Download S.1: Nature of Evil PP

the Holocaust,
the Rwandan genocide,
the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and
killing sprees by serial killers such as Jeffery Dahmer
- we cannot capture the moral significance of these
actions and their perpetrators by calling them: ‘wrong’
or ‘bad’ or even ‘very, very wrong’ or ‘very, very bad.’
- we need the concept of evil.
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Religious: Original sin: human’s
turning away from God and
rejection of his will and love;
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Philosophical: grappling with the
meaning and forms of evil acts,
their causes and effects;
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Psychological: use of defense
mechanisms – evil as a projection
of one’s “shadow” onto others;
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Are we “Fallen Angels”
striving for redemption and
salvation?
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Or, are we intelligent beasts
striving to pull ourselves out
of the muck of creation?
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Children usually see evil in one dimensional
terms – evil is supranational or demonical;
Vampires, witches, and werewolves
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Evil comes in the form of warped and
satirical individuals bent on attacking God,
people, the flag, superman, batman.
Kant's concern is to make sense of three
apparently conflicting truths about human
nature:
(1) we are radically free,
(2) we are by nature inclined toward goodness,
(3) we are by nature inclined toward evil.
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The worst forms of evil involves prioritizing selfinterest over the moral law.
Martin Buber
• Evil - not the opposite of good;
• Working towards the good: the moral
path;
• People fall into evil through an absence of
attention;
• One must work to be good, but one
happens to be evil.
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A Report on the Banality of Evil
On trial of Nazi supporter Adolf
Eichmann;
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Motives and character of evil people
are banal rather than monstrous;
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She states: there is "a strange
interdependence between
thoughtlessness and evil."
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Monsters and demons do not engineer the
murders of millions in any supernatural sense.
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Human beings who choose to do evil resemble
living corpses who lack any spontaneity or
freedom.
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Doing terrible things in an organized and
systematic way rests on "normalization."
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This is the process whereby ugly,
degrading, murderous, and unspeakable
acts become routine and are accepted as
"the way things are done."

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Dehumanization was made routine through:
Hate propaganda in speeches, print and on hate
radios;
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Use of words like: cockroaches, animals, vermin,
and diseases.
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Calling it “ethnic cleansing,” or “purification.”
Such euphemisms hide the horror of mass
murder.
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Human slavery was firmly institutionalized
and routinized and still is…
- racism was so routine that it took years of
incidents, movement actions, reading, and
real-world traumas to overturn the deeply
imbedded bias. Is racism still present?
money,
status,
promotions,
power, and
jobs are at stake.
There is usually a division of
labor. People get paid for what
they do.

Each individual’s sin in some way
affects others;
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There are sins located in social
structures, situations and groups;

Situations and actions which promote
or facilitate greed and human
selfishness.
Structures which systematically :

oppress human dignity,

violate human rights,

stifle human freedom, and

impose gross inequality between the
rich and the poor.

Over-identification with a cause (isms):
nationalism, liberalism, conservativism

The retreat to ignorance: real, cultivated, or
manufactured.

Elevating personal goals over concern for
human consequences of decisions

Lack of empathy and compassion for others.

The complicity of persons who do not
take responsibility for evil being done
or who silently allow injustice or
oppression to happen
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politics without principles
wealth without work
pleasure without conscience
knowledge without character
commerce without morality
science without humanity
worship without sacrifice
Ignore Us, Ignore
Human Rights.
Cruel but true,
speak out and
help to win
back what
they should
have:
human rights.