aspects of Evil Robert L. Arrington (bio) On Evil by Terry Eagleton (Yale University Press, 2011. 192 pages. $16 pb) Oddly dedicated to Henry Kissinger (an evil man, are we to assume, or, ironically, a good one?), Terry Eagleton's book is a dazzling collection of references to philosophers (medieval to modern), modern novels, psychological theories, and theological tracts. Eagleton certainly wears his erudition on his sleeve. Unfortunately his clarity of logical exposition is less evident. He offers us an ontological theory of evil, describing it in terms that he thinks apply to the human condition itself. As such it is inescapable. Not to be equated with simple wrongdoing, nor even wickedness, evil is not, in Heidegger's terms, an ontic condition, and hence variable and contingent; instead it is a part of human being qua human being. Eagleton, as is well known, is a Marxist. He is also in this book a psychoanalyst— or at least a follower of Freud. Evil is said to be an expression of the death wish, which operates in all of us and is in essence a desire for nonbeing, expressed inwardly toward ourselves and outwardly toward others. Eagleton thinks that evil and its companion, the death wish, have consequences that, while dire and inevitable, nevertheless are avoidable, at least on the social level. In his introduction Eagleton worries about the problem of determinism. If evil is something that "infects" some people and societies, then how can their evil actions be avoided? Such a "disease" would be a cause of the behavior and would be inevitable, given the laws of causation. In that case it would be improper to hold the perpetrators of the evil actions accountable and responsible. They could no more avoid this behavior than one could avoid the consequences of any medical condition that causes an evil act; they would need to be treated, not punished. In fact such actions would be completely intelligible according to the laws of causation, whereas many have argued that evil is fundamentally unintelligible and mysterious. Nor, Eagleton believes, can evil be said to be uncaused or a "cause in itself," as others have thought. "This," he tells us, "mistakenly implies that an action which has a cause cannot be freely undertaken." Unfortunately he provides us with no good argument for this claim. If causes are necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of an event, and if these necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of an act conspire, how could the act not take place? If Satan or adverse social conditions are what an evil person or society are up against, "then evil would seem to be unbeatable." If the young killers of toddlers, say, are born evil or under [End Page lxi] the control of demonic powers, then they are innocent. So, Eagleton concludes, "those who wish to punish others for their evil . . . need to claim that they are evil of their own free will." Eagleton sees no problem here; however, for, as he cavalierly remarks, "The truth . . . is that reason and freedom are bound closely together." The many philosophers today who think that reasons are in fact the causes of actions would beg to disagree. Eagleton owes us an explanation of how responsibility for evil actions and causation are compatible. At this point Eagleton states one of his conclusions: "Either human actions are explicable, in which they cannot be evil; or they are evil, in which case there is nothing more to be said about them. The argument of this book is that neither of these propositions is true." In other words either one can explain evil—as the result of possession by the devil, social conditions, or a simple matter of fact about some people and their character—or . . . what? Evil can be characterized, he thinks, and in some cases it can be dealt with, avoided, or rendered less likely to occur. We can hold people responsible for their evil actions, and we can legitimately punish them for such actions—this in spite of the fact that there are undeniable social conditions that often give rise to evil behavior, or character flaws that can be uncovered, or even possession by the...

Beyond Tragedy: Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau on Responsibility, Evil and Political Ethics

Hans Morgenthau claimed that a tragic perspective enables us to confront more squarely the harsh realities of politics, the evil aspects of human nature, and the ethical compromises action requires. Richard Lebow has more recently identified Morgenthau as an exemplar in making his own case for the “tragic vision.” This essay contrasts the sharp differences between Morgenthau’s and Hannah Arendt’s response to the Holocaust to challenge Morgenthau’s claim, and to illustrate the limitations of a tragic perspective. Her turn to law in confronting the problems of evil and responsibility that the Holocaust had so radically posed underscores the need to draw upon other conceptual resources beyond tragedy in our critical engagement with such issues.

