A compelling account of evil in which Adam Morton draws on fascinating examples as diverse as Augustine and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Exciting and thought-provoking, On Evil is essential reading for anyone interested in a topic that attracts and.

There are a number of different senses of the term “evil.” We examine in this paper the term “evil” when it is used to say things such as: “what Hitler did was not merely wrong, it was evil”, and “Hitler was not merely a bad person, he was an evil person”. Failing to keep a promise or telling a white lie may be morally wrong, but unlike genocide or sadistic torture, it is not evil in this sense. In this paper (...) we analyze the specific moral difference between “evil” and “mere wrongdoing”. In so doing we shall defend a specific conception of what acts and which persons should count as evil. On the view defended in this paper it is a necessary feature of an evil act that the victim of that act suffer what would at least normally be a life-wrecking or life-ending harm. (shrink)

One familiar philosophical use of the term ‘evil’ just contrasts it with ‘good’, i.e., something is an evil if it is a bad thing, one of life’s “minuses.” This is the sense of ‘evil’ that is used in posing the traditional theological problem of evil, though it is customary there to distinguish between moral evils and natural evils. Moral evils are those bad things that are caused by moral agents; natural evils are those bad things that are not caused by (...) moral agents. Since the existence of evils of both sorts is usually taken to be indubitable, the problem of evil is then construed as the problem of how to square their existence with the existence of an all-powerful and benevolent God. (shrink)

This book is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character that date back to Aristotle. John Doris draws on behavioral science, especially social psychology, to argue that we misattribute the causes of behavior to personality traits and other fixed aspects of character rather than to the situational context. More often than not it is the situation not the nature of the personality that really counts. The author elaborates the philosophical consequences of this research for a (...) whole array of ethical theories and shows that, once rid of the misleading conception of motivation, moral psychology can support more robust ethical theories and more humane ethical practices. (shrink)

In his book The Myth of Evil , Phillip Cole claims that the concept of evil divides normal people from inhuman, demonic and monstrous wrongdoers. Such monsters are found in fiction, Cole maintains, but not in reality. Thus, even if the concept of evil has the requisite form to be explanatorily useful, it will be of no explanatory use in the real world. My aims in this paper are to assess Cole’s arguments for the claim that there are no actual (...) evil persons, and, in so doing, to develop a clearer framework in which to think about evil personhood. While Cole is right to claim that there are no actual evil monsters or supernatural demons, he underestimates the extent to which ascriptions of demonic monstrosity are figurative rather than literal. Hence, a lack of actual monsters does not imply a lack of actual evil persons. More plausibly, Cole suggests that the concept of evil implies an unrealistically dualistic worldview, with purely evil people on one side and ordinary people on the other. Since no one is purely bad, Cole claims, the concept of evil fails to refer to actual persons. Cole is wrong to think that the use of extreme moral concepts is incompatible with fine-grained moral evaluations across a broad spectrum between the extremes. Nor is Cole sufficiently careful in unpacking the various ways in which a person might be considered purely bad. I will argue that some actual persons are extremely bad, that it is very likely that some actual persons are fixedly bad, and that quite possibly no actual persons are thoroughly bad or innately bad. It is plausible that a person is evil only if he is extremely and fixedly bad, but Cole is wrong to suppose that a person is evil only if he is thoroughly and innately bad. Thus, even if we accept Cole’s claim that no actual person is thoroughly or innately bad, it still seems very likely that some actual persons are evil, and hence that evil can be an explanatorily useful concept. (shrink)

Though ‘evil’ is often used loosely as merely the generic opposite of ‘morally good’, used precisely it is the worst possible term of opprobrium available. In this essay it is taken as applying primarily to persons, secondarily to conduct; evil deeds must flow from the volition to do something evil. An evil action is one so horrendously bad that no ordinary decent human being can conceive of doing it, and an evil person is one who knowingly wills or orders such (...) actions. Malignant evil—doing evil because it is evil—is not just possible but real, and is one of several kinds of evil delineated. There are incidental discussions of cruelty, Rosenbaum on Explaining Hitler, Baumeister on Evil, and Benn on wickedness. Footnotes1 Dedicated to Alan Gewirth, in honour of his 90th birthday, and in appreciation of his superb, illuminating, and ground-breaking philosophical work over many years. (shrink)

In his book The Myth of Evil, Phillip Cole argues that we ought to abandon the concept of evil. Cole claims that the concept of evil forms part of a dualistic worldview that divides normal people from inhuman, demonic, and monstrous wrongdoers. Such monsters are found in fiction, Cole suggests, but not in reality, so evil is of no explanatory use. Yet even if there were actual evil persons, Cole maintains, evil would be a redundant, pseudo-explanatory concept, a psychological black (...) hole that is of no use in our explanations of why people do wrong. Contrary to Cole's claims, evil does have the requisite form to function as an explanation, and thus, if there are any actual evil actions or persons, evil will be explanatorily useful. Cole is right to suggest that evil cannot provide a complete explanation for any actions, but none of our virtue or vice concepts can do so, and they are none the worse for that. Cole is also right to suggest that the concept of evil is often used to play certain narrative roles, but he fails to see that evil can play those roles only if it has an explanatorily useful form. While it is true that evil could be paraphrased out of explanations of actions without any loss of information, that does not show that the concept is explanatorily redundant. In fact, Cole's preferred alternative explanations of extreme wrongdoing that eschew appeals to evil are themselves inadequate because they fail to account for the directed and intentional nature of some extremely wrong actions. (shrink)

C. C. W. Taylor presents a clear and faithful new translation of one of the most famous and influential texts in the history of Western thought, accompanied by an analytical and critical commentary focusing on philosophical issues. In Books II to IV of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle gives his account of virtue of character, which is central to his ethical theory as a whole and a key topic in much modern ethical writing.

On the day on which Dr Harold Shipman, the Manchester serial killer, was convicted, there was wall-to-wall coverage of it in the media. During the course of one of the many reports, the daughter of one of his victims was interviewed, and asked for her views on why Shipman had acted as he did. What she said was this: she’d tried and tried to understand or explain his deeds, and she could only come to the conclusion that he was a (...) really evil man. In saying this, she clearly meant to convey more than the obvious truth that what Shipman did was very wrong and entirely to be condemned. It seems to me that a secular as well as a religious audience would find the daughter’s appeal to evil as an appropriate explanation perfectly comprehensible. But what exactly was it that was being attributed to Shipman, and how was it thought to explain his actions? (shrink)

This paper argues for the moral significance of the notion of an evil person or character. First, I argue that accounts of evil character ought to support a robust bad/evil distinction; yet existing theories cannot plausibly do so. Consequentialist and related theories also fail to account for some crucial properties of evil persons. Second, I sketch an intuitively plausible “affective-motivational” account of evil character. Third, I argue that the notion of evil character, thus conceived, denotes a significant moral category. It (...) marks one end of a moral continuum that has, at the opposite pole, the saint. Fourth, I argue that “frequent evildoing” accounts confuse this moral space with another: that defined by the moral hero and the moral criminal. (shrink)

“This one,” she said, pointing at a chocolate in the box she was handing to me, “is absolutely evil.” And she was right or, at least, half-right: I’ve never tasted chocolate like that before, or since. Should I refrain from doing so?