Description
Book SynopsisWritten across the disciplines of law, literature, philosophy, and theology, Understanding Evil: An Interdisciplinary Approach represents wide-ranging approaches to and understandings of “evil” and “wickedness.” Consisting of three sections – “Grappling with Evil”, “Justice, Responsibility, and War” and “Blame, Murder, and Retributivism” –, all the essays are inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary in focus. Common themes emerge around the dominant narrative movements of grieving, loss, powerlessness, and retribution that have shaped so many political and cultural issues around the world since the fall of 2001. At the same time, the interdisciplinary nature of this collection, together with the divergent views of its chapters, reminds one that, in the end, an inquiry into “evil” and “wickedness” is at its best when it promotes intelligence and compassion, creativity and cooperation. The thirteen essays are originally presented at and then developed in light of dialogues held at the Third Global Conference on Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, held in March 2002 in Prague.
Trade Review"[an] ambitious book … there are so many memorable statements, comments and argument that I recommend it with the caveat, to quote Murley in the book, “There has never been a ‘need’ for evil; there has always been a need to account for it.”" - in: Metapsychology (2003)
Table of ContentsIntroduction. PART I Grappling with Evil. Neil FORSYTH: Evil and Literature: Grandeur and Nothingness. Theodore SETO: Reframing Evil in Evolutionary and Game Theoretic Terms. Robert N. FISHER: The Catheter of Bilious Hatred. Margaret SÖNSER BREEN: Reading for Constructions of the Unspeakable in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. PART II Justice, Responsibility and War. Peter DAY: Never Just, Always Evil: The View of Warfare in the Writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Bill WRINGE: International Justice, Intervention, and the Prevention of Evil. Scott LOWE: Terrorism and Just War Theory. John T. PARRY: Collective and Individual Responsibility for Acts of Terrorism. PART III Blame, Murder, and Retributivism. Maria Michela MARZANO: Moral Responsibility, Liability, and Perversion: A New Understanding of Wickedness. John A. HUMBACH: The Humane Principle and the Biology of Blame (Evolutionary Origins of the Imperative to Inflict). Ramzi NASSER: Rescuing Kant’s Retributivism. Jean MURLEY: Ordinary Sinners and Moral Aliens: The Murder Narratives of Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allan Poe. Karen-Margrethe SIMONSEN: Evilness and Law in Heinrich von Kleist’s Story “Michael Kohlhaas”. Notes Contributors.
