Evil
Conclusion
After decades of neglect, the language of evil has been reintroduced to public life in the rhetoric used by political leaders in the early twenty-first century. Some political theorists, too, have argued that a revival of the language of evil is required to maintain a sufficient outrage at genocide, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and threats to the ecological stability of the planet.
Shared indignation at the worst things people do seems to be all that remains of a shared normative view of the world. But does this justify reviving the language of evil? Feminist scholars are not the only ones to caution against so quintessentially dualistic a concept. Evil allows no compromise. But the history of human societies shows that it is almost always the other who is demonized. Perhaps what Carl Gustav Jung called a "morality of evil"—an integration through honest recognition of the capacity for evil in human nature—is safer.
The modern problematic of theodicy, with its confidence in reason and shared conceptions of the good, may not survive our postmodern age. As long as we try to make moral sense of the world and of human life, however, "evil" will remain a challenge and a temptation.
See also Christianity; Free Will, Determinism, and Predestination; Natural Theology; Religion; Theodicy.
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Mark Larrimore
Additional topics
Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Ephemeris to Evolution - Historical BackgroundEvil - Evil, The Problem Of Evil, Moral And Natural Evil, Epicurus' Old Questions, Conclusion