The Concept of Evil

First published Tue Nov 26, 2013

During the past thirty years, moral, political, and legal philosophers have become
increasingly interested in the concept of evil. This interest has been partly
motivated by ascriptions of evil by laymen, social scientists, journalists, and
politicians as they try to understand and respond to various atrocities and horrors
of the past eighty years, e.g., the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the 9/11
terrorist attacks, and killing sprees by serial killers such as Jeffery Dahmer. It
seems that 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.
To avoid confusion, it is important to note that there are at least two concepts of
evil: a broad concept and a narrow concept. The broad concept picks out any bad
state of affairs, wrongful action, or character flaw. The suffering of a toothache is
evil in the broad sense as is a white lie. Evil in the broad sense has been divided
into two categories: natural evil and moral evil. Natural evils are bad states of
affairs which do not result from the intentions or negligence of moral agents.
Hurricanes and toothaches are examples of natural evils. By contrast, moral evils
do result from the intentions or negligence of moral agents. Murder and lying are
examples of moral evils.
Evil in the broad sense, which includes all natural and moral evils, tends to be the
sort of evil referenced in theological contexts, such as in discussions of the
problem of evil. The problem of evil is the problem of accounting for evil in a
world created by an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God. It seems that if the
creator has these attributes, there would be no evil in the world. But there is evil
in the world. Thus, there is reason to believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing,
all-good creator does not exist.
In contrast to the broad concept of evil, the narrow concept of evil picks out only
the most morally despicable sorts of actions, characters, events, etc. As Marcus
Singer puts it evil [in this sense] is the worst possible term of opprobrium
imaginable (Singer 2004, 185). Since the narrow concept of evil involves moral
condemnation, it is appropriately ascribed only to moral agents and their actions.
For example, if only human beings are moral agents, then only human beings can
perform evil actions. Evil in this narrower sense is more often meant when the
term evil is used in contemporary moral, political, and legal contexts. This entry
will focus on evil in this narrower sense. The entry will not discuss evil in the
broad sense or the problem of evil to any significant degree (these topics will be
discussed briefly only in section 2).
The main issues discussed by philosophers on the topic of evil have been: Should
we use the term evil in our moral, political, and legal discourse and thinking, or

is evil an out-dated or empty concept which should be abandoned? What is the

relationship between evil and other moral concepts such as badness and
wrongdoing? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for evil action?
What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for evil character? What is the
relationship between evil action and evil character? What types of evil actions
and characters can exist? What is the proper analysis of derivative concepts such
as evil institution?
This entry gives an overview of answers to these questions found in the literature.
1. Evil-Skepticism Versus Evil-Revivalism
o 1.1 Evil and the Supernatural
o 1.2 Evil and Explanatory Power
o 1.3 The Dangers of Evil
1.3.1 Nietzsche's Attack on Evil
o 1.4 Arguments in Favor of the Concept of Evil
2. The History of Theories of Evil
o 2.1 Dualist and Privation Theories of Evil
o 2.2 Kant's Theory of Evil
o 2.3 Arendt's Analyses of Evil
3. Contemporary Theories of Evil Action
o 3.1 Evil and Wrongdoing
o 3.2 Evil and Harm
o 3.3 Evil and Motivation
o 3.4 Evil and Affect
o 3.5 Evil and Responsibility
3.5.1 Psychopaths
3.5.2 Bad Upbringings

 3.5.3 Ignorance
4. Contemporary Theories of Evil Character/Personhood
o 4.1 Frequent Evildoer and Dispositional Accounts
o 4.2 Affect-Based Accounts
o 4.3 Motive-Based Accounts
o 4.4 Consistency Accounts
o 4.5 Extremity Accounts
5. Evil Institutions
Bibliography
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1. Evil-Skepticism Versus EvilRevivalism

Evil-skeptics believe we should abandon the concept of evil. On this view we can
more accurately, and less perniciously, understand and describe morally
despicable actions, characters, and events using more pedestrian moral concepts
such as badness and wrongdoing. By contrast, evil-revivalists believe that the
concept of evil has a place in our moral and political thinking and discourse. On
this view, the concept of evil should be revived, not abandoned (see Russell 2006
and 2007).
Someone who believes that we should do away with moral discourse altogether
could be called a moral-skeptic or a moral nihilist. Evil-skepticism is not as
broad. Evil-skeptics believe the concept of evil is particularly problematic and
should be abandoned while other moral concepts, such as right, wrong, good, and
bad, are worth keeping.
Evil-skeptics give three main reasons to abandon the concept of evil: (1) the
concept of evil involves unwarranted metaphysical commitments to dark spirits,

the supernatural, or the devil; (2) the concept of evil is useless because it lacks
explanatory power; and (3) the concept of evil can be harmful or dangerous when
used in moral, political, and legal contexts, and so, it should not be used in those
contexts, if at all.

1.1 Evil and the Supernatural

The concept of evil is often associated with supernatural powers or creatures,
especially in fictional and religious contexts. The monsters of fictions, such as
vampires, witches, and werewolves, are thought to be paradigms of evil. These
creatures possess powers and abilities that defy scientific explanation, and
perhaps human understanding. Many popular horror films also depict evil as the
result of dark forces or Satanic possession. We find similar references to
supernatural forces and creatures when the term evil is used in religious
contexts. Some evil-skeptics believe that the concept of evil necessarily makes
reference to supernatural spirits, dark forces, or creatures. According to these
theorists if we do not believe that these spirits, forces, or monsters exist, we
should only use the term evil in fictional contexts, if at all (See Clendinnen
1999, 79113; Cole 2006).
Evil-revivalists respond that the concept of evil need not make reference to
supernatural spirits, dark forces, or monsters. There is a secular moral concept of
evil which is distinct from fictional or religious conceptions, and it is this secular
conception of evil that is meant most often when the term evil is used in moral
and political contexts (see Garrard 2002, 325; Card 2010, 1017). Evil-revivalists
seek to offer plausible analyses of evil which do not make reference to
supernatural spirits, dark forces, or monsters, but which fully capture secular uses
of the term evil. Evil-revivalists believe that if they are able to offer plausible
analyses of evil which do not make reference to the supernatural, they will have
successfully defended the concept of evil from the objection that ascriptions of
evil necessarily imply unwarranted metaphysical commitments (see sections 3
and 4 for secular accounts of evil).

