Visualizing Atrocitytakes Hannah Arendt's provocative and polarizing account of the 1961 trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann as its point of departure for reassessing some of the serviceable myths ...that have come to shape and limit our understanding both of the Nazi genocide and totalitarianism's broader, constitutive, and recurrent features. These myths are inextricably tied to and reinforced viscerally by the atrocity imagery that emerged with the liberation of the concentration camps at the war's end and played an especially important, evidentiary role in the postwar trials of perpetrators. At the 1945 Nuremberg Tribunal, particular practices of looking and seeing were first established with respect to these images that were later reinforced and institutionalized through Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem as simply part of the fabric of historical fact. They have come to constitute a certain visual rhetoric that now circumscribes the moral and political fields and powerfully assists in contemporary mythmaking about how we know genocide and what is permitted to count as such. In contrast, Arendt's claims about the banality of evil work to disrupt this visual rhetoric. More significantly still, they direct our attention well beyond the figure of Eichmann to a world organized now as then by practices and processes that while designed to sustain and even enhance life work as well to efface it.
In the last two requests in His model prayer in Matthew 6: 9-13, Jesus alluded to leading into “temptation” and delivering from “evil.” The two requests form a composite by the use of the conjunction ...alla. The construction of the expression ἄpo tou ponērou in Koine Greek poses some translation and theological dilemmas. Does the statement tou ponērou refer to “evil” as a substantive phenomenon or as a personality? Is Jesus requesting deliverance from “temptations,” “tests,” and “trials,” or from the one who originates these conditions? The idiom, tou ponērou, may be interpreted and understood as the sinister conditions in the world. Suggestively, the idiom may also be understood as “the evil one,” or “the devil” due to the use of the preposition ἄpo “away from”, instead of ek “out of” both of which take the genitive case. This article demonstrates, by the use of interpretive methods, that the two requests form one appeal by the employment of the conjunction alla and that the literal translation of the expression alla hrusai hmas apo tou ponērou should be “but deliver us away from the evil one/devil” the theologically alleged source of all “evil.” This petition, which is missing in the Lukan account, hinges on the request before it; hence Luke finds it redundant and omits it.
Keywords: Lead, temptation, deliver, evil, evil one.
Drawing inspiration from Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and Thomas Aquinas, and in support of the definition of evil as the privation of being or goodness, this article proposes a ...complementary definition of evil. It argues that evil can be defined as the non-advancement of being, appetite, or natural inclination toward its proper perfection or completion. First, it explains what this definition entails, elaborates on its implications, and defends its plausibility. Second, it discusses typical objections to the privation account and shows how defining evil relative to appetite can help overcome them.
Moral Typecasting Gray, Kurt; Wegner, Daniel M
Journal of personality and social psychology,
03/2009, Letnik:
96, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Moral agency is the capacity to do right or wrong, whereas moral patiency is the capacity to be a target of right or wrong. Through 7 studies, the authors explored
moral typecasting
-an inverse ...relation between perceptions of moral agency and moral patiency. Across a range of targets and situations, good- and evil-doers (moral agents) were perceived to be less vulnerable to having good and evil done to them. The recipients of good and evil (moral patients), in turn, were perceived as less capable of performing good or evil actions. Moral typecasting stems from the dyadic nature of morality and explains curious effects such as people's willingness to inflict greater pain on those who do good than those who do nothing.
This article uses the tools and distinctions derived from a twofold analysis to develop and refine the perception of administrative evil. First, the general problem of evil is discussed and nuanced, ...and second, two case examples from the Finnish context are examined and explained – the notion of so-called old boys’ networks and the case of unethical behaviour in a psychiatric hospital. The article defines administrative evil as actions by civil servants and government employees when they do what they are expected to do to fulfil their organisational roles and responsibilities without considering or recognising that they are engaging in or contributing to evil. Based on a conceptual analysis, the article suggests that administrative evil is a middle form between moral and natural evil. This view yields a solid basis for further analysis in which the concept of the banality of evil – as introduced by Hannah Arendt – provides valuable insights. The article is based upon the conviction that the concept of administrative evil offers explanatory power to understand and describe why and how people behave badly and even unethically in organisational contexts. In doing so, the article connects the concept of administrative evil to organisational studies and links the concept with the distinction between types of evil. The paper concludes that a major problem in theorising administrative evil is that the concept (as advanced by Adams and Balfour) has remained isolated and is not an organic part of modern organisation theory.
