The Positive Function of Evil

The Positive Function of Evil Also by Pedro Alexis Tabensky HAPPINESS: PERSONHOOD, COMMUNITY, PURPOSE JUDGING AND UND...

Author: Pedro Alexis Tabensky

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The Positive Function of Evil

Also by Pedro Alexis Tabensky HAPPINESS: PERSONHOOD, COMMUNITY, PURPOSE JUDGING AND UNDERSTANDING: ESSAYS ON FREE WILL, NARRATIVE, MEANING AND THE MORAL LIMITS OF CONDEMNATION (editor)

The Positive Function of Evil Edited by

Pedro Alexis Tabensky Department of Philosophy Rhodes University

Selection and editorial matter© Pedro Alexis Tabensky 2009 Chapters © their authors 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identiﬁed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-21955-7 ISBN-10: 0-230-21955-1

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Sally, for her loving support and formidable intellectual presence, and to Noah, for being a superlative brute

Damocles never danced better than beneath the sword. (Albert Camus, citing Nietzsche)

Contents Acknowledgements

viii

Notes on Contributors

ix

Introductory Remarks

xii

1

Love and the Problem of Evil Robert Merrihew Adams

1

2

Wrong that is Right? The Paradox of the ‘Felix Culpa’ Geoffrey Scarre

14

3

Love and Emotional Reactions to Necessary Evils Thaddeus Metz

28

4

Shadows of Goodness Pedro Alexis Tabensky

45

5

“Moral Beauty Happens” Richard H. Bell

66

6

Murdochian Evil and Striving to be Good Heather Widdows

81

7

Tragedy and Reparation Elisa Galgut

98

8

The Psychology of Evil: A Contribution from Psychoanalysis Michael Lacewing

112

9

Good Citizens and Moral Heroes Adam Morton

127

10 The Moral Significance of Evil John Kekes

139

11 The Virtues of the Useless: On Goodness, Evil and Beauty Samantha Vice

155

Bibliography

172

Index

178

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Acknowledgements I have been worrying about the central issues explored in this collection for a few years, particularly since moving to South Africa in 2001 and finding in South Africa an interesting and disturbing blend of the redemptive and the horrible, and I have decided finally to bring a group of authors together to think with me and to enlighten me (and hopefully also the reader of this collection) about the issues motivating this project. And, indeed, I have been enlightened and, for this reason, I have all contributors to this collection (but myself) to thank. I would also like to thank Palgrave Macmillan, and particularly Priyanka Pathak, for believing in the project and supporting it. A special word of appreciation must also be extended to Springer Science and Business Media for kindly allowing me to re-publish Robert Merrihew Adams’ fine piece (Chapter 1 of this collection), which originally appeared in Philosophia. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Rhodes University Department of Philosophy for providing me with a supportive and inspiring environment. Here, in the antipode, relatively detached from the centres of philosophical power, interesting directions for philosophy are silently being explored.

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Notes on Contributors Robert Merrihew Adams taught philosophy for 35 years at the University of Michigan, UCLA, and Yale. He is now a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Mansfield College, Oxford, and Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the University of Oxford. He has published influential articles and books in ethical theory, metaphysics, the philosophy of religion, and the history of modern philosophy. Richard H. Bell is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. He is author of Simone Weil: The Way of Justice as Compassion (1998); Understanding African Philosophy: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Classical and Contemporary Issues (2002); and Rethinking Justice: Restoring Our Humanity (2007). Since retiring from The College of Wooster in December of 2003 he has taught at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa in 2004 and continues to write and teach in the area of African Philosophy. Elisa Galgut teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town. Her research interests lie in the areas of aesthetics, particularly literary aesthetics, the philosophy of psychoanalysis, and the application of psychoanalysis to readers’ responses to literature. She has published articles in these areas in peer-reviewed journals and in anthologies; she has also published poetry in local peer-reviewed literary journals. John Kekes, after many years, first as Professor of Philosophy and then as Research Professor, has retired and now works as an independent author. His many books include Facing Evil (Princeton, 1990), The Roots of Evil (Cornell, 2005), and most recently Enjoyment (Oxford, 2008). He is at work on The Human Condition: A Secular View. Michael Lacewing is Director of Research and Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College, London. His research interests lie in the philosophy of psychoanalysis, especially epistemological issues and ethical implications. He has published on the nature of unconscious emotions, ethical deliberation, the limitations of practical reason, and the implications of philosophical theories of emotion for models of therapy. He is a co-editor of The Academic Face of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2007). ix

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Notes on Contributors

Thaddeus Metz is Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and in 2009 will be Humanities Research Professor at the University of Johannesburg. His research addresses the meaning of life and the moral, political and legal implications of both African and Kantian ethics. His articles have appeared in journals that include Ethics, Religious Studies, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy and Public Affairs, The Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, The Journal of Political Philosophy, and Law and Philosophy. Adam Morton writes on the boundary of the philosophy of mind and ethics, and on epistemology-decision theory, which for him is one subject. His most recent book is On Evil (Routledge, 2004) and he is now writing on bounded rationality and on imagination in ethics. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Epistemology and Decision Theory at the University of Alberta. Geoffrey Scarre is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, UK. In recent years he has taught and published mainly in the areas of moral theory and applied ethics. His latest books are Death (Acumen/McGillQueens, 2007), Mill’s On Liberty: A Reader’s Guide (Continuum, 2007) and the edited collection (with Chris Scarre) The Ethics of Archaeology (CUP, 2006). His current projects include a book On Courage to be published by Routledge in 2009. Pedro Alexis Tabensky lectures in philosophy at Rhodes University in South Africa. He is the author of Happiness: Personhood, Community, Purpose (2003) and of several publications in peer-reviewed journals. Tabensky is also the editor of Judging and Understanding: Essays on Free Will, Narrative, Meaning and the Ethical Limits of Condemnation (2006). He is currently working on two monographs: one on the issues explored in the present collection and another defending a new position in the free will debate which rejects the standard divisions within the determinist camp and explores the ethical implications of this rejection. Samantha Vice is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Rhodes University. She is co-editor, with Nafsika Athanassoulis, of The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and, with Ward E. Jones, of Ethics at the Cinema (forthcoming for Oxford University Press). She has published papers on impartiality and partiality in moral theories, on Iris Murdoch, and on the concept of the Good. Heather Widdows is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham. Her research interests include

Notes on Contributors xi

virtue ethics, especially the philosophy of Iris Murdoch, global ethics, feminism and bioethical issues. She is Lead Editor of the Journal of Global Ethics and her publications include a monograph, The Moral Vision of Iris Murdoch, and an edited collection, Women’s Reproductive Rights, in addition to articles and book chapters on all her areas of interest.

Introductory Remarks The collection in a nutshell With the exception of Robert Merrihew Adams’ contribution (Chapter 1), ‘Love and the Problem of Evil’,1 this is a collection of especially commissioned essays. What unites all contributions is that they engage with the controversial idea that evil, broadly conceived, may have a central positive function to play in our lives. Adams’ contribution plays the double role – the bridging role one could say – of representing the theodicy tradition from which the key concerns that define this collection largely originate while at the same time engaging with the relevant issues from the largely secular point of view.2 The central claim explored in this collection is not merely that good things follow from evil at times – a relatively uncontroversial claim – but that evil plays a constitutive role in bringing about certain key, primarily but not exclusively ethical, goods, such that, were the world fundamentally to lack evils, large and small, ethical and natural, we would be even worse off than we currently are from the ethical point of view or simply worse off all things considered.3 Another closely related issue that will be explored is the role that evil may play in allowing us properly to recognize goodness as such. This is what could be characterized as the epistemic, as opposed to ontological, aspect of the idea being explored in this collection of essays. It must be pointed out that the conception of evil informing this collection as a whole, but not necessarily the contributions of individual authors, is extremely broad and includes most varieties of evil considered by the Christian theological tradition, with the important exception that the central concerns here are secular. The broad conception of evil at issue is indeed a close relative of the concept of badness, but these concepts are not identical insofar as, among other things, we often reserve the term ‘evil’ for certain especially heinous varieties of what can only inadequately be characterized as (very) bad (but the term is not always used in this narrow sense). The deeds of tyrants are indeed evil and to claim merely that they are bad or very bad is, it seems me, to deflate the sheer terribleness of the deeds of tyrants (see, for instance, Susan Neiman [2002], p. xv). And, I may mention that I agree with those who, like Phillip Cole (2006), have pointed out that descriptions xii


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of certain people as evil – Arabs, Jews or alleged witches for instance – can have a dehumanizing function. But, contrary to Cole, who is an eliminativist about evil, all I conclude from this is that we must be careful in our use of ‘evil’ so as to avoid dehumanizing others. Cole, it must be noted, holds a rather narrow conception of evil – demonic evil (and indeed it is dehumanizing to refer to a human being as a demon or a monster) – which he argues, and I agree, is incoherent, but the concept of evil as such does not fall with the fall of the concept of demonic evil. Friedrich Nietzsche, it should also be noted, at least according to one pervasive interpretation of his work, thought little of evil, but his conception of evil, explored most famously in his Genealogy of Morals, was also quite narrow and I could agree with him that slave morality (good/evil morality as opposed to ‘noble’ good/bad morality) should be eliminated and still think that talk of evil is acceptable and informative, without inconsistency. The conception of evil that informs this collection is broader than badness, for things can be evil and not properly described as bad or very bad and, also, all things that are bad or very bad can be characterized as evil, insofar as it makes sense to talk about big, small and even petty evils. And, also, not all evils are brought about by agents. It is informative to claim that devastating earthquakes are evil, even if we do not believe in a divine creator. And some individuals are so very evil that one finds it difficult to imagine how their deeds could be those of agents (one can say this without necessarily dehumanizing). In extreme cases it is easier at times to imagine such perpetrators as being pushed along by blind processes, like earthquakes. For one of the things that radical evil often does is defy reason, defy explanation in the terms we normally use to describe the behaviour of agents. So ‘evil’ can mean quite a few things, but its possible uses are not identical to the uses of ‘bad’, despite the fact that the overlap is substantial. The idea that evil may play a key positive role in our lives has been explored for centuries by theologians (and philosophers of religion, if one wishes to make the distinction), but it is an idea that has not been explored in any significant detail from the secular point of view, so the collection fills a gap within the field of ethics. Moreover, the gap in question needs filling in insofar as understanding the proper relationship between goodness and evil will allow us to understand better the nature of the goals that we should aspire to achieve and the relationship between these goals and the space which bestows significance upon them, which allow these goals to show up as genuinely worthwhile. If the presence of evil is indeed constitutive of a good life, our ethical understandings will, it seems, require important adjustments.