On Studying Evil

Keywords language, value, virtues, positive psychology When you bump up against the limits of your own honesty it is as though your thoughts get into a whirlpool, an infinite regress: You can say what you like, it takes you no further. (Wittgenstein 1984, 8e) The more we learn about some things, the harder they become to define (James 1902/1982). Although language is an indispensable tool, what can be said in words is finite and necessarily approximate (Wittgenstein 1922, 1953). As Morton (2005) points out, when we choose a definition of evil, our definition will cover some aspects of evil and exclude others. This, however, does not necessarily mean that different definitions do not refer to things that are all part of the same phenomenon; it may merely reflect the limitations of language and the many perspectives on evil. Different definitions of evil can focus our attention (and potentially resources) on specific aspects of the phenomenon for detailed study. Baumeister's (1996, 8) definition of evil as "intentional interpersonal harm" is perhaps the best definition for studying atrocities. "Militant ignorance"—exterminating the evidence for what one wants to be false—is only one of the definitions used by Peck. This definition is not limited to extremely abhorrent actions: evil is the enemy of truth, which dovetails with the notion of evil being connected with lies; but it includes a greater range of problems on which to spread, rather than focus, our limited resources. Some of these problems may not be amenable to scientific research, although they are not, for that reason, unimportant. Another definition Peck (1983, 42) uses is that evil is "live spelled backwards"—that which destroys life, and not only corporeal life but human spirit—evil is anti-love. (I once saw a bumper sticker that read "EVOL"—love spelled backward.) Yet another Peck (1978) definition of evil is using power to impose one's will on others by overt or covert coercion to protect a sick, unloving self. Ultimately, Peck (1983) believes that evil is a diseased will. According to Dostoyevsky (1864/1972), the human will is the one thing science will never be able to neatly categorize. No one definition of evil will suffice. I also agree with Stein (2005) that rigorous research is likely to uncover details that cannot be accounted for by any one theory. This is the purpose of science, and for this very reason Peck (1983) explicitly states that nothing he says about evil should be taken as the last word. We also do not define narcissism, the self, love, and truth because we are eager to impose the limits of language on realities that are not limited by our ability to express them in words, but because we must do so in order to have discourse with each other. Perhaps some things we define only because we need to defend our views of these things when they are challenged. Psychology has at least seven definitions of the self (Weston 1990). What definition of the self is deceived in self-deception, and what definition of truth is withheld? Western tradition recognizes [End Page 265] four kinds of love (Lewis 1960; May 1969). If narcissism is self-love, which definition of the self do narcissists love, and with what kind of love? In pathologic narcissism, a false self—an unreality, a lie—is "loved," usually with something that, if scrutinized, turns out not to be love at all; the true self is ignored or even hated and exterminated, because it is not what the person wants to be true. Morton (2005) points out that we often maintain our self-respect if at all possible. One of the many uses of narcissism is as a synonym for self-esteem (Pulver 1986), but self-esteem is not the same as self-love. A thorough Wittgensteinian analysis, looking at how the words are used and how they came to have those uses, would be most helpful (Kubarych 1999). Because of the extreme complexity of...

Legal Aspects of Evil in Man

Legal Aspects of Evil in Man

Herod the Great in Medieval European Drama

Herod the Great in Medieval European Drama Miriam Anne Skey Herod the Great, as he appears in the English mystery plays, has recently been the subject of critical attention which has shown him to be a complex and multi-faceted character. Penelope Doob visualizes him as a mad sinner whose “wilful madness could never be cured” so that he was doomed to death and damnation,1 while David Staines sees a “diversity in the presentation of Herod in the mystery cycles . . . as he becomes at times the comic braggart, at times the tragic ruler, at times the combination of comic and tragic hero.”2 Thus complexity and variety in the presentations of Herod in English drama have been adequately appreciated. However, European drama developed even different traditions for representing Herod the Great, and it is the European approach to Herod that will be the subject of this paper. In the vernacular drama of the con­ tinent, great emphasis was often placed on the role of Herod as a courteous and sophisticated ruler, meeting foreign guests in a highly civilized and sumptuous medieval court, while in English drama he tended to develop into an arrogant, blustering, and blaspheming tyrant in a relatively simple and somewhat crude court. An examination of the treatment of Herod in the vernacular drama of Europe prior to the sixteenth century, a topic which has not yet received sufficient attention by modem scholars,3 may serve to deepen our appreciation of the English Herod still further, while giving us a view of an entirely dif­ ferent interpretation of this king by the continental dramatists. I Sources for the interpretation of Herod, both as the success­ ful king of European drama and as the infamous villain of 330 Miriam Anne Skey 331 English drama, date from the first century and enjoyed great popularity throughout the Middle Ages. The earliest source, Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, included the many successes as well as the horrible disasters of Herod’s career in his extensive versions of this monarch’s role in Jewish history in the War of the Jews4 and the Antiquities of the Jews.5 Herod ruled successfully for thirty-seven years (longer than any other Jewish king) until his death at the advanced age of seventy. During his reign the country was at peace; old cities were re­ stored and new ones built; Jerusalem was transformed and Solo­ mon’s Temple rebuilt; trade flourished.6 However, according to Josephus, Herod was plagued by domestic troubles and, at the end of his life, by a horrible, wasting disease which drove him to savage acts and to a desperate, though unsuccessful, attempt at suicide. Josephus describes in detail Herod’s appalling illness and savagery, just as he did his earlier military and diplomatic brilliance. Biblical, apocryphal, and patristic writers took an entirely different attitude towards Herod since they stressed his villainy. The only canonical gospel to mention Herod’s interview with the Magi and his plan to massacre the Innocents is Matthew’s. Although it is quite likely that Josephus was one of the sources for the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, it should be noted that nowhere in Josephus or in any other contemporary his­ tories is there any mention of the Massacre of the Innocents.7 Early Christian writers were interested in emphasizing only the evil aspects of Herod the Great: they concentrated on his wily reception of the Magi and their news, his hypocrisy in bidding them report back to him, his rage at being deceived and his savagery in ordering the Massacre of the Innocents. He was primarily the first enemy of Christ, just as Satan was the first enemy of God, and was accordingly vilified and condemned, becoming a grand symbol of evil, wickedness, and misused power. Ultimately he became associated with the devil himself.8 Patristic writers especially delighted in describing Herod’s death. As this event is given full treatment in European drama, the historical facts of the matter and the medieval interpretation of these facts should be noted here. Although Matthew gives no details about Herod’s death, Josephus had made it quite clear that near the end of his...

