Evil In Man Research Articles

Man as the central theme of the philosophical and anthropological manuscript of Metropolitan Platon (Levshin)

The article is devoted to the study of the first deciphered manuscript “Dogmatic Theology” by Metropolitan Platon (Levshin), a representative of the Russian theological academical philosophy of the first half of the 19th century. The purpose of this article is to undertake for the first time a philosophical and anthropological analysis of the main content of the manuscript. In the course of the research, the main thematic sections of this work are identified: the doctrine of the world (cosmology), the doctrine of angels (angelology) and the doctrine of man (anthropology), within which Christological and anthropological problems are considered. All the topics are connected by one main theme — the theme of man and his fate, which underlies all the arguments of Metropolitan Platon and leads to a conclusion about the anthropological orientation of the studied manuscript of theological academical philosophy of the first half of the 19th century. In the manuscript of Metropolitan Platon (Levshin) “Dogmatic theology” the doctrine of man is revealed quite fully, deeply and consistently. At the same time, some contradictory statements have been found on the issues of the original existence of moral evil in man and immortality and painlessness originally inherent in man. Presumably, these contradictions are connected with some complexity of the presentation of the non-worldly Divine teaching in earthly terms and formulations for theological academical authors of the first half of the 19th century.

OBRASCI GRAĐENjA KNjIŽEVNIH (ANTI)JUNAKA U PROZI VILIJAMA TREVORA NA PRIMERU ROMANA „FELISIJINO PUTOVANjE“

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the patterns of building literary (anti)heroes in the prose of William Trevor based on the novel Felicia’s Journey (1994). As a standard-bearer of new realism in the contemporary Irish and British literature, William Trevor writes novels, novellas, and short stories with humanised characters, which he builds using the mimetic literary method, shapes by psychological descrip- tion, and evaluates according to the criteria of believability. As a Protestant in the Catholic Ireland, an Irishman in England and a countryman in London, the author forges his characters on the front line of the archetypal battle between the good and the evil in man and nature, Ireland and England, the country and the city, the old- world religiousness and the new-world loss of faith. The startling plight of all Trevor’s antiheroes (marginalised, atomised and alienated) initiates their introspective evalu- ation until the cathartic self-awareness is achieved through personal epiphany. The most striking character transformations occur on life’s by-paths which irreversibly lead from virtue to sin, from innocence to experience, from the collective and general to the individual and personal. However, the characters’ epiphanic self-awareness is always and exclusively paid by happiness, the loss of which poses the underlying atmosphere, tone, colour, and leitmotif of each and every Trevor’s literary work.

William Golding's Lord of the Flies: A Study of Evil in Man

William Golding's first and the most popular novel Lord of the Flies (1954) presents a depressing truth about man and his nature: here, he portrays inherent evil in man. In this novel there is almost a complete absence of grown-ups, and evil is portrayed through children. It has an instinctual hold upon the human heart. Generally the growth of the inherent evil in human being is kept under control by civilized restraint, but removal of such restriction results in a complete regression into savagery and brutality. This is what happens in the novel too. Therefore, inherent evil in man which brings out the dystopian vision of the post-modern world will be discussed with reference to plot, images, symbols and character in this article. Lust for power and control over other are the evils of society from which even the children are not immune.

DİN, JUNG VE SİNEMA ÇALIŞMALARI AÇISINDAN, JEKYLL VE NEFS/GÖLGE

This work examines the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde through an analysis of the film of Rouben Mamoulian’s, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1937). The main theme of the film is Jekyll’s creation of a new character, Hyde, from himself. This theme raises a philosophical question regarding the battle between good and evil. Mamoulian associates the character of Hyde with the metaphor of the primitive man; he explores the potential of evil in man as a consequence of the repression of his primitive needs. Mamoulian’s interpretation points to a conflict between the spiritual and material aspects of man. As such, it presents a perspective which can be interpreted by different disciplines. In this regard, this work examines the context which produces and supports both the film and Mamoulian’s theme. It examines how this context shapes the characters. Further, this context is explored as a possible means of reading the film through Sufism and psychoanalysis. In Sufism it is the nafs, when it is not properly tamed, which represents the dark and material aspect of the human. In this respect, this work first investigates the relationship of the nafs with the character Hyde, and the nature of the conflict created by the nafs. Following this, the work outlines Carl Jung’s definition for the potential of evil in psychoanalytic theory and explores the conflict of Jekyll/Hyde by considering the shadow archetype of Jung. 

