The gamer’s dilemma, initially proposed by Luck (Ethics and Information Technology 11(1):31–36, 2009) posits a moral comparison between in-game acts of murder and in-game acts of paedophilia within single-player videogames. Despite each activity lacking the obvious harms of their real-world equivalents, common intuitions suggest an important difference between them. Some responses to the dilemma suggest that intuitive responses to the two cases are based on important differences between the acts themselves or their social meaning. Others challenge the fundamental assumptions of (...) the dilemma. In this paper, we identify and explore key imaginative and emotional differences in how certain types of in-game violence are experienced by players, consider how these differences factor into the moral lives of players, and use these insights to resolve the dilemma. The view we develop is that the key moral emotion in offensive video gameplay is self-repugnance. This is not repugnance of the act one directs a game character to perform in the game, nor repugnance of the character one plays. It is repugnance of oneself in playing the game. If self-repugnance is a fitting emotional response to playing a videogame, then this is prima facie grounds for thinking it is wrong to play the videogame. Our approach to the gamer’s dilemma is to distinguish the fittingness conditions of self-repugnance from the fittingness conditions of other moral emotions as they pertain to playing videogames. We argue that because of the virtual character of the actions performed in video games, self-repugnance is a fitting response to particular kinds of offensive gameplay. On the other hand, in-game murder is not invariably a fitting ground for self-repugnance. We argue that this difference is grounded in imaginative responses to the harm of death and the harms of profound suffering. Our task is to explain and justify this difference in fittingness conditions and use this to resolve the gamer’s dilemma. (shrink)

It is intuitively plausible that not every evildoer is an evil person. In order to make sense of this intuition we need to construct an account of evil personhood in addition to an account of evil action. Some philosophers have offered aggregative accounts of evil personhood, but these do not fit well with common intuitions about the explanatory power of evil personhood, the possibility of moral reform, and the relationship between evil and luck. In contrast, a dispositional account of evil (...) personhood can allow that evil is explanatory, that an evil person can become good, and that luck might prevent evil persons from doing evil or cause non-evil persons to do evil. Yet the dispositional account of evil personhood implies that some evil persons are blameless, which seems to clash with the intuition that evil persons deserve our strongest moral condemnation. Moreover, since it is likely that a large proportion of us are disposed to perform evil actions in some environments, the dispositional account threatens to label a large proportion of people evil. In this paper I consider a range of possible modifications to the dispositional account that might bring it more closely into alignment with our intuitions about moral condemnation and the rarity of evil persons. According to the most plausible of these theories, S is an evil person if S is strongly disposed to perform evil actions when in conditions that favour S's autonomy. (shrink)

Evil acts are not merely wrong; they belong to a different moral category. For example, telling a minor lie might be wrong but it is not evil, whereas the worst act of gratuitous torture that you can imagine is evil and not merely wrong. But how do wrongs and evils differ? A theory or conception of evil should, among other things, answer that question. But once a theory of evil has been developed, how do we defend or refute it? The (...) most commonly used method for doing this in the literature has been to, respectively, provide pro-examples or counter-examples. While this method might be sufficient for establishing that a theory is at least a prima facie plausible theory of evil, it is often insufficient for making fine-grained distinctions between otherwise plausible theories of evil. To supplement this insufficiency I propose that we also focus on five theoretical virtues that a theory of evil should have. These virtues are: 1) meshing well with important theories of moral wrongdoing; 2) being based on a plausible moral psychology; 3) explaining the basis of our judgments about evil; 4) being able to alter, revise and expand our judgments about evil; and 5) being pitched at the right level of generality. The main result of this paper will be to show that these five theoretical virtues provide a useful analytical tool for interrogating plausible theories of evil. The secondary result will be to show that my theory of evil has these five virtues. (shrink)

All morally wrong actions deserve some form of moral condemnation. But the degree of that condemnation is not the same in all cases. Some wrongs are so morally extreme that they seem to belong to a different category because they deserve our very strongest form of moral condemnation. For example, telling a white lie to make a friend feel better might be morally wrong, but intuitively such an act is in a different moral category to the sadistic, brutal, and violent (...) rape and torture of a child. The former act is merely wrong and not evil. In contrast, the latter act seems so morally extreme that we need to call it “evil” and not merely “wrong” if we are to do justice both to the moral seriousness of that act and the strength of our condemnation of it. The task of a theory or substantive conception of evil is to spell out what is an evil action and how it differs from a merely wrongful action. But what does a plausible substantive theory of evil look like? To explore this question, I spell out the concept of evil and illustrate four different types of substantive conceptions of evil actions: victim, perpetrator, spectator, and mixed theories. Of these four options, I argue that mixed theories are the most plausible type of theory, before investigating in detail the promising mixed theory recently defended by Matthew Kramer (2014b). Finally, in light of my analysis of Kramer’s view, I present a reformulated version of my combination theory of evil (Formosa 2008; Formosa 2013). (shrink)

