Diabolical Evil Research Articles

Shakespeare’s Ambivalence: Epistemological Hesitation about the Origin of Evil

Recent studies of the conceptualization of the Devil in the early modern period have pointed to the shifting theological and philosophical coordinates, which made possible a diverse spectrum of representation of diabolical evil—from Francis Bacon’s naturalistic scepticism to King James’s supernatural demonology. Shakespeare has always been central to this discussion but has not yet been placed in a contextual frame that incorporates the rise of scholarly interest in the diabolical. This article interprets Shakespeare’s representation of diabolical evil in Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), Measure for Measure (1604) and Macbeth (1606) as constituted by a complex tension between natural and supernatural ideas about the origin of evil. Drawing on a raft of recent scholarship on representations of witchcraft and devils in the period, I show that diabolical figures in the universe of Shakespeare during the period of great tragedies between 1601 to 1606 exist in two modes of representation: as a persistent magical ambience and as a localized agent. Ambivalence is expressed in the hesitation between these opposing theological modes and is evident in the way that the Devil’s material agency is obscured and left unresolved. Viewing this through the lens of the fantastic as an ontological uncertainty that results in epistemological hesitation helps us to frame Shakespeare’s ambivalence, which at least in part originates in the ambivalent theology of Calvin. The analysis thereby positions hesitation and diabolic temptation in line with Calvin’s theology and shows how Calvin’s framework of secular evil presents an intellectual context through which Shakespeare’s ambiguity can be understood in theological terms.

Like devils, but still humans: a systematic examination and moderate defense of Kant’s view of (quasi-)diabolical evil

ABSTRACTAmong scholars, how to interpret and evaluate Kant’s rejection of diabolical evil remains controversial. This article has two aims. First, I will examine all six forms of (quasi-)diabolical evil either discussed by Kant or implicitly contained in his texts, thereby demonstrating the reasons why each of these forms must be rejected (or admitted) within his framework. The conclusion of this text analysis is that the extremity of human evil for Kant is quasi-diabolical Willkür which does evil for the sake of self-assertion. Second, I will offer a moderate defense of Kant’s view of (quasi-)diabolical evil as a whole. On the one hand, the legitimacy of Kant’s rejection of both diabolical Wille and full-fledged diabolical Willkür (which precludes inner conflicts between different incentives) can be confirmed within his theory of practical freedom. On the other hand, faced with the possibility of ‘occasionally doing evil qua evil’, a critical defense of Kant’s moral psychology can be established, i.e. a defense that casts doubt on the distinguishability between ‘doing evil for the sake of self-assertion’ and ‘doing evil qua evil’.

A History of Science, Magic, and Belief: From Medieval to Early Modern Europe by Steven P. Marrone

