85:2 April 2002
Evil

Advisory Editor: Adam Morton, Bristol

Some acts are wrong, some outcomes are bad, some people are unworthy. Philosophical theories differ about the meanings and grounds for these claims. But, whatever their status, such claims do not entail that any acts or people are evil. Consider, for example, a utilitarian who miscalculates what act will have the best consequences, or a contractarian who thinks that one convention has optimal properties when in fact another does, or even a Kantian who misjudges what act-types can consistently be projected into general maxims. The actions of all these people may be wrong, by their own accounts, but they seem to lack the whiff of brimstone required by evil. Are moral theories missing anything important if they do not define and give a significant role to some concept of evil? Is the concept a morally useful one? Might it even be pernicious? Does it have any place outside a religious context? If the answer to the first of these questions is Yes, then what are the distinguishing marks of evil? Does evil apply to acts or to people, to individuals or to societies? This issue of The Monist invites submissions addressing these and similar questions from a variety of points of view. Contributors will include Raimund Gaita, Colin McGinn, Hillel Steiner and Paul Thompson.

Table of Contents:

Adam Morton 

Introduction

DEFINING EVIL

Hillel Steiner 

Calibrating Evil

Ernesto V. Garcia 

A Kantian Theory of Evil

Stephen de Wijze 

Defining Evil: Insights from the Problem of 'Dirty Hands'

Paul Thompson 

The Evolutionary Biology of Evil

EVIL CHARACTER

Daniel M. Haybron 

Moral Monsters and Saints

Shaun Nichols 

How Psychopaths Threaten Moral Rationalism: Is It Irrational to Be Immoral?

WHY WE NEED THE CONCEPT OF EVIL

Roy W. Perrett 

Evil and Human Nature

Eve Garrard 

Evil as an Explanatory Concept

APPENDIX: 

Adam Morton 

Review of Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ed. The Many Faces of Evil: Historical Perspectives