1.2 Evil and Explanatory Power

Some evil-skeptics argue that we should abandon the concept of evil because it
lacks explanatory power and therefore is a useless concept (see, e.g., Clendinnen
1999, 79113; Cole 2006). The concept of evil would have explanatory power, or
be explanatorily useful, if it were able to explain why certain actions were
performed or why these actions were performed by certain agents rather than by
others. Evil-skeptics such as Inga Clendinnen and Philip Cole argue that the
concept of evil cannot provide explanations of this sort and thus should be
abandoned.
According to Clendinnen the concept of evil cannot explain the performance of
actions because it is an essentially dismissive classification. To say that a person,

or an action, is evil is just to say that that person, or action, defies explanation or
is incomprehensible (see Clendinnen 1999, 81; see also, Pocock 1985). (Joel
Feinberg (2003) also believes that evil actions are essentially incomprehensible.
But he does not think that we should abandon the concept of evil for this reason.)
Similarly, Cole believes that the concept of evil is often employed when we lack
a complete explanation for why an action was performed. For instance, we might
wonder why two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venerables,
tortured and murdered two-year-old James Bulger while other ten-year-old boys
with similar genetic characteristics and upbringings cause little harm? Cole
believes that the concept of evil is employed in these cases to provide the missing
explanation. However, Cole argues that the concept of evil does not provide a
genuine explanation in these cases because to say that an action is evil is just to
say either that the action resulted from supernatural forces or that the action is a
mystery. To say that an event resulted from supernatural forces is not to give a
genuine explanation of the event because these forces do not exist. To say that an
event is a mystery is not to give a genuine explanation of an event, but rather, it is
to suggest that the event cannot be explained (at least with the information
currently available) (2006, 69).
Evil-revivalists have offered several responses to the objection that the concept
of evil should be abandoned because it is explanatorily useless. One common
response is that the concept of evil might be worth keeping for descriptive or
prescriptive purposes even if it isn't explanatorily useful (Garrard 2002, 323325;
Russell 2009, 268269).
Another common response is to argue that evil is no less explanatorily useful
than other moral concepts such as good, bad, right, and wrong (Garrard 2002,
322326; Russell 2009, 268269). Thus, if we should abandon the concept of
evil we should abandon these other moral concepts as well.
Eve Garrard and Luke Russell also point out that even if the concept of evil
cannot provide a complete explanation for the performance of an action, it can
provide a partial explanation. For instance, Garrard argues that evil actions result
from a particular kind of motivation. Call this an E motivation. Thus, to say that
an action is evil is to say that it has resulted from an E motivation. This provides
a partial explanation for why the action was performed.

1.3 The Dangers of Evil

Some evil-skeptics believe that we should abandon the concept of evil because it
is too harmful or dangerous to use (See e.g., Cole 2006, 21; Held 2001, 107). No
one can deny that the term evil can be harmful or dangerous when it is
misapplied, used perniciously, or used without sensitivity to complicated
historical or political contexts. For instance, it is likely that by calling terrorists
evildoers and Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the axis of evil former US President
George W. Bush made it more likely that suspected terrorists would be mistreated

and less likely that there would be peaceful relations between the peoples and
governments of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea and the peoples and government of
the United States.
But should we abandon the concept of evil because it leads to harm when it is
misapplied or abused? Claudia Card argues that If the likelihood of the
ideological abuse of a concept were sufficient reason to abandon the concept, we
should probably abandon all normative concepts, certainly right and wrong.
(Card 2010, 15) And yet evil-skeptics do not believe that we should abandon all
normative concepts. So why do they believe that we should abandon the concept
of evil?
An evil-skeptic might reply that we should abandon only the concept of evil, and
not other normative concepts, because the concept of evil is particularly
dangerous or susceptible to abuse. We can discern several reasons why
ascriptions of evil might be thought to be more harmful or dangerous than
ascriptions of other normative concepts such as badness or wrongdoing. First,
since ascriptions of evil are the greatest form of moral condemnation, when the
term evil is misapplied we subject someone to a particularly harsh judgement
undeservedly. Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that evildoers not only
deserve the greatest form of moral condemnation but also the greatest form of
punishment. Thus, not only are wrongfully accused evildoers subjected to harsh
judgments undeservedly, they may be subjected to harsh punishments
undeservedly as well.
Another reason that ascriptions of evil can be particularly harmful or dangerous
is that it isn't always clear what people mean when they use the term evil. As
Eve Garrard puts it the general obscurity surrounding the term makes some
thinkers very reluctant to appeal to the idea of evil(Garrard 2002, 322). For
instance, some people believe that to say that someone performed an evil action
implies that that person acted out of malice (see e.g., Kekes 2005), while others
believe that evildoing can result from many different sorts of motives, even good
motives (see e.g., Card 2002). Given this ambiguity, it might be unclear whether
an attribution of evil attributes despicable psychological attributes to an evildoer,
and this ambiguity might result in an overly harsh judgment.
Other ambiguities concerning the meaning of the term evil may be even more
harmful. For instance, on some conceptions of evil, evildoers are possessed,
inhuman, incorrigible, or have fixed character traits (See Cole 2006, 121;
Russell 2006 and 2010; Haybron 2002a and 2002b). These metaphysical and
psychological theses about evildoers are controversial. Many who use the term
evil do not mean to imply that evildoers are possessed, inhuman, incorrigible,
or that they have fixed character traits. But others do. If evildoers have these
traits, and thus will continue to perform evil actions no matter what we do, the
only appropriate response might be to isolate them from society or to have them

executed. But if evildoers do not have these fixed dispositions and they are
treated as if they do, they will likely be mistreated.
Thus, while most theorists agree that the concept of evil can be harmful or
dangerous there is considerable disagreement about what conclusion should be
drawn from this fact. Evil-skeptics believe that because the concept of evil is
harmful or dangerous we should abandon it in favour of less dangerous concepts
such as badness and wrongdoing. Evil-revivalists believe that because the
concept of evil is harmful or dangerous more philosophical work needs to be
done on it to clear up ambiguities and reduce the likelihood of abuse or misuse.
Card and Kekes argue that it is more dangerous to ignore evil than to try to
understand it (Card 1996 and 2010; Kekes 1990). For if we do not understand
evil we will be ill-equipped to root out its sources, and thus, we will be unable to
prevent evils from occurring in the future.

1.3.1 Nietzsche's Attack on Evil

The most celebrated evil-skeptic, nineteenth century German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche, also argues that the concept of evil should be abandoned
because it is dangerous. But his reasons for thinking that the concept of evil is
dangerous are different from those discussed above. Nietzsche believes that the
concept of evil is dangerous because it has a negative effect on human potential
and vitality by promoting the weak in spirit and suppressing the strong. In On the
Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic, Nietzsche argues that the concept of evil
arose from the negative emotions of envy, hatred, and resentment (he uses the
French term ressentiment to capture an attitude that combines these elements).
He contends that the powerless and weak created the concept of evil to take
revenge against their oppressors. Nietzsche believes that the concepts of good
and evil contribute to an unhealthy view of life which judges relief from
suffering as more valuable than creative self-expression and accomplishment. For
this reason Nietzsche believes that we should seek to move beyond judgements
of good and evil (Nietzsche 1886 and 1887).
Nietzsche's skeptical attack on the concept of evil has encouraged philosophers to
ignore the nature and moral significance of evil and instead focus on the motives
people might have for using the term evil (Card 2002, 28).
In the Atrocity Paradigm, Claudia Card defends the concept of evil from
Nietzsche's skeptical attack. Card rejects Nietzsche's view that judgements of evil
indicate a negative life-denying perspective. Instead, she believes that
judgements of evil often indicate a healthy recognition that one has been treated
unjustly. Card also argues that we have just as much reason to question the
motives of people who believe we should abandon the concept of evil as we do to
question the motives of people who use the concept. She suggests that people
who want to abandon the concept of evil may be overwhelmed by the task of
understanding and preventing evil and would rather focus on the less daunting
task of questioning the motives of people who use the term (Card 2002, 2749).

