## 1. Speaking of Evil



"Evil" and related terms in the Germanic branch of
Indo-European have referred, at various points, to suffering and
wrongdoing, but also to defecation, latrines, spoiled fruit, diseases,
prostitution, and (oddly enough) forks.



The Greek term "*kakos*" may be related to the
Proto-Indo-European term
"*kakka*"--"defecation". But only
the first two meanings survive in English, and non-ironic uses of the
term are relatively rare outside of ceremonial and literary contexts.
Indeed, speaking of evil nowadays often feels like an exercise in
anachronism--like speaking of wickedness, abomination,
uncleanness, and iniquity.



The *Oxford English Dictionary* explains:



> 
> 
> In modern colloquial English it [*evil*]; is little used, such
> currency as it has being due to literary influence. In quite familiar
> speech the adjective is commonly superseded by *bad*; the noun
> is somewhat more frequent, but chiefly in the widest senses, the more
> specific senses being expressed by other words, such as *harm*,
> *injury*, *misfortune*, *disease*, etc.
> ("evil, *adj.* and *n.*1", under A.,
> abbreviations expanded, *OED Online*, accessed September
> 2021)
> 
> 
> 



This trend is found in other modern languages, but not in all. Ruppel
(2019) notes that in German-speaking lands "*das
Ubel*" declined just like "evil" did in
England, but was soon replaced by "*das
Bose*", which is still alive and well in Germany.



This slow erasure of "evil" and its cognates from many
European languages, which began in the seventeenth century, was due to
the rejection of the *concept* of evil, especially by elites.
Doctors, moral philosophers, natural scientists, and even theologians
shied away from *evil*--preferring more tractable notions
like *badness*, *harm*, and *misfortune*, or
quasi-quantifiable concepts like *pain*, *suffering*,
*trauma*, and
*disutility*. Traditional views of ontologically substantive
and supernatural evil--something able to possess a body or
terrorize a soul--came to be seen as quaint, unscientific,
embarrassing (Ruppel 2019).



Philosophers of religion are a half-exception to the rule. They did
and do continue to speak of evil, at least when discussing the
"problem" thereof. (See the entry on
 the problem of evil.) If pressed, though, they typically
admit that this is because the great framers of the
problem--Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz, Bayle--used the term
(in Latin or French), and then proceed to gloss it generically as, in
Michael Tooley's words, "any undesirable states of
affairs" (2002 [2019]). Philosophers of religion in the broadly
Continental tradition are less likely to assimilate evil to more
general or anodyne notions in this way, and more likely to discuss the
nature of evil as opposed to the "problem" it raises for
theism (e.g., Kearney 2001 and Matustik 2008).



Despite this widespread squeamishness about "evil" in both
scientific culture and common parlance, there are moments when the
pull of the ancient lexicon is irresistible--at the very least
expressively, in the mode of both condemnation and lament.
Premeditated mass shootings aren't just bad or traumatic;
rather, they are something else: here people still reach for
"evil" or even "radical evil". The years-long
imprisonment and rape of children by their parents is a misfortune
that produces negative utility, to be sure, but the transfixing horror
of it seems only to be captured by the invocation of
"evil". The same is true of most instances of genocide,
sex-trafficking, torture-slaying, terrorism, serial killing, and
slavery: these are one and all bad, harmful, and traumatic activities,
but they are also something else--something excessive,
mesmerizing, and revolting all at once (see Stone 2009 for a
psychologist's account). In the face of such acts,
we--along with our spiritual leaders, newscasters, and
politicians--are still willing to speak, preach, and tweet about
"pure evil".



Thus after a school shooting in February 2017, Donald Trump
(@realDonaldTrump) tweeted that "we must keep 'evil'
out of our country". (Despite the quotation marks, it was clear
that he meant evil the entity, and not "evil" the word.)
After the Las Vegas mass shooting in October 2017, Trump and many
others in leadership referred to the event as "an act of pure
evil" (Matuson 2017). Less recently, George W. Bush referred to
Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil" in a
state of the union address on 29 January 2002 (see Other Internet
Resources), and Ronald Reagan repeatedly characterized the Soviet
Union as "the evil empire", famously at a speech on 8
March 1983 to the National Association of Evangelicals (see Other
Internet Resources).



But when we do this--when we speak of *evil*, *das
Bose*, *il male* nowadays--what *is* it
that we are referring to, and where does it *come from*?



Pressed with such questions, many people (philosophers included)
revert to the more tractable terms. *Of course* what we are
really talking about (whispering about, thundering about, shaking our
heads about) in those moments of condemnation and lament is an extreme
instance of suffering or disutility. *Of course*
"evil" is to "bad" what "wicked"
is to "immoral": a conceptual vestige of a pre-scientific,
credulous past that we invoke for the sake of solemnity, empathy, or
emphasis. A concept that--outside of horror films and
fiction--is best analyzed in terms of nature's frustration
of the basic needs of sentient creatures, or as the effects of illness
and ill-parenting. Yes, evil happenings have an excessive, egregious
quality that makes them notable, even transfixing. But they are not,
in the end, *sui generis* or metaphysically mysterious:
neuroscience, medicine, psychology, and law have domesticated evil.
Taken to its logical extreme, the doctrine that characterizes this
camp would be that *all* evil is "natural" (a
product of various causal processes in nature).



Others prefer to answer the questions about the origins of evil in
terms of *choice, agency*, and *will*. For people in
this camp, evil consists in malevolent intentions, malice with
forethought, and self-conscious cruelty that leads to extreme
suffering and tribulation. They may allow that there are contributing
factors and preconditions, but ultimately hold the *agents
themselves* responsible for evil. Note, however, that the appeal
to human free will can also be seen as an effort to domesticate
evil--to make it explicable in terms of familiar concepts, to set
it on a continuum with other, familiar acts and events. Taken to its
logical extreme, the doctrine held by people in this camp is that
*all* evil has "moral" origins--it is a
product of choice or agency of some sort.



This debate about the roots of evil plays out not only in philosophy
seminar rooms and psychology labs, but also on cable news stations and
op-ed pages. People in the second camp tend to the political right,
and sometimes even make a show of using "evil" because
they think that people in the first camp (who tend to the political
left) are uncomfortable with the idea of personal responsibility and
blameworthiness.



