Topic

Evil

Evil in this collection is understood as a structural condition rather than a personal moral failing. Dante on brute power combined with evil will making mankind powerless is the political definition: evil is most dangerous when it is organized and intelligent. Goethe on those falsely believing themselves free being most hopelessly enslaved is the epistemological version: the deepest evil is the one that presents itself as liberation. Bacon on applying new remedies to time being the greatest innovator warns against the evil of inaction: refusing to change in changing circumstances is its own form of harm. Twain on the lack of money as the root of all evil (inverting the standard formulation) is the economic argument. Karr on uncertainty being the worst evil until reality makes us regret uncertainty is the philosophical complication: anticipating evil is its own variety of it. What the collection argues is that evil is rarely dramatic — it is most often the ordinary human capacity for self-deception and the ordinary social capacity for organized indifference.