Introduction: Thomas Carlyle and the Totalitarian Temptation

This thematic issue of Studies in the Literary Imagination brings together both established and emerging scholars in the field of Carlyle Studies to address Carlyle's paradoxical and often controversial politics from a variety of angles. A reconsideration of the political and ideological views permeating Carlyle's work--ranging from his early aesthetic and social criticism to his historiographies and biographies--presents itself as a highly timely intervention, not only in the field of Carlyle studies, but in the study of nineteenth-century literature as such. Far from a belated attempt at apologetic restoration, the issue results from a shared conviction among the contributors that there is at present an acute need to re-examine critically Carlyle's politics after the often uncritical assumption of his adherence to a totalitarian ideology that dominated the twentieth-century reception of his work. articles included in the volume span Carlyle's career from his earliest writings to his biography of Frederick the Great and re-examine Carlyle's politics from rhetorical, historical, biographical, discursive, and philosophical/theoretical angles. narrative that has persistently determined Carlyle's twentieth-century reception is that of the degeneration of a promising Romantic prophet into an altogether tragic and ultraconservative Victorian sage. This narrative is familiar enough and was most economically articulated by Harold Bloom in his introduction to the 1986 volume of Modern Critical Views on Carlyle: In his profound anxiety to overturn the empirical view of the cosmos as a vast machine, Carlyle divinised nature and debased man. It is Carlyle, and not his critic Nietzsche, who is the forerunner of twentieth-century fascism, with its mystical exaltation of the state and its obliteration of compassion and the rights of the individual. That shadow cannot be removed from the later Carlyle, author of such efforts as The Nigger Question (1849) and Shooting Niagara: and After? (1867), and uncritical idolater of those iron men, Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great. It is the Carlyle who wrote during the fifteen years from 1828 to 1843 who still matters to us. author of Signs of the Times (1829) and Characteristics (1831), of Sartor Resartus (completed 1831) and Past and Present (1843) remains the sage who fathered Ruskin, inspired Emerson, and stimulated the social prophecy of William Morris. If time has darkened Carlyle, it has shown also that there is a remnant of in him, a voice that still rises out of the wilderness. (14-15) This perpetual remnant of vision has consistently been located in Carlyle's early critical engagement with German Romanticism and idealism, from which he derived the poetic insights and rhetorical means to effect his own highly singular late-Romantic critique of British utilitarianism. In his History of Modern Criticism, for example, Rene Wellek claimed that From a strictly literary-critical perspective, one must deplore that Carlyle chose the path of virtue: the shift to biography, didacticism, moralism, and the criterion of sincerity have not advanced the cause of criticism. Carlyle's temporary adoption of the creed of historicism and of German romantic symbolism brought him much closer to an understanding of poetry. But on the other hand, one should recognise that Carlyle's moralism was basic to his personality.... Carlyle's harsh dualism between good and evil in man, his recognition of catastrophes and cataclysms in history, and even his worship of lived experience as fact represents a view of the world (and thus of art) that must be faced in order to be refuted. (110) A brief look at the history of Carlyle's reception since the early twentieth century demonstrates that his work has been systematically refuted on the basis of ideological bias or too hasty reading, rather than critically examined or, for that matter, faced. …

De schipbreuk van een filosofie en de filosofie van een schipbreuk

Stories of shipwrecks were a very popular genre during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The maritime frame of reference became influential and predominant across a wide field of literature and theater. Even philosophers picked up the maritime metaphors. In those dark, violent, and stormy times philosophers urged their readers to remain faithful (Erasmus) and to face violent emotions with the constancy of a brave captain leading his ship to a serene harbour (Justus Lipsius). The ideas of these philosophers were present in the stories on shipwrecks. Thus, the Portuguese seaman Manoel Rangel remains faithful and modest. Captain Bontekoe is a model of pious constancy. But gradually, references to Erasmian and Neostoic philosophy disappear: popular culture and literature show a decline of Christian and neostoic influence. The story told by Francisco Pelsaert demonstrates the omnipresence of evil in man, whereas the stories of Van der Heiden and Hamel illustrate a new scientific discourse focusing not on human virtues, but on all the things human curiosity wants to discover.

Die psigologiese identiteit van die bose: Lacan, aggressie en <i>Op soek na generaal Mannetjies Mentz</i>

The psychological identity of evil: Lacan, aggression and Op soek na generaal Mannetjies Mentz The title of Christoffel Coetzee’s novel Op soek na generaal Mannetjies Mentz introduces a wordplay on Mentz/mens and begs the question: What is man (die “mens”)? Evil as portrayed in this novel can partly be explained by referring to the violent war circumstances, or it can be attributed to the philosophical idea of the “second nature” that Mentz develops in the course of the narrative. I use Lacan’s theory of the formation of identity to explain irrational violence and evil in man. Evil – as seen in this novel – is the result of the following: the pain of a fragmented, suffering body; the identification with an ideal image or leader; the lack of self-reflection; the opposition between “us” and “them”; the Oedipal violence against the parent and the inherent violence of the law.

