Definition Of Evil Research Articles

The genetic mechanism of fallness: St. Maximos the Confessor revisited

Through a close reading of the two definitions of evil in the Introduction to Responses to Thalassios, this article points out a circular, cognitive-affective-somatic, genetic mechanism that St. Maximos the Confessor considers responsible for the initiation and transmission of the fallness as a human condition and the specific manifestation of it in the form of passions. It elucidates the first definition as mainly phenomenological, by identifying the circular mechanism and its behavioural expressions, and the second definition as more aetiological, by explaining why this mechanism emerges and reemerges with the fallen humanity despite its catastrophic results.Contribution: This article highlights a double genetic mechanism (survival cum passions) that St. Maximos the Confessor grasped within the fallen human condition as a curse solvable only in Christ, a notion largely carved out by previous Maximian scholarship, but fully explained and valuated here.

A Kantian Interpretation of the Infinite Manifoldness of Evil Incentives in Real Human Life

Kant defined moral evil as reversing the order between self-love and morality. For many critics, however, his egoistically-orientated notion of self-love fails to make sense of the infinitely manifold incentives of evil under the human condition. Against this criticism, my article will re-interpret Kantian self-love and empirical self-conception from both the transcendental and empirical level, thus offering a transcendental grounding for the empirical manifestations of evil. In this way I will argue that we can explain rather sufficiently the infinite manifoldness of evil incentives in real human life with Kant’s prima facie simplistic definition of evil.

The Manifestation Account of Evil

Abstract This article defends a novel definition of evil. An action is evil if (1) a pro-attitude (or complete indifference) towards severe harm to a sentient being is (2) manifested in the action. The manifestation can take either of two forms: expressing the pro-attitude or attempting to realize its object. In order to exclude cases where the pro-attitude is the result of a positive attitude and the action does therefore not count as evil, the pro-attitude (3) must be generated from a morally reprehensible attitude such as greed or sadistic pleasure. As an implication of this definition, not every evil action is extremely bad, and some ‘merely’ wrong acts might be worse than some evil acts.

Hegel, Plotinus, and the Problem of Evil

The article begins by defining evil, rejecting proffered negative definitions, for example, evil is privation, from which little further insight is obtainable, nor progress to be made towards a resolution of the problem, in favor of a more a constructive definition of evil in terms of an abnegation of responsibility for, or commitment to, one’s dictions or actions. This is an attitude that is both irrational and unintelligible, enabling a connection to be made between Plotinus’ view of evil as unintelligible matter, that is, impassive and inactive nature; and Hegel’s view of evil as that which is real and active, but against reason. For Plotinus, evil is formless matter, matter that is unintelligible, separated from the intellect, unlimited because not bounded by conceptual categories; and hence, what is evil is all darkness. For Hegel, for whom the rational is actual and the actual is rational, evil is an irrational perversion of the world’s inner essential rationality. But these ideas can be connected, for the purpose of finding a solution to the problem of evil, through a more specific understanding of the concept that we offer; that evil is a failure of commitment, a denial of responsibility for one’s actions; and this is in itself both irrational and unintelligible. We can then demonstrate that what that evil, though it certainly exists, is imperfection, and the good, being rational, is already complete and fulfilled and firmly established in the world, and therefore evil cannot possibly oppose it from any position of equivalence; for the good is rational and therefore true, whereas evil is irrational and therefore false.

Evil and Justice: An Experiential Personal Construct Approach

George Kelly (1955) made a philosophical assumption that the universe is integral or interconnected. This assumption, often overlooked by scholars, has profound implications for global issues facing the world today, including the perpetration of acts that can be considered evil. I first give an experiential personal construct psychology definition of evil (the perpetration of acts, out of our own woundedness, that harm another's central ways of being). I then discuss the ways that evil acts are manifested: objectifying others, denying connectedness, numbing of inner experiences, and a limited ability to introspect. Using these manifestations of evil, I illustrate the ways that evil acts are being perpetrated against others (e.g., travel bans, border walls) as well as the greater universe (e.g., ignoring climate change, exploiting the natural world). I conclude by discussing steps each person can take to minimize the perpetration of evil in the world today. Some of these actions are public (e.g., political, speaking up); others are more personal (e.g., maintaining an attitude of humility and reverence for the greater world). I advocate that people carefully and thoughtfully consider the implications of each action for all of our fellow humans as well as the entire planet.

The attraction of evil and the destruction of meaning

Translations of summaryDoes the concept of evil deserve special formulation in the realm of psychoanalytic thought? In agreement with authors such as Meltzer (1992) and De Masi (2003) and through selected moments from a boy's long analysis, I will propose a definition of evil as a state of mind, characterized by disregard for the human quality of the object and the destruction of meaning and meaningfulness of life in and for others. Evil drains, perverts and strips symbols of intentions and goals, leaving them empty of emotional significance. In my patient, the state of mind that he called evil exerted a seductive appeal and was accompanied by a sadistic excitement that he elevated into a state of sexualized well‐being, which progressively perverted and destroyed emotional meaning, contributing to his confusion and desperation. Confronting this pathological configuration and describing the situation that I felt existed within his mind and between us, and rearticulating emotional meaning where it had been perverted, cannibalized or left empty, was the principal – and at times only – clinical instrument available to lead him out of his descent into nothingness.

