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 A PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL

DISCARDED
From Nashville Pu
blic Library
OTHER WORKS BY LARS SVENDSEN
IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

A Philosophy of Boredom
Fashion: A Philosophy
Work
A Philosophy of Fear
 lars svendsen
A PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL
TRANSLATED BY KERRI A. PIERCE

G] dalkey archive press

champaign and london
 ~

Originally published in Norwegian as Ondskapens filosofi by Universitetsforlaget, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by Universitetsforlaget
Translation copyright © 2010 by Kerri A. Pierce
First English translation, 2010
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Svendsen, Lars Fr. H., 1970-

[Ondskapens filosofi. English]
A philosophy of evil / Lars Svendsen ; translated by Kerri A. Pierce.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-56478-571-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Good and evil. I. Title.
BJ1405.N67S8413 2010
170--dce22
2009050785

Partially funded by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and by a grant from the
Illinois Arts Council, a state agency

This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA

www.dalkeyarchive.com

Cover: design and composition by Danielle Dutton, illustration by Nicholas Motte .

Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in the United States of America
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD / 9

INTRODUCTION: What is Evil and How Can We Understand It? / 17

I. THE THEOLOGY OF EVIL / 39

Theodicies / 43
The Privation Theodicy | 46

The Free Will Theodicy / 48

The Irenaean Theodicy / 51

The Totality Theodicy / 55

History as Secular Theodicy / 60

Job’s Insight—Beyond Theodicy / 70
Il. THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF EVIL / 77
Are People Good or Evil? / 77

Typologies of Evil / 82

Demonic Evil / 88
Evil for Evil’s Sake / 91
Evil’s Aesthetic Seduction / 96
Sadism / 101
Schadenfreude | 103
Subjective and Objective Evil / 106

Kant and Instrumental Evil / 110

The Impossibility of a “Devilish” Will / 111
The Paradox of Evil / 114
Moral Rebirth / 119

The Evil is the Other—Idealistic Evil / 122

“Us” vs. “Them” | 124
Violent Individuals / 132

Arendt and Stupid Evil / 137

The Evil and the Stupid / 140

Radical and Banal Evil / 143
Eichmann, Hoss, and Stangl / 148
Normal People and Extreme Evil / 163
Thinking as Opposition | 187
Evil People / 193
III. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL / 197

Theory and Praxis / 197

Ethics of Conviction and Ethics of Responsibility / 209

Politics and Violence / 214

Evil as a Concrete Problem / 227

CONCLUSION / 231

NOTES / 235

BIBLIOGRAPHY / 283
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 FOREWORD
When I first seriously took up the subject of evil many years ago,
I faced a particular challenge. I had to prove that the idea in gen-
eral was still relevant to philosophical discussion. Back then, of
course, the idea was undergoing a nascent “renaissance.’' How-
ever, among most of my colleagues in philosophy, and even more
so among my colleagues in other disciplines, the idea of evil was
seen as a holdover from a mythical, Christian worldview whose
time was already past.
Initially, as I began to attempt this “rehabilitation” of the con-
cept of evil, the idea itself was still an object of fascination for me.’
This fascination was a result, most especially, of our tendency to
regard evil as an aesthetic object, where evil appears as something
other and therefore functions as an alternative to the banality of
everyday life. We're steadily exposed to more and more extreme
representations of evil in films and such,’ but this form of evil
doesn't belong to a moral category. Like most other things in our
culture, evil has been aestheticized. Simone Weil writes: “Imagi-
nary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous,
barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always
new, marvellous, intoxicating.”* In fiction, evil feeds off its fic-
tional nature. It poses a contrast to the banality of everyday life
and represents a transcendence of the same. “Evil” is translated
as “transgression, the sublime,” etc. When such aestheticization
» «.

becomes dominant, we lose sight of the horror associated with

evil. For the purely aesthetic gaze, there is no actual victim. As
FOREWORD

a purely aesthetic phenomenon, evil becomes a game without

consequences, something we can gorge ourselves on, play around
with, or shed a tear about without worrying that the knife will cut
too deep.”
Eventually, however, my rehabilitation of evil took a more seri-
ous turn. In Europe, we paid close attention to the events in the
former Yugoslavia: the reports of mass murder, rape, and extreme
forms of torture. So much meaningless brutality, we thought, as we
read about the Serbian troops who forced Muslim fathers and sons
to have sex, or the male prisoners who were forced to stand naked
and watch women undress—anyone who got an erection had their
penis cut off. Yes, Yugoslavia was a shock to us. We thought such
things didn’t happen in the light of day, at least not in our part of
the world. It’s difficult to find an explanation for why such things
happen... “Evil” was the only word that could begin to express the
horror of these events.
Then came September 11, 2001, and suddenly the idea of evil
assumed a prominent place in political discourse. That day, George
W. Bush declared: “Today, our nation saw evil.” Tony Blair remarked
that “mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today” and that
“we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world”
Ariel Sharon was quick to hop on the bandwagon. He announced:
“There is no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorism—it is all horrific, all evil, all
lacking in human values.”
The events of September 11, as well as the years that have fol-
lowed, have shown us how potent the idea of evil still is, and
how dangerous the use of the word can be. As I sit and write
these words, Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip are suffering
under an Israeli attack. It is difficult to regard this attack—with
its systematic destruction of civilian targets such as schools,

10
 FOREWORD

greenhouses, and mosques—as anything other than a collective

punishment directed against the Palestinian people. The magic
word used to justify this invasion is “terrorism.” And since ter-
rorism is defined as evil incarnate, and Hamas is a terrorist or-
ganization, any and all means may be employed to eliminate
this threat—no matter the suffering it may cause to Palestinian
civilians.
A lot has changed since I first began working on this book. In
the beginning, I wanted to leave out almost all material regard-
ing sadists° and genocide, because I wanted to focus on ordinary,
as opposed to extraordinary, evil. It soon became clear, however,
that our concept of evil is so closely tied to these extreme phe-
nomena that they had to be included. Extreme actions undertaken
by “monsters” are among the clearest ideas we have of evil. Per-
haps there really are human “monsters” in the world—and by that
I mean people whose actions are so extreme that we simply can't
identify ourselves with them—but there are far too few of these to
explain the abundance of human evil in general. In the end, it is
we—we normal, more or less decent, respectable people—who are
responsible for most of the damage. We are the only explanation
for all the evil in the world. From this point of view, it is “normal”
to be evil. Of course, we aren't eager to describe ourselves as such.
If anyone is evil, it’s always “them.”
I emphasize the Holocaust in this book because such a wealth
of research is available concerning the perpetrators that it allows
us a unique insight into how completely ordinary people can
become involved in the greatest evil imaginable. When I discuss
the Holocaust, my focus will not be on Hitler, but instead on the
“normal” people who participated in the mass exterminations.
This is because I’m most interested in the relevance the idea of

EL
FOREWORD

evil has for an understanding of ourselves as moral agents in

the world. When it comes Hitler, most of us have little reason to
identify ourselves with him; on the other hand, it is easy enough
to identify ourselves with those who participated in his pro-
gram. For this same reason, I don’t focus on serial killers and the
like—though I will not claim that there is any categorical dif-
ference between “us” and such “monsters.” For example, Jeffrey
Dahmer’s father, Lionel Dahmer, has described his inability, at
first, to understand how his son could become one of the worst
serial killers in the history of the United States: he seemed, at
first, like a complete stranger. Slowly but surely, however, the
father began to recognize how something could have turned
Dahmer “into the person my son became.” I believe it’s possible,
then, for all of us to discover these sides of ourselves—sides that
find an extreme expression in cases such as Jeffrey Dahmer’s.
But I also believe that the grounds for identification with peo-
ple such as Dahmer—who was obviously a seriously disturbed
young man—are tenuous enough that there is more to be gained
by focusing on the evil done by normal people. I am interested,
that is, in what the idea of evil can contribute to an understand-
ing of us.
It would be intellectual hubris to think that I could make evil
completely intelligible. My own understanding of evil has changed
during the time I’ve spent working on this book. In the beginning,
as I’ve said, evil was first and foremost an object of fascination.
Then it became something more terrifying, and finally something
simply, enormously, sad. And perhaps that’s the essential charac-
teristic of evil: it is terribly sad. As far as basic intelligibility, I as-
sume that my reader will be able to picture in detail the events I
discuss. Those who are looking for graphic descriptions of crimes,

12
 FOREWORD

however—instruments of torture past and present, what serial kill-

ers did to their victims, brutal methods of execution, etc.—will be
disappointed: For the most part, I’ve left such things out. Perhaps
the book would have been more “entertaining” if it contained such
descriptions, but my primary goal wasn't to write an entertaining
book. Besides, I believe that the essential details, presented soberly,
are hair-raising enough.
I recognize as well that the subject of this book is too extensive,
too complex, and too ill defined for any representation to do it
justice in a truly satisfying way. It was never my intention to give
a Gesamtdarstellung, a complete picture, capturing evil in its full
complexity and providing a solution to all the problems evil pres-
ents us with. But even singling out the aspects I felt were especially
pertinent to the discussion proved to be more problematic than I
ever imagined. I thought that, academically speaking, I was well
prepared to write this book, but when I began to survey the source
material I felt like I was drowning. I’ve never worked on any proj-
ect that called for such extensive research; I was only able to cover
a fraction of the literature on the subject, leaving out, in the pro-
cess, many things that I found particularly interesting. Neverthe-
less: I hope I’ve included the most important works.’ This isn’t a
History of Evil, even though I do track changing notions of evil
through my historical sources. A complete history of evil from the
Old Testament (or even earlier: from the Epic of Gilgamesh) to
the present day would prove a far too comprehensive task. Instead,
I’ve chosen to limit my discussion to certain topics and theories
that I find especially relevant.
There are four traditional explanations concerning the origin
of evil: (1) People are possessed or seduced by a malevolent, su-
pernatural power; (2) people are predisposed, by nature, to act in

13
FOREWORD

a certain way that might be described as evil; (3) people are influ-
enced by their environment to commit evil acts; and (4) people
have free will and choose to act in accordance with evil. Of these
four explanations, I will focus most on (3) and (4), while (2) will
be handled more succinctly. On the other hand, I will not discuss
(1) at all. In my opinion, this is not a subject for rational debate,
but is purely a matter of religious belief. That is to say, I will not
debate the existence of Devils and Antichrists, because I consider
these subjects to belong to theology or to the history and sociology
of religion much more than to philosophy.’ In the course of the
eighteenth century, the Devil lost his place as a convincing expla-
nation for evil.!° Religious, magical, and mythical themes do not
occupy a central place in this book, even though I do engage in a
relatively in-depth discussion of the problem of theodicy—that is,
how God's existence is compatible with all the evil that is found in
the world. In this book, I'm more concerned with humanity than
God—something that’s clearly related to the fact that I’m not a
believer. The choice to take humanity as my point of departure,
however, does not mean that I think I’ve found the root of all
evil. It’s simply that evil makes itself known, first and foremost,
in human interaction.'! While it’s clear that, where evil is con-
cerned, the boundaries between philosophy and theology are
blurred, I’ve steered clear of the theological issue—aside from
in Part I, which is devoted to traditional, theological solutions to
the problem of evil—more so than is common in other literature
on this subject.” For myself, evil is about interhuman relation-
ships, not about a transcendent, supernatural force. When we
call evil acts “inhuman,” we completely miss the mark. Evil is
human, all too human. As William Blake writes: “Cruelty has a
Human Heart.”

14
 FOREWORD

Again, the goal of this book is not to unearth “the root of all
evil” or trace evil to its source, but first and foremost to describe
certain characteristics of human action, and the positive and
negative possibilities it contains. One problem we face, in life, is
that the negative possibilities so much outnumber the positive.
In terms of causality, it’s always easier to do evil than to do good;
easier to hurt another human being in ways that will haunt them
for the rest of their lives than to provide a comparable amount
of help; easier to inflict an enormous amount of suffering on an
entire nation than to bring about a comparable state of prosper-
ity. In short, there’s an asymmetry between our ability to do good
and our ability to do evil. This may be a defining condition for
human action, but it’s still our responsibility to do more good
than evil.
Finally, because it was my desire, in writing this book, to un-
derstand the perpetrator more than his victim, I have, necessarily,
put greater emphasis on evils committed than on evils suffered.
Some people will perhaps say that the victim deserves a greater
share of our attention, but it should be obvious where my sym-
pathies lie.

I have had extremely generous support from friends and col-

leagues. Anne Granberg, Thomas Nilsen, Hilde Norrgrén, Helge
Svare, and Knut Olav Amis offered constructive commentary,
pointed out weaknesses and suggested some important revisions.
Helge Jordheim suggested a number of improvements, among
others the reorganization of sections in Part II, which has made
the book clearer. Einar @verenget commented on the chapter on

15
FOREWORD

Arendt. My editor, Ingrid Ugelvik, has gone above and beyond the
call of duty. A hearty thanks to them and to all who have made the
book better than it would have been otherwise. Any mistakes or
omissions are naturally my own.

16
 INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS EVIL AND HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND IT?

Even if the idea of evil seems outdated, a holdover from a pre-
modern era when the world was interpreted by way of Christian
doctrine, evil is still a reality for us. We see, do, and suffer from
evil. This is true even when we manage to forget—sometimes for
quite a long time—that evil does exist; sooner or later, something
always comes along to serve as a brutal reminder. In 1939, Thomas
Mann remarked that wed again discovered the difference between
good and evil, and that this was a good thing."* It seems the recog-
nition of evil surfaces again and again, only to be forgotten. E. M.
Cioran writes: “I have less and less discernment as to what is good
and what evil. When I make no distinction whatever between the
two, supposing I reach this point some day—what a step forward!
Toward what?” Toward catastrophe, I should imagine. We recog-
nize evil when it has a face, an identity. That’s what happened in the
former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s and in the United States
on September 11, 2001.
In his introduction to the book The Death of Satan, Andrew Del-
banco observes that today there's an enormous gap between our
experience of evil and our intellectual capacity for understanding
it.© We see social need and vicious acts, but aside from certain ex-
treme cases—that have a clear perpetrator—we have no real idea
of where evil actually resides. In the Christian culture, Satan was
the scapegoat—but when God died, Satan followed suit, and we,
Satan’s murderers, lost the ability to talk about evil. Because how
can you talk about evil without the aid of evil incarnate?

AF
INTRODUCTION

Jean Baudrillard asks what’s become of evil in our day and age,
and answers that it resides everywhere.'’ This idea is reminiscent
of H. C. Andersen's fairy tale “The Snow Queen,’ where the devil's
mirror—which warps everything it reflects, showing its worst pos-
sible manifestation—splinters, and the splinters land in every hu-
man eye and heart, dooming mankind to see something evil or
corrupt everywhere we turn.'* For most of us, the idea of evil isn't
something we associate with our everyday reality, with our day-
to-day experiences and routines, but we do nonetheless come into
contact with it almost constantly by means of the mass media: We
are always watching and reading reports of genocide, famine, un-
motivated violence, and traffic accidents, living in a paradoxical
situation where evil is both absent and omnipresent—absent in our
concrete experience, but everywhere in the reality we perceive in
the media. Thus, for Baudrillard, evil is everywhere—and since it’s
everywhere, we've lost the capacity to talk about it.!? Evil has be-
come decentralized; it’s no longer located in a single image. We live
in a world where foolishness triumphs on all fronts, and such fool-
ishness is the root of all evil.”” Baudrillard goes further, however,
saying that this omnipresence of evil is made possible precisely be-
cause we don't know how to talk about it. He argues, therefore, that
it’s imperative to restore dualism and resurrect the principle of evil,
as it is found in Manicheism and other mythologies, and oppose it
to the principle of good.*! On the other hand, Andrew Delbanco
maintains that our understanding of evil should be renewed in-
stead of restored—though he makes no practical suggestions as to
how such a renewal might take place.”
We might object to all this and say that evil has always existed
everywhere, but “evil” can refer to such a diverse number of phe-
nomena that the concept seems beyond our comprehension. Per-
haps, then, the idea of evil can indeed only be grasped through

18
 INTRODUCTION

mythological representation? This is the departure point for Paul

Ricoeur's theory on the symbolism of evil. Ricoeur maintains that
evil is more or less inaccessible to philosophical reflection because
reason presupposes a meaningful context that has no room for the
idea of evil, whereas myths and symbols act as recourses to aid our
understanding.” The danger is that myths are easily transformed
into ontology. That is, what starts out as a means of representation
is confused with an actual, active force. In this way, myth comes to
function as explanation rather than as symbol. Ricoeur insists that
the dissolution of myth as explanation is necessary for the return
of myth as symbol.* But what symbolism of evil would still be rel-
evant to us today?
We certainly don't need the idea of an otherworldly hell. Nazi
and Communist concentration camps, for example, have already
done a fairly good job of embodying on earth the same notion of
hell we inherited from our religious traditions. Likewise, we don't
need the idea of a supernatural devil to understand what an evil
agent is: they are everywhere, living among us. Still, though we
cant continue to locate evil in a single place or actor, surely we can
recognize that it manifests itself more fully in certain places and
actors than in others?
There are few who will deny that evil exists in the world, but
there are many, in fact, who will deny that there is such thing as an
evil person. Ron Rosenbaum points out that there are amazingly
few Hitler specialists today who are willing to call Hitler evil.” It’s
striking that there’s such a widespread reluctance to use the word
“evil” to describe the person who in modern times has come to
incarnate evil more than any other. This says a little bit about how
low the idea of evil has sunk, and how little it’s used. I myself agree
with Alan Bullock, who remarks that if we can’t say that Hitler was
evil, then the word “evil” lacks all meaning.” Do evil people exist? If

19
INTRODUCTION

doing evil to others suffices for one to be called evil, then the answer
is a resounding “yes.” The same holds true if we further insist that
evil, to be evil, must be committed with intent, not accidentally. On
the other hand, if we go on to insist that evil is only properly evil
when it is committed because it is evil—that is, that the motivation
for an evil act must reside in the very fact of its being evil—then I
would have to be a little more cautious, and will simply assert that
things which can in some way be defined as good can also become
grounds for doing evil.
The idea of evil seems to be making a comeback, lately, in the field
of ethics—in both the continental and analytical traditions. People
were reluctant, on the whole, to discuss evil during the twentieth
century, because the term was largely associated with theological
problems beyond the scope of a more scientifically oriented phi-
losophy. This trend has a long history: in keeping with what Max
Weber called the Entzauberung der Welt, the “disenchantment” of
the world, and the waning influence of religion, we have seen the
idea of evil gradually shuffled to the periphery since the sixteenth
century. In his excellent discussion of religion’s political history,
Marcel Gauchet writes:

God's withdrawal, which initially caused the evil objec-

tively present in the world to be pushed back into the un-
occupied inwardness of the sinner, logically led, at a later
stage, if not to evil’s total expulsion from the world, at least
to a radical relativization of its influence. Evil still existed,
but it said nothing about the ultimate nature of things or
about the being of humans. It no longer originated in on-
tology but in pathology. 7”

20
 INTRODUCTION

The idea of evil could find no place in a rational and scientific view
of the world. It was no longer religion but science that determined
the truth about the human condition. Today this task falls particu-
larly to biology. However, biology has no room for the concept of
moral evil. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright asserts:

The concept of “evil” [. . .] doesn't fit easily into a modern,

scientific worldview. Still, people seem to find it useful,
and the reason is that it is metaphorically apt. There is in-
deed a force devoted to enticing us into various pleasures
that are (or once were) in our genetic interest but do not
bring long-term happiness to us and may bring great suf-
fering to others. You could call that force the ghost of nat-
ural selection. More concretely, you could call it our genes
(some of our genes, at least). If it will help to actually use
the world evil, there’s no reason not to.¥

Wright's position is in every way incompatible with the idea of evil

as a moral concept. Moral evil vanishes into natural evil; Wright
has replaced original sin with genetic material. The difference be-
tween moral and natural evil is’t easy to map out, but we can ten-
tatively say that moral evil begins with free will, while the causes
of natural evil are purely natural. Biology doesn't have the capacity
to define the moral concept of evil and at most can only explain
away the phenomenon. What tools does biology employ to distin-
guish good from evil? Nothing aside from the fact that “good” can
be understood as “useful for an individual's reproduction,’ while
evil can be understood as anything that is correspondingly use-
less. Lyall Watson writes that we don’t necessarily have to be selfish,
even if our genes are. However, he also veers off and latches onto

21
INTRODUCTION

Augustine's doctrine of original sin, ultimately arguing that, like

the rest of nature, we are born evil.” But neither good nor evil are
located in our genes. Instead, both represent concrete possibilities
for each of us.
Traditional, theological vocabulary has long been considered a
historical relic. In its place, we attempt to use a more “scientific”
vocabulary. Instead of evil, we talk about asocial tendencies, dys-
functions that can be corrected—dysfunctions usually considered
to have social or chemical causes. The problem, however, is that
our vocabulary doesn’t match our own experiences. We can blame
a perpetrator, but we can't blame a dysfunction—a dysfunction can
merely be corrected. In fact, this idea robs the perpetrator of some-
thing essential, namely of his freedom and dignity. As Dostoevsky
writes:

In making the individual responsible, Christianity thereby

acknowledges his freedom. In making the individual de-
pendent on every flaw in the social structure, however, the
doctrine of the environment reduces him to an absolute
nonentity, exempts him totally from every personal moral
duty and from all independence, reduces him to the low-
est form of slavery imaginable.”

One of the best-known fictional serial killers, Hannibal Lecter, re-

fuses, in just these terms, to let himself be imprisoned in a flaw
located outside himself. He insists upon his own evil, because it
forms an essential part of his dignity: “Nothing happened to me
[.. .]. [happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences.”3! We
have a tendency to redefine evil in such a way that social evil is seen
as a “social problem” and individual evil becomes a “personality

22
 INTRODUCTION

disturbance.” We look for the causes of evil and these causes are
often located outside the discussion of morality. They can be either
natural or social, and can range from natural inclination and illness
to poverty and traumatic childhood experiences. However, if you
attribute all human evil to such causes—causes located outside the
individual understood as a moral subject—simply to provide a “sci-
entific” explanation for evil, you've suddenly reduced moral evil to
natural evil, and thereby done away with all moral standards. Such
reductionism is, however, completely contrary to our experience of
ourselves and other human beings as moral agents subject to ideas
such as guilt and responsibility.
My insistence that ideas such as guilt and responsibility are un-
avoidable may seem old-fashioned. David B. Morris suggests that
evil has changed its character in the postmodern era, and that evil
can no longer be understood as the cause of suffering: Instead,
suffering itself should be regarded as evil.” A number of theoreti-
cians likewise have the tendency to separate evil from individual
responsibility. As a result, evil is exclusively attributed to outside
causes, for example to “society:** Odo Marquard describes how
an “Entbésung des Bésen” takes place in modernity—how, that is,
evil is de-eviled.** We traditionally distinguish between evil that
is committed and evil that is suffered, between active and passive
evil; however, according to Morris, only the passive aspect, suffer-
ing, now remains. Not only evil incarnate, but also evil itself has
vanished from the world. The only things to remain are the evils
that we suffer. Of course, these evils do have causes, but the causes
themselves are not considered evil.
The concept of evil evaporates in scientific debate. Human mis-
deeds are not considered sins, but are instead the effects of vari-
ous causes. In Hitler studies, a whole host of causes are typically

23
INTRODUCTION

put forth as explanations for Hitler’s actions—for example, Hit-

ler’s relationship to his father, his later affair with his niece Geli
Raubal, or else his insecurity complex resulting from a physical
defect (first and foremost the much-discussed thesis of whether
or not he lacked a testicle).*° The choice of cause depends on a
given researcher's discipline and runs the gambit from genes and
chemistry to social relationships and political ideologies. How-
ever, Hitler was not simply the sum of a certain set of causes,
but also a person who acted freely. There is always something
else, something irreducible, something that doesn’t simply van-
ish without a trace into the chain of cause and effect—something
that allows us to makes choices, a thing we can call free will.
Without free will, moral evil simply doesn't exist. (I don’t mean
to assert here that every scientific explanation is illegitimate, but
simply to underscore that they have limited validity.) Thus, our
attempts to explain away evil, to rationalize it, have never been
completely successful. The fact that an individual is free means
that in a given situation they could have acted differently; it fol-
lows then, when we commit evil, that we can be accused for not
having acted differently.
It is clear, despite everything, that we continue to have a gen-
eral, if vague, understanding of “evil,” and can use the word to
refer to events, actions, and people. These events, actions, and
people might also be described using other terms, of course; the
question is whether or not the word “evil” aids our understanding.
In my opinion, it certainly does. The idea is a valuable tool when
we attempt to orient ourselves in the enigmatic landscape we call
“the world.” I further believe that “good” and “evil” not only refer
to the way a person evaluates different phenomena, but also to a
given phenomenon itself, to the object of our evaluation. In other

24
 INTRODUCTION

words, I don't agree with Hamlet that “Nothing is either good or

bad, but thinking makes it so.”*” The decree that “X is evil” is true
if and only if X has the characteristic of being evil. So what does
it mean, then, to say that “X is evil’? All people hope to live a
good life, but living a good life is not always possible—and in the
broadest sense of the word, evil can be understood as everything
that hinders the realization of a good life. This understanding of
evil encompasses natural catastrophes and sickness as well—and
there were many who considered the earthquake in Lisbon in
1755 as an expression of the earth’s inherent maliciousness.** In a
narrower sense, evil signifies those premeditated human actions
that are intended to cause harm to others. Earlier, the expression
was often used in the broader sense, but today we mainly use it in
the narrower.
Evil is not simply a single overarching problem. Instead, it rep-
resents a number of concrete phenomena that all contribute to
making life less than good. Yet we humans have always wanted to
discover an unconditional concept of evil that allows us to relate all
our misfortunes back to it. As Novalis concludes: “We seek every-
where the unconditioned, and always find only the conditioned.””
That is, we are always seeking the ultimate evil and finding only
evils. Ultimate evil simply does not exist. What does not exist, in
my estimation, is evil as something autonomous—whether un-
derstood as something present or something lacking. “Good” and
“evil” are relative concepts; that is, something is only good or evil
in relation to something else, not in and of itself. Evil is not a
substance, a thing, but rather a characteristic of things, events, or
actions. Evil is not something definite and well defined, nor does
it have an essence. “Evil” is a broad concept we use to describe
actions and suffering. In fact, the idea refers to such manifold

25
INTRODUCTION

phenomena—for example, illness, natural catastrophes, death,

wat, genocide, terrorism, the drug trade, slavery, rape, child
abuse, etc.—that it can appear to be so broad as to lose all specific
content. All these various evils, however, are recognized as evils
suffered by humanity, and the idea of evil is therefore applicable,
even though it is difficult to pin down the necessary and sufficient
conditions of its use. Of course, in order to reconcile ourselves
to the existence of these evils, we tend to seek a meaning behind
evil. Such meaning would ensure that the worlds existence was
justified and allow us to hope that things could change for the
better. We find such meaning in different places: in religion, in
our belief in progress, in political ideology. My general attitude,
however, is that evil neither can nor should be justified, and that
every attempt to reconcile ourselves to the suffering in the world
is wrong. There is simply no meaning to be found in the countless
tragedies of human history. They cannot be justified by any divine
plan or active historical force.
Indeed, one of the things that fascinates us most about evil is
its apparent incomprehensibility—which is both seductive and re-
pulsive. By incomprehensibility, what I mean is that the idea of evil
has a certain opaqueness about it; even though, as a philosopher,
it's my business to understand things, so I must act on the assump-
tion that my chosen subject is understandable. Still, just because
I think it’s possible to understand the phenomena doesn’t mean
that I'll be able to do it. Raimond Gaita claims: “Good and evil are
essentially mysterious, which is why no metaphysical or religious
explanations will penetrate their mystery.’ I doubt that “mysti-
cal” is the right word, because it implies a special depth that can
only be plumbed by a certain type of insight, by a special intuition.
But isn't it true that anyone can recognize evil? We see evil in the

26
 INTRODUCTION

form of persecution, starvation, torture, murder, etc. If we read a

kind of depth into these events, it’s precisely because we long for a
dimension of meaning that evil’s manifestations actually lack.
Again, the purpose of this book is not to “plumb the depths” in
order to find the root of all evil. Instead, I’ve tried to stay as close
to the surface as possible; close to the place, that is, where the phe-
nomena of evil tend to show themselves. If 'm going to understand
evil, I have to begin on the surface, at the place evil appears in our
lives. Ricoeur argues that the price we pay for clarity, dealing with a
demythologized concept, is the loss of depth.*t However, when deal-
ing with the idea of evil, the surface is so demanding that it seems
premature to “go in depth” Of course, evil also invites “in-depth”
consideration because it appears to defy given forms and frame-
works and eludes our control. Emmanuel Levinas, for instance,
describes evil as something that can't be integrated into the world,
something that doesn't fit when we try to grasp the world as a whole,
something that’s always on the outside: the radical Other.” Evil ap-
pears to us as something chaotic, defying comprehension—and
perhaps it’s this experience of evil that forms the basis for the many
privation theories, according to which evil is simply understood as
the absence or lack of the good. These theories seem to explain our
difficulty in grasping evil, because there's nothing there to grasp.
An attempt to grasp evil would literally be to reach out into an
empty nothingness. The problem, however, is that these privation
theories cannot fully account for the “positive” moments in our
chaotic experience of evil, where something is actually given, not
simply lacking.
We can recognize evil without having a theory of evil. Evil is an
unavoidable aspect of the world. It precedes philosophical reflec-
tion, because it’s found in experiences that form the basis for such

27
INTRODUCTION

reflection. In this respect, philosophy itself is understood as the

act of reflecting on a meaning or experience that already exists.”
Philosophy takes its content and legitimacy from what is already
understood. This viewpoint is methodologically significant be-
cause it requires philosophy to maintain contact with the pre-phil-
osophical if it’s to retain its legitimacy. On the one hand, therefore,
evil is something abstract and elusive; on the other hand, some-
thing concrete and tangible. An abused child, a bomb that kills
innocents, a people slaughtered—all these things are concrete
events. But when we attempt to understand the evil inherent in
these events, we often lose ourselves in greater and greater abstrac-
tions that become steadily less tangible. Ultimately, we remain lost
in abstraction and therefore lose sight of the concrete evil that was
the basis for our initial reflection. Most explanations of evil simply
explain it away. This is especially evident in the countless theodi-
cies that compose the greatest percentage of the literature on evil.
To avoid losing sight of concrete evil has been a goal of this book,
and I have therefore attempted to write a comparatively concrete
study of it.
In part, this book can be described as a phenomenology of evil, as
a consideration of how evil manifests itself. The phenomenologist
Heidegger's reflections concerning evil, however, take an almost
entirely different direction than the one I have chosen. Heidegger
primarily wants to see evil as an ontological, rather than a moral or
political problem.“ He tries to plumb “the depths” of evil, whereas
I've chosen to remain on the surface. For Heidegger, morality is
something derivative,* but for me it’s fundamental for an under-
standing of evil. My own approach to the subject—plainly stated,
that evil is first and foremost a practical problem and that we have
a duty to do our utmost to prevent the suffering of others—would

28
 INTRODUCTION

for Heidegger be an expression of the decay of reason in modern

times.** In fact, as Heidegger understands evil, such a view of evil
would itself be evil.” Heidegger wants to uncover an ontological
evil that penetrates deeper than the moral, but in my opinion he
fails in his attempt. However, a detailed discussion of this topic
would take up a disproportionate amount of space.
The main point of this book is quite simple: evil is not first and
foremost a theoretical concept, but rather a practical problem. The
question of how evil entered into the world, whether it has actual
being, or can only be understood as an absence, etc., is less impor-
tant than the question of how evil can be prevented. In my opinion,
philosophy—and to an even greater extent theology—has errone-
ously prioritized the theoretical over the practical. Today's ana-
lytical philosophy of religion is especially extreme in this regard.”
When we're suffering, theodicy isn’t the most pressing issue. And
it certainly shouldn't be the most pressing issue when others are
suffering. Nevertheless, I’m a philosopher, and therefore this book
also makes a contribution to theory. At the same time, large parts
of it are also devoted to removing what I consider to be theoreti-
cal blind spots. The movement of this book is from the theoretical
to the practical, from the problem of theodicy to politics. Along
the way, political questions replace classical ontological questions
concerning evil.
In the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of human lives
were lost because of war, genocide, and torture. This means that
multiple human lives were lost per minute on political, that is, ideo-
logical grounds. Between 1900 and 1989, around eighty-six million
people were killed in war. When compared to the number of people
who starved to death during the same period, that number may not
seem large; however, it should be stressed that many hunger-related

29
INTRODUCTION

catastrophes have ideological causes as well, such as in the Soviet

Union under Stalin and China under Mao. And, certainly, in it-
self, the number is enormous. Around two thirds of these people
lost their lives in the two world wars; if we distribute these deaths
equally over the entire eighty-nine-year period, however, we still
find that for every hour that passed during the twentieth century,
an average of one hundred people were killed in war.’ Of course,
it’s nothing new for people to lose their lives in war—if we look at
the last 3,400 years, we find that there were only 243, all together, in
which mankind was not at war.*” A study of eleven European coun-
tries showed that, on average, these countries were either involved
in a war or some other kind of military confrontation for forty-
seven percent of the last millennium. In the last century, there was
an average of three conflicts resulting in significant loss of human
life taking place on the globe at any given time.*
According to Hobbes, violent death is the greatest of all evils.*4
There are a number of other great evils, and living with chronic pain
due to some illness is not necessarily the least of them. But violent
death is clearly among the greatest, however we look at it, and Hob-
bes’s assertion has far more resonance today than Augustine's claim
that eternal death is the greatest of all evils.*° Eternal death seems a
rather tempting alternative to the kind of things that living people
inflict on one another. But, on the subject of violence, my focus will
remain on the individuals who perpetrate and are the victims of
these crimes, rather than on general political relationships. I don’t
believe that Auschwitz or Bosnia can reveal any deep metaphysi-
cal truths about modern, Western culture, about civilization’s telos
or the like. What happened was that a group of individuals acting
under certain political, social, and material conditions persecuted,
tortured, and murdered other individuals. There’s no good reason

30
 INTRODUCTION

why an understanding of such events should require us to refer to

historical-metaphysical principles, the “deepest” levels of a person's
spiritual being (what that person “really” is) or the like. We're deal-
ing with concrete agents in a concrete socio-material space—and it’s
important to maintain the agent perspective. A socio-material space
never unfolds by itself. It’s made up of individuals who act in accor-
dance with the possibilities and limitations imposed by that space.
Genocide is only possible if a relatively large number of individuals
are willing to murder a large number of other individuals over a long
period of time. We can put forth a host of explanations on different
levels, and these can all shed some light on the phenomenon, but
ultimately we cannot escape the fact that the individuals in a group
must be willing to murder the individuals in another group because
they belong to the other group. As Hugh Trevor-Roper points out,
in the context of witch-hunts: They were only possible because a
large portion of the population supported them and took part. No
tyrant or dictator acting alone can bring about the persecution of
large groups of people. For the most part, too, those individuals
who take part in persecutions know the difference between right
and wrong. They know that people shouldn't torture and murder
their fellow men, but they don't let this insight influence their ac-
tions. How is that possible? If we're going to understand the major-
ity of the participants in genocide and other such crimes, we have to
direct our focus to a side of evil not often discussed, away from the
usual argument that agents of evil do evil because it’s evil. Instead,
we need to turn our sights toward idealistic and “stupid” evil, re-
spectively—where, on the one hand, agents consider their actions to
be good because those persecuted are themselves considered “evil,”
or else, on the other, agents simply neglect to reflect upon whether
their actions are good or evil.

31
INTRODUCTION

The Holocaust forms a decisive orientation point in relation to

all later thought concerning evil—even though, at the same time,
it’s often upheld as a singular event that won't tolerate compari-
son. A paradoxical aspect of discussions concerning the Holocaust,
therefore, is that it is considered a unique event, without parallels,
while being used simultaneously as the standard by which all other
evil must be measured. In my opinion, the thesis of uniqueness,
which considers the Holocaust to be an absolute singularity, should
be discarded entirely, once and for all.°’ More than implying that
nothing like the Holocaust has ever before occurred in our history,
this thesis also implies that nothing like it will ever happen again.
Adorno, for one, maintains that Hitler has forced a new categorical
imperative upon humanity, “to arrange [our] thoughts and actions
so Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will hap-
pen .. 8 It's interesting that Adorno allows himself this “noth-
ing similar,’ because it weakens the thesis of uniqueness that he
otherwise embraces. This addition, however, is vitally important:
it obliges us not only to prevent another Auschwitz, but also an-
other Srebrenica, Rwanda, Congo, and countless other situations.
Adorno also suggests that the thought that life could proceed “like
normal” after the Second World War and the eradication of the
Jews is “idiotic” For the most part, however, life has proceeded
like normal. Instead of standing for the end of history, the Holo-
caust has become history . . . albeit a part of history that obliges us
to prevent it from ever repeating itself. In the meantime, however,
despite our obligation, it has indeed gone on repeating itself—and
will probably do so again.
The Holocaust represents an extraordinary evil, certainly, but it
was completely ordinary people who carried out the mass extermi-
nations, who gassed and cremated others, who slaughtered whole

32
 INTRODUCTION

towns, who conducted medical experiments on other human

beings, who murdered Jews so that their skeletons could be do-
nated to an anatomical institute at a German university, etc.—and
the morality of these perpetrators can't be used to differentiate the
Holocaust from other genocides. The Holocaust stands as one of
the worst cases of genocide the world has ever seen—perhaps the
worst, by certain standards—but it can indeed be compared to
other genocides: Everything can be compared to something else.
On empirical grounds—that is, the number murdered, the tech-
nology used to commit the murders, its effectiveness, etc.—the
Holocaust is simply not a unique event. As compared with earlier
genocides, the Holocaust does demonstrate some characteristics
theretofore unrecorded, but none of these signify that we're deal-
ing with an absolute singularity or historical discontinuity—quite
the opposite.
For example, there's a direct connection between the Holocaust
and the Armenian genocide in Turkey in 1915, where around
800,000 of the 1.3 million Armenians in Turkey were murdered.”
The Nazis were “inspired” by this genocide, and there was a close
relationship between the governments of Germany and Turkey.
Turkey still doesn’t admit responsibility for this genocide and ar-
gues that there were “merely” around 300,000 murdered—as if
that wasn’t already an enormous number—and that, besides, the
mass exterminations weren't planned and executed by the govern-
ment. Turkey’s official position is completely false, and it ought to
be possible now—nearly a hundred years later—to acknowledge
the realities of the event. At the same time, although the perse-
cution of Kurds in present day Turkey can scarcely be described
as genocide, it too has claimed around 30,000 lives over the last
decades.

33
INTRODUCTION

Another example would be the gruesome events in the Belgian

Congo, modern day Zaire. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was
not simply a fantasy; under Leopold II, the Belgian Congo was very
close indeed to the world described by Conrad—only worse. It’s
difficult to say exactly how many died as a direct result of Belgium's
policies, but the most common estimate is that the population was
reduced from twenty million to just under ten million during the
years (1880-1920) that the land was officially ruled by Belgium.
These figures are particularly astonishing because Belgian’s involve-
ment in the Congo was almost exclusively economically motivated.
That is, Belgium's goal wasn't simply to exterminate the populace, as
is the case with most other genocides. The violence in the Belgian
Congo was essentially instrumental in nature, based on a concept
of how the land could best be ruled with an eye toward turning the
maximum profit. At the same time, it’s clear that the violence esca-
lated to such an extent that it also undermined its own effectiveness.
Much of the valuable work force was either eradicated or disabled.
King Leopold II himself recognized the irrationality of cutting off
a native’s hand—after all, that native could have been put to work.
Beyond that, however, he gave no thought to how the natives were
treated.” Eventually, the terror in the Belgian Congo began to take
on a life of its own, divorced from the instrumental considerations
that formed its basis. It’s clear too that most of those who carried
out these “crimes against humanity”® were ordinary people without
notable sadistic tendencies, although the undertaking did attract a
fair number of individuals who took a perverse pleasure in abusing
the natives. In brutality and scope, the events in the Belgian Congo
are certainly comparable to the Holocaust, though the motivations
behind the two genocides were widely different. Indeed, the Nazis’
goals could be considered far more idealistic:** What makes the

34
 INTRODUCTION

Holocaust especially difficult to understand, perhaps, is that its evil

was not first and foremost instrumental. The Jews posed no threat
to non-Jews, nor had they tried to challenge the government. The
Jews were standing in no one’s way. In other words: “The Jewish
Problem” was in no way a real social, economic, religious, territo-
rial or general political problem.
The genocide in Rwanda, in which around 800,000 people were
murdered by the Hutus, was more explicitly politically motivated.
The victims were mainly Tutsis, but a number of moderate and
intellectual Hutus were murdered as well because they were not
“radical” enough and therefore were grouped together with the
“enemies.” The slaughter of the Tutsis was hard work, in part be-
cause many of the Hutus were armed only with machetes (which
had been imported from China for the occasion), but nonetheless
they were able to murder Tutsis at a greater pace than the Nazis’
during the Jewish extermination.® The violence, however, wasnt
“merely” a matter of murder. There was also rape, torture, crippling
of victims, etc. And then, similarly, we can also mention Indone-
sia: In 1966, the Indonesian government accused ethic Chinese of
being in league with the communists and murdered hundreds of
thousands of people. And when Indonesia invaded East Timor in
1975, around 200,000 East Timorians, or a third of the population,
were killed. The list of genocides and similar occurrences is only
getting longer.
In the communist regimes, anyone could be a target for ag-
gression, and new groups were always being added to the enemy
list. There were as many murders in the largest Gulag camps, like
Kolyma, as in the largest concentration camps. In the Nazi camps,
prisoners were gassed, while in the communist camps prisoners
mainly starved to death. The similarities between the Nazis and

be
INTRODUCTION

the communists is starkly underscored by the fact that a number

of former concentration camps, such as Buchenwald and Sach-
senhausen, were reopened by the Russians after Germany's surren-
der and filled with Nazis and other political opponents. Some ex-
prisoners were even sent to the same camp from which theyd just
been released. Even if the prisoner count was significantly lower
than when the Nazis managed the camps, there were still around
120,000 prisoners, of which 45,000 died of hunger, sickness, or
exhaustion, or else were executed. The Nazis succeeded in mur-
dering around twenty-five million people; over a longer period of
time, the communists succeeded in murdering at least a hundred
million.” Both systems had a remarkable willingness to sacrifice
human lives for the sake of a “higher” cause. Mao believed that
one in every five people was an enemy; at the time, this meant that
thirty of the six hundred million people living in China should
be eliminated. He eventually considered letting half the popula-
tion die in an atomic war, since the country was overpopulated
anyway. Any consideration of the individual was irrelevant. It’s
difficult to estimate how many died under Mao, but it was at least
thirty-five million people, and presumably this is a conservative
estimate. These deaths were regarded as irrelevant, or at least as
justified, on the grounds that they served a higher purpose. Then,
in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge murdered approximately two
million out of a population of eight million. To murder over a
quarter of one’s own people for the sake of a political agenda is an
example of the totalitarian worldview driven to its most extreme.
Still, it's important to underscore that some conception of the good
lay at the heart of these mass exterminations. That is, it was pre-
cisely a concept of the good that led to some of the greatest evils
imaginable.

36
 INTRODUCTION

And yet evil—no matter if it’s committed on a small scale or a

large—always has a multitude of different causes. It’s important to
keep this complexity in mind, rather than to reduce all evil to a sin-
gle root cause. As ’'ve mentioned, many theories of evil posit that
the root of an evil action is the intent to cause harm—that is, that
evil is a goal in and of itself. This is what I will call “demonic” evil,
but it’s not the dominant form. Theories that reduce all evil to the
demonic form cause us to lose sight of the myriad other varieties.
Such a one-sided focus on demonic evil also encourages us to re-
gard the problem of evil as irrelevant for an understanding of our-
selves, simply because we don’t see ourselves as “demons.” Evil isn't
limited to “demons,” however, and most of those who took part in
the genocides mentioned above were—and I will continue to stress
this—completely normal people without sadistic dispositions. Un-
der certain circumstances, we're all capable of doing unspeakable
things to our fellow men. It’s therefore essential to pinpoint these
exact circumstances. Part II of this book, “The Anthropology of
Evil,’ will be dedicated to this question.
Evil is primarily a moral category and effects a person's every
actions. Therefore, it’s just as important to understand what we
should do about evil as to understand why we commit evil. It's here
we leave the descriptive field and enter into normative ethics and
political philosophy. It’s also here that the real problem of evil lies.
In Part III, then, “The Problem of Evil, I will try to demonstrate
that this problem is a practical problem, because it's more impor-
tant to hinder and limit the scope of evil than to explain how it
entered into the world. The problem of evil shouldn't be located
in theology or the natural sciences, and certainly not in philoso-
phy, but in moral and political discourse. One of this book’s most
important goals, therefore, is to remove what I’ve referred to as

37
INTRODUCTION

theoretical blind spots—not the least of which are the various theo-
dicies I will discuss in Part I—which direct our attention away
from concrete evils and cause us to focus on abstractions instead
of the real problem.
~

38
 Teeter eat Or eV IL
Primo Levi writes: “There was Auschwitz, therefore God cannot
exist.” Levi, who survived several years in Auschwitz, repeated
these words a few days before he died in 1987—when he appar-
ently committed suicide. Dostoevsky’s romantic figure Ivan Kara-
masov requires something less radical than Auschwitz to make the
same declaration: a single child’s tear. We could perhaps say that
Levi has an evidential argument against God's existence, while Ivan
Karamasov has a logical argument. The evidential argument claims
that the amount of evil in the world is incompatible with the belief
in a good, almighty God,” while the logical argument claims that
the very existence of evil is incompatible with such a belief.’”’ The
logical argument tries to show that theism is inconsistent, while the
evidential tries to show that it is improbable.
At the heart of Ivan’s great and damning speech is a child's inno-
cence. Ivan believes that the suffering of an innocent child is an un-
acceptable evil. In a letter, Dostoevsky writes: “my hero has chosen
an argument that in my opinion is irrefutable—the senselessness
of children’s suffering—and from it reaches the conclusion that all
historical reality is an absurdity.’” Ivan begins by underscoring the
difference between children and adults:

Although I had originally thought of talking to you

about human suffering in general, I have now decided
to talk to you only about the suffering of children. [...] I
also will not speak of adults at the moment, because,

39
THE THEOLOGY OF EVIL

besides being disgusting and undeserving of love, they

have something to compensate them for their suffering:
they have eaten their apple of knowledge, they know
about good and evil and are like gods themselves. And
they keep eating the apple. But little children haven't
eaten it. They’re not yet guilty of anything. [. . .] Well
then, if they suffer here in this world, it’s because they're
paying for the sins of their fathers who ate the apple.
But that is the reasoning of another world and it’s in-
comprehensible to the human heart here on earth. No
innocents should be made to suffer for another man’s
sins, especially innocents such as these!”

Ivan then produces a number of concrete examples, which Dosto-

evsky has taken from real life:

People often describe such human cruelty as “bestial,” but

that’s, of course, unfair to animals, for no beast could ever
be as cruel as man, I mean as refinedly and artistically
cruel. The tiger simply gnaws and tears his victim to
pieces because that’s all he knows. It would never occur to
a tiger to nail people to fences by their ears, even if he
were able to do it. Those Turks, by the way, seem to de-
rive a voluptuous pleasure from torturing children—they
do everything from cutting unborn babes out of their
mothers’ wombs with their daggers to tossing infants into
the air and catching them on the point of their bayonets
while the mothers watch. It’s doing this in front of the
mothers that particularly arouses their senses. But, of all
the things the Bulgarian told me, the following scene par-

40
 THE THEOLOGY OF EVIL

ticularly caught my attention. Imagine a baby in the arms

of his trembling mother, with Turks all around them.
The Turks are having a little game: they laugh and tickle
the baby to make it laugh too. Finally they succeed and
the baby begins to laugh. Then one of the Turks points his
pistol at the baby, holding it four inches from the child’s
face. The little boy chuckles delightedly and tries to catch
the shiny pistol in his tiny hands. Suddenly the artist
presses the trigger and fires into the baby’s face, splitting
his little head in half.”

Ivan’s brother Alyosha asks him where he is going with all this and
Ivan answers that “if the devil doesn’t exist and is therefore man’s
creation, man has made him in his own image.’ Perhaps the most
extreme example that Ivan cites takes place on a Russian property.
The story is as follows: A little eight year-old boy throws a stone
and hits the paw of a dog. Unfortunately, the dog belongs to the
property's owner, a retired general. The general grabs the boy and
sticks him in a cell over night:

They brought the boy out of the guardroom. It was a

bleak, foggy, raw day—an ideal day for hunting. The gen-
eral ordered the boy stripped naked. The boy was shiver-
ing. He seemed paralyzed with fear. He didn't dare utter
a sound. “Off with him now, chase him!” “Hey, you, run,
run!” a flunkey yelled, and the boy started to run. “Sic
im!” the General roared. The whole pack was set on the
boy and the hounds tore him to pieces before his mother's
eyes.

41
THE THEOLOGY OF EVIL

Ivan believes that such occurrences can under no circumstances

be justified as part of divine providence. Because He created a
world where such things happen, God is morally responsible. Ivan
turns away from God, because God’s morals are, to him, unac-
ceptable. He also asks Alyosha to consider the following scenario:
“[L]et’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of
human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would
find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, in order to attain
this, would have to torture just one single creature [. . .] and that
on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you
agree to do it?””* Alyosha is forced admit that he couldn't do such
a thing. God’s moral stance is one that even Alyosha, his staunch
defender, must reject. As a result, his justification of God’s moral-
ity seems empty.
In the subsequent chapters of Brothers Karamasov, Dostoevsky
attempts to refute Ivan’s world-view through his portrayal of the
monk Zosima. However, there are few who will agree that this
refutation is successful. Dostoevsky has simply made Ivan’s argu-
ments too good. However, successful or not, a number of differ-
ent theories have been put forward over time in an attempt to
demonstrate that all the world’s suffering is compatible with the
idea of a good, almighty God. These theories don't just belong
to the history of ideas, but are also active today—even though
“God” is often replaced by other concepts, such as “History.” My
discussion of these theories is purely negative. That is, I generally
consider the theology of evil to be one of the theoretical blind
spots that obstruct our understanding of the real problems posed
by evil.