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One aspect of ethical theorizing that could go if we assume that indeed the presence of evils, large and small, is necessary for goodness is the maximizing tendency found in the principal ethical systems of the West where the upper limit of goodness is seldom conceived as constrained by the actual conditions within which our lives are lived out. As the concerns of this collection are quite general and they cut to the heart of concerns regarding how best to live humanly, this collection, despite the fact that it is targeted primarily at professional philosophers and students of philosophy, should have broad appeal. And it is written in a style that is accessible to the non-specialist.

Background Theists have for a long time been trying to show that evil has a positive function to play in human life in general. Put more strongly, everything happens for the best. But the concerns of this collection, as I said, are primarily secular, so contributors are not under any compulsion to square God with his creation. Rather, their task here is to explore the idea that human goodness depends, to a large extent and necessarily, on the presence of large and small evils. Contrary to what some utilitarians may think, this is not the same as claiming, incoherently, that evil is good. Rather, it is to say that some forms of goodness can only come about if there are evils to overcome and that evil can only be properly recognized as such, and hence also goodness, if there are actual evils in the world. Evil, viewed this way, is, among other things, understood as a pretext for and epistemic counterpoint to goodness; a counterpoint that allows us properly to recognize goodness as such. For centuries theodicy have aimed to show that we live in something like the best of all possible worlds, to borrow Gottfried Leibniz’s turn of phrase. The motivation is clear: the alleged goodness and infinite power of the creative God is in conflict with the abundance of evils, ethical and natural, but particularly ethical, although the Lisbon earthquake was certainly grist for Voltaire’s scathing ‘anti-theodicy’. In his Candide, or Optimism, Voltaire argues, in a literary fashion, against the theistic idea that everything always happens for the best. In its crude form, the form that Voltaire effectively attacks, theodicies are insensitive to the tremendous evils our species has endured. The insensitivity is perhaps most effectively discussed, in a literary form, in Mark Twain’s exquisitely sarcastic Letters from the Earth. But the concerns of this anthology are invulnerable to attacks of the sort produced by Voltaire and Twain, for the concern motivating this collection are not the theistic concerns that have led some theists to blind


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themselves to the deeply horrible nature of some human suffering. This collection is not primarily aimed at engaging with old theological disputes attempting to reconcile God with his creation and, relatedly, its aim is not to show that all evils may play some key positive function in our lives. It seems clear that at least some evils are unambiguously irredeemable from any point of view.4 Rather, the central aim of this collection is to explore the idea that some evils may play a key positive role in our lives; that some evils may be necessary conditions for living even minimally robust good lives. Some, notably Saul Smilansky (2007), have recently argued in favour of a position such as this one, but he is happy to claim that once robust ethics has done the job of ridding the world of evils, there is little more for it to do. Others, notably Colin Radford (1996, pp. 137–44), have argued against this view and are in favour of the idea that evils in the form of adversity are a necessary requirement for proper human living. And their differences lie fundamentally in their differing largely implicit conceptions of the ethical domain. In Smilansky’s case, ethics is understood independently of issues of meaning and purpose, whereas Radford defends the opposite idea. So, for Smilansky, ethical shallowness does not entail shallowness in other central dimensions of life. No book, as far as I know, has explored these rather controversial ideas in a sustained fashion from a secular point of view and this, in my view, is rather unfortunate as we can only properly understand how it is that we ought to live our lives if we properly understand the allegedly complex relationship between goodness and evil. Some authors, other than those mentioned above, who have come closest to arguing in favour of the idea that evil may play a positive function from a secular point of view are Friedrich Nietzsche and the existentialists, particularly John-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir. These authors were all anti-perfectionists who believed that life is, in a sense, inherently tragic and morally ambivalent. Without suffering, without injustice and even terror, we could not live properly human lives. In Nietzsche’s words (1996, §246): The cyclops of culture. – When we behold those deeply-furrowed hollows in which glaciers have lain, we think it hardly possible that a time will come when a wooded, grassy valley, watered by streams, will spread itself upon the same spot. So it is, too, in the history of mankind: the most savage forces beat a path, and are mainly destructive; but their work was nonetheless necessary, in order that later a gentler civilization might raise its house. The frightful energies – those which are called evil – are the cyclopean architects and road-makers of humanity.

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And, de Beauvoir (1976 [1948], p. 34) claims that [m]en do not like to feel themselves in danger. Yet, it is because there are real dangers, real failures and real earthly damnation that words like victory, wisdom, or joy have meaning. Nothing is decided in advance, and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose that he can also win. Neither Nietzsche nor de Beauvoir go far enough in their explorations of the implications of what they claim above, although they certainly provide a valuable starting point for further investigations.

Exploring some relevant issues We know, for example, that moral champions such as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Chris Hani, Beyers Naude, and so many other anonymous moral heroes, could only have become the specific champions that they are because of the evils of apartheid, because of the specific evils that confronted them. This, of course, does not mean that we should thank apartheid or hope that other terrible regimes should continue to come about, but the observation invites us to reconsider our relationship to evil.5 Adams (Chapter 1), for instance, argues that our attitude to some, particularly evils that are necessary for bringing certain highly valued goods about, should be ambivalent. It is also arguable that inner torment, another form of evil under at least one interpretation of ‘evil’, is a source of great creativity (think of the tormented artist).6 Taoists, such as Lau Tzu, think that goodness and evil are mutually constituted, and so did Leibniz, meaning that for them a world relevantly similar to ours or, in Leibniz’s case, a world identical to ours, is as good as the world can get. On the other hand, it may just be the case that a world without moral champions formed in times of adversity, and without as many tormented creative individuals accosted by their inner foes, is, on balance, a better world. In a world without evils perhaps we would not have moral luminaries or many great artists, but would we not have peace, harmony and a far better average quality of life? On the other hand, it is conceivable that such a world would be hopelessly dull and irredeemably impoverished and, on balance, far worse than a world rich in evils, which would mean that, in actual fact, a perfectly good world could not exist. A ‘perfectly good’ world (populated, perhaps, by Susan Wolf’s (1982) moral saints) may, even if it could exist, be a very terrible place indeed.7


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And what sorts of inner demons, if any, are necessary for living ethically or, more generally, for living the sorts of lives that we consider worthwhile? Socrates understood the human situation to be that of creatures torn between the bestial and the divine. For him, our situation, if you may, is erotic (see Plato’s Symposium). The fate of the human lot, he thought, was to live in a state of limbo, capable of appreciating divine goodness yet incapable of fully partaking of it. Being in this state, Socrates thought, is a condition for the possibility of doing what he thought was most valuable to humans, namely, philosophy. Sigmund Freud (1961) spoke of the necessity of repression, Carl Jung (1938) spoke of the shadow-side sustaining human life and Melanie Klein, discussed by Elisa Galgut (Chapter 7) and Lacewing (Chapter 8), spoke of the positive role of depression. These psychoanalysts thought that these deeply negative features of our lives are key conditions for living in ways that we appreciate and value. Midgley (2001), as briefly mentioned above, speaks of how the positive drives defining our species are also a condition for the possibility of wickedness. Only agents proper can be evil in the ethical sense and the very fact of their vulnerability to evil makes them the sorts of creatures that they are; creatures capable of being moral and of living meaningful lives. This vulnerability to evil, some could argue, is in itself a form of evil. Generally, it is clear that we are creatures that are limited in many ways. We seek knowledge insofar as we are ignorant. And, arguably, we value moral goodness in part because it is so rare. Crucially, it is arguable that it is rare because forces, internal and external, conspire against the aim of being good. Could it be that at least some of these forces are necessary for being good and for living meaningful lives and what does this say about the relationship between goodness and evil?8 *** The order of the essays in this collection is, in general, not terribly important. Nevertheless the essays are ordered roughly in accordance with key concerns. Adams’ and Scarre’s pieces (Chapters 1 & 2), as mentioned above, bridge the secular aims of this collection with the concerns defining the theodicy tradition. Metz’s piece (Chapter 3) discusses Adams’. Pedro A. Tabensky’s piece (Chapter 4) draws a general picture of the key problems defining this project and defends the idea that the presence of evil in our lives, not any but many, is a necessary condition for living the best possible human lives. Bell’s and Widdows’ pieces (Chapters 5 & 6) defend the idea that we need adversity and strife in order to live genuinely worthwhile lives. Galgut and Lacewing

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(Chapters 7 & 8) defend the idea that evil has a positive function from the psychoanalytic point of view (as mentioned above, Galgut’s focus is on artistic creativity whereas Lacewing defends a psychoanalytic reading of the psychology of evil pointing out the often positive mental functions that are involved in the psychology of evil). Morton (Chapter 9) defends the idea that evil does have a positive function in low-stake situations but none in high-stake situations, so his endorsement of the idea of the positive function of evil is qualified. Finally, Kekes and Vice (Chapters 10 & 11) reject the idea that evil can have a positive function tout court. Each contribution is preceded by a summary which should help the reader navigate through the complex web of issues.

Notes 1. Thaddeus Metz’s contribution (Chapter 3), ‘Love and Emotional Reactions to Necessary Evil’, is a discussion of Adams’ piece. Both pieces focus primarily on what sorts of responses we ought to have towards evils that are necessary for certain goods. 2. Geoffrey Scarre’s contribution (Chapter 2), ‘Wrong that is right? The paradox of the Felix Culpa’, is the other exception to the fundamentally secular concerns of this collection, as his starting point is the old Christian concern with the happy fault of Adam which is taken, by important strands in the Christian theological tradition, to be a necessary condition for Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. 3. In Chapter 8, ‘The Psychology of Evil: A Contribution from Psychoanalysis’, Michael Lacewing does not deal directly with this issue. Rather, from the psychoanalytic perspective, he deals with how it is that agent evil is possible in the first place and he shows us, following Mary Midgley (1984) and others, that certain psychoanalytic processes found in those we think of as normal, and which play key positive roles in our lives, are responsible for the possibility of agent evil. 4. In his contribution (Chapter 10), ‘The Moral Significance of Evil’, John Kekes argues that all evils are unambiguously irredeemable. Samantha Vice (Chapter 11), in her ‘The Virtues of the Useless: On Goodness, Evil and Beauty’, concurs. In contrast, in his ‘Good Citizens and Moral Heroes’ Adam Morton (Chapter 9) agrees, but only when the stakes are high. He argues that in low-stake situations some evils in the form of misbehaviour play a positive function. Small evils are redeemable, according to Morton. But in the end the differences in views here may hinge largely on differing conceptions of evil. 5. Richard Bell (Chapter 5), ‘“Moral Beauty Happens”’, among other things, discusses some of the evils of apartheid in the context of a discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and argues for the importance of strife in human living in the context of discussing actual historical cases of evil (he follows Phillip Hallie and Simone Weil). The function of goodness, of moral beauty, is for him largely the function of breaking through darkness. Relatedly, Heather Widdows (Chapter 6), ‘Murdochian Evil and Striving to


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be Good’, discusses the importance of strife in valuable human living and provides us with a Murdochian account of evil. Widdows argues that for Iris Murdoch goodness requires strife and strife always requires a backdrop of darkness; it requires that there be something to struggle against (evil). 6. In Chapter 7, ‘Tragedy and Reparation’, Elisa Galgut discusses this issue from the psychoanalytic perspective in her contribution to this collection. Lacewing (Chapter 8), as mentioned above, also deals with the psychoanalytic dimension of the idea informing this collection, but his focus is on the motivational mechanisms allowing for evil. In this regard, in addition to following Midgley (2001), his views are fruitfully comparable to those expressed in Amélie O. Rorty (2001). 7. In Chapter 4, ‘Shadows of Goodness’, Pedro A. Tabensky discusses these matters. 8. A collection such as this one would not be complete without arguments against the fundamental thesis this collection sets out to explore. Kekes (Chapter 10) and Vice (Chapter 11), as mentioned above, reject the idea that evil may have a positive function.

