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Evil: A History edited by Andrew Chignell: What, if anything, is evil? Is it just badness by another name? Is it the shadow side of good, or is it an active force opposed to the good in a Manichean/Star Wars kind of way? Does evil have its source in something personal—a malevolent, striving will that makes the universe tend not just to entropic winding-down but also to outbreaks of targeted hellishness? These are some of the main ontological questions that philosophers raise about evil. There are related epistemological questions: Can we really know evil? Does a victim know evil in a way that is entirely different from the way a perpetrator or witness knows it? Does a perpetrator know evil as evil at all? There are also psychological questions: what motivates people to perpetrate evil? Satan’s rebellion, Iago’s machinations, and Stalin’s gulags might be hard to grasp. But what about less remarkable evils: Can we make sense of how former vacuum oil salesman Adolf Eichmann could regard himself as an effective bureaucrat? And what about structural and symbolic evils—can they be explained in terms of actions on the part of individuals? In Evil: A History, 13 original essays tell the story of the concept of evil in the west, starting with its origins in early Hebrew wisdom literature and ending with evolutionary theory and the Holocaust. 13 separate reflections contextualize these developments by considering evil through the eyes of poets, mystics, witches, librettists, directors, livestock, and a Google product manager.
What, if anything, is evil?
All of reality is a dance between unity and division.
Evil is that division expressed in human form. Love is the unity expressed in human form.
Or, in computer language, zeros and ones.