Hannah Arendt and the law and ethics of administration : bureaucratic evil, political thinking and reflective judgment

After the absurd terrorism and violence of the totalitarianism and bureaucratic administrative and legal systems of the 20th century it does not give any meaning to rationalize harm as meaningful evil that even though it is evil may have some importance for the development of the world towards the good. Rather, evil is incomprehensible and as radical and banal evil it challenges human rationality. This is indeed the case when we are faced with instrumental and rationalized administrative and political evil. Therefore, we must analyse the banality of evil in politics and in administration in order to understand the concept of evil. Moreover, as proposed by Hannah Arendt, we need to fight this evil with political thinking and social philosophy. The only way to deal with harm and wrongdoing is to return a concept of responsibility that is closely linked to reflective thinking. In this paper, we will on the basis of a discussion of the banality of evil explore this in relation to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the administration of evil, as expressed by the personality of Adolf Eichmann. Finally, we will place this concept of administrative evil in Hannah Arendt’s general political philosophy

The Emotional Impact of Evil: Philosophical Reflections on Existential Problems

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky illustrates that encounters with evil do not solely impact agents’ beliefs about God (or God’s existence). Evil impacts people on an emotional level as well. Authors like Hasker and van Inwagen sometimes identify the emotional impact of evil with the “existential” problem of evil. For better or worse, the existential version of the problem is often set aside in contemporary philosophical discussions. In this essay, I rely on Robert Roberts’ account of emotions as “concern-based construals” to show that theistic philosophers can effectively address the existential problem (and so, the problem should not be set aside). In fact, addressing the emotional impact of evil is crucial, I argue, given that resolving just the impact of evil on agents’ beliefs about God constitutes an incomplete response to the problem of evil

Leopardi “Everything Is Evil”

Giacomo Leopardi, a major Italian poet of the nineteenth century, was also an expert in evil to whom Schopenhauer referred as a “spiritual brother.” Leopardi wrote: “Everything is evil. That is to say, everything that is, is evil; that each thing exists is an evil; each thing exists only for an evil end; existence is an evil.” These and other thoughts are collected in the Zibaldone, a massive collage of heterogeneous writings published posthumously. Leopardi’s pessimism assumes a polished form in his literary writings, such as Dialogue between Nature and an Islander (1824)—an invective against nature and the suffering of creatures within it. In his last lyric, Broom, or the flower of the desert (1836), Leopardi points to the redeeming power of poetry and to human solidarity as placing at least temporary limits on the scope of evil

Quakers and Coercion in a World of Good and Evil (Chapter Eleven in Good and Evil: Quaker Perspectives)

Excerpt: When is it right to force someone to do something? Real evil exists in the world. We recognize it in the selfish and cruel actions of other people, and if we are honest we admit at least the possibility of evil in our own actions. Sometimes we have the power, we think, to stop evildoers. But since we recognize the potential for doing evil ourselves, we worry that our efforts to stop the injustice of others will themselves be unjust. Whether wickedly or unwittingly, our fight against evil might just produce more evil

Matter in Plotinus's Normative Ontology.

To most interpreters, the case seems to be clear: Plotinus identifies matter and evil, as he bluntly states in Enn. I.8[51] that ‘last matter’ is ‘evil’, and even ‘evil itself’. In this paper, I challenge this view: how and why should Plotinus have thought of matter, the sense-making έσχατον of his derivational ontology from the One and Good, evil? A rational reconstruction of Plotinus’s tenets should neither accept the paradox that evil comes from Good, nor shirk the arduous task of interpreting Plotinus’s texts on evil as a fitting part of his philosophy on the whole. Therefore, I suggest a reading of evil in Plotinus as the outcome of an incongruent interaction of matter and soul, maintaining simultaneously that neither soul nor matter are to be considered as bad or evil. When Plotinus calls matter evil, he does so metonymically denoting matter’s totally passive potentiality as perceived by the toiling soul trying to act upon it as a form-bringer. As so often, Plotinus is speaking quoad nos here rather than referring to ‘matter per se’ (for Plotinus, somewhat of an oxymoron) which, as mere potentiality (and nothing else) is not nor can be evil. In short: matter is no more evil than the melancholy evening sky is melancholy – not in itself (for it isn’t), but as to its impression on us who contemplate it. As I buttress this view, it will also become clear that matter cannot tritely be considered to be the αυτό κακόν as a prima facie-reading of Enn. I.8[51] might powerfully suggest, but that the αυτό κακόν, far from being a principle of its own, has to be interpreted within the dynamics of Plotinus’s philosophical thinking as a unique, though numerously applicable flaw-pattern for all the single kakã (hence the Platonic αύτό). To conclude, I shall offer a short outlook on the consistency of this interpretation with Plotinus’s teaching on the soul and with the further Neoplatonic development of the doctrine of evil

Book Review: Evil

In contrast to traditional systems of thought which regarded evil as a supernatural force that explained human misfortune, Michel Wieviorka develops a sociological analysis of evil phenomena. His aim is to explain evil, to reveal its social, political, and cultural sources, and to clarify the processes through which the present–day forms of evil – terrorism, violence, racism, and active hatred – are constituted. Jo Taylor finds that in this highly topical and engaging book

Aquinas’ De malo and the Ostensibly Problematic Status of Natural Evil as Privation

Arguments concerning the nature of natural evil vary in their conclusions depending on the particular approach with which they commence inquiry; one of the most contested conclusions regards evil as privation, sourcing its justification primarily from Aquinas’ metaphysical conception of good as being and evil as non-being. It should be of no surprise, then, that the dismissal of natural evil’s privative nature comes about when the understanding of natural evil favours a phenomenological approach rather than a metaphysical one. Proponents of said dismissal generally centre their claims around the notion of pain and suffering as substantially contentful – as in, non-privative – experiences of evil. On the other hand, theorists espousing the privation account generally argue that characterisations of pain and suffering as necessarily evil do not consider the context of orientation towards individual wellbeing within which pain/suffering experiences naturally function. Furthermore, some of the arguments for the privation account’s dismissal seem to disregard completely the Thomistic sense of the form and hierarchy of the good, which ends up straw-manning the privation account to a point where it can no longer reconcile the awfulness of experienced pain and suffering with these experiences not being necessarily evil. The importance of understanding this Thomistic sense is further emphasised in its capacity to explain why a divine and fully good Creator would involve the world with such evil. Thus, this paper first considers the account of evil given in question one of Aquinas’ De malo, along with contemporary arguments for the nature and purpose of evil as privation; second, these are then used as resources to help make sense of, one, the general nature of pain and suffering, and two, some of their specific expressions as found in disease and depression, and throughout evolutionary history

Evil, child abuse and the caring professions

The aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which the concept of evil has been invoked in relation to child abuse. First, the scene is set by juxtaposing professional discourses which have eschewed the concept of evil and public opinion which is affronted by the evil of child abuse. Second, I will discuss the work of some therapists in the USA whose work with perpetrators and survivors has led them to frame the causes and consequences of child abuse in terms of moral evil. Third, I will draw upon case studies of Satanic abuse and spirit possession in the UK to illustrate that some social workers and religious communities have interpreted child abuse as an outcome of or as an antidote to metaphysical evil. Finally, there is a critical appraisal of the merits of referencing moral and metaphysical evil in the discourses of caring professionals, with a suggestion that a mythical–metaphorical conception of evil could be a more flexible and fruitful resource for therapeutic work