1.4 Arguments in Favor of the Concept

of Evil
Some people believe that we should revive the concept of evil because only the
concept of evil can capture the moral significance of acts, characters, and events
such as sadistic torture, serial killers, Hitler, and the Holocaust. As Daniel
Haybron puts it Prefix your adjectives [such as wrong or bad] with as many
verys as you like; you still fall short. Only evil, it seems, will do (Haybron
2002b, 260). According to this line of argument, it is hard to deny that evil exists;
and if evil exists, we need a concept to capture this immoral extreme.
A second argument in favour of the concept of evil is that it is only by facing
evil, i.e., by becoming clear about its nature and origins, that we can hope to
prevent future evils from occurring and live good lives (Kekes 1990, Card 2010).
A third reason to revive the concept of evil is that categorizing actions and
practices as evil helps to focus our limited energy and resources. If evils are the
worst sorts of moral wrongs, we should prioritize the reduction of evil over the
reduction of other wrongs such as unjust inequalities. For instance, Card believes
that it is more important to prevent the evils of domestic violence than it is to
ensure that women and men are paid equal wages for equal work (Card 2002,
96117).
A fourth reason to revive the concept of evil is that by categorizing actions and
practices as evil we are better able to set limits to legitimate responses to evil. By
having a greater understanding of the nature of evil we are better able to guard
against responding to evil with further evils (Card 2010, 78).

2. The History of Theories of Evil

Prior to World War II there was very little philosophical literature on the concept
of evil in the narrow sense. However, philosophers have considered the nature
and origins of evil in the broad sense since ancient times. Although this entry is
primarily concerned with evil in the narrow sense, it is useful to survey the
history of theories of evil in the broad sense since these theories provide the
backdrop against which theories of evil in the narrow sense have been developed.

2.1 Dualist and Privation Theories of

Evil
The history of theories of evil began with attempts to solve the problem of evil,
i.e., attempts to reconcile the existence of evil (in the broad sense) with an allpowerful, all-knowing, all-good God or creator. Philosophers and theologians
have recognized that to solve the problem of evil it is important to understand the
nature of evil. As the Neoplatonist Plotinus put it Those inquiring whence Evil

enters into beings, or rather into a certain order of beings, would be making the
best beginning if they established, first of all, what precisely Evil is
(Plotinus, Enneads, I, 8, 1).
One theory of evil that provides a solution to the problem of evil is Manichaean
dualism. According to Manichaean dualism, the universe is the product of an
ongoing battle between two coequal and coeternal first principles: God and the
Prince of Darkness. From these first principles follow good and evil substances
which are in a constant battle for supremacy. The material world constitutes a
stage of this cosmic battle where the forces of evil have trapped the forces of
goodness in matter. For example, the human body is evil while the human soul is
good and must be freed from the body through strict adherence to Manichaean
teaching. The Manichaean solution to the problem of evil is that God is neither
all-powerful nor the sole creator of the world. God is supremely good and creates
only good things, but he or she is powerless to prevent the Prince of Darkness
from creating evil. (For more about Manichaeanism see Coyel 2009 and Lieu
1985).
Since its inception, Manichaean dualism has been criticized for providing little
empirical support for its extravagant cosmology. A second problem is that, for a
theist, it is hard to accept that God is not an all-powerful sole creator. For these
reasons influential medieval philosophers such as Saint Augustine, who initially
accepted the Manichaean theory of evil, eventually rejected it in favor of the
Neoplatonist approach. (See Augustine, Confessions; On the Morals of the
Manichaeans; Reply to Manichaeus; Burt, Augustine's World.)
According to the Neoplatonists, evil does not exist as a substance or property but
instead as a privation of substance, form, and goodness (Plotinus, Enneads, I, 8;
See also O'Brien 1996). For instance, the evil of disease consists in a privation of
health, and the evil of sin consist in a privation of virtue. The Neoplatonist theory
of evil provides a solution to the problem of evil because if evil is a privation of
substance, form, and goodness, then God creates no evil. All of God's creation is
good, evil is a lack of being and goodness.
One problem with the privation theory's solution to the problem of evil is that it
provides only a partial solution to the problem of evil since even if God creates
no evil we must still explain why God allows privation evils to exist (See Calder
2007a; Kane 1980). An even more significant problem is that the privation theory
seems to fail as a theory of evil since it doesn't seem to be able to account for
certain paradigmatic evils. For instance, it seems that we cannot equate the evil
of pain with the privation of pleasure or some other feeling. Pain is a distinct
phenomenological experience which is positively bad and not merely not good.
Similarly, a sadistic torturer is not just not as good as she could be. She is not
simply lacking in kindness or compassion. She desires her victims' suffering for
pleasure. These are qualities she has, not qualities she lacks, and they are

positively bad and not merely lacking in goodness (Calder 2007a; Kane 1980.
See Anglin and Goetz 1982 for a reply to these objections).

2.2 Kant's Theory of Evil

Immanuel Kant, in his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, was the first
to offer a purely secular theory of evil, i.e., a theory that does not make reference
to supernatural or divine entities and which is not developed as a response to the
problem of evil. 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.
Kant's thoughts on evil and morality have had an important influence on
subsequent philosophers writing about the nature of evil such as Hanna Arendt,
Claudia Card, and Richard Bernstein. However, most theorists acknowledge that
Kant's theory is disappointing as a theory of evil in the narrow sense since it does
not pick out only the morally worst sorts of actions and characters. (See, e.g.,
Card 2010, 37). Instead, Kant equates evil with having a will that is not fully
good.
According to Kant, we have a morally good will only if we choose to perform
morally right actions because they are morally right (Kant 1785, 4: 3934:397;
Kant 1793, Bk I). On Kant's view, anyone who does not have a morally good will
has an evil will. There are three grades of evil which can be seen as increasingly
more evil stages of corruption in the will. First there is frailty. A person with a
frail will attempts to perform morally right actions because these actions are
morally right, but she is too weak to follow through with her plans. Instead, she
ends up doing wrong due to a weakness of will (Kant 1793, Bk I, 2425).
The next stage of corruption is impurity. A person with an impure will does not
attempt to perform morally right actions just because these actions are morally
right. Instead, she performs morally right actions partly because these actions are
morally right and party because of some other incentive, e.g., for self-interested.
Someone with an impure will performs morally right actions, but only partly for
the right reason. Kant believes that this form of defect in the will is worse than
frailty even though the frail person does wrong while the impure person does
right. Impurity is worse than frailty because an impure person has allowed an
incentive other than the moral law to guide her actions while the frail person
tries, but fails, to do the right thing for the right reason (Kant 1793, Bk I, 2526).
The final stage of corruption is perversity, or wickedness. Someone with a
perverse will inverts the proper order of the incentives. Instead of prioritizing the
moral law over all other incentives, she prioritizes self-love over the moral law.
Thus, her actions conform to the moral law only if they are in her self-interest.
Someone with a perverse will need not do anything wrong because actions which
best promote her self-interest may conform to the moral law. But since the reason
she performs morally right actions is self-love and not because these actions are