The Call to Action of Stories: An Interview with Paul Rogat Loeb

Caren Neile: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. I was interested in speaking with you for this special issue on political storytelling in large part owing to the chapter in Soul of a Citizen entitled of Stories. How do you define the call of stories with respect to citizen involvement in the political process?Paul Loeb: If I look at Soul of a Citizen and what it's trying to do as a book-and I think it's worked pretty well-it's trying to do multiple things. First of all, it's trying to encourage people to get engaged by taking them through barriers to engagement and giving them a way to surmount them. Second, it's breaking down barriers for those who are already engaged but don't know how to engage others.But it's also trying to give a sense of how you can act effectively. If you get caught in the perfect standard, that is, if you need everything exactly right in approach, timing, and knowledge before you begin, you're never going to get involved. The chapter Call of Stories is about acting effectively. If you can tell your story powerfully and well, that's how you're going to have the most success. If you don't tell your story well, or if you don't think stories are important, you are going to have less success.Part of the problem is that people who get involved often think, I'll give people the facts on poverty, on climate change-here's the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now that's useful and important and in some areas even critical because, if you're measuring climate change, these numbers track how we're putting the habitability of the planet at risk. But at the same time, the numbers aren't anchored in any context of meaning to those who are not already involved. So if you're talking about poverty, for example, you need to say, This is this family's life under poverty. These are the barriers they face.There's a book called Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado. She did a blog piece called Why Poor People Make Poor Choices, talking about her life working low-wage jobs and barely surviving. That book eloquently goes into the heart of what it's like to live as a member of the working poor. It gets beyond the abstractions.Getting back to climate change for a minute, you have to say something about disasters like Hurricane Katrina or Sandy becoming commonplace, that this is the risk we're entering, that other countries have had disasters even worse that are climate related. But then you have to bring it onto a human level. For example, there have been some interesting essays out recently describing the growth of factionalism in Syria that led to birth of ISIS and how it was partly due to the desiccation and drought that drove people to the cities, causing them to loose their traditional livelihoods. So if you're a climate change activist and believe that's credible, you want to say, Here are the stories that ISIS tells of itself, the horrible beheadings, and then the different contending narratives around that According to one story, these are evildoers simply infested by the Devil. And because they are just evil, all we need to focus on is their evil. I would say they're evil, if there's a definition of evil. But if you want to truly understand their roots and appeal, you have to tell the story of what we did in Iraq that destabilized that region and what we did with climate change. You have to tell about the roots of that evil.CN: False or one-sided stories can be very powerful.PL: Of course you will always have false stories. And the stories that dominate a culture will in some ways determine its politics. In the case of ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], if indeed the only story that matters to us is that these people are profoundly evil, then they're in that category. But it's not the whole of the story. You can't address them by saying they're just the evildoers, horrible people who behead people-unlike our friends in Saudi Arabia who also behead people. …

Cormac McCarthy's Definition of Evil: Blood Meridian and the Case of Judge Holden

In the figure of Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy has crafted perhaps the most haunting character in all of American literature. The antagonist of McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Holden is a richly composed portrait of human evil responsible for a litany of wicked deeds. This essay attempts to expound the character of judge Holden, to the end of clarifying McCarthy's definition of evil. It argues that McCarthy, with the judge, lays bare the contours of soul of the evil man, focusing especially on the tension between his ambitious repudiation of justice, on the one hand, and his steadfast, if unwitting, adherence to it, on the other. It is the evil man's conception of the purpose of knowledge, together with his desire to acquire boundless knowledge, that is the key to this tension in his soul.

Evil and elder abuse: intersections of Paul Ricoeur's and Simone Weil's perspectives on evil with one abused older woman's narrative

Doing violence and evil always indirectly or directly leads to making someone else suffer. Such is the dialogical structure of evil and it seems to be the dialogical structure of elder abuse as well. There is a perturbing sameness between definitions of evil and definitions of elder abuse. It is hard at times to see how or if there is any line of demarcation between the subjects. Two modern-day philosophers, Paul Ricoeur and Simone Weil have delved particularly into the concept of evil. The symbolism Ricoeur analyses in depth is that of defilement, sin, and guilt and the concept of the servile will. Integral in Weil's description of evil are the concepts of suffering and the special situation of extreme suffering, termed affliction. Grounded in the writings of Ricoeur and Weil, this paper is a series of reflections on the intersection of evil and elder abuse as exemplified in the narrative of an abused older woman. This woman provided around the clock care at home for her husband who had vascular dementia. She was also abused by her husband. This was witnessed by both family and others but no one intervened. In her narrative there were indications of defilement, sin, guilt, and true affliction as a servile will. This paper illuminates the evil of elder abuse that is harm and suffering, and the challenge of untangling issues of blame, free will, responsibility, and self-determinism. When engaging with abused, older persons it can be worthwhile for nurses to enter the encounter with non-judgemental compassion founded on the human to human connection and recognition of our mutual fallibility and potential for evil that is part of our human fragility.