42
 THEODICIES

THEODICIES
The expression “theodicy” comes from Leibniz and is a combina-
tion of the Greek words for God and justice, teos and diké. A theo-
dicy is a justification of God, an argument for His righteousness.
Theodicy is generally associated with Christian thinking, but most
of the arguments can already be found in Greek, pre-Christian
thought. The basic tenet is articulated in a fragment attributed
to Heraclitus, which claims that, for God, everything is beautiful,
good, and just. Humans, on the other hand, see some things as just
and others as unjust.” The basic premise for all later theodicies is
likewise that injustice or evil only appear as unjust or evil to our
limited understanding, while everything—either all parts or the
sum of all parts—is good from a divine perspective. The free-will
argument, which attributes the presence of evil to our own exercise
of choice, can be found in Plato,” as well as the claim that this is the
best of all possible worlds,” while the privation argument—which
asserts that evil has no actual existence, but can be understood as
an absence—is first systematically formulated by Plotinus, even
though this thought also has its roots in Plato. (I should point out,
however, that the picture we're painting here is somewhat mislead-
ing: ancient Greek philosophy did not, in fact, contain any real con-
cept of “evil,” despite the convenient use of the word in translating
their texts into contemporary languages; as such, our tracing the
above theories back to the Greek philosophers means projecting a
later concept back onto them—a problematic undertaking at best.
Nevertheless, any history of ideas concerning evil must include the
ancient Greeks, because their theories have so strongly influenced
later theoretical development.)
Next, the argument that God’s omnipotence or divinity is in-
compatible with the world’s suffering goes back to Epicurus and

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Sextus Empiricus. However, it receives its classical formulation in

De ira Dei by Lactantius (in the year 303), who sums up four pos-
sible alternatives:®

(1) God wants to overcome evil, but cannot.

(2) God can overcome evil, but will not.
(3) God neither can nor will overcome evil.
(4) God can and will overcome evil.

These four alternatives can be further paraphrased as follows: God

is either evil or powerless (ultimately evil and powerless), or evil
does not exist. Therefore, the contradiction presented by opposing
a world where suffering exists with the idea of a good and almighty
God has two possible resolutions: Either you somehow deny-the
world’s suffering (that is, suffering is eventually shown to belong to
a higher order of goodness) or else one or more of God’s charac-
teristics (existence, benevolence, omnipotence) are denied. Theists
generally choose the first solution and atheists the second.
While the logical and evidential arguments both claim that God
cannot exist because evil exists, theodicy takes God’s existence for
granted and tries to show how God's existence is compatible with
the fact that evil is also found in the world. Theodicy tackles many
of the same problems as the logical and evidential arguments; it has,
however, a different purpose—namely, to show that faith in God is
justified. Theodicy may place God on trial, but the verdict has been
decided in advance: The accused was declared innocent before the
trial even began. Thus, the function of theodicy might be described
not as a justification of evil but as a means of explaining how God
can be found innocent when the world contains so much suffering;
theodicy springs from a “cognitive dissonance,”*! from the seeming

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paradox created by viewing the world’s suffering with the expecta-

tion that the world must be righteous, since it was created by a righ-
teous God. Theodicy seeks to neutralize this dissonance by showing
that the world is “actually” just after all—that suffering is necessary,
that God is not responsible for suffering, etc.
I will discuss the strategy of debate adopted by different theo-
dicies. However, most of the thinkers I will mention do not limit
themselves to just one strategy, but combine several of them—for
example the privation argument, the totality argument, the free
will argument, and the aesthetic argument.” Augustine is typical in
this regard. In the course of his Confessions, he works with the pri-
vation argument, the totality argument, and the free will argument
as well, although he never clearly distinguishes between the three.*
And, in the course of a single page, Descartes argues first that evil
is not a positive existence, but rather an essential lack; second, that
evil is caused by free will alone; and third that some things must be
less than perfect in order for the world’s splendor to shine through.
God is of course not to blame in any of this, since he has ordered
the universe for the best.** This smorgasbord of conflicting argu-
ments confuses the issue much more than is necessary; I myself
have chosen to address each argument individually. Of course,
some may object that that these arguments form a whole and even
support each other—but if each one is implausible, as I will try to
demonstrate, then the sum of them must also be implausible; and
ifIfeel that it’s important for me to show that these theodicies are
implausible, it is because, in my opinion, they have only one func-
tion: namely, to justify or explain away all the evil found in the
world. But evil should never be justified, should never be explained
away—it should be fought.

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The Privation Theodicy

The person who first systematically formulates the privation the-
ory is the neo-platonic thinker Plotinus. This primarily takes place
in tractate 8 of the First Ennead, which Plotinus devotes to a con-
sideration of “the nature and source of evil”* Plotinus claims that
the highest form of existence is The One. However, we can neither
know nor conceive of The One; it possesses neither qualitative nor
quantitative characteristics; it’s neither active nor at rest; and it’s
neither in time nor in space. Creation takes place when The One
“passes over,’ as light streams from the sun. This outpouring is
called an emanation and the emanation shapes a host of creations,
from the highest spiritual being to the lowest and most material
plane. The first source, The One, is good, but the farther you move
from the source, the nearer you come to evil. Therefore, matter
itself must be purely evil. From this standpoint, it may seem in-
explicable that evil entered the world at all, since all that exists is
shaped by emanations from the good, and all emanations are in
themselves good. The solution to this quandary is that evil has no
actual being. Instead, evil is simply a lack of the good. This lack,
however, is necessary. In progressing away from the first source,
the emanations must necessarily have a “final step,’ and by the time
they have reached this final step, which is material, they contain no
trace of the good. Thus, Plotinus’s objection to those who complain
that evil exists is this: They don't understand that an optimally
good world must necessarily contain a number of evils. These evils,
moreover, are merely a lack of the good, and therefore do not have
any actual reality. The world necessarily contains varying degrees
of imperfection.
Augustine furthers this privation theory. He likewise asserts that
evil is merely a lack of the good and, therefore, that evil has no

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actual being—a direct continuation of Plotinus’s privation theory,

minus the idea that all matter is evil.*° There’s nothing evil in na-
ture, he says.*” Nature is inherently good, and though it can be cor-
rupted, it can never become evil.** This theory is further developed
by Thomas Aquinas, who asserts that evil can’t be understood as a
general lack: For instance, it’s not evil for a person to lack wings, be-
cause it isn’t in our nature to have wings. On the other hand, it’s evil
if a bird lacks wings, because this lack directly contradicts the bird's
nature. Therefore, it is evil to diverge from the nature God intended
us to have; and, according to Aquinas, humanity has chosen to be
less than God intended.
A number of other thinkers have also launched versions of the
privation theory,® and a few proponents are still hanging around,”
but they've moved from the center to the periphery of the discus-
sion concerning the problem of evil. The privation theory deals
solely with evil’s ontological status and is logically independent of
theories that discuss to what extent everything that exists—that is,
to what extent the totality—is good. The primary reason for this
independence is that privation can become so all-encompassing
that the totality itself comes to seem evil. The privation theory also
has no logical relation to the question of guilt: Even if evil is un-
derstood as an absence of the good, this absence can be regarded
as willed, as a willing eradication of the good by God. Augustine
and Thomas Aquinas argue that humanity has chosen to exist in
imperfection and, therefore, has fallen away from God. However,
this argument can also be applied to God Himself: God has cho-
sen to create an imperfect world, and, therefore, is responsible for
that choice. It could be objected here that the imperfections in cre-
ation are necessary, that a certain amount of imperfection cannot
be avoided, but this objection can be met with the assertion that a

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creation that necessarily has such glaring imperfections shouldn't

have been undertaken in the first place. As a result, creation begins
to seem like a fatal mistake on God’s part, a mistake for which we
all continue to pay the price. The privation argument, therefore,
fails to justify God’s benevolence and omnipotence. The argument
rests on the idea that everything God has created is good, and that
He cannot be blamed for what He didn't create. But a good, al-
mighty God would be responsible for all privations, as well as for
all the things that positively exist.
I do agree with privation theoreticians when they say that evil
has no actual being, if by “having being” you mean that evil is a
thing. I regard evil as a characteristic of something, not something
that exists in its own right. My objections, however, are directed
toward a more radical understanding of privation, which persists
in denying the obvious. Phenomenologically understood, evil has
a positive existence. Suffering is not simply the absence of pleasure,
without any actual reality. Ontologically speaking, you can argue
that suffering is rooted in human mortality, in the world’s imper-
fections, etc. The question is whether this fundamentally ontologi-
cal viewpoint helps shed light on the phenomenon of evil. In my
opinion, it does not. In the best case, privation theory is irrelevant
for an understanding of the phenomenon, and in the worst case it
simply explains away the phenomenon.

The Free Will Theodicy

The free will theodicy was first suggested by Plato. In book II of The
Republic he writes that God is innocent of evil, and that we must
look elsewhere for evil’s source.*! In book X, he expands on this idea,
asserting that we are responsible for evil, rather than God, because
we are able to choose.” Plato's argument is, among other things,

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pragmatic. If people believed that gods did terrible things to humans

and to other gods, they'd take their own sins less seriously.”
Augustine expands upon this and writes that evil actions stem
from an evil will, but that the evil will itself has no root cause.”
The will doesn’t turn toward evil, but turns away from God—only
when the will turns toward something base does it become evil.
Thus, says Augustine, the will itself is always seeking some form
of good—just a good, at times, that is of a lower order. As such,
it’s the act of turning itself that must be considered evil. If we ask
why people do this, the answer is found in the doctrine of origi-
nal sin.®° This dogma resolves part of evil’s conundrum by tracing
moral evil back to a choice made by our forefathers, Adam and
Eve, who failed to act in accordance with God’s will. However, this
idea too is extremely contradictory. For example, it was only af-
ter choosing to eat from the Tree of Knowledge that humanity re-
ceived knowledge of good and evil: “The man has become like one
of us, knowing good and evil”** And yet, you have to know what a
choice entails before you can exercise free will through choosing it.
Humanity cannot be said to have chosen evil, because they didn't
know what evil was until they transgressed. If the transgression
itself gave Adam and Even the knowledge necessary to understand
sin, humanity cannot be said to have chosen freely. Even leaving
that paradox aside, it’s difficult to imagine that sin can be inherited.
You can inherit a natural evil—a weak heart, for example—but not
a moral evil based on individual choice. The idea that “the result of
one trespass was condemnation for all men”” doesn't seem logi-
cal. There are still a few thinkers who try to defend the doctrine of
original sin, but I don’t regard it as a subject for rational debate.
Moving on to Thomas Aquinas, we find that moral evil can en-
tirely be ascribed to a person's free will. If this is the case, however,

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it could be argued that the world would have been a better place
without this particular human faculty. However, Thomas insists
that the world would have been incomplete if it weren't possible
for people to sin.” It’s important to note that it is simply the pos-
sibility of sinning, and not sin itself, that’s necessary for the world’s
perfection, and, therefore, that an individual is still responsible for
all actual sin. Aquinas couples this idea with the belief that God
is capable of transforming all evil people into good, but does not,
given evil'’s necessity. But if evil always has a positive effect, then
why avoid evil at all? Why not simply do more evil to bring about
more good?
Richard Swinburne argues that a good God could create a
world of people who have both free will and a sense of respon-
sibility to their fellow man. Even if such a world would lead to
evil, it would also contain great goodness.” At the same time, the
Bible repeatedly insists that nothing is impossible for God.'” As
John Mackie and others point out, God could simply have cre-
ated a world where people both had free will and always chose to
do good.’ There's nothing in the idea of free will that requires
us to choose evil. Therefore, God can be blamed for not having
shaped a world where people consequently, consistently choose
to do good.
We simply cannot use the existence of evil to derive the value
of freedom. There's just no convincing way to do this. For exam-
ple, would imposing limitations on free will—perhaps by creating
human beings in such a way that, in praxis, we always chose to
do good—make human life less valuable? The answer is anything
but obvious. And even if you accept the argument that free will is
the root of all evil, this only explains moral evil, not natural evil.
Thomas Aquinas maintains that God is responsible for natural evil,

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but that it’s not actually evil. That is, natural evil only seems evil to
us, because our understanding is too limited. In reality, natural evil
is a necessary part of a totality that is good. I will return to, and
refute, the totality argument below.’
I certainly don't disagree with the emphasis that free-will theo-
dicies place on choice, but I do not believe that simply referring to
free will resolves this theological problem in a convincing way. Not
to mention the fact that the theological dimension still doesn't help
us to understand the relationship between freedom and evil.

The Irenaean Theodicy

Named after Irenaeus (130-202), this theodicy maintains that evil
can indeed be attributed to God, at least in part. God created hu-
man beings in a state of imperfection, and placed them in a world
composed of good and evil so that they might be shaped and even-
tually achieve perfection. This world, with all its suffering and tribu-
lations, is designed to bring about and develop characteristics that
will make us ready for and worthy of salvation. The Irenaean theod-
icy, therefore, stands in sharp contrast to the Augustinian tradition,
where humans choose evil of their own free will and—together with
fallen angels—are to blame for all the suffering in the world. God, in
that scenario, remains guiltless—according to Augustine, humans
are created perfect, but fall. According to Irenaeus, humans arent
created perfect, but strive for perfection.
In 1819, John Keats described the world as “the vale of soul-
making.” The idea is that we're placed in a world full of sorrow so
that we can grow and become complete human beings. He writes:
“Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is
to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?”'” Thus, suffering is
considered necessary to create a real soul.'* In my opinion, Simone

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Weil's defense of suffering’s role in human life should be regarded

as Irenaean as well. She represents suffering as redemption, be-
cause God is present even in extreme evil.'° Weil bases this idea
on the fact that human beings must learn that they are not yet in
Paradise.'” There is no limit to the extremes Weil is willing to go
to in order to justify God, such as claiming, for instance, that evil
is the expression of God’s mercy in this world.’”” She assumes that
God is just and therefore interprets every phenomenon as compat-
ible with this idea. Ultimately, for Weil evil only exists because God
wills it so.'°* However, this idea is tantamount to abandoning all
rational discussion of the subject. To claim that injustice, because
it’s unjust, is actually just, breaks the rules of meaningful discourse
and abandons the subject to irrationality. There’s no phenomenon
that can oppose Weil's conviction of God’s righteousness, because
every phenomenon is systematically interpreted as an expres-
sion of God's grace. Weil wants to make suffering meaningful, but
along the way she manages to refute its character as suffering. Ac-
cording to Weil, suffering should be regarded as a gift from God,
but because suffering doesn't have the chance to actually become
suffering, in her work, Weil’s theory—despite its insistence upon
extreme instances of suffering in the world; suffering, moreover,
she believes classical theodicies have turned a blind eye to—ends
by explaining away suffering itself. Though the Irenaean tradition
would like to see itself as the one form of theodicy that preserves
suffering’s character as suffering, it manages, in reality, to do so the
least.!°
We know that the world’s suffering is unjustly dealt and strikes
randomly; innocents are often the ones hit hardest. Even if suffer-
ing can be cathartic, in the long run it often proves destructive.
As E. M. Cioran points out, suffering doesn’t lead to heaven, but

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to hell." Usually, good leads to more good, while evil leads to

more evil. Suffering isn’t something that makes us grow; as a rule,
suffering is purely destructive. Intense pain doesn’t often make a
person stronger; instead, it destroys their worth, their confidence,
and their ability to communicate. Martin Amis writes: “There is no
language for pain. Except bad language. Except swearing. There's
no language for it. Ouch, ow, oof, gah. Jesus. Pain is its own lan-
guage.!"! Instead of having a language, pain destroys language.’
You can say something hurts, but when the pain becomes too in-
tense, you lose the ability to speak and descend into a prelinguistic
state. Mental pain can be trumped by physical pain, because physi-
cal pain destroys all mental ability"? Pain deprives us of experi-
ence. It can’t be shared with someone else, because there's no room
for anything else when pain itself becomes all there is.
What does a child gain by having Lesch-Nyhans syndrome, a
disease that gives the child such an intense desire to hurt himself
that all his teeth have be pulled as they grow in to prevent him from
gnawing his fingers and lips off? As we find in Camus’ novel The
Plague, a child’s suffering is “an abomination.” Father Paneloux
tries to come to terms with the problem:

Apparently it all came to this: we might try to explain the

phenomenon of the plague, but, above all, should learn
what it had to teach us. Rieux gathered that, to the Father's
thinking, there was really nothing to explain. His interest
was again quickened when, in a more emphatic tone, the
preacher said that there were some things we could grasp
as touching God, and others we could not. There was no
doubt as to the existence of good and evil and, as a rule, it
was easy to see the difference between them. he difficulty

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THE THEOLOGY OF EVIL

began when we looked into the nature of evil, and among

other things evil he included human suffering. Thus we
had apparently needful pain, and apparently needless
pain; we had Don Juan cast into hell, and a child’s death.
For while it is right that a libertine should be struck down,
we see no reason for a child’s suffering. And, truth to tell,
nothing was more important on earth than a child’s suf-
fering, the horror it inspires in us, and the reasons we must
find to account for it. In other manifestations of life God
made things easy for us and, thus far, our religion had no
merit. But in this respect He put us, so to speak, with our
backs to the wall. Indeed, we were up against the wall that
plague had built around us, and in its lethal shadow we
must work out our salvation. [. . .] Thus today God had
vouchsafed to His creatures an ordeal such that they must
acquire and practice the greatest of all virtues: that of All
or Nothing."

Paneloux interprets the tragedy as a gift of grace, something that

puts faith in God to a test so challenging that lukewarm faith is
simply not possible. Instead, a person must either embrace God
or reject him completely. Suffering is justified because it provides
food for the soul: “[W]e must go straight to the heart of that which
is unacceptable, precisely because it is thus that we are constrained
to make our choice. The sufferings of children were our bread of
affliction, but without this bread our souls would die of spiritual
hunger.”'"® This is a poor theodicy, because such a test would have
no rational basis.
There are a multitude of evils that don’t seem to serve any posi-
tive function, and this is the foundation for the evidential argument

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against God’s existence.” Starving to death, as millions of people

do every year, isn't something that leads to personal growth or
the like. For one thing, you don't necessarily learn anything from
your own suffering—but it’s even more irrational to expect others
to suffer so that you can learn something from them. Irenaean-
ists may assert that we can learn generosity from other people's
suffering, but in my opinion the argument is untenable. Personal
edification cannot justify the suffering of others. John Hick admits
that some forms of evil are purely destructive, and perform no
useful function for those they strike down. Nonetheless, he in-
cludes these evils in his Irenaean theodicy, because these evils give
the world an essential quality: mystery.''® Even if it’s true that the
world appears more mysterious with such evils in it, Hick’s argu-
ment is utterly unacceptable. By comparison with what is gained,
the price for mystery is far too high—wed be much better off with-
out it. Speaking generally, the only lesson you can draw from great
suffering is that life can be hell . . . and this is a lesson we can all
certainly live without.

The Totality Theodicy

Explaining away evil, rather than explaining the phenomenon it-
self, is a common response to the problem of evil. One assumption
that fits into this category is that that which appears to be evil is ac-
tually good, if only we consider it in the right light. Plato may have
been the first to make the totality argument,'”” but the first thinker
who gives it a central place and formulates it systematically is Au-
gustine. Augustine argues that God puts humanity's evil to good
use.!2° All that exists may appear to be evil, but in reality it is actu-
ally good, since it forms a necessary part of a totality that’s good."
Suffering is generally seen as a punishment for man’s sins; since all

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men are sinners, they all deserve suffering as punishment.'”* And

if an individual must ultimately be described as good, suffering is
simply a means to make this individual an even better person.'”
According to Thomas Aquinas, a world without evil must neces-
sarily be less good than the world we actually live in—the world
filled with evil. A world without evil would be a world without hu-
man beings; without beings, that is, capable of choosing and doing
evil; and every creature who has this possibility will indeed choose
to do evil from time to time. However, a world without human be-
ings would be less perfect than a world that contains humans, pre-
cisely because this world would Jack humans. Whatever its defects,
Thomas's argument only tries to explain why it’s necessary that the
world contain moral evil, and therefore the existence of natural evil
cannot, by its lights, be regarded as justified. The answer Thomas
gives to this challenge is comparatively cryptic: God could have
prevented natural evil, since He did so before the Fall; however,
the fact that he allowed natural evil to enter the world after the
Fall doesn’t make him less good, because natural evils themselves
produce great good. It remains unclear how Aquinas imagines this
transformation of natural evils into good will occur. On the other
hand, it’s perfectly clear, from the Thomistic position, that if we
could grasp the world as a totality, we would be able to compre-
hend that everything that exists is good.
Boethius too maintains that all that appears to beevil is actu-
ally good, because everything in existence follows God’s law. It’s
simply our limited understanding that makes the world seem oth-
erwise.'*‘ In Alexander Pope's Essay on Man, we find the following:
“All Discord, Harmony not understood; / All partial Evil, universal
Good.’° Rousseau also postulates a similar totality argument. He
differentiates between the idea that absolutely all parts are good

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and the idea that the totality itself is good, and writes that the latter
point of view does not require all evil to be explained away.'”° How-
ever, Rousseau’s “optimism” is not held to the same burden of proof
as the theory he discards: He goes on to argue that the veracity
of such optimism cannot be decided by taking examples from the
material world, but only by considering God's characteristics. That
is, since God is presumed to be good, it follows that the world as
a whole is good too. John Milton's explicit ambition with Paradise
Lost is likewise to “justify the ways of God to men.”’”’ In this work,
justification is again posited through the suggestion that every-
thing that appears to be evil is actually good—a fact that would
be obvious if only we could grasp the elusive totality.’* A plethora
of other variations on this argument can be found in philosophy
and literature. For Spinoza, evil is something that only exists in our
inadequate human understanding, while an adequate understand-
ing would have no conception of evil.'” Evil is an illusion that no
longer appears as evil for those capable of seeing the world (God,
substance) in the right way. In a letter, Spinoza writes that both
good and evil are in God’s service; however, while the good man
serves God through an understanding of what he does, the evil
man becomes God’s unwitting tool.!° Luther, for his part, declares
that all evil has its roots in God and the Devil, though the Devil
desires evil for its own sake and God desires the good to be found
in evil; because God is mightier than the Devil, he uses the Devil
to promote the good.'*! In Goethe's Faust, we again find that all
evil contributes to the good—in replying to Faust’s demand that
he identify himself, Mephistopheles says: “Part of that force which
would / Do evil evermore, and yet creates the good.”'** Therefore,
everything is good from a divine perspective that privileges totality
over all. In Goethe's time, Romantic thought revolved around the

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idea that evil is justified, because it serves a higher purpose. Novalis

is therefore typical when he suggests that evil is simply a stage to
be overcome on the journey toward our union with something
higher—the realization of true good takes place through evil’s nul-
lification by the good."
However, the thinker who gives the most comprehensive exam-
ple of the totality theodicy is Leibniz. He imagines that God cre-
ated the world by conceiving a definite set of possible substances.
These substances can be combined in any number of ways, but God
chose a definite combination. And because God is a perfect being,
He was bound to choose the best possible combination. Our world
is, therefore, the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz clearly states,
however, that the world isn't perfect. His own philosophy makes
this fact unavoidable: In a universe where no two substances are
alike, there can only be one perfect substance (God). All other sub-
stances have lesser, varying degrees of perfection. Working within
these conditions, God has done the best that He can, but not even
He can eliminate what Leibniz calls “metaphysical evil:!*+ There-
fore, Leibniz also regards evil as lack—as a necessary absence of
perfection.'*° This idea imposes certain basic limitations on God’s
act of creation. All God can do is combine all the universe’s sub-
stances in the best possible way, and since God is perfect and al-
ways acts with sufficient reason, he will necessarily have chosen
the best possible world from among all the other countless possible
worlds.'** As a necessary part of the best possible totality, then, evil
is justified. If a world without moral and natural evil would’ve been
a better world than this one, God would have created such a world.
Natural and moral evils therefore exist because they help to realize
a greater good or hinder a greater evil.'°” In sum, the world would
have been worse than the one we know if God had eliminated even

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the smallest evil, since then things would be different—that is, it

would no longer be the best possible arrangement. As Leibniz con-
cludes: “To permit the evil, as God permits it, is the greatest good-
ness.” In fact, if God had not allowed all the physical and moral
evils we have to enter into the world, He would have been guilty of
a worse evil still.!°° Ultimately, Leibniz’s theodicy forms a perfect
circle: Because God is good, he has chosen the best of all possible
worlds, and because God has created the best of all possible worlds,
he is good.'*°
The totality theodicy is a risky strategy for theists, because it
seems to impose serious limitations on God’s omnipotence. This
brings up an important question: How far does good go in balanc-
ing out evil? If we were capable of taking all the good and evil in the
world and weighing them against one another, it’s conceivable that
evil would have a clear majority. However, it’s also conceivable that
if all of these evils in fact lead to good, then we would be forced to
outline the characteristics of first and second orders of good and
evil, where an evil of the first order might perhaps lead to a good
of the second—for example to generosity. And yet, as John Mackie
has pointed out, it’s just as likely that an evil of the first order will
instead lead to an evil of the second order, or, for the sake of argu-
ment, that a good of the first order will finally lead to an evil of the
second." In my opinion, the problem with the totality argument
is not that it’s logically inconsistent, but rather that we have no rea-
son to trust it. The countless instances of suffering in the world
don’t seem to play any positive role in any totality. The suffering
of the child in Ivan Karamasov’s complaint—what positive role
does that play in the totality? If a recluse is caught in a forest fire
and dies a painful death without anyone the wiser, without anyone
having learned a single solitary lesson from his suffering—what

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good does that contribute to the totality? The sheer number of evils
in the world speak against God’s benevolence and omnipotence.
Each individual evil does the same. And then there are evils so
extreme they make you wonder if it would have been better not to
have lived at all.'** An example from our previous discussion that
falls into this category would be a victim of German or Japanese
medical experimentation during World War II. The existence of
such evils undermines the totality argument: A good, almighty and
omniscient God could not allow such evils to strike individuals for
the sake of the totality. Ifa world couldn't be created without such
evils, it would have been better to not have created the world. There
are, then, two conclusions that can be drawn from the discussion
of the totality theodicy: First, we have no real reason to believe in
the existence of a totality of good that can justify individual evils;
and, second, there are evils so extreme that no totality could ever
justify them.

HISTORY AS SECULAR THEODICY

Our contemporary tendency toward secularization has replaced
God with History. The belief in progress is something that’s deeply
rooted in Western thought; nonetheless, time and again, we've had
to revise our assumptions. In many people's eyes, for example, the
Holocaust undermined the entire concept of historical progress.
And yet, no matter how terrible a given occurrence is,we actually
have no reason to believe that the world will change for the worse or
the better because of it. Yes, it can certainly happen that the world
does go on to change in one way or the other, but there’s never any
real basis on which to assume, logically, that the entire world, or
any of its parts, will react in any one way to any one event.

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We ought to be skeptical, then, of ideas regarding progress and

decline—skeptical of optimism as well as pessimism. There's no
historical arithmetic, after all, we can use to figure out which is the
most reasonable worldview. Certainly we can determine that some
relationships have become better and others worse, but we cannot
determine if the totality has become better or worse: the world’s
progress or decline cannot be proven in actual terms, because we
can never grasp the world as a totality, and therefore cannot com-
pare this totality to different totalities that existed at other stages of
history. There isn’t one history for optimists and another for pes-
simists; each worldview deals with the same history, but each in-
terprets it differently, emphasizing whatever aspects they believe to
be central. Optimists dismiss negative events as more or less irrele-
vant. For example, Schelling writes: “[W]hatever is not progressive
is not an object for history.” Everything that does not aid prog-
ress, or might even point in the opposite direction, is dismissed as
irrelevant because it does not fit into a totality already defined as
progressive. In the same way, Hegel introduces his philosophy of
history with the assumption that history is rational.'™ And where
optimistic theories tend to focus on a totality, pessimistic theories
generally single out a few terrifying historical examples to make
their point. That is, optimists do not deny that there’s evil in the
world, but believe there’s a higher order that gives this evil mean-
ing;'> pessimists, however, maintain that no totality is capable of
making individual evils meaningful, and instead maintain that the
very idea of totality is illusionary—or that if a totality does exist, it
only makes things worse. Which is not to say that being a pessimist
necessarily implies the conviction that the world’s going to hell in
a handbasket. Some pessimists believe that the world’s always been
a pretty terrible place.

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The goal of both the optimistic philosophy of history and the

theodicies discussed earlier is to invalidate contingence—to order
all events, no matter how terrible, into a totality that gives them
meaning.'“° The belief in a theory of progress that neutralizes evil by
transforming itinto a tool for the realization of good is not explic-
itly limited to visions of historical totality, however, such as those
found in Hegelianism or Marxism; we also find it in thinkers like
Bernard Mandeville. The idea that agents working to further their
own self-interest are also furthering the collective good is clearly
formulated in the title of Mandeville’s most famous work: The Fable
of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits. Private vice furthers
public good. Mandeville claims that not only is evil the source of
all public good, but that evil’s existence is necessary for society's
existence. To thinkers such as Mandeville, a secularized ideal of
providence performs the same function as divine providence does
in theodicy—namely, it creates a dialectical turnabout where evil is
transformed into good. Evil is the expression—a fragment—of the
totality, which is good.
This form of optimism, especially with regard to Leibniz, is
parodied in Voltaire’s Candide. Candide’s tutor, Pangloss, outlines
the following position with great zeal: “[P]rivate ills make up the
general good, so that the greater the sum of private ills the better
everything is.”'” This parody demonstrates that simply explaining
away all evil by pointing to some common good is an untenable
position. In a dark moment, after having been struck by countless
misfortunes, Candide also describes this optimism as “the mania
for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well?"8
According to Kant, we are morally obliged to be optimists.!””
Creation’s meaning is first revealed in our moral conduct; thus,
people are no longer passive observers who watch the divine plan

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unfold, but are participants in history—and the goal of history itself

becomes the realization of human freedom. Kant further departs
from the idea of an original condition, a natural state where all was
good.!™ Instead, he asserts that people simply sense that there's a
chasm between how the world is and how it ought to be, and this
idea gave rise to different stories concerning a prehistorical, paradi-
sical natural state. In fact, Kant emphasizes that people have never
felt at home in nature. If our natural state were as harmonious as
Rousseau, for example, maintains, we would never have abandoned
it; instead, this condition was obviously insufficient to provide for
human nature or human destiny. People are free, and a realization
of human nature can only take place if we shape the world in ac-
cordance with human reason. Our task is therefore to transform
culture in such a way that it can enable us to realize ourselves, our
happiness, and our perfection. That is, only human beings can ful-
fill human needs and find human happiness, and these goals can
only be attained if reason is realized in the world. Further, because
we have a moral nature, we have the ability to shape rational hu-
man societies that correspond to this nature. However, there is an
essential ambiguity regarding how this realization of reason and
morality will take place. Is it human action that enables the realiza-
tion of an ethical society? Or does nature itself contain an inherent
purposefulness that ensures this goal will be realized independent
of people’s actions? Kant asserts that progress toward a better world
isnt furthered by our quest for the good, but rather by what our
nature—or providence—compels us to do.'*! Only providence (na-
ture) can substantially further these goals, and humanity's inten-
tional actions are unfortunately ineffective. In this way, Kant antic-
ipates Hegel’s argument that human development takes place with
the aid of antagonistic forces in society. In Kant's understanding

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of society, it is the differences between people that drive develop-

ment forward—human beings are further characterized by what
Kant calls “unsocial sociability” (ungesellige Geselligkeit). This re-
sults from both our desire to enter into society, since it’s there we
can feel as though we belong to something greater, as well as our
struggle against society, since we also want everything to go our
way—and also recognize that everyone else in the world feels the
same way.’ These contrasts result in revolutions, wars, and other
violent acts, but war is, according to Kant, also the mother of free-
dom; he explicitly writes that war is a tool in the hands of prog-
ress.'*° Everything negative can be ordered into something higher
and positive; even nature's inhospitality and humanity’s hunger for
wealth and power are necessary to further human development.'™
Suffering too is seen as a useful means to make us better people.'*®
All evil either committed or suffered is, therefore, part of a total-
ity progressing toward the realization of the good.'** According to
Kant, moral evil also has the general tendency to work against itself
and thereby create room for the good.'”
The question now becomes whether individual reason plays any
role in history’s progress. Good is the goal of history, and so if all
people act in accordance with the good, their actions will result in
the end of history—since, if history is understood as being driven
by inner conflict, when this conflict ends, history will end as well.
Until this utopian vision is realized, however, history will contin-
ued to be driven by conflict; and whether we choose good or evil,
the result will be the same: history will progress toward a higher
world order'**—and progress progresses with or without our help.
Kant underscores that his theory of progress cannot be proven, but
that it’s useful to formulate our actions in keeping with this larger
picture.'””

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It is clear, then, that Kant’s theory of progress focuses on hu-

manity as a whole, rather than the individual. This is further de-
veloped by Hegel, who with even less reservation than Kant orders
every horrifying event into a benevolent historical process where
every individual is a “means to an ulterior end.”'*' Hegel has no
problem whatsoever with the fact that his philosophy of history
is a theodicy.’” The “cunning of reason” ensures that progress is
guaranteed;!® such progress, however, requires victims. Herder,
for example, describes how fortune moves towards its goal over
“millions of corpses,” anticipating Hegel’s description of history
as a “slaughter-bench.”!® All victims on this “slaughter-bench” are
reduced to random flotsam watched over by a rational and be-
nevolent totality. Of course, Hegel doesn't really devote himself
to evil as an individual problem, but essentially remains within
a cosmological framework. “The claim of the World-Spirit” tri-
umphs over all other considerations,’ and world history exists on
a higher plane than morality.” Human suffering and the actions
that cause it are therefore regarded as means to an end, and that
end is progress.
Hegel's theoretical, backward-looking historical viewpoint is
transformed in Marxism to a practical, forward-directed mission.
And just as Hegel believed he could legitimate earlier evils through
a consideration of history as a whole, Marxism believed it could
legitimate present and future evils. This is clearly stated by Georg
Lukacs, who claims that the highest duty in communist ethics is to
accept the necessity of acting immorally—knowing, however, that
the evil which results will be made glorious through the dialectics
of historical development.!® That is, a political ideal will reveal and
justify both the historical process and its victims: The end vindicates
all actions, and because this ideal was understood to be something

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THE THEOLOGY OF EVIL

of a historical or natural law, it simply had more weight than the

individual. It would be up to future generations to rectify the sins
of the present day. In many respects, therefore, Marxist commu-
nism can be considered a religious ideology. This may seem like an
unusual statement, since it would be hard to find a more militantly
anti-religious ideology. However, Marxist communism duplicates
Christian-apocalyptic patterns of thought: God is simply replaced
with history and humanity. Just as Christ’s second coming marks
the utopian end of days in the one doctrine, communist thought
anticipates the end of history when society finally reaches its so-
called “highest phase.” Of course, we already know how this Marx-
ist teleological suspension of the ethical—that is, the setting aside
of morality in favor of a higher purpose—played out: around a hun-
dred million dead, all told. To Lukacs’s credit, he at least recognized
such actions as immoral. No such awareness seems to have come
into play among the members of the Central Committee under
Stalin, for whom historical progress overshadowed all moral con-
siderations. Then again, perhaps it would be more accurate to say
that historical progress was their sole moral consideration—some
followers believed so strongly in this ideal that they even accepted
it as necessity when they themselves fell victim to the most egre-
gious injustices.’ But with the collapse of communism at the end
of the 1980s, it became increasingly clear that the movement had
finally lost its grand teleological dimension. Of course, there are
still countries where religious or nationalistic beliefs give rise to
such ideologies, but since human rights has gradually assumed -
a more central place in the international court, the ideologically
motivated persecution of individuals and groups has become
less and less acceptable. We no longer accept the validity of the
idea that sweeping political goals can take absolute priority over

66
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morality—and are no longer so likely to excuse whatever evils hap-

pen to be committed in the name of progress, or for the sake of
some higher good. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the
United States’ “ war on terror” relies on just such rhetoric, justifying
any and all means necessary to defeat terrorism.
The anti-teleological concept of history is nothing new either.
This viewpoint was formulated by Schopenhauer, although he
doesnt take political ideologies as a point of departure, but instead
focuses on the different metaphysical conceptions we discussed
earlier. Schopenhauer can be seen as the great-grandfather of the
modern pessimist, and modern pessimism—which must be clearly
differentiated from antiquity’s ideas concerning “decay”: ideas that
originated in another historical context and that rely on an entirely
different historical viewpoint—should perhaps be understood as
resulting from the collapse of traditional cosmologies.'” That is,
pessimism arose because optimism no longer seemed trustworthy.
For Schopenhauer, the world was a “hell” that never should have
existed.!7! He describes optimism as an irresponsible way of think-
ing, because it doesn’t take “the unspeakable sufferings of man-
kind” enough into account.'” He further argues that there is no
higher providence that gives meaning to an individual’s suffering,
and that the world’s principle—which he calls its Will—is blind.
Without a higher providence, individual suffering remains unjusti-
fied and cannot be simply “explained away,’ as it is by Hegel. The
“real” world, therefore, stands in terrifying contrast to all “fancied
eminence”’”? Schopenhauer further objects to Leibniz and asserts
that ours is the worst possible of all worlds.’ For pessimists, the
logic of providence is easily the opposite of the optimist’s: All good
is negated by evil.’”° An invisible hand will ultimately see to it that
everything arranged for the worst.’

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THE THEOLOGY OF EVIL

Nietzsche also follows in Schopenhauer’s footprints; it’s not for

nothing that he calls Schopenhauer his “great teacher.’!”” Nietz-
sche explicitly states that the moral interpretation of history, like
the religious interpretation of history, must fall by the wayside, be-
cause the moral interpretation is religious. The one inescapable fact
that confronts us is “the meaninglessness of all events,’ the idea
that “the world no longer has any meaning.”'” He also writes that
modern man’s problem is not suffering itself, but rather the fact
that our suffering is meaningless.'” Nietzsche therefore attempts
to overcome this problem by giving our suffering new meaning.
According to him, the new man—the superman—doesn‘ need a
justification for evil, nor does he need a God.'* He says “yes” to
life and also to suffering. In keeping with this idea, Nietzsche criti-
cizes those who want to abolish suffering and instead welcomes
“great” suffering.'*! Nietzsche's reevaluation of all values should not
be confused with a simple reversal of values, however—where each
value is simply transformed into its opposite. Nor does Nietzsche
embrace the concept of total chaos. Instead, he wants to establish a
new morality, and argues for a revision of those values he regards
as degenerate. He also opposes the way traditional values are taken
for granted and, in a purely polemical way, praises those values we
typically disdain. According to Nietzsche, “slave” morality must be
discarded. It is a morality without genuine ideals, a morality that
may indeed focus upon minimizing “evil,” but that cannot conceive
of the good as anything other than the absence of evil. For Nietz-_
sche, slave morality is pathetic, incapable of heroism. Therefore, he -
praises the suffering of self and other, because “profound suffering
makes noble.” In this way, he fetishizes suffering in what could
well be described as a secularized version of the Irenaean theodicy.
At the same time, Nietzsche's inverted and secularized theodicy

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ends exactly as other theodicies do: by simply explaining away the

reality of evil.
This inversion of theodicy is formulated in a particularly radi-
cal way by the Marquis de Sade. Sade is not simply a belletrist,
but also a “philosopher in disguise,’ and he can be read as a
critic of theodicy. According to Sade, the idea that providence
strives for justice is one of “those dangerous sophistries of a false
philosophy.” His protagonist, Justine, trusts in this concept of
justice: that justice will be done, if not in this world, then in the
next.!*5 Justine’s interlocutor, la Dubois, who could be regarded
as a mouthpiece of Sade himself, reverses Justine’s cosmol-
ogy and embraces an evil, rather than a benevolent providence:
“[B]e convinced that as soon as it [providence] places us in a situ-
ation where evil becomes necessary, and while at the same time it
leaves us the possibility of doing it, this evil harmonizes quite as
well with its decrees as does good, and Providence gains as much
by the one as by the other. [... Fatality [.. .] inevitably saves the
criminal by sacrificing the virtuous [. . .]”"*°
Its Sade, rather than Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, who most
radically articulates modern pessimism. However, his articulation
is so radical that it only refutes itself. Kant writes that the world
isn’t worth living in if justice does not prevail.” The universe Sade
describes in his work is indeed uninhabitable. The problem with
Sade is that his thought is largely structured by dichotomies: either
the world is good or it’s evil. And since it isn't good, it must be
evil. Therefore, he posits as a normative consequence that we ought
to act in accordance with evil. However, one obvious possibility
that Sade fails to consider is that the world may be a mixture of
good and evil and that it’s our duty—not the duty of God or provi-
dence—to make the world a better place. This viewpoint is simple,

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but decisive. Sade’s thoughts are largely structured in the shadow of

an absent God; he doesn't recognize that this very absence makes
the world man’s responsibility. We exist in this world and we're ob-
ligated to it. The problem of evil is our problem.

JOB’S INSIGHT—BEYOND THEODICY

The Book of Job begins with a bet between God and Satan. Satan
insists that Job loves God because God has greatly blessed him.
God is confident of Job's faith, and so allows Satan to take away ev-
erything Job has. As a result, Job loses his children, servants, herds,
and health—in the end, he becomes so sick he nearly dies. Job’s wife
and friends blame Job himself for his misfortunes: Surely Job must
have done something to deserve such punishment. In fact, they're
so concerned with the idea of justice that they deny Job human
sympathy. Job knows he’s done nothing to deserve his misfortunes,
and so he blames God; God answers Job’s accusation, but empha-
sizes might rather than justice. As God proceeds to ask: “Would
you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify your-
self? Do you have an arm like God’s and can your voice thunder
like his?”’** In this way, God proceeds directly from the question of
justice to the question of raw power. At the same time, even though
God is obviously stronger than Job, that fact doesn’t necessarily
mean that He's more just.'* In the end, it’s difficult to see God, as
He’s represented in Job, as anything other than an immoral tyrant: |
On the one hand, God seems to be a kind of natural catastrophe -
that strikes blindly, without any regard for justice, and yet, on the
other, He wants to be loved and worshipped as righteous. There's
no compromise between these two aspects, and God doesn’t even
manage to give a convincing argument for His own righteousness.

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“Wisdom is better than strength,’ writes the Preacher,'” but in the

Book of Job, God never shows wisdom, only raw power. When Job
asks: “Where can wisdom be found?”'*! God answers with the fol-
lowing: “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom.”’” In my opinion,
Job doesn’t find wisdom in God, but in himself. And this wisdom is
based on a simple insight: God, and therefore the world, is unjust.
Toward the end of Job, God praises Job and faults his friends:
“After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the
Temanite, ‘I am angry with you and your two friends, because you
have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. ”!*
However, it’s unclear why exactly God praises Job and yet blames
Job’s friends. The only reason He gives is a vague reference to the
fact that Job has spoken truly of Him, while his friends have spo-
ken false. But how are we supposed to interpret truth in this con-
text? The main thrust of the friends’ conversation is that there is an
absolute justice to the world; that Job only appears to be innocent
of the misfortunes that have struck him; that the injustice of the
situation is ultimately illusory, because a God-given cosmic justice
is surely behind everything. It’s precisely this that Job denies—and
because we know about the bet God and Satan made in the first
part of the book, turning Job into an innocent pawn in a super-
natural game, we know that Job is right. Job has everything and
loses it, and he did nothing to deserve this. Moreover, Job clearly
has better arguments than God—so much so that we can say that
Job gives God a lesson in ethics. In numerous places, the Bible un-
~ derscores that God doesn’t treat men unjustly: “God does not show
favoritism?!°*However, it’s clear that God does treat Job unjustly.
He lets Job be struck again and again by suffering and misfortune,
and Job never does anything to deserve it. As the Preacher tells
us: “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: a

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THE THEOLOGY OF EVIL

righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man

living long in his wickedness.”!”°
Ultimately, the assertion that the seemingly almighty God is
good seems implausible here, insofar as “good” retains its usual
meaning. Of course, one solution to this problem would be argue
that we cannot apply the human concepts of good and evil to God,
because he transcends human understanding. Matthew, Mark,
and Luke all state that the only thing that can be called “good” is
God.'** With this idea in mind, we might draw a sharp distinc-
tion between human goodness (which is not actually “good”)
and God's goodness, which is the only thing truly deserving of
the name. Since our concept of the good is based on human ac-
tions, and since this concept forms the basis of our approach to
the problem of evil, any basis for approaching evil as a practical
issue suddenly disappears. In a certain sense, you could say we've
even solved the problem by saying this, since we no longer need
to justify that God is good according to our understanding of the
concept. At the same time, however, we've also abandoned the
very thing we set out to prove—namely, that God must be repre-
sented as good. This is the trap Calvin falls into when he argues
that there’s no higher standard of righteousness than God’s will,
and that whatever God wills or does is therefore righteous.!*” We
have no access to God's principle of justice, and it’s conceivable
that God's sense of justice is completely different from ours—in
this respect, then, we can hardly state that “God is just” and pre-
tend that this has any meaning. As John Stuart Mill has argued, the -
rules of logic dictate that we cannot use the same designation for
two completely different things—at least not without having out-
lined the differences—and since we get our notion of justice from
human interaction, and since God's “justice” cannot be compared

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with ours, we cannot identify this apparent characteristic of God’s

as “justice.”"* If God’s characteristics transcend what the human
intellect can grasp, therefore, we should not say that God is “good”
or “just,” but ultimately that God is “X” and “Y” with the adden-
dum that we don’t have the vaguest idea as to what “X” and “Y”
might signify—but once we've reached this point, we have to ad-
mit that the conversation has become totally meaningless.
In my brief remarks concerning theodicy earlier in this chapter,
I do not pretend to have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that
all theodicies are inconsistent, untrue, or irrational—only that they
are unconvincing. It’s possible that it is not logically inconsistent to
believe in a good, almighty, and omniscient God—or a historical
process that functions as God’s equivalent—while at the same time
acknowledging the existence of evil. However, consistency itself
isn't enough to make conviction either well-founded or rational.
Further, I believe that theodicy itself represents a mistaken ap-
proach to the problem of evil, because it fails to take suffering into
account in any serious way. We must reject theodicies and the like,
and see evil for what it is. I say again: Evil shouldn't be justified; it
should be stopped.
Let us therefore follow Job and say that the world, seen from
a human perspective—and there is no other perspective that al-
lows us to speak meaningfully on the subject—isn't just. This is
an important point. Because Job’s friends lived under the illusion
that a cosmic justice exists, they were insensitive to Jobs suffering.
An abstract, metaphysical principle stood in the way of sympathy.
That is their greatest sin. Theodicies aren't so much explanations of
God’s goodness and justness as they are a dismissal of the world’s
suffering and injustice. As Karl Jaspers writes, the act of denying
or dismissing evil is itself evil." Theodicies are evil because they

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justify and uphold injustice. Justice isn’t a natural law; it's a prin-
ciple instituted by men.
The customary picture we're given of life is this: the world is
just, our actions and character have definite meaning, and whether
were rewarded or punished, we'll eventually get what we deserve.
Plato believes that one reason poetry is so dangerous is that it con-
tains dramatic examples of unjust people who are happy, and just
people who are unhappy.” It’s essential to uphold the image of a
just world where good is rewarded and evil punished: Plato's idea
is that even a simple belief in the principle of justice can motivate
people to be good. I won't deny that there’s something to this. The
problem is that this philosophy can also lead us to turn a blind eye
to all the injustices that actually do exist.
For those of us living in a world where God is dead, justice no
longer has a cosmic anchor. When Job insists that the world is not
just, that the world is not ordered according to our concepts of jus-
tice, he becomes an existentialist. At the same time, even without
a God, people are still inclined to believe that the world is just.?°!
This can seem like a harmless conclusion, but it leads to the further
conclusion that every victim has in some way earned tyranny or
misfortune. The principle of justice, regarded as descriptive rather
than normative, can lead to an acceptance of evil. This idea is one
step away from blaming the victim, rather than the perpetrator, for
the victim's suffering. Before the Second World War, for example,
many Dutch Jews believed that the German Jews must have done
something seriously wrong to deserve such persecution. The basic
problem with this belief was that it took for granted that suffer-
ing had to be earned. The world is not, however, organized teleo-
logically around human needs and desires. Remember that human
beings appeared relatively late on the scene, in the history of our

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planet, and it’s utterly naive to believe that the world has to con-
form to our concept of justice. Justice is a duty, not a given.
God’s death doesn’t mean that man became God,” but simply
that man must give up believing in his own divinity.” It doesn't
mean that humanity suddenly became self-sufficient, either. In-
stead, humanity lost all its ties to that which could have guaranteed
sufficiency. The death of our almighty God didn’t make man al-
mighty; it delivered him up to a world of radical contingence. This
means that were forced to shape our history without any guarantee
that our history will unfold in the right direction. Instead of reject-
ing the concept of evil together with the concept of God, let us
say instead that when God vanished, evil became a purely human
problem. It’s our problem. Evil plays arole in our lives—and not just
moral evil, but also all the natural evils we don't ourselves cause.
We can see now that natural phenomena do not have a metaphysi-
cal or mystical dimension; they have no higher meaning, are purely
destructive, unrelated to anything but suffering and death. And if
we were expecting, after the traditional cosmology collapsed, that
science would be able to govern our belief in progress, we have
found ourselves disappointed. Science has steadily lost its ability
to maintain this belief, in part because its own destructive poten-
tial was demonstrated time and time again over the course of the
twentieth century.
With what is popularly known as “the death of the grand nar-
rative”*°* thought loses its totalizing characteristic in relation to
history. It was this faculty, however, that made the dialectical turn-
about possible, positing that evil should be considered part of a
good totality. Without this concept of totality, evil at last has the
room to show itself as evil. Suffering also loses its “why.” It can
no longer be justified with reference to something higher; there’s

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no authority that halts the flood of questions. Instead of a ratio-

nal world justly shepherded by an almighty, good God, we have a
world shepherded by chance.” We aren't rewarded according to
our just deserts, but rather by luck—be it good or bad. And there's
no moral message to be read in other peoples luck, be it good or
bad. In a theocentric world, it was possible to trust in life’s inher-
ent justice, in the fact that every soul would receive its just reward.
Today, it’s the world’s inherent unjustness that greets us every day.
Once again it’s up to us intervene and do something about it.

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The first part of the book ended with the conclusion that theol-
ogy is essentially irrelevant for an understanding of the problems
posed by evil in the world, and I put theodicies in the category of
theoretical blind spots. Evil should only be considered as a human,
moral problem. This ethical interpretation of evil implies a demy-
thologization of evil. That is, we no longer ask quid est malum?
(what is evil?), but instead unde malum faciamus (why do we do
evil?).7%
In this section, I will first take up the question of whether people
are essentially good or evil. I will then propose a typology of four
different kinds of evil—the demonic, the instrumental, the idealis-
tic, and the stupid—and discuss each one in depth. This consider-
ation, in turn, will help to answer the question of why we do evil.
This discussion will also help us respond to the real problem: What
should we do about evil?

ARE PEOPLE GOOD OR EVIL?