Entitative and Systemic Aspects of Evil

Entitative and Systemic Aspects of Evil

Jean George's Arctic Pastoral: A Reading of Julie of the Wolves

Jean George's Arctic Pastoral:A Reading of Julie of the Wolves Jon C. Stott (bio) Although literary critics are surprised that they can effectively apply the techniques of their discipline to works for children which are thought of as simple, the reasons for their successes should be clear: good children's fiction, while it does not generally contain the social, economic, political, and sexual complexities found in adult novels, does operate according to principles inherent in all good writing. It differs from adult literature in degree rather than in kind. One way of seeing the truth of this statement is to examine Jean Craighead George's Julie of the Wolves, 1973 Newbery Award winner, in terms of the pastoral tradition. To apply the term pastoral to a novel dealing with an Eskimo girl who early in the 1970's confronts a pack of arctic wolves may appear inappropriate to anyone who thinks of pastoral in terms of shepherds, Arcadia, and the Golden Age. Yet when we remember that the great Greek, Latin, Renaissance, and nineteenth-century American pastorals were written by sophisticated city dwellers, and that Jean George writes from the highly developed civilization of twentieth-century America, we are in a better position to understand the applicability of the term. As John Lynen has shown in his study of Robert Frost, the traditional elements mentioned above are not the essence of pastoralism, but tropes used to embody a basic literary structure: pastoralism "is always the product of a very highly developed society and arises from the impulse to look back with yearning and a degree of nostalgia toward the simpler, purer life which such a society has left behind."1 Such is the case in Julie of the Wolves, in which the simpler, purer life of Eskimo society is regarded from the perspective of the American civilization which is encroaching upon and destroying it. Pastoral literature is generally structured around a series of contrasts between a sullied, artificial, complex, urban world which represents turmoil, and in which are found all the more evil aspects of progress, especially greed, anxiety, and ambition; and a rural world which is natural, pure, and calm. In this setting, truth, tranquility, contentment, and innocence predominate. The pastoral world is seen as an ideal one in which the characters come closer to achieving a fundamental goodness of being than is possible in the actual world. This utopian land represents a way of life not realizable in ordinary existence, but only in a distant land, such as Arcadia, or in a distant time, such as the Golden Age. Thus, it represents what ought to be, and what once may havebeen,a golden past created in the minds of wistful men. Often, therefore, pastoral literature is ironic; for, written as it is from the perspective of a deficient actual world, it is a literature of the defeat of the ideal. It may at best express beliefs like those of Miles Coverdale, narrator of Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, who thinks of his communitarian experiment as follows: "Let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies that I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the world's destiny."2 [End Page 131] Within this structure of contrasted worlds, the central action of the pastoral takes place: the withdrawal of the central character from the urban world to the rural one, and his inevitable return to the urban world. It might be said that if the author intends his characters to stay in the Arcadian world and does not view their end ironically, he is writing romance rather than pastoral, a form seen in Book I of The Faerie Queene, in many folk tales in which the hero and heroine are married and live happily ever after, and in even Doris Gates' Blue Willow. In these works, a land of the heart's desire is achieved and the normal vicissitudes of life are over; the characters live happily ever after. The writer of the romance is more interested in the qualities that enable the characters to get to the ideal land, whereas the writer of the pastoral is concerned with how the experiences...

An examination of the necessity for a concept of evil: some aspects of evil as a form of perversion

An examination of the necessity for a concept of evil: some aspects of evil as a form of perversion

The Dual Aspects of Evil in “Rappaccini's Daughter”

If we assume that recurrent images, structure, tone, and literary allusions contribute to the meaning of “Rappaccini's Daughter”— and students of Hawthorne will agree, I think, that such an assumption is valid—the traditional interpretation of the story as a warning against intellectual pride appears inadequate. Such an interpretation, as I hope to make clear in this paper, overlooks the basic paradox of Giovanni's position as he wavers between the two aspects of evil represented by Rappaccini and Baglioni. Achievement of a fully satisfactory reading is difficult, however, because this is Hawthorne's most complex story, one which presents what he elsewhere describes as “a more perplexing amalgamation of vice and virtue than we witness in the outward world” (II, 377).

The Dual Aspects of Evil in "Rappaccini's Daughter"

The Dual Aspects of Evil in "Rappaccini's Daughter"