I said these were *the* two opposing camps. In truth there is
another one--one that used to be very popular but now seems
sparsely populated, at least among philosophers. People in this third
camp eschew efforts to domesticate evil; for them, what we mean by
"evil" is not equivalent to what we mean by
"bad" or "wrong" or even "very very very
bad" or "very very very wrong". In other words, evil
is not just illness, misfortune, or malevolent choices by another name
but rather a positive, substantial rottenness in the universe. It is,
or has its origin in, some non-agential force or shadow side of
reality--something spooky, imperceptible, but out there
("in them woods").


## 2. Two Distinctions in Evil: Kinds and Origins



The late antique (Plotinus, Proclus, Augustine, Boethius), medieval
(Anselm, Ibn Sina, Aquinas), and early modern (Descartes, Leibniz,
Bayle, Kant) eras contain sophisticated traditions of reflection on
questions about evil--about its being or non-being, its intrinsic
features and natural manifestations, and its origins in nature, will,
or supernature. Over the course of that centuries-long discussion, two
main distinctions emerged.



The first main distinction has to do with the *nature* or
*kinds* of evil: is evil at bottom just an *empirical*
phenomenon--something that is given in the causal, phenomenal
world of our experience? Or is there a deeper, *metaphysical*
aspect to some evils? Note that this is not an exclusive distinction:
people who endorse the idea of metaphysical evil typically assume that
it *also* has an empirical character or manifestation.



Suppose, for example, we come across the sort of scene that drove
Friedrich Nietzsche mad in Turin: a coachman mercilessly beating his
horse (Prideaux 2018). In this version of the case, however, suppose
that the coachman's cruelty is a response to his having been
recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. So here there is certainly
some empirical evil: the cancerous disruption to the body, the cruelty
of the man, the pain of the horse. Some philosophers will say that
there is also metaphysical evil: neither the man nor the horse is
metaphysically perfect, and so on the Absence Theory considered below
 (section 3.1.1)
 both are in that respect evil. We might also regard the body and
character of the man as corrupted and conclude that he is
metaphysically evil in a "privative" way too (see
 section 3.1.3).
 Metaphysical evils like these are distinct from the empirical evils
of the cancer, the cruelty, and the suffering of the horse, though on
many accounts they are the ground of the latter.



The second main distinction has to do with the *origins* of
evil, and tracks the differences between the three camps mentioned
above. The first option here is to say that a specific evil arises
*entirely* from *natural* phenomena for which no one is
responsible. In the case of the man and his horse, it is common to
think that their metaphysical finitude and incapacities, as well as
the cancerous tumor and the canine pain, are "natural" in
this way: they seem to be based in facts about the natures, events,
and causal laws involved.



An alternative is to say that a specific evil has its origin in
*moral* actions and intentions. Applied to our case, it is
common to think that the man's agency--the choice to beat
his vulnerable steed--is the origin of the cruelty and the pain.
If there is metaphysical evil here, then it too might have a moral
origin: on some religious pictures, for instance, the corrupted human
nature that leads to disease, cruelty, and enmity between him and
other creatures is a result of free choice on the part of his
primordial ancestors. (If there is agency in any non-human
creatures--animals or angelic--then it would also fit
here.)



The third (and now-quite-unpopular) view about origins says that a
specific evil arises ultimately not from nature or from choice but
from something that is both supernatural and non-agential (call this a
"spooky non-agential" origin). On such views there is a
dark force or side of reality that is the ultimate origin of, say, the
metaphysical evil in the man's nature. It may also be the
ultimate source of the empirical evil involved.



Three further preliminary notes:


1. The second main distinction here is often regarded as exclusive
with respect to a specific evil, since we are asking about its
*ultimate* origin. If the man's cancer and ill-treatment
of the horse originate entirely in the causal powers of the physical
universe, then they are not also based in either free choice or
supernatural spookiness (and vice versa). "Typically" here
is key, however, since a compatibilist picture of free will
(O'Connor & Franklin 2018 [2021]) says that free choices
themselves are determined by natural causes. On that view, perhaps,
the origin of the man's cruel act is *both* moral
*and* natural. Compatibilisms between natural and spooky
origins are also conceptually possible.
2. Although some theorists think that *all* instances of evil
(whether metaphysical or empirical) are grounded in just one of these
ultimate origins, most will allow that different evils have different
ultimate origins. For instance, someone might coherently think that
the man's cancer has a natural origin, that his cruelty has a
moral origin, and yet that the ferociousness of the beating has a
spooky or "dark force" origin.
 Section 4
 considers some historical efforts to suggest that *all* evils
are ultimately moral in origin.
3. Although these conceptual distinctions are fairly clear, there is
terminological variation in the historical and contemporary literature
with respect to the term "natural evil". Some philosophers
and theologians use "natural evil" to refer not to an
origin but to a kind--the kind that is here called
"empirical evil". When the distinctions are maintained,
however, it should be clear that they are orthogonal: both
metaphysical evil and empirical evil can have natural, moral, or
spooky origins (see
 Figure 1).





|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Origins: | *Natural* | *Moral* | *Spooky non-agential* |
| Kinds: |  |
| *Metaphysical* | The finitude, susceptibility to pain and disease, and other
incapacities essential to the coachman and the horse and that are
ultimately based in facts about natures | The finitude, susceptibility to pain and disease, and the
inclination to cruelty that are essential to the man and the result of
damage to his nature and/or that of his species, which damage is
ultimately based in facts about immoral acts and intentions (e.g.,
Original Sin) | The finitude, and susceptibility to pain and disease in the
coachman and the horse, and the corruption in the coachman's
nature and/or that of his species, and that are ultimately based in
facts about a dark force or shadow-side principle in reality |
| *Empirical* | The cancer of the coachman, whose ultimate explanation consists
in causal facts about natural phenomena | The cruelty of the coachman and the suffering of the horse,
whose ultimate explanation consists in facts about the man's
immoral acts and intentions. | The cancer, anger, cruelty, and suffering of the coachman and
the horse whose ultimate explanation is based in facts about a dark
force or shadow-side principle in reality. |



Figure 1. The Table of Evils, applied to
Nietzsche case




The distinctions represented in the Table of Evil are the topics of
Sections 3 and 4. Sections 5 through 7 look at three varieties of evil
(systemic, symbolic, and radical) whose positions within the Table are
more difficult to discern.


## 3. Kinds of Evil: Metaphysical and Empirical



The first key distinction is concerned with the *kinds* of
evil--with what evil is or consists in, and thus with where and
how it manifests. Again, the distinction is not exclusive: someone
might hold that there is *both* metaphysical evil and empirical
evil, and that the latter is typically a manifestation of metaphysical
evil. Someone else, however, might hold that there is no such thing as
metaphysical evil, and that all evils can be accounted for at the
empirical, causal level.