morally right, her actions have no moral worth and, according to Kant, her will
manifests the worst form of evil possible for a human being. Kant considers
someone with a perverse will an evil person (Kant 1793, Bk I, 25).
Most contemporary theorists reject Kant's view that the worst form of evil
involves prioritizing self-interest over the moral law (See, e.g., Card 2010, 37
and 2002; Garrard 2002; Kekes 2005). Whether, and to what extent, a person, or
her will, is evil seems to depend on details about her motives and the harms she
brings about and not just on whether she prioritizes self-interest over the moral
law. For instance, it seems far worse to torture someone for sadistic pleasure than
to tell the truth to gain a good reputation. In fact, it seems reasonable to suppose
that the first act (sadistic torture) indicates an evil will while the second act
(telling the truth for self-interest) indicates a will that is merely lacking in moral
goodness. But for Kant, both acts indicate wills that are equally evil.
Kant makes several other controversial claims about the nature of evil
in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. One of these claims is that there is
a radical evil in human nature. By this he means that all human beings have a
propensity to subordinate the moral law to self-interest and that this propensity is
radical, or rooted, in human nature in the sense that it is inextirpable. Kant also
believes that we are imputable for this propensity to evil (Kant 1793, Bk I).
Richard Bernstein argues that Kant cannot coherently hold both of these theses
since we could not be responsible for a propensity that is in us originally and that
we cannot be rid of (Bernstein 2002, 1135).
In his Confessions, Saint Augustine tells us that one day he stole some pears for
the sole sake of doing something wrong (Augustine, Confessions, II, v-x). Kant
rejects the idea that human beings can be motivated in this way (Kant 1793, Bk I,
sect. 2). For Kant, human beings always have either the moral law or self-love as
their incentive for acting. Only a devil could do what is wrong just because it is
wrong. (For more about Kant and diabolical evil see Bernstein 2002, 3642;
Card 2010, 3661; and Allison 2001, 86100).

2.3 Arendt's Analyses of Evil

Secular analyses of the concept of evil in the narrow sense began in the twentieth
century with the work of Hanna Arendt. Arendt's thoughts on the nature of evil
stem from her attempt to understand and evaluate the horrors of the Nazi death
camps. In the Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Arendt borrows Kant's term
radical evil to describe the evil of the Holocaust. However, Arendt does not
mean what Kant means by radical evil (see section 2.2 for Kant's view of
radical evil). Instead, Arendt uses the term to denote a new form of wrongdoing
which cannot be captured by other moral concepts. For Arendt, radical evil
involves making human beings as human beings superfluous. This is
accomplished when human beings are made into living corpses who lack any
spontaneity or freedom. According to Arendt a distinctive feature of radical evil

is that it isn't done for humanly understandable motives such as self-interest, but
merely to reinforce totalitarian control and the idea that everything is possible
(Arendt 1951, 437459; Bernstein 2002, 203224).
In Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt's analysis of evil focuses on evils which
results from systems put in place by totalitarian regimes. Her analysis does not
address the character and culpability of individuals who take part in the
perpetration of evil. In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,
Arendt turns her attention to individual culpability for evil through her analysis
of the Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann who was tried in Jerusalem for
organizing the deportation and transportation of Jews to the Nazi concentration
and extermination camps. Arendt went to Jerusalem in 1961 to report on
Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker magazine. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, she
argues that desk murderers such as Eichmann were not motivated by demonic
or monstrous motives. Instead, It was sheer thoughtlessnesssomething by no
means identical with stupiditythat predisposed [Eichmann] to become one of
the greatest criminals of that period (Arendt 1963, 287288). According to
Arendt, Eichmann's motives and character were banal rather than monstrous. She
described him as a terrifyingly normal human being who simply did not think
very deeply about what he was doing.
Arendt's reflections on Eichmann and her concept of the banality of evil have
been both influential and controversial (For a discussion of the controversy see
Young-Bruehl 1982). Some theorists take Arendt's thesis of the banality of evil as
a datum to be explained. For instance, social psychologists Stanley Milgrom
(1969) and Philip Zimbardo (2007) have attempted to explain how social
conditions can lead ordinary people to perform evil actions. Others have
contested Arendt's suggestion that ordinary people can be regular sources of evil
(see Card 2010; Calder 2003 and 2009).

3. Contemporary Theories of Evil

Action
Spurred on by Arendt's work, and dissatisfied with analyses of evil found in the
history of philosophy, several theorists over the past twenty-five years have
sought to offer necessary and sufficient conditions for evil. Some theorists focus
on evil character, or evil personhood, as the root concept of evil. These theorists
consider the concept of evil action to be a derivative concept, i.e., they define an
evil action as the sort of action that an evil person performs. But just as many
theorists, or more, believe that the concept of evil action is the root concept of
evil. These theorists consider the concept of evil personhood to be a derivative
concept, i.e., they define an evil person as someone who is prone to perform evil
actions. Some theorists who believe that evil action is the root concept believe
that only one or two component properties are essential for evil action, while

others believe that evil action has a multitude of essential components. This
section discusses different views about the essential components of evil action.