From a Christian perspective, people are essentially evil. In Genesis,
~ it reads: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had
become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil all the time””” Furthermore, we find that “every inclination
of his heart is evil from childhood.””® This belief in people's inher-
ent evil is especially developed in Augustine’ doctrine of original
sin—one of the most influential concepts in Western thought. It has

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shaped a long tradition and this tradition continues to influence our

thinking. This idea can be seen, for example, when theories con-
cerning rational choice take it as a given that a rational person will
always seek to maximize their own interests. Both Machiavelli and
Hobbes based their philosophies on Augustinian anthropology, and
Kant’s own attempt to develop a demythologized, rational theory as
to why we choose evil also owes much to Augustine.
According to Machiavelli, people will always be evil until ne-
cessity forces them to be good.” According to Hobbes, all people
are born evil. We exist in a perpetual state of conflict that has its
roots in human nature: The struggle for self-preservation, riches,
and fame naturally leads people to live in conflict with one an-
other.””° Of course, Hobbes also recognizes that humans have an
innate ability to sympathize, but this emotion is too weak to pre-
vent these perpetual conflicts. Therefore, anthropology forms the
basis of both Machiavelli's and Hobbes’s political philosophies, and
it shows too that our concept of human “nature” is paramount to
the discussion. In Machiavelli's view, however, politics should help
prevent human evil, and he tries to pinpoint those strategies that
further the cause of evil the least.?!!
In a similar way, Montaigne argues that human nature is predis-
posed to cruelty.”!” We also find countless examples in literature of
individuals who are evil “by nature”; for instance in Lautréamont’s
Maldoror, where Maldoror claims that he was born evil and that
he is slave to a force stronger than will. He insists that trying to }
change his evil disposition would be like trying to change the laws
of gravity.” The same is true of Herman Melville’s character Clag-
gart, who had “the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by vi-
cious training or corrupting books or licentious living, but born
with him and innate.”?"4

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However, there are also theories that take the opposite viewpoint
and claim that “by nature” man is good. Perhaps the most famous
example is Rousseau. According to Rousseau, man was born free,
equal, self-sufficient and without bias, but civilization has trans-
formed him into the opposite of these things. The natural man is
savage, happy, and good; civilized man is unhappy and immoral.”
Since the natural state is evidently a good state, however, we are
again compelled to ask why that state was ever abandoned. Rous-
seau’s only answer is a vague gesture in the direction of a “fatal
accident;”"* or the vague promptings of some “natural order:’*”
Nature is good, but it was apparently nature too that caused people
to enter into the state of civilization that corrupted them. Rousseau
doesn’t blame God or human nature for the evil in the world, but
rather civilization—or, more pointedly, civilized man.?!® Indeed,
the category of “natural evil” is not found in Rousseaus thought at
all. Instead, evil is understood to be a purely human phenomenon,
something that has no actual existence beyond the actions and suf-
fering of civilized man.” Within civilization, people do retain a
natural goodness, but this goodness can only have a perverted ex-
pression in this context. At the same time, it would be misleading
to call Rousseau’s natural man “good,” since he’s actually amoral:
It’s only when civilized man becomes rational that he’s able to dis-
tinguish between good and evil.” Since natural man is completely
focused on his own well-being, he ultimately has no desire to com-
pete with or harm others.”
In their views on human nature, Rousseau and Machiavelli may
appear to be perfect opposites—but, in the end, there’s not really
much difference between them.”? When Machiavelli describes
man as evil, it’s in relation to the common good of a civilized soci-
ety, and in this context Machiavelli considers the natural man to be

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THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF EVIL

evil because he’s self-centered. For both Rousseau and Machiavelli,

therefore, evil is a result of the struggle between what's “natura
> « i

and what’s “civilized” This struggle can perhaps be illustrated by

the following example:
On January 9, 1800, a small figure wandered out of the woods
around Saint-Sernin in France and became known as the “the
wild boy of Aveyron.” The boy, who was around twelve years
old, couldn't speak. He refused to be locked up indoors, would be-
come enraged without warning, and tore off his clothes if anyone
tried to dress him. Moreover, he bit everyone who came too close
to him. The discovery of the boy was widely and enthusiastically
discussed. People thought they could finally validate the popular
conception of the “noble savage.””* Victor, as the boy was called,
lacked a moral compass: he was neither moral nor immoral, but
rather amoral. He “stole” everything he came across, but since he
had no concept of thievery, it’s better to say he took everything he
came across. He showed no sign of empathy or any other moral
sensitivity that might have helped him modify his behavior in the
light of somebody else’s moral-determined reactions. Victor sim-
ply seemed to see other people as tools to satisfy hunger, thirst,
or other primitive desires. If Victor had had a moral conscience,
he would've been described as an egotist through and through.
On the other hand, he showed no sign of ill-will toward others,
and aside from those instances where he felt threatened, he was
never aggressive. He demonstrated no desire for dominance, no
desire for power and status. In short, Victor was neither good nor
evil, but existed in a premoral state. He appeared as the natural
man—that is, as man was before he ate from the Tree of Knowledge
and learned about good and evil.
What can we learn from Victor's example? In my opinion, very
little. Perhaps nothing, besides the fact that ideas regarding “the

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natural state” do very little to help us understand our moral char-

acter. It’s a state we're not in, and therefore cannot be used to tell
us anything about who we “really” are. The natural state is an un-
known—perhaps because it never existed in the first place. If we
want to discover who people “really” are, we shouldn't focus on a
hypothetical primitive state, but rather on what people do and why
they do it.
There are only four possible answers to the question of whether
our moral “nature” is good or evil:’”

(1) People are good.

(2) People are evil.
(3) People are neither good nor evil.
(4) People are both good and evil.

There’s plenty of support for (1) in the form of various good deeds,
but just as much support for (2) in the form of evil deeds. However,
neither of these answers acknowledges the complexity of our con-
duct. Now, people arguing for (1) and (2) may assert that nature
disposes us to be either good or evil, and that we thereafter fall
from grace and become more evil, or else that we struggle against
our inherent evil tendencies and become better people—but these
assertions lack sufficient evidence. Perhaps you could indeed find
a “natural” man somewhere in the world and demonstrate that he
has, inherently, good or evil tendencies—though the amount of
evidence for both (1) and (2) points toward (3) as being most the
likely solution. However, (3) could be interpreted as the belief that
we come into the world morally neutral and thereafter become good
or evil. This idea is certainly reasonable: a newborn baby can hardly
be said to have a moral character; since it lacks self-consciousness,
it lacks a concept of morality. However, this newborn baby will

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grow older, and as it grows older, it will, in society, become a moral

being—someone who is neither purely good nor purely evil, but
good and evil. Figures who are purely good or purely evil abound
in the history of literature, but in the real world, people are good
and evil both. Some have more good in them than evil, others more
evil than good, but all are a combination of elements.”” Therefore,
alternative (4) is the most plausible, if we're going to speak mean-
ingfully about human beings possessed of moral consciences.
It all boils down to the fact that we're free. This is why we can-
not be unambiguously good or evil. Schelling was correct when he
said that the root of freedom was the freedom to be both good and
evil”’” (though when this freedom is operative—when we make
choices—our freedom becomes the freedom to be good or evil”).
We're good and evil not simply because we sometimes choose good
and other times evil, but because both are essential components of
our nature. Understanding this is essential to understanding who
we are.

TYPOLOGIES OF EVIL
In discussing evil, I believe that it’s an error in method to reduce
a manifold of phenomena to one basic form. It’s more informative
to propose a typology of the different forms of evil as they present
themselves, and to consider how the different types are related. In C.
Fred Alford’s consideration of the numerous ways evil is imagined
and understood, many of those interviewed said there ought to be
more than one word for it, since there are so many different kinds
of evil.” This is a reasonable argument. However, Alford observes
that the interviewees primarily wanted to distinguish between dif-
ferent varieties of evil so that they could either excuse themselves

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or someone else by describing certain actions as examples of a less

serious form of evil. Even so, in my opinion, such distinctions have
an objective worth that Alford largely overlooks. Of course, he does
tentatively distinguish between the evil that’s committed and the
evil that’s suffered, and also in part between an isolated evil act and
an evil lifestyle, but he makes evil seem one-sided, as if it's always
the same subject and always stems from the same motivation. This
mistake leads Alford to miss important distinctions, and ultimately
to claim that there's no difference between the desire to squeeze
someone’s hand until it hurts and the desire to murder millions of
people.” I will argue the exact opposite: namely, that agents who
do evil have an infinite number of motivations, and that these can-
not be reduced to a single, basic description.
The different forms of evil can be categorized according to di-
verse typologies. Starting with Leibniz, we can distinguish be-
tween physical, metaphysical, and moral evil: Metaphysical evil is
the world’s imperfection, physical or natural evil is suffering, and
moral evil is sin.2?! Leibniz also refers to moral evil as malum cul-
pae, because it’s tied to guilt. Moral evil can only be attributed to
subjects who are able to choose for themselves, and is more shock-
ing than natural evil—it’s obviously a tragedy if an avalanche de-
stroys a whole village, but it’s far more shocking if the residents of
that same village are brutally slaughtered by soldiers.
Nevertheless, it’s not so simple to draw a clear line between
moral and natural evil. John Hick distinguishes between them by
arguing that moral evil is caused by humans, while natural evil
has nonhuman causes.” In my opinion, this distinction is hardly
useful. A large percentage of the evil that people do does not fall
under the category of moral evil. That is, in many cases an indi-
vidual might not understand the consequences of his actions, or

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there might be extenuating circumstances that cause us to absolve

an agent of all moral blame. David Griffin distinguishes between
moral and natural evil by saying that moral evil must contain the
express intent to hurt other people; by contrast, all unintended
suffering can be described as natural evil.” To my mind, Griffin's
distinction is better, but saying that there must be a clear intent
to hurt others is too strict—this simply excludes too many other
forms of evil. Take, for example, an industrialist, trying to earn
money, who doesn’t stop to reflect on the people who might be
affected by his actions. Or a bureaucrat who carries out his ap-
pointed tasks without considering the consequences. I would opt,
I think, for a more general, tentative definition: A morally evil
agent is a free agent who inflicts suffering on others against their
will and without regard for their human worth. This suffering in-
flicted on others doesn't need to be intentional, but can be caused
by thoughtlessness as well. Further, a thoughtless agent can also be
blamed for the evil he commits, because he should have thought
before he acted.
We can also look at moral evil as a possible determination of
human freedom. A world without free agents might still contain
evil, but it would only be natural evil, not moral. A world without
freedom might contain an infinite amount of suffering, in fact, but
only someone who could have acted otherwise can be blamed for
not having acted otherwise. Only a free agent can be guilty of moral
evil.
If we limit ourselves to a consideration of moral evil as it per-
tains to human conduct, and which therefore excludes natural and
metaphysical evil, we can distinguish between the following four
basic types of evil:

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Demonic evil is the least relevant type. This form of evil—

taken for granted by numerous theories—is defined as the
activity of doing evil precisely because it’s evil. I find this
conception extremely problematic, and will discuss this
idea at length below. In my opinion, furthermore, de-
monic evil still has a component of good. Every desire
may have something good about it, if only for the agent
himself, and even if the desire itself can be regarded as
evil. The fulfillment of a wish is a good, and if for example
rape and murder can satisfy a desire, then rape and mur-
der have a good side. Nonetheless, it's obvious that rape
and murder should be regarded as evil. Thomas Aquinas,
therefore, argues that good can be found in that which is
evil
Instrumental evil concerns agents who do something evil,
well aware that it’s evil, in order to accomplish some other
goal. The goal can be good, but the means evil. Therefore,
instrumental evil exclusively concerns the means, not the
goal. Evil is instrumental if the agent would have aban-
doned the action if the goal, for example wealth, could
have been achieved in some other way. In this respect, an
instrumental evil action does not have value in and of it-
self. Those who carry out instrumental evil do not take
pleasure in the action itself so much as in the accomplish-
ment of their goal. And this goal can be good, evil, neu-
tral, or a combination of both.
Idealistic evil results when agents do something evil in the
belief that they're doing something good. Consider, for
example, the Christian crusades, or the witch and heretic
trials. No doubt most of the participants in these events

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considered themselves to be representatives of good. Ter-

rorists can largely be described as idealists who believe
they're on the side of good. Consequently, what they do is
justified by the struggle against evil. Beyond a shadow
of a doubt, many Bolsheviks were idealists—even those
who condemned innocent people to death, knowing be-
forehand that they were innocent. This is demonstrated
by the fact that a number of these same people willingly
confessed to crimes they weren't guilty of—crimes pun-
ishable by death—for the sake of the Party and the revo-
lution.?*° Many Nazis were also idealists driven by an am-
bition to create a better society, and the SS considered
themselves to be a moral elite.**° The fact that their ideol-
ogy is perverted doesn’t make these agents any less ideal-
istic. For idealists—in contrast to those who do instru-
mental evil—it will often appear not only morally accept-
able, but also morally just to harm others for a good
cause.’ Enemies embody an evil that must be fought.
Idealists can recognize that certain actions are deplorable,
but will continue to insist that they’re justified by a higher
mission. Those who do evil often act as if they represent
the good, and oftentimes they even believe it. But the con-
viction that an ideal is good is not enough to guarantee
that it really is good. .
Stupid evil, on the other hand, is characterized by an agent
who acts without stopping to consider whether his actions
are good or evil. Stupid evil is different from idealistic
evil, which is characterized by an agent who thinks about
good and evil, but thinks wrongly. Stupidity can be under-
stood as a form of thoughtlessness, an absence of reflec-

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tion. Kant writes at one point that “stupidity is caused by

a wicked heart}2** but we should reverse this concept and
say that stupidity creates a wicked heart. It’s this form of
evil that Hannah Arendt describes as banal.

It can be difficult to decide to which of the four categories a cer-

tain agent or action belongs, and a single agent can belong to
more than one category (for example, a primarily idealistic mo-
tive can be supplemented by a sadistic pleasure in hurting people;
I do not believe that any one of us are completely immune to such
feelings) ... An idealist, for instance, can easily become a fanatic.
That is, he no longer assumes responsibility for thinkinga situation
through, and begins to follow a given set of directions slavishly:
This is how idealistic evil can become stupid evil. Further, a prob-
lem with the category of “instrumental evil” is that it threatens to
become so broad that it subsumes all other categories—motivated
actions always have a goal. One thing all four types of evil have in
common, however, is the lack of regard for other people's dignity.
The four types of evil will therefore serve as a tentative foundation
for further discussion.
The problem with many theories of evil is that they assume evil’s
goal is to cause harm—that is, that evil is autotelic rather than in-
strumental. In other words, demonic. In reality, however, demonic
evil is a marginal phenomenon at best. Theories that reduce all evil
to the demonic type lose sight of the other forms; moreover, such a
one-sided focus also leads us to lose sight of ourselves, because we
certainly—as I’ve said—don't tend think of ourselves as demons.
This notion of evil, therefore, seems irrelevant to an understand-
ing of our own conduct. Evil isn’t limited to sadists and fanatics,
and most of the participants in genocide and the like are no more

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demonic than you or I. It’s a commonplace to say that we all have

a dark side, that we all have the capacity to do wrong—I’m cer-
tainly not alone in making this assertion. This notion becomes
rather unhelpful, however—if not wholly obtuse—if we don't try to
identify those things that cause an otherwise normal person to do
something truly atrocious. The question we should ask ourselves
isn't simply “Is it possible?” but “What would it take for me to do
something similar?”

DEMONIC EVIL
The real and practical existence of evil becomes quite clear if we
define it as anything that, in one way or another, opposes one’s liv-
ing a life both meaningful and worth striving for. The question is
whether the extreme, demonic form of evil actually exists—that is,
whether evil is ever actively pursued as evil. Demonic evil would
seem to be self-sufficient, to exist for its own sake. Descriptions of
this type of evil tend to appear more often in victims’ testimonies
than in the confessions of any perpetrators**°—that is, if we want to
understand a perpetrator’s motives, we can't take the victim’s word
as being an authoritative source. To a victim, the only satisfactory
explanation for a perpetrator’s actions may indeed be pure sadism;
but this doesn’t mean that the idea has any emotional relevance
for the perpetrator. A single action can scar or can even destroy a
victim for life, but this same action may seem like a small, mean-
ingless episode to the perpetrator: A professional torturer, for in-
stance, probably doesn't remember each and every victim. Instead,
the act of torture is entirely impersonal; after all, he was “only doing
his job,’ despite the fact that his victims will carry this experience
with them for the rest of their lives. We often see this enormous gap

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between the profound negative effect and the insignificant positive

effect the same action can have for a victim and perpetrator, re-
spectively. The victim’s loss is almost always greater than the per-
petrator’s gain. The satisfaction we might get from hitting someone
who's annoying us will pass, while the victim can suffer serious
and lasting damage. This gap is the primary reason conflicts have
a tendency to escalate. Even if both sides inflict precisely the same
amount of damage on the other, both still feel that they've suffered
more harm than they've dealt.
When we think about torture, furthermore, we usually put our-
selves in the victim's place, because we can't imagine being tortur-
ers ourselves. Torturers seem like monsters, like perverse and in-
human sadists—but the fact is that most torturers are more or less
average people without any particular disposition toward sadism.
The torturers in the Greek Juntas in 1967-74, for example, have
been studied exhaustively, and none of them were found to have
obvious sadistic or authoritarian tendencies either before or after
their time in the army. Neither was there anything in their family
backgrounds or personal histories to distinguish them from the rest
of the populace." It’s true, however, that some torturers begin to
like what they do after a while—the violence starts for one reason
and ends up associated with another: the torturer begins to receive
a kind of self-validation. During the Vietnam War, for example, it
was common American practice to beat Vietnamese soldiers under
interrogation. Most times, military intelligence began these inter-
rogations without any real enthusiasm—it was just a part of the
ordinary routine. Once they began hitting their prisoner, however,
the interrogators found that they began to enjoy it—to enjoy it so
much that they had to hold back before the beatings degenerated
into more serious forms of torture.” Sometimes they were able

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to restrain themselves, they reported later, sometimes they let the

situation deteriorate, and other times they consciously went much
farther. War, of course, is a situation in which many people let
themselves get carried away.” Joanna Bourke’s An Intimate His-
tory of Killing contains countless citations from soldiers claiming
that murder is “satisfying,” “entertaining” and “attractive.”“* Henry
de Man describes how with just a grenade launcher he was able
to hit a group of enemies so that their bodies and body parts flew
through the air—a description that ends with the words: “I had
to confess to myself that it was one of the happiest moments of
my life.’*** And Philip Caputo makes a similar confession, stat-
ing that going into combat made him “feel happier than he ever
had” before. A Soviet veteran of the war in Afghanistan says:
“Killing en masse, in a group, is exciting, even—and I’ve seen this
myself—fun.”° Context is all-important: Most people who return
from war take up their lives in exactly the same ways as before, and
while a number of studies have been made on the relationship be-
tween the experience of war—where people are encouraged to act
in a brutal manner—and the commission of violent criminal acts in
civilian life thereafter, no perceptible increase in the latter has been
shown.” War and civilian life are so different that there seems to
be little transference of the one onto the other. Let us move away,
then, from cruelty that appears limited to specific situations, and
take up the subject of those people for whom it becomes a mode
of conduct.
Popularly, demonic evil is best personified by serial killers.
When you read about a particular serial killer, for example about
Henry Lee Lucas, the obvious conclusion seems to be that they do
what they do because they take extreme satisfaction in inflicting
extreme suffering. For example, Lucas would tie up his victim and
tell her—most of the victims were women—that she was going to

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die. After that, he'd sliced her open, beat her, perhaps cut off her
fingers and toes, just so shed know that if she managed to survive,
shed be disfigured for life.** Other, more extreme examples don't
need to be mentioned here. The point is that there are some actions
whose sole motivating factor seems to be inflicting as much harm
as possible on another person—actions undertaken solely for the
sake of inflicting the maximum amount of suffering. If we're going
to understand an action, we have to understand its purpose—in
these cases, however, it’s not clear what the purpose could possibly
be. Some murders can’t be explained by the fact that the perpetra-
tor was overcome with rage, that he was trying to cover up another
crime, or that the victim refused to cooperate with the perpetrator
in some way. In other words, there are some murders that can't be
explained by any of the usual scenarios; such murders are rare, but
they do exist.” We can call this autotelic violence: self-justifying,
self-sufficient violence. In other words, “demonic.”

Evil for Evil’s Sake

Montaigne writes:

If Ihad not seen it I could hardly have made myself believe

that you could find souls so monstrous that they would
commit murder for the sheer fun of it; would hack at an-
other man’s limbs and lop them off and would cudgel their
brains to invent unusual tortures and new forms of mur-
der, not from hatred or for gain but for the one sole pur-
pose of enjoying the pleasant spectacle of the pitiful ges-
tures and twitchings of a man dying in agony, while hear-
ing his screams and groans. For there you have the far-
thest point that cruelty can reach.”

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Are there people who do evil purely for evil’s sake? We know that a
person can take pleasure in doing what he thinks is good, precisely
because of its goodness; can we imagine there's a person out there
who takes a similar pleasure in doing what he thinks is evil because
it’s evil? The idea that people do evil because it’s evil is a central te-
net in much of the existing literature on evil, and many people cite
this idea as the paradigmatic example of evil. It’s also this form of
evil that is dominant in horror films and such.
Schopenhauer defines cruelty as “delight at the suffering of an-
other which has not sprung from egoism, but is disinterested”—
where suffering appears to be “an end in itself??*! In his otherwise
excellent book on the holocaust, Berel Lang argues that the Nazis
mass extermination of the Jews was ultimately carried out because
it was evil.*? C. Fred Alford makes sadists the paradigm of evil and
argues that evil is not just the act of hurting another person, it’s
also the enjoyment of total control implicit in the ability to inflict
harm.” For Bataille as well, self-sufficient evil is the true evil. For
instance, he doesn't consider crimes for profit to be evil, since they
do not provide pleasure independent of whatever material gain may
result from them.” And the idea that there are people in the world
who do evil for its own sake isn't limited to crime, horror films, and
speculative metaphysics; it’s also present in the work of (presum-
ably) thoughtful, analytical philosophers. John Kekes asserts that
there are “moral monsters [who] habitually choose to cause evil”
and who “choose to live evil lives.’5> And Colin McGinn defines
an evil person as someone who takes pleasure in the pain of others
and who does evil for its own sake.?°° He does distinguish between
“pure” evil and instrumental evil, but he lets the “pure” form domi-
nate his whole discussion; as such, his definition of evil is synony-
mous with sadism.*” John Rawls writes that the motivating factor

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behind the acts of an “evil person’ is love of injustice, and he argues

that such a person seeks injustice simply because it breaks with the
perceived norm of justice.**
All these authors write in the tradition of Augustine, who de-
scribed what might well be the world’s most famous instance of
pear stealing. Most of us can remember the excitement of indulg-
ing in petty thievery when we were children. When I was a boy,
for instance, we had a yard full of apple and pear trees—but the
apples and pears that fell in other people's yards were far sweeter
than anything I could find in my own. Augustine also stole pears as
a child, and he transforms this action into a drama between good
and evil:

There was a pear tree near our vineyard laden with fruit,
though attractive in neither colour nor taste. To shake
the fruit of the tree and carry off the pears, I and a gang
of naughty adolescents set off late at night. [. . .] We car-
ried off a huge load of the pears. But they were not for
our feasts but merely to throw to the pigs. Even if we
ate a few, nevertheless our pleasure lay in doing what
was not allowed.”

Augustine draws the conclusion that: “I loved my fall, not the ob-
ject for which I had fallen but my fall itself?” I find it difficult,
however, to view the young Augustine through the eyes of his elder
self: Where he sees a serious sinner, I see a child looking for athrill.
It’s far more plausible to assume that the desire for excitement was
the motivation for his theft, not the fact that his action itself could
be considered evil. This excitement was naturally tied to the fact
that stealing pairs is a break with normal behavior, and entails a

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risk of punishment. Because excitement is the central factor, Au-

gustine’s actions have more in common with extreme sport than
sadism, and his story about stealing pairs doesn’t give us a clue
about demonic evil.
What about the man who first originated the idea of “sadism”?
Is this an example of doing evil because it’s evil? Sade challenges
Rousseau and other enlightenment thinkers by insisting that nature
isn't in fact good, and that criminality and violence are natural laws.
Society is simply a continuance of nature and the evil inherent in
nature. Sade's agents want to be free and so sever themselves from
society's bonds—but in doing so, they simply bind themselves to
nature. There's no distinction here between natural and moral evil.
Sade'’s project is, in fact, to make this idea explicit and to take advan-
tage of the resulting possibilities. You can read Sade’s work as a-_par-
ody of philosophical ethics,**' but it appears Sade’s ambitions were
greater than caricature. The problem with Sade’s philosophy, how-
ever, is this: In order to insist that something is evil, something else
must be recognized as good—yet the recognition of good is missing
from Sade’s thought. Ultimately, we can say that Sade rejects every
idea of objective good and objective evil and exclusively embraces
whatever gives subjective pleasure: For Sade, evil is something that
should be enjoyed . . . but then that enjoyment cannot be regarded
as anything other than a subjective good. It’s telling that one of Sade’s
protagonists observes that: “the evil I do to others makes me happy,
as God is rendered happy by the evil he does me?” Sade’s libertines
seek a subjective good, that which gives pleasure, and therefore it’s
clear that Sade’s works cannot be used to develop the idea of a per-
son who does evil solely because it’s evil. Taking pleasure in the suf-
fering of another is, insofar as it’s pleasurable, a good, even though
this pleasure is caused by something evil.

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Can we imagine that an agent might simply invert basic moral

norms and transform evil into subjective good? In Milton's Paradise
Lost, Satan declares: “Evil, be thou my good.”*? What we have to
ask ourselves is whether this idea is meaningful. What is evil good
for in Satan’s eyes? The answer is nothing other than—freedom.
In his pride, Satan revolts against God, because he refuses to be a
slave to God and his commandments.” “To do aught good never
will be our task, / But ever to do ill our sole delight, / As being con-
trary to his high will, / Whom we resist.” Instead of saying that
evil is good in and of itself—a statement that would be meaning-
less—Satan insists that freedom is the greatest of all goods. Satan
embraces evil as a means of freeing himself from God. Therefore,
for Satan, evil only has an instrumental worth. It’s the will to free-
dom that made Satan such a popular figure with William Blake and
other Romantics, an idea that stands in open contrast to Miltons
intentions and that he explicitly warns against.” In my opinion,
Milton’s Satan is more like a stubborn child than a freedom fighter.
Nonetheless, Satan's goal is freedom, not evil for its own sake.
We find another view in Edgar Allan Poe. In Poe's short story
“The Black Cat” the narrator claims that the human heart holds
a “spirit of Perverseness,’ which is the “unfathomable longing of
the soul to vex itself—to offer violence to its own nature—to do
wrong for wrong’s sake only.””*” This idea is developed in “The Imp
of the Perverse” where perverse actions are described as actions
we undertake because we know we shouldn't do them.” Poe goes
on to say that there’s no deeper motivation for the perverse action
than this—no underlying principle—and that it would be tempt-
ing to call such actions the devil's work. As a result, he argues that
these actions are based on “a mobile without motive, a motive not
motiviert?2® It’s difficult to know what conclusion we should draw

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from Poe's short description of perversity. He seems to mean that

the fact of something’s being evil is reason enough for action. This
can hardly be considered a reason, however—it is a non-reason, a
non-justification; and when Poe subsequently states that another
force seems to be working through us, we leave the rational sphere
behind and enter into the realm of pathology. Poe has not dem-
onstrated that an action is carried out because it’s regarded as sub-
jectively or objectively evil; at most, he’s merely pointed out that
we are capable of carrying out evil actions while fully aware that
they're evil, whatever the motivation. This hardly indicates that
evil for its own sake is a good basis for action—only that people
are sometimes irrational. Even an irrational agent would still have
reasons for acting—but no reason to prefer a worse alternative to a
better.’””° Thus, if we're to imagine a person who does evil for its own
sake, we have to assume there’s some rational mechanism directing
this decision. In my opinion, there are only three possibilities here:
aesthetics, pathology, or some combination of the two. Pathology
I'm setting aside, because that’s a discussion external to the context
of freedom—the context, that is, of assuming that someone could
have acted otherwise. Let us therefore turn to aesthetics.

Evil's Aesthetic Seduction

An agent can have a reason to do evil, well aware that it’s evil, where
the reason itself is not based in morality. It can simply be that this
action gives the agent a feeling of pleasure. 3
Colin McGinn ties ethics and aesthetics together and maintains
that evil is expressed in repulsive actions, that violence is inher-
ently repulsive, etc.””' He bases his ideas strictly on a pre-modern
concept of aesthetics, and his readers would be justified in asking
whether or not he’s aware that the Romantic or Modern eras ever

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occurred. Now, we Romantics—or possibly Post-Romantics—can

find beauty in evil and can regard violence as attractive.” How-
ever, I’m more inclined to call violence and evil sublime rather than
attractive. According to Kant, the sublime produces a “negative
pleasure” in us, and is therefore both attractive and repulsive.”
Kant calls attention to war, for instance, as something sublime.’
Consider the confession of an American Vietnam veteran recall-
ing the thoughts that struck him when he stood and looked at the
corpses of North Vietnamese soldiers:

That was another of the times I stood on the edge of my

humanity, looked into the pit, and loved what I saw there.
I had surrendered to an aesthetics that was divorced from
that crucial quality of empathy that lets us feel the suffer-
ings of others. And I saw a terrible beauty there. War is
not simply the spirit of ugliness [. . .], it is also an affair of
great and seductive beauty.”

Through aestheticization—consider war, for example, as it appears

in movies—terrible actions can become attractive.” You can ad-
mire the music of machine guns, the glint of steel on weapons,
and the color of napalm. War can even become a comedy, and
those wounded and killed can appear to be purely comic figures.
By robbing war of its reality, one’s individual vulnerability and the
suffering of others both become easier to bear. And violence has
its own seductions. We can say that violence is repulsive, but we
can also say that violence is attractive. This is in no way a contra-
diction. In both cases, we're talking about taste, and aesthetic taste
doesn't follow moral judgment. Aesthetics are often regarded as
an autonomous sphere, removed from the demands of morality.

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When evil is redefined as an aesthetic object, its moral qualities

fall by the wayside.
Plato, therefore, was mostly right in his condemnation of art:
The aesthetic object is dangerous because it’s irrational. Almost
half a century ago, Thorkild Bjornvig described an “illness of the
age” that he termed the “aesthetic idiosyncrasy.” The aesthetic idio-
syncrasy is the tendency to be “fascinated by details, to burn with
infinite passion for those things one finds beautiful, and just as in-
finite loathing for those things one finds ugly.’”” We can also call
this idea an aesthetic irrationality, where aesthetic judgments are
deemed sufficient grounds for action and for destroying what we
find repulsive. The examples Bjornvig cites range from Edgar Allan
Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” to the Nazi mass extermina-
tions. If we turn to Poe, we find that the protagonist in Poe's short
story murders an old man because he can't stand the sight of the
old man’s “evil” eye. He admits that occasionally he likes the old
man himself, but his hatred for the eye causes him to abstract it
from the old man’s other qualities.*”* Whenever he encounters the
victim, all he can see is his evil eye. We find a similar idiosyncratic
action described by Hamsun in “Fra det ubevidste Sjzleliv” (“The
Unconscious Life of the Mind”), where a man kills a horse for look-
ing at him wrong:

I know a man, an upstanding farmer in his thirties, who

shot his neighbor's horse three years ago for looking at
him askance. The man had no other reason for his action
than this: the horse's lopsided glare irritated him to death.
Since he couldn't admit the real, ridiculous reason for kill-
ing the animal, he held his peace, and every single person
put the act down to pure malice?”

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In his description of Claggart, the sadist who plagues Billy Budd in

Herman Melville's novel, Melville makes great use of what Bjornvig
calls aesthetic idiosyncrasy.”*° The only thing that motivates Clag-
gart to molest Billy Budd is that he can't stand the sight of Billy's in-
nocence. Bjornvig dubs Nazism an aesthetic ideology for this same
reason, and for Berel Lang, the Jewish extermination is ultimately
a modernistic artwork.*' In my opinion, this idea is flawed. Even
if morality and aesthetics were closely tied in Nazism, as they are
in every totalitarian system,” its discourse was focused more on
a moral than on an aesthetic project. Furthermore, the aesthetic
goal wasn't to create an artwork made up of dead Jews, but rather
to remove those people who were deemed to be nothing more than
filth: revolting objects, no better than garbage. At the same time, we
have to say that it wasn’t the dehumanization processes in the camps
that created the illusion that Jews were filth, because that idea was
already in place before the mass exterminations began. Instead, the
dehumanization processes sought to strengthen the extant, ideo-
logically founded belief that Jews were filth—the better to pacify
any qualms on the parts of the executioners. If we stick with the
art metaphor, we could say that it wasn’t the concentration camps
themselves that were the artwork, in this case; the artwork would
have been the finished product, whatever would remain after all un-
desirable material had been eliminated from society—like a sculp-
tor removing excess material to reveal a shape. At the same time, I
certainly won't exclude the possibility that certain individuals took
an aesthetic pleasure in the mass exterminations—however far re-
moved their tastes might be from my own aesthetic preferences.
Nietzsche claims that people in general “enjoy evil” and find
“meaningless evil the most interesting form”*’ Perhaps Nietzsche
has a point: Evil is seductive, and meaningless evil seems to be an es-
pecially extreme, and therefore seductive, form of evil. The essential

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question then becomes, what type of seduction does evil present?

Jean Genet begins The Thief’s Journal with the assertion that “for
love's sake” he has been driven “[t]oward what is known as evil.?**
He wants to see “a new paradise” where he shall “impose a candid
vision of evil.’*8° But this becomes Genet’s “good,” and he describes
certain policemen as basking in an atmosphere of “foul infamy:””**
For Genet, the main thing is to create a deviant identity,’ and to de-
fine his own “good” in contrast to the official good he deviates from.
What society calls evil, Genet also calls evil, but he considers evil to
be good. The important point is that he considers evil to be attrac-
tive, and therefore the ethical is subordinate to the aesthetic.”
Genet provides a continuation of Baudelaire’s thought. Baude-
laire holds that evil is harmful as a purely moral category, but as an
aesthetic category, he values it. The aesthetic and the ethical evalu-
ations of evil have completely different results. Everything can be
made beautiful, but Baudelaire wants more than anything to con-
nect beauty to evil, and he claims for example that murder is one
of beauty’s most valuable adornments.” Morality is subordinate
to aesthetics, and good and evil are primarily aesthetic catego-
ries: “the things we loathed become the things we loved??” Evil
can even overcome boredom, the unifying figure in Les Fleurs du
Mal. It also becomes a kind of good, or rather, a kind of substitute
for good—although the good is an aesthetic good. When we dis-
cuss the desire for demonic evil, however, we must consider evil
as a moral grounds for action. If the motivations behind evil were
purely aesthetic, we would have no difficulty explaining them. The
idea of choosing to do moral evil because it’s morally evil does not
have a place in the discussion of aesthetic evil; the idea is spoiled by
the fact that evil here becomes a source of aesthetic delight.

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Sadism
We have yet to establish a clear idea of an agent who does evil sim-
ply because it’s evil. So far, there has always another motivating
factor in the picture. But how about a classical sadist who takes
pleasure in the suffering of others?
A common explanation when trying to understand how people
can inflict gruesome suffering on other people is that perpetra-
tors reduce their victims to the status of a thing, that the victim
becomes objectivized to such an extent that the I-you-relationship
vanishes. This model of objectivization seems applicable to certain
situations, such as the near-mechanical operation of a Nazi death
camp, but it contributes little to an understanding of sadistic vio-
lence. Sadistic murders have no meaning if the perpetrator has
simply reduced another human being to the level of an object. He
might as well have kicked a rock down the road, an equally ir-
relevant action. There’s a reason the perpetrator would rather kick
heads than kick stones. The fact that his victims are conscious be-
ings with their own subjectivity is a condition for the action oc-
curring in the first place. A sadistic action presupposes a certain
amount of identification with the victim. Otherwise, the action
would be utterly meaningless.”
I believe that sadism can best be understood in terms of the
Hegelian model of recognition. Sadists want to be acknowledged
as subjects. In fiction, there’s a good representation of this idea in
Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho. The protagonist, Patrick
Batemen, suffers from a lack of personal identity, and therefore tries
to compensate by murdering others in extremely sadistic ways.”
In a famous essay, Hans Morgenthau claims that love and power
spring from the same source, namely isolation, but that love tries to
dismantle the wall between two people so they become one, while

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power tries to subordinate another's subjectivity to one’s own.”

Sadists desire power. The screams of the victim prove that the sa-
dist has power over another individual, that the power relationship
is authentic. For a sadist, pain isn’t the goal. It's simply a means to
domination. Of course, suffering can also give pleasure. However,
in the I-you-relationship, the goal of pain is subordinate to the goal
of domination—that is, to the goal of recognition.
In his struggle for recognition, the sadist utterly subordinates
another person's subjectivity to his own, so much so that all au-
tonomy disappears. For this reason, his plan is doomed from the
start: Once his goal is reached, and the foreign consciousness is
completely beaten and subordinated to his own, the subdued con-
sciousness is no longer capable of giving the recognition he craves.
That is, you do not regard a subdued consciousness as an individ-
ual. In order to attain true recognition, you must be recognized by
an individual that you in turn recognize as an individual. Accord-
ing to the Hegelian model I’ve used as the basis for this discussion,
sadists must necessarily fail; they'll never attain the recognition
they strive for.
Colin McGinn interprets sadism in another way, so that sadists
do not necessarily fail. He claims that sadists suffer from an “exis-
tential envy,’ a feeling that their lives have less worth than others.
It's therefore the sadist’s project to reduce the quality of another
person's life to an even lower plateau than their own?*—an inter-
esting hypothesis, precisely because it allows sadiststo succeed.
The problem, however, is that we have no reason to believe that
every sadist suffers from existential envy. We could also claim, for
example, that think they’re better than their victims and, therefore,
feel they have the right to treat their victim however they want.
Nonetheless, whatever success is provided by McGinn'’s model will

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be extremely short-lived. The act will have to be repeated again and

again, because the sadists will constantly be meeting people who
cause him to feel the same existential envy.
We can imagine other variations as well. Sympathy can be re-
versed, and I might want another person to feel my pain. I might
want to show that my life is hard. I can either express my pain sym-
bolically, in words and pictures, or concretely, by inflicting pain
on others.”*> None of these ideas involve doing evil for evil’s sake,
however: they are simply futile attempts to communicate. I will not
pursue this discussion further. My main point is that there’s a mul-
titude of possible explanations for sadism that are all understand-
able, in contrast with the idea of doing evil because it’s evil.

Schadenfreude
What about schadenfreude? Isn't taking pleasure in another's suf-
fering the same thing as taking pleasure in evil because it's evil?
Plato describes the vicious person as someone who takes pleasure
in another person's pain.”® Most of us fall under this category to
some degree; broadly speaking, we've all experienced schaden-
freude at one time or another. Colin McGinn distinguishes between
active and passive evil: in general, the former is defined as taking
pleasure in inflicting suffering on others, and the latter as enjoy-
ing suffering when it’s inflicted.*” Schadenfreude, then, would be
closely related to “passive evil.” Schopenhauer describes schaden-
freude as the worst trait in human nature, and as the most demonic
of all sins.2%* Kant also condemns schadenfreude as the opposite of
the neighborly love we should all feel,”° and he therefore describes
schadenfreude as “inhuman” and “devilish.”
There are two clear reasons for schadenfreude: a general delight
in another’s suffering or a specific delight in seeing justice done.

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We cannot exclude, however, the fact that schadenfreude is often

a combination of the two. In my opinion, schadenfreude is an ac-
ceptable feeling if it’s motivated by justice; that is, if it’s not the
suffering itself, but the sense of justice being done, that produces
pleasure. This viewpoint has a long philosophical tradition going
back to Augustine.*” It follows, furthermore, that schadenfreude
is harmful when it’s not accompanied by the belief that another's
suffering is justified. That most of us have experienced both modes
could hardly be regarded as a controversial statement. However,
the picture becomes more complicated when our sense of justice is
confused by a personal entanglement in the matter—for example,
if we're jealous. And we should certainly avoid the idea that all who
suffer did something to deserve it. Faith in a this kind of just world
can be a dangerous concept.
As we've seen time and again, furthermore, violence draws an
enthusiastic crowd. There was huge interest in public executions,
and if we started showing executions on TV, ratings would surely
skyrocket. In France, the guillotine was unpopular at first because
executions happened too quickly for the public to see much of any-
thing—there were public protests to reinstate the gallows. The rev-
olutionary government took these protests to heart and instituted
a number of changes—higher platforms, displaying of the head
afterwards, more executions at once, etc.—in order to meet the
public halfway.” We can interpret such interest in two ways: (1) A
fascination, possibly even a pleasure, in seeing another person suf-
fer and die; and (2) a pleasure in seeing justice done to the fullest.
Some will assert that it’s naive to believe that (2) is plausible. But
hardly anyone would enjoy seeing an innocent person executed.
In order for violence to be pleasurable, therefore, it must appear
justified (or fictional). Otherwise, our own sense of justice would

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protest too strongly. It's no coincidence that those thrown to the

lions in the Colosseum were billed as “criminals.” Burning Chris-
tians for their heresy wasn’t always popular with audiences, for the
very reason that the audience often—and rightly so—considered
the victims to be innocent.
In my opinion, people are not as bad, where schadenfreude is
concerned, as—for example—Schopenhauer would have us believe.
I trust that schadenfreude is usually motivated by the feeling that
suffering has been earned—because the person has done something
evil, has done something stupid, etc. Of course, we often laugh at
things—when someone trips and falls, for instance—without hav-
ing any reason to think the person “earned” it. There’s just some-
thing comical about the situation. But our laughter would quickly
die away if the fall was especially hard, or if the person was seriously
hurt. Perhaps such laughter should indeed be categorized as a form
of schadenfreude, but in any case it’s a harmless form. It may seem
that I'm trying to put people in a better light than they deserve,
where schadenfreude is concerned. However, I really do think that
most of us believe that the suffering we enjoy witnessing or hear-
ing about was justified in some way. For example, if someone told
me that Ratko Mladi¢—one of people principally responsible for
the massacre in Srebrenica—was suffering from a long-lasting and
particularly painful illness, the thought would give me pleasure. At
the same time, if I heard the same thing about Nelson Mandela, or
a neighbor who had never hurt a fly, my feelings would be exactly
the opposite. When we feel schadenfreude, we distinguish between
those who deserve to suffer and those who dont. In my opinion, the
existence of schadenfreude isn’t proof that people in general have a
sadistic disposition.

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Subjective and Objective Evil

Socrates claims that no one commits evil intentionally. Everyone
wants to live the good life, and evil actions hinder that goal.*’ The
Socratic argument can be roughly outlined in the following way:
(1) No one commits evil intentionally; (2) to act virtuously (with
aréte) is to act knowledgeably; (3) all moral knowledge is knowl-
edge about the good; ergo all evil actions are caused by ignorance
of the good.*“ This theory explains how evil actions are possible,
but it also goes against our intuition about ourselves as agents: We
recognize, in ourselves and other human beings, the tendency to do
things we know are evil. A more sophisticated variation on Socrates’
argument is that those who do good are happier than those who do
evil, but that those who do evil aren't aware of this and therefore
act in ignorance. It’s not that a person is ignorant of an individual
action’s character as evil, but rather of the relationship between this
action and happiness. Seen in this way, there would be no contra-
diction between knowing an action is immoral and choosing to
do it anyway—but while this interpretation of Socrates’ account
is certainly more in keeping with our experience of ourselves and
others as agents, it still denies the possibility that a person could do
evil because it’s evil (and, therefore, it doesn’t help us to answer the
question of whether or not this is likely). The Platonic variant*®> on
the above is more sophisticated still in that desire (epitumia) plays
an essential role and can vanquish reason (logos). But here, too, evil
actions are only undertaken involuntarily.
Thus, in any iteration, the Socratic explanation doesn't really
seem to match how we normally think of ourselves. The quandary
posed by morality is not simply our knowing what's right, but doing
what's right. Most people choose the Platonic variant when explain-
ing their own actions—they don't plead ignorance or irrationality,

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but instead claim to have been overcome by some form of emotion,

and go on to express surprise at just how strong these compulsions
can be. While such an explanation is not necessarily irrational, it
does contradict the notion that we ourselves are the only ones re-
sponsible for our own actions. The logic goes something like this:
If you're always letting yourself be overcome by various emotions,
youre certainly a pathetic case, but you also aren't morally respon-
sible, since the actions you undertook were unintentional.
Aristotle claims that we can deliberately ignore the good.*° He
accepts the Platonic premise that we're led by desire, but claims
that submission can be deliberate—that is, that we can choose to
allow ourselves to be led. He develops this idea into a sophisticated
theory, distinguishing between the weak will and the bad will. The
weak will understands what the good is, but fails to act in accor-
dance with it; the bad will acts in accordance with its interpretation
of the good, but this interpretation is not accurate.°” According to
Aristotle, sin doesn’t know itself, but weakness does**—as such,
there’s no way an agent can do evil for the sake of evil. The agent
still chooses evil in his pursuit of the good. A foundational prem-
ise in Aristotle’s ethics is that the good toward which all actions
are directed is happiness (eudaimonia).*” An action that doesn’t
have happiness as a goal is simply unfathomable. The goal of all
actions is the good—so exceptions to this rule can only be on ac-
count of failing to act in accordance with one’s understanding of
the good, or else simply being unaware what the good might be.
For Aristotle, therefore, all evil actions are either due to weakness
or misunderstanding—which, again, fails to match our own expe-
rience of ourselves and others as agents, because we know very well
that we occasionally do evil things deliberately and with the full
understanding that they are evil.

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Doing something evil because it’s evil, moreover, can't simply be

attributed to akrasia, the weak will. The weak-willed person does
something he shouldn't do because he gives in—he doesn't actively
choose evil. It’s this experience of weak will that Paul describes in
Romans: “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I
do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”*”° Doing evil for the sake
of evil is an incoherent idea—it means deliberately doing the oppo-
site of what we consider to be good. But is it even possible to desire
something we don't consider to be good, in one way or another?
As Sartre puts it, youd have to wish for what you don't want and
stop wanting what you wish for.*” It’s a matter of two contrasting
intentions; when an agent does something he knows to be evil, he's
caught in a self-opposition, caught between the knowledge that he’s
doing something he shouldn't do and the fact that he’s chosen to do
it anyway.
Earlier, I discussed a number of thinkers who believe people do
evil because it’s evil, pure and simple, and make this idea into a
paradigmatic conception of evil. There are just as many thinkers
who claim the opposite, however: that people are always motivated
by something that they consider to be good in some way. Thomas
Aquinas writes that a man cannot love something evil without
also thinking it's good.*” Leibniz follows this train of thought and
maintains that the will can only be motivated by a conception of
good, never by evil alone.*!* Hume rejects the concept of “absolute,
unprovoked, disinterested malice”?!*—disinterested, autoteleologi-
cal evil doesn't appear in his works. Rousseau grandly asserts that:
“no one does the bad for the sake of the bad.”> He claims that both
good people and evil people try to do good, but evil people seek
their good at other people’s expense.*"* Kant argues that evil holds
no direct attraction for us, only an indirect one*!”—that is, we do

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evil, but not because it’s evil. We desire evil things because we inter-
pret them as subjective goods.
Thus, we can say that when someone does something he knows
to be evil, evil isn’t the primary attraction. The attraction is some-
thing else. True demonic evil can only be described as disinter-
ested, however, because it has no purpose beyond itself. In my
opinion, therefore, disinterested evil simply doesn’t exist. Inter-
ested evil can spring from envy, jealousy, a sense of injustice, our
desires, etc. Interested evils are purpose-driven. They want to
maintain or restore a condition or gain something that’s lacking.
In these cases, evil actions are motivated. It’s true, of course, that I
can also do something without placing a lot of value on it—most
of the things I do everyday I do habitually, without reflecting on
their moral status. As such, it would be ridiculous to say that all
my actions are initiated because I’m trying to realize some par-
ticular good. Instead, I believe that to the extent to which my
actions are caused by reflection—in which case I can identify a
grounds for action—the grounds for action are somehow related
to the realization of a subjective and/or objective good. Every
wish is tied to some concept of the “good, even if the good is only
good for the agent himself and, in general, can be considered evil.
The satisfaction of desire is good—as in the example of rape and
murder satisfying a desire, and thus having, subjectively, a good
side—though, obviously, rape and murder are certainly evil in
and of themselves.
In other words, I would reduce the category of “demonic” evil
to being a variant of the instrumental. When evil people do evil,
they do so trying to attain some form of good—either for them-
selves or for a group; demonic evil must be associated with in-
strumental evil because of the self-awareness implied by the latter

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category. The difference between instrumental and idealistic evil

agents, furthermore, is not that one desires evil and the other
good: they both desire good. But the idealistic evil agent desires
that which he considers to be objectively good, while the instru-
mental evil agent pursues what he considers to be subjectively
good. The instrumental evil agent, unlike the idealist, knows that
what he does is evil, but chooses to subordinate this knowledge to
a higher purpose.

KANT AND INSTRUMENTAL EVIL

In my discussion of instrumental evil, I have chosen to use Kant’s
theory of radical evil in human nature. As mentioned above,
the instrumental evil agent knows that what he does is evil, but
chooses to subordinate this knowledge to a higher purpose. Kant
clarifies this idea by stating that self-love is prioritized over moral
law. According to Kant, the assumption that human nature con-
tains radical evil is essential to explaining freedom and moral re-
sponsibility.’ In contrast to theories that stumble blindly toward
defining all evil as demonic, the theory of radical evil represents a
step in the right direction . . . But it also suffers from some serious
weaknesses. Among these is the fact that Kant traces evil back to an
inscrutable and unexamined event in human history, something
that—contrary to Kant'’s intentions—threatens to undermine the
moral responsibility people have for their own evil actions. How-
ever, I will argue that these weaknesses can be addressed satisfac-
torily, and that Kant’s theory—with some modifications—provides
a good explanation for the foundational principles of instrumental
evil, and further demonstrates why we are wholly responsible for
actions that take this form of evil.