### 3.1 Metaphysical Evil



Many of the traditional kakologists believed in *metaphysical*
evil--i.e., evil that has to do with the *way things exist or
fail to exist.*  Typically, metaphysical evil is supposed to be a
function of a thing's nature and characterized by a kind of
unintelligiblity. As we have seen, many such theorists also typically
assume that metaphysical evil has empirical manifestations.



Both metaphysical and empirical evil have been described in terms of
four main theory-templates: *Absence, Matter, Privation*, and
*Real Property*. These templates are laid out in more detail in
the discussion of metaphysical evil in this section, and applied again
in
 section 3.2's
 discussion of empirical evil.


#### 3.1.1 Absence Theory



The *Absence Theory of Evil* has its origins in the Platonic
idea that there are different "degrees of being"
corresponding to the number and kinds of capacities a thing has.
Roughly speaking, the more numerous and impressive a thing's
capacities, the more *real* and thus *better* it is,
metaphysically-speaking. A dog cannot stand erect; an ape can. A rock
cannot pass through walls; an angel can. These lacks or absences are
essential to being the kind of finite creature that a dog or a rock
is; miracles aside, a rock is just the kind of thing that cannot pass
through walls. All the same, the lack of that ability is an evil.



Absence theorists typically add a "plenum" thesis here: it
is fitting, or beautiful, or perhaps even necessary, that *all*
the different degrees of being are exemplified, and thus that every
link in the "great chain of being" is occupied. Evil is a
function of the way things ought to be or even must be.



Absence Theory was popular across antiquity, but it was particularly
attractive to philosophers in monotheistic traditions because it
allowed them to say that evil is not a *thing*--and thus
not some *thing* that a good, all-powerful God created or
sustains. Anselm writes in *On the Fall of the Devil*:



> 
> 
> Just as nothing that is not good comes from the Supreme Good, and
> every good is from the Supreme Good, likewise nothing that is not
> being [*essentia*] comes from the Supreme Being
> [*essentia*], and all being is from the Supreme Being. Since
> the Supreme Good is the Supreme Being, it follows that every being is
> a good thing and every good thing is a being. Therefore, just as
> nothing and non-being [*non esse*] are not being
> [*essentia*], likewise they are not good. So, nothing and
> non-being are not from He from whom nothing is unless it is good and
> being. (*De Casu Diaboli*, v.1, 235; translation by Sadler
>  [Other Internet Resources])
> 
> 
> 



A lingering problem in the theistic context, however, is that Absence
Theory entails that finite things have a degree of evil *just in
virtue of* not being at the top of the chain. So even if God does
not *create* evil (because absence is uncreated), God creates
beings that are *essentially* evil.


#### 3.1.2 Matter Theory



Plotinus rejects Absence Theory for a related reason: it compels
us



> 
> 
> to say that there are evils in the higher world too; for there the
> Soul is inferior to Intellect, and Intellect is lesser than [the One].
> (*Enneads* I, 8, 13)
> 
> 
> 



For Plotinus, it is not merely being *lower* than the highest
One that makes something evil; rather, evil consists in being so low
as to be associated with matter. Indeterminate or "unformed
matter" is the final term on the cosmic chain from being to
non-being--it is as far away from intelligence as possible, and
thus equally far away from goodness. This is the *Matter Theory of
Evil* that was influential in various gnosticisms, early Christian
heresies, and late antique platonisms (see O'Meara 2019).


#### 3.1.3 Privation Theory



Augustine, as well as many scholastics and early moderns, rejected
Matter Theory on religious grounds. God *created* matter, and
so it cannot be bad in itself. Instead of reverting to pure Absence
Theory, however, these monotheists developed the *Privation Theory
of Evil*. This can be construed as Absence Theory plus the
Aristotelian idea that goodness is relative to a thing's
*kind*. Individuals of different kinds have different ends
dictated by their natures: as long as the dog achieves the ends set
out by its nature, it counts as *fully* good of its canine
kind, even if it essentially lacks the good-making capacities (or
"realities") of beings higher on the chain. (For more on
Augustine's version, see King 2019; on Aquinas, see Davies
2019).



Privation Theory thus reduces pressure on monotheism: evil is not a
being but rather an absence, and so God did not create it. Moreover,
evil is the kind of absence that is *not* a function of the
essential natures of things, and so God cannot be faulted for creating
things that are essentially evil. Failing to accomplish the end set
out by one's nature--failing to be the way one
*ought* to be--*is* a privation, however, and so it
is evil.



Friends of Privation Theory offer different accounts of how and why
things fail to accomplish their natural end. Most ascribe the failure
to something *in* the individual creature--culpable
ignorance, Original Sin, free agency--rather than to God, thereby
grounding metaphysical evil in moral evil (on which see
 section 4.1
 below). The extent to which these appeals to privation succeed in
getting God off the hook is, naturally, controversial.



Plotinus's view is effectively a hybrid of Privation Theory and
Matter Theory: for him, privation only occurs when some of the matter
in something is unformed or unmastered by a form (see *Enneads*
I, 8, 5, 19-26). But even if other Privation Theorists do not
view privation in this way, the conception of evil as infinitely
distant from reason and intelligibility survives. In other words,
Ignorance, Original Sin, and other misuses of freedom are not
necessarily a function of irrational *matter*, but they are
still opposed to rational *mind*. Descartes is illustrative
here: for him, the *only* teleology (and privation) in the
world relates to the souls--and in particular the wills--of
human beings. Material substance is mechanistic, and aggregates of it
(in the forms of animals and plants) can be explained mechanistically,
without invoking teleology or kind-relative values (compare Newlands
2019).


#### 3.1.4 Real Property Theory



A fourth major account of the nature of metaphysical evil takes it to
be something more substantive than absence, privation, or unformed
matter. Call this the *Real Property Theory of Evil*: evil is
some sort of *reality*--a determinate feature of certain
finite beings (see J. Russell 1977, 1981, and Frankfurter 2006). Some
versions of this picture say that evil is ultimately dependent on the
good. Other, more Manichaean versions take the two to be coeval and
independent, locked in an eternal axiological struggle. Although the
relevant "property" here is supposed to have more reality
or substance than mere absence or privation, there is still a kind of
unintelligibility to it. The evil side of reality, the dark force, or
the malevolent will is a kind of black hole for the "natural
light" of reason--positively real, but inaccessible to
complete explanation.