There is considerable philosophical dispute about what it takes for an action to be evil. The methodological assumption underlying this dispute is that there is a single, shared folk conception of evil action deployed amongst culturally similar people. Empirical research we undertook suggests that this assumption is false. There exist, amongst the folk, numerous conceptions of evil action. Hence, we argue, philosophical research is most profitably spent in two endeavours. First, in determining which (if any) conception of evil action we (...) have prudential or moral (or both) reason to deploy, and second, in determining whether we could feasibly come to adopt that conception as the single shared conception given our psychological make-up and the content of the conceptions currently deployed. (shrink)

In this article, I assess three contemporary criticisms levelled at Kant’s theory of evil in order to evaluate whether his theory can be saved. Critics argue that Kant does not adequately distinguish between evil and mundane wrongdoing, making his use of the term ‘evil’ emotional hyperbole; by defining evil as the subordination of the moral law to self-love his analysis is seemingly overly simplistic and empirically false; and by focusing solely on the moral character of the perpetrator of evil, Kant’s (...) theory apparently ignores the most salient aspect of evil – the suffering of victims. While I will not claim that Kant provides us with a fully adequate theory of evil, I respond to each of these criticisms and conclude that Kant’s theory can still provide significant insight into both the nature of evil and the moral psychology of perpetrators of evil. (shrink)

We often talk and behave as if being a man required more than just being male, and being a woman required more than just being female. There are expectations that need to be met if someone wants to fully qualify as a man or a woman in their social environment, expectations regarding their behaviour as well as character. It is, however, not entirely obvious what ‘being a man’ or ‘being a woman’ actually means and in what way and to what (...) extent it defines our identity, making us who we are. Would I be a different person if I were a woman? And what would it take for me to be a woman? Could I conceivably be neither? Or both? If gender were nothing but sex, telling a man to ‘be a man’ would make little sense. We may have different ideas about what it means to be a man or woman and how we need to behave in order to secure or maintain our manhood or womanhood, but we are all likely to have some deeply ingrained understanding of what makes a man a man and a woman a woman that goes beyond mere biology. Does it, however, follow that gender can, if necessary or desired, be completely detached from sex, that I can be a woman despite having all the physical attributes of a male member of my species, or a man despite being biologically female? If so, on what grounds exactly would we decide who is what? (shrink)

In this article I seek a more complete understanding of evil action. To this end, in the first half of the article I assess the conceptual strengths and weaknesses of the most compelling theories of evil action found in the contemporary philosophical literature. I conclude that the theories that fall under the category I call ‘‘Nuanced Harm Accounts’’ successfully identify the necessary and sufficient conditions of the concept. However, necessary and sufficient conditions are not coextensive with significant features, and Nuanced (...) Harm Accounts are incomplete even if they are correct. In order to supplement them, in the second half of the article I examine the normative relation that obtains between perpetrators and victims of evil and find them to be parties to a relation of asymmetrical power in which the vulnerability of the weaker party is exploited by the stronger party for its advantage, pleasure, or otherwise to achieve its aims. Moreover, the parties in the relation reciprocally enable each other’s role relative to one another. The strength of the more powerful party emerges out of the states of vulnerability of the victims, and the victims are vulnerable relative to the power(s) of the perpetrator. (shrink)

The starting point of this article lies in the idea, defended by Hannah Arendt, according to which only goodness can be radical, while evil is merely banal. The idea of a banality of evil is present in Arendt’s work Eichmann in Jerusalem, although it is explicitly not presented as a general theory on evil as such – it is more particularly in her correspondence with Gershom Scholem that one can find this specific distinction between evil and goodness mentioned. How is (...) this distinction to be understood? This article proposes the idea that such a distinction has to be construed on an ontological level: evil is ontologically deficient, since it does not take hold in a specific capacity of human beings, which would be what Hannah Arendt calls the demonic evil, but in the absence of thinking, i.e. in the absence of a specific human faculty. Conversely, only goodness expresses a creative human faculty, which is precisely thinking, and which, following Hannah Arendt, can be fully realized only through a political, collective dimension. (shrink)

Luke Russell's book, Evil: A Philosophical Investigation, is a marvelously clear and rigorous addition to the philosophical literature on the secular moral concept of evil. The term “evil,” in this...