Reviewed by: A History of Science, Magic, and Belief: From Medieval to Early Modern Europe by Steven P. Marrone Michael D. Bailey A History of Science, Magic, and Belief: From Medieval to Early Modern Europe. By Steven P. Marrone. (New York: Palgrave. 2015. Pp. xvi, 317. $34.00 paperback. ISBN 978-1-137-02978-2.) Steven Marrone begins this useful survey by declaring that the early-modern “witchcraze” and scientific revolution “both arose from a single process of broad change sweeping Europe” (p. viii). While general readers, at whom Marrone is in part aiming, might be shocked to find witchcraft related to science in any way, experts in these fields will be interested in the nature of the connections he draws. First, Marrone frames the connection of magic to both science and religion through the anthropological theories of James Frazer and Bronislaw Malinowski. He then begins his historical survey by moving quickly from antiquity, when some forms of magic were taken seriously as learned scientia, into the early Christian era, when church fathers resolutely linked magic to demon-worship and therefore to false religion. Throughout the early Middle Ages, however, Christian elites did not respond to magic’s diabolical evil so much as they disdained common magical practices intellectually. This changed in the twelfth century, when the idea of magic as a viable form of scientia re-emerged in medieval Europe. At the same time, however, the Church also developed a judicial apparatus to control popular beliefs and practices more stringently. Initially these mechanisms focused on heresy, but they would eventually be turned against magic. After a brief moment of intellectual respectability, magic was resoundingly recondemned as evil and demonic by most major Scholastic authorities. Their thought informed the stereotype of the diabolical witch that emerged in the early-fifteenth century. Ironically, there was at that time another brief surge in intellectually serious and respectable magic among Renaissance neo-Platonists. This too, however, never became widely accepted, and the next major intellectual change to affect magic was the advent of mechanical philosophy, which undermined the world of active spiritual and occult forces on which magical thinking depended, leading ultimately to modern science and Weberian “disenchantment.” The basic outlines of this analysis are well known. Marrone gives the most attention to twelfth- and thirteenth-century debates about magic as a form of scientia. Despite his initial framing of witchcraft and the scientific revolution, he offers little coverage to either, and the balance of the book tips decisively toward the medieval. This is valuable, insofar as many surveys covering these topics tend to skew heavily toward the early modern. That said, readers who are not already familiar with the history of early-modern witchcraft or science will find Marrone’s coverage sparse. For example, his chapter on the “Witchcraze” dedicates more than twenty pages to the intellectual origins of the witch-stereotype in the fifteenth century, but just one paragraph to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century witch-hunts themselves. By his own admission, Marrone often favors older interpretations rather than more recent ones. For example, he maintains a distinction between “popular” and [End Page 372] “elite” magical cultures, where many scholars now stress “common” practices. Marrone’s position is certainly tenable, and he explains his reasoning clearly. Some points, though, are more problematic. He consistently uses the term witchcraze, for example, which many experts reject because it implies irrationality (which Marrone’s analysis also opposes) and because it conveys a sense that fear of witches was rampant throughout this entire era. In fact, witch trials varied dramatically in frequency and intensity across space and time, but Marrone gives no indication of this. Any book that traces broad developments over the better part of a millennium will have to eschew some details, and a good survey should try to emphasize points not stressed in others. Marrone does this in a book that is at its best when exploring the fraught high-medieval efforts to elevate magic into the sphere of respectable “science.” Michael D. Bailey Iowa State University Copyright © 2016 The Catholic University of America Press

‘Dark am I, yet lovely’: Tracing diabolical evil and femininities in gothic fusion tribal belly dance

Abstract While belly dance as a dance genre has been recognized for its ‘ambivalence’ in terms of its empowerment of women’s identities and body types and essentializing of narrowly constructed femininities, it has nonetheless in the research literature generally been regarded positively in its influence on women’s spiritualities, corporalities, sexualities and overall well-being. But what about its attraction and allure in its ‘darker’ forms, as a way of empowering women, especially older women, and enabling them to negotiate and traverse a range of difficult, deviant, damaged and/ or otherwise negative experiences? Based primarily on a participant observation of a six-week series of dance workshops held in the north of England and drawing on my other experiences as a dancer of other belly dance forms, this article references Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of horror and the monstrous feminine to explore the meanings, experiences and performances of ‘darkness’ in what is belly dance’s darkest genre, Gothic Fusion Belly Dance (GFBD).

From psychopathology to diabolical evil: Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde and Jean Renoir

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde can be regarded as a reflection on the nature of evil seen through the lens of late-nineteenth-century medical discourse. When Jean Re...

Feitiçarias, territórios e resistências marginais

Os evangélicos, cotidianamente, através de menções à feitiçaria, cuja origem estaria nos cultos afro-brasileiros, denunciam crimes nefandos e atos de barbárie provocando horror e estarrecimento nos seus ouvintes em igrejas, rádios e televisão. Descrevo dois casos de feitiçaria, objeto de atenção pentecostal, que articulam marginalidade, crime e presença do mal diabólico em duas comunidades. A feitiçaria é a chave com a qual examino alguns problemas relativos à vida em "comunidades": a "diabolização" de territórios periféricos provocada pelas identificações criminalizadoras das suas populações pelo Estado, por um lado, e o combate evangélico ao mal diabólico, por outro. Busco demonstrar que, tanto na comunidade de crentes quanto na favela, os evangélicos respondem por meio do seu combate ao diabo às interpelações do Estado associadas às suas modalidades de identificação de espaços periféricos. Analiso, assim, o sentido assumido pela feitiçaria em relação ao projeto de salvação evangélico e o horizonte social que este busca construir.