3.1 Evil and Wrongdoing

Most philosophers, and laypeople, assume that wrongfulness is an essential
component of evil action (See e.g., Card 2002, Garrard 1999, Formosa 2008). It
seems that, to be evil, an action must, at least, be wrong. However, this claim is
not universally accepted (Calder 2011). The central question for most theorists is:
what more is required for evil than mere wrongdoing? One controversial answer
to this question is that nothing more is required: an evil is just a very wrongful
action (Russell 2007). This position is resisted by most evil-revivalists who claim
that evil is qualitatively, rather than merely quantitatively, distinct from mere
wrongdoing (See, e.g., Steiner 2002; Garrard 1999 and 2002; Calder 2013).
To determine whether evil is qualitatively distinct from mere wrongdoing we
must first understand what it is for two concepts to be qualitatively distinct.
According to some theorists two concepts are qualitatively distinct if, and only if,
all instantiations of the first concept share a property which no instantiation of
the second concept shares (Steiner 2002; Garrard 1999, 2002; Russell, 2007). For
instance, Hillel Steiner claims that evil acts are distinguished from ordinary
wrongs through the presence of an extra quality that is completely absent in the
performance of ordinary wrongs (Steiner 2002, 184). According to Steiner, the
extra quality shared by all evil actions and lacking from merely wrongful actions,
is the perpetrator's pleasure; evil action consists in taking pleasure in doing
wrong, no merely wrongful action is pleasurable for its doer (for more about
Steiner's theory of evil see Section 3.4).
Todd Calder (2013) disputes this understanding of what it is for two concepts to
be qualitatively distinct, arguing instead that two concepts are qualitatively
distinct provided they do not share all of their essential properties. Thus, evil
actions are qualitatively distinct from merely wrongful actions provided the
essential properties of evil actions are not also the essential properties of merely
wrongful actions but had to a greater degree.
Calder argues that on plausible theories of evil and wrongdoing, evil and
wrongdoing do not share all of their essential properties, and thus, evil and
wrongdoing are qualitatively distinct. For instance, Calder argues that it is an
essential property of evil actions that the evildoer intends that his victim suffer
significant harm while it is not an essential property of wrongful actions that the
wrongdoer intend to cause harm. For instance, cheating, lying, and risky
behaviour can be wrongful even if the wrongdoer does not intend to cause harm
(Calder 2013).

3.2 Evil and Harm

Many theorists writing about evil believe that evil actions must be harmful (see,
e.g., Card 2002; Kekes 2005). However, there are reasons to think otherwise. For
instance, someone who has a narrow conception of harm, might believe that evil
actions need not be harmful. For example, she might believe that only painful
experiences are harmful, but that it would be evil to sadistically destroy
someone's reputation, even if doing so did not cause any pain. If it is evil to
sadistically, yet painlessly, destroy someone's reputation, and only painful
experiences are harmful, then some evil actions are not harmful (for more about
different conceptions of harm see Nagel 1970; Kagan 1998, 2941).
One particularly controversial class of actions which some theorists believe are
evil and yet not harmful are cases of sadistic voyeurism (Calder 2002, 56;
Garrard 2002, 327). For instance, imagine that Alex takes pleasure in witnessing
Carol's extreme suffering, but that Alex does not cause Carol's suffering. Some
people would call this act of sadistic voyeurism evil even though it causes no
additional harm to the victim (we can imagine that Carol is not aware that Alex
takes pleasure in her suffering so that the witnessing of her suffering does not
aggravate the harm). Paul Formosa suggests that sadistic voyeurism is only evil
because the voyeur allows the harm to occur and thus is partly responsible for the
suffering (Formosa 2008, 227). The problem with Formosa's analysis of sadistic
voyeurism is that it cannot make sense of cases where the voyeur is unable to
prevent the harm from occurring. Consider, for example, Daniel Haybron's case
of a sadistic quadriplegic who has no ability to communicate. Such a person may
wish nothing more than the greatest suffering for her fellow creatures and yet
be helpless to cause, or prevent, her victim's suffering (Haybron 2002a, 264).
One might argue that if this person took pleasure in witnessing someone else's
significant harm she would thereby do evil even though there is no sense in
which she allows the harm to occur? If so, evil actions need not be harmful.
In response, it could be argued that what is evil about sadistic voyeurism is
the person who enjoys someone else's suffering and not her actions. According to
this view, theorists who believe that sadistic voyeurs perform evil actions confuse
evil action with evil character: the sadistic voyeur is an evil person, but she does
not perform an evil action because she does not cause any harm (for more about
evil character see Section 4).
However, even if we agree that evil actions, themselves, need not be harmful, it
seems plausible to suppose that evil actions must involve a certain amount of
harm. For even in cases of sadistic voyeurism it is necessary that someone suffers
even if the suffering isn't caused by the evildoer (Russell 2007, 676).
Assuming that harm is an essential component of evil, the question then becomes
how much harm is required for evil? In the Roots of Evil John Kekes argues that
the harm of evil must be serious and excessive (Kekes 2005, 13). In an earlier
work, Kekes specifies that a serious harm is one that interferes with the
functioning of a person as a full-fledged agent. (Kekes 1998, 217). Claudia Card

describes the harm of evil as an intolerable harm. By an intolerable harm, Card

means a harm that makes life not worth living from the point of view of the
person whose life it is. Examples of intolerable harms include severe physical or
mental suffering as well as the deprivation of basics such as food, clean drinking
water, and social contact (Card 2002, 16).

3.3 Evil and Motivation

Most theorists writing about evil believe that evil action requires a certain sort of
motivation. Once again, this claim is somewhat controversial. In the Atrocity
Paradigm, Claudia Card makes a point of defining evil without reference to
perpetrator motives. She does this because she wants her theory to focus on
alleviating the suffering of victims rather than on understanding the motives of
perpetrators (Card 2002, 9). Card's theory also has the virtue of being able to
count as evil actions which stem from a variety of motives.
However, while Card claims that the atrocity paradigm does not have a
motivation component, part of the plausibility of her theory comes from that fact
that it restricts the class of evil actions to those that follow from certain sorts of
motives. Card's theory of evil is that evils are reasonably foreseeable intolerable
harms produced by inexcusable wrongs (Card 2010, 16). While this account of
evil allows for a wide range of motivations, it does specify that evildoers must
foresee the harm they produce and lack a moral justification for producing the
harm. In other words, for Card, evildoers are motivated by a desire for some
object or state of affairs which does not justify the harm they foreseeably inflict.
Other philosophers have suggested that evildoers desire to cause harm, or to do
wrong, for more specific reasons such as pleasure (Steiner 2002), the desire to
annihilate all being (Eagleton 2010), or the destruction of others for its own sake
(Cole 2006). When evil is restricted to actions that follow from these sorts of
motivations, theorists sometimes say that their subject is pure, radical, diabolical,
or monstrous evil. This suggests that their discussion is restricted to a type, or
form, of evil and not to evil per se.
While some philosophers argue that certain motives, such as malevolence or
malice, are necessary for evil, others focus instead on motives or desires that
evildoers lack. For instance, Adam Morton contends that evildoers are crucially
uninhibited by barriers against considering harming or humiliating others that
ought to be there (Morton 2004, 57). Similarly, Laurence Thomas contends that
one distinctive feature of an evildoer is that whereas normally a person's moral
sensibilities would get in the way of his performing an act of such moral gravity
[i.e., one that results in serious harm], this does not happen when a person
performs an evil act (Thomas 1993, 77).
Eve Garrard's theory of evil also focuses on a deficiency in the motivational
structure of the evildoer. To understand Garrard's theory of evil we need to
understand the difference between metaphysical and psychological silencers. A

metaphysical silencer is a reason which is so weighty that, objectively speaking,

