Taking atrocities as paradigms of evil, this book develops the theory that evils (plural) are foreseeable, intolerable harms produced by culpable wrongdoing. It places this theory in relation to others put forward by historically influential philosophers (Jeremy Bentham, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, the ancient Stoics), places the concept of evil in relation to other ethically important concepts (such as justice and equality), and considers case studies: rape in war, domestic violence, child abuse, and “gray zones” understood as certain predicaments of people who are at once victims and perpetrators.
Contesting Nietzsche's rejection of the concept “evil,” this book holds it important to distinguish as evils the very worst wrongs and show how they differ from ordinary wrongs (which are bad but do not make lives intolerable); it finds the concept “evil” rooted not in the envy of the impotent (as Nietzsche thought) but in the belief in entitlement to decent treatment. On the atrocity theory, the nature and severity of harm, rather than degrees of perpetrator culpability, distinguish evils from ordinary wrongs. Intermediate between stoicism and utilitarianism, the atrocity theory treats both wrongful willing and harm as essential components of evils but finds neither all wrongful willing (but only what produces intolerable harm) nor all intolerable harm (but only what issues from wrongful willing) to be evil. Like Kant (in the Stoic tradition), it treats evil as an ethical concept, but it extends Kant's moral psychology in reexamining the possibility (which he rejected) of what he called “diabolical evil,” namely, doing evil for evil's sake.
Unjust inequalities need not be evils, although they are wrong; to be an evil, an injustice must be intolerably harmful, not merely exhibit arbitrary inequality. Hence, political activists, including feminists, should prioritize addressing genuine evils (such as war rape) over eliminating such inequities as the arbitrary exclusion of women from certain occupations. Two chapters examine legacies of past evils, considering forgiveness, mercy, gratitude (for mercy or forgiveness), guilt, and punishment in reflecting on how best to live with evils we have not escaped suffering or avoided perpetrating. The final chapter uses Primo Levi's concept of “gray zones” to construct an all‐too‐human account of diabolical evil, namely, the deliberate and successful pursuit of moral corruption of others as an alternative to the conception Kant rejected.