Narrative Self-Justification: Melville and Amasa Delano

In 1965, E. F. Carlisle's description of the fictional Amasa Delano as American Fool established the character as a superficial ugly American, unable to comprehend the aboard the San Dominick.(1) By converting an historical figure into an archetype of ineptness and misunderstanding, Carlisle subverted middle-class white self-justifications based upon apparent virtues - innocence, benevolence, and optimism which mask defects [that] the tale emphasizes [as] the ignorance, foolishness, and blindness of the Captain.(2) Almost without exception, those sharing this view begin with the slyly sarcastic early description of Delano's character: [His] surprise might have deepened into some uneasiness had he not been a person of a singularly undistrustful good nature, not liable, except on extraordinary and repeated incentives, and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms, any way involving the imputation of malign evil in man. Whether, in view of what humanity is capable such a trait implies, along with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual perception, may be left to the wise to determine.(3) This questioning of Delano's intelligence marks one of Melville's first swipes at Delano's Narrative self-representation.(4) Unlike most scholars, however, Melville did not underestimate Delano's intelligence or narrative skills; he distrusted the validity of and the motives behind the captain's vindictive and self-vindicatory narrative. Benito Cereno parodies the complex methods through which the American captain's Narrative disguises and legitimates his willful greed as exploited innocence. This inquiry demonstrates that Melville read out of Delano's Narrative far more than the simple, straightforward chronicle of the incident tacitly assumed in most work on Benito Cereno since Harold Scudder presented Chapter 18 as Melville's ready made source.(5) Delano's Narrative offered Melville far more than story-fodder; he covertly satirizes Delano's evasive, contradictory, and greedily hypocritical narrative. For Melville, Delano's inconsistent representation of the incident in Chapters 16-18 and 25 foreshadows later attempts to justify United States economic and cultural imperialism. Chapters 16 and 17 of Delano's Narrative, allegedly dealing with events occurring in 1800 and 1801, combine scenic and climatic descriptions of his 1800 visit with inserted descriptions of mutual Spanish and English barbarities along South America's Pacific Coast in 1805. Seven chapters separate the bulk of Delano's of the capture of the Spanish ship Tryal from the rest of the account of his 1805 visit to Lima in Chapter 25.(6) The engagement necessitated the voyage, a fact only indirectly acknowledged in Chapter 25. Read in this chronologically confused context, Delano prefigures his use of the incident as exemplifying his moral and economic strength by stating early in Chapter 18 that had in the course of the day the satisfaction of seeing the great utility of good discipline (p. 321). He implies a pejorative comparison between his charitable and business-like actions and what will be represented as Cereno's passivity in his account of surmounting the worst situation to effect any enterprize than I had been in during the voyage (p. 320). This attempt to establish a worthy ethos becomes his primary means of legitimating his monetary claims. Delano's characterization of the affair as an important enterprize, however, indicates that, claims and perhaps conscious belief notwithstanding, he valued the incident as one of the more business opportunities of any of his voyages. Delano's haphazard attempts to disguise or mask the contradictions between his righteous ethical stance and mercenary motivations produce the textual gaps within which Melville discovers his own narrative strategy in Benito Cereno. In satirizing Delano's self-justification, Melville almost totally repressed in his text the economic conflicts that rend Delano's text. …