it takes away the reason-giving force of some other consideration. When this
happens we say that the less weighty consideration has been metaphysically
silenced. By contrast, a psychological silencer is a reason which is so weighty for
an individual that, subjectively, it takes away the reason-giving force of some
other consideration. When this happens we say that the consideration has been
psychologically silenced for the individual.
Consider Peter Singer's case of coming across a child drowning in a shallow
pond (Singer 1972). If we came across a child drowning in a shallow pond, the
need to rescue the child would be so morally important that it would
metaphysically silence the desire to keep our clothes clean as a reason for acting
or not acting. That is, when a child is in urgent need of rescue, considerations
about keeping our clothes clean lose all of their reason-giving force. They cease
to be reasons for acting or not acting. For many people, especially for virtuous
people, considerations about keeping their clothes clean are also psychologically
silenced by the urgent need to rescue a child drowning in a shallow pond. In
other words, virtuous people are completely unmoved by considerations about
keeping their clothes clean when presented with children in urgent need of
rescue.
According to Garrard, the evildoer has a particularly despicable motivational
structure. She psychologically silences considerations that are so morally weighty
that they metaphysically silence the very considerations which move her to act
(Garrard 1999, 55). For instance, it would be evil to psychologically silence the
urgent need to rescue a drowning child as a reason for acting because we desire
to keep our clothes clean.
Critics of Garrard's theory of evil argue that it is too restrictive since it does not
count as evil actions which cause, or allow, significant harm for no good reason
when the agent is slightly motivated by morally important considerations. For
instance, on Garrard's theory it would not be evil for John to allow a child to
drown in a shallow pond if he was slightly motivated to rescue her but not
motivated enough to dirty his clothes. Yet it seems that John would do evil by
allowing a child to drown for those reasons.

3.4 Evil and Affect

Some theorists believe that to do evil we must feel a certain way or have certain
emotions at the time of acting. For example, Laurence Thomas believes that
evildoers take delight in causing harm or feel hatred toward their victims
(Thomas 1993, 7677). Hillel Steiner goes even further by contending that there
are just two components of evil: pleasure and wrongdoing. According to Steiner
[e]vil acts are wrong acts that are pleasurable for their doer (Steiner 2002,
189).

Critics of Steiner's view argue that it is neither necessary nor sufficient for evil to
take pleasure in performing wrongful actions. Critics argue that it is not
necessary to take pleasure in doing wrong to perform an evil action since it is
sufficient to intentionally cause significant harm for an unworthy goal such as
self-interest (Calder 2013). Imagine that a serial killer tortures and kills his
victims but that he does not take pleasure in torturing and killing. It seems that
this serial killer is an evildoer even though he does not take pleasure in doing
wrong.
Critics of Steiner's view argue that it is not sufficient for performing an evil
action to take pleasure in performing a wrongful action since we would not think
that it was evil to take pleasure in performing a wrongful action if the victim did
not suffer significant harm. For instance, it wouldn't be evil to take pleasure in
telling a white lie (Russell 2007).

3.5 Evil and Responsibility

It is universally accepted that to perform an evil action an agent must be morally
responsible for what she does. Although hurricanes and rattle snakes can cause
great harm, they cannot perform evil actions because they are not moral agents.
Furthermore, moral agents only perform evil actions when they are morally
responsible for what they do and their actions are morally inexcusable (see e.g.,
Kekes 2005; Card 2010; Formosa 2008). To meet these conditions evildoers must
act voluntarily, intend or foresee their victim's suffering, and lack moral
justification for their actions. It is particularly controversial whether these
conditions are met in three sorts of cases: (1) serious harms brought about by
psychopaths; (2) serious harms brought about by individuals who have had bad
upbringings; and (3) serious harms brought about through ignorance.

3.5.1 Psychopaths
Psychopathy is a syndrome that consists in lacking certain emotional,
interpersonal, and behavioural traits and having others (Hare 1999). Some of the
defining characteristics of psychopathy include shallow emotions, egocentricity,
deceitfulness, impulsivity, a lack of empathy, and a lack of guilt and remorse.
Particularly relevant for assessments of moral responsibility is the psychopath's
inability to care for others and for the rules of morality.
According to the M'Naughten rules for criminal insanity, a person is legally
insane if, due to a disease of the mind at the time of acting, she is unable to know
the nature or quality of her action or to know that what she is doing is wrong. For
instance, a delusional schizophrenic who believes that her neighbour is a demon
is not responsible for harming her neighbour since she does not understand that
she is harming an innocent person; she believes she is defending herself from an
inhuman malicious agent. Many philosophers believe that the M'Naughten rules

give us the conditions for moral responsibility as well as the conditions for
criminal responsibility (see, e.g., Wolf 1987).
It is controversial whether psychopaths are insane according to the standard set
by the M'Naughten rules since it is controversial whether psychopaths know that
their actions are wrong. Motivational internalists believe that it is conceptually
impossible to believe (and thus to know) that an action is morally wrong and yet
be completely unmotivated to refrain from doing the action. That is, for the
internalist, there is a conceptual connection between believing that an action is
wrong and having a con-attitude toward the action. The internalist believes that
one may be able to knowingly do what is wrong because, all things considered,
she cares more about something that is incompatible with refraining from
wrongdoing, provided she is at least somewhat inclined to refrain from doing
what she knows to be wrong. Since psychopaths seem to be completely
indifferent to whether their actions are right or wrong, motivational internalists
believe that they do not truly believe, or understand, that what they do is morally
wrong. At most, they might believe that their harmful actions break societal
conventions. But it may be one thing to believe that one has broken a societal
convention and quite another to believe that one has broken a moral rule.
Philosophers who reject the internalist thesis, i.e., motivational externalists, are
more willing to believe that psychopaths know the difference between right and
wrong. According to motivational externalists, moral knowledge only requires an
intellectual capacity to identify right and wrong, and not the ability to care about
morality. Since psychopaths are not intellectually deficient, motivational
externalists do not think there is any reason to believe that psychopaths cannot
tell the difference between right and wrong. (For more about how the internalist
and externalist theses relate to the moral responsibility of psychopaths see Brink
1989, 4550; Duff 1977; Haksar 1965; and Milo 1984. See also Rosati 2006.
Recently some theorists writing about the moral responsibility of psychopaths
have tried to avoid the internalist/externalist debate. It is beyond the purview of
this entry to survey this literature. See Levy 2007, Matravers 2008, Talbert 2008.)