#MeToo has inspired the voices of millions of people (mostly women) to speak up about sexual harassment at work. The high-profile cases that reignited this movement have revealed that sexual ...harassment is and has been shrouded in silence, sometimes for decades. In the face of sexual harassment, managers, witnesses and targets often remain silent, wittingly or unwittingly protecting perpetrators and allowing harassment to persist. In this integrated conceptual review, we introduce the concept of network silence around sexual harassment, and theorize that social network compositions and belief systems can promote network silence. Specifically, network composition (harasser and male centrality) and belief systems (harassment myths and valorizing masculinity) combine to instill network silence around sexual harassment. Moreover, such belief systems elevate harassers and men to central positions within networks, who in turn may promote problematic belief systems, creating a mutually reinforcing dynamic. We theorize that network silence contributes to the persistence of sexual harassment due to the lack of consequences for perpetrators and support for victims, which further reinforces silence. Collectively, this process generates a culture of sexual harassment. We identify ways that organizations can employ an understanding of social networks to intervene in the social forces that give rise to silence surrounding sexual harassment.
Spinoza and Letters on Evil Fatma SOMUNCUOĞLU ERKAN
Din ve Bilim Muş Alparslan Üniversitesi İslami İlimler Fakültesi Dergisi,
06/2023, Letnik:
6, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The letter is a communication tool used by many thinkers and scientists. It is generally written to disseminate ideas, criticize, and open discussion. The tradition of philosophizing with letters is ...a method and a form of philosophical discourse widely used by Muslim and Western philosophers. It is known that the letters written by philosophers in previous periods are public documents that are read and discussed not only by their correspondents but also by those concerned. The reason why this is so is the widespread use of ideas at that time. In particular, it can be said that letters written in the 17th century serve the function of scientific-academic articles today. The 'Letters on Evil' is the name given to the eight letters Spinoza exchanged between 1664 and 1665, containing discussions with Willem van Blyenbergh on the issue of evil. This name was given by Gilles Deleuze. The most fundamental discussion in these letters is the problem of evil. These letters are texts in which Spinoza deals with the problem of evil and other related issues and evaluates different solutions. In these letters, Spinoza and Blyenbergh discuss major issues in relation to the issue of evil, such as God's creation and contribution, the nature of will and actions, the nature and source of evil, the structure of the Bible, lack, and perfection. Offering a different perspective, Spinoza used the concepts used by theism while evaluating these issues but attributed new meanings to them. In the face of Spinoza's new and different explanations, Blyenbergh repeatedly asked the subjects he had difficulty in understanding in each of his letters. Although the first letters started with very good wishes, the expressions in the following letters became harsh, and in the last letter, Spinoza firmly declared that he would end his letters, believing that they could not come to an agreement. Although Blyenbergh was described as ignorant and bigoted by Spinozists, some researchers claimed that he was not ignorant, on the contrary, he asked very important questions to Spinoza, even unanswered. Although these letters written about evil gave Spinoza's thoughts on the subject in a limited way, it can be said that the only text in which his discussions on the problem of evil are together is the "Letters on Evil". For Spinoza, evil is an illusion and a product of the human mind, and it is neither a situation in which God's will can be spoken of nor an act for which man is morally responsible. Although the fact that evil is unreal or an illusion has an attractive side, it can be said that this claim does not offer a solution when the moral responsibility of human beings and their efforts to make sense of life is considered. As a matter of fact, it can be claimed that it is against our intuition to say that there are many evils we witness, and pain and sorrow as a result, even in the universe or in our environment. It can be argued that characterizing and ignoring evil as a rational being provides an explanation rather than a solution to the problem of evil, which is the main problem of the philosophy of religion. His views on God's will and human freedom in particular offer a new and different approach for that period. It can be seen that this approach is against theological traditions and is open to discussion. In Spinoza's thought, everything necessarily occurs in the order of God or Nature.
In this essay, I revisit the univocity thesis, Sterba’s analogy between God and a leader of a politically liberal society, and, most fundamentally, whether the existence of horrendous evils is ...logically compatible with the existence of a good God. I concede that the typical appeals to free will and greater goods defenses to block the logical problem of evil are not sufficient because they do not adequately address the horrendous evils that are all too much a feature of human existence. While acknowledging that a compensatory response to the problem of evil is suggested by several important philosophers, I rely most centrally on the work of Marilyn McCord Adams. In so doing, I defend the thesis that the existence of a good God is logically compatible with the existence of horrendous evils, given God’s capacity to absorb, defeat, or engulf it.
The Thin Moral Concept of Evil Wilby, Michael
Studia z Historii Filozofii,
12/2022, Letnik:
13, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Evil-scepticism comes in two varieties: one variety is descriptive, where it is claimed that the concept of evil does not successfully denote anything in the world; the other variety is normative, ...where it is claimed that the concept of evil is not a helpful or useful concept to be employing in either our social or interpersonal lives. This paper argues that evil-scepticism can be responded to by understanding the concept of evil as a thin moral concept. Understood in this thin way, the descriptive challenge fades, because the concept of evil does not even purport to denote anything in the world (it is purely evaluative), and so does the normative argument, since the thinness of the concept means that, first, it is ineliminable anyway, and, second, its malleability allows for it to be used for progressive and constructive means.
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