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The Impossibility of a “Devilish” Will

Kant’s answer to the question of why we do what we shouldn't do is
that we let moral laws—laws formulated by reason, laws that make
us morally responsible beings—become subordinated to sensual
appetites. The search for happiness or the satisfaction of desire are
not in themselves immoral activities. Evil first occurs when the
pursuit of happiness brings about an intentional transgression of
moral law. According to Kant, every transgression of moral law is
accompanied by a respect for moral law. We cannot fully ignore
moral law or replace it with another, evil law: radical evil therefore
takes place when we recognize the authority of moral law, but at the
same time ignore its precepts.*””
Kant believes that agents can only choose what they consider
to be good in some way.” If I'm going to commit an evil action, it
will be because I think the action will help me to satisfy a desire—
that is, evil makes possible the realization of a good. The evil, Kan-
tian agent knows what both subjective and objective good and evil
are, but chooses subjective good over objective good. A common
objection to Kant’s theory is that he overlooks the possibility of
a thoroughly “devilish” will, that is, a will that takes pleasure in
evil for evil’s sake—a form of disinterested evil.**! Kant strongly de-
nies that this type of evil is even possible.” According to Kant, we
choose evil, but we choose it for the sake of something else. Namely,
we choose it for the sake of our own self-love.
Kantian evil is not an extravagant form of evil practiced by dev-
ilish agents. It’s what we might call “everyday evil,’ or ordinary evil.
Radical evil isn’t an extreme form of evil; instead, it’s the basic foun-
dation of every evil action we commit, even the actions that arent
especially noteworthy. Radical evil is the root (radix) of all evil. To
talk about radical evil is not to talk about sadistic actions: Radical-
ism refers to the depths of an individual's moral corruptness; that

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is, when we prioritize self-love over all other considerations. As a

result, radical evil is wholly compatible with living what appears
to a morally exemplary life. If I live the life of a saint simply to be
recognized as a saint by those around me, and not because I think
this life is morally correct, I would be evil, as Kant understands the
word. It should also be pointed out that this theory of radical evil
is also completely compatible with extreme human cruelty. We do
not have to postulate the principle of the devilish will in order to
explain such actions.*” They can be explained in the context of a
steadily increasing self-love, with the result that an agent becomes
more and more morally degenerate. Even the most degenerate
agent, therefore, does evil for the sake of something else—namely,
for the sake of self-love. There are no limits to the consequences
radical evil can have. Indeed, a particularly thought-provoking as-
pect of Kant’s theory of radical evil is that our small, daily offenses
spring from the same source as the cruelest actions.
Kant distinguishes between three levels of evil, although there's a
gradual transition from the first to the third: (1) Weakness or frailty,
where an agent has good intentions but doesn't live up to them; (2)
impurity (Unlauterkeit), where an agent isn’t motivated by morals
alone, but where the motivations are mixed; and (3) wickedness or
perversity, where an agent tends to choose the greatest evil.** The
first two types can be described as unintentional evil and the third
as intentional evil. The fact that the third is described as intentional
evil does not, however, mean the agent chooses evil for its own
sake—instead, he chooses evil because he values himself more than
he values morality.
A central aspect of Kant’s theory of action is what Henry Al-
lison has called “the incorporation thesis.”> An impulse or desire
can determine an agent's ability to choose (Willkiir) if and only
 KANT AND INSTRUMENTAL EVIL

if an agent has chosen to incorporate the desire into his maxims

of conduct.” Therefore, if the desire leads to an action, the agent
must have freely chosen to be guided by their desire. As a result,
sensuality can no longer play the villain in evil’s drama; moral re-
sponsibility presupposes independence from natural causes as de-
terminative sources. Evil ultimately presupposes that a propensity
is deliberately included in a maxim of conduct.*”
Kantian evil, furthermore, belongs neither to psychology nor
cosmology, but rather to the metaphysics of freedom. The root of
evil may be found in free will, but it’s not evil itself (Bdse) that can
be found there, but rather evils (Ubel).°*8 Without free will, there
would be nothing to blame, because nature cannot be subjected to
moral judgments. That is, evil is not external to freedom, but it’s a
possibility that comes with freedom. For Kant, freedom is not de-
fined as the ability to act in defiance of the moral law;*” instead, he
understands freedom fundamentally as our ability to act in accor-
dance with moral law. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that freedom
isn’t also compatible with the ability to defy it.
According to Kant, evil originates in humanity,” and every in-
dividual is responsible for choosing good or evil.**! There are no
external causes that determine actions or fundamental attitudes.
Our innate ability to choose has a single function: to decide on
maxims, that is, our codes of action. Every code of action has
both sensuous and moral determinates, and therefore evil cannot
be said to originate in a maxim of conduct that has sensuous or
moral content.” Instead, evil originates in the form the maxim of
conduct takes. Moral evil originates in the subordination of moral
law to sensuous inclinations, and radical evil is the choice to fol-
low these inclinations. Therefore, radical evil precedes immoral
actions.? This is the subjective basis for the formation of every

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THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF EVIL

immoral maxim of conduct. Moral evil presupposes radical evil,

because radical evil is implied in every maxim that intentionally
breaks with moral law.

The Paradox of Evil

We have freedom of choice, and this is the origin of evil. Every vio-
lation of moral responsibility can only be explained by the fact that
we've chosen a maxim whose basis and consequences are known to
us. If this were not the case, there would be no such thing as moral
evil.*** Thus, we inflict the propensity toward evil on ourselves,**°
but Kant also maintains that we are “evil by nature.’*** The idea of a
freely chosen propensity seems to be self-contradictory, and Kant
is not very successful in resolving this contradiction—where he
otherwise sharply distinguishes between nature and freedom, here
he seems to blend the two together. The concept of a freely chosen
propensity toward evil is paradoxical, and in order to resolve this
paradox the phrase “by nature” must mean something other than it
usually does, because here “nature” is not a given, but a chosen.>’
Kant can be understood as describing evil’s dimension—as it ap-
plies to every person—rather than discussing something naturally
inherent in every human being. According to Kant, a concept of
good is necessary, because moral law is not something we can sim-
ply do away with. Evil, on the other hand, is contingent, although
people cannot simply eradicate the radical evil inside themselves.*"8
In other words, radical evil is both a universal and a contingent
characteristic of being human, and every individual has a propen-
sity to deviate from moral law. However, Kant gives no evidence
for evil’s universality aside from a rather unhelpful gesture toward
“the multitude of crying examples.’ Given Kant’s assertion that
the existence of radical evil cannot be proven empirically, however,

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this rhetorical strategy is rather strange. Kant gives no empirical

evidence to support his claim. The problem here is that our mo-
tives are not empirically observable. At best, we can simply draw
conclusions concerning the motives that formed the basis for an
action, but we can't conclude anything about this motive with ab-
solute certainty.*° This lack of certainty doesn't simply pertain to
other people's motives, but also to our own. What's inside us is no
clearer than what’s outside us, and the motivation behind an ac-
tion will always be partially obscure. In a similar way, we cannot
observe the maxim for an action, though we can use the action
itself to draw conclusions about the maxim and, further, about the
agent's disposition (Gesinnung).*” The judgment that an agent is
evil cannot be proven experientially with absolute certainty, but
only with relative certainty. And even if the relative certainty was
high with regard to a number of agents, the fact would still be in-
sufficient to prove that radical evil is universal.
Humanity may have chosen its propensity toward evil, but Kant
argues we cannot trace this choice back to any one specific point in
time; if we could, we would then be implying a causal relationship
that would ultimately undermine the freedom necessary to make
any subsequent choices. If we are to talk about the origins of evil
in choice, he says, we must understand this origin rationally, not
temporally. Kant uses this argument to avoid answering the ba-
sic question raised by the notion that we have chosen our natures:
At what stage in our development did this supposed choice take
place? However, even focusing on the logical chain of events that
such a choice implies, Kant still manages to get himself caught in a
number of difficulties.
Radical evil presupposes a consciousness of moral law. If an agent
cant understand the requirements of moral law, there's no reason

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to attribute evil to him. The origin of his or her evil is some-

thing an agent must be able to take responsibility for. Therefore, the
source of evil cannot be located in the fact that I’m an individual
being—that is, the source is not in my physical nature, in my ratio-
nal nature, or in any combination of the two. The source must be
found in choice, and this choice must have been an informed one.
As a result, it must be assumed that when I act, ’'m aware of both
principles involved in the choice: moral law and self-love. In and
of itself, moral law does not motivate an agent's actions. Instead,
the consciousness of moral law provides a basis for decision. This
consciousness is imparted through a respect for moral law. But how
do we come by this respect? For Kant, the only possible answer is:
through the violation of moral law. It’s the violation itself that gives
me insight into my freedom. According to Kant, the disgust that
I feel when I act immorally tells me that I’m free and obligated to
moral law.
We're acquainted with moral law because it affects our sensibili-
ties, and the respect we feel for moral law is imparted through the
feeling of guilt. Our only access to moral law is through a feeling of
guilt. According to Kant, this idea is applicable to even the most
morally degenerate person.** I’m guilty, and therefore I’m free. If
the question is, what am I guilty of? The answer seems to be: I’m
guilty of violating moral law. But how can I be guilty of violating
a law I wasn't even aware of? As it is written in Romans: “[W]here
there is no law there is no transgression [.. .] for before the law was
given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when
there is no law.”*° A person can do something that, considered ob-
jectively, they obviously should not have done, even if they have
no knowledge of the law. However, without knowing the law, they
cannot be considered guilty, insofar as ignorance is something they

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cant be held responsible for. If a person was responsible for his or

her own ignorance, we could accuse them by saying: “You should
have known that . . 2”; but this accusation is completely illogical if
the responsible party was incapable of knowing any better—and
this is exactly the case with an individual agent before they violate
moral law. They could not have known any better. Since conscious-
ness of moral law is only attained post factum, after moral law has
already been violated and the feeling of guilt sets in, the so-called
“original choice” must have taken place before we even knew about
moral law, says Kant. At this point in the discussion, however, we've
lost the ability to use the word choice in any meaningful way.
In exercising our ability to choose, we choose maxims that are
either moral or immoral. There is no morally neutral maxim or
action.” We cannot imagine anything that precedes this choice or
that motivates it. We want to find an explanation for why people
choose evil, but Kant only gives a formal description without mak-
ing reference to any concrete rationale. This omission is due to the
fact that such reasons would undermine the status of active choice
as something spontaneous and autonomous. The problem, how-
ever, is that we're now left with the idea of a choice with no reason
behind it, and therefore a choice we are in no position to try and
understand. We haven't come any closer to explaining why we ap-
parently choose evil. Kant is well aware of the limits of his discourse,
and emphasizes the fact that the original choice of evil is character-
_ ized by “inscrutability,’ by the fact that we can find “no conceivable
ground” for it. But reference to a given inscrutability is unaccept-
able in a theory that professes to be rationally acceptable.
Kant, however, points to the inscrutability of the original choice
of evil in order to avoid an obvious regress problem. An agents dis-
position is the broadest, most general maxim that forms the basis

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for choosing all other, more specific maxims.*”” However, it's clear
that this maxim of disposition will imply earlier maxims that form
the basis for the choice of later maxims. In the context of our dis-
cussion, this means that there can be no original choice of evil, be-
cause every choice implies a previous choice: You must be evil in
order to become evil. As mentioned above, Kant is aware of this
regress problem,°*° but he chooses to solve it in an unsatisfactory
way by postulating that the original choice has already taken place
and that it cannot be explored further.
Radical evil is paradoxical, because the original choice it implies
is only possible in light of presuppositions that have already taken
place. It’s a choice that presupposes itself. As a result, an individual
seems to be both responsible and not responsible for their own
evil. Normally, a person chooses to accept such a paradox, without
privileging one side over the other; this possibility, however, is not
available to Kant. He cannot find any middle position, because then
the motivation for evil is indefinite and an agent's status will vacil-
late between autonomy and heteronomy. In Kant’s moral universe,
the responsibility is either mine or it is’t. To take an indefinite
position with regard to autonomy and heteronomy would be the
same thing as choosing heteronomy. The basic question is whether
an agent's actions are an expression of his freedom, and this ques-
tion can only be answered positively if the agent has freely chosen
his essential disposition. In the meantime, Kant hasn't been able to
convincingly demonstrate the existence of such free choice.
Kant's stubborn belief in an originally chosen evil propensity
seems to rely on two premises: (1) We accuse agents of acting
according to immoral maxims, and these maxims are the result
of an immoral propensity; (2) such accusations are legitimate
because agents have chosen their propensity. The first premise is

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comparatively unproblematic, because it certainly is a fact that

we accuse one another. The other premise, however, is extremely
suspect, because Kant has in no way provided a clear explanation
for how such choice would even be possible.

Moral Rebirth
We've already seen that Kant does not succeed in giving a con-
vincing explanation of how an original choice of evil is possible.
However, this does not necessarily imply that he still can't justify
the concept of moral responsibility. Even if we can't be held re-
sponsible for being evil, we can conceivably be accused of remain-
ing evil instead of working to become better people. This would
be the case if we were capable of choosing a good disposition over
an evil one. Unfortunately, this possibility is denied to us, because
radical evil corrupts the basis for the formulation of all maxims.**'
An individual might want to form a maxim in order to change
their disposition, but this does not seem to be feasible, since the
basis for formulating all maxims has already been contaminated.
That is, if every formulation of a good maxim has already been
undermined, there seems to be no possibility of overcoming our
propensity to evil.
However, Kant argues that people do have the ability to overcome
their propensity toward evil, and bases this idea on the logic that,
as we have a duty to overcome evil, duty would not demand some-
thing of us that we were not capable of giving.*’ Should presup-
poses can, and if something is truly our duty, we should be capable
of living up to it. Therefore, according to Kant, it should be pos-
sible to triumph over evil—yet such a triumph demands nothing
less than a revolution in an agent’s disposition, and this revolution
presupposes divine assistance.*’ Kant continues that people must

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do everything in their power to make themselves worthy of such

assistance, and thereafter they can only hope to receive it: there's no
guarantee. In Kant’s moral anthropology, it’s clear that people are
simply unable to overcome evil on their own, and in this respect
the duty becomes less burdensome. People should try to overcome
evil, but they should not be blamed for failing. After all, it’s ridicu-
lous to accuse someone for not having received divine assistance.
Only by receiving such assistance will agents be completely free.
Complete freedom is a gift from God, and until this gift is given,
agents will only be partially free.
Evil therefore seems unavoidable, and we need more than mo-
rality and human will to overcome it. How, then, can morality be
as independent of religion as Kant claims? In his preface to the
first edition of Religion, Kant argues that his moral philosophy is
completely independent of religious doctrine and that people don't
need a higher power to transform themselves into good, moral
agents.*** However, we have never seen Kant prove this assertion.
In my opinion, there's no doubt that Kant fails in his attempt to
explain the possibility of evil and humanity’s responsibility for it.
He has not given a rationally satisfactory answer for how a person
is responsible for choosing a propensity toward evil, since he has
not managed to demonstrate that such a choice exists in the first
place. Furthermore, he has not explained how this choice would
even be possible. He also lacks a rationally acceptable explanation
of how the propensity to evil can be overcome—that is, of how we
can become better people.
The main problem here is that Kant presupposes a basic choice
between good and evil, a choice that all other actions more or less
result from, since this choice lays the groundwork for the formu-
lation of all maxims. With that, the focus is shifted from concrete

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active choice to the original choice at the foundation of all active

choices. Kant first assumes that we've all chosen our basic pro-
pensity toward good or evil, and second that this choice becomes
the basis for all further maxim formulation. Both assumptions
are, in my opinion, doubtful—or, rather, Kant’s first assumption
makes the second suspect. Kant only sees two possibilities: a per-
son is either good or evil.** It’s more plausible, however, that all
people—both in the depths and on the surface—are good and
evil, instead of having chosen good or evil. A person lives, acts,
and is shaped by the life they lead. In being shaped, they develop
a character. But at no time can we pinpoint the decisive choice of
a character that’s good or evil. Some people lean more towards
good, others more towards evil, but all people choose both good
and evil. This is an idea that Kant would not necessarily disagree
with; he maintains that even the worst person has a kernel of
good inside him, but he formulates his theory in such a way that
absolute priority is given either to the good or to the evil in every
person. It’s this absolute prioritizing that I’m skeptical of. Within
our own individual situations, we choose between good and evil,
and even if a person’s disposition guides the choices they make,
every person still has the possibility to choose good instead of
evil. Freedom, the ability to have acted differently in a given situ-
ation, is inherent in every situation where there is choice. It’s this
freedom that Kant goes a long way towards undermining when
he asserts that the supposed original choice of evil undermines
all further maxim formulation. In short, Kant creates unneces-
sary problems for himself. He postulates that we originally chose
our propensity to evil in order to say we bear responsibility for
this propensity, since, according to his theory, choice alone lays
the groundwork for responsibility. But if this propensity is not

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developed as an either/or, but instead as a both/and, then the

principle of responsibility can still be upheld by the fact that a
person is always responsible for bettering himself because a per-
son can better himself.
Kant’s theory has a limited scope. It essentially applies only
to agents who know that what they’re doing is wrong—or more
pointedly, to instrumental evil agents. Therefore, it must be supple-
mented by other theories, both in the idealistic form—where an
agent believes that what he does is good—and in stupid evil, where
an agent does not stop to think about whether his activities are
good or evil.

THE EVIL IS THE OTHER—IDEALISTIC EVIL

According to Ernest Becker, “man’s natural and inevitable urge to
deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes
of human evil.*** In my opinion, this idea is extremely speculative
and lacks evidence. I do not believe that most people have any real
desire to appear “heroic,” and instead of denying death, we largely
recognize it as an unavoidable fact of our lives. On the other hand,
I do believe that Becker comes close to an essential insight in the
following passage:

But men are truly sorry creatures because they have made
death conscious. They can see evil in anything that wounds
them, causes ill health, or even deprives them of pleasure.
Consciousness means too that they have to be preoccu-
pied with evil even in the absence of any immediate dan-
ger; their lives become a meditation on evil and a planned
venture for controlling it and forestalling it.

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The result is one of the greatest tragedies of human ex-

istence, what we might call the need to “fetishize evil? to
locate the threat to life in some special place where it can
be controlled. It is tragic precisely because it is sometimes
very arbitrary: men make fantasies about evil, see it in
the wrong places, and destroy themselves and others by
uselessly thrashing about.**

In my opinion, ideas about evil have caused more evil than just
about anything else. Projects intended to overcome both illusory
and actual evils have brought far more evil into the world than
any straightforward attempt at transgression. Human aggression
is driven more by ideas than by hormones. As human beings,
we struggle to find meaning; in seeking meaning and in creating
meaning, we create ideas that become bases for action. Two of our
most central concepts are “good” and “evil,” and these are often
correlated with the difference between “us” and “them.” Devils, or
evil people, are always others—never oneself.
In a fragment, Novalis argues that people do evil because they
hate evil: that they perceive everything to be evil and subsequently
become destructive,*** which destructiveness rebounds back on
themselves and strengthens their worldview. In attempting to over-
come evil, people introduce evil into the world. Now, I don’t mean
to argue here that all evil is imaginary: our actions cause real evils,
and we ourselves suffer real evils. I further believe that we do in-
deed have a duty to fight these evils—but it’s tragic that we so often
introduce more evil into the world by attacking something we have
mistakenly judged to be evil itself.
Throughout history, we have repeatedly seen the catastrophic re-
sults of the desire to cleanse the earth of something people consider

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to be evil incarnate. As Norman Cohn points out, there’s a thought-

provoking continuity between the witch and heretic trials of the
middle ages and the Renaissance and the Nazi mass extermina-
tions.?® The innocent people who were condemned for witch-
craft and heresy and then burned at the stake were persecuted by
people who believed they stood on the side of good—and people
who resort to violence often see themselves as representatives of
the good: fighting for a just cause. This was undoubtedly the case
with many of the Christian crusaders; it’s also the case with to-
day’s terrorists. From the victim’s perspective, however, the situa-
tion appears to be quite different. Nietzsche writes that whatever
happens because of love happens beyond good and evil.*® I find
it difficult to agree with this idea. An overwhelming amount of
the evil in the world happens because of love—love of self, love
of family and friends, love of country, love of an abstract ideal, or
love of a leader. Nothing that we do, regardless of motivation, is
beyond good and evil. And some conceptions of good are them-
selves, in fact, evil.

"Us" vs. “Them’

We structure the world and define ourselves through opposed ideas
such as Christian/heretic, man/woman, Norwegian/foreigner,
Aryan/Jew, Greek/barbarian, white/black, Hutu/Tutsi, etc.**! These
concept pairs distinguish first and foremost between “us” and
“them,” and vary with different historical, geographical, and social
contexts. The distinction between “us” and “them” is essential for
identity formation. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these
concept pairs, even if some distinctions are undeniably more arbi-
trary than others. The problem is that these concept pairs are often
interpreted asymmetrically, and form the basis for discrimination.

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The German lawyer and philosopher Carl Schmitt writes: “Every

religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms
into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings
effectively according to friend and enemy: Schmitt finds that
this idea has dramatic consequences: for him, political is defined
as the separation between friend and foe. A political action origi-
nates in the preservation of self and the destruction of whatever
threatens the self, and there’s little room for overcoming opposition
through discussion. Such political action is the right of the state
alone, which may, in order to preserve itself, likewise eliminate en-
emies within—that is, anyone who doesn't fit into its homogeneous
whole.
Novalis, in turn, describes evil as isolating, as the principle of
separation (Princip der Trennung).°° The word “devil” comes from
the Greek verb diabellein, which means to distinguish between
or divide. Evil takes place when human bonds are broken, when
concrete relationships crumble for the sake of abstract identifica-
tions. When we divide the world into sheep and goats, **4 into good
and evil, the sheep—the self-proclaimed good—have a tendency
to subject the goats to the worst imaginable treatment. In doing
so, the sheep’s group identity is made stronger, something that
forms the basis for new and better identification of goats. Violence
brings groups together. Philip Gourevitch, for example, describes
genocide as an exercise in team building.*® We have a tendency to
“forget” the wrongs that are done to people we've labeled as “evil”
After the Second World War there was widespread agreement that
the Germans were evil, and the incarceration and forced deporta-
tion of around 11.5 million Germans from Czechoslovakia and
Poland didn't disturb too many people. They weren't even dis-
turbed by the fact that around 2.5 million of these Germans died

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under conditions so brutal they bore a striking resemblance to

Nazi practice.* However, most of the Germans who were forcibly
deported had not actively taken part in the war or the persecu-
tions; in fact, most were women and children. Nonetheless, they
were German and therefore considered to be “evil” This pattern
repeated itself in the summer of 1995 when 250,000 Serbs were
driven out of Croatia. The Serbs were considered “evil, and very
few tears were shed for their fate.*°”
The fact that the other is evil is oftentimes regarded as sufficient
reason to use more or less any means necessary to combat him.
However, the fact that “the other” is evil doesn’t mean that “we”
are necessarily good.*® It’s entirely possible that both sides are evil.
This is a basic, but essential point. Even if we have good reason to
describe “the other” as evil, we cannot use the fact of their evil as
a guarantee that whatever means we use to fight them is good. Of
course, this latter conclusion is all too common. A famous example
from recent history is Osama bin Laden’s assertion that he repre-
sents a “good terrorism,” because he fights the United State's “evil
terrorism.” For the idealistic evil agent, it’s often not only morally
permitted, but morally imperative to harm the other in the service of
good, because the other embodies an evil that must be fought. That
bin Laden believes this is perfectly clear. In an interview from May
1998, he said that it was the duty of every Muslim to kill American
soldiers and civilians, as well as all their allies. He justified this as-
sertion by emphasizing that the United States hadn't distinguished
between military and civilian casualties, men and women, adults
and children, for example in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bin Laden
is correct that the United States is guilty of serious war crimes—the
United States cannot allow itself to ignore the difference between
military and civilian targets—but that doesn't justify the fact that he

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himself has sacrificed thousands of American lives in protest against

the injustices he believes the United States government and lifestyle
represent. The brutality of the terrorists’ actions on September 11
is irreconcilable with the idea that these actions were motivated by
the good. What good could ever come from such means? The re-
sult was nothing but destruction. It is natural to believe that anyone
who murders thousands of innocent people must realize that what
they do is evil, but even the most basic moral understanding will
crumble in the face of ideological conviction. The world is a com-
plicated place, but in theories about evil, this complexity is often re-
duced to a single binary opposition—the world becomes little more
than a metaphysical drama between good and evil. There’s good and
there’s evil, and no other alternative is possible.
Religion is often polarizing, leading to people of other faiths be-
ing demonized as evil. Since evil must be fought, these other faiths
seem legitimate objects of persecution. The perpetrator is “good”
and the victim is “evil.” The Crusades are a clear example of this
idea, but we can also cite more recent examples. On February 25,
1994, Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Muslims at prayer in He-
bron, killing and wounding 130 people. Goldstein was convinced
that he represented the good and that Muslims were evil—and
many Jewish settlers supported his actions and hailed him as a
hero. Goldstein is only one of countless examples, and I could just
as easily have chosen a Muslim perpetrator. There's a clear Biblical
precedent for the type of action Goldstein carried out. For example,
in Numbers there’s an account of the Israelite war against the Midi-
anites. Were told that Moses grew angry when he found out his
soldiers had killed the Midianite men, but had let the women and
children live. At that, Moses gives the order that every child down
to the last newborn baby should be slain, as well as all the women

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who had ever slept with a man. The rest of the women, however,
would be taken as slaves.*”° In Genesis, we find a similar command
regarding the treatment of the Amalekites. The only difference is
that, in this case, absolutely everyone must be wiped out: ““‘Now
ae

go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that be-
longs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women,
children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. ”*”’ The
Bible contains many similar episodes.*”
A notable trait of such exterminations is that the relationship be-
tween attacker and victim is reversed in the attacker's eyes, so that
the attacker becomes the “actual” victim. The blame rests on the
shoulders of the victim, who is represented as and considered to
be the aggressor. As Arne Johan Vetlesen points out, this reversal
was the case in every genocide in the twentieth century.*” For the
most part, it stems from the inner logic of group thinking: Morally
evil traits and practices are often ascribed to “the other; although
there’s no support for the accusations; a sense of group belonging
is created from and based on judgments regarding one’s own group
in opposition to other groups.*“ To white colonials, the natives
often appeared as “evil” savages who, among other things, were
cannibalistic—a perception that was seldom accurate—while Afri-
cans often mistook the white colonials for the same. Many thought
that white men salted and smoked human flesh, made cheese from
brains, and red wine from blood. On the slave transport ships, pris-
oners even died because they refused to eat food made from what
they believed to be human flesh.*” Both sides were in agreement as
to the other’s corruption.
This tendency toward differentiation can best be explained by
taking Benedict Anderson's concept of “imagined community” as
a point of departure. The community is imagined because most

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members of a single group have never had contact, nor ever will
have contact, with one another. In fact, most members of the
group wont even have heard of the others. Nonetheless, they have
a feeling of group identity,°*” as a single aspect or trait shared by
a number of people has been elevated until it becomes the basis
for community. This trait, arbitrarily chosen from a multitude of
traits, abruptly constitutes an essential difference, motivating the
differentiation between “us” and everyone else on the planet—and
the vast number of other traits “we” and “they” might otherwise
have in common are summarily set aside. For example, it was pre-
cisely the concept of imagined communities that blew up in ev-
eryone’ face in the former Yugoslavia. Practically speaking, both
sides spoke the same language and belonged to the same group
of “Slavs.” Well might we wonder what trait it could have been
that united the groups against one another. The conflict has been
blamed on historical and religious differences, yet before 1989, it
hadn't occurred to most ordinary Yugoslavians to give those differ-
ences much thought. That is to say, the differences were essentially
created in a rather short period of time—but they were enough to
turn friend into foe and drive one group of people to persecute
another.?” One imagined community motivated the persecution
of another imagined community.
Characteristics that distinguish “us” from “them” can be as
trivial as cheering for different soccer teams. The 1985 tragedy at
Heysel Stadium in Brussels, where Juventus faced off against Liv-
erpool and thirty-eight people were killed in the bleachers, showed
just how catastrophic the us/them binary can be. There are other
examples, such as the war between Honduras and EI Salvador in
1969, which was provoked by two qualification matches in the
World Championship. The two countries, of course, already had a

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long history of conflict—nonetheless, the war lasted one hundred

hours and cost around six thousand lives.*”* One of the most ex-
treme examples of a sports-based conflict, however, occurred in
Constantinople in the seventh century.*” The large hippodrome in
Constantinople was used for chariot races, and the chariots were
painted blue and green to distinguish them. Fans quickly began
identifying themselves with these colors, and in no time at all two
groups had formed: the blue group and the green group. After a
while, these divisions became associated with political and reli-
gious leanings—in part because Emperor Anastasius, who had
been condemned by the Pope as a heretic, supported the greens.
As a result, all greens were regarded as heretics. Steadily, the green
and blue camps became more and more fanatical, until finally, dur-
ing a religious festival near the end of Anastasius’s reign, the greens
murdered three thousand blues. Anastasius was succeeded by Jus-
tin, who was succeeded by Justinian, who happened to support the
blues. The tension between the greens and the blues continued, and
in the year 532 there were huge riots in the hippodrome—riots that
ended with the murder of 30,000 greens.
Thus, the perceived difference between “us” and “them” can be
based on extremely insignificant details. Often, it’s a case of what
Freud calls the “narcissism of minor differences.” Inspired by
Freud, Michael Ignatieff argues that the degree of animosity be-
tween two groups is inversely proportional to the degree of differ-
ence between them—but this is not strictly true.**' You can have
great differences and a smaller or greater degree of animosity, or
small differences and a smaller or greater degree of animosity. Tre-
mendously small differences, differences so small they seem ut-
terly irrelevant to outsiders, can create intense hatred, but one does
not necessarily follow from the other. Nonetheless, the difference

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between “us” and “them, which is often based on the most trivial
characteristics, can and does lead to systematic discrimination.”
Even if the quality that forms the basis for categorization is not
an ethically relevant quality, it results in ethical consequences. In
the most extreme cases—such as the Jewish persecutions—moral
categories were generally considered to be applicable to an in-
dividual’s own group, while the other group was excluded from
the moral arena. The classical, Aristotelian principle that says
relevantly equal cases should be treated as equal, and relevantly
unequal cases as unequal is systematically undermined by group
solidarity.
To use Aristotle's expression, human beings are political animals,
and we tend to live in herds.**? Group solidarity seems to be a basic
human necessity, but it becomes dangerous when the group be-
comes too tightly knit, when individuals in the group stop thinking
as individuals and therefore stop reflecting on the group’s values,
ideals, and actions. When the difference between “us” and “them”
is truly established, individuals will often substitute the groups val-
ues and judgments for their own. The need for individual reflection
disappears, and thinking for yourself can even seem disloyal to the
group. Groups are dangerous because a mass does not have a con-
science—conscience always belongs to an individual alone—and
therefore individuals in a group seem to have broken free of the de-
mands of morality.*** Emerson describes how the mob deliberately
deprives itself of reason and, therefore, becomes like an animal.”
Group identity triumphs over individual, moral reflection. To sur-
render individuality means to surrender the capacity for thought,
and vice versa. You must consider yourself to be an individual in
order to recognize the other as an individual—depersonalization
of the self leads to the depersonalization of the other.

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William Blake writes: “[N]one can see the man in the enemy
[...] I cannot love my enemy for my enemy is not man but beast
& devil.”**° It’s difficult to see an enemy as an individual, because
the idea of “enemy” gets in the way of the idea of common human-
ity. You shouldn't kill another human being, but when the other
is seen as a monster, it’s often considered acceptable to eradicate
this threat. Recognizing the humanity of each and every person
is therefore essential—or, rather: It’s essential not to lose sight of a
person’s humanity in view of ideologies or group identity. As Tz-
vetan Todorov writes:

Someone who sees no resemblance between himself and

his enemy, who believes that all the evil is in the other and
none in himself, is tragically destined to resemble his en-
emy. But someone who, recognizing evil in himself, dis-
covers that he is like his enemy is truly different. By re-
fusing to see the resemblance, we reinforce it; by admit-
ting it we diminish it. The more I think I’m different, the
more I am the same; the more I think I’m the same, the
more I’m different . . .**”

Violent Individuals
The tendency to separate people into categories of “good” and “evil”
is obvious in cases of group violence, but this tendency can also be
found among individuals. It is easier to understand group violence
than individual violence, because the former can be blamed on
pressure in the group, a common goal, or something similar—but
how can we explain individual violence? It’s not uncommon to
blame a perceived threat or low self-esteem for an individual's ag-
gressive tendencies and violent nature,*** but these are in no way
obvious conclusions. There’s no proven connection between “low

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self-esteem” and violent behavior.** The typical “badass” who

chooses a specific target that they then subject to physical and/or
psychological attack is not necessarily compensating for an insecu-
rity complex. Instead, they are often rather confident people with
high self-esteem.>” Perhaps you could say that their self-image is
unstable; therefore, they try to bolster it by dominating others. If
something threatens their self-image, it can be interpreted as a per-
sonal humiliation, and aggression could then be described as an
inverted humiliation. Instead of suffering the humiliation, the indi-
vidual targets the person they believe to have caused it.
“Violence” is a notoriously unclear concept. It’s difficult to give it
an unambiguous definition.*! Physical violence is at least limited:
brutal, painful, and directed at the body. Ted Honderich defines
violence as the abnormal use of force.*”? My definition of violence,
however, is as follows: the intent to inflict harm or pain on a sensi-
ble being against their will. The question then becomes: Why does
this occur? We can find an infinite number of reasons to attack
another person. Usually self-control holds us back, but sometimes
we lose this self-control. I want to underscore, however, that we
choose to lose control—that is, losing control is an active, rather
than a passive action.” This idea is illustrated by the fact that most
people who “lose” control don’t lose it completely, but are able to
stop themselves before they seriously harm anyone. Normally, a
person loses their self-control when they believe they have suffered
some form of injustice. Violence does not only create chaos, it also
creates order. In a sense, violence is typically an attempt to create
order out of chaos: to restore a balance that has been lost.
All actions, furthermore, are situational. That is, they take place
in the context of a given situation that has been evaluated before-
hand by an agent. One the most informative studies on violent
criminality, Lonnie Athens’s Violent Criminal Acts and Actors, puts

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“situation” at the center of its analysis. The main point that Athens's
study makes is that violent actions should not be understood as
resulting from unconscious motives, inner conflicts, sudden pas-
sions, or the like, but instead as results of consciously constructed
strategies of action formed by individuals who judge their situation
to be one where violence is called for. In other words, violence isn't
something that suddenly breaks out, that happens unreflectively.
Instead, violence is the result of a decision, of a particular interpre-
tation of events. Athens distinguishes between four different types
of interpretation that tend to lead to violence:

(1) Physically Defensive: Where an individual believes vio-

lence is the only thing that will prevent someone from
hurting the individual or others.
(2) Frustrative: The individual believes that the victim is at-
tempting to hinder an action the individual wants to carry
out, or possibly that the victim is attempting to force them
to do something they don't want to do. The individual
sees violence as the only means to make what they want
to happen happen. The desired action can be a robbery, a
rape, or something similar.
Malefic: The individual believes that the victim is express-
ing a malicious intent and that the victim is trying to hu-
miliate or mock them. Violence appears to be an accept-
able response to such maliciousness.
Frustrative-malefic: These types of interpretation are a
combination of (2) and (3). The individual believes the
victim is attempting to prevent them from acting in a cer-
tain way or is forcing them to act in a certain way, and this
fact can be attributed to the victim’s maliciousness.

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Athens gives a number of concrete examples for each of these

judgments. In every case, the perpetrator considered himself to be
“good” and the victim to be “evil” As a general rule, depictions
of unmotivated violence can only be found in the victim’ descrip-
tions of what took place. A victim will talk about “unprovoked
evil; while the perpetrator will usually refer to a specific, previous
provocation. In reality, so-called “unprovoked evil” is almost al-
ways brought about by mutual aggression, and there is often reason
to blame both the victim and the perpetrator for the violent result.
A study of 159 murders, where each murder was unconnected to
other criminal activity, showed that in most cases the victim had
acted aggressively and so contributed to the tragic outcome.” The
overall picture this study paints is supported by a number of other
studies: The descriptions of both victim and perpetrator are biased
in the sense that victims tend to describe the situation as worse,
and the perpetrator as better, than an objective witness might
describe it. It’s a rare moment when those who do evil recognize
their actions as evil. In other words, evil is almost never found in
a perpetrator’s self-image, but only in the eyes of victim and wit-
ness. Therefore, one’s own conscience is not an infallible source of
information on the subject.’” There will often be an enormous dif-
ference between the motives the perpetrator thinks he has, and the
motives the victim accuses the perpetrator of having. The perpe-
trator will often find his own motives good, because he has judged
his victim to be “evil.” while the victim judges the perpetrator’s mo-
tives to be unconditionally “evil” themselves.
Jack Katz emphasizes that—with the exception of hit-and-runs,
as well as of murders committed in connection with robbery and
such—the typical murder tends to be motivated by some notion
of the good.” He cites a number of cases where perpetrators, who
saw themselves as representatives of the good, murdered people

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they thought had either challenged or violated the good by being

unfaithful, trespassing on personal property, insulting someone
or something, etc. At the moment of action, murderers almost al-
ways see their own behavior as justified, although afterwards they
often realize that what they did was wrong. Some interpretations
are better than others, and Athens’s study doesn't ever discuss the
fact that it’s often merely a case of misinterpretation that leads
to violence—that sometimes a person attributes motives to an-
other person which they simply didn't have. Interpretations that
motivate violent actions often suffer from one of the following
weaknesses: (1) Agents interpret all statements and gestures to be
directed at them personally, which is only the seldom the case; (2)
agents only focus on the aspects of a situation that support their
interpretation of the situation, and ignore aspects that contradict
it; and (3) their particular interpretation leads to a systematic
distortion, where even good intentions appear to be malicious.
However, Athens’s study does shed light on why such misinter-
pretations take place. The answer is linked to the perpetrator’s
self-image: a crucial factor in determining whether a person will
resort to violence—and, if so, how far they'll go.°* Individuals
with non-violent self-images typically resort to violence only in
the context of interpretation (1), while people with violent self-
images tend to resort to violence on the basis of all four of Ath-
ens interpretations. In short, people who consider themselves
to be violent are far more likely to decide that a given situation
requires a violent response—and people who consider themselves
to be violent are generally more likely to judge others to be vio-
lent. Even though we would like to think that knowing ourselves
allows us to know others, then, the truth is that self-knowledge is
ultimately limited to the self.

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A weakness with Athens’s study is that it generally considers the

different interpretations as honest, and therefore doesn't allow for
cases where a given judgment functions as pure excuse. There are
people who just like to mistreat other people. Their attacks don't
have any use value: they offer no economic gain, they're not un-
dertaken in self-defense, nor are they a reaction to some humili-
ation. The action itself is simply “enjoyable?*”? And yet, violence
always needs an excuse, a rationale—not just to justify one’s actions
to other people, but also to oneself. When we accidentally bump
into someone on the street, most of us quickly say we're sorry. For
some people, however, this is a good excuse to punch someone.
The punch is not a reaction to the offence—it was already present
as desire; all it lacked was an excuse to legitimate it. The movement
from desire to action requires a link, something that will legitimate
the action and allow blame to be placed on the shoulders of an
opponent. At this point, however, we are again approaching the
concept of sadism, as discussed earlier.

ARENDT AND STUPID EVIL

Up until this point, we have limited our discussion to agents who
act in keeping with or in struggle against what they perceive as
good and evil. The instrumental evil agent knows what evil is, and
intentionally does evil because he wishes to achieve some good for
himself, whether that be economic gain or the satisfaction of some
desire. I have also argued that, in reality, demonic evil is a variation
of instrumental evil. In contrast, the idealistic evil actor believes
that he represents the good, and that his victims are evil. How-
ever, there are still some agents that do not fit the definitions of
instrumental or idealistic evil. This was the agent Hannah Arendt

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saw when she watched the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. She
writes:

I was struck by a manifest shallowness in the doer that

made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his
deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds
were monstrous, but the doer—at least the very effective
one now on trial—was quite ordinary, commonplace, and
neither demonic nor monstrous. There was no sign in him
of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives,
and the only notable characteristic one could detect in
his past behavior as well as in his behavior during the trial
and throughout the pre-trial police examination was
something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but
thoughtlessness.4°

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many

were like him, and that the many were neither perverted
nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terri-
fyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institu-
tions and of our moral standards of judgment, this nor-
mality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities
put together, for it implies [.. .] that this new type of crim-
inal [. . .] commits his crimes under circumstances that
make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel
that he is doing wrong.*”

The problem with understanding Eichmann was that he did not

have the “demonic” traits you would expect to find in a person who
was guilty of such terrible crimes. He did not seem like much of a

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fanatic. He did not have the classic “evil” characteristics you might
have assumed hed have—in fact, he didn’t have much character at
all. Arendt develops her concept of the banality of evil to try and
understand this person without personality.
Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil has been much dis-
cussed, but the idea itself is nonetheless unclear and for the most
part undeveloped. As far as I can tell, the expression only occurs
three times in the course of her controversial book on Eichmann,
and one of those is in the title.* The idea is made somewhat
clearer in the introduction to the first volume of Life of the Mind,
entitled “Thinking,”*” but is still rather fuzzy. Arendt does em-
phasize that the idea wasn’t meant to make a theoretical contri-
bution to the discourse surrounding the nature of evil,** but I
don’t think this means the idea itself might not be useful for the-
oretical development. As a result, it’s been cited in most philo-
sophical works concerning evil over the last forty-five years—and
yet, Arendt’s “theory” of evil’s banality is still so undeveloped
that I’ve turned to other sources to shed light on it. This section,
therefore, is not solely limited to Arendt. And of course, with
regard to the banality of evil, she certainly never meant to imply
that this is the only form of evil that exists; it’s only one form,
but it’s true that it happens to occupy a center stage in moder-
nity. Arendt also emphasizes that though her point of departure
was a single individual, Adolf Eichmann, her text is meant to
have wider significance and to help us understand “a new type of
criminal. In order to form a picture that is more representa-
tive of this criminal, we can cite two other central participants
in the Jewish exterminations: Rudolf Héss, who commanded
Auschwitz, and Franz Stangl, who commanded Sobibor and Tre-
blinka. Eichmann, Héss, and Stangl immediately strike me as

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three very different personalities, but they functioned in essen-

tially the same way during the Jewish exterminations, and gave
many of the same excuses afterward. In addition, as we progress,
well take a closer look at other examples: foot soldiers who took
part in the slaughter in Eastern Europe and American soldiers
during Vietnam, among others.

The Evil and the Stupid

Arendt's idea of the banality of evil is a completely secularized con-
ception of the concept. It bears no trace of any transcendent quali-
ties. Her idea is commonly considered to be an innovation in theo-
ries of evil, but it’s not entirely without precedent. To Socrates and
Plato, those who do evil can only be blamed for lacking insight into
the good, and to Aristotle, an evil agent is simply someone who has
misunderstood what the good is. There are a host of later thinkers
with similar viewpoints. In more than one place, Francois de La
Rochefoucauld draws a connection between evil and stupidity,
and Pascal describes it as especially evil to be “full of [shortcom-
ings] and unwilling to recognize them, since this entails the further
evil of deliberate self-delusion.”“” Baudelaire also ties together evil
and stupidity: “There can never be any excuse for being wicked,
but there is some merit in knowing that one is being wicked; and
the most irreparable of vices consists in doing evil through stupid-
ity.’*°* Camus writes: “The evil that is in the world always comes of
ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevo-
lence, if they lack understanding?”*”
The notion of the banality of evil doesn’t so much follow the path
of thinking wrongly or lacking knowledge as not thinking at all.
This idea, for example, is more pronounced in Giacomo Leopardi:

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He said that negligence and thoughtlessness are the cause

of an infinite number of cruel and evil actions [. . . ]He
was of the opinion that in men thoughtlessness is much
more common than cruelty, inhumanity, and the like and
that a substantial part of the behavior and of the actions
of man which are attributed to some innate wickedness
are actually due to thoughtlessness.*””

In my opinion, however, this viewpoint is best described in Dietrich

Bonhoeffer’s letters and memoirs from prison, where he sat until
he was executed just before Germany’s surrender for participat-
ing in an assassination attempt on Hitler. In his memoirs, there is
a passage entitled “Of Folly,’ which I have never seen cited in any
of the literature I’ve read on evil, and which deserves to be cited
(almost) in its entirety:

Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil.

One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and,
if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the
seeds of its own destruction, as it makes people, at the
least, uncomfortable. Against folly we have no defense.
Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no
use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply
be disbelieved—indeed, the fool can counter by criticiz-
ing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be
pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct
from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied; in fact,
he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much
to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated
‘more cautiously than a scoundrel; we shall never again

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try to convince a fool by reason, for it is both useless and

dangerous.
If we are to deal adequately with folly, we must try to
understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is a
moral rather than an intellectual defect. There are people
who are mentally agile but foolish, and people who are
mentally slow but very far from foolish—a discovery that
we make to our surprise as a result of particular situations.
We thus get the impression that folly is likely to be, not a
congenital defect, but one that is acquired in certain cir-
cumstances where people make fools of themselves or al-
low others to make fools of them. We notice further that
this defect is less common in the unsociable and solitary
than in individuals or groups that are inclined or-con-
demned to sociability. It seems, then, that folly is a socio-
logical rather than a psychological problem, and that it is
a special form of the operation of historical circumstances
on people, a psychological by-product of definite external
factors. If we look more closely, we see that any violent
display of power, whether political or religious, produces
an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed,
this actually seems to be a psychological and sociologi-
cal law: the power of some needs the folly of the others. It
is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capaci-
ties for instance, become stunted or destroyed, but rather
that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming
impression that men are deprived of their independent
judgment, and—more or less unconsciously—give up try-
ing to assess the new state of affairs for themselves. The
fact that the fool is often stubborn must not mislead us

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into thinking that he is independent. One feels in fact,

when talking to him, that one is dealing, not with the man
himself, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like, which
have taken hold of him. He is under a spell, he is blinded,
his very nature is being misused and exploited. Having
thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable
of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it
is evil. Here lies the danger of a diabolical exploitation
that can do irreparable damage to human beings.*"’

In this passage on folly, Bonhoeffer describes what Arendt twenty

years later would term “the banality of evil” Eichmann was
“foolish” —we find the same annihilation of personal judgment and
thinking in Arendt’s description of Eichmann, the same imper-
sonal embrace of promises and programs, etc. Of course, Bonhoef-
fer distinguishes between evil and foolishness, but his distinction
is the result of a traditional, “demonic” understanding of evil, and
he emphasizes that the foolish person commits evil actions. Fur-
thermore, Bonhoeffer seems to understand the evil agent as a type
of victim of external circumstances, something that's not entirely in
keeping with Arendt’s idea. Arendt writes about “thoughtlessness,”
and distinguishes that from “stupidity,” while Bonhoeffer’s “fool-
ishness” is synonymous with Arendt’s thoughtlessness. I should
point out, I use “stupidity” and “thoughtlessness” interchangeably
in this book, but I want to underscore that by “stupidity” I do not
mean a lack of intelligence, but rather a lack of judgment.

Radical and Banal Evil

Arendt’s notion of banal evil is a continuation of her concept of rad-
ical evil as described in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Her concept

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of radical evil, however, has little in common with Kant’s. For Kant,
radical evil is something that’s exclusively human, while for Arendt
it means the annihilation of all humanity, of all individuality, and
this annihilation of individuality occurs in both the victim and the
perpetrator. For Arendt, totalitarian society is characterized by the
fact that all individuals have become superfluous and every person
can occupy the roll of victim or aggressor respectively.*4 In a to-
talitarian society, individual uniqueness is irrelevant and everyone
is expendable. Totalitarianism ultimately enacts a “transformation
of human nature itself?*"4
The process by which an individual becomes superfluous occurs
in three stages. First, an individual is eliminated as a juristic per-
son, that is, an individual or a group is singled out and stripped of
their civil rights.*!* Next, a person is eliminated as a moral person,
because conscience is shown to be in doubt and human solidar-
ity dissolved.*"° Finally, all individuality is completely eradicated.””
This dehumanization is what Arendt calls radical evil, where “hu-
man nature as such is at stake.’”"* A large part of what distinguishes
Arendtian radical evil from traditional theories is that this radical
evil cannot be explained by human motives such as greed, self-in-
terest, ambition, etc.*!
Instead, victims are chosen according to an almost consistent
arbitrariness.’ This was especially evident during the Soviet ter-
ror in the 1930s. The Soviet purges had a different character than
the Nazi purges, and were driven by a logic of paranoia that as-
sumed the Bolsheviks were under constant threat from subver-
sive forces.’ Lenin believed that it would not be necessary to
use force against masses who were, after all, under the dictator-
ship of the proletariat, but exclusively against the enemies of the
country and the revolution: Ultimately, the regime was there to

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serve the masses. The problem was, the masses were not what
Lenin and later Stalin wanted them to be, and therefore violence
and excessive force were directed against the very workers and
peasants the new regime was supposed to serve. Immediately af-
ter the Russian Revolution, a class of people was singled out and
stripped of their rights—sometimes even stripped of the right
to eat. By 1918, five million people had already fallen into this
category—a curious turn of events, to put it mildly, given that the
Revolution was founded on a radical egalitarian ideology. After
1932, all Soviet citizens were required to have ID cards on them
at all times, and the ID cards categorized people not only by age
and gender, but also by social class and ethnicity. Purges under
Stalin were more ethnically or racially motivated than is generally
understood: This was especially true where groups from the Cau-
casus or Crimea were concerned, but also included Asians, Jews,
etc. Still, ethnicity was only one criterion among many—and
as time went on, more and more groups seemed to fit the regime's
qualifications.
The terror reached its peak between 1937 and 1938, when it be-
came clear even to Stalin that the violence had spun out of con-
trol. The initial purpose of the violence was to give the illusion
of political control. The purges could be described as completely
irrational, as executioners were given arbitrarily chosen liquida-
tion quotas that changed from week to week, and they could fill
_ these with more or less arbitrarily chosen groups of people. These
groups could range anywhere from people of certain nationalities
to harmless hobbyists, like students of Esperanto or stamp collec-
tors.?? Terms like “Trotskyist,” which were used to describe partic-
ularly dangerous enemies of the Party, state, and Revolution, were
constantly changing content as the political situation evolved and

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alliances shifted, and being a real “Trotskyist” came to mean less

and less.**? However, the fact that the enemy couldn't be described
with any accuracy didn’t appear to cause too many members of
the Central Committee to question whether or not the enemy ac-
tually existed—instead, the criteria for selecting “enemies” simply
became less and less precise, and therefore applicable to more and
more people—not only an individual “enemy,” but also his family
and friends.
In a totalitarian society, the principles a person should live by
are no longer dictated by the individual’s reason or conscience, but
by the state. Distinguishing between good and evil is no longer a
matter for individual conscience, but an affair of state. However,
Arendt goes on to say that thoughtlessness is not only found in
totalitarian societies, but also characterizes American military ad-
visors, for example, during the Vietnam War.’ Her reflections,
therefore, are meant to have a broader significance than simply
the discussion of totalitarian societies, and she emphasizes that
those aspects of modernity that made totalitarianism possible do
not simply disappear when the totalitarian government in ques-
tion is overthrown.” The depersonalizing aspects of modernity,
which can result in a dissolution of politics and morals, also result
in apathy; when that happens, personal responsibility and critical
thought become threatened, and must somehow be reestablished.
It's difficult to pinpoint the exact relationship between radical
and banal evil, and to my knowledge Arendt does not give us a
systematic discussion of this idea anywhere in her work. “Banal? in
this context, doesn’t mean “normal” or “widespread,” even though
banal evil can certainly be widespread in certain situations. To call
a variety of evil banal is to call it superficial. However, when Arendt
wrote about banal evil, I do not believe she was trying to describe

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something that differed in any significant way from what she had
earlier described as radical evil. Indeed, the concept of radicalism
may be misleading in terms of the phenomena she had originally
set out to characterize. “Radical; as I've mentioned, is taken from
the Latin word radix, which means “root.” To say that evil has roots
is to say that it has depth—but isn’t Arendt trying to character-
ize something that lacks depth? This is why she places so much
emphasis on the fact that Eichmann repeatedly speaks in clichés.
Clichés are superficial, and people who rely on them do not strike
us as being especially “deep.” Thus, Arendt writes that the goal of
totalitarian indoctrination is not to create absolute conviction, but
instead to destroy the ability to form convictions at all’”°—that is,
to destroy the ability to think with depth. In this context, we can
also say that people indoctrinated in this way lose the ability to act,
at least as Arendt understands the concept of action. (She defines
the ability to act as the ability to “start again’ 27 Seen in this way,
her concept of action is very similar to Kant’s idea of freedom as
spontaneity.) As such, banal evil can certainly be described as an
extension of radical evil; it’s just that the idea of radical evil seems
more relevant to systems and banal evil to individual agents. We
could perhaps say that Arendt’s “radical evil” is a political concept
concerning the absence of the political, whereas “banal evil” is a
moral concept concerning the absence of the moral. Banality is not
meant to describe an action, but rather a motivation. The problem
is, when we talk about a crime, we typically presuppose the exis-
tence of an evil will, of a definite intent. However, it was difficult
to prove that Eichmann had an evil will. The same was true in the
cases of Héss and Stangl, commanders of Auschwitz and Treblinka
respectively.