3.5.2 Bad Upbringings

The degree to which deviant behavior is caused by bad upbringings rather than
genetic starting points or individual choices is a difficult empirical question.
Assuming that there is a strong causal connection between bad upbringings and
deviant behaviour, there are two main arguments for the claim that we should not
hold perpetrators morally responsible for behaviour that has resulted from bad
upbringings. The first argument contends that since we do not choose our
upbringings we should not be held responsible for crimes which result from our
upbringings (See, e.g., Cole 2006, 122147). Susan Wolf (1987) offers a variant
of this argument. According to Wolf people who have had particularly bad
upbringings are unable to make accurate normative judgements because they
have been taught the wrong values. Wolf likens people who have been taught the

wrong values to people suffering from psychosis because like psychotics they are
unable to make accurate judgements about the world. For example, Wolf has us
consider the case of Jojo, the son of Jo, a ruthless dictator of a small South
American country. Jo believes that there is nothing wrong with torturing or
executing innocent people. In fact, he enjoys expressing his unlimited power by
ordering his guards to do just that. Jojo is given a special education which
includes spending much of his day with his father. The predictable result of this
education is that Jojo acquires his father's values. Wolf argues that we should not
hold Jojo responsible for torturing innocent people since his upbringing has made
him unable to judge that these actions are wrong. Since Jojo is unable to judge
that his actions are wrong he meets the conditions for insanity as stated in the
M'Naghten rules (See section 3.5.1 above).
The second argument for the claim that we should not hold people morally
responsible for crimes that result from bad upbringings begins with the
supposition that we are morally responsible for our crimes only if we are
appropriate objects of reactive attitudes, such as resentment (Strawson 1963).
According to this argument, perpetrators of crimes who have had particularly bad
upbringings are not appropriate objects of reactive attitudes since there is no
point to expressing these attitudes toward these perpetrators. A proponent of this
argument must then explain why there is no point to expressing reactive attitudes
toward these perpetrators. In his paper Responsibility and the Limits of Evil:
Variations on a Strawsonian Theme (1987) Gary Watson considers various ways
to make sense of the claim that there is no point to expressing reactive attitudes
toward people who commit crimes due to bad upbringings. Watson's discussion
centres on the case of Robert Alton Harris. As a child, Harris was an affectionate
good-hearted boy. Family members say that an abusive mother and harsh
treatment at corrections facilities turned him into a malicious cold-blooded
murderer.

3.5.3 Ignorance
Sometimes ignorance is used as an excuse for putative evildoing (Jones 1999,
6970). The argument goes something like this: if an agent has no good reason to
believe that she causes significant harm without moral justification, then she is
not morally responsible for causing this harm because she has no good reason to
act otherwise. For instance, if Dorion shoots a gun into some bushes on a country
estate without having any reason to believe that a man is hiding there, he is not
morally responsible for harming a man who is hiding there (this case comes from
Oscar Wilde's A Picture of Dorion Gray). In this way ignorance can be a
legitimate excuse for causing unjustified harm.
However, since Aristotle, theorists have recognized that ignorance is only a
legitimate excuse for causing unjustified harm when we are not responsible for
our ignorance, i.e., when the ignorance is non-culpable (Nichomachean Ethics,
Bk III). One sort of culpable ignorance which has received a fair bit of attention

from philosophers writing about evil is ignorance that results from selfdeception. In self-deception we evade acknowledging to ourselves some truth or
what we would see as the truth if our beliefs were based on an unbiased
assessment of available evidence. Self-deceivers are initially aware of moments
when they shift their attention away from available evidence to something else,
although they may not be aware of the overall project of their self-deception.
(Jones 1999, 82). Some tactics used by self-deceivers to evade acknowledging
some truth, including (1) avoiding thinking about the truth, (2) distracting
themselves with rationalizations that are contrary to the truth, (3) systematically
failing to make inquiries that would lead to evidence of the truth and (4) ignoring
available evidence of the truth or distracting their attention from this evidence
(Jones 1999, 82). Several theorists writing about evil have suggested that
perpetrators of the Holocaust such as Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann were selfdeceptive evildoers. (Calder 2003 and 2004; Jones 1999; See also, Martin 1986).

4. Contemporary Theories of Evil

Character/Personhood
There are five main types of theories of evil character, or evil personhood (The
terms evil personhood and evil character are used interchangeably in the
literature. This entry will follow this convention): frequent evildoer accounts,
dispositional accounts, affect-based accounts, motive-based accounts,
consistency accounts, and extremity accounts.

4.1 Frequent Evildoer and Dispositional

Accounts
On frequent evildoer and dispositional accounts of evil character the concept of
evil action is the root concept of evil, while the concept of evil character is a
derivative concept. For instance, according to the frequent evildoer approach, an
evil person is simply someone who performs evil actions often enough (Kekes
1990, 48; 1998, 217; Thomas 1993, 82).
One serious problem with frequent-evildoer accounts is that they cannot make
sense of the fact that an evil person might only very rarely (if ever) do evil. For
instance, an evil person might only very rarely do evil if she is too incompetent
or cowardly to carry out her evil plans. But since incompetence and cowardice do
not make our characters any better, it seems that we can have the worst sort of
character, i.e., an evil character, and yet very rarely, if ever, perform evil actions
(See Haybron 1999, 132).
In light of this and other problems for frequent evildoer accounts, Luke Russell
(2010) has developed a dispositional account of evil character that is similar in
many respects to frequent evildoer accounts, but which can make sense of the
fact that some evil people do not do evil. According to Russell, an evil person is

someone who is strongly and fixedly disposed to perform evil actions when in
autonomy favouring conditions. Someone is strongly disposed to do evil if she is
very likely to do evil. Someone is fixedly disposed to do evil if this disposition is
unlikely to change over time. Someone is in autonomy favouring conditions
when she is not deceived, threatened, coerced, or pressed to act in one way rather
than another (Russell 2010).
On Russell's dispositional account, an evil person might never do evil because
although she is strongly and fixed disposed to do evil in autonomy favouring
conditions, she might lack opportunities to perform evil actions or else autonomy
favouring conditions might never obtain.
While Russell clearly favours a dispositional account of evil character, he does
not say that his dispositional account identifies necessary and sufficient
conditions for evil personhood. Instead, he suggests that certain sorts of feelings
might also be sufficient for being an evil person (Russell 2010, 249).

4.2 Affect-Based Accounts

According to affect-based accounts, evil people have certain sorts of feelings or
emotions. For instance, Colin McGinn argues that an evil character is one that
derives pleasure from pain and pain from pleasure (62). There is some initial
plausibility to this view since sadism and malicious envy are paradigms of evil.
However, while it is undoubtedly true that some evil people are sadistic, there is
reason to believe that feelings of pleasure in pain or pain in pleasure, or any other
sorts of feelings, are neither necessary nor sufficient for evil character. The
problem with thinking that certain sorts of feelings are necessary for evil
character is that an evil person might routinely cause serious harm to her victims
without any accompanying feelings. For instance, someone who routinely runs
down pedestrians out of indifference for their well-being, and without any
accompanying feelings, seems to qualify as an evil person (Calder 2003, 368).
The problem with thinking that certain sorts of feelings, such as feelings of
pleasure in another person's pain, are sufficient for evil character is that these
sorts of feelings might be involuntary and not endorsed by the person who has
them. For instance, John might be just so constituted to experience pleasure in
the face of another person's pain. If John does not desire to take pleasure in other
people's pain, and is horrified by his sadistic feelings, it seems too harsh to call
him evil. He should be pitied rather than condemned. Calling someone like John
evil would be like blaming someone for her patellar reflex (Calder 2003, 368
369).