### 3.2 Empirical Evil



*Empirical evil* is a capacious category: it covers bodily
pain, damage, and disease as well as the psychological
*concomitants* or *effects* of these physical
phenomena--suffering, terror, depression, mental illness.
Traditionally, it has also included social ills such as oppression,
poverty, and structural injustice (see Sharpe 1909). Philosophers who
believe in metaphysical evil often take them to manifest in empirical
evils. Philosophers who reject metaphysical evil, by contrast, take
the empirical kind to be fundamental.



Calling pain an evil might raise eyebrows, since clearly some pain is
beneficial: it protects us from collisions, diseases, and predators.
But the idea is that, whatever instrumental uses it has, pain *qua
phenomenal quality*--the *feeling* of it--is
*intrinsically* bad (setting aside for these purposes tricky
cases like that of the masochist who takes pleasure in experiencing
pain). Pain in the horrendous amounts and kinds that we encounter in
human history as well as in the "charnel house" of
evolutionary history is sickeningly and obviously bad (Murray 2008;
Martin & Watkins 2019).



The templates used to characterize metaphysical evil above can be
applied to empirical evil, too. An *Absence Theory* of
empirical evil construes it simply as the absence of
physical-psychological states of pleasure, health, stability, justice,
and even life. *Matter Theory* regards pain, disease, mental
malaise, and social ills as effects of our standing as material
beings, vulnerable to the "matter" in our organism
breaking down or coming into conflict with other parts of material
creation. *Privation Theory* says that empirical evil is the
absence of some such good which *ought* to exist. There will
then be different accounts of why the good ought to exist, and why it
doesn't--some of these will be based in a theory of
metaphysical evil.



A *Real Property Theory* of empirical evil, by contrast,
insists that pain and suffering are positive realities and not mere
absences (it is thus compatible with Matter Theory, but not with
Absence or Privation Theory). As Malebranche notes, this is
problematic in theological contexts, since God is supposed to be the
ground of all positive beings (see Malebranche 1674-5 [1997: 348
and 392]). In a letter to a mathematician named Arnold Eckhard, G.W.
Leibniz discusses this issue, and suggests "with some
scruples" that "pain too is a perfection" (1677
[1969: 177]). That is a fairly unusual view, one that is made
particularly poignant by the fact that Leibniz himself spent the last
few years of his life in immense pain. He apparently had a habit of
sleeping in a chair near his writing desk, and it



> 
> 
> led to his having an open sore on his right leg. This caused him
> difficulty in walking; he tried to remedy it, but only by putting
> blotting paper on it. Later, to reduce the pain and to make the nerves
> insensitive he had a number of wooden clamps made, and these he
> screwed onto himself wherever he felt pain. I suspect that by doing
> this he so damaged his nerves that eventually he could no longer use
> his feet and had to stay in bed. (Guhrauer 1842 [1966: vol 2, p.336];
> quoted in Mates 1989: 29)
> 
> 
> 



Although such pain is a "perfection" and thus a real
property, for Leibniz, it still involves a kind of weakness or
imperfection in the person who *has* it, and so God cannot, in
the end, exemplify this "perfection". Rather, God's
possession of maximal pleasure is somehow sufficient to ground the
"reality" that is found in both pleasure and pain (Leibniz
1677 [1969: 177]). This seems fishy, and other philosophers argue
against Leibniz that if pain is a real property (rather than a mere
absence), then God as the "ground of all reality" must
indeed exemplify it. Some recent theologians and philosophers even
welcome this idea, arguing that a conception of God as grounding
empirical evil by *suffering* it has advantages for projects in
theodicy (Hartshorne 1984; Wolterstorff 1988).



Mental illnesses can be classified as "empirical evils" if
we assume that they have empirical causes and neural bases
(Bhattacharjee 2018). Such illness often generates further empirical
evil in the form of inexplicably cruel or destructive behavior to self
and others, as will be familiar to anyone who has tried to live (or
love someone) with mental illnesses like posttraumatic stress disorder
(PTSD), borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, and so on. It
is unclear whether the theologians just mentioned would want to say
that this kind of empirical evil, too, must have its ground in the
divine by way of exemplification. The theological consequences of such
a suggestion seem unattractive, to say the least.


## 4. Origins of Evil: Moral and Natural


### 4.1 Moral Evil



*Moral evil* is metaphysical or empirical evil that arises out
of the acts or intentions of agents: other traditional terms for it
include "sin", "wickedness",
"trespass", and "iniquity".



Philosophers in the Abrahamic tradition typically hold that we can be
damaged by moral evil even before we have *performed* any
actions whatsoever. Augustine, for example, characterizes Original Sin
as a result of a primordial choice that *damaged* our very
nature such that each member of the species is born already worthy of
infinite punishment and strongly inclined to engage in further moral
evil. So this is a case of metaphysical evil that has its origin in
moral evil: bad choices on the part of the forefather led to damaged
natures all the way down the spermatic line.



Such metaphysical evil will often manifest in empirical evil (although
it need not do so); it also makes it likely that there will be further
metaphysical evil. Thus an initial moral choice starts off a kind of
snowballing into hellishness. It is clear why ancient and medieval and
even some contemporary responses to the "*Unde
Malum?*" question focus on how a morally uncorrupted
creature (Adam, Eve, or Lucifer) could have started the process in the
first place (see, e.g., Anselm *De Casu Diaboli*, vol.1 and
Johnston forthcoming).



Kant appropriates this idea in a modern context, arguing that we are
all originally afflicted by a *propensity* to moral evil
(*Hang zum Bosen*), even apart from any specific actions
that we perform. This "radical evil"--the
metaphysical evil at the root of our nature
("*radix*" = Latin for "root")--is
something for which not Adam but *we* as individual agents (or
perhaps the *species itself*) are somehow responsible. And this
is reflected even in garden-variety peccadillos: any act that
subordinates commitment to the moral law to something else is an
expression of radical evil. This makes it clear that people who use
"radical evil" to refer to something particularly
horrendous or awful (Arendt 1951, Bernstein 2002) are departing from
the Kantian concept (see
 Section 7
 below). That said, whether it is intelligible to say that we are
culpable for a status that is not *temporal* is a notoriously
open question in Kant-interpretation (see Card 2010, Wood 2010, and
other essays in Anderson-Gold & Muchnik 2010).