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1 Love and the Problem of Evil* Robert Merrihew Adams

The focus of this chapter is the virtual certainty that much of what we must prize in loving any human person would not have existed in a world that did not contain much of the evil that has occurred in the history of the actual world. It is argued that the appropriate response to this fact must be some form of ambivalence, but that lovers have reason to prefer an ambivalence that contextualizes regretted evils in the framework of what we welcome in human life.

I want to emphasize at the outset that I do not pretend to offer, in this chapter, a complete solution to the theological problem of evil. In particular, I shall not address questions, which form the topic of most theodicy, about the justification of God’s action in creating and governing a world that contains evils. My aim is rather to explore, in ways that I hope may be theologically fruitful, some philosophical issues about how we should think, and feel, about evils. These are issues for all human beings as such. There is no easy escape from them by becoming an atheist. They are related to a problem of evil that exists for atheists too, though theists have a theological dimension of it to deal with. The problem concerns human beings as such, including atheists, because it threatens loves that help us find value in our lives. It is important for all of us to believe that human lives—our own lives and those of other people—are worth living. And if our valuing of human lives is to rise to the level of love, it is important to be glad of our own existence and of other people’s existence. If no one is glad of our existence, no amount of conscientious effort to make our lot as comfortable as possible is likely to keep it from being an unhappy existence. 1

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Love and the Problem of Evil

These much-needed beliefs and attitudes are tried by the problem of evil in much the same way as theism is. I am particularly interested in a line of argument on this point that is developed, in the context of a theodicy, by Leibniz (2005). To interlocutors imagined as “indignant that God did not [replace] Adam and Eve,” as soon as they fell, with better creatures, “so that the stain should not be transmitted to posterity,” Leibniz replies that if God had done that, . . . a vastly different series of things, vastly different combinations of circumstances, persons, and marriages, and vastly different persons would have been produced, and hence if sin had been taken away or extinguished, they themselves would not be in the world. They therefore have no reason to be angry at Adam or Eve for sinning, much less at God for permitting the sin, since they must rather credit their own existence to this very toleration of sins. Leibniz compares the imaginary complainers with someone resenting his own “half-noble birth” who would be “irritated with his father because he had married a women unequal in rank . . . not thinking that if his father had married someone else, not he, but some other man, would have come into the world.”1 We do not have to go all the way back to Adam and Eve to make the point that concerns me here. My mother’s father served as a chaplain with the US Army in France during the First World War. He survived a mustard gas attack, but it left him with respiratory problems that threatened, after several years, to make preaching impossible for him. This led him to change his work, and the life-situation of his family. When my mother was 14, they moved hundreds of miles from the Midwest to Philadelphia, where my grandfather became the chief editor of a religious publishing house. In Philadelphia my mother completed secondary school and then university, where she met my father, who had lived in the Philadelphia area all his life. I tell this story to make the point that it is extremely unlikely that my parents would ever have met and married, and hence extremely unlikely that I would ever have been born, if the First World War had not occurred. How should I and others think and feel about the dependence of my existence on that great evil? Is it wrong for me to be glad that I exist? At least as important, is it wrong for anyone who loves me to be glad that I exist? That expresses the form of the problem of evil on which I want to reflect here.

Robert Merrihew Adams 3

Of course, it is not a problem about my existence alone. An event as cataclysmic as the First World War has extremely widespread and pervasive effects on human life, affecting not only which people meet but also the circumstances in which those who do meet relate to each other, and therefore affecting even more pervasively such microscopic matters as which gametes meet. Within a very few years, probably no one being born in any country affected by the war would ever have been born if the war had not been fought. Nor do those born in other countries or in earlier generations have a situation fundamentally different in this respect. What society and what generation has had no war, no injustice, no disaster in its previous history? The coming into this world of any human child depends on a multiplicity of interacting factors, and in each case we surely will find evils small and great in the causal nexus without having to go very far back in time. Darwinians must think what I have just said applies to all human generations without exception. Those who hold to a traditional interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve will regard our first human ancestors as an exception. I see no need, in my present line of argument, to enter into the debate between these views. What I have said about the evils involved in our coming to be applies at any rate to all the human beings of whom we have any ordinary historical knowledge. Those of us interested in metaphysics may want to ponder the question how strong a dependence on evils is to be ascribed to our coming to be. As I am interested in metaphysics, I hope you will allow me to dwell a while on this question, though I think in the end it will not be of crucial importance for the main line of our investigation. In particular, and as an example, we may ask whether the occurrence of the First World War was a “metaphysically” or absolutely necessary condition for my coming to exist in the world. And that in turn can be approached as equivalent to a question of what is called “counterfactual identity”: whether anyone born into a world in which the First World War had not been fought could have been the same person that I am. That is not an easy question to answer. The cases about which we have the clearest conviction of counterfactual identity are ones in which a person or an object has alternative possible histories branching “forward,” as we say, from some decision point in time. I think that my life could have been different in this or that respect, and still have been mine, if I had made different choices at certain junctures in the past. In such cases the individual already exists at the decision point, and the history of the world before the decision point is the same in all the possible alternatives under consideration. The intuitions that typically

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sustain our claims of counterfactual identity in these cases desert us, however, where the history would have been different before the individual began to exist. Or at any rate they desert me when the question is whether there is some conceivable way in which someone born where and when I was, in 1937, but in a world in which the First World War had not been fought, could have been precisely and individually me. I am inclined to answer that question in the negative, but it is likely to remain controversial.2 For present purposes, fortunately, I think we need not answer that difficult question. It might be quite relevant to some treatments of the theological problem of evil, inasmuch as what is metaphysically or absolutely possible is relevant to questions about what God could have done. For reflection about the relation of evils to human love, however, it is enough that in all probability I would not have been born if the First World War had not occurred, and in general that probably none of us would in fact have come into the world had it not been for many and great evils preceding us. That we would probably not in fact have existed without those evils is surely true. Even if it would have been metaphysically possible for us (precisely and individually us) to come into existence without the particular causal nexus from which we actually emerged, what reason is there to believe that we would have?3 Moreover, our bare individual identity and existence is by no means all that we care about in our lives that is affected by the course of history. The point finds a vivid illustration in the life of Helen Keller (1880–1968), famous in America in my youth. She was only 19 months old when a fever deprived her, totally and permanently, of both sight and hearing. Her handicap bound her in loneliness and frustration until she was almost seven, when a tutor was obtained for her who was able to teach her sign language by touch. From then on her story was one of remarkable success. She learned not only to speak but to do so in several languages. She graduated from a prestigious college, and became well known and widely admired. Her life seems on the whole to have been happy and satisfying—which is of course not to say there was no pain or sorrow in it. Here is my question about Helen Keller. Would it have been reasonable for her, as an adult, to wish, for her own sake, that she had never been blind or deaf? I doubt it. Perhaps she would have had an even better and happier life with sight and hearing; perhaps not. Whatever its advantages might have been, however, such a life would not have had a single day in it that would have been much like any day in her actual life after the first 19 months. The two lives would not only differ


at every moment in the sensory qualities of experience, they would also differ in what she loved. Her actual life was organized around the fact that she was blind and deaf. That fact was presupposed in all the skills and projects, all the joys and sorrows, all the labors and accomplishments, trials and triumphs, and even the social relationships, of her actual life. Take the blindness and deafness out of her life history and most of the concrete content that she actually cared about would go with it. To wish that away would be, disturbingly, like wishing that she—the person she had become—had never existed. Of course you can say it is only wishing that she—the person she always had been, even as an infant—had not been deprived of sight and hearing. That is one true description of the wish, but it should not distract us from the fact that what we rightly prize in ourselves, and in other people that we love, is not just our bare metaphysical identity but a treasure of meaning that is inextricably bound up with details of our actual personal histories. The point I have been trying to make about Helen Keller applies to any actual human being. To love a person, oneself or anyone else, is not just to care about a bare metaphysical identity. When no one cares about any particular project or aspiration of yours, when no one sees in any particular action or experience of yours something they want preserved in future fabrics of meaning, you are not loved. But in actual human lives all particular projects and aspirations, all meaningful actions and experiences, presuppose things we rightly regard as evil as well as things we rightly regard as good. What we prize concretely in our loving presupposes evil as well as good. At least implicitly, love engages attitudes toward the causal structure of human life. No one should want to be someone whose projects and actions are not positively valued. But projects and actions always presuppose a causal nexus—both its general causal laws and some of its particular causal conditions or factors. So do our powers, dispositions, personalities, and characters, in which those who love us must see something of positive value. For powers and dispositions, including personalities and characters, are causal properties and part of a causal nexus. They involve actual causal laws and actual causal conditions. Finding positive value in actual human projects, actions, powers, dispositions, personalities, and characters involves some sort of acceptance of the causal nexus they presuppose, some acceptance of the actual causal structure of human life. Hence that is also involved in loving any particular human being. That should not be a surprising conclusion. How can you love someone who (as far as you can tell) has never been anything but a human being, without seeing positive value in what is and

