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Evil – A History - Oxford Scholarship Online
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Evil: A History

Andrew P. Chignell

Abstract

What, if anything, is evil? Is it just badness by another name? Is it the shadow side of good, or is it an active force opposed to the good in a Manichean/Star Wars kind of way? Does evil have its source in something personal—a malevolent, striving will that makes the universe tend not just to entropic winding-down but also to outbreaks of targeted hellishness? These are some of the main ontological questions that philosophers raise about evil. There are related epistemological questions: Can we really know evil? Does a victim know evil in a way that is entirely different from the way a perpet ... More

Keywords: evil, religion, God, moral evil, natural evil, radical evil, Holocaust, theodicy, intelligibility, reason

Bibliographic Information

Print publication date: 2019 Print ISBN-13: 9780199915453
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2019 DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199915453.001.0001

Authors

Affiliations are at time of print publication.

Andrew P. Chignell, editor
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University

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Contents

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Front Matter

Title Pages

Dedication

Epigraph

Series Editor’s Foreword

Preface

Contributors

Introduction

Andrew Chignell

Chapter One Evil, Unintelligibility, Radicality

Andrew Chignell

Chapter Two Kakology

Antonia Ruppel

Chapter Three Evil in the Hebrew Bible

Carol A. Newsom

Reflection The Early History of Satan

Esther J. Hamori

Reflection Meat and Evil

Matthew C. Halteman

Chapter Four Explaining Evil in Plato, Euripides, and Seneca

Rachana Kamtekar1

Chapter Five Explaining Evil in Late Antiquity

Dominic J. O’Meara

Chapter Six Augustine on Evil

Peter King

Reflection Hell as a Problem of Evil in Medieval Women Mystics

Clark West

Chapter Seven . . . but draw not nigh this tree

Nadja Germann

Chapter Eight Evil and Late Medieval Thought

Brian Davies

Reflection Dante on the Evil of Treachery

Eleonore Stump

Reflection Calvinism and the Demonic in the Divine

Derk Pereboom

Reflection Feminine Evil and Witchcraft

Sarah K. Pinnock

Chapter Nine Evils, Privations, and the Early Moderns

Samuel Newlands

Reflection Is Don Giovanni Evil?

Elaine Sisman

Reflection Kant’s Journey on Evil

George Huxford

Chapter Ten Evil in Classical German Philosophy

Allen Wood

Reflection Leopardi

Silvia De Toffoli

Chapter Eleven What Happened to Evil?

Susan Neiman

Chapter Twelve Evil, Natural Science, and Animal Suffering

Eric Martin and Eric Watkins

Reflection Cinematic Evil

Christy Mag Uidhir

Reflection The Banality of Evil

Jennifer L. Geddes

Chapter Thirteen Evil After the Holocaust

Gabriel Motzkin

Reflection Satanically Great Instigators and Banal Compliers

Avishai Margalit

Reflection On Google and Not Being Evil

Wesley Chan

End Matter

Bibliography

Index