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Eichmann, Hoss, and Stangl

In discussing Eichmann, I will use Arendt’s essays documenting the
case against him—collected in Eichmann in Jerusalem—as a point
of departure, and will also refer to the interrogation records kept
by the Israeli police force.** I will not take up the more juridical
aspects of Arendt’s book, such as the question of retroactive laws,*””
but am more concerned with Eichmann as an individual.*°
Psychiatrists pronounced Eichmann completely normal.*' He
claimed that, speaking for himself, he was incapable of murder,
and that if hed been forced to command a concentration camp in
person, he would’ve committed suicide.” Eichmann complained
that the German soldiers were utterly destroyed by what they were
forced to do to the Jews—though never that the Jews were made
to suffer in the first place.*? Personally, he said, his nerves “weren't
strong enough” to witness what was done to the Jews, and he in-
sists that it was cruel of the officers at Auschwitz to describe to
him so directly and so brutally—that is, to a simple, normal office
worker—what they were doing in the camps.** He repeatedly em-
phasizes that he wasn't involved in the murders, just in the trans-
port.*® It's unclear how he sees the question of responsibility. At
one point, he admits that he was guilty from a purely juridical per-
spective, but doesn't elaborate on the question of moral responsi-
bility.“ At another point, he denies bearing any responsibility at
all, since he was only following orders.” However, at yet another
point, he claims that he was responsible, precisely because he fol-
lowed orders.*** It’s understandable that for Eichmann the ques-
tion of responsibility was not a simple one. He was subjected to
two contradictory duties: the duty to follow orders and the duty
to refuse them. Eichmann chose to follow the false duty, and by
obeying his orders, he fulfilled his duty as a bureaucrat, in keeping

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with Max Weber's description: “[I]t is his honor to carry it [the

order] out conscientiously just as if it was in accordance with his
own conviction.’? Eichmann says that his actions didn't involve
“a personal decision,’ but that he was only following orders from
higher up.*° It seems never to have occurred to him to try and
change positions. Instead, he truly believed the only possible alter-
native was to carry out his orders. As Weber observes: “The indi-
vidual bureaucrat cannot squirm out of the apparatus in which he
is harnessed.”**' The fact that bureaucrats fulfill their duties without
reference to personal interests creates the illusion that personal mo-
rality is not a factor in their jobs.” Not letting personal interests
interfere with your job means that an individual shouldnt use their
position to further their own interests; this requirement does not,
however, negate the personal responsibility every agent has for all
of what they do, no matter their position. As a private individual,
a human being may indeed have a moral perspective that does not
coincide with their moral perspective as a civil servant. However,
in no case is personal responsibility nullified.
Eichmann takes refuge in Kant’s moral philosophy in order to
explain why he did what he did, and insists that hed adopted Kant'’s
categorical imperative as his moral norm.” Even if we take him at
his word, Eichmann does not, however, appear to be a good rep-
resentative of Kant’s moral philosophy. As we know, Kant's ethics
are based on a principle of autonomy. Nonetheless, in Eichmanns
interpretation, Kant’s ethics are thoroughly heteronomous. To his
mind, moral laws dont originate in an individual agent's rational
mind, but in the orders handed down by Hitler.“ A strictly heter-
onomous ethics—consisting of moral laws that originate outside
the individual agent, whether they come from another person, an
institution, or God—are therefore utterly un-Kantian. Of course,

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Kant argues in his philosophy of law that a person has an absolute

duty to follow the laws of his land, but this formulation still re-
quires that such laws be grounded in moral principles—something
that the laws of the Third Reich certainly were not. Kant explicitly
writes, for instance, that an individual should not follow a com-
mand that’s obviously evil.“ And Eichmann knew that the Jew-
ish exterminations were evil, because he admits to experiencing an
inner conflict when he was told about the “solution to the Jewish
problem.” However, he soon stopped worrying himself, because he
managed to “get out of doing it”—that is, it wasn’t his hands that
would have to shove the Jews into the gas chambers.“
In Eichmann’ final statement to the court, he insists that he isn’t
a monster, but, in fact, a victim.” His reasoning on this point is
still a little unclear. He points to a “fallacy, and apparently we are
meant to conclude that he is being blamed for actions he had no di-
rect part in: that is, for concrete murders. This follows the approach
he adopted during his police interrogation and then his cross ex-
amination in front of the court: admitting hed had a central role
in the transportation of the Jews, but denied murdering anyone
with his own hands. During the trial, he appeared most disturbed
when a witness (whom the court deemed untrustworthy) swore
that theyd seen Eichmann beat a Jew to death for some minor
provocation.“ Eichmann sincerely believed that hed been unjustly
accused of participating in actions that had taken place at a great
remove from himself, and which hed had no direct part in.
When Eichmann described himself as an idealist, he was largely
correct.“ He was idealistic and thoughtless. His unconditional
obedience of Hitler’s orders was idealistic, but his absence of re-
flection concerning the fact that its wrong to exterminate Jews
was thoughtless. Idealism and stupidity are two sides of the same

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coin. “I followed my orders without thinking.”*° Because so many

prominent people supported the “solution to the Jewish problem,”
Eichmann assumed that the solution had to be right—therefore, he
ceased to have any opinion of his own on the subject, and went on
to state: “I felt free of all guilt”*”
Arendt argues that Eichmann “never realized what he was do-
ing?‘ This is a rather famous assertion—that we know not what
we do.‘ It tends, however, to make Arendt'’s position problematic.
On the one hand, she argues that Eichmann didn’t know what he
was doing; on the other, she supported the decision when he was
condemned to death. In contrast, I believe that Eichmann was to
a great extent aware of what he was doing, but allowed other con-
siderations—his own career and his faith in the Leader—to get in
the way. My objection to Arendt is not that what she writes about
Eichmann is wrong—on the contrary, I believe that she uncovers
something essential—but that it’s too one-dimensional. Of course,
Arendt does not go as far as, for example, Zygmunt Bauman in
reducing Eichmann to a completely depersonalized bureaucrat.
Arendt retains her focus on Eichmann as an individual, however
little individuality he may have shown, while Bauman essentially
considers him as little more than a passive cog in the wheel.** Lack
of individuality became a central focus for Arendt, while Bauman
hardly raises the question. It’s an essential component of Arendt'’s
philosophy that a person reveals who they are, reveals their indi-
viduality, through their actions and words. It’s precisely this form
of individuality that Eichmann never demonstrates. In the narrow
sense of the word, he doesn’t act, but simply follows orders. He
doesn't talk, but simply opens his mouth and lets forth a stream
of clichés. He even admits that the only language he knows is the
language of the civil servant.** The language of the civil servant

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is a depersonalized language, full of clichés and catchphrases that

save individuals from the inconvenient task of having to think for
themselves. Nothing requires that the individual resort to reflec-
tion; instead, everything can be satisfied with superficial, standard
formulae. All particulars—including individual human beings and
their individual suffering—disappears in view of such formulae.
And yet, when Arendt argues that Eichmann had no motiva-
tion,** she overlooks something essential—namely that Eichmann,
who had career ambitions, was a Hitlerist to the core. The last thing
he did before his execution was to pay homage to Germany, Ar-
gentina, and Austria.” Arendt mentions this as an example of
Eichmann’s typical use of catchphrases and clichés, but I believe
it confirms something crucial about Eichmann: his self-described
idealism. Eichmann wasn't simply an average bureaucrat, but also
an average fanatic. In this light, his evil no longer appears quite as
banal as Arendt would have us believe; in addition to “stupid” evil,
we now have idealistic evil in the equation as well. In either case,
his is certainly a form of evil that has something unselfish about
it—even if Eichmann was also undeniably driven by selfish mo-
tives. As such, the picture Arendt paints of Eichmann as “banal”
seems, in my opinion, far too narrow. Even if there was limited
anti-Semitism in his personal outlook, he had a strong ideological
bent, namely his belief in Fiihrer and Fatherland.
A similar idealism was also present in Rudolf Héss, who was
commander at Auschwitz, the largest of the concentration camps.
He describes himself as a “fanatic National Socialist” and was a
self-proclaimed anti-Semite.** When he asserted a year after
the war that the mass exterminations were wrong, this wasn't
because they were evil or immoral, but because Germany had
thereby made itself a target for the world’s indignation—which,

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in reality, had brought the Jews closer to realizing their goal of

world domination!*”
When reading the autobiography Héss wrote in prison shortly
after the war—a helpless, though fascinating piece of prose—one is
struck by the many similarities to Eichmann. Hoss was obviously
less intelligent than Eichmann, but in terms of stupidity—under-
stood in the context of thoughtlessness—they seem to be peers.
Writing his book, Héss didn’t seem to have any concept of what he
had done. Even though a large number of statements begin with
phrases such as “Now I understand. .. ,” it’s absolutely clear to the
reader that such isn’t actually the case. As such, strangely enough,
he manages to present more of a puzzle than Eichmann. As Primo
Levi writes in his introduction to Héss’s book, the “commandant”
wasn't a monster, but nonetheless his autobiography is “full of
malice”* Héss declares that he was different from the SS soldiers
who took pleasure in torturing the prisoners.*' He was right about
this much, but his declaration shows that he did not understand
his own role: He describes these soldiers as evil,“ but in doing so
overlooks his own culpability. Here, as is usually the case, “evil” is
an idea that applied to others, not to himself. He criticizes these
soldiers for failing to regard their prisoners as people,*® but this is
something he too failed to do—otherwise, he wouldn't have been
capable of carrying out his job. He claims that he had “too much
sympathy” for the prisoners to do his work, that he had a “weak-
ness,” but his “sympathy” and “weakness” never did the prisoners
any good. Indeed, these reported emotions hardly seem trustwor-
thy. If Héss recognized his prisoners’ humanity at the same time
as holding ultimate responsibility for and maintaining oversight of
the activities in Auschwitz, he would indeed have been a monster.
But I think it’s likely that this wasn't the case.

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Even as Eichmann claimed he had lived his life according to

Kant’s categorical imperative, Héss puts great weight on the fact
that he was a moral person and tried his best to uphold certain
moral distinctions—like the fact that it was perfectly fine to kill
Jews, but not for a soldier to steal from them. This concept of mo-
rality was not Héss’s invention, but came from Himmler, who ar-
gued that exterminating the Jews was a moral imperative, but not
for the sake of personal profit. Héss also frowned on violent acts
such as rape and “unnecessary” brutality, which might occasion-
ally be committed in the process of following Himmler’s overriding
moral imperative. He underscored the fact that he never mistreated
the prisoners.*” What he means by this, apparently, is that he never
beat the prisoners with his owns hands, that he never shot them
with his own gun, that he never emptied canisters of Zyklon B into
the gas chambers. Nonetheless, he commanded the largest concen-
tration camp in history and was absolutely cognizant of the func-
tion of this camp. Everything that happened in the camp required
his final approval. Héss was not at all a passive figure—in fact, he
showed great initiative in commanding his post. He had ample op-
portunity to make the conditions less harsh for the prisoners, but
instead his priority was to create the most “effective” camp possible.
He even criticized the prisoners for their immoral behavior toward
each other, without taking into consideration the fact that he him-
self was responsible for forcing them to live in conditions where
it was nearly impossible to maintain any sort of moral decency.**
Naturally, among the prisoners as well as among the guards, there
were better people and worse; neither the prisoners nor the guards
came from completely homogeneous groups composed of indi-
viduals with identical moral qualities. Even if we have a number of
examples of prisoners who were able to maintain a sense of moral

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decency throughout their incarceration in the Nazi concentration

camps,“ it’s a fact that morality wasn't a priority there—such ex-
treme conditions typically suspend all moral consideration. It’s
likewise a fact that some prisoners managed to exceed the guards
in their brutal treatment of their fellow prisoners. It’s important to
remember that just because someone’s a victim, they're not neces-
sarily a good person—but it’s also indisputable that Héss had no
right to judge his prisoners for their behavior. In his detailed de-
scription of the six years he sat in prison for politically motivated
murder, Hoss identifies himself strongly with his own fellow pris-
oners and criticizes the men guarding him for their excessive bru-
tality. However, he never draws the obvious comparison between
his situation and Auschwitz, because he is still unable to see the
camp from a prisoner's perspective.
Large portions of his autobiography are devoted to complaints
dating back to his time at the camp: limited resources, a lack of
qualified labor, disorganized and confusing orders from his supe-
riors—in short, the same complaints you would expect from any
bureaucrat. The moral questions posed by the whole operation are
completely absent from his remarks. In fact, Hoss argues that he
was “obsessed” by the task of making Auschwitz as efficient as pos-
sible.** He considered it very important to be the sort of man who
carried out his duties to the letter.“ This is something else he has
in common with Eichmann, but in contrast to Eichmann, H6ss
puts himself on a par with his underlings by saying that he would
not have asked them to do anything he himself was not willing
to do.4” He believed that death by gas was far better for morale
than death by gun, since the latter would produce too strong a
reaction among the SS soldiers, especially where the execution of
women and children was concerned.*”! As with Eichmann, Hoss

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is concerned essentially with his fellow German soldiers, never

giving their suffering prisoners a single thought. He asserts, in
short, that he only did what he expected his men to do in turn:
namely, follow the Leader’s orders. It was imperative that he set
a good example for his underlings and not show any weakness.*”
In what is perhaps his autobiography’s most hair-raising passage,
HOss writes:

When he [Himmler] gave me the order personally in the

summer of 1941 to prepare a place for mass killings and
then carry it out, I could never have imagined the scale, or
what the consequences would be. Of course, this order
was something extraordinary, something monstrous.
However, the reasoning behind the order of this mass an-
nihilation seemed correct to me. At the time I wasted no
thoughts about it. I had received an order; I had to carry it
out. I could not allow myself to form an opinion as to
whether this mass extermination of the Jews was neces-
sary or not. At the time it was beyond my frame of
mind.*”

This is banal evil at its most extreme: pure thoughtlessness, the un-
willingness to even bother with thought. He admits that the order
was “monstrous,” but nonetheless carried it out, because orders
must be followed.
When we come to Franz Stangl, commander of Sobibor and
Treblinka, we meet another type of personality—or, rather, we
meet a person who actually had a personality. While Hoss seems
like an emotionally stunted military climber without a single orig-
inal thought in his brain, and Eichmann like the bureaucrat from

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hell, Stangl appears relatively well-spoken and sometimes even

charming. In 1970, after his trial was over, Gitta Sereny conducted
a number of interviews with Stangl in prison. The following com-
ments are based on Sereny’s book Into that Darkness. Stangl, like
Hoss and Eichmann, delivers the standard introductory excuses,
like the fact that he’s never personally harmed another human be-
ing, but at certain points in the interviews he seems to fall into
what can only be called thoughtfulness . .. before once again giving
the impression that he is not aware what he did. It’s as if he’s always
on the verge of questioning his actions, but constantly shies away
from this insight. He recognizes his own guilt,“”* but doesn't seem
to grasp the extent of what he admits to being guilty of. An admis-
sion of guilt is only valid if a person understands what he's guilty
of; and yet, the murders in Treblinka were so extensive—with
hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million dead—it’s hardly
possible for any one man to grasp the full scale of the catastrophe.
The problem with Stangl’s admission of guilt, therefore, is that it’s
so limited. Even though he doesn't try to hide what actually hap-
pened, it’s clear he has no idea how far his own responsibility actu-
ally reaches. The paradoxical thing is that he admits his guilt and
asserts that his conscience is clean.*”
Stangl recalls that when he first arrived at Treblinka, the scene
was straight out of Dante’s Inferno.*” But he also chose to be com-
mander there, a fact that he doesn’t deny is roughly the same as
choosing to play the role of the devil himself. However, here is
another paradox: on the one hand Stangl freely—if a little grudg-
ingly—chose the role of the devil, but on the other hand he has no
overtly “devilish” qualities. He doesn’t appear to take pleasure in
other people's suffering, although it can’t be denied that he threw
himself into his work with unfeigned zeal. His zeal, however, wasn't

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driven by a hatred of the Jews, but simply by a strong work ethic.*”

And this work ethic somehow took priority over all other moral
considerations.
Treblinka was not a concentration camp, but an extermination
camp, and it was the largest of these. The difference between an
extermination camp and a concentration camp is often not well
understood: Concentration camps were extreme work camps that
were far more inhuman than the countless other pure work camps
the Nazis constructed for their enemies. In the beginning, concen-
tration camps were institutions for slave labor, but the conditions
systematically worsened the longer they existed. At the same time, it
should be stressed that even though the prisoners were gassed, shot,
starved, exhausted, used in medical experiments, etc., it was pos-
sible to survive a stint in a concentration camp. Even in Auschwitz,
which also had an extermination center (Birkenau), around a
fifth of the Jews survived (of the 950,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz,
just under 800,000 were murdered), and an even larger portion
of non-Jews. By comparison, only eight-seven people—none
of them children—survived the five extermination camps in Po-
land, which ended up claiming around two million human lives.‘”
And Franz Stang] commanded the largest of these.
The victims were systematically dehumanized. They were carted
around like cattle in cramped train cars without toilets, food, or wa-
ter, before they arrived in Treblinka. After their arrival, they were
separated into groups of men, women, and children, made to strip
and subjected to cavity searches—the soldiers were looking for hid-
den valuables—then were shaved and finally shoved into the gas
chambers. According to Stangl, the goal of this humiliating process
was to dehumanize the prisoners enough that the soldiers would
be capable of carrying out the executions.” This dehumanization

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process had an effect on him as well: the Jews didn’t seem like in-
dividuals to him, but “cargo” and “a mass of rotting flesh’**° He
avoided talking with those who were sentenced to death,**' presum-
ably so they wouldn't come to seem again like individuals with some
degree of inviolability.
How could Stangl do what he did? He repeatedly says that he
was forced to carry out his orders, that it was a matter of self-
preservation.” This is false—not a single German soldier was
executed for being unwilling to take part in the mass extermina-
tions. Stangl says that he should have committed suicide rather
than taking part,*® but there’s no reason we can't simply say that
he should have refused to take part. He asserts that he knew that
the treatment of the Jews was a “crime” from the moment the
plans for the mass exterminations were first revealed to him,™
but instead of refusing to take part or actively opposing this crime,
he contented himself with requesting a transfer—a request that
was subsequently denied. He chose, therefore, to take part in the
crime. He tries to explain his actions away a number of times, for
instance when he insists that as a young man in the police acad-
emy hed learned that there were four requirements to be met be-
fore something was considered a crime: a subject, an object, an ac-
tion, and an intention. He asserts that he isn't guilty of any crime,
because the fourth requirement was never met—presumably be-
cause he himself didn’t bear any real grudge against the Jews.**”
But it’s clear that he knows better, that he is aware of his guilt and
complicity. He attempted, at the time, to “limit my own actions
to what I—in my own conscience—could answer for.’*** That is,
he abstracted thought from deed to such a degree that each of
his actions appeared to be justified—essentially for the purpose of
absolving himself of seeing the whole picture.**”

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As previously mentioned, Stang] was not an anti-Semite, but he

had a deep-seated contempt for his prisoners. This contempt was
not due to their “race,” but rather to their weakness:

It had nothing to do with hate. They were so weak; they

allowed everything to happen—to be done to them. They
were people with whom there was no common ground,
no possibility of communication—that is how contempt is
born. I could never understand how they could just give
in as they did. Quite recently I read a book about lem-
mings, who every five or six years just wander into the sea
and die; that made me think of Treblinka.**

Stangl said this in 1971, twenty-seven years after Treblinka was de-
stroyed. It’s unbelievable that a person can understand so little after
so long a time. As for the assertion that it wasn't possible for him
to communicate with his prisoners, he clearly could have proven
himself wrong simply by talking to them. And yet, as I’ve already
mentioned, it was insights such as these that Stang] deliberately
avoided. Harald Ofstad has suggested that a “contempt for weak-
ness” is central to understanding Nazism,‘ and Stangl provides a
clear example of this idea. From Hitler’s perspective, the Jews de-
served no mercy: “No pity must be shown to beings whom destiny
has doomed to disappear:*” The reasoning is as follows: Fate has
dictated that the Jews will perish by making them weak, and be-
cause they are weak it’s perfectly legitimate to set about exterminat-
ing them. The weak have no right to life—weakness, and therefore
the weak, must be destroyed.
Its obvious that Stangl became more corrupt the longer he re-
mained in service, less able to recognize the fact that he was a central

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actor in a crime without parallel. After a while, he simply got used to

it—as he says.*”! Stang] hardly noticed this personality change—the
change from being too weak to refuse to participate to becoming
someone who more or less had no conscience. Habituation is a cen-
tral factor here.*” Every person has a multitude of habits they're
not aware of, simply because they’re not conscious of them. Instead,
they form a type of “backdrop” for what we are conscious of; they
determine what we normally look for in a given situation. Viewed
in this way, we can say that habits create possibilities for perception,
but they also limit our capacity for understanding, because they
lead us to dismiss many phenomena as irrelevant. Habits, therefore,
become a form of blindness, and in Stangl’s case, they obviously led
to a progressive loss of moral vision.
One of the most striking aspects of the “confessions” of Eich-
mann, Héss, and Stangl is that they reveal all three as having been
incredibly self-centered. They seem never to have given their vic-
tims a thought. Their dedication to their work demonstrated a clear
belief in the value of their labors—but we must then ask: What
value could anyone possibly find in such monstrosities? For Hitler,
the Nazi obligation to purify the races was “the holiest obligation,’
and this statement was meant to legitimate the exterminations;
however, very few of those responsible for the day-to-day work of
genocide ever used this idea to explain their actions.*” In Hoss’s
case (but not in that of Eichmann and Stang), anti-Semitism is an
important motive, but hardly the most important one. All three
men certainly had career ambitions—though Stang less so than the
other two—but there remains an enormous disparity between their
particular ambitions and the actual work each set about with such
efficiency. All three had the utmost faith in Hitler, although Stangl
had his reservations, and can therefore be considered idealists.

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It’s clear as well that Eichmann and Hoss didn't just follow orders,
but actively supported the program. What all three have in com-
mon, however, is that they seem to lack any basic consciousness of
their own personal responsibility—even if Stang] does show glim-
merings of this insight. Himmler argues that individual SS soldiers
did not have any responsibility for their actions, and that the re-
sponsibility rested solely on the shoulders of himself and Hitler,
but individual responsibility cannot simply be delegated away.
Nonetheless, during the pledge of allegiance, all German sol-
diers were required to swear allegiance to Hitler personally, not
to the German constitution, which in any case was synonymous
with whatever Hitler decreed. The Fuhrer principle dictates that an
individual does not have the right to question the legitimacy of a
given order; an order was legitimated by the fact that it came from
Hitler. In essence, an order could not possibly come into conflict
with some higher norm, because there was no higher norm than
the Leader's will. In Mein Kampf, we find that not only must the
individual set aside his own personal interests for the sake of the
whole, but also his “personal opinions.”** To think for yourself is
a form of betrayal.“ From a juridical perspective, following or-
ders was the only lawful action. But as Emerson points out: “Good
people must not obey the laws too well.’**° To refuse to follow or-
ders is to help undermine them. An order’s authority is dependent
upon the order being followed, and it’s arguable that anyone who
refuses to follow orders also refuses to recognize them as legiti-
mate. Therefore, a refusal to follow orders is a potentially powerful
weapon. If an order has to be repeated, it’s already lost some of its
force. Eichmann, Héss, and Stangl seemed to believe that following
orders was the only morally lawful action. This is especially clear in
Eichmann’s remarks. However, we can assume that all three also

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had a moral conscience that operated independent of this convic-

tion. Their immediate reactions when told about the plans for the
mass exterminations demonstrate this fact.“”” But this particular
moral insight, along with their moral consciences, was discarded
for the sake of other considerations.
All three men maintained a normal moral conscience in other
aspects of their lives. Robert J. Lifton points to the phenomenon
of “doubling,” where a person has two distinct selves—a self in the
camp and a self outside of the camp.*” This idea appears plausible,
given that both Stangl and Héss maintained relatively normal fam-
ily lives outside their camps. However, is it not just as plausible to
say that every person is a single self, but this self systematically
interprets all actions differently inside and outside the camps?

Normal People and Extreme Evil

The most gruesome actions can be carried out by people whose
sole focus is on solving a practical problem—people who don't
have any sadistic motives.*” Eichmann, Héss, and Stang are clear
examples of this idea. Again, the stupidity I mention above does
not indicate a lack of intelligence. For example, half of the four-
teen participants in the Wansee Conference were lawyers, and six
of the fifteen Einsatsgruppenfiihrer—that is, the leaders of the death
squads in the east—had doctoral degrees. And what about the
doctors who conducted experiments on the prisoners?°" It’s as if
these actions took place in a moral vacuum where ideas of good
and evil had no application.
This moral vacuum was intentionally created through a dehu-
manizing process. Through shaving prisoners, starving them, etc.,
individuality was minimized and people were made into an un-
differentiated mass.% An anonymous diary found in Auschwitz

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reads: “We're not human beings anymore, nor have we become an-
imals; we are just some strange psycho-physical product made in
Germany.” In the camps, for example, a good deal of trouble was
taken to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide. This may
seem strange, since their deaths was the obvious goal, but suicide
is problematic because it’s an action that presupposes individual
subjectivity. Suicide reinforces the idea that the victim has human
worth, and therefore threatens the intended picture of the prison-
ers as non-humans. The Nazis, however, had declared that the Jews
were not people, an idea that would make it easier for soldiers to
exterminate them en masse. It was okay, therefore, to force Jews
to wallow in their own filth—in Bergen-Belsen, thirty thousand
women shared one latrine—in order to prove that Jews themselves
were filth, but there was always the danger that they might start to
seem human again. As such, this humanity had to be extinguished
in every way possible. In fact, Berel Lang argues that the dehuman-
ization processes that the Jews endured before they were murdered
essentially demonstrates that they were recognized as fellow hu-
man beings by the Nazis.™ As a result, for Lang, the Nazis should
be considered as consciously evil, because their crimes were largely
committed with intent. He goes even further, and asserts that they
did what they did because they were evil.* As a result, he regards
Nazis as representative of demonic evil in its most extreme form—
but, as we've seen, this indictment doesn't fit the majority of the
perpetrators. | |
In Hitler's Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen criticizes Ar- -
endt for representing the Nazis in general as emotionally neutral
in relation to Jews. However, Arendt does not mean to speak
for every participant in the mass exterminations, only for some of
them, and she believes that different agents who took part in the

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exterminations represent different forms of evil. Goldhagen, on the

other hand, considers all the agents to be homogeneous. Indeed,
for Goldhagen, the central factor is that they were German. As
Norman G. Finkelstein and Bettina Birn point out, however, there
is a definite tension in Goldhagen’s remarks between the empha-
sis on German anti-Semitism on the one hand and individual re-
sponsibility on the other.*” Yet the relationship between these two
elements is never clarified by Goldhagen. Goldhagen’s insufficient
and biased description of German anti-Semitism can ultimately
be said to be entirely refuted by Finkelstein and Birn. The docu-
mentation indicates that most Germans did not share the Nazis’
anti-Semitism, not even during the war years. And even though
anti-Semitism grew stronger after the Nazis took power, it was not
especially strong in the majority of the German people, and for ex-
ample Kristallnacht wasn't necessarily considered a positive devel-
opment by the ordinary German. See, for example, the following
excerpt from an official Nazi report on Kristallnacht:

One knows that anti-Semitism in Germany today is es-

sentially confined to the party and its organizations, and
that there is a certain group in the population who have
not the slightest understanding for anti-Semitism and in
whom every possibility of empathy is lacking.
In the days after Kristallnacht these people ran immedi-
ately to Jewish businesses . . . This is to a great extent be-
cause we are, to be sure, an anti-Semitic people, an anti-
Semitic state, but nevertheless in all manifestations of life
in the state and the people anti-Semitism is as good as un-
expressed . . . There are still groups of Spiessern among
the German people who talk about the poor Jews and who

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have no understanding for the anti-Semitic attitudes of

the German people and who interceded for Jews at every
opportunity. It should not be that only the leadership and
party are anti-Semitic.”

Physical violence against Jews was not applauded by average Ger-

mans, but the growing limitations on the Jews’ civil rights pro-
duced few protests, and there was relatively broad support among
the populace when the Jews were excluded from certain positions,
when their possessions were confiscated, and so on.*” In the Ger-
man populace as a whole, it was more a case of apathy and moral
indifference than an active hatred for the Jews. In his book, how-
ever, Goldhagen resorts to broad generalizations, such as: “Every
German was inquisitor, judge, and executioner.’*'° In this way,
Goldhagen demonizes the German people, and goes on to write
about a unique “German culture of cruelty,’*!! a “general [German]
propensity to violence,”*!* that Germans “were generally brutal and
murderous,”*”’ etc. At the same time, Goldhagen has no evidence
to support his claims that Germany’s culture was a uniquely cruel
one that promoted the mass exterminations. A further difficulty
Goldhagen falls into is that the emphasis on a unique German
culture that’s capable of shaping the opinion of every agent stands
in a direct contrast to his goal of making individual responsibil-
ity a determinant factor in Holocaust studies. If an agent is simply
a product of his culture, there can be no discussion of individual _
responsibility. As a result, Goldhagen’s explanation is thoroughly -
monocausal, despite his claims to the contrary. *'* Everything in
his discussion is related back to a specifically German, specifically
extreme form of anti-Semitism. As a result, collective guilt replaces
individual responsibility. Indeed, if we go by the picture Goldhagen

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paints of Germany, we have to wonder why the Nazis didn't receive

one hundred percent of the vote in the last election, instead of the
mere thirty-three percent they actually received. However, there are
those, like James M. Glass, who support Goldhagen’s viewpoint. He
likewise explains the Holocaust monocausally, attributing the mass
extermination of the Jews to a culturally propagated anti-Semitism
that was scientifically—or, rather, pseudo-scientifically—substan-
tiated, and that spread itself to the German populace as a whole.”
Like Goldhagen, Glass argues that the German people harbored a
deep desire to see the Jewish race annihilated.
An important factor in this discussion, however, is that in con-
trast to what Goldhagen argues, the average German appears to
have been unaware of the full extent of the exterminations. On the
other hand, the work camps were so widespread that it’s inconceiv-
able the average German wouldn't have been aware that they ex-
isted. We must keep in mind, however, that there were significant
differences between the work camps, the concentration camps,
and the extermination camps. There were over ten thousand work
camps, and although most of them were in Eastern Europe, the av-
erage citizen must have known about them, since for example there
were 645 such camps in Berlin and the surrounding areas alone."
But if the average German knew about the work camps, the con-
centration camps were much worse, and there was far less public
understanding as to what took place behind their walls . . . and,
_ going one step further, the extermination camps were a closely
guarded secret: every one of them was located in Poland, and they
only existed for a relatively short period of time. Systematic gassing
in the extermination camps first began in the spring and summer
of 1942, and most of them were only operational for less than a
year and a half. Therefore, there's little reason to suspect that the

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average German knew about these camps at all. Neither Goldhagen

nor Glass makes these distinctions, but simply assume that the av-
erage German must have known about all the camps—a claim that
is simply not tenable.
For their book What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Every-
day Life in Nazi Germany, Eric Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband
attempted to pin down exactly how much the average citizen knew
about the camps by circulating an extensive questionnaire among
“normal” Germans and Jews who lived in Germany under Hit-
ler.” The investigation revealed that knowledge of the mass exter-
minations was relatively widespread from the middle of 1942 on;
Johnson and Reuband estimate that around a third of the populace
knew that mass exterminations were taking place. However, since
they too dont distinguish between work camps, concentration
camps, and extermination camps in their investigation, this makes
it difficult to determine how extensive the knowledge actually was.
That is, among those who now believe they were aware of the ex-
terminations, how many were aware at the time?
Regardless, the average German's lack of response to what was
going in their country can be attributed more to indifference and a
concern for their own well being than any active hatred. The coun-
try was in crisis, and during a crisis people have a greater tendency
to look after themselves and their own. We must remember that, in
the period between the world wars, Germany was afflicted with a
depression, inflation, unemployment, an increase in violence and
other crime, etc. And most people operate on the basis of what
Ervin Staub calls “hedonistic calculus”®!*—that is, when a person
compares their own, actual well-being to what they consider nor-
mal, to the level of well-being they believe they should have. They
then use the results of this equation to estimate how much they

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should bother to help others. If their own sense of well-being is

seen to be substandard, people are far less likely to help others,
even when those others have an even lower level of well-being than
themselves. When people believe their well-being is sufficient,
or better than sufficient, however, helping others seems perfectly
reasonable again. Of course, this isn’t always the case—especially
strong moral considerations are often able to overcome an indi-
vidual’s concern for personal well-being. But seen in the light of
this “calculus,” it can come as no surprise that—during the period
between the two world wars—average Germans would have found
their own problems more pressing than the Jews.
Gotz Aly has shed considerable light on this subject with his
controversial study Hitler’s Beneficiaries, where he posits that we
can only understand the Third Reich if we regard it as the largest
“plunder state” in modern times.*”” He argues that ninety-five per-
cent of the German populace benefited from the Nazis’ plundering
of both Jews and occupied countries, and this explains the strong
support the government had in Germany. The average German may
thus be seen as a participant who willingly accepted the trespasses
against the Jews in order, explicitly, to secure their own well-being.
It's probable, however, that many of the figures Aly cites will have
to be revised—for example, it’s unlikely that ninety-five percent of
the entire German populace enjoyed economic benefits during Hit-
ler’s time. Even leaving out the Jews themselves, the mentally and
physically handicapped, political opponents, etc., it's doubtful that
we could reach ninety-five percent. The exact percentages are not
what matters, however. The essential point to make is that a clear
majority of the German people benefited from what was going on.
The Jewish plunder, the forced labor, not to mention the com-
merce created by the occupation of other countries—taken together

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with the inflated value of German currency—all added up to a

marked improvement in the standard of living for average Germans.
In short, Aly argues that Hitler was popular among most Germans
because of the economic improvements his government had made
possible. One could perhaps say that the government “bribed” the
populace with social goods. As a result, Aly describes Germany in
the years between 1933-1945 as having an “accommodating dicta-
torship,” that is, a “considerate dictatorship” with “social warmth”
The National Socialists’ social politics doubtlessly contained a
number of traits that were attractive to many people: No taxes were
raised, despite the extensive rearmament, because occupied coun-
tries were made to finance their own occupation. Average citizens
paid considerably less taxes than the rich. Family allowances were
introduced, and newly married couples could receive good loans.
Pensions increased dramatically, and pensioners were all given
health insurance. Aly doesn't argue that Hitler invented the German
social state, but developed it quite radically. Seen in this context,
Hitler really does look like the people’s Leader.
This picture stands in sharp contrast to the image presented by
what we might call the “totalitarian” school, which was undoubtedly
a product of the Cold War, and which was also developed, among
other things, in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.
This work is based more on logic than on empiricism, and makes
totalitarianism itself the problem, in the sense that a totalitarian
regime is supposedly characterized precisely by the terror it inflicts i
on a people living in chronic fear of secret police, etc. However,
new research has modified this picture considerably. For example,
it's clear that the Gestapo’s resources were much more limited
than previously thought, and that the majority of German people
went about their daily routine without government interference.

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The Nazi government's control of the populace wasn't due to op-

pression, but because it had the people’s clear support. However,
this support did not extend to everything. Studies examining what
the German people considered to be important factors in the Na-
tional Socialist regime found that the fight against unemployment
and crime were largely the dominant concerns, while anti-Sem-
itism was only mentioned as an especially attractive factor by a
small number of people.
Aly’s analysis does show that it’s impossible to maintain a clear
distinction between an oppressive regime and an “innocent”
people. At the same time, it’s clear that he occupies some of the
same ideological territory as Goldhagen, though Aly’s assump-
tions are considerably more nuanced and plausible, and are better
supported than Goldhagens. A central point Aly’s book makes is
that more Jewish deportations actually took place after the Allied
bombings began, for the simple reason that more homes and fur-
niture had to be found for German civilians. These deportations
were not kept secret, and the connection between the deportations
and “new” apartments couldn't possibly have escaped the German
populace. To a certain extent, the same could be said for Ger-
many’s economy in general: Many people must have realized that
someone was paying for Germany’s prosperity. 1938 is the decisive
year in Aly’s estimation, because military armament, coupled with
tax and social policies, had by then forced Germany to the edge
of bankruptcy. Around this time, Nazi economists calculated that
the economy could be speedily repaired through the acquisition of
Jewish assets. In the beginning, this idea only applied to German
Jews, but after a while it was broadened to include new Jews in
new territories as well. It’s clear that Hitler’s government quickly
became dependent on a steady stream of slave labor and goods

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from occupied countries. If the government wanted to support

both its armament and social policies, it had to find new territo-
ries to plunder, new victims to exploit. In this regard, peace would
have meant bankruptcy. Plunder and slave labor was necessary if
the German economy was to continue to function.
Nonetheless, Aly’s book does not answer, nor does it attempt to
answer, the question of why Jews were the first victims. The ele-
ments Aly cites function better as explanations for the German
populace’s support of the Nazi government than as explanations
for the Holocaust itself. Aly represents an extreme structural posi-
tion with all the weaknesses this implies. Even though most Ho-
locaust studies have a tendency to exaggerate anti-Semitism’s role
as a central motivating factor, one can argue that Aly occupies the
opposite extreme and hardly admits its importance at all. In Aly’s
representation, the Holocaust was more or less an economic op-
eration whose primary motive was to keep the German economy
rolling. However, from a purely economic viewpoint, the murders
of Eastern European Jews—who formed the majority of the vic-
tims—would have been a waste of time. Most of the people were
extremely poor and there was little or nothing to be gained from
them, economically. Though anti-Semitism wasnt especially strong
in the average German—not even among the political supporters
and soldiers responsible for the practical side of Nazi social orga-
nization—it's still significant that anti-Semitism was an important
motivating factor for many of the central agents who planned and —
ordered that the crimes be carried out.
Obviously, the German people's acceptance of the Jewish persecu-
tions is morally reprehensible. In my opinion, however, the primary
focus should fall on those who actively participated in the Jewish
exterminations—a matter of several tens of thousands: presumably

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about a hundred thousand Germans. At the same time, it should

be mentioned that not all of these people were aware of full extent
of the Holocaust. Naturally, all of the train operators should have
refused to take place in the forced deportations ... and yet, presum-
ably most of them had no idea how unthinkable the conditions were
in the worst of the camps. So let us now direct our focus to a group
who was directly involved in the murders: Police Battalion 101.
In the literature surrounding the Holocaust, most of the empha-
sis is given to the gas chambers, but gassing “only” accounted for
fifty to sixty percent of the murders. The rest of the victims were
murdered in other ways, mainly by shooting. This is an important
point, because it causes a number of the usual explanations for
the exterminations to fall by the wayside—such as bureaucratiza-
tion, the separation of labor, technologization, and distancing. The
victims were still people when they were shot at close range, not
“masses” who arrived in a camp like cattle. In order to investigate
these murderers, I will take Christopher Browning's study of Police
Battalion 101 as a departure point. The Battalion itself consisted
of around five hundred men who formed a cross-section of the
German populace, as was the case with all the task forces stationed
in the East. These policemen were not your average soldiers. Noth-
ing was threatening them, no one was shooting back. Yet Police
Battalion 101 shot at least 38,000 Jews and deported at least 45,000
Jews to Treblinka in the period between July 1942 and Novem-
ber 1943, and therefore was responsible for the deaths of at least
83,000. On average, this is, every soldier shot seventy-six Jews
and was responsible for 166 deaths. Furthermore, hardly any of
these men had been in previous conflicts; their actions cannot be
explained with reference to a predisposition for brutality.” They
were average men who were called to duty without being selected

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according to any special criteria that made them particularly fit for
this type of activity.
One of the most thought-provoking aspects of Browning's study
is the documentation showing that before their first assignment in
Jézefow, the men were given the option to withdraw if they didn't
think they were capable of carrying out their mission.* Only a
few refused, and that same day 1,500 Jews were murdered in the
marketplace. The soldiers’ reactions varied. Some didn't seem to
have understood what they had agreed to before they stood face to
face with their victims, and these asked to be excused. They were
subsequently assigned to guard duty away from the marketplace.*4
Others asked to be excused after they shot a few Jews, and after a
little time had passed, a few hid and tried to avoid the marketplace
altogether. A few more consciously missed their targets. But most
of the policemen hit what they were shooting at, and no one in the
whole battalion protested that this slaughter was immoral. Brown-
ing estimates that between ten and twenty percent of the men in
Police Battalion 101 refused to take part, but Daniel Goldhagen
believes this figure is too high. It’s difficult to know what the exact
figure is, but going by the information both authors cite, it’s reason-
able to assume that just under ten percent refused. In my opinion,
disagreements regarding the exact figures are irrelevant. The im-
portant thing is that an overwhelming majority of the men chose
to take part in the slaughter, despite the fact that they could have
bowed out without suffering any consequences—and indeed were
actually offered the opportunity to withdraw. As I've mentioned, ~
there is no evidence that a single German soldier or policeman was
executed or put in prison for refusing to kill a Jew. Most soldiers
must have realized that they had an opportunity to say “no? but
almost all of them chose to say “yes.”

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It's really one of the most incomprehensible things about Po-

lice Battalion 101—that more men didn't refuse to take part in the
slaughter, when this choice carried absolutely no consequences for
their personal well-being or careers. No one was forced to partici-
pate. Even more incomprehensible is the fact that those who refused
to take part at first later volunteered of their own free will. The men
in Police Battalion 101 didn’t demonstrate much enthusiasm for or
seem to take much pleasure in the slaughter, and many even became
acutely depressed after participating’ —though, certainly, there are
also numerous examples of the opposite trend occurring**—for the
most part suffering strong physical and mental discomfort follow-
ing the massacre. Why, then, did they do what they did? Brown-
ing makes a convincing case that, here too, anti-Semitism was not
a decisive motivating factor for the policemen,” and, indeed, only
twenty-five to thirty percent were members of the NSDAP.**°
Most people experience extreme discomfort, both physical and
mental, when they kill someone for the first time, but we know
that this discomfort decreases every time the act is repeated. Many
members of Police Battalion 101 felt horrible during and after the
massacre in Jézefow. This discomfort is tied to a degree of iden-
tification with the victims. However, the sheer number of vic-
tims—1,500 in Jézefow, 1,700 a month later in Lomazy, etc.—helped
to transform the victims into a homogeneous mass instead of a
group of actual individuals. By the time their second mission in
Lomazy rolled around, the policemen were already expressing
fewer qualms about their orders.*! For most of them, any discom-
fort vanished relatively quickly, presumably because all basis for
identification with the victims had begun to disappear. The very
act of killing, in fact, made it obvious that there was an enormous
gulf between “us” and “them.” The policemen were made brutal. It

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became commonplace for more men to volunteer for a mission than

were actually needed, and a competitive culture surrounding the
“Jew hunt”*” developed. They were still somewhat reluctant to kill
Jewish women and children, but even this wasn't an insurmount-
able obstacle. The number of “ardent” murderers increased, while
the unwilling few became even fewer. The largest group, however,
was composed of men who neither volunteered nor refused, but
simply carried out their orders. We can assume that this group gen-
erally had more sympathy for themselves—because of being forced
to carry out such a mission—than they had for their victims. And,
again, each mission only increased their indifference. As unbeliev-
able as it may seem, these men do not appear to have reflected on
whether or not what they was doing was evil. For example, one po-
liceman later said: “Truthfully, I must say that at the time we didn't
reflect about it at all. Only years later did any of us become truly
conscious of what had happened then.”>* This type of thoughtless-
ness is even more difficult to grasp than Eichmann’. The police-
men of Batallion 101 stood face to face with their victims, while
Eichmann remained at a remove from the scene of his crime.
The policemen later said that they didn't want to be seen as cow-
ards, that they wanted to be part of the group, etc.,>** but these ex-
cuses seem hopelessly inadequate to explain participation in mass
murder. One policeman, however, describes the act of pulling the
trigger as being the real act of cowardice here, and this is perhaps
closer to the truth: It was easier to take aim than stand out.**5 The
men of Battalion 101 rated their relationships with their comrades
and the experience of belonging to a group considerably higher
than the lives of their victims. This is understandable—though in
no way acceptable—since the victims lives were worth so little to
begin with.

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It's important for Goldhagen’s account that the Germans in Po-

lice Battalion 101 hated the Jews—but did they? Very few of them
express such feelings in interviews. Soldiers in a normal war sce-
nario rarely express hatred for the enemy; group loyalty seems to be
far more important to them than hatred.°** Likewise, loyalty seems
to have been more important than anti-Semitism for the men in
Police Battalion 101. Furthermore, many of them insist that the
root of their behavior was nothing more than the receipt of orders
and the determination to follow them. Goldhagen thinks that the
actions of the men in Police Battalion 101 can only be explained
in terms a unique, German culture. In my opinion, this assump-
tion is false. Take another famous example, namely the massacre
in My Lai on March 16, 1968. Lieutenant William L. Calley was
commanding officer and was, therefore, principally responsible for
this massacre, which lasted around an hour and a half. In that time,
507 innocent people were murdered, among them 173 children
and 76 infants. Calley alone killed 102 people. The official report
read: “128 enemy resisters killed in battle” However, for one thing,
it wasn't 128 people killed, but 507, and for another, they weren't
killed in battle, but slaughtered while helpless; finally, they weren't
enemy resisters, in the sense of enemy soldiers, but were ordinary
civilians. In his own eyes, Calley was simply following orders and
was doing what was expected of a good soldier. He couldn't believe
his ears when he was accused of mass murder:

Icouldn't understand it. I kept thinking, though. I thought,

Could it be I did something wrong? I knew that war's
wrong. Killing’s wrong: I realized that. I had gone to a war,
though. I had killed, but I knew—so did a million oth-
ers. I sat there, and I couldn't find the key. I pictured the

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people of My Lai: the bodies, and they didn’t bother me.

I had found, I had closed with, I had destroyed the [Viet
Cong]: the mission that day. I thought, It couldn't be
wrong or I'd have remorse about it.°””

If we replace “My Lai” with “Jézefow” and “Viet Cong” with “Jews,”
this speech could have been made by any of the soldiers in Po-
lice Battalion 101. They also argued that they were just following
orders, and that they had “located, confronted, and defeated” the
enemy; that it was wrong to kill, but that they were in a war; and
last but not least, that they felt no remorse that would have told
them they were doing anything wrong. Calley wasn’t alone in in-
terpreting the massacre in My Lai this way. Most of the 105 soldiers
who participated that day were fine with slaughtering five hundred
unarmed civilians, since they were only following orders. Fifteen
other officers and nine enlisted men were indicted with Calley.
Only Calley was found guilty, however, and even though he was
sentenced to life in prison for premeditated murder, he got away
with three years of house arrest.
Later examinations showed that My Lai was not a unique event;
the difference between Police Battalion 101 and the American com-
pany isn’t that large. Some American soldiers expressed great satis-
faction at having taken part in the slaughter, but others expressed
regret or discomfort. One soldier said that he didn’t want to par-
ticipate after looking a Vietnamese woman in the eyes: “Something |
told me not to [. ..] but when everybody else started firing, I started -
firing.’°** This was also a common experience in Police Battalion
101. In fact, we find the same patterns in My Lai as in Jézefow: A
small percentage refused—some even protected civilians and saved
numerous lives—while a slightly larger group shot at animals in-
stead of people or intentionally missed altogether, while others hid

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on the fringes. However, the majority participated without protest.

Among the American soldiers, there was no real widespread ha-
tred for the Vietnamese. They only did what they were told. Calley
insisted that he hadn't personally murdered anyone in My Lai, but
that he was only representing the USA.*” The policemen in Poland
could have said the same thing, that they were only carrying out
the will of the Leader, and that it wasn’t anything personal. But: of
course it was personal. And Calley and his men were personally
responsible for their actions, even if they didn’t feel this responsi-
bility. When they were put on trial, they didn't feel guilty, but rather
saw themselves as victims. Therefore, they obviously had no sym-
pathy with their actual victims. That Calley never recognized his
responsibility was one thing, but the fact that it wasn’t recognized
by others who knew what had happened in My Lai is incomprehen-
sible. One of the most shocking things about the trial against Cal-
ley is the violent protests it occasioned.” These protests were not
against the perpetrators, however, but against the fact that a soldier
was being put on trial for carrying out his duty. When Calley was
condemned, the White House received 100,000 letters of protest
in a single day, and a song supporting Calley, “The Battle Hymn of
Lieutenant Calley,’ sold a million copies in a week. In 1970, Time
conducted an extensive survey, where two-thirds of the Americans
questioned said that they were not emotionally moved by the mas-
sacre in My Lai. Only nine percent of those asked said they thought
it was right to indict Calley, while eighty percent of those asked
said that it was wrong to indict him. And all these Americans knew
exactly what had happened in My Lai: that over five hundred help-
less people had been murdered.
Just as the events in My Lai would seem to imply an intense ha-
tred for the Vietnamese, the actions of Police Battalion 101 would
seem to imply an intense anti-Semitism, as Goldhagen has asserted.