"Benito Cereno" and the Black Friars

"BENITO CEREÑO" AND THE BLACK FRIARS Charles Berryman University of Southern California Herman Melville's preference for "intuitive Truth" that probes to "the very axis of reality" was a challenge in 1855 for the editors of Putnam's Monthly Magazine.1 They paid him in advance for "Benito Cereño" and then hesitated before printing the account of a slave revolt with its "imputation of malign evil in man" (p. 47). Melville's bold comparison of slavery and religious asceticism was hardly in keeping with Putnam's editorial policy: "Care is taken that nothing in the remotest degree offensive to propriety or good taste defaces these pages."2 Nevertheless, the skull of a rebellious slave continues to stare from the final pages of "Benito Cereño." The first readers of the story in the decade before the Civil War were apparently less concerned than the reluctant editors. Although "Benito Cereño" was described in a few reviews as "a strangely conceived story" and "a thrilling, weird-like narrative," the common response was to accept the story as a "delightful companion for an afternoon lounge."3 The head of a slave fixed on a pole was not disturbing to Melville's readers because the "intuitive Truth" about slavery was presented in religious terms (references to friars and monasteries ) that a nineteenth-century audience might accept as familiar devices of gothic fiction. Melville's readers, of course, were also well acquainted with the anti-Catholic sentiment that had allowed Edgar Allan Poe, for example, to use the black-robed judges of the Inquisition for a gothic story like "The Pit and the Pendulum." The black slaves in "Benito Cereño," however, do not come from Poe's haunted imagination . If the semblance of gothic fiction allowed Melville to satisfy the editors at Putnam's, it was an ironic moment in the history of American literature: the story of a slave revolt was hardly light entertainment on the eve of the Civil War, and Melville's description of slaves as "Black Friars" is neither a simple gothic image nor a common appeal to the prejudice, racial or religious, of his audience. The readers of Putnam's may have been prepared for the conventions of gothic fiction but not for the way Melville combined the familiar images of black demons with historical evidence of a real slave revolt. When he adapted "Benito Cereño" from a chapter of Captain Amasa Delano's A Narrative of Voyages and Travels, Melville defied the taste of his public by altering the historical record to attribute even more violence to the slaves and less intelligence or understanding to his fictional Captain Delano. The most remarkable change, however, involves the character of Benito Cereño, who is 160Charles Berryman transformed from a selfish coward to a self-absorbed figure of resignation and spiritual asceticism. Melville ignores the complaints in Delano's Narrative about the ungrateful behavior of the real Cereño and instead creates a monkish ending for the Spaniard, who is driven by fear into a monastery and then to an early grave. Melville's addition of religious imagery to the historical account of a slave revolt thus allowed him to create an ironic commentary on the identity of monastic vows and slave discipline. The argument has recently been made by J. H. Kavanagh that Melville's intentions ought to be regarded either as unknowable or irrelevant: different readings of "Benito Cereño" are "determined more by critical ideologies working through readers than by any intentions of the 'real' Herman Melville."4 It is hardly news that critics have political assumptions that influence reading and interpretation, but that ought to confirm the same possibility for the author of "Benito Cereño." Thus it should be a fair critical question to ask why Melville adds religious imagery to his source material, or how he was influenced by contemporary accounts which bring together the history of slavery and religious asceticism. H. Bruce Franklin has argued in some detail that Melville's description of the slave ship as a monastery and its captain as a spiritual recluse have close parallels in William Stirling's The Cloister Life of the Emperor...

Oathkeepers and Vagrants: Meliorist and Reactive World Views in Science Fiction

Oathkeepers and Vagrants:Meliorist and Reactive World Views in Science Fiction Joseph O. Milner (bio) At a recent meeting of the International Federation of Teachers of English, Charmaine Pountney asked, "Why are we so completely wed to a view of the future offered by men like Huxley and Orwell and so oblivious to those projected by women like Ursula LeGuin?" As I pondered this male/female dichotomy, I found myself turning to another opposing pair, one which I feel is even more comprehensive, trenchant, and evocative: the meliorist/reactive world views expressed by various writers of science fiction. Broadly defined, the meliorist view celebrates the progress of man and the hope that civilization is in some broad fashion moving toward an almost Edenic state. Jacob Bronowski projects this near-utopian vision of man's journey in his film series The Ascent of Man. The reactive position is a more skeptical view of man's pilgrimage. It sees mankind as basically flawed, unable to progress, and forever caught in the tension between its angelic and bestial nature. Like Shakespeare's Bottom, man appears to be angelic but carries the head of an ass on his shoulders. This view contains a basic fear of what the future might hold for us. Many books could be used to illustrate these opposing world views, but the differences show up particularly clearly in Sylvia Engdahl's Enchantress From the Stars and John Christopher's The White Mountains. Four basic features common to most works of science fiction separate the views of these authors: their conception of human naturetheir understanding of historytheir perception of science and technologytheir use of the formal and contextual elements of fiction. Their understanding of human nature most severely separates the two writers. Engdahl clearly feels that people can be better than they are now. In her array of full and believable characters to aspire to be good, but which also urges readers to higher levels of moral understanding. When we see Kevan kill Andrecians for sport we are sure that Engdahl is not ignorant of the fact that such viciousness can lurk within all men; she offers no specific explanation for his behavior. She also shows us a Dulard, who dehumanizes what he considers to be lower life in a much less physical and less blatant manner; by his thorough attention to the requests of his exploitive colonizing government, however, he may do more eventual harm to the Andrecians than the spontaneously destructive Kevan. The even-tempered Dulard is the natural product of a culture that mechanically, rationally sets out to control and to drain other human beings. Even within this self-seeking culture, however, something—we don't know exactly what—has impelled Jarel to rise as far above his culture's moral norms as Kevan has fallen below them. He has transcended his culture, and Engdahl is clearly pleased to let us know that such transcending is possible. She even sets Jarel in bold relief against the simpler evils of his brothers: their thirst for power, wealth, and regal women. From the first Jarel possesses a virtue far beyond his culture's, and in the course of his relationship with Elana, he moves toward a very high level of moral thought and action. The Oathkeepers represent the possibility that a civilization might approximate moral perfection. From the first Illura demonstrates wholehearted adherence to her oath, an analogue to Jesus' Golden Rule or Kant's categorical imperative. She consciously gives her life to maintain a distant and altruistic goal for another civilization. Elana's father is a near parallel to St. John's construct of God who so loved the world that He gave his only child. Clearly Engdahl is presenting a vision of humankind that includes the capacity to produce, under the right conditions, truly good people capable of Niebuhr's standard of the moral man: self sacrifice for a higher good. In The White Mountains, Christopher projects a less hopeful view of man's basic nature. He is concerned that a basic evil in man threatens to dislodge us from our place between the spiritual and the bestial worlds and to cast us into that...