"Critchley is Žižek": In Defence of Critical Political Philosophy

In an ironically Žižekian manner, this paper argues that Simon Critchley and Slavoj Žižek's apparent political disagreement (ludic reformist versus strident revolutionary) conceal a common set of preconditions and presuppositions. These presuppositions can be summed by the slogan "the for getting of political philosophy", which more specifically means the forgetting of the difference between philosophy and political life, and the reflective need to find mediations between the two. Critchley's turn to humour honours the notion that politics is about the realm of appearances, while Žižek's frank avowal of the "diabolical evil" of the subject of the death drive makes patently clear the dangers posed by a "politics of Truth".

Foruroligende etik i Heinrich von Kleists »Michael Kohlhaas«

Disquieting Ethics in »Michael Kohlhaas« by Heinrich von Kleist:This article argues that the concept of evil takes a central place in the exploration of the Kantian ethics in Heinrich von Kleist’s novella »Michael Kohlhaas«.Maria Jørgensen argues that not only is the famous duty to which Kohlhaas finds himself obliged conceived in accordance with Kant’s ethics of duty, but also the description of Kohlhaas’ subjectivity in general is constructed by means of Kantian terms. Kleist’s text makes use of concepts such as duty, freedom, pathology, universality and the sublime in order to construct Kohlhaas as an inherently decentered subject. Furthermore Jørgensen argues that the emptying of the concept of the Good in Kantian ethics surfaces in Kleist’s novella as a hitherto unnoticed tendency to a certain tautologisation in Kohlhaas’ qualitative judgments.In the final section of the article the evil act in »Michael Kohlhaas« as an act of freedom, »Aktus der Freiheit«, is investigated with a departure in the Kantian concept of diabolical evil in Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft. If Kohlhaas’ first attempt to act ethically is contaminated by the self-interest which sticks to his initial duty to secure redress for the wrongs done to him and his fellow citizens by the Junker von Tronka, his last act of refusing to negotiate with the Elector of Saxony functions as a purely ethical act in Kantian terms. Kohlhaas’ act can be seen as an ethical act as it neglects the subject’s pathology, which according to Kant can only be done by an act of reason. Furthermore the act is in keeping with the criteria which Kant, according to Alenka Zupančič, delivers in the famous footnote on the execution of Louis XVI in Metaphysik der Sitten: The act is characterized by being purely formal, it arises from a maxim, and it is first of all an act of freedom. This article thus argues that »Michael Kohlhaas« evidently contains a fulfilled ethical act in Kantian terms, but that this act must be found in quite another place than previously assumed.

The myth of evil: demonizing the enemy

Terrorism, Torture and the Problems of Evil Diabolical Evil--Searching for Satan Philosophies of Evil Communities of Fear The Enemy Within Bad Seeds The Character of Evil Facing the Holocaust Twenty-First-Century Mythologies Bibliography Index

Is There an Ethics of Diabolical Evil? Sex Scandals, Family Romance, and Love in the School & Academy

This essay attempts to examine the difficult question of sex scandals both in public school settings and in the academy. It raises issues over the way authority in the classroom is unequally exercised by both male and female teachers in terms of power and seduction. However, the Law remains explicit when it comes to judging who is at fault within a-student relationship that collapses into the bedroom. The ethics that surround such sexual affairs is raised through the psychoanalytic and philosophical writings of Jacques Lacan. The essay ends by offering a surprised perspective over the question whether an ethics of diabolical evil is possible, given that such affairs are differentiated as post-Oedipal relationships where age differentiations have become blurred.

Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the (Mis)use of a Notion

Totalitarianism has always had a precise strategic function: to guarantee the liberal democratic hegemony by dismissing the Leftist critique of liberal democracy as the two-faced twin of Right-wing dictatorships. Instead of providing yet another systematic exposition of the history of this notion, Zizek looks at totalitarianism in a way that Wittgenstein would approve of - finding it a cobweb of family resemblances. He reveals the consensus view of totalitarianism, in which it is invariably defined in terms of four things: the holocaust as the ultimate, diabolical evil; the Stalinist gulag as the alleged truth of the socialist revolutionary project; the recent wave of ethnic and religious fundamentalisms to be fought through multiculturalist tolerance; and the deconstructionist idea that the ultimate root of totalitarianism is the ontological closure of thought. Zizek concludes that the devil lies not so much in the detail but in what enables the very designation totalitarian: the liberal-democratic consensus itself.