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The public's surprisingly positive opinion of Calley prompted a se-

ries of investigations in the years following the trial, where Ameri-
can civilians and soldiers were asked the following question: If you
were in the military and received orders to shoot a group of un-
armed civilians, among them elderly people, women, and children,
would you follow those orders? There is a disconcerting similar-
ity among the different findings: Around thirty percent said they
would refuse to shoot, while fifty to sixty percent said they would
shoot because theyd been ordered to do so.*! When we consider
that this was a purely hypothetical question, and that it’s easier to
say youd refuse than actually to do so in a real situation, we come
ominously close to the number who participated in Police Battal-
ion 101’s slaughter of Jews in Poland.
Let me cite another example, this one from Israel, where Is-
raeli troops carried out a massacre at Kafr Qasim on October 29,
1956." A five oclock curfew had been imposed that day in the
area between the Israeli border and Jordan, and the border patrol
received orders to shoot anyone who broke it. The problem was,
any Palestinians who commuted to and from work would be com-
ing home after five oclock, and they hadn't been informed of the
curfew. Major Shmuel Malinki of the Israeli border patrol—who
had ordered the curfew—had specifically said that no exceptions
should be made for such people, and is supposed to have remarked
that any casualties would only convince the Palestinians of the seri-
ousness of the situation. Malinski’s subordinates carried out his or-
ders without protest. A truck full of women was stopped, and even
though the women begged for their lives, they were shot. Fifteen
cyclists were ordered off their bicycles and shot, etc. In the course
of a couple of hours, the police had shot and killed forty-seven un-
armed men, women, and children. Their crime? Returning home

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from work. Malinki and some of his men were put on trial and
sentenced to long jail terms, but their sentences were eventually
reduced and they were freed after a relatively short interval. What's
the difference between the Israeli border police, Calley’s soldiers,
and the men in Police Battalion 101? In my opinion, not much.
There are differences in the extent of their crimes, but with regard
to motivation, function, etc. they are disconcertingly similar.
We can go on and draw a further comparison with the geno-
cide in the former Yugoslavia, where Serbian policemen as well as
paramilitary and military troops went from town to town, sepa-
rated the men and boys from the women, herded them into barns,
slaughtered them, and destroyed the corpses. These policemen and
soldiers were also “normal people.’ The biggest difference between
them and Police Battalion 101 is that some of the Serbian troops
knew their victims beforehand. War naturally provides ample op-
portunities for sadists and people who are ultimately driven to kill
for the sake of killing, simply because it gives them a “kick,” and
during the war in Bosnia there were certainly Muslims who, from
time to time, would join the Serbian death squad of their own free
will. But, again, such people only make up a small percentage of
the participants.
What do all these groups have in common? Little more than this
very normality. If we look at the agents who participated in the
crimes under Hitler’s (and Stalin’s, Mao’s, Pol Pot’s, etc.) regime, we
_ find very few out-and-out sadists, very few people who could re-
ally be described as representatives of demonic evil. Yes, there were
quite a few sadistic guards in the concentration camps—and these
sadists even seemed to compete in devising the most extreme and
innovative forms of cruelty**’—but they were a minority, and Him-
mler actually ordered that such individuals be kept from service.“

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The majority of the guards in the concentration and extermina-

tion camps were stationed in these places because they were unfit
for regular military duty. There were few criteria that had to be
met to get such an assignment—aside from the requirement that
one not demonstrate any sadistic tendencies. The majority of the
guards were careerists, idealists and, largely, conformists who sim-
ply did what the others were doing without pausing to reflect on
the morality of their actions. The same was true of the guards in
the Japanese prison camps in the Second World War.** The worst
evils are committed not by monsters, but people no different from
ourselves.
Conformity is a powerful force. In a famous psychological ex-
periment, groups of six individuals were shown a line and asked
to determine which of three other lines was as long as the first. In
every group, five people were instructed to choose the wrong line,
while the sixth was the subject of the experiment. A large number
of experimental subjects gave the same answer as the rest of the
group, in spite of the fact that the others had obviously made the
wrong choice.*° What this study doesn’t tell us, however, is whether
conformity—which leads individuals to endorse an answer they
know is false—is merely external, or if it’s internalized—that is, if
subjects only say they agree with the rest of a group, or if they actu-
ally believe what the rest of the group believes. It’s difficult to tell,
and perhaps there really isn't much of a transition between saying
something and believing it . .. so that a person who says something
often enough will indeed believe it in time.
In 1960, Stanley Milgram conducted a famous experiment that
allowed ordinary students to subject—or, rather, to think that they
were subjecting—test subjects (hereafter called “victims”) to strong
electrical shocks when the victim answered a question wrong.”””
In the years that followed, Milgram repeated the experiment in a

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number of different ways. All the students received a test shock

of forty-five volts before the experiment began. The students had
nothing personal against their victims, and there were no conse-
quences if a student chose not to participate. They underwent no
training, they were not paid for their time, there were no threats,
no punishments that could influence their actions—but, nonethe-
less, the majority of students did what they were told. Sixty percent
of the students obeyed all the way up to 450 volts, even though that
particular voltage was marked with a warning: “Danger: Severe
Shock.” When they neither saw nor heard their victims, nearly all
of the students cooperated. However, when they could see and hear
the victims, only forty percent fully cooperated, and that number
sank to thirty percent when the students themselves had to put the
test subject’s hand on the metal plate. When a non-authoritative
person gave the order, there was almost no cooperation. When they
did not have to apply the shock, but only had to read the question
and judge the answer, over ninety percent participated all the way
up to 450 volts. Later, these students justified themselves by saying
that they weren't really responsible, because they hadn't actually
pressed the button. Ifa large majority of the group refused to partic-
ipate, almost ninety percent of the rest would follow suit. There was
no obvious difference between the behavior of men and women.
Students had diverse methods for dealing with the situation: some
focused exclusively on each individual step in the procedure, as if
they were trying to avoid the whole picture; some talked extremely
loudly to drown out their victim's protests, some turned away so they
couldnt see the victim, some insisted that shocks weren't really so
bad, and many argued that the victims were so dumb they deserved
to be shocked. In the concluding interview, when the students
were told that they had been the actual test subjects, many said that
they wouldnt have shocked the victims if it had been up to them,

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that they were only following orders. They overlooked the fact that
it was up to them whether or not they followed orders.
In Milgram’s experiment, we see only one side of the issue. None
of those who thought they were causing someone pain seemed to
have any desire to do so. They simply subordinated themselves to a
perceived authority. What if some of the test subjects had actually
wanted to cause pain? Milgram’s experiment says nothing about
this possibility. An experiment conducted by Robert A. Baron,
however, sheds some light on this subject.** In this case, the test
subjects, male university students, were introduced to a person be-
fore the experiment began, and this person deliberately irritated
some of the test subjects, while others were treated neutrally. This
person, who was employed by the researcher, would be the “vic-
tim” in a learning experiment where wrong answers were punished
with electric shocks. This experiment differs from Milgram’s in
that some of the test subjects had been deliberately provoked, and
were all personally responsible for controlling the strength of the
electric current, which ranged from extremely mild to extremely
strong. In addition, half the subjects were stationed in sight of a
“pain meter” supposedly showing how much pain their victim was
feeling. In the case of test subjects without access to the pain meter,
those who had been provoked only gave a slightly stronger shock
than neutral subjects; in those cases where the pain meter was vis-
ible, however, the difference in behavior was drastic. The neutral
subjects—those who weren't provoked beforehand—turned the
current down as soon as they received feedback on the victim's
pain. The provoked subjects, however, turned up the electrical cur-
rent. They wanted to cause the irritating person pain, and the pain
meter telling them that they had succeeded was itself a powerful
motivator—despite the fact, as should certainly be mentioned, that
the pain the subjects thought they were causing their victim was

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completely disproportional to the minor provocation they had re-

ceived before the experiment began. Of course, I do not believe
that we can draw many broad conclusions from this experiment,
other than the fact that an individual's basis for acting in situations
where they are subjected to authority are not as unambiguous as
Milgram claims. He concludes, namely, that the deciding factor is
not so much who a person is, but in what type of situation they find
themselves.*? However, both factors are clearly quite important,
and in foregrounding situation over personality, Milgram seems to
underestimate individual responsibility. Yet an individual has the
capacity to reflect on and decide about what type of person they
want to become, and this capacity implies responsibility.
If, despite this, we focus for a moment on the diverse situations
an individual might find themselves in, we can isolate five elements
capable of causing people—people who can in no way be described
as evil in the classical sense, that is, as sadists—to accept evil:

1. Presentation: It’s crucial how a given activity is presented

to an agent. There’s a big difference between participating
in the mass extermination of an innocent and helpless
group of people and in defending yourself and those you
love against a powerful enemy threatening to destroy you
...and yet, genocide can be described in either way. Pre-
sentation was crucial, for instance, in carrying out the
extermination of the Jews. The victims were regarded as
vermin, garbage. It’s true that this image was occasionally
difficult to maintain—especially in the case of small chil-
dren—but certainly not impossible, especially in conjunc-
tion with the other elements below.
2. Distancing: The creation of the greatest possible distance
between your actions and the people affected by your

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actions. For example: Someone makes a decision in an

office and the consequences are felt in a completely dif-
ferent location, a place the decision-maker will presum-
ably never visit.
3. Separation of labor: Where an agent only carries out part
of a task, and so doesn't feel responsible for the result of
the whole. This was especially evident in the case of the
Holocaust, where we can outline the typical murder in the
following way: At the Wannsee Conference, the Nazi lead-
ership made plans that were then put into action; a po-
liceman arrests a Jew; Eichmann’s division organizes the
transport; train engineers and others carry out the trans-
port; the prisoner arrives in a camp directed by Héss or
somebody else; this camp has soldiers who each “have
their orders”; one prisoner forces another prisoner into
the gas chamber—and there you have it. No one has to feel
responsible for their actions.
4. Escalation: Where there’s no fundamental alteration in an
individual's worldview. Instead, the change happens little
by little, every time the individual is faced with a problem
that needs solving. In a relatively short period of time, the
individual finds himself with a set of values that are radi-
cally different from the ones he started out with—and is
not even aware that said values have altered so completely.
5. Socialization: An individual is introduced into a culture
where actions that would once have seemed reprehensible
are suddenly the norm. Because all agents in the culture
accept this norm, the individual’s opposition vanishes.

All five of these elements were operative among the participants

in the mass exterminations discussed above. And yet, though they

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can help explain why these men and women did what they did,
they cannot, however, be used as excuses. All people, regardless
of rank, are free to choose whether they will participate in some-
thing or not, and if they choose to participate, they can define how
they participate. Even in the most extreme of situations, people still
maintain the ability to choose. Unfortunately, the choice is often
between two evils—and, yes, by choosing the lesser of two evils, an
agent may avoid committing a greater. Nonetheless, these agents
are still responsible for their lesser evil. The concentration camps
had their share of sadistic guards, but likewise had their share of
guards who saved prisoners’ lives, presumably because they still
regarded their prisoners as people. For the most part, these humane
actions took place in secret, because they directly contradicted the
purpose and mentality of a camp. We even know of a number of
examples where the most sadistic guards still acted to save the lives
of prisoners—as Primo Levi writes, “Compassion and brutality can
coexist in the same individual and in the same moment, despite all
logic” There were guards too who conducted themselves with
relative decency during the entire time they were stationed in the
concentration camps. Each guard was an individual with the abil-
ity to make individual choices, and they were under no obligation
to be vicious. Relative decency, however, does not mitigate the fact
all the camp guards can still be blamed for having taken part in
genocide. It’s just that some chose to participate in mass murder in
such a way that they could be seen as still retaining a scrap of moral
decency at the end of the war.

Thinking as Opposition
Since the particular form of evil under discussion is occasioned by
thoughtlessness, it’s logical to assume that thought can act as an op-
posing force. Therefore, Arendt takes it upon herself to investigate

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the relationship between our capacity to think and our capacity to

tell good from evil, and, indeed, whether pausing for thought actu-
ally helps to keep us from doing evil. Earlier, I stressed that Eich-
mann didn't act, in the strictest sense of the word, but only followed
orders, and likewise didn’t speak, only spouted an endless stream of
clichés. We can go one step further and say that he neither thought
nor evaluated his situation. Eichmann demonstrated that thought-
lessness is literally a lack of judgment. It’s as though Eichmann’s ca-
pacity for judgment wasn't even operational. Ultimately, such lack
of judgment is the epitome of banal evil. All these elements—ac-
tion, speech, thought, and judgment—are tied together. For Arendt,
thought is a positive “destructive” activity that undermines habits
and rules, and which therefore is capable of directing action. As she
points out: “All thinking demands a stop-and-think:”>*' Thinking in-
terrupts our activities and tears us out of the frictionless functional-
ity that’s so characteristic of our day-to-day lives. We can also call
this manner of thought “reflection,” and in reflection we can impose
a certain distance between our activities and ourselves.
“Thinking deals with invisibles, with representations of things
that are absent; judging always concerns particulars and things
close at hand. But the two are interrelated, as are consciousness
and conscience.’ Thinking is clearly tied to judgment. It’s in mak-
ing judgments that thinking is first realized in the world, but such
judgments can only be made if they are brought about by thought. ;
The goal of thought is to return to the world that was the point of a
given thoughts departure, and this goal implies that thinking must
be critical—and being critical is nothing more than exercising the
ability to make distinctions. The goal of thought, therefore, is not
to produce abstract knowledge, but rather to give us the ability to
judge, to make distinctions, such as the distinction between good

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and evil. Arendt writes that if the ability to make distinctions is

linked from the outset to the ability to think—something we have
good reason to believe—then we can indeed demand that people
think.**
But what does it really mean to think? In answering this ques-
tion, Arendt draws closer to Kant, who postulates three maxims
for thinking:

They are: 1. to think for oneself; 2. to put ourselves in

thought in the place of everybody else; 3. always to think
consistently. The first is the maxim of unprejudiced
thought; the second of enlarged thought; the third of con-
secutive thought. The first is the maxim of a Reason never
passive. The tendency to such passivity, and therefore to
heteronomy of the Reason, is called prejudice [. . .] As re-
gards the second maxim of the mind [. . .] it indicates a
man of enlarged thought if he disregards the subjective
private conditions of his own judgment, by which so many
others are confined, and reflects upon it from a univer-
sal standpoint (which he can only determine by placing
himself at the standpoint of others). The third maxim, viz.
that of consecutive thought, is the most difficult to at-
tain, and can only be attained by the combination of both
the former, and after the constant observance of them has
grown into a habit.**

Eichmann, Héss, and Stang fail in all points: (1) They don't think
for themselves, but follow orders; (2) They don’t put themselves
in anyone else’s shoes and they never reflect on how the mass ex-
terminations might have seemed from a prisoner's point of view;

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(3) They don't think consequently—and this mistake is a result of

the foregoing—because they don't think for themselves. The result
is that they can't take the whole picture into account. What they
think results directly from what they were ordered to think, and
this can change from moment to moment. Where thought is con-
cerned, they all made themselves guilty of incompetence. They fail
to maintain the ideal Kant proposes for Enlightenment:

Enlightenment is the human being’s emancipation from its

self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the ability to make
use of one’s intellect without the direction of another. This
immaturity is self-incurred when its cause does not lie ina
lack of intellect, but rather in a lack of resolve and cour-
age to make use of one’s intellect without the direction of
another. “Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own
intellect!” is hence the motto of enlightenment. **

Eichmann, Hoss, and Stangl are guilty for not having made use of
their own understanding, for not having had the courage to think
for themselves, simply following orders instead. And they are
guilty too for having chosen to follow orders. This guilt is not sim-
ply Eichmann’, Héss’s, and Stangl’s, but also belongs to the men
in Police Battalion 101, to Calley’s troops, and to countless others.
It's a guilt we all potentially bear, and therefore the old Enlighten-
ment project is still important and relevant. From the standpoint
of the Enlightenment, evil wasn’t an independent, active force,
but rather a lack of enlightenment; thus, evil could be defeated
by overcoming ignorance. This idea bears a certain kinship to the
Socratic-Platonic notion that evil stems from ignorance—and
if I now return to and support a similar concept, it’s because I
don't see any other alternative. Adorno argues that the only true

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oppositional force to the principal introduced by Auschwitz is

autonomy, “the power of reflection, of self-determination, of not
cooperating.”°** This is a view of enlightenment that’s as good as
any, and perhaps the only opposition to banal evil. The principle
of autonomy is a moral principle, which demands the individual
think for himself and follow his own conscience instead of simply
following orders.
Arendt indicates that there’s an important connection between
thought and conscience, or rather between thoughtlessness and a
lack of conscience**’—we could find no better illustration of this
than the cases of Eichmann, Héss, and Stangl. By conscience, how-
ever, I don’t just mean the ability to feel guilt. (As far as I know, Eu-
ripedes formulated the first conception of conscience, writing: “T
know that I have done terrible things.”***) Guilt is seldom felt while
an action is still being carried out, but only afterward, when the
individual begins to consider that what they did was wrong; none-
theless, this feeling of guilt can prevent future actions of the same
type.°” The ability to feel remorse is necessary if an individual is
going to recognize his own evil. Remorse, therefore, is an expres-
sion of moral self-recognition.
Michael Gelven cites three possible reactions to the realization
that an individual has done something evil:

1. How could I have been so stupid? This reaction doesn't

follow an act committed in “honest” ignorance, like press-
ing an elevator button without knowing a child is in the
shaft, or out of carelessness, like running someone over in
a car because you didn't check your mirrors. Instead, it's a
situation where you should have known better and are
guilty for not thinking your actions through carefully
enough.

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2 Why did I not resist this wrong? This reaction follows some
more-than-typical human weakness. We accept that we
are fallible, to a certain extent, but in this case there has
been an unacceptable form of weakness, leading a person
to permit the occurrence of some action or event that is
nonetheless recognized as wrong.
3. What have I let myself become? The most serious form of
self-condemnation, for here we realize we have let our-
selves degenerate or become corrupted to such an extent
that we do not just feel shame, but disgust at our moral
character.

These reactions are steps to self-recognition. Eichmann, Hoss, and

Stangl should all have come to (3), but none of them did. Héss didn't
even get to (1); Eichmann remained stuck at (1); while Stangl ex-
pressed both (1) and (2), and many times, in his testimony, seems
on the verge of (3)—one reason he makes a more sympathetic im-
pression than the other two, in my opinion, despite everything. If
all three men had reached the third level of self-recognition, there
would have been some basis for understanding them, if not forgiving
them, because by judging themselves they would have taken a step
toward joining the moral community they abandoned by partici-
pating in the mass exterminations to begin with. Self-disgust would
demonstrate that despite everything, they still belonged among us.
Which doesn't mean, of course, that they would not have earned .
their punishment—but our understanding someone with such ter-
rible crimes on their conscience first requires that they understand
themselves. Recognition of one’s own moral corruption shows that
an individual has retained some sense of his own humanity, that he’s
not a complete moral wasteland. For instance, to take an example

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from fiction, a character based on a number of real people, we might

cite Kurtz, from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Kurtz’s original
goal was to civilize the natives, an ambition not in itself evil. How-
ever, he became progressively corrupted over time, and ended by
believing the natives should all be destroyed: “Exterminate all the
brutes!”°*! It’s impossible to know when the change occurred in him,
because it doesn't happen at any one specific point in time—rather,
it’s a gradual habituation and distortion that ends with cruelty be-
coming habit. Kurtz eventually realizes this, and his last words—
“The horror! The horror!”***—might be interpreted as an expression
of horror at what he’s let himself become. With that, Kurtz again
joins the moral community before he dies.

EMIS REOPRKE
What can we conclude from our discussion of the different types
of human evil? Essentially, just this: that people should be regarded
as good and evil, rather than good or evil. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
writes that the line separating good from evil is not drawn between
different groups—nations, classes, or political parties—but “right
through every human heart.”*® Evil is a possibility found in all of
us, because we are all free, moral beings. Evil is part of our com-
mon humanity, as is goodness. This is not to say that every person
has the same mixture of good and evil—it’s obvious that this is not
the case. Some people are more evil than others. However, it is still
possible for each of us to do either good or evil. The most impor-
tant question is how this possibility is realized in our actions.
What is also clear is that a person can have a number of different
motives—or no motive at all—for doing evil. The least plausible
motive is the demonic—doing evil simply because an action is evil.

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However, people do indeed commit evil acts, fully aware of their

nature, to reach a subjective good. Despite my reservations about
Kant’s theory of radical evil, I think that he still gives us the most
convincing explanation for instrumental evil. Kant’s theory, how-
ever, is limited in its applicability to other forms—it can’t explain
what I’ve called idealistic or stupid evils, where an agent is either
motivated by what he considers to be an objective good, or fails to
reflect about good and evil at all.
None of us are immune to evil. We've all committed some vari-
ety of evil in one of the aforementioned forms. Most of us have only
done so in little ways, but all of us could have committed evil on
a much larger scale. Evil people are not just “others,” but also our-
selves. I’m pretty certain, today, based on what I know of myself,
that I would not be capable of doing what Eichmann, Hoss, Stangl,
or the men in Police Battalion 101 did, but I realize that, in cer-
tain situations, I could have done what they did. There’s nothing in
my “nature” that assures me that, in their places, I would not have
ended up acting as they did. As Odo Marquard points out, we hu-
mans are more accident than intention. It’s a mistake to think that
people are absolute masters of themselves and their fates. My “self”
is largely the result of chance: where and when I was born, what has
affected me in the interim, etc. We can see a person's life as thor-
oughly determined, but we must also recognize that we have the
ability to change what determines our life: we can describe people |
as both determined and determining. Human beings can reflect
upon who they are and who they ought to be, and they have the ©
ability to choose who they become. We are not strictly determined
by our environment, though it does limit our scope of action.
People are free, and this means that they could always have acted
differently . . . and because they could have acted differently, they

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can be blamed or praised for their actions, morally speaking. Every-

one who took part in the Nazi mass exterminations, for instance,
could have acted differently—and this is the essential point.
It can be tempting to describe people as inherently evil. Stig
Seeterbakken has writen:

Were all bastards, when it comes right down to it. The

only reason were not all murderers and fascists is that,
luckily, the situation’s never been right. Under certain cir-
cumstances, every single person is capable of torturing
another human being. It’s a reality we can’t ignore. But of
course we can ignore it, and we do, every single one of us,
every single one of us in our own hypocritical way. If
there’s any true moral position left to take, it’s in admitting
that at the critical moment, morality is something we've
never even known.

However, even if every single person was indeed capable of tortur-

ing another human being under certain circumstances, this doesn't
mean that every single person would really do it. Morality is not
something that all people are ignorant of in the critical moment,
and we aren't all doomed to fail when it counts most. Perhaps the
majority do fail, but not all. And while there may be no essential
difference between those who fail and those who do not, Szterbak-
_ken’s assertion is simply too one-dimensional. The problem we face
is that our actions, at the critical moment, are as-yet undetermined.
We can’t know what we would do in a given situation—that is, be-
fore we actually do it. If we are all doomed to fail, we have nothing
to strive for: we may as well give up altogether. But this isn't the
case—we can still hope that wed do the right thing, that wed have

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THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF EVIL

the strength to oppose evil. And this hope itself—which is just that,
a hope, not something we absolutely know—might help us, when
the time comes, to make the right choice.
People are fallible. They fail. Paul Ricoeur writes: “What is meant
by calling manfallible? Essentially this: that the possibility of moral
evil is inherent in man’s constitution.”°* To be human is to have
the possibility of doing evil, but since it’s only a possibility, not a
necessity, this reference to “man’s constitution” cannot function as
an excuse. At most, it can only be part of the explanation. Ricoeur
goes on to argue that the gap between the possibility and reality of
evil is reflected in a similar gap between a purely anthropological
description of fallibility and an ethical one.°® There isn’t any con-
tradiction between anthropology and ethics, but the one doesn't
follow from the other. Anthropology allows room for ethics to
play; it says that we are all capable of doing evil, of failing, while
ethics blames us for our failure—because, despite everything else,
we could also have not done evil.
All people fail at some point. Pure innocence would be fallibility
without failure,*’’ but this state of innocence is only an ideal, not
something we can actually attain. Only those who can be guilty
can also be innocent. Strictly speaking, therefore, an infant cannot
be innocent, because—morally—it cannot fail. Innocence is a state
that belongs to moral judgment, but that can never be found in its
pure form. Pure guilt and pure innocence are idealizations, and we
are caught between them. We're all guilty and we're all innocent, if -
to different degrees. In a religious sense, we can say that we're all -
sinners.°*°* Were all sinners—not because we're victims of original
sin, but because we've actually sinned ourselves.

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 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
The fact that this chapter is entitled “The Problem of Evil” does not
signal a return to theodicy and the question of how evil “came to
be.” Instead, I will be discussing the problem of evil as a practical
problem. Neutralizing evil is a far more important task than ex-
plaining how it first came into the world. Evil is a challenge to us as
agents, rather than merely as thinking beings. Therefore, the prob-
lem of evil is not a philosophical problem that demands a philo-
sophical solution—our goal shouldn't be to find some subtle line of
reasoning that will let us come to terms with the existence of evil.
Ultimately, the fact that evil exists is not so much a metaphysical
challenge as it is a moral and political one.

THEORY AND PRAXIS

In philosophy, there’s a tendency to shy away from praxis, to focus
on the world of ideas and neglect the world of action. This disparity
is set out in Aristotle’s claim that the contemplative life (bios theo-
retikos) is superior to the practical or political life (bios politicos).°®
One possible result of this idea is that philosophy loses the oppor-
tunity to change the outside world, because now all great ideas—the
idea of evil included—belong to the world of inner reflection. This
thought is clearly formulated by Marcus Aurelius: “Your evil does
not consist [. . .] in any change and alteration of your environment.
Where then? Where the part of you which judges about evil is. Let
it not frame the judgment, and all is well”°” Aureliuss ethics are

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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

exclusively egocentric, arguing that you should not focus on others’

evil, but exclusively on your own.”
This stoic ideal turns up repeatedly in the history of philoso-
phy. The “provisional ethics” Descartes suggests in The Discourse
on Method contains the four following points: (1) To obey the laws
and customs of one’s country, (2) to be firm in one’s actions, (3) to
master yourself rather than fortune, and (4) to devote yourself fully
to the study and search of truth.°” In a letter to Princess Elizabeth
of Bohmen, he develops this idea further and outlines three rules
for the good life, which corresponds to the three [sic] moral rules
in the Discourse on Method: (1) To use reason to discover what we
should or should not do, (2) to be resolute in carrying out reason’s
commandments, and (3) to change ourselves, since external good
is beyond our control. He connects these three rules to a fourth,
namely that the correct use of reason leads to happiness, and that
one should therefore devote oneself to the study of reason.°” This
concept of ethics suggests that the best life is the contemplative life.
Since it is not possible to change the world, a person can do noth-
ing more than seek to change within themselves.
Wittgenstein, though an anti-Cartesian, draws the same conclu-
sion. For him, all ethics are directed toward the individual, and
Paul Engelmann’s remarks in this sense are enlightening:

In me Wittgenstein unexpectedly met a person who, like

many members of the younger generation, suffered acutely —
under the discrepancy between the world as it is and as it
ought to be according to his lights, but who also tended
to seek the source of that discrepancy within, rather than
outside, himself. °”4

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 THEORY AND PRAXIS

Engelmann further writes that “the person who consistently believes

that the discrepancy lies in himself alone must reject the belief that
changes in the external facts may be necessary and called for.”°”
In keeping this idea, the young Wittgenstein writes that he cannot
change the state of the world through will alone, and in this respect
is completely powerless: “I can only make myself independent of
the world—and so in a certain sense master it—by renouncing any
influence on happenings.”*”* The solution to life's problems lies in
renouncing individual responsibility to change the world. The “ethi-
cal reward” for such resignation is happiness, because those who
are happy have succeeded in bringing themselves into harmony
with the world.*” The happy life is the contemplative life: “The only
life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the
world.”5’ Again we find the belief that the purely contemplative life,
bios theoretikos, is the good life, and represents a type of escape from
the vicissitudes of the world. However, this standpoint is not one
an individual can simply embrace all at once: it’s only in giving up
the practical, and devoting oneself purely to the theoretical, that a
person can find happiness.*” Wittgenstein severs philosophy from
the world, and therefore from changing the world, again reducing
philosophy to a discipline that cannot change the world, only itself.
In keeping with this, the older Wittgenstein writes in 1944: “The
man will be revolutionary who can revolutionize himself” As we
see, the older Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy as a disci-
pline that “leaves everything as it is”*' had been shaping his work
for most of his life: “Thoughts that are at peace. That's what someone
who philosophizes yearns for.”*” The younger and the older Witt-
genstein seem to share the same basic (and, in this sense, Cartesian)
philosophical idea—an idea that is incompatible with the belief that
philosophy should help to change the world.

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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Stoicism does indeed lead to the kind of attitude that Aure-

lius explicitly recommends—namely, that we should exercise in-
dulgence toward other people's evils.*** However, it also leads to
countless sins of neglect and allows the evil in the world to remain
unchecked. Paul places those who allow evil on a par with those
who do evil.*** However, we might also come to the conclusion that
there is no real reason to fight evil. “Such is the self-contrariety of
evil,” says Pascal, that its “intrinsic malignity” leads it to destroy
itself. The example Pascal uses is the lie. A lie is only possible
if it is represented as truth, and therefore a lie contains an inher-
ent contradiction—but having an inherent contradiction is not the
same as being self-destructive. As long as truth remains an insti-
tution—that is, as long as the act of lying is not the rule, but the
exception—the lie will continue to function. Therefore, we cannot
say that evil destroys itself. Evil must be actively fought and cannot
be left to its own self-inflicted ruin.
In my opinion, therefore, philosophical reflection should move
from pure reflection to praxis. Kant argues that all interest is ul-
timately practical;**° the human race, he says, has a “thoroughly
active existence,**’ and he wants to pin down the determining
possibilities and goals of this activeness. Kant further asserts that
“all the operations of our faculties must issue in the practical and
unite in it as their goal.”°* Theoretical philosophy, that is, should
be subordinate to the practical.5*° But Kant doesn't believe that this
principal is limited to philosophy: Ordinary people have faculties
enabling them to distinguish between good and evil and to act in
accordance with the conclusions they draw. The problem is, this
insight is so easily relegated to the sidelines.
Agnes Heller reformulates Kant’s categorical imperative to sug-
gest that one should act as though the lessening of everyone else’s

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 THEORY AND PRAXIS

suffering was dependent on one’s own actions.” However, we all

know that it’s possible for us to see a person suffering right in front
of our eyes and still remain unmoved. Understanding how this is
possible can be difficult, since sympathy presupposes some form of
immediacy—but sympathy also has a discursive aspect: it is guided
by our idea of who we feel we can allow ourselves to feel sympathy for.
Sympathy tears down the walls between others and ourselves—in
a certain sense, feeling sympathy for someone implies that we are
putting ourselves in their place, “becoming one with them.” When
we feel for someone, when we're empathetic, we enter into an ex-
tremely intimate relationship; the question then becomes, Is this
person whos suffering someone I want to get close to? There tends
to be a rather large difference of opinion on this point. For some
people, sympathy must extend to the entire planet—something I
myself am quite incapable of comprehending in its enormity; for
others it just extends to animals, leaving humans out of the equa-
tion entirely; and for still others sympathy is reserved for a certain
group of people only. These “sympathetic groups” don't exist in any
kind of hierarchy, so that people who are sympathetic to animals
aren't necessarily sympathetic to all people—the Nazis, for instance,
who established the first nature preserves and can be considered
the founders of the modern environmental movement, certainly
lacked sympathy for rather large portions of the human race. But
clearly we feel that it’s important that the object of our sympathy
_ is considered worthy of it. For Aristotle, as well as the typical citi-
zen of ancient Greece, it would have been entirely inappropriate to
feel sympathy for a slave, because the slave wasn't worthy of such
a response.*' The same could be said for a white man or woman
with regard to an African American during the slave period in the
United States. For an SS soldier it would have been wrong to feel

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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

sympathy for a Jew or a gypsy, and for a member of Arkan’s Tigers

it would have been wrong for feel sympathy for a Bosnian Muslim,
etc. Iwon't exclude the possibility that people have a “natural” abil-
ity to feel sympathy (as philosophers and others have suggested
since antiquity), but I will say that this ability can be effectively
blocked by categorization. The difference between “us” and “them”
can create walls that sympathy cannot tear down. Hoss, Stangl, and
others like them naturally knew their prisoners were suffering, but
this suffering was dismissed as irrelevant. Suffering had a human
face, but they did not allow it to play a corrective roll.
Hume suggests that proximity in time and space plays a role in
sympathy,” and this is largely accurate. For example, we had much
more sympathy for the victims in Bosnia than in Angola in the
1990s, despite the fact that conditions were far worse in Angola.
Yet proximity alone isn't always enough. Most people feel little to
no sympathy for the homeless men and women they see every-
day. Hume writes: “Every human creature resembles ourselves, and
by that means has an advantage above any other object, in oper-
ating on the imagination.’ An exercise of the imagination is a
requirement for sympathy—That is, I have to think that there’s a
resemblance between a person suffering and myself before I’m able
to sympathize with them. Hume, therefore, argues that we sympa-
thize with the people who most resemble ourselves**—yet this is
not entirely accurate. Earlier, I called attention to Freud’s idea of
the “narcissism of minor differences.’ Take, for example, the re-
lationship between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Now, these two groups have more in common with each other than
they do with anyone else on the planet, but this similarity is under-
mined by their sense of belonging to opposing groups—the result
being that there is often little to no sympathy between them. What

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 THEORY AND PRAXIS

is humanism other than an attempt to tear down such hindrances

to human feeling? Sympathy requires individuals to make an es-
sential connection between another person’s suffering and their
own ... but this implies that the individual must already identify
with the victim.
When some injustice is visited on a group that is already stigma-
tized or seen as having a lower status—groups that an individual
may not identify with very strongly—there is always a great likeli-
hood that it won't remain confined to this group for long, but infect
every level of society in time. If a person accepts torture or some-
thing like it when it’s being inflicted on the bottom rungs of society,
this evil will inevitably spread to all social classes. In this respect, a
purely egotistical argument for sympathy would be: You shouldn't
be so ready to tolerate injustices that will eventually strike you as
well. Torture, for example, tends to spread.°*° Roman law first lim-
ited torture to slaves who had been accused of a crime, but after
a while it was broadened to include slaves who had witnessed a
crime, until finally it was practiced on free men as well. Ultimately,
torture became common, even in criminal cases that weren't es-
pecially serious.*” This pattern repeated itself in the Middle Ages,
when Roman law became the norm in most European countries.
Around the year 1250, strong restrictions were placed on who one
was allowed to torture—for instance, you couldnt torture eyewit-
nesses, children, the elderly, pregnant women, knights, members
of the nobility, kings, and to a large extent the clergy. However,
these restrictions had disappeared again a couple of hundred years
later, and eventually anyone could in principle be subjected to le-
gal torture.** We find the same development in our modern soci-
ety, but moving at a much greater tempo, so that what begins with
“fringe groups” affects virtually all of society in a relatively short

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period of time. Evil starts small—most genocides didn't begin as

extreme acts of violence, but grew to such enormous proportions
precisely because the initial stages found little resistance. This was
clearly the case, for example, with the Nazi exterminations. The
Holocaust could hardly have taken place if the German people had
protested against the anti-Jewish laws and the forced deportations
that were its predecessors. Even if the German people—in contrast
to Goldhagen’s argument—were not aware that the Jews were being
exterminated to the extent that they were, they still had a duty to
protest against the deportations, which in and of themselves were a
severe violation of human rights.
Some small demonstrations did in fact take place, and these
demonstrations had consequences: the German people did not
simply tolerate everything their leaders did. The Nazis’ first eutha-
nasia program, which was directed against the mentally and physi-
cally handicapped, produced a strong reaction once the German
people realized what was happening. And large protests led to the
programs cancellation—admittedly, after 70,000 lives had already
been lost. On another occasion, German women demonstrated
in Berlin for three days against the imprisonment of their Jewish
husbands, and the result was that 6,000 Jewish men were freed.5”
The protests, in other words, produced results. However, there
were no large protests in Germany against the deportation of Jews
in general. In Bulgaria, on the other hand, there were such large
public protests that imprisonment of Jews was severely curtailed.
Furthermore, the passivity of other countries in the face of the Jew-
ish exterminations helped strengthen the idea that the extermina-
tions were not so evil after all—and in December of 1942, Himmler
wrote that he honestly believed that the English and Americans
were onboard with the Jewish genocide. In reality, however, there

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 THEORY AND PRAXIS

wasnt all that much the Allies could actually do once the war had
begun; and yet, even if there were practical hindrances that, for
example, made the bombing of Auschwitz impossible before quite
late in the war—an alternative that was rejected even by Jewish or-
ganizations—the Allies should nonetheless have signaled that they
knew what was taking place: that it was completely unacceptable
and that the responsible parties would be brought to justice. If this
had happened, perhaps nothing would have changed, but perhaps
too it might have led to an earlier dismantling of the extermina-
tion camps. This is easily imagined, and by extension we can see
just how much the German populace itself might have influenced
the situation by putting pressure on their government through
mass demonstrations. The most obvious explanation for why such
demonstrations did not take place is that normal Germans didn't
see the deportations as affecting them directly and, therefore, were
simply indifferent. This indicates that the average German citizen
had already accepted the distinction between “German” and “Jew”
dictated by the regime, but it hardly proves that the German people
were actively anti-Semitic, as Goldhagen argues. Regardless, it does
demonstrate that “normal” Germans felt an indifference to the de-
portations that can only be described as morally reprehensible.
Witnesses have a duty to intervene. This duty is not necessary a
juridical one, but is in any case a moral one. If a person has the op-
portunity to intercede in an injustice, but fails to, then that person
shares part of the blame. However, our high regard for personal
comfort—not security, but comfort—has a tendency to overshadow
our concern for a victim’s welfare, and even existence. Sins of ne-
glect are not the worst type of sin, but they are certainly among the
most common. Most murders have witnesses, but it’s very rare that
these witnesses act to prevent the tragic outcome.

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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

But this leads us to another phenomenon: The more people

have an opportunity to intervene, the less personal responsibility
each individual feels to do so. This principle of diffused respon-
sibility was introduced by John Darley and Bibb Latané in 1968
to explain why bystanders so often fail to help victims in need.
The departure point for their study was a famous case from New
York in 1963, when Kitty Genovese was beaten to death for over
an hour. None of the forty people who either saw or heard the at-
tack came to her aid or called the police. In contrast to the usual
explanation—that people in urban settings are simply indiffer-
ent to each other—Darley and Latané suggested that the fact that
there were so many witnesses led each individual to feel that they
had no personal responsibility to step in. Later laboratory experi-
ments strengthened this hypothesis and demonstrated that there is
a much greater likelihood that an individual will step in and help a
person in need than a member of a group.
Bystanders can do a great deal to influence the outcome of a
situation, both in isolated cases of violence and with regard to
crimes on a national scale. An example of the latter is Edmund
Dene Morel, who fought for years to make the world aware of the
crimes taking place in the Belgian Congo. Eventually, he helped
bring them to an end.™ Those of us who live in democracies are
required to stay vigilant. In a democracy, citizens who keep silent
implicitly give their consent. Those who have an opportunity to
protest publicly, but refrain, give their assent by failing to protest.
Bystanders, that is, can influence a situation concretely by becom-
ing participants. This participation doesn't just mean stepping in
physically with violence or sanctions. Helping to define and rede-
fine an event's moral status is just as important as intervention. We
must argue that certain actions should be understood in a certain

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 THEORY AND PRAXIS

way, and that the agents in question should therefore stop what
they're doing. Witnesses who become participants can break the
moral consensus and increase awareness that something morally
unacceptable is happening. The participant witness can help to
awaken our slumbering consciences and thereby incorporate a vic-
tim back into the moral community. Most agents, furthermore, feel
a need to legitimate their actions—preferably before, but also after
they actually do them; as such, it’s extremely important to strug-
gle against prejudice at ail times, because this helps to de-legitimize
prejudice-based justification strategies.
The justification of evil actions usually springs from one of two
elements, perhaps from both: (1) A person or a group poses such a
serious threat to myself or others that they must be harmed or an-
nihilated or (2) a person or a group has a characteristic, or a weak-
ness, that means they do not need to be regarded as inviolable. In
other words, fear and contempt are evil’s two primary wellsprings.
Witnesses, however, can try and change the picture so that the fear
and/or the contempt is revealed to be based on something other
than the facts.
The descriptive and the normative, facts and values, are not
completely independent of each other. Normative considerations
influence how we interpret a situation, and what we consider to
be “facts” have consequences for normative evaluations. We sel-
dom deduce that a certain type of situation is wrong. For example,
we know that it’s wrong to abuse someone. The concept of abuse
goes hand in hand with the knowledge that the act is wrong, but
the consciousness that abuse is wrong is only applicable in situ-
ations that we recognize as cases of abuse. Bystanders can play
a decisive role in helping define how a situation is interpreted.
This is especially true, for instance, in the case of genocide. A

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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

number of countries avoided calling what happened in Bosnia

and Rwanda a “genocide; because that would mean they had the
moral, political, and juridical responsibility to intercede. Inter-
vention was considered undesirable, and so these countries had
to be pressured to admit that genocide—with all that this implies,
as far as the world community’s level of responsibility, harking
back to the Convention on Genocide in 1948—was taking place.
We have a similar responsibility to pressure our own legislators
to act.
In my opinion, the primary reason for intervention is this:
Victims deserve the recognition that what's been done to them is
wrong, and deserve too to see this wrong righted, if at all possible.
At the same time, perpetrators deserve to be recognized as mem-
bers of a moral community, and this membership presupposes that
they will be brought to justice for their crimes. I consider this ele-
ment of punishment, the bringing of a perpetrator to justice, to be
far more important than any other possible individual or societal
effects punishment might have. In other words, I place the idea of
justice above utilitarian considerations.”
The purpose of international war crimes tribunals is to hold in-
dividuals responsible for crimes, rather than demonize a whole
people. The tribunals exist to place individual rather than collec-
tive guilt.°* Demonizing an entire group cements the contrast be-
tween “us” and “them,” and, as discussed earlier, justifies—among
other things—further persecution of innocent people. Nonethe- |
less, international war crime tribunals challenge a basic principle -
of international law, a principle that dates back to the Peace of
Westphalia in 1648, namely that international law reflects the in-
terests of sovereign nations who each “manage their own affairs,”
so long as one nation isn't having its territory violated by another.

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 ETHICS OF CONVICTION AND ETHICS OF RESPONSIBILITY

By placing another country’s soldiers, functionaries, and leaders

on trial, the principle of sovereign statehood is violated, because
we are, in effect, reducing them to the level of individuals, rather
than representatives of a state.

ETHICS OF CONVICTION
AND ETHICS OF RESPONSIBILITY
However, it can also be argued that we should do more than sim-
ply put perpetrators on trial after they've already committed their
crime. It may also be necessary to intervene violently in order to
stop violations from occurring in the first place. The Prophet Micah
writes that people “will beat their swords into plowshares and their
spears into pruning hooks,’ while the Prophet Joel writes: “Beat
your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks to spears.”*"”
For the most part, we should follow Micah, but in a world where
not everybody follows Micah, we sometimes have to follow Joel. To
use Max Weber’s distinction between the ethics of ultimate ends
and the ethics of responsibility, we can say that the ethics of ul-
timate ends will generally prompt us to follow Micah, while the
ethics of responsibility will sometimes tell us that we should follow
Joel. Weber writes that where the ethics of ultimate ends says that
evil should not be opposed with force, the ethics of responsibility
says: “You shall resist evil by force, otherwise you will be respon-
sible for its spread.”*'! Weber expands on this idea:

We have to understand clearly that all ethically oriented

action can follow two totally different principles that are
irreconcilably opposed to each other: an ethic of “ultimate
ends” or an ethic of “responsibility.” This is not to say that

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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

the ethic of ultimate ends is identical with a lack of re-

sponsibility, or that the ethic of responsibility is identi-
cal with lack of conviction. There is naturally no question
of that. But there is an immeasurably profound contrast
between acting according to the maxim of the ethic of ul-
timate ends—to speak in religious terms: “The Christian
does the right thing and leaves the outcome in God's
hands,’ and acting according to the ethic of responsibility:
that one must answer for the (foreseeable) consequences of
one’s actions.°?

A similar ethics of ultimate ends is not only found in the New Tes-
tament,°!? but is also well represented in the Old.°“ In short, the
idea implies staying your course and leaving the rest up to God.
Kant is perhaps the most obvious representative of this viewpoint
in modern times. For him, an individual's moral responsibility has
such absolute value that, for example, you should not even tell a lie
to save another person's life.°!° It seems safest to adopt an exclusive
ethics of ultimate ends, because at least you can claim that you've
always maintained the proper moral stance—that you were just
a victim of circumstances. Oftentimes, the easiest course is sim-
ply to follow our conscience, that is, those laws a person develops
as they live in order to guide their actions. But the easiest course
isn't always the best one. Is it always a good thing to place peace
of mind and a clean conscience above the suffering of others? I~
believe the answer is no. An ethics of ultimate ends and an eth-
ics of responsibility are not mutually exclusive, but instead supple-
ment each other, and sometimes an ethics of ultimate ends must
be suspended for the sake of responsibility. The problem we face,
however, is that we are fallible, and do evil by unjustly bringing

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suffering upon others, suffering that cannot be legitimated. Weber,

therefore, goes on to write:

No ethic in the world can get around the fact that in many
cases the achievement of “good” ends is linked with the
necessity of accepting ethically dubious, or at least risky
means and the possibility or even the probability of evil
side effects. And no ethic in the world can predict when
and to what extent the ethically good end “justifies” the
ethically risky means and side effects.°"°

There is no “moral algorithm’*”’ that will tell us infallibly when

it is appropriate to suspend an ethics of ultimate ends, and espe-
cially not which means are justifiable when it is suspended. We
have nothing to rely on except our own moral judgment . . . and
sometimes this judgment fails—and then a person can become a
representative of evil, no matter how good his intentions were at
the start. As a general rule, I would argue that an ethics of ultimate
ends can only be suspended to prevent further evil, not to realize
some ideal of the good. This would limit idealistic evil—as we saw
it manifested in the totalitarian regimes during the twentieth cen-
tury. Furthermore, some evils are of such extreme character that
they justify any means. Nonetheless, all other plausible alternatives
must be tried first.
An ethics of ultimate ends and an ethics of responsibility can
have different values with respect to, for example, the status of hu-
man rights. Human rights are not something forced upon an op-
pressed people against their will. The opposition comes from lead-
ers who defy these rights, while the populace desires them.*'* The
concept of human rights has arisen as a normative response to the

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experience of violence, persecution and oppression. Such rights

arent simply for humans, but are also created by humans—that
is, they are products of history, and ought to be regarded as es-
sentially revisable. Nonetheless, I believe that in everyday praxis,
these rights ought to be regarded as absolute—that they should be
respected even when they make it more difficult to attain a further
good or hinder a prospective evil. They should only be set aside if
they come into conflict with other rights that, after an extensive
evaluation, we regard as more vital.
An ethics of responsibility should, in my opinion, be developed
as a weak consequentialism.°” The difference between a strong and
a weak consequentialism is that the strong argues that we have
the duty to maximize the total set of best possible consequences
in every case, while the weak simply argues that there is no case
whose consequences are irrelevant for doing what is right. In
most cases, weak consequentionalists will agree with an ethics of
ultimate ends, but weak consequentionalists will also argue that
there can be cases where consequences have more weight than, for
example, our concern for individual rights.
This largely implies that human rights should be understood as
an unrestricted obligation that in principle can be deviated from
when there's an especially urgent reason to do so—a case where
the consequences of upholding human rights would be extremely
negative. The question is when and to what extent human rights
can be deviated from. In my opinion, there must be a specific threat
against a nations or an individual's security. That means that every ©
single case of departure must be justified individually. There can
be no talk of lawful, general exceptions to human rights, because
this would be the same thing as declaring our rights null and void.
Unfortunately, it must be said that the Bush administration’s “war

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on terror” did not fit the bill, and to a great extent resulted in an
unjustified nullification of human rights.
In many cases, it will be unclear which course of action will
cause the least evil. In these cases, and in cases where the con-
sequences of our actions are wholly unclear, we ought to make a
judgment, generally speaking, based on an ethics of conviction.
But when we think we have a clear choice between two evils, and
one evil is obviously greater than the other, we should choose the
lesser evil. Sometimes it can be the right decision to infringe on
a person’ rights if this will prevent a catastrophe. The paradox of
“getting our hands dirty” is that sometimes we will find it necessary
to do something wrong in order to do something right. To choose
the lesser of two evils is not in itself reprehensible—though, at the
same time, we must recognize that we will still be morally respon-
sible for the lesser evil, and will have to do our utmost to correct
things afterwards.
All actions take place on a more or less unsteady ground. We
never have a complete overview of all the consequences and cir-
cumstances surrounding our actions, and the best of intentions
can lead to horrifying results. Without realizing it, and on the basis
of choices and circumstances beyond our control, we can end up
inflicting terrible evil on another human being. There is no infalli-
ble example we can point to that will tell an ethics of ultimate ends
what is right in every situation, because, as stated above, there is no
moral algorithm. Universalization tests—imagining whether a cer-
tain action could be taken up by the entire populace—can point us
in good directions, but they aren't infallible, since they necessarily
exclude actions that are obviously perfectly acceptable and benefi-
cial and include those that clearly aren't. This point is clearly ex-
pressed in Hegel’s critique of Kant’s categorical imperative—namely,

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that this degree of abstract formalism has the consequence that any
maxim can be transformed into a general law.® In addition, uni-
versalization can only give us general rules whose relationship to
individual cases remains unclear. Hegel therefore argues that be-
cause the categorical imperative requires the separation of society
and the individual, and only the society can pass moral judgments,
this variety of ethics does not have true relevance for our personal
conduct, since we are confronted on a daily basis with concrete
situations, not generalizations. Because the categorical imperative
is not applicable to every individual situation, it is external to every
individual situation. As a result, when an individual situation is
abstracted to something general, it becomes something unrecog-
nizable.* Ethical judgments should take place in the context of
general human interaction, and therefore be made on “common
ground.” In Sophocles’ Antigone, Kreon is asked by his son Aimon
not to monos fronein, that is, not to practice what is called practi-
cal wisdom without discussing the situation with others. To turn
away from monos fronein is to hail a proto-democratic principle:
Morality and political questions should be addressed in a public
forum; in this discussion, we will sometimes decide that violence is
necessary to overcome evil.