Although moral evildoing *often* leads to empirical evil, it
needn't do so, at least on non-utilitarian accounts. Some crimes
can be "victimless" at the empirical level.



Once again, the four traditional theoretical templates can be used to
further characterize the evil acts and intentions that make an evil
"moral".  *Absence Theory* says that the
*absence* of a good will--either because something lacks a
will altogether, or because its will is not good--is evil just by
way of being an absence. *Privation Theory* says that a will is
evil when it *ought* not have the absence of good orientation
that it does. *Matter Theory* says that our embodiment and
other engagements with matter explain the misorientation of our will.
*Real Property Theory* insists that a will that is oriented to
the bad is a *real* thing, and that its orientation to the bad
is a *real* feature of it, not just a privation.



Declaring that moral evil is rooted in the will does not fully
*explain* it. We would need a further account of *how*
evil choices are made--of what sort of moral psychology could
explain them. For Kant, explanation ceases at some point; evil
choices, at bottom, are irrational--surds that we can identify
and impute, but never fully explain. "There is no conceivable
ground for us, therefore, from which moral evil could first have come
in us" (Kant 1793 [AK 6:43; 1998: 64]).



Other philosophers offer partial explanations. Augustine says that
although there is no *determining* cause of the devil's
choice, it is able to be partly "rationalized" in terms of
Satan's self-obsessed delight in his own powers (see King 2019).
This is an early version of what is now called a
"dispositional" account of evil agency (L. Russell 2014:
ch.10; Kamtekar 2019). Early Islamic interpreters of the Qu'ran,
by contrast, offer explanations in terms of ignorance: there is
something that the supremely evil agent (Iblis) didn't realize,
or an inference that he failed to make, and this is what explains his
orientation to the bad (see Germann 2019).



Moral evil is what contemporary people--including
philosophers--tend to have in mind when they talk of
"evil". Extreme forms of it are viewed by many
philosophers view as "unintelligible"--as defying
ordinary explanation in significant and threatening ways. Such extreme
and unintelligible moral evils are what many philosophers (though not
Kant) are referring to when they speak of "radical" evil
(Arendt 1951; L. Russell 2014; see also
 Section 7).


### 4.2 Natural Evil



*Natural evil* refers to metaphysical and/or empirical evils
whose origins are "natural"--i.e., grounded in the
natures of things and/or the natural laws. The very nature of a horse
makes it incapable of language: if that incapacity is a metaphysical
evil (as it would be on Absence Theory), then given its origin it also
counts as a natural rather than a moral evil. Likewise, cancer,
pandemics, earthquakes, meteor strikes, aging and perhaps even death
itself are (typically) regarded as natural rather than moral evils. In
the tradition there are characterizations of natural evil that use one
or more of the four templates discussed earlier: *Absence*,
*Privation*, malfunctions in *Matter*, or some other
*Real Property*.



Outside of religious contexts, however, many philosophers (and people
generally) will be reluctant to characterize hurricanes, diseases, and
meteor strikes as a source of "evil". The very idea of
natural *evil* seems most at home in theological debates: can
the Author of Nature be supremely good, wise, and powerful and yet
still create a world that contains so much pain and suffering, not to
mention Category Five hurricanes, animal predation, and
Alzheimer's Disease?



There are different kinds of responses to the problem of natural evil
in theological traditions: *Aesthetic* responses say that we
don't presently have the right perspective to see the overall
beauty of the natural system, and thus that there really is no natural
evil; *Soul-making* responses say that this present vale of
natural evil is justified because it gives us the chance to become
virtuous; *Skeptical theistic* responses say that given our
limited faculties we cannot reasonably *expect* to understand
why God would allow natural evils. (For more on these responses see M.
Adams 1998, Tooley 2002 [2019]).



A very different kind of response involves recharacterizing at least
some natural evils as moral evils. For instance, we might focus on
ways in which human activity has set in motion the kinds of
environmental, climatic, microbial, and biospheric changes that lead
to "natural" disasters, pandemics, famines, and other
empirical evils. Or, in a more religious context, we might seek to
explain the suffering and misery caused by "nature" by
appeal to sin, karmic law, or divine justice.



On some versions of this view, the morally responsible agent can be
someone other than the victim: Adam sins, and now the non-human
"creation has been growning" (*Romans* 8:22,
NRSV)--and makes the rest of us groan along with it. Or: we emit
the greenhouse gasses, and our descendants three generations later
suffer.



Other versions insist that the fault lies with the victim of natural
evil himself: Eliphaz the Temanite says to Job



> 
> 
> Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?
>   
> 
> Or where were the upright cut off?
>   
> 
> As I have seen, those who plow iniquity
>   
> 
> and sow trouble reap the same.
>   
> 
> By the breath of God they perish,
>   
> 
> and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.
>   
> 
> The roar of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion,
>   
> 
> and the teeth of the young lions are broken.
>   
> 
> (*Job* 4: 7-10, NRSV)
> 
> 
> 



Eliphaz suggests that if Job continues to suffer, then there must be
some explanation for these natural evils in Job's own past
behavior. The risk in this kind of doctrine will be obvious to less
ancient sensibilities: to suggest that a victim of natural evil must
be morally responsible for it seems like the very definition of adding
insult to injury.



Another way to recharacterize natural evil as moral evil is by
appealing to the actions of moral agents who are neither divine nor
human. This appears to have been Augustine's position in places;
more recently, it has been invoked by Alvin Plantinga as an at least
*broadly logically possible* scenario which could be used in a
"defense" against the logical problem of evil (Tooley 2002
[2019]). The scenario says that



> 
> 
> [n]atural evil is due to the free actions of nonhuman persons; there
> is a balance of good over evil with respect to the actions of these
> nonhuman persons; and it was not within the power of God to create a
> world that contains a more favorable balance of good over evil with
> respect to the actions of the nonhuman persons it contains. (Plantinga
> 1989: 58)
> 
> 
> 



A final way to recharacterize natural evil as moral would simply be to
hold *God alone* morally blameworthy for it, since God created
a world in which sentient creatures suffer so terribly. Obviously this
would not be a winning strategy if the goal is a successful theodicy.
Indeed, some theistic traditions block this route *a priori* by
saying that it is conceptually impossible for God to do wrong: a
perfect creator is either unbound by moral principles, or essentially
incapable of violating them (see Murphy 2017).