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actually has been involved in being a human being? And that is largely a matter of the actual causal structure of human life. But evil, as well as good, seems to be involved in the actual causal nexus, the actual causal structure of human life. Earthquakes and deadly viruses are part of the causal nexus to which we belong. So is the difficulty of many of the best human projects, and competition among them for scarce resources. There is and will be suffering and loss, and frustration and failure of good projects, in human life in this causal nexus. It seems also far too predictable that some situations will evoke a lot of bad human behavior, even destructive behavior. Some would remind me of theologies according to which evil is not involved in the original causal structure of human life, but only in a structure of life resulting from humanity’s fall from its original perfection. This is another point that raises issues that my present project does not require me to address, significant as they may be for theology. For no human being that lives with us in the world today, even at a great distance from us, has lived in a state of original, “unfallen” perfection; and I am reflecting on what is involved in loving people, including ourselves, who live in the world today. Do lovers have to accept the evil as well as the good in the causal conditions and presuppositions of actual human lives? Need our acceptance of the causal nexus be more than making the best of a bad bargain? I doubt that that’s enough. One does not love the best of a bad bargain. One makes do with it, and making do is not love. Of course the suggestion was not that we should make do with each other as the best of a bad bargain, but that we should adopt that stance toward the causal nexus in which we find ourselves. But can we separate in that way our attitudes toward actual human lives and toward the causal nexus that they presuppose? What I have said thus far might perhaps be read as arguing for a sort of amor fati, for the view that “whatever is, is right,” leaving no room for attitudes of horror and indignation toward anything that has actually happened. But that is not my intent. Terrible evils have actually occurred. Much that has happened thoroughly deserves to be regarded with indignation or horror or both. In many cases love itself cries out for indignation or horror—or remorse. What love requires, I believe, is not complacency with whatever is or has been, but a sort of ambivalence. More than one sort of ambivalence can be considered. One alternative might be a purely particularistic way of valuing that would refuse to make “all-things-considered” evaluations, or to set a value on complexes


that include both goods and evils. If we adopted this alternative view we would try to evaluate each event in itself, rejoicing and regretting without regard to the causal connections between the goods and the evils. For instance, we would be glad of our own, and each other’s, individual existence, and we would regret the First World War, without letting the causal dependence of the former object on the latter qualify in any way our evaluative attitude toward either of them. One might think of this as a Manichean way of valuing things. Not that it necessarily involves the view that the world is an arena of conflict between a good and an evil supernatural being; but it shares with that view a refusal to regard either the evils as occurring in the framework of a system that is comprehensively good, or the goods as occurring in the framework of a system that is comprehensively evil. A contrast with Manichean dualism suggests a further pair of alternatives to be considered. In both of them we would be allowed to make “all things considered” evaluations; we would not be required to turn a blind eye on any causal connections. In one alternative we would be locally glad of particular goods, but view them in the framework of a world regarded as comprehensively evil. In the other we would locally regret particular evils, but view them in the framework of a world regarded as comprehensively good. I fear that placing all goods in a comprehensively evil framework would spell the end of love. For in such a placement, nothing could be better than the best of a bad bargain; and love, as I have argued, cannot regard the beloved in that way. But placing all evils, with only local regret, in a comprehensively good framework seems worthy at least of careful consideration as an alternative for lovers. We can think of it as a theistic way of valuing things. Not that a person could not adopt it without believing in a good supernatural being who is comprehensively responsible for the comprehensive goodness of the world. But those who do believe that a supremely good supernatural agent, acting under no external causal constraints, created the world out of nothing do have an obvious reason for thinking that particular evils, though fit objects of horror, indignation, or remorse, in a local view, must be regarded in a wider view as set in a framework that is comprehensively good. Both the “Manichean” and the “theistic” alternatives seem to me to deserve further consideration. The Manichean approach, as I conceive of it, requires us to insulate from each other, to some extent, our valuing of causally connected goods and evils. My question about it is how compatible that is with love. First we need to get clear about the type and extent of insulation that is involved.

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One of the most interesting discussions of such insulation that I have seen is in an article published in 1986 by James Woodward.4 Woodward considers the following principle: (R) If a state of affairs q is a necessary condition for a state of affairs p, then if one does not (or ought not rationally to) regret that p, one ought not rationally to regret that q.5 Woodward is discussing a statement of Derek Parfit’s that could be read as presupposing (R). Parfit imagines a nuclear disaster that occurs, predictably enough, to people (“the nuclear people”) living 300 years after an earlier generation has chosen a “Risky Policy” of development of nuclear energy. The catastrophic release of radiation causes a disease that, as they discover, will kill them (painlessly) at about 40 years of age. Parfit assumes, plausibly in my opinion, that coming after 300 years of history pervasively influenced by energy policy, none of the nuclear people, individually, would ever have been born if the Risky Policy had not been followed. He suggests that [t]hese people would regret the fact that they will die young. But [on the assumption that] their lives are worth living, they would not regret the fact that they were ever born. They would therefore not regret our choice of the Risky Policy.6 Woodward objects to this suggestion. For both Parfit and Woodward the discussion of regret is an incident in a larger discussion about what would be wrong with such actions as choosing the Risky Policy. We can ignore that in the present context, in which I have chosen not to focus, as most discussions of the theological problem of evil do, on issues of the rightness or wrongness of acts of causing or permitting evils. I want to focus on questions about regret and gladness for their own intrinsic importance. Woodward is surely right in rejecting the principle (R) in the form in which he states it. We do and rationally should regret, in some way, some things that were necessary conditions of other things of which, in some way, we are glad. Consider an example of Woodward’s: Suppose that the fact that the Nazis murdered certain people is a necessary condition for M’s existence.7 Does it follow that if M does not (or ought not to) regret his own existence, he ought not regret that the murders took place, or that if he regrets that the murders took place, he must regret his own existence?8


Woodward answers the question in the negative, and I agree. His example (not coincidentally, I think) can be regarded as a variant on my self-referential example in which I take the First World War to have been a necessary condition of my own existence;9 and surely I can and should regret the great losses of that immensely destructive conflict, even while I am glad of my own existence. But what we say about regret and gladness needs to be more nuanced if it is to illuminate the issues that engage us here. That is fairly clear in relation to the other example that Woodward offers in his argument against the principle (R). He asks us to “suppose that X first (1) assaults someone and that then (2) wishing to make amends, he nurses this person back to health.” We can certainly agree that “here 1 is a necessary condition for 2,” or at any rate that the nursing would not have happened if the assault had not. And we can also agree with Woodward’s obviously intended negative answer to the question, “If X does not regret [the nursing], does it follow that he must not regret his initial assault?” But in answering that question in the negative, we, and Woodward, probably are not supposing that X’s favorable attitude to the nursing would or should be unconditional. Given that X had committed the assault, X is glad that he nursed the victim back to health. That conditional gladness is not only consistent with X’s regretting the assault; morally and emotionally the two attitudes are of a piece. Either should lead us to expect the other. But unconditional gladness about the nursing is not clearly compatible with thorough regret about the assault. When the alternative in view is a history in which he fails to make amends to a victim he has already injured, we think X should be glad that his history contained his nursing the other person back to health. But Woodward is certainly not supposing that X would or should prefer the history containing his nursing to a history in which he does not make amends because he has not wronged or injured the other person. In relation to that pair of alternatives it would be misleading to say without qualification that X should be glad to have been able to nurse the other person. Reflecting on these considerations, we may well suspect that the favorable attitude that Woodward thinks X should have toward his nursing is not much more than one of making the best of a bad bargain. Of course, we are supposing that X’s nursing is undertaken as a form of making amends, and perhaps we all should think that making amends is a sort of making the best of a bad bargain. The issues may pinch us a bit tighter if we consider the case of a professional nurse who finds much of her life’s meaning and satisfaction in caring for suffering

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people—but not as a way of making amends to them, since she has not caused their ills. Should she not be glad to be able to nurse them? Again there is no problem about a conditional gladness; given that they are suffering from injury or disease, she is rightly glad to nurse them. But would she or should she prefer the actual history containing her nursing to a history in which she does no nursing because no one is injured or diseased? This is a harder question. Unlike X, she does not have a bad conscience about the relevant aspect of the actual history, but the compassion that we may suppose is motivating her nursing certainly seems a motive for preferring the history in which there is no need of medical procedures. Perhaps she should be unconditionally glad of the more general fact that she is able to do good, and does so, but only conditionally glad of nursing. On the other hand, the causal structure of life in a disease-free world would be so different from the actual causal structure of human life that we may wonder whether it could contain enough of what she actually, and rightly, cares about concretely in the actual world, including individual persons in it, to motivate a wellconsidered preference for the disease-free history. There is a particularized or localized type of valuing, as we may call it, in which one certainly can regret one thing and be glad of another, though the former is a necessary condition of the latter. That is, the former can be something one dislikes, and the latter something one likes, about the history to which they both belong. But what is one to do evaluatively with the necessary connection between them? Well, one might regret it. It is certainly possible, and not obviously inappropriate, to regret, or at any rate dislike, a necessary connection. Consider Parfit’s nuclear people who “would regret the fact that they will die young . . . but would not regret the fact that they were ever born.” How are they to put those attitudes together with their knowledge that their being born had a necessary condition (the choice of the Risky Policy) that has their early death as a necessary consequence? I believe it is very plausible to think of them as regretting that pair of necessary connections. This way of thinking about Parfit’s example puts new pressure on his suggestion that the nuclear people would not regret the choice of the Risky Policy. If it is a reason for not regretting the choice, that it is a necessary condition of their existence, which they do not regret, should it not be a reason for regretting the choice, that it has a necessary consequence (their early death) that they do regret? Should they both regret and not regret the choice of the Risky Policy? Certainly they welcome part of its effects and regret another part. Or should they simply regret the necessary connections and raise no issue of regret about the policy


choice itself? Probably they think it was morally wrong to make that choice, but that is not theirs to feel remorse about. Or if the question of regret is raised about the Risky Policy, do they have reason to come down on one side rather than the other? Perhaps so. Suppose they consider as alternatives (1) the actual history in which they are born, but die young as a necessary consequence of a necessary condition of their being born and (2) a causally possible history in which they neither are born nor die young, because the Risky Policy is not chosen. Of those alternatives, would they or should they prefer a history of the second sort, with neither them nor their early death in it? Parfit’s comments clearly suggest a negative answer to that question, and I think a negative answer to it is the most plausible, on Parfit’s assumption that the lives of the nuclear people are worth living. And that negative answer suggests in turn that what the nuclear people regret about the choice of the Risky Policy and its effects should be contextualized within the framework of what they welcome, and that what they welcome about the choice of the Risky Policy and its effects should certainly not be contextualized within the framework of what they regret. These reflections suggest a more nuanced variant of Woodward’s formulation of principle (R), in which a non-localized form of regretting that p is understood as wishing, all things considered, that not-p. Consider: (R*) If a state of affairs q is a necessary condition for a state of affairs p, then if one does not (or ought not rationally to) wish, all things considered, that not-p, one ought not rationally to wish, all things considered, that not-q. (R*) is much more plausible than (R). As I understand (R*), indeed, it seems to be a condition of coherence in wishing. For I take it that wishing, all things considered, that not-q is wishing away q and everything of which q is a necessary condition, and not wishing, all things considered, that not-p is not wishing away either p or any of its necessary conditions. In these terms we can frame our main issue: is it important, for the fullness of love, not to wish, all things considered, that the beloved not have existed? Am I, and should I be, glad and not regret, all things considered, that you and I exist? I am inclined to say Yes, and I certainly want to say Yes, to that question. But that answer seems to have the consequence that I should not wish, all things considered, that the First World War had