4.3 Motive-Based Accounts

According to motive-based accounts of evil character, to be an evil person is to
be motivated in a certain sort of way. For instance, Todd Calder argues that to be
an evil person it is sufficient to have a regular propensity for e-desires. An e-

desire is a motivational state that consists in a desire for what is correctly

believed to be someone else's significant harm for an unworthy goal or for what
would correctly be believed to be someone else's significant harm for an
unworthy goal in the absence of self-deception (see Section 3.5.3 for more on
self-deceptive evil). According to Calder, significant harm is desired for
an unworthy goal if a state of affairs consisting of the achievement of the goal
together with the harm would be less valuable than if the goal was not achieved
and the harm was avoided (Calder 2003 and 2009. See also Card, 2002, 21 for a
similar view).
A problem for motive-based accounts is to explain why we should judge
someone as evil based solely on her motives. In other words, why judge someone
as the morally worst sort of person for having certain motives if these motives do
not result in significant harm? Why not judge people as evil only if they actually
cause significant harm? One way to respond to this objection is to point out that
even if e-desires do not result in significant harm on some particular occasion or
for some particular person, e-desires do, for most people most of the time, lead to
significant harm (Driver's consequentialist theory of virtue and vice (2001) uses a
similar line of thought). However, a problem with this response for the proponent
of a purely motive-based account is that if we say that someone has an evil
character only if she has motives that generally lead to significant harm then we
adopt a dispositional account of evil character (see Section 4.1). Instead, a
proponent of a purely motive-based account could insist that judgements of evil
character look inward to an agent's psychology and not to the effects (or likely
effects) of her actions (See Calder 2007b for a similar view about virtue and
vice).
However, if we insist that judgements of evil character look inward to an agent's
psychology and not to the effects of her actions, why judge evil character solely
on the basis of her motives? Why not take into account the agent's affective states
as well? (Haybron 2002b, 267)

4.4 Consistency Accounts

According to most, if not all, theories of evil character, to have an evil character
it isn't sufficient to do evil, or have evil-making characteristics, only on occasion;
it is necessary to have evil-making characteristics regularly, frequently, or
repeatedly (See, e.g., Calder 2003 and 2009; Card 2002; Thomas 1993; Barry
2009). Consistency accounts take this idea to the extreme: according to
consistency accounts to be an evil person we must have evil-making
characteristics consistently, or almost always. For instance, Daniel Haybron
argues that it is necessary and sufficient for evil character to be utterly lacking in
motives or sentiments of moral worth (Haybron 2002a and 2002b). For Haybron,
evil people almost always lack empathy and concern for others, and they are in
no way motivated to help others or to do what is morally right. On Haybron's

view, the concept of evil character very closely resembles the concept of
psychopathy (For a description of psychopathy see Section 3.5.1).
Critics of the consistency view argue that it is too restrictive. Imagine that Bob
loves to torture children and does so frequently, but that Bob also displays
genuine compassion for the elderly, perhaps by volunteering at a long-term care
facility on a regular basis. On consistency accounts of evil character, Bob is not
an evil person because he does not have evil-making characteristics consistently.
And yet most people would want to say that torturing children for fun on a
regular basis is enough to make Bob an evil person (Calder 2009, 2227).

4.5 Extremity Accounts

According to extremity accounts of evil character, evil characters have certain
bad-making characteristics to an extreme degree. For instance, Peter Brian Barry
argues that evil people possess extremely vicious states of character in the
following sense: (1) evil people have the worst kinds of vices, such as cruelty and
maliciousness rather than more benign forms of vice such as cowardice or
laziness, and (2) evil people have these vices to an extreme degree (Barry 2009,
171173).
Barry believes that one virtue of his theory is that it makes sense of the mirror
thesis: that evil people are the perverse mirror images of moral saints (Barry
2009; Haybron 2002b, McGinn 1997, and Steiner 2002 also accept versions of
the mirror thesis). According to Barry moral saints are the mirror images of evil
people in the sense that they possess extremely virtuous states of character, i.e.,
the very best virtues, such as justice and compassion, to an extreme degree. (See
Russell 2010 for an argument against the mirror thesis.)

5. Evil Institutions
While most theorists writing about evil focus on evil action and evil character,
there has also been some discussion of evil institutions. When we speak of evil
institutions we might mean one of two things: (1) organizations that are evil or
that perform evil actions, or (2) social practices that are evil, such as slavery and
genocide. Since an organization can only be evil, or perform evil actions, if it is
morally responsible for what it does, the debate concerning the concept of evil
institutions in sense (1) is discussed under the heading of collective
responsibility. Evil institutions in this sense will not be discussed in this entry.
According to Claudia Card, an institution, in sense (2), i.e., a social practice, is
evil if it is reasonably foreseeable that intolerable harm will result from its
normal or correct operation without justification or moral excuse (2002, 20;
2010, 18, 2735). For instance, genocide is an evil institution since significant
suffering and a loss of social vitality result from its normal and correct operation
without moral justification (Card 2010, 237293).

However, while Card's account of evil institutions correctly identifies genocide

and other paradigmatically evil institutions as evil, her account also classifies as
evil some institutions which are less obviously evil such as capital punishment,
marriage, and motherhood (Card 2002, 2010). Her classification of marriage and
motherhood as evil has been particularly controversial.
According to Card, marriage and motherhood are evil institutions because it is
reasonably foreseeable that their normal, or correct, operation will lead to
intolerable harm in the form of domestic abuse without justification or excuse
(Card 2002, 139165). For instance, Card argues that the normal, or correct,
operation of marriage leads to spousal abuse because it provides incentives for
partners to stay in broken relationships, places obstacles in the way of escaping
from broken relationships, gives perpetrators of abuse virtually unlimited rights
of access to their victims, and makes some forms of abuse difficult or impossible
to detect or prove (Calder 2009, 28). Card argues that there is no moral
justification for the intolerable harm that results from the institution of marriage
since nothing prevents us from abolishing marriage in favour of other less
dangerous institutions.
Critics argue that even if Card is correct that it is reasonably foreseeable that the
institution of marriage will lead to intolerable harms, it is too heavy-handed to
call marriage an evil institution. For instance, Todd Calder has argued that an
institution should be considered evil only if intolerable harm is an essential
component of the institution. Since suffering and a loss of social vitality are
essential components of genocide, genocide is an evil institution. But since
spousal abuse is not an essential component of marriage, marriage is not an evil
institution (Calder 2009, 2730).

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Related Entries
Augustine, Saint | evil: problem of | Kant, Immanuel: moral philosophy | Kant,
Immanuel: philosophy of religion | moral motivation | moral
responsibility | moral skepticism | Nietzsche, Friedrich: moral and political
philosophy | Plato: middle period metaphysics and epistemology |
Plotinus | reasons for action: internal vs. external | responsibility: collective

Copyright 2013 by
Todd Calder <Todd.Calder@SMU.CA>