If these efforts to locate a moral basis for natural evil (whether
empirical or metaphysical) are unsuccessful, then
"natural" remains a distinct category of evil's
origin.



Here again is our Table of Evils, now with more examples that go
beyond Nietzsche's horse case:





|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Origins: | *Natural* | *Moral* | *Spooky non-agential* |
| Kinds: |  |
| *Metaphysical* | The finitude and other limitations that are essential to an
individual or species-nature and that are ultimately based in facts
about natures. | The finitude, limitations, and corruption that are essential to
an individual or species-nature and the result of damage to natures,
which damage is ultimately based in facts about immoral acts and
intentions (e.g., Original Sin) | The finitude, limitations, and corruption that are essential to
an individual or species-nature and are ultimately based in facts
about a dark force or shadow-side principle in reality. |
| *Empirical* | Pain, suffering, and illness (including mental) whose ultimate
explanation consists in causal facts (e.g., aging, accidents, genetic
defects, disasters and other natural phenomena). | Pain, suffering, and illness (including mental) whose ultimate
explanation consists in facts about immoral acts and intentions (e.g.,
interpersonal violence, social ills, self-harm) | Pain, suffering, and illness (including mental) whose ultimate
explanation consists in facts about a dark force or shadow-side
principle in reality. |



Figure 2. The Table of Evils, with
general examples




Some types of evil do not seem to fit nicely in the Table of Evils.
The three dealt with in what follows are *systemic evil, symbolic
evil*, and *radical evil*. The nature and the origins of
such evils are difficult to discern, and may require an expansion of
the Table.


## 5. Systemic Evil



*Systemic evil* is the kind of evil that exists at the level of
systems or groups rather than merely at the level of individuals.
Organized structures like governments, corporations, teams, and
religious institutions can be evil in this way; so can more
loosely-organized systems such as "Academia", "White
Supremacy", and "Wall Street". Indeed, Google
includes the motto "Don't Be Evil" in
its *Company Code of Conduct* (for the origins of this, see
Chang 2019); disgruntled employees later sued the company alleging
that it had violated that pledge (Allyn 2021).



Systemic evil seems empirical rather than metaphysical, but its
origins are difficult to identify. It does not appear to be a merely
natural phenomenon, or a spooky non-agential one, and yet its
supra-agential character makes it seem not entirely moral either.



Hannah Arendt's early work on totalitarianism (1951) depicts
systemic evil as a kind of empirical evil for which *no*
individual or even collection of individuals is fully responsible. The
cogs in the machine, as well as the leader or leadership, may be the
origin of some of the harms involved, but the evil of the whole
structure (on Arendt's view) is somehow greater than the sum
produced by its parts.



Racism is another prominent example of systemic evil. Recent accounts
of entrenched racist structures in certain societies (the United
States, for instance) suggest that such evil has its origin not merely
in actions and intentions but also in *omissions* and
*passivity:* people who do *not* explicitly support the
systemic evil can count as agents of it. If this is right, then active
work against the evil in question--"anti-racist"
activity rather than "non-racist" activity, for
example--becomes morally required (Kendi 2019). But even such
active opposition efforts may not be sufficient to avoid complicity in
systemic evil: some theorists argue that even anti-racist people
living in racist societies are "tainted" by its evil all
the same (Rothstein 2017). That leads to the next kind of problem
case.


## 6. Symbolic Evil



*Symbolic value* is a less familiar idea in philosophy than it
is in Anthropology, Religious Studies, and the other social sciences
that deal with production, exchange, and consumption. The main idea is
that an object or act can have far more "symbolic" value
to a certain individual than its exchange or monetary value on some
market or other, typically because of its causal history. That bauble
given to you by a now-deceased friend has far more symbolic value (to
you, at least) than the monetary or exchange value that it would fetch
at auction. This is because the gift had its origin in the generosity
of a friend who has since died, has the ability to invoke his memory,
and so on.



Symbolic *disvalue* works in an analogous way. Products that
fetch a certain monetary value on an open market may have significant
symbolic *disvalue* that is not reflected in their price. This
disvalue often arises, again, from the product's provenance: an
industrial chicken sandwich is a result of the obscene degradation of
animals, workers, and the environment on the part of an industry that
pays revolving-door lobbyists to promote food policy that, in turn,
keeps production costs and prices artificially low, in part by
externalizing most of the harms it causes. In some cases, such
disvalue may be significant enough to make purchasing the product
wrong, even if doing so does not lead, causally, to any actual harm or
rights-infringement (see Chignell 2016).



The term "evil" is typically only applied in cases of
symbolic disvalue when there is something excessive about them.
Stepping on a flag or consuming a chicken sandwich might have some
symbolic disvalue, but it would be strange to say that these are cases
of symbolic *evil*. Having anything to do with soap made from
the body fat of people murdered at the Stutthof concentration camp, by
contrast, seems downright evil, even if the intended consequences
(i.e., getting oneself clean) are good. Indeed, the symbolic evil
attached to such a product may "touch" everyone who was
part of the society that permitted its manufacture, whether they were
directly involved or not. The evil of sustained chattel slavery may
have a similar sort of symbolic power, even generations later.



Both the nature and the origins of symbolic evil are hard to
characterize; thus it is hard to see where it fits in the Table of
Evils. Is there a metaphysical aspect to symbolic evil, or is it fully
empirical? Is its origin entirely natural, or moral, or is there
something spooky and non-agential about it? A related set of
difficulties has to do with the fact that, in some contexts anyway,
the transfer of symbolic disvalue operates via the complex logic of
"taint", contagion, or uncleanness. Some philosophers who
write about symbolic value argue that the only way to avoid being
"touched" by such evil is via active and explicit
*dissociation*--a symbolic "standing with the
good" (R. Adams 1999). In other words, even if our abstinence
does not make a difference, we must *symbolically* oppose an
evil practice by, say, explicitly signaling opposition and (where
possible) refusing to consume or benefit from its results (see Hill
1983; Appiah 1986).


## 7. Radical Evil: Four Conceptions



Kant is the source of "radical evil", but his way of using
the term is now out of favor. In fact, most people writing on this
issue use the term in a precisely non-Kantian way to refer to
something spectacularly excessive--an act or event whose badness
is deeper and more mysterious than the badness of ordinary states or
activities (Bernstein 2002).