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not been fought, since I, and probably all or most of you, individually, would not have existed if that war had not occurred. That consequence is hard to swallow. Is it not monstrous to regard our individual existences as more important than the horrors of that conflict, not to mention some of its later repercussions? On the other hand, we can also ask for whose sake we should regret the First World War. Chiefly for the sake of all the individuals who suffered from it, I should think. If personal substances are the most important objects of love, as I believe, regret over a merely abstract badness of the events of a war would not provide enough reason to wish away the existence of all or most of the individual human persons we know well and love. Arguably, however, it makes little sense to wish away our own existence for the sake of the victims of the First World War if, at the same time, we are wishing away their existence as part of our all-thingsconsidered regret about even older catastrophes that were necessary conditions of their being born. Once we start wishing away evils and everything that depends on them, where do we stop? These considerations argue, I think, for contextualizing regretted evils in the framework of what we welcome in human life. That is consistent, I think, with a localized regret that can be quite intense regarding the First World War and other evils. It is also an attitude that has plausibly been seen as required by theistic belief. So much the worse for theism, the Manichean may say. If you believe the world as a whole was created out of nothing by an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good god, it is hard to avoid having all-thingsconsidered joys or regrets. But that is exactly what the Manichean thinks we must avoid if we are to do justice to both the goods and the evils in human life. All-things-considered joys and regrets seem to be what Albert Camus is rejecting, for instance, when he denounces as “puerile” the “belief that to love one single day of life amounts to justifying whole centuries of oppression.”10 I do not believe we can easily dismiss the Manichean view (as I am calling it) that all regret and gladness should be localized, refusing all invitations to form such attitudes on an all-things-considered basis. But I do find it difficult to refuse all invitations of the latter sort, and I suspect that the cost of refusing them all may be high, in blocking integration of our attitudes toward life and the world, and in leaving our loves surrounded with a cloud of attitudes that are consistent with them, not in substance, but only in being kept out of reach in a sort of emotional apartheid. I want to have room for ambivalence, but I also want to have room for integration.


It may be hard in the end, however, to see any all-things-considered gladness as justified except in a religious context, and a certain sort of religious context at that. What I have in mind is an eschatology, and a theology of history, that would support us in believing that what is given us to love is so good that the totality of our history with God will provide a framework of gladness in which all our just regrets can be contextualized. What such an eschatology and theology of history would involve is a large subject—too large for the present chapter (as one says when one is not prepared, not yet at any rate, to provide what is demanded).

Notes * This article originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in Philosophia (2006) 34, 243–51, © Springer Science + Business Media B. V. 2006. 1. Leibniz (2005), pp. 106–7; the translation I have given is partly my own. This passage from Leibniz and the example of Helen Keller, discussed below, also figure in Adams (1979a), reprinted in more definitive form in Adams (1987). In that earlier article, however, they are set in a framework focused much more on ethical issues about God and creating a world. 2. The point of view from which I think about issues of counterfactual identity has been expounded in a series of papers: Adams (1979b, 1981 & 1986). 3. The role of biological processes in this reasoning does not, in my opinion, depend on a materialist view of the constitution of human persons. I do not hold such a view, and am in fact much inclined to broadly idealist views of the nature of physical objects; but I am confident that the phenomena of the physiology of human reproduction correspond to important features of the causal nexus in which we came to be. I am indebted to Richard Swinburne for alerting me to the need for comment on this point. 4. Woodward (1986), particularly pp. 822–4. 5. Woodward (1986), p. 824. 6. Parfit (1984), p. 373. 7. Woodward does not explain why this would be so, but we could suppose M’s parents would neither have married nor had children together had it not been for the death of a previous spouse of one of them, who was in fact killed by the Nazis. 8. Woodward (1986), p. 824. 9. Woodward (1986, p. 824) explicitly contrasts his verdict on his own example with what he (not implausibly) takes to be my conclusions in an article (Adams [1979a]) in which my example was used. If I am more cautious now, that is partly because I have thought about Woodward’s article (and also about Hanser [1990]). 10. Camus (1957), p. 305.

2 Wrong that is Right? The Paradox of the ‘Felix Culpa’ Geoffrey Scarre

This chapter argues that not only do bad things sometimes have good effects, but that in some cases the badness of the cause is essential to the realisation of the good effect. Here, puzzlingly, it seems that some things are bad in so far as they’re good. This paradox has been recognised in the Christian tradition of the ‘happy fault’ of Adam, whose original sin of disobedience was a necessary condition of the gracious redemptive sacrifice of Christ. Drawing on this and other ‘secular’ examples of good-producingevils, I argue that the moral paradox of the happy fault may reasonably make us wonder whether total consistency of ethical judgement is attainable even in principle.

2.1 Separating good and evil The local council has omitted to grit your street during an icy snap. You come out of your house, intending to cross the road, but immediately fall flat on your face, twisting your ankle and barking your shin. A moment later, a car goes out of control on the icy surface and you watch it spin across the patch of road on which you would have been walking had you not fallen down. You realise, with a gasp, that your mishap has had the fortunate effect of saving you from a much more serious accident. This is a simple, if dramatic, example of how good may flow from evil. There is nothing philosophically very problematic about such cases, and they are certainly not rare. Ironists will appreciate their wryness, and stolid thinkers may feel their belief confirmed that it’s an ill wind that ne’er blows anyone any good. There is no principle of nature or ethics that determines that good comes always and only from good, or 14

Geoffrey Scarre

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evil always and only from evil. It is true that we sometimes revise our earlier evaluations of things when their effects turn out to be better or worse than we had expected (‘I thought the election of the X Party was such a good thing, but not anymore, in view of all the problems they’ve created’); but we would have to be very naïve not to realise that good things do not invariably have only good consequences, or bad things only bad ones. (There are exceptions, though, where the goodness of cause and consequence are analytically related. Good trees bear good fruit because, if they bore bad ones, they would not be called good trees.) Consider now a revised version of the example. You are a happy-golucky soul who rarely stops to ponder any deeper questions of life and takes each hour as it comes. Then you fall on the ice, break your ankle badly, and are compelled to spend a painful and immobile month in plaster. This period of uncomfortable enforced inactivity is actually rather good for you. It prompts you to develop some unwonted patience and fortitude, teaches you to be more sympathetic towards other people’s misfortunes, and gives you the opportunity to read the improving books for which you never could find time. The difference between this scenario and the first is that the badness of the productive causes is now essential to the realisation of certain of the benefits, rather than an incidental, causally irrelevant feature. In the first scenario, it was not the shock or the pain of your fall which saved you from being run over but the fact you were stopped in your tracks. (If you had paused instead to tie your shoelace, the same effect would have resulted painlessly.) In the second scenario the enhancement of your virtue and development of your sympathies were non-contingently related to the badness of events. One cannot learn fortitude from pleasant experiences. Even your decision to do some serious reading – to tackle The Anatomy of Melancholy rather than the latest light romance – may be non-accidentally related to the misfortune of the accident, a decision bred in pain. Cases of evils qua evils producing goods provide more philosophical food for thought than those in which the badness of the good-producing cause is causally inessential. (Note that I use ‘evil’ and ‘bad’ interchangeably throughout this essay, side-stepping the debate over whether ‘evil’ is most properly reserved for some special form – say, some particularly severe form – of badness. For present purposes, ‘evil’ can be taken to refer to any of life’s ‘minuses’, even quite trivial ones (cf. Adams and Adams [1990, p. 1]). The problem is that once

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Wrong that is Right?

we allow that something bad, qua bad, has produced something good, it seems hard to resist the paradoxical implication that the bad thing was in some sense, or to some degree, a good thing. It is not just that its production of good was a feature that partially mitigated its badness. Rather, it now seems that bad things can be good things – not merely mixtures of good and bad but good in so far as they’re bad. The issue here is not whether it may sometimes be right, as utilitarians claim, to do something evil in order to produce a greater good or prevent a greater evil (say, to shoot one innocent hostage to save a larger number of innocent hostages). The present question is a more basic one, about the very sense of the concepts of good and evil. If ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’, then your breaking your ankle, since it bore some very good fruits, was, on account of being evil, also good. There is also a converse form of the paradox, though I shall not pursue this here. Some things look as though they’re bad in so far as they’re good. Think of a life in which nothing ever goes wrong, from which illness, poverty, storms, grief, stress, and disappointment are absent. Such a life seems too good for its subject’s good: there is little or nothing to call forth virtue, daring, ‘grit’, enterprise, or the exercise of imagination. Are the ‘goods’ contained in such a life genuinely good or evil? The question induces some mental cramp because it is precisely the goodness of sound health, tranquillity, prosperity, etc. which gives rise to their badness. Apparently, a person can be cursed with good fortune; he can be well off and badly off at the same time. Have we arrived at a moral refutation of the law of noncontradiction?

2.2 The ‘happy fault’ of Adam and Eve A venerable theological tradition represents Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience to God, recorded in the third chapter of Genesis, as a felix culpa, literally a ‘happy fault’, since without it there would have been no redemptive sacrifice of Christ, to Christians the greatest event in human history and the supreme manifestation of God’s boundless love for his creation. In the striking words of the Exultet, the ancient hymn which still accompanies the blessing of the Paschal Candle in the Roman Catholic Easter Vigil liturgy: ‘O necessary sin of Adam, which Christ’s death effaced! O happy fault, which merited so great a redeemer!’ It has long been recognised that there is something deeply paradoxical about the sentiment expressed here. Surely our primal parents’ disobedience to God’s command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good

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and evil ought to be deprecated, not applauded.1 The expression felix culpa seems a plain oxymoron. If we say, ‘What a good thing that Adam acted as he did, since otherwise the redemption would not have taken place’, we appear to put aside the moral standards which we would normally apply when people fail to comply with orders and instructions issued by appropriate authority. Our moral judgements have become inconsistent, and we seem to be condoning what we should properly condemn. Many English readers are familiar with the paradox of the happy fault from the famous lines in the final book of Milton’s Paradise Lost, where Adam, who, along with Eve, has just been expelled from Eden by the archangel Michael, responds to the news that one day his sin will be expunged by a self-sacrificial act of God-made-man himself. Adam understandably doesn’t know what to make of this, and we may share his puzzlement: Full of doubt I stand, Whether I should repent me now of sin By me done or occasioned, or rejoice Much more that much more good thereof shall spring – To God more glory, more good will to men From God – and over wrath grace shall abound. (Bk. XII: ll. 473–8) Adam’s closing words are a reminiscence of the Letter to the Romans, where St Paul writes of Christ’s sacrifice as the ‘free gift’ of grace which restored men to the life of which Adam’s sin had deprived them, adding that ‘where sin abounded, grace did much more abound’ (Rom. 5: 15–20; King James version). This plainly implies that the final state of the world is a much better one (maybe an infinitely better one) than its state before the Fall. Not only has God become man – in itself a wonderful honour shown to humankind – but through the sacrifice of the God-made-man the original offence of Adam has been expunged. However, the Pauline theology which Milton follows closely fails to save him from putting morally mixed messages into Adam’s mouth. It is orthodoxy itself which seems to be in trouble here. As Arthur Lovejoy remarked 60 years ago in his essay ‘Milton and the paradox of the fortunate fall’, Adam is forced to doubt whether his ‘primal sin – the intrinsic enormity and ruinous consequences of which had elsewhere been copiously dilated upon – was not, after all, rather a