POLITICS AND VIOLENCE

Where an ethics of ultimate ends normally indicates that a per-
son should not resort to violence, an ethics of responsibility can -
require it—and violence is never out of the question in any politi-
cal regime, whether youre talking about a liberal democracy or a
dictatorship. Violence is normal. The essential question in the po-
litical arena is not between violence and nonviolence, but between

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 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE

legitimate and illegitimate violence. Liberal societies use violence

to protect liberal ideas. Their existence presupposes this type of
violence. There is, therefore, no contrast—but rather an obvious
compatibility—between liberal democracies and violence. As a re-
sult, the question is not whether one supports or opposes violence,
but rather what type of violence one wishes to participate in or sup-
port. There are, of course, people who support political violence
for its own sake; Georges Sorel, for instance, finds that violence
isn't only something feasible, morally—an unfortunate alternative
one can be forced to resort to once all other choices have been
exhausted—but has a high value in and of itself: Violence builds
character and brings the proletariat together. Frantz Fanon also
believes that, for the oppressed, violence has an essential—in ad-
dition to an instrumental—worth, because it’s a source of pride
and has “positive, formative features.’ In the foreword to Fanon’s
book, Sartre supports this view of violence, and even takes it fur-
ther than Fanon himself. However, I won't dwell here on those
theories that consider political violence to have inherent worth,
and instead focus exclusively on violence’s instrumental aspects.
Pacifism will oftentimes prove a defensible position, and in more
cases than is commonly assumed—but violence can prove a moral
imperative in cases where it’s necessary to check other violence or
injustice. Violence is a fact in every society—and if I refuse to use
violence, I may still be supporting it indirectly: sharing the blame
when violence affects others. The idea that the use of violence
can become a moral imperative is absolutely compatible with the
desire to minimize violence as much as possible; but this doesn't
mean that pacifism doesn't have value. Democracy and pacifism
are tied together. Pacifism recognizes that violence is the scourge
of a democratic society, because violence is an intentional physical

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denial of an individual's or a group's right to exist and thrive—and

this right is the core of democracy.°” The problem is that in praxis
the very existence of a democracy presupposes violence, as I’ve
said. There are always going to be unjust individuals and groups
that subject other people to violence or infringe on their rights in
some other way, and if a democracy is going to exist, these people
must be persecuted legally and perhaps even subjected to violence
themselves, if they oppose their legal persecution.”’ Democracies,
furthermore, never achieve a complete balance. They contain indi-
viduals and groups with diverse interests who all attempt to define
and control society with respect to those interests. There must be a
functioning public forum where these differences can play them-
selves out in nonviolent ways. Disagreement occurs when two or
more individuals or groups have diverse opinions and/or interests.
If this disagreement is not sustainable, there are only three possi-
bilities: (1) The parties discuss their differences and come to terms,
(2) a third party, for example a court, weights the case, decides on
a course of action, and implements it, or (3) the parties resort to
violence. The problem with idealism—and not the smallest prob-
lem, either—is that (1) and (2) so often seem like unacceptable al-
ternatives. Idealists, to their way of thinking, have a monopoly on
the good, and anything other than complete, unequivocal victory
would be the same thing as allowing a terrible evil to persist. There-
fore, only alternative (3) is acceptable to them. In modern, demo-
cratic societies, parties are not allowed to solve their differences in _
such a way: the state itself has a monopoly on violence.** As Max -
Weber writes: “The specific characteristic of the present is that the
right to use physical force is only granted to any other associations
or individuals to the extent that the state itself permits this. The
state is seen as the sole source of the ‘right’ to use force”

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If we consider violence as purely instrumental, then the use of

force is rational if it fulfills a desired purpose. Having accepted
this, however, we still haven't reached an instrumental rationale for
violence, and a substantial rationale would require that the goal it-
self be rationalized and legitimated. Arendt observes that violence
changes the world, and often only makes the world a more violent
place.®” Therefore, one should only use violence after thoroughly
weighing the options and deciding that violence is the best means
to attain a given goal—so long as the goal is important enough that
it legitimizes the use of violence. In my opinion, political violence is
only good if it helps to reduce the amount of violence in the world,
if it helps to maintain a free, nonviolent, democratic, and pluralistic
society. Political violence is evil when it does the opposite.
All nations have internal laws regulating the use of violence.
What’s more problematic still is evaluating whether or not to em-
ploy violence against other countries, especially when it concerns
matters within their own borders. This is a problem that’s hardly
restricted to cases of genocide, though genocide is the obvious test
case. We must remember that the concept of “genocide” is rela-
tively new. It was coined by Rafael Lemkin in 1944 to describe the
Nazi mass exterminations. At the time, he didn’t think the term
“mass murder” was adequate to describe what had happened. Since
then, the concept has become central to our understanding of evil,
and many people will argue that genocide is the greatest of all evils,
because it causes the greatest amount of suffering. All other forms
of evil seem to be contained in genocide, and an enormous number
of people have fallen victim to it. In the 1990s, the expression “eth-
nic cleansing” also became common, and it’s difficult to pinpoint
the exact similarities and differences between “genocide” and “eth-
nic cleansing,” especially since the latter expression doesn't have a

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commonly agreed-upon definition. Regarding “genocide,” how-

ever, Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punish-
ment of the Crime of Genocide says:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the fol-

lowing acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members
of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in
whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births in
the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to an-
other group.*”

Each of these points qualifies as genocide, but in normal usage,

genocide is primarily tied to the activities listed under points a),
b), and c). With regard to Article 1 of the Convention, nations
are obligated to prevent and punish genocide. Article 2(4) in the
UN’s charter, however, forbids humanitarian intervention on an-
other country’s territory, and Article 2(7) additionally forbids the
UN from meddling in a country’s internal affairs. The one gen- -
eral exception to these rules is a crime that threatens the freedom
and security of the international community. Therefore, one could
conclude that the UN’s charter forbids what the Convention on
Genocide demands, namely intervention when a country is in the
process of carrying out genocide on its own territory. But genocide

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must be interpreted as a crime that threatens the freedom and

security of the international community. As I understand it, this
means that the UN’s charter gives nations the right to intervene in
another country’s internal affairs when they are planning or carry-
ing out a genocide, while the Convention on Genocide imposes a
duty on nations to carry out such an intervention.
If current trends are any indication, the need for humanitar-
ian intervention will only increase as time goes on, especially
since so many of the larger armed conflicts today are civil wars.
Edmund Burke writes: “Civil wars strike deepest of all into the
manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt
their morals; they pervert even the natural taste and relish of eq-
uity and justice.”°* “Normal” wars are gruesome enough, but the
sides tend to conform—at least to some extent—to a given set
of rules, especially those set down by the Geneva Convention,
which are meant to limit the worst aspects of the process. To-
day, however, wars play out far less often between countries than
within countries—and, in internal conflicts, the rules of war are
not necessarily followed to any appreciable degree.** The UN and
traditional international law has been built around conflicts be-
tween nations, and as Sadako Ogata argues, we haven't yet de-
veloped adequate, international tools for intervening in internal
conflicts.°° In many cases, however, such conflicts can only be
stopped by international intervention, and we should all feel we
have this duty to intervene—even if neither of the participating
sides want this—out of concern for the civilian population. All
wars affect civilian populations far more than the actual combat-
ants, but this happens to an even greater degree in internal con-
flicts. Although additional protocols to the 1977 Geneva Conven-
tion explicitly forbid attacks on any civilian population, this rule
is constantly broken.

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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Since World War I, however, more civilians than soldiers have

lost their lives in war. UNICEF estimates that ninety percent of
those killed in war since 1945 have been civilians, and expects
that in the future, one hundred civilians will die for every single
soldier.* Seen in this way, war is not something that plays out
primarily between soldiers, but between soldiers and civilians.
This can perhaps shed some light on the extensive use of rape in
war.’ In Bosnia, it’s estimated that around 60,000 women were
raped. However, this was not a purely Serbian activity. All the var-
ious sides in Yugoslavia—Serbs, Croatians, Muslims—indulged
in rape to a startling extent. In the media, these rapes were repre-
sented as a new development in such conflicts. However, rape can
be described as a common military praxis. Just to mention a few
figures: When the Japanese took Nanking in 1937, around 20,000
women were raped, and in Korea during World War II, between
100,000 and 200,000 women were captured by the Japanese and
sent to camps, where they were repeatedly subjected to rape and
other sexual torture. Around 200,000 women were raped in Ban-
gladesh in 1971. In just Berlin and the surrounding areas alone,
possibly up to a million women were raped as the Russians ap-
proached the city in 1945. Around 5,000 women were raped by
Iraqi troops during the occupation of Kuwait. Rape is not a mar-
ginal phenomenon, and should be regarded as a systematic char-
acteristic of war. Carl von Clausewitz underscores, however, that.
the purpose of an invasion is not to conquer the invaded land,
nor to win the struggle against the enemy army, but instead to
inflict general harm.*’ War is not so much about the destruc-
tion of an army as it is about the destruction of a culture.“ The
extensive rape of women fits into this picture, because in war-
time it is largely women who hold families and society together.

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Massive assaults on women destabilize the whole culture and aid

in its dissolution; rape of women is a symbolic rape of an entire
society. Rape is used to “contaminate” the culture—that was
an expression used by both the Serbians in Bosnia and the Rus-
sians when they approached Berlin in 1945. In Yugoslavia, rape
camps were set up and received logistical and economical sup-
port from Bosnian and Serbian leaders, something that plainly
demonstrates that the action was a national initiative, rather
than individual soldiers simply running amok—a typical repre-
sentation of rape in war. As we saw in Bosnia, a typical course
of action when troops enter a city is first the destruction of cul-
tural objects, for example historical monuments, churches, and
mosques—something explicitly forbidden by Article 53 of the
1977 Geneva Convention’s additional protocols—then to arrest
and often execute intellectuals, for example priests and teachers
who also serve to unite the local culture, and finally to subject
women to sexual assault. Rape is a crime against humanity when
it’s carried out on political grounds. Earlier, this fact did not re-
ceive enough attention, and it was a real breakthrough when a
war-crimes tribunal in The Hague on February 22, 2001 found
three Bosnian Serbs guilty of crimes against humanity. They were
charged with a number of sexual assaults, among others the rape
of a twelve-year-old girl.
Globalization is changing the moral world, and our responsi-
bility extends further than ever. There is no longer any place on
earth external to our sphere of responsibility. Should we, therefore,
embrace what Thomas Mann called a “militant humanism’?! I
believe so. At the same time, politics often creates greater evils in
the attempt to overcome lesser—that should be especially clear
to us after the twentieth century and the recent “war on terror.”

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Adorno’ assertion that acts of overcoming are always worse than

what’s being overcome, therefore, is not entirely unreasonable.”
If taken literally, however, the statement is extremely exaggerated
and is politically and morally indefensible. If Adorno’s idea held
true, our only strategy would be to simply make peace with all the
evil in the world. Instead, we must attempt to defeat evil—well
aware of the fact that each defeat is a potential catastrophe. Evil
is something we cannot remain neutral to; we have a duty to step
in—perhaps even to use military force—when circumstances re-
quire it.
Classical realism, as it emerges in theories surrounding inter-
national politics, argues that nations, not individuals, are the only
meaningful agents, that foreign policies must be driven by national
interest and that ethical considerations are improper, unacceptable,
or even directly harmful in international relations.“? In modern
times—after the Westphalia peace accord in 1648, that is—such
realism has become almost universal, although a gradual thaw has
taken place since World War II. That is, from the Nuremberg Trials
on, international relations have placed increasing importance on
individual and moral considerations, and equally we find steadily
stronger limitations placed on the principle of an individual na-
tion’s inner autonomy or sovereignty. I regard this development as
positive. Of course, the weakening of an individual nation’s sov-
ereignty should not result in nations being replaced by one world |
government, for as Kant has already pointed out, that could lead
to the development of a global despot or else a single world nation —
constantly torn apart by inner strife.“ Nations must retain their
sovereignty, but boundaries must be established as to how far that
sovereignty may extend, where the individuals living in a given na-
tion are concerned. These limitations are partially imposed by the
concept of human rights, which in the last fifty years has become

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more and more central to international law and has largely set the
principle boundaries for how a war may be conducted, as well as
how far a nation’s inner autonomy extends. Human rights are
considered to be universally relevant, whether or not they have
local support. Any infringement of human rights must be con-
demned—in more serious cases with sanctions, and in worst cases
with intervention.
Modern “humanitarian” war is, in reality, a return to the Chris-
tian teaching regarding just war. This is a tradition extending from
Augustine to Michael Walzer,“° with Hugo Grotius emerging as
perhaps the foremost, classical theoretician.’ For Augustine, war
is fought for the sake of peace. Just war concerns negative justice:
that is, it is conducted to limit an evil instead of to attain a good.
This is especially clear in Grotius. This tradition recognizes that
war is an evil that should be prevented, and therefore maintains
strict requirements for calling a war “just.” These requirements can
be separated into three main points:

(1) Jus ad bellum—legitimacy of going to war.

(2) Jus in bello—legitimacy of the means.
(3) Jus post bellum—legitimacy of the war's conclusion.

I will only discuss (1) and (2) in this context. The requirements of
(1) are traditionally as follows:

(1.1) Lawful grounds: A nation can enter into war only if it has
lawful grounds, for example self-defense, the protection
of the innocent, or the punishment of violations of inter-
national law.
(1.2) Correct intentions: Not only must a nation have lawful
grounds, they must go to war on these grounds alone—

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that is, these grounds must prove the essential motivating

factor.
(1.3) War must be publicly declared by the nation’s lawful au-
thorities.
(1.4) War must be the last resort after all (plausible) peaceful
alternatives are exhausted.
(1.5) It must be reasonable to assume that war will lead to the
attainment of the legitimate goal.
(1.6) War must not inflict greater suffering or loss of life than
can be prevented.

The requirements for (2) are traditionally that one must distin-
guish between targets, so that only the targets directly involved
in the war are attacked; that one cannot use more violence than is
strictly necessary to attain a goal; and that one cannot use means
that are inherently evil themselves, such as rape, torture, weap-
ons of mass destruction, biological and chemical weapons, etc.
Today, the requirements for jus in bello are specified in the four
Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the two additional protocols
from 1977.
Classical theories concerning just war demand that all the above
requirements be met, and thus that a war which does not meet all
of them is evil. Most wars, however, seem to fall tragically short of
most of these requirements. If we look, for example, at the U.S’s
war in Vietnam, there is reason to believe that not a single require-
ment of jus ad bellum and jus in bello was met. A more problem-
atic example, however, is NATO’s war in Kosovo. As far as I can
judge, NATO met the requirements for jus in bello, since no open
transgression of the Geneva Conventions has been proved as far as
its methodology—even though a strategy of bombing from 15,000

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feet resulted in far more civilian suffering than was necessary. At

the same time, it’s doubtful that the initial requirements for jus ad
bellum were met.
We can demand that humanitarian intervention meets the cri-
teria for just wars—but I will, regardless, continue to insist that
there are just wars, and that, when the circumstances are right,
it can be immoral not to go to war. For example, Rwanda is a
sin of neglect of enormous proportions. It was obvious before it
even began that genocide was going to take place. Nonetheless, it
took months of slaughter before the U.S. and other nations con-
demned these actions as genocide. They hesitated, as I’ve said, be-
cause calling the events by their proper name would have forced
the world community to act in accordance with the Genocide
Convention of 1948. Asa result, 800,000 people were slaughtered
in the course of a hundred days—a faster pace than in any pre-
vious genocide. Not stepping in to prevent this was a crime in
and of itself. There have been many cases where the UN has been
so concerned with remaining neutral that they have neglected to
intervene in genocide, because such intervention would imply
partiality. However, one cannot afford to be impartial when one
group is trying to drive out or exterminate another group, an en-
tire people.
There is no formal, juridical definition for “humanitarian in-
tervention,’ but the main line of thought is that a nation or a so-
ciety of nations has a right and perhaps even a duty to intervene
to protect the people of another nation, whether or not these are
threatened with what might be described as a purely internal
conflict. In an important speech in Chicago on April 22, 1999,
Great Britain’s then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said that NATO
troops in Kosovo had altered the balance between human rights

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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

and sovereign statehood. The intervention set a precedent for

NATO, dictating that humanitarian concerns must have a higher
priority than national sovereignty. A week later, Jiirgen Haber-
mas wrote that the intervention in Kosovo represented a step
away from classical international law, as it had continued since
the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and toward a cosmopolitan law
for a world conceived of as one large community®'—and he was
right. But when one goes to war for humanitarian reasons, there
are even stricter requirements regarding the way the war should
be conducted. Even if the strategy of bombing from 15,000 feet,
with all the suffering it entails for the civilian population, is not
necessarily in direct conflict with jus in bello, it is still highly
questionable. NATO’s goal of a risk-free war here operated on the
assumption that the lives of NATO soldiers were more valuable
than the lives of the people they were trying to save—a problem-
atic stance where human rights are the reason for the interven-
tion, given that human rights are meant to imply that all human
lives are of equal value.* If a humanitarian intervention is to
be honorable, it must be conducted according to humanitarian
principles—among other things this same principle of universal
equality. Jean Baudrillard writes that the unwillingness to risk
life is worse than the wish to destroy life, because such unwilling-
ness implies that nothing means enough to justify the possible
sacrifice.** If we are not willing to risk anything, we cannot be
said to have an authentic relationship with our values.
The urgent question we must ask ourselves is whether individu-
als have rights that are important enough for national sovereignty
to be set aside. In my opinion, the answer is yes. The international
community must be willing to send troops in when the situation
demands it, and these troops must oppose acts of tyranny. There

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should never be a repetition of Srebrenica in June 1995, when UN

troops stood passively by and watched as seven to eight thousand
men and boys were murdered, and 23,000 women, children, and
elderly people were deported. One cannot remain neutral in the
face of a massacre, and one must be prepared for soldiers to die in
the attempt to stop such atrocities. A pure non-intervention strat-
egy implies that evil is allowed to occur unhindered.
Globalization has ethical consequences, and our responsibil-
ity does not stop at any one border. As we have seen, this re-
sponsibility can require that we resort to violence, despite our
thereby running the risk of introducing even more evil into the
world.

EVIL AS A CONCRETE PROBLEM

In my opinion, morality is sui generis: that is, we cannot define
“good, “evil? and other moral ideas in terms of facts that are not
themselves moral. We also don’t actually require such a definition,
but can take morality as a given. Our task in examining the prob-
lem of evil is not to create a new system of morals—where would
we even begin?—but rather to insist on the relevance and worth
of the morals we already have. These morals place us under clear
obligations, and no matter what theoretical standpoint we take, it's
indisputable that we have a duty to respect human worth, prevent
suffering, etc. We can argue about the basis for human rights, but
how many reasons do we really need before we realize that people
shouldn't be murdered, maimed, tortured, etc.? We've all experi-
enced pain and we can—at least partially—imagine what other
human beings might be feeling. I agree with John Rawls that the
practice and realization of the concept of rights is more a practical

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and social task than an epistemological or metaphysical problem.*™

It is less important whether the concept of rights are “true” than
whether such a concept can form the basis for a logical discussion
about how our social and political institutions can best serve hu-
man freedom and well-being.
In the political arena, therefore, pragmatists are better than ideal-
ists and we can regard politics as a form of social engineering. Karl
Popper, for example, distinguishes between utopian and piecemeal
social engineering as the model of social development.®° Accord-
ing to his definition, a utopian social engineer wants to see society
change all at once—existing society is seen as being in such miser-
able shape that gradual improvements won't save it. The old must
be destroyed to make way for the new.
However, utopias and paradises are places for angels and saints—
and we humans don't fall into either category. People are, as previ-
ously mentioned, fallible—they fail. In addition to fallibility, hu-
man life is characterized by a pluralism of values, by the pursuit
of goals that are not only dissimilar, but that are also often in-
compatible. Because people have different values and ideals, every
society will contain a mixture of these. In light of this, a true uto-
pia can only be realized through mass oppression. Utopia presup-
poses that all conflicts cease to exist, because the entire society is
organized according to the conception of a good life shared by
absolutely everyone.
Utopias, therefore, can’t survive if they contain either fallibility
or pluralism. Instead of trying to realize a version of utopia, we
should try to encourage a peaceful shared existence for groups
and individuals with different and possibly incompatible concepts
of the good life, so long as it is presupposed that certain moral re-
quirements are met. I give Popper my full support when he writes:

228
 EVIL AS A CONCRETE PROBLEM

“Work for the elimination of concrete evils rather than for the
realization of abstract goods. Do not aim at establishing happi-
ness by political means. Rather aim at the elimination of concrete
miseries.’*°°
Those who embrace the opposite of utopian social engineering,
namely piecemeal social engineering, can also have ideals, but they
will always be prepared to revise their ideals, to make compromises
when they see that the human cost for realizing their ideals is too
high. There’s no room for compromises among utopian engineers.
That is, the goal of advancing a society where people can flourish
is so attractive that no price seems too high for its realization. As
Popper also asserts, however: Those who try to realize heaven on
earth will only succeed in making earth into hell.
In other words, we should proceed negatively, rather than try
to realize grand positive visions. Much concrete good can be done
to work against poverty, sickness, discrimination, torture, war, etc.
In fact, there are far fewer differences of opinion between people
regarding what’ evil than what's good; ethics has a far greater con-
sensus on its negative, rather than on its positive side. Therefore,
the identification of evil and the agreement that evil must be fought
can largely be attained no matter what ethical and meta-ethical po-
sition one takes. As Stuart Hampshire argues: “There is nothing
mysterious or ‘subjective’ or culture-bound in the great evils of hu-
man experience, re-affirmed in every age and in every written his-
tory and in every tragedy and fiction: murder and the destruction
of life, imprisonment, enslavement, starvation, poverty, physical
pain and torture, homelessness, friendlessness."*” We don't need
a theory to tell us that these evils are evil—and every theory that
concludes that these evils are not in fact evil will be wrong. As I’ve
said time and again, such evils must be fought. This is the basic

229
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

presupposition behind every known moral stance, and ought to

be one for all political stances as well. Though different concepts
of the good can lead to different priorities in the struggle against
evil, all people agree on one thing: these evils, and others like them,
must be opposed. What matters now is finally doing it.

230
 CONCLUSION
Evil is not merely a theoretical problem: it’s a highly practical one.
All our countless theoretical blind spots serve only to prevent us
from arriving at one simple insight: Evil is not primarily a subject
for theology, the natural or social sciences, or even philosophy, but
a concrete problem that must be addressed in the moral and politi-
cal arena. We cannot understand and fight evil as long as we con-
sider it to be an abstract concept external to ourselves.
Theology, and especially theodicies, attempt to salvage the idea
of a good, almighty God, but this attempt mostly results in afailure
to recognize the reality of evil. Since everything from a divine per-
spective is “actually” good, or will be transformed into good, evil’s
reality is explained away. However, our task is not merely to come
to terms with evil. Instead, we're actively called upon to do some-
thing about it. This, among other things, is the reason I believe that
theodicies are themselves evil. They lead us to accept evil’s exis-
tence passively.
The most important question is not, “What is evil?” but rather:
“Why do we do it?” The answer is that we do evil for a number of
different reasons, and we all have a variety of motives—but one
reason we can be certain is not among these is because it’s evil. This
“pure” form of evil, “demonic” evil, should be dismissed as a myth.
And yet, demonic evil is often regarded as evil’s fundamental form.
The problem with considering evil in this light, however, is that it
makes the phenomenon appear external to ourselves: do you see
yourself as a demon? The problem, then, with focusing on demonic

594
CONCLUSION

evil is not theoretical, but practical. It hinders the realization that

every single one of us has the capacity to do evil.
More to the point, we often do evil, well aware that it’s evil, be-
cause we want to realize a subjective good. The instrumental evil
agent understands the difference between good and evil, but sets
good aside in favor of their own self interest. However, instrumen-
tal evil can only explain some of our evil actions. We must also
take idealistic and stupid evil into account, where agents are either
motivated by the idea of an objective good or else fail to reflect
on whether their actions are good or evil in the first place. But,
without exception, we are all evil. We have all done evil in one of
the aforementioned forms, even if we don't always recognize our
actions as evil. Most of us have only done evil on a small scale, but
all of us could have done evil on a much larger scale. It’s not-only
“others” who are evil. It’s we who are evil.
Our basic problem isn’t a surplus of aggression. Instead, it’s a
lack of reflection. This lack leads people to accept and even par-
ticipate in the most lunatic transgressions imaginable against
their fellow men. Pure egotism is a motivating factor in far fewer
murders and assaults than an unreflective, unselfish surrender to
a “higher” purpose. However, simple indifference results in even
more victims—and not just the ones who are out of sight and,
therefore, out of mind. Indifference, furthermore, is not just a fac-
tor in violent crimes, but is also a contributing factor to the reality
that 1.2 billion people continue to live in extreme conditions of
poverty, and likewise that several million people die of starvation
every year. The evil in the world is not simply the sum of unjust
actions committed by individuals against individuals, along with
whatever natural catastrophes happen to be taken place. Evil can
also be found in social institutions. Indeed, from this perspective,

232
 CONCLUSION

we could begin to talk about structural evil. John Rawls’s “norm

of justice” suggests that economic and social differences should
be organized so that the worst situated receive the greatest ad-
vantage.®* In my opinion, this should apply not only to the orga-
nization of individual societies, but globally as well. Rawls stops
short of making a similar statement,*” but he does agree that a just
society should do far more to help other societies than Western
politics allows for today. Evil is not simply one overarching prob-
lem, but rather a multitude of concrete problems—all those situ-
ations where our identity as free, active beings capable of reason
and reflection is put to the test. Ultimately, it all comes down to
what we decide to do.
Can we imagine a human world without evil? Since evil is hu-
man, I seriously doubt such a thing is conceivable. In this world,
we may all be victims of evil, but we also inflict evil on others.
There are many reasons for this, not least being that we are moral
creatures, and therefore tend to divide everything we see in the
world into good and evil—whatever threatens or harms us is la-
beled evil. We want to make the earth a habitable place, and there-
fore reflect on how to can gain control of evil. We're always on the
lookout for evil, and when there’s no immediate threat, we often
try to go out and get a jump on it. We localize evil so that we can
fight it, and often imagine that we must be good since we're fight-
ing the good fight.
Humanism was founded on the idea that people should over-
come their animal nature. In short, that homo humanus should
overcome homo barbarus. But is homo humanus any less barbaric
than homo barbarus? It seems to me that homo humanus has never
quite overcome his animal nature, and has simply invented new
outlets for barbarism.

233
CONCLUSION

Perhaps we can say finally say that humanity itself is the root of
all evil. Animals can’t be evil—only us. Despite the attempts of the
Enlightenment and humanism to find a different culprit, the short
answer to the question concerning the origins of evil remains this:
evil exists because people are free. To be free, moral agents neces-
sarily implies that we are both good and evil. This does not imply,
however, that we are all good and evil to the same degree. And it
certainly does not imply that the amount of evil in the world will
always be the same.
So what is the solution? The most dangerous response is the belief
that if only we localize and exterminate the world’s “forces of evil,”
evil might be eradicated once and for all. In that case, however, we
overlook Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s observation that the line divid-
ing good and evil doesn’t run through different groups—nations,
classes, or political parties—but “right through every human heart.”
Personally, the only solution I see to the problem of evil is a con-
tinuation of a humanist project, of Enlightenment thinking. This
wont eradicate the evil in the world, but at least offers us the hope
that it might be limited.

234
 NOTES
1 Cf. Schuller and Rahden (eds.): Die andere Kraft: Zur Renais-
sance des Bésen. In these notes, the sources are cited by the author's
last name, the work’s title and the page number. For a more com-
plete citation, see the biography at the end of the book.
2 This is a notable trend in the titles of several anthologies that
have come out in the last few years. For instance, Haring and Tracy
(eds.): The Fascination of Evil and Liessmann (ed.): Faszination des
Bésen: Uber die Abgriinde des Menschlichen.
3 This is obviously nothing new, and our present fascination
with evil clearly has its roots in the Romantic. For more on this
subject, see Davenport: Gothic: 400 Years of Excess, Horror, Evil
and Ruin; Gillespie: Nihilism Before Nietzsche, especially chapter
4; Russell: Mephistopheles, especially chap. 5; Bohrer: Nach der
Natur.
4 Weil: Gravity and Grace, p. 70.
5 Oscar Wilde writes about how art expresses reality—that is,
life—but in a tame form that prevents us from hurting ourselves.
Therefore we must turn to art—not life—for all our adventures and
experiences: “Because Art does not hurt us. The tears we shed at a
_play are a type of the exquisite sterile emotions that it is the func-
tion of Art to awaken. We weep, but we are not wounded . . . But
the sorrow with which Art fills us both purifies and initiates . . . [It]
is through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves
from the sordid perils of actual existence” (Wilde: Complete Works,
p. 173). Art, therefore, becomes a defense against life's burdens, and

235
NOTES

aestheticism becomes escapism. In my opinion, this describes all

aestheticism—and Wilde himself develops a critique against such
aestheticism in his later works, especially The Picture of Dorian
Gray and De profundis.
6 The term “sadism” is used in this book in association with
abuse, not consensual sexual intercourse.
7 Cited in Masters: The Evil That Men Do, p. 179.
8 For example, I was unable to cover Schelling’s speculative the-
ory about evil in his work Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature
of Human Freedom from 1809. In my opinion, Schelling’s discus-
sion is one of the most difficult works in the history of philosophy,
and even a short paraphrase would have taken up too much space.
Nor I have devoted much space to psychoanalytical theory. (For
an excellent study of evil within a psychoanalytical framework, see
Alford: What Evil Means to Us.) The main reason for this is that
I’m skeptical of psychoanalytical theories in general—but this is
not the place for a systematic outline of what I perceive to be the
weaker points of the field.
9 For those who are interested in an overview of representations
of the Devil from antiquity until today, I suggest Jeffrey Burton
Russell's four volume work The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from An-
tiquity to Primitive Christianity; Satan: The Early Christian Tra-
dition; Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages; and Mephistopheles:
The Devil in the Modern World. Russell has also published a more
popular discussion of the four volumes’ main thesis in The Prince
of Darkness: Radical Evil and Power of Good in History. However,
Russell's study is strongly influenced by the fact that he himself
seems to believe in the Devil (see especially Mephistopheles, p. 251,
296-301). Still, the study mainly restricts itself to a reiteration of
the historical changes that have taken place in the representation

236
 NOTES

of the Devil over time. For an excellent discussion of the history of

the Antichrist, see McGinn: Antichrist.
10 Cf. Kittsteiner: “Die Abschaffung des Teufels im 18. Jahrhun-
dert.’
11 Ricoeur: Fallible Man, p. xlvi.
12 For an overview of how evil is understood in different cul-
tures, see Parkin (ed.): The Anthropology of Evil. For a discussion of
the way evil appears in different world religions, see Cenkner (ed.):
Evil and the Response of World Religion.
13. Blake: “A Divine Image,” in The Complete Poetry and Prose of
William Blake, p. 32.
14. Mann: “The Problem of Freedom.”
15 Cioran: Drawn and Quartered, p. 110.
16 Delbanco: The Death of Satan, p. 3.
17 -Baudrillard: The Transparency of Evil, p. 81.
18 Andersen: “The Snow Queen,’ pp. 175-206. The similarity be-
tween Baudrillard’s world-view and Andersen's “The Snow Queen”
is only a partial one. In the fairy tale, those who get asplinter of the
devil’s mirror in their eye only perceive everything that is good and
beautiful as evil and corrupt. According to Andersen, that is, it is
only as ifevil and corruption were found everywhere. On the other
hand, Baudrillard believes that evil really is found everywhere.
19 Baudrillard: The Transparency of Evil, p. 81, 85.
20 Baudrillard: Fatal Strategies, p. 7.
Bi Whidh.pi77z:
22 Delbanco: The Death of Satan, p. 9.
23 Ricoeur: The Symbolism of Evil.
24 Ibid., p. 350.
25. Rosenbaum: Explaining Hitler, p. xxi.
26 Ibid., p. 87.

237
NOTES

27 Gauchet: The Disenchantment of the World, p. 168.

28 Wright: The Moral Animal, p. 368.
29 Watson: Dark Nature, p. 86.
30 Dostoevsky: “Environment,” p. 136.
31 Harris: The Silence of the Lambs, p. 19.
32 Cf. Midgley: Wickedness: A Philosophical Essay, p. 49.
33 Morris: “The Plot of Suffering: AIDS and Evil?” Morris points
to Levinas as an example of this idea, and some of Levinas’s works
do support this interpretation (cf. Levinas: “Useless Suffering”),
but Levinas also describes evil as a responsibility persisting despite
its refusal of responsibility to the Other (Levinas: Humanism of the
Other, p. 56). In general, Morris’s observation is true, but it’s not
necessarily correct to use Levinas as a typical representative of this
conception of evil, since Levinas also upholds the dimension. of
personal responsibility.
34 For an example of this viewpoint, see Plack: Die Gesellschaft
und das Bose.
35 Marquard: Apologie des Zufalligens, pp. 21ff.
36 See Rosenbaum: Exploring Hitler for a critical overview of the
different explanations.
37 Shakespeare: Hamlet, ILii.
38 ‘The central reactions from intellectuals alive at the time
(Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant etc.) to the earthquake in Lisbon are
collected in Breidert (ed.): Die Erschiitterung der vollkommenen
Welt.
39 Novalis: Pollen, in The Early Political Writings of the German
Romantics, p. 9.
40 Gaita: A Common Humanity, p. 39.
41 Ricoeur: The Conflict of Interpretations, p. 303.
42 Levinas: Of God Who Comes to Mind, p. 128.

238
 NOTES

43 Cf. Ricoeur: Fallible Man, p. 4.

44 Heidegger’s remarks on evil are nowhere assembled in his
works into a systematic presentation, but he repeatedly returns
to a statement of the problem. As far as I know, the one compre-
hensive account of Heidegger’s reflections on evil is Irlenborn: Der
Ingrimm des Aufruhrs: Heidegger und das Problem des Bésen. This
study is marked by the same incomprehensibility that characterizes
so much of the commentary on Heidegger, and so is not recom-
mended for readers who do not have a comparatively solid knowl-
edge of both Heidegger's earlier and later philosophy.
45 Cf. Heidegger: Being and Time, p. 331f; Holderlins
Hymne, ‘Andenken,” p. 102; Hélderlin’s Hymn “The Ister,” pp. 78f.
46 Cf. Heidegger: Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowing),
pp. 81f.
47 See especially Heidegger’s reflections on evil in Heidegger:
Feldweg-Gesprache.
48 My discussion of Heidegger in The Philosophy of Boredom,
pp. 131f., should provide a glimpse of the direction such a critique
would take, namely criticizing Heidegger for a false ontologicaliza-
tion of evil that causes him to overlook all concrete evils in favor
of an essential force, Being, which he is not able to convincingly
legitimate.
49 A representative selection of articles from this tradition can
be found in Adams and Adams (eds.): The Problem of Evil.
50 Cf. Robertson: Crimes Against Humanity, p. 454.
51 Cf. Glover: Humanity, p. 47.
52 Leyhausen: Krieg oder Frieden, p. 61.
53 Watson: Dark Nature, p. 160.
54 Hobbes: De Cive, pp. 58f.
55 Augustine: City of God, book XIX. 4.

239
NOTES

56 Trevor-Roper: The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and

Seventeenth Centuries, pp. 38f.
57 For an excellent discussion of the arguments for and against
the thesis of uniqueness, see Brecher: “Understanding the Holo-
caust: The Uniqueness Debate.”
58 Adorno: Negative Dialectics, p. 365.
59 Adorno: Minima Moralia, p. 65.
60 Cf. Naimark: Fires of Hatred, pp. 40f, 57f.
61 Cf. Hochschild: King Leopold’s Ghost, p. 233.
62 Ibid., p. 224.
63 Sixty years before it assumed a central place in the Nurnberg
Process, this expression was used by the historian George Wash-
ington Williams to describe the situation in the Congo.
64 Seen in this way, Belgium's actions in the Congo are more
reminiscent of the German slaughter of the African Hereros: When
the Hereros revolted against Germany in 1904, Lieutenant General
Lothar von Trotha gave the order that every Herero found on Ger-
man territory should be shot. Over a couple of years, seventy-five
percent of the Hereros—that is, about 60,000 people—on Germany
territory had been exterminated (cf. Pakenham: The Scramble for
Africa, p. 611). In both of these cases, evil can primarily be consid-
ered to be instrumental.
65 Cf. Gourevitch: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We
Will Be Killed With Our Families, p. 3. Gourevitch’s book is excep-
tionally well written, but also rather journalistic. A more solid and
well-documented work on the genocide in Rwanda is des Forges:
Leave None to Tell the Story.
66 ‘Tzvetan Todorov: Facing the Extreme, p. 134.
67 Courtois et. al.: The Black Book of Communism.
68 Cf. Glover: Humanity, p. 297.

240
 NOTES

69 Cited in Anissimov: Primo Levi, p. 1, 181.

70 For an overview of different variations on the evidential argu-
ment, see Howard-Snyder (ed.): The Evidential Argument from Evil.
71 In my opinion, the most convincing statement of the logical
argument is put forth by John Mackie in the article “Evil and Om-
nipotence” (Mackie’s article appears in a number of anthologies,
among others in Adams and Adams (eds.): The Problem of Evil).
For a more comprehensive thematisation, see also Mackie: The
Miracle of Theism.
72 A letter to Nikojaj Aleksejevits; Ljubimov May 10, 1879, in
Dostoevsky: Selected Letters, p. 465.
73 Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov, pp. 315f.
74 Ibid., p. 317.
75 Ibid., p. 323.
76 Ibid p. 326. Dostoevsky also uses this example in “Pushkin (a
Sketch),” p. 1287.
77 Heraclitus: Fragments, p. 39.
78 Plato: The Republic, 617e.
79 Plato: Timaeus, 29-30.
80 Lactantius: The Wrath of God.
81 Cf. Blumenthal: “Theodicy: Dissonance in Theory and Practice.’
82 Ido not discuss the so-called aesthetic argument here, be-
cause it’s hardly convincing. The argument claims that good be-
comes more valuable when contrasted with evil. For example, Au-
-gustine (City of God, book X1.18) writes that the world’s splendor
would be diminished if good were not contrasted with evil. This
thought is later found in Descartes (Meditations, fourth medita-
tion) and Leibniz (Theodicy, § 214), but does not play a central
role in either of them. The aesthetic argument fails because an
aesthetic effect is not a good moral reason to allow suffering. This

241
NOTES

claim is a categorical fallacy. The aesthetic argument is also unten-

able if we judge God as an individual. If God can inflict suffering
on humanity for the sake of beautifying the world, we should be
able do the same. In contrast, if it’s not permissible for an indi-
vidual to use aesthetics to justify inflicting suffering on another, it
certainly should not be permissible for God.
83 Augustine: Confessions, VII.12-16.
84 Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy, fourth meditation,
pp. 45f.
85 Plotinus: The Enneads, p. 76.
86 See Augustine: The Nature of the Good, chap. 17 in The Essen-
tial Augustine, p. 49.
87 Augustine: City of God, book XI. 22.
88 Augustine: The Nature of the Good, chap. 4.
89 Pseudo-Dionysius has perhaps given the theory its most
radical formulation in On the Divine Names. He writes that evil
is neither being, nor of being, nor in being. In other words, evil
has no existence whatsoever. For Pseudo-Dionysius, evil can only
be described negatively, as non-being, non-beautiful, non-living,
non-reasoning, etc. The privation theory can hardly find a more
extreme representation that it does in Pseudo-Dionysius.
90 For example, Ralph Waldo Emerson was still insisting on the
privation theory in an address from 1838 (“An Address,” in The
Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 65), though in Em-
ersons time its role was already diminishing. Emerson argues in a
classical way that evil reduces itself, and this is the punishment for
evil. (This justification is further developed by Emerson in “Com-
pensation,’ in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp.
154ff.) There are also a few later privation theorists. For example,
in Wickedness, Mary Midgley explicitly locates her discussion of

242
 NOTES

evil in a privation theoretical framework, describing evil as purely

negative, stripped of its own positivity.
91 Plato, The Republic, 397c.
92 Ibid., 617e.
9310 Ibids391e;619e
94 Augustine: City of God, book XII. 6.
95 Augustine bases his doctrine of original sin on Romans 5:12,
but today there is widespread agreement that the doctrine hinges
on a mistake in translation that is not found in the original Greek
text.
96. Genesis, 3:22.
97 Romans, 5:18.
98 Aquinas: Summa Theologica, I, 48, 2, 3.
99 Swinburne: The Existence of God, p. 200.
100 Mark 10:27, Luke 1:37, Genesis 18:14, Jeremiah 32:17, 27,
Job 42:2.
101 Cf. Mackie: “Evil and Omnipotence.”
102 There are other suggested solutions to the problem of natu-
ral evil. According to Swinburne, the free-will argument not only
functions as a justification for the existence of moral evil, but also
for natural (Swinburne: “Natural Evil”). The reason he gives is that
natural evil must exist to give human beings the knowledge neces-
sary to bring about moral evil. Here we could object that, in the
first place, an almighty God could simply have given man the nec-
essary knowledge without forcing him to take lessons from natu-
ral evil, and, in the second place, that man can learn more than
enough from the moral evil he himself causes (cf. Stump: “Knowl-
edge, Freedom, and the Problem of Evil”). Swinburne’s argument
further postulates that the free-will argument is a valid explana-
tion of moral evil, but this is, as I've said, doubtful. On the other

243
NOTES

hand, Alvin Plantinga argues that fallen angels rather than God
are responsible for natural evil (Plantinga: The Nature of Necessity,
p. 192). This is an argument that could well have been relevant in
a historical epoch other than our own. However, as John Mackie
makes clear, this idea is an arbitrary ad hoc solution, since we have
no knowledge of such beings. In the best case, fallen angels form
part of the religious hypothesis under discussion, and there's no
independent reason to allude to them (Mackie: The Miracle of The-
ism, pp. 126f.).
103 John Keats: “To George and Georgina Keats, February 14 to
May 8, 1819,” p. 249.
104 Keat’s phrase has become the slogan for the modern version
of Irenaean theology, represented among others by John Hick. See
especially Hick: Evil and the God of Love.
105 Weil: Gravity and Grace, p. 27.
106 Ibid., p. 81.
107 Ibid., p. 145.
108 Ibid., pp. 75f.
109 Marilyn McCord Adams later developed a concept of suffer-
ing very similar to that of Weil's, where suffering enables a mysti-
cal unity with God, whether or not the sufferer acknowledges it
(Adams: Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, see especially
chap. 8.)
110 Cioran: On the Heights of Despair, p. 109.
111 Amis: London Fields, p. 348.
112 Cf. Scarry: The Body in Pain.
113 Ibid., p. 34.
114 Camus: The Plague, p. 214.
115 Ibid., pp. 223¢f.
116 Ibid., p. 226.

244
 NOTES

117 For a convincing formulation of this argument, see Rowe:

“The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism.’
118 Hick: Evil and the God of Love, p. 330.
119 Plato: Timaeus, 29-30.
120 Augustine: Confessions, book 5.8.
121 Ibid., book 7.12-13. See Augustine: Enchiridion, chap. 10, in
The Essential Augustine, p. 65.
122 Augustine: City of God, book XIL.8.
123 Ibid., book 1.29. There is no limit to the extremes Augustine
will go in order to explain that absolutely everything must ulti-
mately be regarded as good. One of his examples is: If a virgin is
raped, it helps to destroy her actual or possible pride or arrogance,
and therefore the act has an element of good in it (ibid., book 1.
28). And if a christened baby, the most innocent thing in the whole
Augustinian universe, suffers greatly, it helps to teach us something
about earthly life and makes us to long for God in His Heavenly
kingdom (ibid., book XXII.22).
124 Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy, book IV.6.
125 Pope: An Essay on Man, book I, line 291f.
126 Rousseau: “Letter from J.-J. Rousseau to Mr. de Voltaire, Au-
gust 18, 1756,’ p. 213.
127. Milton: Paradise Lost, book I, line 26, p. 3.
128 Ibid., book XII, line 469-73, p. 283.
129 Spinoza: The Ethics, 4P64.
130 Spinoza: Letter to William Blyenbergh, January 1665, pp. 238f.
131 Cf. Russell: Mephistopheles, pp. 37ff.
132 Goethe: Faust, p. 159, verse 1336f.
133 Correspondingly, Novalis sees suffering and sickness as
means toward “a higher synthesis” (Novalis: Notes for a Romantic
Encyclopaedia).

245
NOTES

134 Leibniz: Theodicy, § 21.

135 .Abid;§ 20,153;
136 Ibid., § 8, 9.
137. Ibid. $9; 23, 24.
138 Ibid., § 121.
139 Ibid., § 130.
140 Leibniz also has other arguments. Among these is the asser-
tion that there is not as much evil in the world as people suppose
(ibid., § 220), and that God couldn't have shaped human beings as
creatures of reason without allowing physical and moral evil (ibid.,
§ 52, 119). The ultimate source of all evil is metaphysical evil, but
mans free will is the direct cause of moral evil and therefore man
is to blame for all of it (ibid., § 273, 288, 319). At the same time,
the world is completely justified; therefore, we can trust that every
unjust evil inflicted upon us by other people will be followed by at
least the same amount of good (ibid., § 241).
141 Mackie: “Evil and Omnipotence.”
142 See Marilyn McCord Adams's discussion of “horrendous
evils” that inflict such suffering they transform a whole human life
into something that’s not worth living (Adams: Horrendous Evils
and the Goodness of God, p. 26).
143 Cited in Rapp: Fortschritt, p. 159.
144 Hegel: The Philosophy of History, p. 15, 25.
145 Cf. Pauen: Pessimismus, p. 11.
146 Cf. Rapp: Fortschritt, p. 144.
147 Voltaire: Candide, p. 12.
148 Ibid., p. 52.
149 It may seen strange that I cite Kant in a discussion con-
cerning theodicy, especially because he claims in a famous article
that all philosophical theodicies must necessarily fail (Kant: “On

246
 NOTES

the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy”), but this

is only true, he implies, of theodicies that are strictly theoreti-
cal. In fact, Kant develops a form of theodicy in both his moral
philosophy—for example in the postulates on practical reason
(Kant: Critique of Practical Reason) and in his philosophy of his-
tory. I limit my discussion here to the philosophy of history, but
it should be noted that the subject is closely tied to Kant’s moral
philosophy, since theodicy in Kant changes from “natural the-
ology” to “ethical theology” (cf. Kant: Critique of Judgment pp.
219-227).
150 Kant: “Conjectural Beginning of Human History,’ in Toward
Perpetual Peace and Other Writings, p. 36.
151 Kant: “On the Common Saying: “This May Be True in The-
ory, But It Does Not Apply in Praxis,” in Political Writings, p. 90.
152 Kant: “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan
Perspective, in Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings, pp. 6f.
153 Kant: Critique of Judgment, p. 211.
154 Kant: “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan
Perspective,” in Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings, pp. 7f.
155 Kant: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View in An-
thropology, History and Education, p. 338.
156 Kant: “Conjectural Beginning of Human History,’ in Toward
Perpetual Peace and Other Writings, pp. 29f.
157. Kant: Toward Perpetual Peace, in Toward Perpetual Peace
and Other Writings, pp. 102f.
158 A problem with the whole tendency in Kant’s thought comes
from his idea that it is through humanity’s enlightenment and au-
tonomy that the good will be realized, while, at the same time,
Kant denies that man’s intentions will play any substantial role in
the realization of this goal on a global scale, and instead leaves this

247
NOTES

task to nature’s design. We can imagine three possibilities with

regard to the relationship between man’s intentional actions and
history’s progress: (1) the two function completely independent
of the other, (2) history is driven by its own engine and human en-
lightenment is a product of history, or (3) human enlightenment
propels history toward a realization of the ideal life. The whole
tendency in Kant’s thinking speaks for (3), but it’s nonetheless (2)
that Kant embraces. Humanity is placed in a situation whose out-
come was established beforehand, independent of what you and
I might choose to do. In Critique of Judgment ($83), however, we
find a slightly different viewpoint. Instead of regarding the prog-
ress of history as something originating in a more or less mechani-
cally functioning natural law, the perspective changes. Progress is
now understood as a byproduct of humanity. Of course, nature
still plays an essential role, but the understanding of nature has
evolved away from what we might call natural history, resituat-
ing it as an element somewhere between the natural world and
freedom. Nature “acts” to stimulate progress toward an ever more
cultivated and civilized (though not necessarily moral) world or-
der. However, in being thus stimulated, man is perfected along the
way; he becomes capable, to a larger and larger degree, of taking
destiny into his own hands. We can perhaps sum up this idea in
the following way: Nature drives humanity toward enlightenment,
and after that we're in a position to take control. Nature has a plan
for humanity, but the enlightened individual understands this
plan and aids in its realization.
159 Kant: “Reviews of Herder’s Ideas on the Philosophy of the
History of Mankind,” in Political Writings, p. 220; cf. Kant: “Con-
jectural Beginnings of Human History, in Toward Perpetual Peace
and Other Writings, p. 36; Kant: Toward Perpetual Peace p. 92.

248
 NOTES

160 Cf. Kant: “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan

Perspective,” in Perpetual Peace and Other Writings, pp. 122f.
161 Hegel: The Philosophy of History, p. 33.
162 Ibid., p. 15. Hegel concludes the essay on the philosophy of
history by repeating the idea that the recognition of world history
as the spirit’s actualization is the only true theodicy (ibid., p. 457).
163 Ibid., p. 33.
164 Herder: Another Philosophy of History for the Education of
Mankind, p. 88.
165 Hegel: The Philosophy of History, p. 21.
166 Ibid., p. 37.
167 Ibid., pp. 66f.
168 Cf. Hollander: “Revisiting the Banality of Evil: Political Vio-
lence in Communist Systems,” p. 56.
169 Cf. Getty and Naumov: The Road to Terror.
170 Cf. Pauen: Pessimismus, p. 31.
171 Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation, p. 325;
Parerga and Paralipomena II, p. 368.
172 Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation, p. 326.
173 Ibid., The World as Will and Representation: Volume 2, p. 643.
174 Ibid., p. 583.
175 Cf. Lacroix: Das Bose, p. 77.
176 Thisinverted theodicy receives a clear expression in Giacomo
Leopardi, who claims that all happiness is either deceitful or illu-
_ sionary (Leopardi: The Canti, p. 65). In reality, everything is rooted
in evil, even though at times it can seem otherwise. Existence itself
is evil, and true happiness can only be found in nonexistence.
177. Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals, p. 19.
178 Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1884-1885, pp. 625f.
179 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, p. 49.

249
NOTES

180 Nietzsche, Writings from the Late Notebooks, p. 180.

181 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 225.
182 Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil, § 270.
183 Airaksinen: The Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade, p. 5.
184 Sade: Justine, p. 458.
185 Ibid., p. 481.
186 Ibid., pp. 481f, cf. pp. 128ff. This espousal of an evil provi-
dence is purely rhetorical, for there is no place for a metaphysi-
cal concept such as providence in Sade’s worldview. His universe is
a cold machine where all bodies are mechanical, in keeping with
La Mettrie's Man a Machine—a Cartesian concept without any res
cogitans. Everything can be quantified. Because every qualitative
difference disappears, all moral difference disappears as well. The
fact that a human being has qualities that an insect lacks is irrel-
evant: mass is mass. The essential quality of action is the size of
the organs, the number of sexual acts, partners, and orifices, the
amount of sperm and blood and the number of victims. Quantity is
the same as intensity and therefore also as quality. For Sade, quan-
tity is the only quality. The human body, both your own and that
of another, is raw material that should be used, and its pleasure is
directly proportional to its consumption.
187 Kant: Metaphysics of Morals in Practical Philosophy, p. 473.
188 Job 40:8f.
189 Ofcourse, Hobbes agrees with God and says that God is just
precisely because he's so powerful. (Hobbes: Leviathan, chap. 31,
p. 246.)
190 Ecclesiastes 9:16.
191 Job 28:12.
192 Job 28:28.
193 Job 42:7.