In her famous account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem,
Arendt (1963) promoted the idea that even the worst evils can be
"banal" and bureaucratical. A decade earlier, however, she
conceived of "radical evil" quite differently. In a March
1951 letter to Karl Jaspers she wrote:



> 
> 
> We know that the greatest evils or radical evil has nothing to do
> anymore with humanly understandable, sinful motives. What radical evil
> is I don't know, but it seems to me to somehow have to do with
> the following phenomenon: *making human beings as human beings
> superfluous*. (Arendt & Jaspers 1992: 166, emphasis added)
> 
> 
> 



Arendt went on in the letter to insist that "making human beings
as human beings superfluous" is not the same as treating them as
"mere means to an end". She thus rejected the Kantian view
that radical evil--no matter how benign or awful the
effects--has its root (Latin: *radix*) in the willful
violation of the categorical imperative by individual free agents (see
Louden 2010: 98).



Jaspers's view of radical evil, by contrast, was consistently
non-exotic and Kantian: "there is evil because there is freedom.
*It is only possible for the will alone to be evil*"
(Jaspers 1947 [1958: 532], emphasis added). According to one
commentator, this focus on human freedom as the root of *all*
evil is "significant and commendable":



> 
> 
> Kant [and following him Jaspers] refuses to cater to our prurient
> craving for a special account that applies especially to the most
> extreme cases of evil.... He fears that occupying our
> imaginations with extreme cases of evil may be merely a way of
> indulging some of our nastier human traits--rationalizing our
> resentment and vindictiveness by supplying it with an object that
> would seem to justify it. (Wood 2010: 157)
> 
> 
> 



The concerns expressed in these passages are common in discussions of
the nature and origins of evil. Call them *Jaspersian concerns*
for short. They are second-order concerns about how we should conceive
and speak of evil, especially when calling it "radical".
The concerns fall into two broad kinds: (1) concerns about
*exoticizing* wrongdoing with excess-locutions like
"evil" and "radical"; and (2) concerns about
*tainting* people and things that are touched by such evil,
beyond the straightforward condemnation of the perpetrators (for more
on such concerns, see Card 2002, Cole 2006, and Calder 2013
[2018]).



The Kantian conception of radical evil is considered in the next
sub-section. Sections 7.2-7.4 survey three other conceptions and
look at how each might raise Jaspersian concerns.


### 7.1 Radical Evil as Violation of the Moral Law



Kant argues in *Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone*
(1793) that free choices against the moral law are unintelligible in
the sense that they are *irrational*; our propensity to make
them is thus an inexplicable mystery at the "root"
(*radix*) of our moral psychology. The post-Kantian idealist
F.W. J. Schelling, picking up the refrain, rejects the Privation
Theory of radical evil in favor of the view that it has its origin in
the positive, irrational decision to prefer self-advantage over the
moral law, though "just how the decision for good or evil comes
to pass in the individual, that is still wrapped in total
darkness" (Schelling 1809 [1936: 59]).



On the Kantian view of radical evil, then, there is a normative sense
in which it is "unintelligible": it is an
*irrational* propensity and thus cannot be
"understood" in the sense that it cannot be sanctioned by
proper reason. Likewise, an immoral choice cannot be fully explained:
full explanations appeal to good reasons, and there are no good
reasons for wrongdoing.



There is a broader sense of "understand" or
"explain", however, in which such evil is no mystery at
all: it is the most depressingly familiar thing in the world. Everyday
immoral agents presumably see what they are doing under the aspect of
*some* good or other--good for their company, good for
their bonuses, good for their reelection efforts--even if they
also know that what they are doing is ultimately wrong. If we
interpret the war cry of Milton's Satan--"Evil be
thou my good!" (1667, *Paradise Lost*, Bk IV, line
110)--as implying that he is taking evil under the guise of the
good, then it is not absurd. But it is still not *wholly*
intelligible, either.



The Kantian conception of radical evil, then, says that that the
unintelligibility of wrongdoing does not prevent us from assigning
blame, holding perpetrators responsible, and refusing to taint the
innocent. This explains why Jaspers found the conception so
attractive:



> 
> 
> To rank the will to happiness, which dominates among men's
> motives, above the unconditioned law that shows itself in
> reason--*that* is the root of evil, the
> "propensity" which Kant calls "radical evil".
> (Jaspers 1962: 321)
> 
> 
> 


### 7.2. Radical Evil as Choosing Evil for its own Sake



Some philosophers, and more than a few novelists and screenwriters,
find the view that agents are always choosing under "the guise
of the good" as inadequate to the psychology of extreme
malevolence. It may have suited the melioristic conceptions of the
Enlightenment, but the well-publicized, mechanized horrors of the
recent past allegedly demand a bleaker picture of perpetrator
psychology. Serial killers, murderous dictators, torturers,
derivatives traders: the idea is that at least some of these malign
actors *see their own actions as atrocious*--as making the
world worse rather than better on the whole (and sometimes worse for
themselves)--and yet still choose to perform them. They are thus
not saying "Evil be thou my good", at least on the
interpretation just offered. Rather, they are self-consciously
*male-volent:* they *will the bad under the aspect of the
bad*. And yet they are not insane--this is what makes their
actions especially difficult for the rest of us to understand. This is
a second common way in which the term "radical evil" is
used. (See Pauer-Studer and Velleman 2015 for a reading of Milton
according to which Satan's war cry is interpreted in this
way.)



Augustine reports in his *Confessions* that during the pears
incident he took pleasure in



> 
> 
> the theft and sin itself.... Behold, now, let me heart tell Thee
> what it was seeking there, that I should be gratuitously wanton,
> having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I
> loved it ... I loved my own error - not that for which I
> erred, but the error itself. (*Confessions* Bk 2, Chap. IV,
> paragraph 9 [1876: 30])
> 
> 
> 



It is tempting to say that in "loving the sin itself",
Augustine was in some sense taking it to be good. But he at least
gestures here at this second conception of radical evil: some acts can
be performed under the aspect of their own abject deformation and
rottenness--as ultimately bad even for the agent himself.



As we have seen, the Prussian philosopher who coined the term
"radical evil" 1400 years later did *not* think
that it can involve choosing evil for its own sake. In fact, Kant
argues that such a "diabolical" conception of evil is
incoherent or at least psychologically inapplicable to human beings.
Kant's skepticism, however, did not prevent Dostoyevsky from
composing *Notes from the Underground* (1864) as an extended
and somewhat plausible portrait of one man's effort to choose
evil *qua* evil. And there are more recent accounts of people
who confess--in private diaries or braggadocios
depositions--that they did what they did *because* it was
evil.