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ground for self-congratulation’ (Lovejoy 1948, p. 277). It is not just Adam who can’t get his ideas straight about this, and his perplexity is not the result of poor analysis or simple confusion. The crux is that there are two equally legitimate viewpoints from which his original sin can be seen. While from one of these it ‘could never be sufficiently condemned and lamented’, from the other ‘it could never be sufficiently rejoiced over’ (ibid., p. 278). The mystery only deepens when we consider that God must not only have predicted Adam’s disobedience but also, in some sense, have approved of it, since (unless we make the heterodox supposition that God was not wholly in control of things) it played an essential role in his plan for world history. God must have wished man to sin, and to that end created him with a sinful nature. This raises an obvious issue about whether God could then justly punish man for a sin he committed on account of his God-given make-up. But leaving that question aside, one wonders about God’s attitude to sin as such. Can sin really be so hateful to him if it has an indispensable role in his grand design? That God meant the Fall to play a significant part in universal history was readily acknowledged by St Thomas Aquinas, who seems to have been uncharacteristically insensitive to the moral problems it raised: Nothing … stands in the way of human nature’s being lifted to something greater, even after sin; God permits evil that he might draw forth some greater good. Thus the text in Romans reads, ‘Where wickedness abounded, grace abounded yet more’; and in the blessing of the Paschal Candle, ‘O happy fault that merited so great a redeemer’. (Aquinas 1976, p. 19/21) God, says Aquinas, ‘predestines that the work of the Incarnation should be a remedy for human sin’ (ibid, p. 21). (He omits to add that God must also have predestined the sin, without which there would have been no point to the Incarnation.) But the redemptive work of Christ was clearly, in Aquinas’s eyes, much more than a mere retrieval mechanism. It was not only the climax of world history (which it could still have been even if it were solely a retrieval device). It was the ultimate goal at which the whole creation was directed, the final purpose of the universe which everything else subserved. On this account, Adam’s sin was a necessary condition of the Incarnation and Redemption though not a sufficient one. (Man cannot

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twist God’s arm to do something, and Adam’s disobedience didn’t force God to bestow his grace.) It might be quibbled that what the Exultet calls the necessary sin of Adam (necessarium Adae peccatum) cannot have been quite that, since some other human transgression could have produced the same alienating effect (e.g. Adam and Eve might have thumbed their noses at God when he walked in the Garden); but the crucial point is that some human misdemeanour was required to precede the Redemption. In the quoted passage, Aquinas portrays God as a sort of cosmic utilitarian who permits evil to occur as the price of the ‘greater good’ that it ultimately produces, or helps to produce. At first sight, this may seem to offer a way out of the puzzle as to how a morally perfect God could view tolerantly either Adam’s or any other sin. If God looks on wrongdoing from a consequentialist rather than a deontological perspective, then why shouldn’t he regard the end as justifying the means in Adam’s case and dislike the means? (Note, however, that if God is able, compatibly with his goodness, to allow Adam’s sin because of the opportunity it provides for a later exercise of sublime graciousness, there is no such justification available for Adam, who sinned in ignorance of the long-term fruits that his sin would bring forth.) Even if we are prepared to look on God as a cosmic utilitarian, there is something facile about this attempt to resolve the tensions. To use sin as a means of producing a great(er) good is scarcely compatible with viewing sin with abhorrence, as a perfectly good being could be presumed to do. To such a being, any act of sin should be regrettable, where, as Bernard Williams has pointed out, the ‘constitutive thought’ of regret is ‘something like “how much better if it had been otherwise”’ (Williams 1981, p. 27). But God could not have this thought about Adam’s sin. Had Adam and Eve not sinned, there would have been no opening for God to become man and to perform his redemptive sacrifice. So it would have been matter for divine regret if Adam had not sinned. Some sin, therefore, is apparently good sin. God’s moral attitude to the Fall would therefore seem necessarily fractured in just the way that Adam’s retrospection was at the end of Paradise Lost: an unstable combination of condemnation and rejoicing.

2.3 The ‘happy fault’ of Jean Valjean ‘Happy faults’ are not confined to the esoteric province of theology. Here is an example from a more exoteric setting. In Les Misérables Victor Hugo relates how the released convict Jean Valjean, hardened by

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19 years’ punishment in the galleys for stealing a loaf of bread, begs a night’s refuge from the saintly Bishop Myriel (whom he mistakes for a poor village curé). Astonished by his host’s simple kindness and courtesy, and moved at being called ‘my brother’, Jean Valjean senses that something strange is happening to him: ‘Stop, Monsieur le Curé’, he exclaims, ‘I was very hungry when I entered here; but you are so good that I no longer know what has happened to me’ (Hugo 1955, p. 103). But the former convict’s moral reformation still has a considerable way to go. During the night, while the household is sleeping, he gathers up the Bishop’s few pieces of silver tableware and silently makes off with them. Being shortly after apprehended by gendarmes, he is hauled back before the Bishop and charged with theft. To Jean’s speechless amazement, the Bishop affirms that the forks and spoons were a present to his guest, and reminds him that he had forgotten to take away the silver candlesticks as well. After the gendarmes’ exit, Bishop Myriel addresses some solemn words to the ex-convict: ‘Jean Valjean, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God’ (ibid., p. 130). Evil has not yet quite relinquished its hold on Jean Valjean. The next day, through mere force of selfish habit, he gruffly refuses to return a small coin dropped by a beggar child, Little Gervais. When the boy, frightened by his threats, has run off sobbing, the man sinks into a prolonged reverie, from which he awakes with a sense of horror at his unkindness to a child and a profound loathing for his former self. The moral metamorphosis is now complete: [T]his last evil action had a decisive effect on him; it abruptly traversed that chaos which he bore in his mind, and dispersed it, placed on one side the thick obscurity, and on the other the light, and acted on his soul, in the state in which it then was, as certain chemical reagents act upon a troubled mixture by precipitating one element and clarifying another. (ibid., p. 136) Later Jean Valjean, assuming the penitential name of ‘Monsieur Madeleine’, amasses a fortune by honest effort and dedicates his life and his wealth to the service of others; unable to locate Little Gervais, he shows particular kindness to pauper children. His moral transformation is never reversed. Nor does he practise his good works from a morbid compulsion to atone for his past offences. The Bishop’s transfiguring

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example has turned Jean Valjean from a self-centred misanthrope into a true lover of mankind. Suppose that Jean had never stolen the Bishop’s silverware. Then the Bishop would never have spoken the astonishing words of forgiveness which stimulated the ex-convict’s repentance. Consequently there would have been no moral awakening in Jean Valjean, with all the good internal and external effects that followed. It seems, then, that if ever an act merited the label of felix culpa, Jean Valjean’s nocturnal thievery did. One could imagine Monsieur Madeleine later recalling his theft with a similar moral ambivalence to Adam’s: ‘Full of doubt I stand,/Whether I should repent me now of sin/By me done or occasioned, or rejoice’. In neither case could there have been good without evil, despite the otherwise different moral dynamics. Adam and Eve were not themselves prime beneficiaries of their own disobedience, though their expulsion from Eden must have taught them the error of their ways. Jean Valjean’s transformation was catalysed not by punishment but by a wondrously generous act of forgiveness (though one which neither condoned nor made light of the offence). In the former case, it was mankind as a whole who would reap the fruits of the felix culpa, via another act of transcendent generosity, the atoning self-sacrifice of the God-Man himself. Two offences, two different blossomings of grace.

2.4 ‘Shall We Continue in Sin?’ Neither Adam nor Jean Valjean seem in a position to look back at their respective offences with the unqualified regret that might be thought the proper response of the virtuous agent. To think ‘how much better if it had been otherwise’ would be incompatible with welcoming the good that their misdeeds brought about. So should they be glad they performed them, and even look for future chances of doing-ill-thatgood-may-follow? St Paul, in the Letter to the Romans, was aware of the dilemma here. Human sin had been followed by God’s grace in the shape of the redeeming sacrifice of Christ. So although sin had abounded, ‘grace did much more abound’ (Rom. 5: 20). But if any given quantity of sin draws forth a still greater quantity of grace, then a disturbing question arises: What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? (Rom. 6: 1)

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To which St Paul gives an uncompromising answer: God forbid! How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? … Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. (Rom. 6: 2, 18) Despite the forceful Pauline rhetoric, and the emphasis throughout Romans on the robust antipathy to sin of those whom Christ has saved, one could be pardoned for finding this response more hopeful than compelling. If sin is the occasioning cause of grace, as Paul asserts (5: 20), then shouldn’t the upright man try to overcome his repugnance to sin, and commit still more sins – even if he has to hold his moral nose while doing so? Rejecting sin seems unreasonable if one sincerely believes that by sinning one provides the requisite basis for the greater good of grace. But maybe this is to misunderstand Paul. Perhaps he believed that divine grace abounded in response to one sin only, the (heritable) original sin of Adam. If no other sin would be met with similar grace, then no other sin would be worth committing. Even if we leave to theologians the puzzling issue of why different categories of sin should arouse such very different divine responses, this interpretation makes it unclear why Paul should now think the question at 6: 1 worth posing. Moreover, the answer he gives to it would miss the main point, which is not that the redeemed and upright man finds sin repugnant but that only original sin prompts abounding divine grace. Yet St Paul captures an important insight when he describes an upright person as a ‘servant of righteousness’. An averagely virtuous person may sometimes succumb to temptation and do wrong, but when she does so her conscience pricks her. Occasionally she may decide, on consequentialist grounds, that she should perform some harmful act for the sake of preventing some greater harm. In such cases, though she may (and should) feel compunction at the harm she causes, her action can be quite consistent with the values she holds (so a person who shoots one innocent hostage to prevent the shooting of many more can credibly claim to be acting out of respect for the value of human life). Even a utilitarian can be a ‘servant of righteousness’. But the moral phenomenology changes when the option is to act against a value for the sake of producing more value. Deliberately setting out to do something wrong qua wrong because one believes that something morally very estimable will ensue would be very hard for the genuinely virtuous