A JUNGIAN VIEW OF EVIL

Abstract. On the one hand Jungian John Sanford criticizes Carl Jung for underestimating the importance granted evil by at least some strains of Christianity. On the other hand Sanford follows Jung in assuming that psychology is entitled to criticize Christianity whenever it fails to grant evil its due. Like Jung, Sanford contends that he is faulting Christianity on only psychological grounds: for failing to cope with evil in man–the shadow archetype. In fact, Sanford, like perhaps Jung as well, is also criticizing Christianity on metaphysical grounds: for failing to acknowledge not just psychological but also ontological evil. Whether Sanford is thereby using psychology to assess Christian metaphysics is the issue.

Evil in Man: The Jewish Point of View

Evil in Man: The Jewish Point of View

Legal Aspects of Evil in Man

Legal Aspects of Evil in Man

Delacroix's Lions and Tigers: A Link between Man and Nature

The article reconstructs the framework of thought behind Delacroix's preoccupation with the lion and tiger, starting from a conversation he had with Taine in 1863. From the details of this conversation, with their elliptical references to physiognomy and comparative anatomy, from the paintings and from remarks in the Journal, it is possible to show that Delacroix saw the lion and tiger not only as embodiments of nature, but as simpler reflections of the good and evil in man. His personal synthesis of ideas accompanies the entire production of his feline oeuvre, with particular strength in his transformation of the theme of the Lion Hunt.

Evil in Man—Legal Considerations

Evil in Man—Legal Considerations

The Psychodynamics of Hostility

Unlike Freud, who emphasized sexual drives and did not discuss uneroticized aggression until very late in his life, Saul considers hostility the basis of most psychopathology and most of the problems of civilized life. He defines hostility as a motivating force... aimed at injuring or destroying some object, animate or inanimate and calls it an essential evil in man. After discussing the fight-flight reflex and pointing out its inappropriateness for life today, Saul asserts that hostility is not hereditary, but is usually developed in early childhood. When parents are overprotective or neglectful, abusive or overindulgent, they are likely to produce hostility in their children that will give lasting direction to their lives. Numerous case histories show how improper parental care produces disordered motivation, conflict about dependency needs, inferiority feelings, resentment, projection, with consequent paranoid idealism, or cruel and violent behavior. Some people express hostility openly and directly, others more indirectly.

Book Review: III. Historical — Theological Studies: The Reality of the Devil: Evil in Man

Book Review: III. Historical — Theological Studies: The Reality of the Devil: Evil in Man

Book Review: The Reality of the Devil: Evil in Man

Book Review: The Reality of the Devil: Evil in Man

New Focus on Human Rights

Historic and fundamental issues of human rights will remain with us as long as man is his less than perfect self. No end is foreseen to the struggle between the evil in man's nature and his ideals of justice. But to these traditional problems of human rights a new element has been added. There are new challenges to the interrelation of men — challenges at once novel, frightening and complex. They hold enormous promise for good and evil. We have not begun to think out their implications; indeed, we have just become dimly conscious of them.