In this article I propose a theological reflection on the philosophical assumptions behind the idea that intelligent machine can be governed through ethical protocols, which may apply either to the people who develop the machines or to the machines themselves, or both. This idea is particularly relevant in the case of machines’ extreme wrongdoing, a wrongdoing that becomes an existential risk for humankind. I call this extreme wrong-doing, ‘evil.’ Thus, this article is a theological account on the philosophical assumptions behind (...) the possibility of evil machines, machines that can create an existential risk for humankind, and the ethical remedies that limit that risk. After discussing these assumptions, I argue for the ineffectiveness of these ethical remedies to prevent the possibility of evil machines. The article is an application of Romano Guardini’s thought on technology to evil machines. (shrink)

What is the nature of evil action? My thesis is that perpetrators and victims of evil inhabit an asymmetrical relation of power; the strength of the more powerful party lies in its ability to exploit the other’s fundamental vulnerability, and the weaker party is vulnerable precisely insofar as it is directly dependent on the more powerful party for the satisfaction of its fundamental needs. The fundamental vulnerabilities that are exploited correspond to features essential to our humanity (ontological), moral personhood (personal), (...) and individuality (characteristic). These kinds of vulnerabilities are both constituted by and engender fundamental needs and give rise to direct dependencies on others to satisfy or to refrain from interfering with the satisfaction of fundamental needs. The unambiguous exploitation by the more powerful agent on whom the vulnerable directly depend is characteristic of evil action. Although I do not claim that the exploitation of ontological, personal, and characteristic vulnerabilities necessarily results in evil, it does typify it. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard’sSelf-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrityis an impressive endeavour to synthesize the ethics of Plato and Kant in a comprehensive account of action and agency that locates the key to understanding both in self-constitution. A purportedly comprehensive account of action and agency will fail on its own terms if it cannot adequately account for some morally salient phenomenon. Korsgaard’s account fails to adequately account for the possibility of evil actions and evil people. If self-constitution is key to action and agency, (...) then we must abandon the Platonic and Kantian elements that Korsgaard endorses.L’ouvrage de Christine Korsgaard intituléSelf-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrityreprésente un remarquable travail de synthèse des éthiques platonicienne et kantienne qui, de manière exhaustive, rend compte de l’action et de l’agentivité sous le prisme de la constitution de soi. Toute tentative de saisie parfaite de l’action et de l’agentivité en termes propres ne saurait aboutir sans une prise en compte adéquate d’un quelconque phénomène moral saillant. L’approche de Korsgaard ne prend pas suffisamment en compte la possibilité du mal sous forme d’actions ou d’individus. Si la constitution de soi demeure centrale pour l’action et l’agentivité, alors il faudra mettre à l’écart les éléments platoniciens et kantiens que Korsgaard fait siens. (shrink)

What was distinctive about the evil of the transatlantic slave trade and New World slavery? In what ways can the present seek to rectify such historical wrongs, even while recognizing that they lie beyond repair? Irreparable Evil explores the legacy of slavery and its moral and political implications, offering a nuanced intervention into debates over reparations. David Scott reconsiders the story of New World slavery in a series of interconnected essays that focus on Jamaica and the Anglophone Caribbean. Slavery, he (...) emphasizes, involved not only scarcely imaginable brutality on a mass scale but also the irreversible devastation of the ways of life and cultural worlds from which enslaved people were uprooted. Colonial extraction shaped modern capitalism; plantation slavery enriched colonial metropoles and simultaneously impoverished their peripheries. To account for this atrocity, Scott examines moral and reparatory modes of history and criticism, probing different conceptions of evil. He reflects on the paradoxes of seeking redress for the specific moral evil of slavery, criticizing the limitations of liberal rights-based arguments for reparations that pursue reconciliation with the past. Instead, this book argues, in making the urgent demand for reparations, we must acknowledge the fundamental irreparability of a wrong of such magnitude. (shrink)

We propose in this essay the idea that education for citizenship in Colombia, through citizen competences embody ways of positive political subjectivity that silence moral evil that characterize the democracy in which we live and silence the voice of those who are influenced for that discourse that is called Citizen Competence. To argue this such proposition we assign to a secular philosophical perspective of evil, and, through an analysis of the document “Estándares básicos de competencias ciudadanas” we propose the possibility (...) of narrate evil in the school as an exercise of construction of senses about the experience of evil that allow to identify, through the voice of boys, girls and young, the micro physical ways in which it influence in political subjectivity of those who are educated as citizens in the school, and allow us to rescue the contributions that situated experience can offer to the effort of educate citizens facing the imperfect democracy in wich we live. (shrink)