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agent. Attempting to hold one’s moral nose while acting against one’s values in order that more grace might abound would be to run a considerable risk of alienating oneself from those values. If one takes a value seriously, one upholds it. If one is prepared to flout that value, then one’s loyalty to it must be superficial. The point of these rather abstract reflections can be clarified by another concrete example. As Jean Valjean’s case showed, acts of forgiveness sometimes have remarkable regenerative power, and misdeeds which evoke or invite truly gracious, transfiguring forgiveness may well appear in retrospect to have been happy faults. Imagine now that Simon and Sue have been married for some years and that recently Simon has become a thoughtlessly neglectful and self-absorbed husband, taking Sue far too much for granted and rarely showing her any marks of love or appreciation. One day Simon receives a shock: Sue tells him that she is sick of his casual indifference and that, in her view, they no longer have a future together. At last the scales fall from Simon’s eyes: he sees for the first time that he has treated Sue very badly. Crucially, too, he realises that he is really very much in love with her, and that the relationship still has much to offer them both. Sincerely apologising to Sue and begging her forgiveness, Simon sets out to show himself worthy of it by doing everything he can to demonstrate his true feelings. Eventually Sue is convinced of his repentance and wholeheartedly forgives him. Sue and Simon find that their marriage has not merely been restored to its original state by this painful experience but strengthened and enriched: there is now more love, trust, and understanding between them than ever before. In hindsight, Simon’s original offending appears to have been a happy fault. Suppose, next, that Simon, reflecting on the sequence of offence, repentance, forgiveness, and the ‘abounding grace’ of his revitalised marriage, concludes that it would be a very good thing if the whole cycle were to be repeated. Believing that there is nothing that so invigorates a marriage as falling out and falling in again, he decides quite deliberately to sin again, ‘that grace may abound’. So he resumes his bad old ways, intending, when the moment is ripe, to put on a powerful show of repentance to induce another ‘kiss and make up’ scene. Although Simon knows his behaviour is morally objectionable, he grits his teeth and sets about it, holding the end to justify the means. When a close friend in whom he has confided remonstrates with him, Simon replies, ‘I don’t deny that my behaviour is morally faulty. But don’t forget that it’s a happy fault since – if I play my cards right – the outcome will amply make up for it’.

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Admittedly, this is not a very plausible sequel to the initial tale. But the reasons why it’s implausible are themselves interesting. Obviously Simon would have to be an excellent actor to make his scheme work; if Sue came to realise she was being duped, she would be likely to respond with outrage rather than forgiveness. Even if she didn’t spot his deception, she might fail to play the role he has assigned to her in his domestic comedy; maybe she would despair of him as a backslider and cast him off permanently. Apart from such prudential objections, Simon’s scheme requires him to act with a degree of disengagement from his own feelings and values that it is highly improbable that anyone of ordinary moral and personal sensibilities could muster. This is not because the average person lacks the acting abilities that would be needed to carry out Simon’s cunning plan. Even someone with the thespian talents of Laurence Olivier would find the role hard, since it calls not merely for simulated but for real wrongdoing. This, I think, is what St Paul is gesturing towards when he speaks of an upright man being a ‘servant of righteousness’, though we could elaborate on Paul’s thesis in the light of our example, since what should stand against Simon’s adoption of his plan is not only his moral commitments but also his love for Sue. Simon’s proposed manipulation of his wife is simply not the act of a genuinely loving husband; for love excludes such cold-blooded calculation. So too does genuine virtue. Utilitarianism (rightly, in my view) sanctions our sacrificing something of value for the sake of something of greater value, in certain circumstances. Yet here there need be no departure from, and no slackening of allegiance to, the values one holds. We do not flout our values when we sacrifice something that scores lower on some evaluative scale for something that scores higher. Sometimes, too, different values may come into practical conflict and one may be forced for the nonce to place them in ranking order: so one may think it right to tell a lie to save an innocent life, though one has no intention of giving up the value of veracity. Here there is no fault, happy or unhappy; one may be doing something that would normally be wrong, but on this occasion it is more regrettable than wrong. Simon’s enterprise, however, is morally of a quite different colour. He intends to exploit the very badness of his acts for the sake of an anticipated outweighing good. The wrongness of what he does is of the essence; otherwise it wouldn’t warrant Sue’s forgiveness, without which there could be no fairy-tale ending. ‘Acting wrongly here is right’, Simon reflects, ‘since by sinning I ensure that “much more good thereof will spring”’. Yet if Simon proceeds with his scheme, one will suspect that

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he doesn’t really take very seriously the values that he infringes – that the sins he commits are ones he finds it easy to condone. Someone who claims V to be one of his values but is quite content to suspend it when convenience dictates at best pays lip-service to V. Values are not like clothes, to be put on or off at whim. For Simon to treat Sue in the way he proposes would be deeply disrespectful, such manipulation being inconsistent with treating a person as an end in herself. Simon’s scheme faces a further problem too. Even if Sue falls for his trick, her forgiveness, though given in good faith, is evoked by a charade. She thinks she is forgiving her peccant but remorseful husband when she is actually addressing her words of forgiveness to a cheat and charlatan. Were she to learn the truth, she would assuredly withdraw a forgiveness that was elicited from her by a ruse. Even if Simon and Sue live happily ever after, they are in effect living in a fool’s paradise. If this is grace abounding, it is a very tarnished grace.

2.5 ‘Happy Faults’ in prospect and retrospect One significant conclusion to be drawn from the reflections of the previous section is that it would be very odd indeed to set out wittingly to commit a happy fault. In practice we would need a lot of convincing that this was what someone was doing, even if (like Simon) he claimed that it was; in such a case, we might be more inclined to suppose that, in his heart of hearts, the agent didn’t really believe there to be much wrong with the way he was acting. If, however, by casuistry or selfdeception an agent did talk himself into committing some happy fault, he would inevitably endanger his sustained allegiance to the values he knowingly flouted. Trying to hold on to values while breaking them is a recipe for moral schizophrenia. The danger with putting one’s values on ice is that they may become permanently frozen. What sort of person might be attracted by the idea of deliberately committing a happy fault? Presumably a person of Simon’s type, with a devious and cunning mind; probably, too, someone who prides himself on a flexible, ‘pragmatic’ attitude to right and wrong. Such an individual would be far from being a deep-dyed villain – were he that, he would not be interested in promoting an abundance of grace. But he might still merit some negative epithets of a milder kind: unsteadfast, unreliable, ‘tricky’, lacking in scruples, deceitful. And his conviction that the end justifies the means, which prompts him to exploit even wrongness for a good end, paradoxically subverts his pretensions to care about the goods he aims at.

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It is worth repeating that an agent who intentionally sets out to commit a felix culpa is different from an agent who knowingly breaks the moral rules in order to produce a greater good. In the former’s case, the badness of what he does is essential to the realisation of the target ends, which depend on others’ response to the badness qua badness. This is not so in the latter’s. Suppose that while marking a certain student’s exam paper, I realise that by giving a few extra marks, I greatly increase her chances of gaining an important scholarship. I therefore dishonestly award the extra marks, as a result of which she wins the scholarship. Most people – even many utilitarians – would probably judge my action, despite its kind intentions, to be wrong. By privileging this one student, I have unfairly discriminated against others; I have also failed to display the trustworthiness as a marker on which any robust examination system relies. But I have not attempted a felix culpa, since while I have sought to bring about a good end by a wrong act, the wrongness of the act played no role in the causal dynamic. (In fact, were my wrongdoing to be recognised, then my intention would be blocked.) Admittedly, some of the same negative epithets might apply to me as do to the agent who attempts to commit a happy fault. But at least I cannot also be accused of trying to wring some good out of badness itself.2 When Simon plans his deception of Sue, he needs to weave an intricate web, then keep his fingers crossed that nothing will unravel. But the complexity of causal sequence involved means that many happy faults are quite beyond the limits of human foresight and could never have been deliberately attempted even by the most prescient, least riskaverse, of agents. Neither Adam nor Jean Valjean could have predicted the benefits that would flow from their sins; so they could never have coolly calculated to commit them for the sake of the anticipated goods. Happy faults more often reveal themselves in retrospect, when their beneficial results have become apparent, than in prospect, as practicable options for action.3 Viewed after the fact, a happy fault does not give rise to a dilemma of choice, but it can still (as Milton vividly shows) give rise to a dilemma of appraisal, not merely for the agent but also for other onlookers. Even someone who intentionally commits a happy fault should have some moral qualms about his action afterwards. It is a nice question about moral luck whether he should have more serious qualms if his action failed to achieve its object. But even if it has been wholly successful on its own terms, he could certainly be accused of a shortfall in moral sensitivity if he were to bask in unqualified self-satisfaction.

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Should Adam regard his sin of disobedience with delight or loathing? Ought Monsieur Madeleine to rejoice at or lament Jean Valjean’s theft of kind Bishop Myriel’s silverware? The disconcerting truth is that, in each case, both responses are not merely permitted but demanded from the upright agent. The moral paradox of the felix culpa is as inescapable as it is uncomfortable. It might be considered the equivalent, in ethics, of the Russellian paradoxes of set theory. As such, it need not make us despair of the general rationality of ethics but it may legitimately make us wonder whether complete consistency of ethical judgement is attainable even in principle.

Notes 1. Here I take the story in its traditional acceptation, as an account of unwarranted disobedience to a divine command. Outside that tradition, one might wonder why a loving God should so have disapproved of Adam and Eve’s acquiring the knowledge of good and evil. The rather unflattering explanation in Genesis is that God saw that man, through his newly acquired knowledge, had ‘become as one of us’, and feared that Adam’s next step would be to ‘put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’ (3: 22). Seen this way, God’s response seems less than generous, the testy reaction of a ‘jealous God’ (cf. Exodus 20:5). (If one wanted to be pernickety, one might also wonder whether Adam and Eve were capable of committing a genuine moral fault before they possessed the knowledge of good and evil.) 2. Would the following constitute a happy fault? Mick, who is a member of a gang of teenage hoodlums, decides to heighten his reputation with his fellows by committing a daring and brutal assault on Nick, the leader of another gang. No, because while seeking to acquire the admiration and respect of others is generally laudable, here it is not, since the status sought is of a morally reprehensible kind. This may seem too obvious to be worth saying. But it is less obvious, though equally true, in the case of those historically respected figures who have sought to acquire honour by waging aggressive warfare. 3. Milton’s Adam is in the unusual situation of learning of the happy consequences of his own sin before they occur, hearing them foretold by the Archangel Michael. More commonly, happy consequences are unknown before they occur, in the normal absence of heavenly messengers.