Varieties of organizational soul: The ethics of belief in organizations

This article argues that the expression of religious beliefs within organizations, often made manifest through the notion of soul, provides insight into the ethics of organization in postsecular society. Using examples to illustrate the discursive representation of organizational soul in three US-based multinational companies, we argue that religious organizational beliefs must be located within cultural and material contexts of practice in order to fully appreciate their ethical implications. We show how the use of soul is a contemporary reiteration of the 19th century religious attitude that William James termed ‘healthy-mindedness’. We suggest that this variety of religious experience is limiting through its neglect of the social and political contexts of ethical thought and action and the definition of evil or harm as external to the believer and the organization. Drawing on a pragmatist perspective, we critique this approach to belief-led business and propose that the Jamesian notion of a ‘sick soul’ constitutes a more robust ethical framework for belief-led businesses by encouraging ethical skepticism concerning the nature of organizational activities. We conclude by exploring what our analysis means for the development of postsecular critical organization theory.

"If No-One Speaks Out, Then Nothing Changes": A Personal Response to Liz Crow's Resistance

I am not often rendered speechless. I am rarely haunted by things that I have read or watched. If asked, I would have said that I consider myself to be too long in the tooth, too jaded, too cynical to experience such a visceral response to any work of art, no matter how brilliant. I would have been wrong. Liz Crow, of Roaring Girl Productions, spent ten years creating her installation Resistance: Which Way the Future? Given its subject matter, I shudder to think how gruelling those ten years must have been. Given its impact, I cannot find it in myself to argue that she should not have put herself through it. What watching Resistance brought home to me more powerfully than any amount of reading about Aktion-T4 has ever done, or could ever do, is that it would have been me. I would have been taken away in a bus and gassed to death, along with the majority of my friends. People I love, admire, and respect; people of towering intellect; people of great compassion; people of piercing insight; people with children; people who are creative; people who are witty; people who are frivolous; people who are serious; people who love and are loved: all these people would have been slaughtered as though they were just so much vermin. And they would have been slaughtered by individuals who may, just a few months earlier, have been their neighbours; neighbours who, in response to political propaganda, had learned not to regard them as people any more; neighbours who, even worse, had been persuaded that murdering them in cold blood was a noble duty. When the Nazis held their sophisticated, champagne-fuelled, tinkly soiree to celebrate the successful despatch of the one thousandth useless eater, the photograph at which they pointed with such smug self-congratulation could have been of me. I have absolutely no reason to assume that the young man whose gentle image Crow placed in the photograph frame used in the film was valued by his friends and family any less than I am. This, for me, was the pivotal moment of the installation. I sat with my hand clamped over my mouth: I was close to vomiting from the utter horror of it. It beggars belief that anyone could be so callous as to celebrate their part in the murder of one innocent person, let alone a thousand. To demand energetic approval of the atrocities you are so proud of having committed from people who are bound to you by chains of fear that they will be next for the cull must surely be the very definition of evil. And yet, against all the odds, there is hope. Even though none of the disabled people who were sent to the holding centres came out of them alive, still they resisted. In a time of absolute extremis, knowing that they faced their own deaths, all too aware that they would never know whether they had been successful, they took what action they could to save the lives of those who came after them. If that does not give the lie to any suggestion that disabled people are sub-human, then I do not know what would. What is remarkable is that these tiny, individual acts of resistance actually worked. People-non-disabled people-ultimately decided that they could no longer stomach what was going on. It must be hard to maintain the fiction that disabled people are sub-human when, as individuals, they bid you farewell before they are taken away to be gassed to death. …

How to be Bicameral: Reading William Connolly's Pluralism with Whitehead and Deleuze

This article argues that the concept of bicameralism is central to William Connolly's pluralism. The concept is analysed in terms of its roots in political bicameralism, in the bicameral mind and in organic bicameralism in order to show its richness and its capacity to provide positive answers to a series of standard criticisms of pluralism. Two more persistent critical problems are presented in the problem of evil (can we afford to be open to other political positions if they are evil?) and in the problem of the generation of paradoxes (does pluralism depend on adopting perniciously paradoxical positions?). These questions are answered by drawing connections from Connolly's work to Alfred North Whitehead's definition of evil and to Gilles Deleuze's work on paradox.

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...

Knowing Evil When You See It: Uses for the Rhetoric of Evil in International Relations

The rhetoric of evil has been a mainstay in international affairs, although President Bush’s use of the phrase ‘axis of evil’ has elevated its prominence. Few, however, have attempted an analytically defensible definition of evil as it relates to international events. I attempt this, identifying commonalities that unite historical deployment of the term: an evaluation of evil cuts across the traditional ethical axes of evaluation of ‘person’ (virtue theory), ‘nature of action’ (deontology), and ‘consequence’ (utilitarianism). This analysis will help identify possible roles that the concept of evil plays in our international linguistic economy and what purposes it serves. I briefly discuss these roles (motivational, counterforce, divisional, and evaluational). Clarifying the meaning of the term evil and its usage in global political discourse will highlight the pitfalls that accompany the use of such rhetoric in international relations, which include forestalling possibilities of redemptive reform.