250
 NOTES

194 Cf. Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11; Galatians 2:6.

195 Ecclesiastes 7:15.
196 Mark 10:18, Matthew 19:17, Luke 18:19.
197 Calvin: The Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 141.
198 Mill: An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy,
ppn273t.
199 Jaspers: Von der Wahrheit, p. 533.
200 Plato, The Republic, 392b.
201 Cf. Lerner: The Beliefin a Just World: A Fundamental De-
lusion.
202 Cf. Ferry: Man made God.
203 Cf. Gauchet: The Disenchantment of the World, p. 199.
204 Lyotard: The Postmodern Condition.
205 Delbanco: The Death of Satan, p. 143.
206 Ricoeur: The Conflict of Interpretations, p. 301.
207 Genesis 6:5; cf. Ecclesiastes 9:3.
208 Genesis 8:21.
209 Machiavelli: Discourses, book 1, chap. 3.
210 Hobbes: Leviathan, chap. 13.
211 Machiavelli wants to cancel out evil with evil. Instead of be-
ing a victim of evil, he decides to actually do evil. According to
Machiavelli, the weakest position is somewhere between good and
evil, and a person should choose to be wholly good or wholly evil
(Discourses, book I, chap. 26). However, because people are essen-
tially evil, goodness will ultimately result in self-annihilation. The
only true alternative is to opt for the greatest evil possible, because
paradoxically this choice will limit evil. This idea is not relevant
to all spheres of life, of course, but a prince must be ready to ex-
ercise maximum brutality when the situation requires it. Machia-
velli’s whole political philosophy can be summed up in the cliché

251
NOTES

that violence is always the best answer. It’s also worth noting that
Machiavelli's whole political philosophy is structured around his
anthropology.
212 Montaigne: “On Cruelty,’ p. 182.
213 Lautréamont: Maldoror, p. 31.
214 Melville: Billy Budd, p. 326. See also the following descrip-
tion of Claggart: “With no power to annul the elemental evil in
him, tho’ readily enough he could hide it; a nature like Claggart’s
surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what
recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and [. . .] act out to the
end the part allotted it” Ibid., p. 328.
215 Rousseau: Emile, pp. 39f.
216 Rousseau: On the Origin of Inequality, p. 115.
217 Ibid., p. 109.
218 Rousseau: Emile, p. 67.
219 Ibid. p. 282.
220 Ibid., p. 67.
221 Ibid., pp. 104f.
222 Cf. Grant: Hypocrisy and Integrity and Bloom: “Introduc-
tion,’ pp. 12f.
223 The following story about the wild boy of Aveyron is taken
from Masters: The Evil That Men Do, pp. 4ff., 31f., 67, 203.
224 Rousseau, for that matter, knew about several cases of chil-
dren who grew up without human contact, who were fostered by
wolves or the like, but he didn't explicitly use these examples in
his discussion of the natural man. (Cf. Rousseau: A Discourse on
Inequality, p. 140n.)
225 Cf. Gelven: The Risk of Being, pp. 162f.
226 No one only does good or only does evil. Dennis Nilsen, one
of Great Britain's worst serial killers, helped some of the young
men he lured to his home, who were often destitute—feeding

259
 NOTES

them and sending them on their way. Others, however, he mur-

dered. In 1970, Ted Bundy saved a three year-old from drown-
ing (cf. Masters: The Evil That Men Do, pp. 10f.) In this context,
we can also mention Quisling, who helped to save thousands of
Ukranian Jews from starvation in the 1920s. Nonetheless, he was
responsible for the deportation of a third of the Norwegian Jews
in 1942 and 1943.
227 Schelling: Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Hu-
man Freedom, p. 23.
228 Cf. Nancy: The Experience of Freedom, p. 135.
229 Alford: What Evil Means to Us, p. 32.
230 Ibid., p. 142.
231 Leibniz: Theodicy, § 21.
232 Hick: Evil and the God of Love, p. 21.
233 Griffin: God, Power and Evil, pp. 27f.
234 Aquinas: Summa Theologica, I-II, 92.
235 See the documents collected in Getty and Naumov: The Road
to Terror.
236 In my opinion, Hitler represented an extreme form of this
type of evil, because he was convinced that his ideology, and the ac-
tions legitimated by his ideology, was entirely just. In Hitler's eyes,
the National Socialist movement represented the good.
237 Cf. Baumeister: Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty,
chap. 6.
238 = Kant: Reflexion 6900.
239 Cf. Baumeister: Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty,
chaps. 1 and 2.
240 For more on this gap, see ibid., pp. 18f.
241 Conroy: Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People, p. 88.
242 Cf. Katz: Seductions of Crime, pp. 5ff. Also see Sofsky: Trak-
tat tiber die Gewalt, chaps. 5 and 10.

253
NOTES

243 Though it should be noted here that most soldiers do not

shoot at the enemy. Only as high as between fifteen and twenty-
five percent of American troops shot at enemy positions or per-
sonnel during the Second World War, even though around eighty
percent of them had the opportunity to do so (Bourke: An Inti-
mate History of Killing, p. 75). There’s reason to believe that the
corresponding figures for soldiers during the First World War are
even lower. Such ineffectiveness was considered unacceptable, so
the United States revised its military training methods in an ef-
fort to create more efficient killing machines. The marines espe-
cially upped the brutality of their training process—employing,
among other things, depersonalization, destruction of all privacy,
unilateral induction into a group mentality at the cost of individu-
ality, extreme physical stress, harsh punishments, forced lack of
sleep, strict emphasis on the absolute necessity of following orders
no matter how absurd they might seem, etc. That the same men
who went on to receive this kind of “education” turned around
and carried out the massacre in My Lai shouldn't have come as a
surprise to anyone. We should mention too that bayonet training
is still included in such training, not because bayonets are an es-
pecially common weapon—they made up only one percent of all
the weapons used in both world wars, and today only form about a
thousandth of a percentile—but because they desensitize soldiers
(ibid., pp. 89-93, 153). People capable of killing other people with
a bayonet will presumably have fewer qualms about killing a per-
son from a greater distance.
244 Bourke: An Intimate History of Killing, chap. 1.
245 Cited in ibid., p. 31.
246 Cited in Glover: Humanity, pp. 54f.
247 Bourke: An Intimate History of Killing, pp. 356f.

254
 NOTES

248 Cf. Norris: Serial Killers, p. 32.

249 Jack Katz lists a number of such cases in Seductions of Crime,
chap. 8.
250 Montaigne: “On Cruelty,’ p. 181.
251 Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation I, p. 363.
252 Lang: Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide, p. 29, 56.
253 Alford: What Evil Means to Us, p. 21.
254 Bataille: Literature and Evil, pp. 17f.
255 Kekes: Facing Evil, p. 126, 131.
256 McGinn: Ethics, Evil and Fiction, pp. 62ff., 82.
257 Ibid., pp. 65ff.
258 Rawls: A Theory of Justice, p. 439.
259 Augustine: Confessions, book 2.4 and 2.6.
260 Ibid., book 2.4.
261 Cf. Airaksinen: The Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade, p. 103.
262 Cited in ibid., p. 150.
263 Milton: Paradise Lost, book 4, line 111.
264 This idea is also found in Isaiah 14:12ff.
265 Milton: Paradise Lost, book 1, lines 159-162.
266 Ibid., book 4, line 957.
267 Poe: “The Black Cat; in The Complete Illustrated Stories and
Poems, p. 237.
268 Poe: “The Imp of the Perverse,” in The Complete Illustrated
Stories and Poems, p. 441.
(269 Ibid., p. 440.
270 Cf. Davidson: “How is Weakness of the Will Possible?,” p. 42.
271 McGinn: Ethics, Evil and Fiction, p. 101.
272 Incontrast to his mentor Hegel (cf. Hegel: Hegel's Aesthet-
ics: Lectures on Fine Art, Volume I, pp. 221ff.). Karl Rosenkranz
pointed out that the most evil can do is evoke aesthetic interest

255
NOTES

(Rosenkranz: Asthetik des Haflichen, pp. 260-309) and this idea

strongly influenced modernism.
273 Kant: Critique of Judgment, § 23, p. 62.
274 Ibid § 28, p. 76.
275 Cited in Oppenheimer: Evil and the Demonic, p. 79.
276 Soldiers’ perception of the wars they take part in are shaped
by the movies they've seen. Many express disappointment that war
doesn't live up to the expectations created by the movies, while
others claim they experienced the whole war as if it were a film.
(Bourke: An Intimate History of Killing, pp. 26ff.)
277 Bjornvig: Den estetiske idiosynkrasi, p. 41. Translated by
Kerri.A, Pierce.
278 Poe: “The Tell-Tale Heart” in The Complete Illustrated Stories
and Poems, p. 244.
279 Hamsun: “Fra det ubevidste Sjeleliv.”
280 Melville: Billy Budd, see especially p. 327.
281 Lang: Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide, p. 29, 56.
282 Cf. Walter Benjamin’s remark that fascists aestheticize poli-
tics, while communists politicize art (“The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction, p. 242).
283 Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks, p. 180.
284 Genet: The Thief’s Journal, p. 5.
285 Ibid., p. 162.
286 Ibid., p. 154.
287 Ibid., pp. 64, 174ff
288 — Ibid., pp. 14f.
289 Baudelaire: “Hymn to Beauty,’ in Baudelaire, p. 42.
290 Baudelaire: “To the Reader, in ibid., p. 13.
291 Cf. Alford: What Evil Means to Us, p. 32, 126.
292 Ihave analyzed American Psycho comparatively exhaustively
in another context and shall not repeat my findings here. Instead,

256
 NOTES

I'll content myself with saying that we find the acknowledgment

motivation well represented there. (Svendsen: Philosophy of Bore-
dom, pp. 69-80.)
293 Morgenthau: “Love and Power.”
294 McGinn: Ethics, Evil and Fiction, p. 80.
295 For a discussion of symbolic representations of evil, see Al-
ford: What Evil Means to Us, pp. 12f., 44f., 113ff., 146f.
296 Plato: Philebus, 48b7.
297 McGinn: Ethics, Evil and Fiction, p. 66.
298 Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation
II, p. 693; Parerga and Paralipomena II, p. 215; On the Basis of Mo-
rality, p. 156, 158.
299 Kant: Metaphysics of Morals in Practical Philosophy, p. 577.
300 Kant: Lectures on Ethics, pp. 197f., 420f.
301 Fora broad philosophical thematisation of schadenfreude and
its history, see Portmann: When Bad Things Happen to Other People.
302 Cf. Sofsky: Traktat tiber die Gewallt, pp. 119f.
303 Plato: Protagoras, 352a; cf. Plato: Meno, 88d, Gorgias 460b.,
509e, Xenophon: The Memorabilia, book 3.9.
304 Plato Protagoras 352a-358d.
305 Plato: The Republic 439a—441c.
306 Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics, 1110b17.
307 Ibid., 1152a.
308 Ibid., book 7.8.
309 = Ibid., 1079b.
310 Romans 7:19.
311 Sartre: Baudelaire, p.71.
312 Aquinas: Summa Theologica, I, Il, 27, 1.
313 Leibniz: Theodicy, § 45, 154.
314 Hume: Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and
Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 277.

257
NOTES

315 Rousseau: Emile, p. 243.

316 Ibid., p. 105.
317 Kant: Lectures on Ethics, p. 198.
318 Kant: Vorarbeiten zur Religion innherhalb der Grenzen der
bloffen Vernunft, p. 101.
319 Cf. Kant: Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Mor-
als in Basic Writings of Kant, pp. 181f.
320 Cf. Kant: Critique of Practical Reason in Practical Philosophy,
pp. 195ff.
321 Cf. Kant: “Reflexionen zur Anthropologie,’ Reflexion 1226.
322 Kant: Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, p. 32. Here-
after, this title will be shortened to Religion.
323 Cf. Anderson-Gold: “Kant’s Rejection of Devilishness: The
Limits of Human Volition”
324 Kant: Religion, pp. 24f.
325 Allison: Kant’ Theory of Freedom, p. 40.
326 Kant: Religion, p. 19.
327 Kant: Metaphysics of Morals in Practical Philosophy, p. 536.
328 Cf. Kant: Critique of Practical Reason in Practical Philosophy
pp. 187ff.
329 Kant: Metaphysics of Morals in Practical Philosophy, p. 380.
330 Kant: “Conjectural Beginning of Human History,’ p. 227.
331 Kant: Religion, p. 40; cf. Kant: Anthropology From a Pragmatic
Point of View, p. 420, Kant: Lectures on Pedagogy in Anthropology, —
History and Education, p. 478.
332 Kant: Religion, p. 31.
333 Ibid., p. 26.
334 Kant: Vorarbeiten zur Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der
blofen Vernunft, p. 102
335 Kant: Religion, p. 25, 30.

258
 NOTES

336 Ibid., p. 27.

337 Ibid., pp. 16f.
338 Ibid., p. 66.
Bos Ibid., p. 28.
340 Ibid., pp. 56f.
341 Kant: Critique ofPure Reason, p. B274, A551n./B579n.; Kant:
Reflections on Metaphysics, Reflection 5612 and 5616.
342 Kant: Religion, p. 16.
343 Kant: Religion, pp. 34f.
344 Ibid., p. 27.
345 Kant: Critique of Practical Reason in Practical Philosophy, pp.
219f. Cf. Religion, p. 33.
346 Romans, 4:15, 5:13.
347 Kant: Religion, pp. 18ff.
348 Ibid., p. 38.
349 Ibid., p. 20.
350 Ibid., p. 18-19n.
351 Ibid., p. 25, 32.
50 Ibid., p. 43.
g08 Ibid., p. 62.
354 Ibid., p. 3.
355 Ibid., pp. 17ff.
356 Becker: Escape from Evil, p. xvii.
357 Ibid., p. 148.
358 Novalis: Teplitzer Fragments in Schriften, p. 398.
ee Cohn: Europe’s Inner Demons.
360 Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil, § 153.
361 For a historic thematisation of such idea pairs, see Ko-
selleck: “Zur historisch-politischen Semantik asymmetrischer
Gegenbegriffe.”

259
NOTES

362 Schmitt: The Concept of the Political, p. 37.

363 Novalis: Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia, p. 121.
364 Cf. Matthew 25:31-46.
365 Gourevitch: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will
Be Killed With Our Families, p. 95.
366 Cf. Naimark: Fires of Hatred, pp. 14f. and chap. 5.
367 Whether you consider the war to have been a war be-
tween two countries or an internal conflict, these deportations
were a war crime. Forced deportation in war is prohibited by
Article 29 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, a prohi-
bition that was expanded in Protocol II from 1977 to include
internal conflicts.
368 In part, Goring’s defense strategy in the Nuremberg Tri-
als was to proclaim that the war’s victors, who were now putting
him on trial, were guilty of similar crimes, both in the war against
Germany and in earlier periods of nation building. And Goring
was largely right: the United State's very existence is based upon
the extermination of a whole people; England’s riches were the
result of an inhuman colonialism; the Soviet Union was at least
as totalitarian as the Germans; the bombing of German civilians
during World War II reached the proportions of an extreme war
crime; and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japanese civilians
should similarly be regarded as criminal. In Casablanca in Janu-
ary 1943, Great Britain and the United States drew up a plan for .
a massive bombing campaign of German civilians meant to “de-
stroy morale’—which was then carried out. If we put any stock —
in the concept of human rights, which holds that civilians should
be protected as much as possible in war, than this—as much as
the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—should be regarded as
a serious breach. And what about the Allied blockade of Germany

260
 NOTES

after World War I, after the war had already been decided, which
led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people? Goring was
partially right in his assertions. His mistake was that be persisted in
believing that these facts lessened his own guilt. Géring’s guilt was
just as great, but a number of the war's “victors” should also have
been put on trial.
369 Alouni: “Transcript?”
370 Numbers 31:1-19.
371 1 Samuel 15:3.
372 See for example Joshua 8:22ff., 10:28-40, 11:10-14.
373 Vetlesen: “Ondskap Bosnia,” p. 96.
374 For a well-informed discussion of the social psychology of
prejudice, see Duckitt: The Social Psychology of Prejudice.
375 Cf. Hochschild: King Leopold's Ghost, p. 16.
376 Anderson: Imagined Communities, p. 6.
377 Cf. Naimark: Fires of Hatred, chap. 5.
378 Kapuscinski: Soccer War, pp. 157-85.
379 Cf. Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, Volume V, pp. 66-72.
380 Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 72.
381 Ignatieff: The Warriors Honor, p. 50.
382 Erwin Staub (The Roots of Evil, p. 58) tells the story of an
English experiment where thirty-two young boys from Bristol
were shown a number of dots on a screen, and afterwards asked
to guess how many dots theyd seen. Half the boys were told that
they belonged to the group that had overestimated the number,
and the other half were told they belonged to the opposite group.
After that, every boy was asked to divide up a sum of money be-
tween two other boys, and the only information they were given
about these boys were that one belonged to the first group and one

261
NOTES

belonged to the second. On this basis alone, the boys systematically

discriminated between the recipients, and gave more money to
those in the same category as themselves. Group solidarity pro-
vided no rational basis for handling the money, but it was nonethe-
less sufficient to lead to discriminatory behavior.
383 Aristotle: Politics, 1253a7ff .
384 Cf. Sofsky: Traktat iiber die Gewallt, p. 162.
385 Emerson: “Compensation,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, p. 167.
386 Blake: “Annotations in Lavater’s Aphorisms on Man, in The
Complete Poetry of William Blake, p. 589.
387 ‘Todorov: Facing the Extreme, p. 200.
388 See for example May: Power and Innocence.
389 For a readable thematization of this problem, see Cruik-
shank: “Revolutions Within: Self-government and Self-esteem”
390 Cf. Berkowitz: Aggression: Its Causes, Consequences, and
Control, pp. 143f. See also Baumeister: Evil: Inside Human Violence
and Cruelty, chap. 5.
391 Generally speaking, we can distinguish between three dif-
ferent definitions of violence: (1) broad, (2) narrow, and (3) legit-
imacy-based. (1): Broad definitions of violence encompass a mul-
titude of different phenomena, for example social injustice. One of
the most common broad definitions of violence is Johan Galtung’s
idea of “structural violence,’ which suggests that violence occurs _
when people are influenced to such an extent that they cannot re-
alize their full somatic and mental potential (Galtung: “Violence, ©
Peace and Peace Research,’ p. 168.). The problem with this defini-
tion is that it makes it difficult to imagine a sphere of human life
not permeated by violence. The concept of violence, therefore, be-
comes watered down. (2): Narrow definitions of violence are more

262
 NOTES

in keeping with the general use of the word and refer to human
actions that deliberately cause psychical, or even emotional, dam-
age. Galtung’s idea of “personal violence” belongs to this category.
(3): The third type of violence, legitimacy-based violence, is prin-
cipally a narrower version of (2), where the concept of violence
is reserved for deliberate actions that cause harm such that these
actions are not legitimated by a country’s laws. In my opinion, this
definition is counter-intuitive, and a given action—for example, a
police beating of protesters—is not made less violent just because
it might be validated by law. I believe (2) is the most reasonable
definition, and if not otherwise indicated, I use the term “violence”
in the narrower sense.
392 Honderich: Violence for Equality, p. 153.
393 Cf. Baumeister: Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, pp.
274f.
394 Athens: Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited, pp. 32-41.
395 Katz: Seductions of Crime, p. 19.
396 For an insightful discussion of this idea, see Emerson:
“Experience, in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
p. 323.
397 Cf. Katz: Seductions of Crime, p. 12.
398 Athens: Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited, chap. 6
and 7.
399 See Katz: Seductions of Crime, chap. 3, about “the badass.”
400 Arendt: The Life of the Mind: Thinking, p. 4
401 Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 276.
402 Ibid., p. 252, 287, 288.
403 Arendt: The Life of the Mind: Thinking, pp. 3ff.
404 Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 285, 288; Arendt: The Life
of the Mind: Thinking, p. 3.

263
NOTES

405 Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 276.

406 La Rochefoucauld: Maxims, § 269 (p. 55) and § 387 (p. 79).
407 Pascal: Pensées, p. 179.
408 Baudelaire: “The Counterfeit Coin, in Prose Poems, p. 74.
409 Camus: The Plague, p. 131.
410 Leopardi: “Memorable Sayings of Filippo Ottonieri” in Oper-
ette Morali, p. 307, 309.
411 Bonhoeffer: Letters and Papers from Prison, pp. 8f.
412 Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 287f.
413 Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 459.
414 Ibid., p. 458.
415 Ibid., pp. 447f.
416 Ibid., pp. 451f.
417 Ibid., pp. 453f.
418 Ibid., p. 459.
419 Ibid., p. ix, 459.
420 Ibid., pp. 432f.
421 For a discussion of the purges under Stalin, see Getty and
Naumov: The Road to Terror. This work is mainly composed of re-
cently released internal documents from the Central Committee
under Stalin together with commentary.
422 Ibid., pp. 470-81, 518-21, 583.
423 Ibid., pp. xiii, 272ff, 578.
424 Arendt: Crises of the Republic, p. 108.
425 Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 460.
426 Ibid., p. 468.
427 Arendt: Vita Activa, chap. 5.; The Origins of Totalitarianism,
pp. 456f.
428 A selection of interrogation records by the Israeli police are
published in Lang and Sibyll: Eichmann Interrogated.

264
 NOTES

429 For a discussion of this aspect, see Rosenthal: A Good Look

at Evil, pp. 163-80.
430 Furthermore, I essentially limit myself to the picture Arendt
paints of Eichmann. As David Cesarani points out in his book Be-
coming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a “Desk
Murderer,’ Arendt was only present for an extremely limited time
during the trial. Cesarani finds many faults with Arendt’s view of
Eichmann, and I find Cesarini to be the more reliable biographer.
However, since this chapter is more devoted to Arendt’s thought
than to an accurate portrayal of Eichmann, I have generally ad-
hered to Arendt’s interpretation of him.
431 Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 25f., 48f.
432 Ibid., p. 92.
433 Lang and Sibyll: Eichmann Interrogated, p. 80.
434 Ibid., 104.
435 Ibid., pp. 96, 111, 118, 131. 197f,
436 Ibid., p. 104.
437 Ibid., p. 173.
438 Ibid., p. 199.
439 Weber: “Politics as a Vocation” in Max Weber’s Complete
Writings, p. 173.
440 Lang and Sibyll: Eichmann Interrogated, p. 144f, cf. pp. 157f.,
197f., 208, 271f. Considered in this way, Eichmann is also remi-
niscent of Max Weber’s protestant capitalist, who puts work above
personal pleasure, because work is the way to salvation. The Weber
capitalist completely dedicates himself to doing the best job pos-
sible in a system whose rules he never pauses to reflect on. Instead,
he merely accepts the rules as a given.
441 Weber: “Bureaucracy” in From Max Weber, p. 228.
442 Cf. Nagel: Mortal Questions, p. 77.

265
NOTES

443 Lang and Sibyll: Eichmann Interrogated, p. 288.

444 Cf. Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 136.
445 Kant: Metaphysics of Morals in Practical Philosophy, p. 505;
Kant: Religion, p. 90n.
446 Lang and Sibyll: Eichmann Interrogated, p. 40f.
447 Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 247f.
448 Ibid., p. 109.
449 Land and Sibyll: Eichmann Interrogated, p. 289.
450 Ibid., p. 150, 157.
451 Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 114.
452 Ibid., p. 287.
453 Cf. Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60.
454 Bauman: Modernity and the Holocaust.
455 Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 48f., 53; Arendt: The Life
of the Mind: Thinking, p. 4.
456 Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 287.
457 Ibid., p. 252.
458 Héss: Commandant of Auschwitz, p. 131.
459 Ibid., p. 178.
460 Levi: “Introduction”
461 Héss: Commandant of Auschwitz, p. 67.
462 Ibid., p. 71f.
463 Ibid., p. 67.
464 Ibid., pp. 80ff.
465 Ibid., pp. 178f.
466 Ibid., p. 116.
467 For a good examination of this idea, see Todorov: Facing the
Extreme.
468 Hoss: Commandant of Auschwitz, p. 111.
469 Ibid., p. 54.

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 NOTES

470 Ibid., p. 76.

471 Ibid., p. 184.
472 Ibid., pp. 152f.
473 Ibid., p. 144.
474 Sereny: Into that Darkness, p. 39, 364.
475 Ibid., p. 364.
476 Ibid., p. 157.
477 Ibid., p. 229.
478 Ibid., p. 100.
479 Ibid., p. 101, 232.
480 Ibid., p. 201.
481 Ibid., p. 203.
482 Ibid., p. 35, 55, 110, 113, 134, 164, 233.
483 Ibid., p. 29, 364f.
484 Ibid., p. 113.
485 Ibid., p. 164.
486 Ibid., p. 164.
487 Ibid., p. 164.
488 Ibid., pp. 232f.
489 Ofstad: Var forakt for svakhet.
490 Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944, p. 396.
491 Sereny: Into that Darkness, p. 200. Seneca has already written
about how evil tends to escalate, and that a person can develop his
own blasé, routine form of evil (Seneca: “On Anger” in Dialogues and
. Essays, pp. 29f.). This habituation can happen terrifyingly fast. An SS
doctor at Auschwitz, Johann Paul Kremer, who kept a diary during
the time he was stationed at the camp, expressed his horror at what
he saw there in the first two diary entries he wrote on arrival—after
that, he never mentioned it again. (Cf. Katz: Ordinary People and
Extraordinary Evil, p. 50-60. See also Lifton: The Nazi Doctors.)

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NOTES

492 Hegel discusses habit as being a “second nature” (Hegel: The

Encyclopaedia Logic, § 410). In my opinion, this idea captures some-
thing essential about habits. If we distinguish between instincts and
habits, we can describe instincts as belonging to our first nature
(those things we were born with) and habits as belonging to our
second nature (those things we learn along the way, but that are so
strongly internalized that they approach pure instinct in terms of im-
mediacy and necessity). The difference between our first and second
natures is that the first is inborn and the second can be changed.
493 Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf, p. 402.
494 Ibid., p. 297.
495 We can draw a parallel here with communism, especially as
it played out under Stalin. Although there was no clearly articu-
lated Fuhrer principle, the party principle was just as strong..An
individual was expected to subjugate himself to the party without
reservation and there was no place for individual reflection and
conscience. (Cf. Getty and Naumov: The Road to Terror.)
496 Cf. Emerson: “Politics,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, p. 65.
497 Himmler’s famous speech in Posen in 1943 shows that the
Nazis considered the mass exterminations to be a dirty secret. The
speech reveals a contrast between the emphasis placed on honor
and duty on the one hand, and the necessity to remain silent for
all time on the other. The necessity for secrecy—not simply with
regard to the strategic considerations of a certain situation, but for
all time—reveals an awareness that these actions were immoral.
Kant formulates a public principle for evaluating an action’s le-
gitimacy: “All actions that affect the rights of other human be-
ings, the maxims of which are incompatible with publicity, are
unjust.” (Kant: Toward Perpetual Peace in Toward Perpetual Peace

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 NOTES

and Other Writings, p. 104.) Kant emphasizes that this idea applies
both to the moral and the juridical evaluations of an action.
498 Lifton: The Nazi Doctors, p. 418-65.
499 For example, we can think of the engineers who constructed
the Nazis’ cremation ovens. In 1950, one of these engineers, Martin
Klettner, was still trying now and then to get a patent for one of the
ovens hed helped develop in Auschwitz. (Cf. Pressac: Auschwitz:
Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, pp. 103, 105, 244.)
500 Cf. Glass: Life Unworthy of Life, pp. 88f.
501 For an excellent study of the doctors, see Lifton: The Nazi
Doctors. The doctors in the concentration camps had taken the
Hippocratic oath, but they committed actions that were diametri-
cally opposed to that oath, seemingly without a single pang of con-
science. They injected different organic material, including viruses
and bacteria, into the prisoners, removed brain tissue and trans-
planted organs into living people without bothering to use anes-
thesia, stuck people in pressure chambers, in boiling and ice-cold
water, etc. They were enacting an inverted Hippocratic oath. Of
course, there were a few doctors who refused to take part, and none
of these were punished in any way—they were simply given differ-
ent jobs. However, the majority seemed to have very little objection
to these experiments.
502 In Auschwitz, a large portion of the prisoners also had a num-
ber tattooed on their arm, and this number replaced their names,
dehumanizing the prisoners even more. We can also remark in this
context that these tattoos were yet another blow to orthodox Jews,
because the Law of Moses forbids tattooing and the like (Leviticus
19:28, cf. Deuteronomy 14:1). However, I doubt that this was done
intentionally, and I believe that the tattooing was mainly motivated
by dehumanization and other “logistical” considerations.

269
NOTES

503 Cited in Glass: Life Unworthy of Life, p. 27.

504 Lang: Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide, p. 210.
505 Ibid., p. 29, 56.
506 Goldhagen: Hitler's Willing Executioners, p. 493n43, 593n23.
507 Finkelstein and Birn: A Nation on Trial.
508 Cited in Bauman: Modernity and the Holocaust, p. 75.
509 Bauman: pp. 109f., 165ff.
510 Goldhagen: Hitler’s Willing Executioners, p. 194.
511 Ibid., p. 255.
512 Ibid., p. 580n108.
513 Ibid., p. 315.
514 Ibid., pp. 416, 479.
515 Glass: Life Unworthy of Life.
516 Goldhagen: Hitler's Willing Executioners, pp. 170f.
517 Johnson and Reuband: What We Knew. Terror, Mass Murder
and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany.
518 Staub: The Roots of Evil, p. 38.
519 Aly: Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare
State.
520 Browning: Ordinary Men. Browning's study has been force-
fully criticized by Goldhagen in Hitler’s Willing Executioners, but
in a new afterword to the 1998 edition of Ordinary Men, Browning
gives a convincing response to this criticism. I am not a special-
ist in this area, but I find Browning's study more attractive than .
Goldhagen’s, simply because Browning’s assertions seem to be bet-
ter supported than Goldhagen’. See also Bettina Birn’s defense of
Browning and critique of Goldhagen in Finkelstein and Birn: A
Nation on Trial.
521 Browning: Ordinary Men, pp. 225f.
522 Ibid., p. 161.

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 NOTES

523 Ibid., p. 57.

524 Ibid., pp. 61f.
525 Ibid., p. 74.
526 Goldhagen: Hitlers Willing Executioners, p. 553n68.
527 Browning: Ordinary Men, p. 214.
528 An especially shocking example is a group from Berlin, ex-
clusively on hand to support the troops, who should have had no
part in the killings. They asked for permission to participate in the
shooting of the Jews, and received consent. (Ibid., p. 112.)
529 Ibid., pp. 73, 150ff., 184.
530 Ibid., p. 48.
531 Ibid., pp. 85ff.
532 Goldhagen: Hitler's Willing Executioners, p. 237.
533 Cited in Browning: Ordinary Men, p. 216.
534 Ibid., p. 72.
535 Ibid., p. 184.
536 During World War II, under thirty percent of the soldiers in
the American Air Force expressed a hatred for the enemy, while
between twenty-seven and thirty-eight percent of the soldiers in
the infantry mentioned hatred as a motivation for killing. On the
other hand, sixty percent cited loyalty to their comrades as the
most important factor. In later wars, which take place at greater
distances, this claim is more and more prevalent. (Cf. Bourke: An
Intimate History of Killing, pp. 157f.)
_ 537 Cited in ibid., pp. 171f.
538 Cited in ibid., p. 191.
539 Ibid., p. 226.
540 The following remarks concerning the protests against the
trial against Calley are taken from Bourke: An Intimate History of
Killing, pp. 193f.

271
NOTES

541 Ibid., pp. 195f.

542 ‘This example is taken from Conroy: Unspeakable Acts, Ordi-
nary People, pp. 138f.
543 See Katz: Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil, p. 84-90.
544 See Todorov: Facing the Extreme, p. 122.
545 A military tribunal in Tokyo (1946-48) uncovered exam-
ples of extreme cruelty in the treatment of prisoners of war, an
investigation which, among other things, showed that twenty-
seven percent of captured Allied soldiers died in Japanese cus-
tody, while corresponding tallies for soldiers in German and Ital-
ian custody were four percent. (Cf. Robertson: Crimes Against
Humanity, p. 223.)
546 Cf. Glover: Humanity, p. 294.
547 Milgram: Obedience to Authority.
548 Baron: Human Aggression, pp. 260ff.
549 Milgram: Obedience to Authority, p. 205.
550 Levi: The Drowned and the Saved, p. 56.
551 Arendt: Life of the Mind: Thinking, p. 78.
552. Ibid. p. 193.
553 Ibid., p. 13.
554 Kant: Critique of Judgment, § 40, pp. 102f.
555 Kant: “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”
in Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings, p. 17.
556 Adorno: “Education After Auschwitz” in Can One Live After
Auschwitz?, p. 23.
557 Cf. Arendt: Life of the Mind: Thinking, p. 5, 191.
558 Euripedes: Orestes and Other Plays, p. 59, line 396.
559 Ted Bundy, who certainly wasn’t much troubled by his con-
science, criticized the concept of guilt, which he believed to be a
social control mechanism and “very unhealthy” (Hare: Without

272
 NOTES

Conscience, p. 41). Its uncertain how many women Bundy mur-

dered, but it was at least seventeen, probably many more, and it’s
indisputable that Bundy would have been a far less “unhealthy”
element in society if hed been capable of feeling guilt.
560 Gelven: The Risk of Being, p. 22-37.
561 Conrad: Heart of Darkness, p. 87.
562 Ibid., p. 111.
563 Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago, pp. 615f.
564 Seterbakken: Det onde oye, p. 20.
565 Ricoeur: Fallible Man, p. 133.
566 Ibid., p. 142.
567 Ibid., p. 144.
568 Pascal writes: “There are only two kinds of men: the righ-
teous who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe
themselves righteous.” (Pascal: Penseés, p. 194.)
569 Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, book 10.7-8.
570 Aurelius: Meditations, book IV. 39, p. 30.
571 Ibid., book VII. 71, p. 194.
are Descartes: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 1: p. 122ff.
aS Ibid., 3: pp. 257f.
574 Engelmann: Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Mem-
oIr, p. 74.
575 Ibid., p. 79.
576 Wittgenstein: Notebooks 1914-1916, dated 11.6.16.
577 Ibid., dated 8.7.16.
578 Ibid., dated 13.8.16.
ye) Ibid., dated 13.8.16.
580 Wittgenstein: Culture and Value, p. 45e.
581 Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations, § 124.
582 Wittgenstein: Culture and Value, p. 43e.

273
NOTES

583 Aurelius: Meditations, book VII. 26, p. 60.

584 Romans 1:32.
585 Pascal: Provincial Letters, p. 249.
586 Kant: Critique of Practical Reason, p. 238.
587 Kant: The Conflict of the Faculties, p. 288.
588 Kant: Critique of Judgment, § 3, p. 39.
589 Kant distinguishes between philosophy as a school and phi-
losophy’s relevance to the world. Furthermore, Kant's philosophical
endeavors were not undertaken as academic philosophy operating
for its own sake (Kant: Logic, pp. 27f., cf. Critique of Pure Reason,
p. A838f,/B866f.).
590 Heller: “The Legacy of Marxian Ethics,” p. 140.
591 A person is free if he exists for his own sake and not for the
sake of another, Aristotle argues. (Metaphysics, 982b25, p. 9.)-Un-
fortunately, Aristotle did not recognize that this principle applied
to all human beings, and considered some people to be born slaves.
Slaves are not accorded the same freedom as others: they do not
have an individual praxis, but are tools for their owners’ praxis.
592 Hume: Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and
Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 229.
593 Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 408.
594 Ibid., pp. 401ff.
595 Freud: Civilization and its Discontents, p. 74.
596 Torture has been widespread for thousands of years. It isn’t
mentioned in antique Babylonian or Jewish texts, but both the As-
syrians and the Egyptians made use of torture, and it was an every-
day part of life for the Greeks and the Romans. In Aristophanes’
comedy The Frogs, for instance, there are descriptions of numerous
forms of torture. Then, for the Inquisition, torture wasn’t just a le-
gitimate practice—it was a holy exercise meant to snatch a person

274
 NOTES

out of Satan's claws. Up until the late eighteenth century, in fact,

torture was common practice in most European countries. Prussia
was the first nation to outlaw all torture, in 1754, and most Eu-
ropean countries quickly followed suite. (Switzerland was the last
country to hop on the bandwagon a hundred or so years later.)
However, as Amnesty International has shown since they began
their campaign against torture in 1973, torture has hardly disap-
peared from Europe.
Descriptions of torture tend to focus on the more obscure meth-
ods, but even the simplest can cause the same amount of pain. You
can systematically beat someone. You can deny prisoners sleep and
food or make them stand upright for long periods, which results in
intense muscle pain. You can also shame your victims, for example
by forcing them to eat an interrogator’s snot or making them wear
women’s underwear on their heads. After that, different methods
can be employed to break the prisoners mentally—for example by
making them think they're going to be executed. These methods
arent as spectacular as the more medieval methods of torture,
but can be just as effective. On top of this, they leave few physical
traces behind. Torture is in violation of Article 5 in the UN Uni-
versal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 7 of the Interna-
tional Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The UN Convention
Against Torture in 1984 also prohibits all use of torture, defined
as any action that consciously inflicts serious physical or mental
harm on a person for the sake of punishing (excepting lawful cases
of punishment), humiliating, or extracting information from the
victim. One hundred and nineteen countries ratified the conven-
tion, and all pledged to punish any person who had carried out
torture within their county’s borders. The problem, however, is that
the countries that did and do extensively use torture either did not

275
 NOTES

ratify the convention or simply refuse to cooperate with the ongo-

ing efforts of the Committee Against Torture.
597 Cf. Conroy: Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People, pp. 27f.
598 Ibid., pp. 20f.
599 Goldhagen: Hitler’s Willing Executioners, p. 119.
600 Staub: The Roots of Evil, p. 158.
601 In contrast to the usual assumption that the Allies neglected
the Jews and could have saved a multitude of Jews from the exter-
mination camps, William D. Rubenstein (The Myth of Rescue: Why
the Democracies Could Not Have Save More Jews from the Nazis)
has shown in detail that this was not a practical possibility.
602 Katz: Seductions of Crime, p. 20.
603 Darley and Latané: “Bystander Intervention in Emergencies:
Diffusion of Responsibility”
604 Cf. Hochschild: King Leopold’ Ghost.
605 Cf. Arendt: Crises of the Republic, p. 88.
606 Contrary to what you’ expect, an extensive investigation
showed that people generally have a more pronounced feeling
of guilt with regard to unpremeditated actions than to premedi-
tated actions. (McGraw: “Guilt Following Transgression: An At-
tribution of Responsibility Approach.) The explanation for this
is that premeditated actions already seem justified before they
are carried out, and the agent, therefore, does not need to feel
guilt, while unpremeditated actions do not necessarily appear
justified afterward. Of course, agents will often try to rationalize
their actions after the fact, and thereby spare themselves some
humiliation.
607 Why do we punish offenders? Typically, we come up with
two explanations: (1) prevention and (2) retribution. Most con-
temporary theories of punishment tend in the direction of the first,

276
 NOTES

but in my opinion, punishment should be something more seri-

ous, something more substantial than an all-around preventative.
On the other hand, while it’s understandable that a victim wants
revenge, I don't think that thoughts of revenge should legitimate
punishment . .. we should remember that there is an essential dif-
ference between pure revenge and punishment motivated by a con-
cern for justice: (1) Punishment is “repayment” for an evil, while
revenge is based on causing suffering; (2) punishment sets limits
on the amount of “payback” that can be taken, while revenge is
never proportional and has a tendency to escalate; (3) revenge is
personal, but what is “repaid” by punishment doesn't have to have
such personal overtones; and (4) revenge implies personal satis-
faction at the sight of another’s suffering—that is, revenge has an
emotional aspect that punishment (ideally) lacks. Of course, it
should be stated that it’s not always easy to distinguish between
revenge and punishment, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldnt
take pains to distinguish between the two. Hegel has given perhaps
the most purely retributive justification of punishment: his theory
states that a crime must always be punished, because the crime is
a breach of justice—and, furthermore, that any possible beneficial
consequences of punishment (for example, preventative effects)
are chance occurrences and are utterly irrelevant to its legitimiza-
tion (Philosophy of Right, § 99f.). Hegel expresses this idea quite
strongly, insisting that a criminal must be punished, since by in-
fringing on someone else’s rights, the criminal has agreed to let
his own rights be infringed upon. Punishment is the negation of
a negation. The criminal’s negative action should be annulled by
subjecting him to a correspondingly negative action. Ideally, this
process should annul the crime and provide the criminal with a
new ethical grounding.

277
 NOTES

608 ‘There are a number of juridical, political, and moral prob-

lems regarding the function and the legitimization of such war
crimes tribunals. For a clear discussion of these problems, see
Nino: Radical Evil on Trial.
609 Micah 4:3.
610 Joel 3:10.
611 Weber: “Politics as Vocation” in Max Weber’s Complete Writ-
ings on Academic and Political Vocations, p. 197.
612 Ibid., p. 198.
613 See especially Matthew 5:39: “Do not resist an evil person”
See also Romans 12:21.
614 See especially Psalms 37.
615 Immanuel Kant: “On a Supposed Right to Lie because of
Philanthropic Concerns.”
616 Weber: “Politics as Vocation” in Max Weber’s Complete Writ-
ings on Academic and Political Vocations, p. 199.
617 Concerning the idea of a “moral algorithm” and fact that it
doesn't exist, see O’Neill: Constructions of Reason.
618 Cf. Robertson: Crimes Against Humanity, p. 440.
619 Fora discussion of “weak consequentialism,” see Barry: Lib-
erty and Justice, p. 40-77.
620 Ibid., p. 76.
621 Hegel: Natural Law p. 79. Cf. Hegel: Philosophy of Right, §
135;
622 Hegel: Natural Law, p. 80.
623 Cf. Castoriadis: Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, p. 120. The
reference to Antigone is in verse 707ff.
624 Sorel: Reflections on Violence.
625 Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth, p. 50.
626 Cf. Keane: Reflections on Violence, p. 88.

278
 NOTES

627 Ibid., p. 90.

628 On the development of the monopoly on violence, see Elias:
The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations.
629 Weber: “Politics as Vocation” in Max Weber's Complete Writ-
ings on Academic and Political Vocations, p. 156.
630 Arendt: Crisis of the Republic, p. 177. Arendt distinguishes
sharply between power and violence. Power implies popular sup-
port, whereas violence largely occurs without such support. Ac-
cording to Arendt, power by definition belongs to a group, but vio-
lence can originate in a single individual. She admits that the two
are often linked, but insists on the distinction, because the essential
question is what type of power lies behind each individual instance
of violence (ibid., p. 146). The essential question with regard to po-
litical violence is whether the violence has a legitimate power base
behind it. We can even say that there is an inversely proportional
relationship between the power base and the extent of the violence.
This is illustrated by the Soviet terror of the 1930s: It was clear to
the Central Committee that they didn’t have the popular support
they wanted, and they therefore drew the conclusion that they were
threatened from all sides. A government that finds it necessary to
arrest people who pose absolutely no threat—for example, students
in small, insignificant towns—lacks security. These actions can be
blamed on the implicit recognition that the power base is poor,
that the government doesn't have enough support from the people
as a whole. Violence is therefore a compensation for power. Of
course, the power base may have been weak, but there’s no reason
to believe that there was any organized, domestic opposition after
1932 (cf. Getty and Naumov: The Road to Terror, p. 574). Despite
the fact that the Bolsheviks weren't threatened by internal enemies,
the Party felt itself to be steadily more threatened and regarded

279
NOTES

all of their measures as “defensive.” If only the Bolsheviks would

have followed the rather more humble use of violence advocated
by Machiavelli: strong, but short-lived. Totalitarian violence is al-
most without exception a “poor use of violence.’ And yet, from
Arendt’s perspective, Machiavelli’s model doesn't work either. It’s
desirable that violence have as broad a power base as possible, be-
cause this minimizes the extent of the violence. The weaker the
power base, however, the stronger the tendency that violence will
increase, and this increase in violence only undermines the power
base even more—with the result that we've taken a step in the di-
rection of pure terror. A government structured around terror has
little power, but always tends toward violence—though this type
of violence doesn’t gain the government any power, and can even
undermine it (Arendt: Crises of the Republic, p. 155; cf. Vita~-Ac-
tiva, p. 187). To governments built on terror, violence will have an
inherent worth. That is, violence loses the instrumental character
it has in governments who enjoy a larger power base. Arendt thus
concludes that instead of stabilizing power, violence typically leads
to more violence.
631 Fora good discussion of the relationship between “genocide”
and “ethnic cleansing,” see Naimark: Fires of Hatred, pp. 2ff.
632 “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment. . ”
633 Cited in Keane: Reflections on Violence, p. 157.
634 For a discussion of this problem, see Ignatieff: The Warrior’s
Honor, p. 18, 109-63. See also William Shawcross: Deliver Us From
Evil.
635 Ogata: “Peace, Security and Humanitarian Action,’ p. 275.
636 Cf. Seifert: “The Second Front.”
637 ‘The following remarks about rape in war are mainly based
on Seifert, ibid.

280
 NOTES

638 Clausewitz: On War, pp. 127f.

639 Cf. Scarry: The Body in Pain, p. 61.
640 Seifert: “The Second Front,” p. 150.
641 Mann: Diaries 1919-1939, dated August 13, 1936.
642 Adorno: Negative Dialectics, p. 380.
643 Cf. Morgenthau: Politics among Nations.
644 Kant: Toward Perpetual Peace in Toward Perpetual Peace and
Other Writings, pp. 91f. See also Rawls: The Law of Peoples, p. 36.
645 Cf. Rawls: The Law of Peoples, § 10.
646 Walzer: Just and Unjust Wars.
647 For a good overview of this tradition, see Johnson: The Just
war Tradition and the Restraint of War.
648 Augustine: City of God, book XIX. 11-13.
649 Military advocates evaluated every single bombing target (cf.
Ignatieff: Virtual War, p. 197-201.) A few things went wrong—for
example, the bombing of the Chinese embassy, a train filled with
civilians, a refugee convoy, a Serbian nursing home, etc.—but for
the most part, NATO seems to have done its utmost to distinguish
between legitimate and illegitimate targets. A single instance, a
television station in Beograd where ten to fifteen civilians were
killed, appears to have been a gray zone, but the station also had a
military use and can therefore be regarded as a legitimate bomb-
ing target. In contrast, it’s doubtful that bombing from such great
distance—a strategy the United States has used in multiple wars in
the last century—is legitimate when it necessarily results in exten-
sive loss to the civilian population.
650 Cf. Ignatieff: Virtual War, p. 72.
651 Habermas: “Bestiality and Humanity.’
652 Cf. Kahn: “War and Sacrifice in Kosovo.’
653 Baudrillard: The Perfect Crime, p. 141.

281
NOTES

654 Rawls: “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory, p. 518.

655 Popper: The Open Society and Its Enemies. Volume One: The
Spell of Plato, chap. 9.
656 Popper: Conjectures and Refutations, p. 361.
657 Hampshire: Innocence and Experience, p. 90.
658 Rawls: A Theory of Justice, p. 98.
659 Rawls: The Law of Peoples, § 16.

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306
Lars SVENDSEN is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Bergen, Norway. He is the author of several books, including A
Philosophy of Boredom (2005), Fashion: A Philosophy (2006), Work (2008),
and A Philosophy of Fear (2008). His books have been translated into
twenty-two languages.

Kerri A. Pierce is the translator of Mela Hartwig’s Am I a Redundant Hu-

man Being? for Dalkey Archive Press. She translates from German, Dan-
ish, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Norwegian, and Swedish.
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GILBERT SORRENTINO, Requiem.
Aberration of Starlight. Diane Wuuias, Excitability:
Blue Pastoral. Selected Stories.
Crystal Vision. Romancer Erector.
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things. Douctas Woo tr, Wall to Wall.
Mulligan Stew. Ya! & John-Juan.
Pack of Lies. Jay Wricut, Polynomials and Pollen.
Red the Fiend. The Presentable Art of Reading
The Sky Changes. Absence.
Something Said. Pui Wyte, Generation of Vipers.
Splendide-H6tel. MARGUERITE YOUNG,
Steelwork. Angel in the Forest.
Under the Shadow. Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.
W. M. SpackMAN, REYoune, Unbabbling.
The Complete Fiction. Zoran ZivKovié, Hidden Camera.
ANDRZEJ STASIUK, Fado. Louts ZuKxorsky, Collected Fiction.
GERTRUDE STEIN, Scotr ZwirENn, God Head.
Lucy Church Amiably.
The Making of Americans.
A Novel of Thank You.
Lars Svenpsen, A Philosophy of Evil.
Piotr Szewc, Annihilation.
GoncaLo M. Tavares, Jerusalem.
Lucian DAN TEODOROVICI,
Our Circus Presents. . .
STEFAN THEMERSON, Hobson’s Island.
The Mystery of the Sardine.
Tom Harris.
JEAN-PHILIPPE TOUSSAINT,
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Camera.
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Running Away.
Self-Portrait Abroad.
Television.
Dumitru TSEPENEAG,
The Necessary Marriage.
Pigeon Post.
Vain Art of the Fugue.
EstHer Tusquets, Stranded.
DuBRAVKA UGRESIC,
Lend Me Your Character.
Thank You for Not Reading.
Mati Unt, Brecht at Night
Diary of a Blood Donor.
Things in the Night.
Atvaro URIBE AND OLIVIA SEARS, EDS.,
The Best of Contemporary Mexican
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Etoy Urroz, The Obstacles.
Luisa VALENZUELA, He Who Searches.
Marsa-Lusa VartIo,
The Parson’s Widow.
PAUL VERHAEGHEN, Omega Minor.
Boris Vian, Heartsnatcher.
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Austryn WainHouse, Hedyphagetica.

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L

Fl
A

aT
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 MI Si
It's normal to be evil,
cc > “7 »

writes Lars Svendsen,in this latest

con
tribution to contemporary philosophy;
the problem
is, we've lost the vocabulary
to talk about it. Despite its overuse in
movies, political speeches,
and news

\\,
reports,
the word “evil” is generally
seen 7

as either flagrant rhetoric

or else an out
dated concept: a medieval holdover with
no bearing on outr complex everyday

Pr
reality. In A Philosophy
of Evil, however,
aoo
|.
acclaimed philosopher Lars Svendsen
argues that evil remains a concrete moral
gina rR
problem: that we're all its victims, and all
eo
&eS
o
guilty
of committing evil acts. Taking up
this problem—how do we speak about
evil’—A Philosophy
of Evil treats evil as
an ordinary aspect of contemporary
life,
with implications that are moral, politi-
cal, and above
all, practical. Because,
as Svendsen says, “Evil should never
be justified, should never be explained

away—it should
be fought.

aa: 13: 978-1-564-78571-8

1-564-78571-8

INU
-10:

ales1564l7e6?