In this context, consider (if you can bear it) Stone 2009's
portraits of the worst serial killers: although some perpetrators
report that they take what they are doing to be good--ridding the
world of "garbage women", giving someone his "just
deserts", correctly following the orders of the voices in their
head, and so on--others openly admit that what they are doing is
bad, wrong, evil, despicable, and so on. In such cases, the
perpetrators are not making a series of unsound inferences, or
mistaking the bad for the good. Rather, they seem to be engaged in a
self-conscious turning away from anything that could be regarded as
good by *anyone*. Radical evil on this conception is sometimes
described as a self-conscious turning away from *being itself*
(Eagleton 2009: 16; L. Russell 2014: 23).



If Augustine's confessions about the pears--or these more
spectacular recent confessions--are accurate, then there may be
(*contra* Kant) a baffling diabolical state that some people
can fall into, and that the rest of us cannot entirely fathom. The
unintelligibility here thus threatens to raise Jaspersian concerns
about exoticization and taint.


### 7.3. Radical Evil as Repudiation of the Moral Law



A third conception of "radical evil" takes the term to
refer to acts or practices (like slavery and genocide) that do not
merely violate rational principles but also constitute an effort to
*repudiate* moral rationality altogether, or at least to
transcend it. When we steal or lie, there is a sense in which we might
be failing to treat others with the respect that they deserve. And as
we have seen, Kant does not hesitate to view such irrational choices
as stemming from our propensity to "radical evil". But
radical evil on this third conception is different: it involves an
intentional refusal to acknowledge that some group of persons has
*any moral standing at all*--the kind of moral standing
that would prohibit us from instigating or complying with their
humiliation, degradation, or extinction.



Radical evil of this sort, in other words, denies the universal
scope--and thus, perhaps, the very existence--of the moral
sphere altogether. It is *anti-rational* rather than *merely
irrational*: this is what threatens to make it incomprehensible or
inexplicable in a unique way. This is also presumably what the early
Arendt means when she says that radical evil involves making human
beings "superfluous".



By way of analogy: suppose that ordinary moral wrongdoing is like
making a bad move in chess, or like cheating by moving one's
pieces in an illegal way when one's opponent isn't
looking. A radically evil act on the present conception, by contrast,
would be like crushing all of the opponent's pieces and upending
the table. The player who does the latter is no longer or perhaps
never was a player: she cannot explain her behavior by saying that she
was trying to win by making what turned out to be a bad move or a
cheat. She cannot explain her behavior *in terms of chess* at
all. Likewise, a radically evil act is supposed to transcend the terms
of moral rationality.



The analogy extends only so far, however. That's because there
are still some reasonable explanations left to our
non-player--explanations external to the game:



> 
> 
> I was hungry, so I crushed all of your pieces and swept them off the
> board in the hopes that you would suggest lunch.
> 
> 
> 



By contrast, it is not obvious how there can be *any* credible
reason given for doing something that constitutes a denial of
*reason* altogether. That is why radical evil in the
repudiative sense threatens to be uniquely unintelligible and
troubling. If someone--not a beast or a machine, but a human
being--acts in a way that entirely disclaims not just an
awareness of moral authority but also the basic rules of moral reason
altogether, he effectively places himself in an antelapsarian state,
unburdened with the knowledge of good and evil. His act asserts that
he has transcended entirely the moral sphere--that what he does
*cannot* be wrong.



Can human beings really perpetrate radical evil in this sense? Richard
Ramirez, the "Night Stalker" serial killer in 1980's
Los Angeles, certainly took himself to be doing so. He repeatedly
snuck into people's houses to rape and kill them, sometimes
cutting off body parts and taking them with him. After his fourteenth
murder, he was caught and then boasted to his captors:



> 
> 
> You don't understand me... you are not capable of it. I am
> beyond good and evil...I love to kill people. I love to watch
> them die. I would shoot them in the head and they would wiggle and
> squirm... I love all that blood. (quoted in Stone 2009: 208).
> 
> 
> 



This idea--that a human being could do something that would
*enact* his own transcendence of moral norms, make other
persons superfluous, and establish his own status as somehow
"beyond good and evil"--is what concerned Karl
Jaspers, and what he was hoping Arendt would resist. In her
face-to-face confrontation with the quotidian, bureaucratic evil of
Adolf Eichmann, she seems to have changed her mind (though see
Cesarani 2007 and Margalit 2019 for a portrait of Eichmann that
resists her famous "banality thesis"). But even if Arendt
ultimately repudiated the repudiative conception of radical evil,
others remain sympathetic to some version of it (e.g., Bernstein 2002
and Motzkin 2019).


### 7.4. Radical Evil as Systemic Evil: Human Beings Made Superfluous in Another Way



"Systemic" or "structural" evil exists at the
level of groups, networks, races, and collectives rather than merely
at the level of individuals (see
 section 5).
 The fourth conception of "radical evil" applies the
concept to particularly rampant or entrenched evils of the systemic
sort.



Although Arendt's interest was in totalitarian state systems,
contemporary philosophers are equally interested in non-state but
still super-human systems: corporations, collectives, markets,
artificial intelligences. These are now some of the most potent
sources of value and disvalue at work in the world. As noted in
 section 5,
 the nature of systemic evil is empirical, but its origin is more
difficult to grasp. Corporations have boardrooms and executive suites,
and are even treated as persons by some legal systems, but (as
investigation after investigation indicates) it is hard to find the
heart of their darkness when assigning responsibility. Still-powerful
systems of white supremacy are based in structures of which no
individual human mind was or is fully aware (Rothstein 2017).
Likewise, markets, algorithms, blockchains, and various forms of
artificial intelligence arise out of innumerable individual human
efforts, but are also *designed* to make human beings
superfluous in a literal and unprecedented way. Some of this is and
will be for the good--there are already fewer back-broken menial
laborers in the fields or exhaust-guzzling toll collectors on the
highways. But some will surely be for the bad, and in ways that are
not foreseeable. Radical systemic evil--especially in a
technological age--does not seem natural or spooky, but it does
not seem fully moral either.



In sum: although natural, moral, and spooky non-agential conceptions
of the origins of evil were the focus of most traditional discussions
of the origins of evil, it looks like some varieties of radical evil
have a different origin altogether--one that is not entirely
intelligible. This raises Jaspersian concerns: a world in which
(non-Kantian) radical evils are widespread is one in which ascriptions
of moral responsibility are increasingly difficult to make.