3 Love and Emotional Reactions to Necessary Evils Thaddeus Metz

This chapter supposes that certain bads are necessary for substantial goods, and poses the question of how one ought to react emotionally to such bads. In recent work, Robert Adams is naturally read as contending that one ought to exhibit positive emotions such as gladness towards certain ‘necessary evils’. A rationale he suggests for this view is that love for a person, which involves seeing the beloved as good, requires being glad about bads insofar as they have been necessary for her to exist. I critically discuss this argument, aiming to enrich understanding of the implications of the normativity of love for proper emotions towards necessary evil.

3.1

Introduction

Sometimes evils (or ‘final disvalues’ or ‘bads’) are necessary for goods (or ‘final values’). For instance, a medical professional can enhance the meaningfulness of her life by stopping another’s great pain. It appears that this meaningful activity, something that is good for its own sake, could not exist without pain; for even if there were virtue in seeking to end pain that one incorrectly believes to exist, one’s actions would have more importance if they ended actual pain.1 Which emotional reactions should one have towards the ‘necessary evil’ in such a case? Clearly, one has good reason to have negative emotional reactions to something bad such as pain considered in itself, apart from its relation to the good it has facilitated. But should one also have some positive emotional reaction to badness in that it has been essential for the realization of goodness? Concretely, should the health care worker be somewhat glad, or at least not regret, that the terrible pain has occurred insofar as it has been required for her to find meaning in her life? 28

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In a recent, rich and thoughtful essay, Robert Adams is naturally read as answering these questions affirmatively.2 He provides reason to think that, while it is appropriate to regret evil in itself, evil, insofar as it has been essential for the production of certain goods, does not warrant regret and can additionally warrant a positive emotion such as gladness. To defend this kind of view, Adams appeals to the value of love, and I take him to contend that love for a person, which involves viewing the beloved as good, requires having positive emotional reactions such as gladness towards what is necessary for her to exist, even if it is bad when considered apart from that relation.3 In this chapter, I critically discuss this argument, aiming to enrich understanding of the implications of love for the way one ought to react emotionally to evil that is required for good. I begin by clarifying both the question that I am posing, about whether one should have a positive emotional reaction towards such evil, as well as the affirmative answer to it that is suggested by Adams’ essay (Section 3.2). Then, I spell out an argument, grounded in Adams’ work, that love for a person requires wishing for the presence of an evil insofar as it is necessary for a beloved’s existence (Section 3.3). In the following section, I develop objections to this argument (Section 3.4). I conclude the chapter by indicating that I am not yet sure of what love entails for the way to react emotionally to evil without which a beloved could not have existed, and by noting how much more work there is to be done on the general topic of how to respond to necessary evil (Section 3.5).

3.2 Positive emotions towards necessary evil In this section I define key terms of the discussion, articulating the question I am asking and the way that I read Adams as answering it. My question is, roughly, how one should emotionally respond to what I call ‘necessary evil’, and, more specifically, whether positive emotions towards it can be appropriate, and, if so, under what conditions and for what reasons. ‘Necessary evil’ is short for ‘evil insofar as it is necessary for a substantial good’. Necessary evil is something that, in terms of intrinsic properties, is something disvaluable, but that, in terms of extrinsic properties, facilitates a final value that could not have existed without it. A condition counts as ‘disvaluable’ insofar as it is undesirable in itself beyond the mere loss or absence of good, e.g., pain, unhappiness, injustice and being enslaved, while something is a (substantial) good insofar as it is (highly) desirable for its own sake. Evils can be said to have ‘facilitated’

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Love and Emotional Reactions to Necessary Evils

or ‘been responsible for’ a substantial good in a variety of ways, e.g., by having enabled, caused or even (partially) constituted it. Finally, to say that a value ‘could not have existed without’ a disvalue, or that the latter is ‘necessary’ or ‘essential’ for the former, is to speak in nomological terms. That is, given the laws of nature, certain goods are impossible without bads. Note that this chapter addresses necessary evils that have already occurred, not those that could occur or will occur in the future; the enquiry is about the right sort of backward-looking response to have towards evil that has been done and that is essential for a substantial good. Responses to necessary evil can be divided into those that are volitional and non-volitional. By a ‘volitional’ response, I mean a decision or action, which includes not only commissions, e.g., choosing to promote necessary evil, but also omissions, electing to allow someone else to promote it. ‘Non-volitional’ responses are propositional attitudes one can have towards necessary evil that are not constituted by willing, such as cognition, conation and emotion. One can have a belief about necessary evil, a desire with regard to it and an emotion about it. Note that by calling these ‘non-volitional’ responses, I do not mean to suggest that the person who has them cannot control them; instead, I am indicating merely that these reactions are not comprised of wilful events. The aim of this chapter is to ascertain which emotions are appropriate towards necessary evil; it is not to address the traditional problem of evil, which concerns whether a being would have sufficient reason to choose to do or allow necessary evil. Non-volitional, or particularly emotional, responses to necessary evil can be either negative or positive. Negative emotions to necessary evil are ones that include the wish that it did not exist or were different in some way,4 e.g., regretting it, hating it, being upset by it. Positive emotions to necessary evil include the wish that it exists or had existed, and among them are emotions like being glad for it, liking it, being happy about it. In this chapter, to ask ‘which emotions’ towards necessary evil are appropriate is to ask whether some emotion is apt at all, and, if so, whether it should be negative or positive; I do not address the particular emotions that might be suitable (e.g., dislike, disappointment, gladness, delight). In asking whether positive emotions to necessary evil can be appropriate (and, if so, when and why), I am interested in any non-instrumental warrant that might exist for them. That is, by the ‘appropriateness’ of an emotion I mean the good reasons for having it apart from any of its consequences for our mental life or behaviour. The issue is whether

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there is something about positive emotions to necessary evil that are in themselves fitting or apt. Normally, we think that negative responses are apt for bads and that positive responses are fitting for goods. For example, most of us intuitively believe that wrong acts warrant disapproval, pain should be feared and unhappiness is something to dislike. However, Adams claims that ambivalence is appropriate for evil,5 by which I understand him to mean that while negative emotions towards evil considered in itself are appropriate, we ought not only to avoid them towards evil insofar as it is required for good, but also to exhibit positive emotions towards the latter. For instance, pain qua pain should be abhorred, but pain as something essential for the caring and hence meaningful behaviour of a nurse should not, and instead should be appreciated in some way. More specifically, Adams’ essay occasions awareness of these three logically distinct theses about appropriate emotional responses to necessary evil: (A) One ought not restrict one’s emotional reactions to a bad condition as it is in itself. (B) One ought to respond emotionally to a bad condition insofar as it is responsible for a substantially good one (such as the existence of a beloved) that one knows could not have obtained without the bad. (C) One ought to respond with no negative emotions, and with positive emotions, to a bad condition insofar as it is responsible for a substantially good one (such as the existence of a beloved) that one knows could not have obtained without the bad. With (A), Adams is contending that it is not merely a condition’s intrinsic properties that can warrant emotional responses, but that its extrinsic properties can as well. He terms the opposing view a ‘particularized’ or ‘localized’ way of valuing or a kind of ‘Manicheanism’,6 as it would prescribe distinct emotions towards a bad condition and towards a good one, but not, e.g., to the relationship between them. Here is an example of the Manichean view: ‘[W]e would be glad of our own, and each other’s, individual existence, and we would regret the First World War, without letting the causal dependence of the former object on the latter qualify in any way our evaluative attitude toward either of them’.7 To reject Manicheanism and thereby hold (A) is not equivalent to holding (B) as well. (B) provides a specification of which extrinsic properties of a bad condition it is appropriate to respond to emotionally,

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namely, those that are relationally necessary for the realization of a substantially good condition, such as the fact that one’s beloved exists. Although Adams most often speaks of the ‘valuing of causally connected goods and evils’,8 his point in principle applies more widely to any necessary relationship between them (return to the nursing case, in which ending pain is a meaningful condition and the pain is not a cause of it so much as a partial constituent of it).9 In Adams’ terms, [t]here is a particularized or localized type of valuing, as we may call it, in which one certainly can regret one thing and be glad of another, though the former is a necessary condition of the latter. That is, the former can be something one dislikes, and the latter something one likes, about the history to which they both belong. But what is one to do evaluatively with the necessary connection between them?10 Adams’ answer to this question is that it is appropriate to reject Manicheanism and instead to emotionally appraise a necessary connection between two events, in particular where an inherently disvaluable one has been required to realize a finally valuable one such as the existence of a beloved. So, I read Adams as saying neither that an evil’s being instrumental for a substantial good is enough to warrant a certain emotional response (for the evil might not have been the only way the good could have come about), nor that an evil’s being instrumental for a substantial good is required to warrant an emotion (for the evil might have been responsible for the good without being a means to it), nor that an evil’s being necessary for a substantial good is enough to warrant an emotion (for the good’s sufficient conditions might not obtain). Instead, I interpret Adams as focusing on a necessary relationship between badness and goodness, where the goodness has in fact been realized or will be. (B) is the view that such relationships are proper objects of emotional reaction, or, in Adams’ precise terms, it is the view that ‘all-things-considered evaluations’ (and not merely particularized or localized ones) are appropriate,11 or that ‘complexes that include both goods and evils’12 are apt objects of emotional appraisal.13 (C) goes a step farther and indicates which emotional reactions are apt for these relationships, namely, an absence of negative ones and the presence of positive ones such as liking them and being glad that they obtained. Adams claims that, at a minimum, one ought not to wish that a necessary evil not exist. Most abstractly, he claims, ‘If a

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state of affairs q is a necessary condition for a state of affairs p, then if one does not (or ought not rationally to) wish, all-things-considered, that not-p, one ought not rationally to wish, all-things-considered, that not-q.’14 For instance, insofar as World War I was necessary for a beloved to exist and we (ought to) wish that the beloved exists, Adams maintains that we ought not wish that the war had not occurred.15 More strongly, though, Adams sometimes suggests that one should be glad, or prefer, that a necessary evil exists, which the nursing case is meant to illustrate: (C)onsider the case of a professional nurse who finds much of her life’s meaning and satisfaction in caring for suffering people. … Should she not be glad to be able to nurse them? Again there is no problem about a conditional gladness; given that they are suffering from injury or disease, she is rightly glad to nurse them. But would she or should she prefer the actual history containing her nursing to a history in which she does no nursing because no one is injured or diseased? … [T]he causal structure of life in a disease-free world would be so different from the actual causal structure of human life that we may wonder whether it could contain enough of what she actually, and rightly, cares about concretely in the actual world, including individual persons in it, to motivate a well considered preference for the disease-free history.16 Note Adams’ point about ‘conditional’ gladness. With (C), Adams is not merely saying that supposing one is stuck with something bad, one should be glad that it was at least essential for something good that resulted from it, while wishing that it had not been the bad that was essential for it. Instead, the suggestion is that, if the bad is truly necessary for the good (in the nursing case, for a relationship of care or ‘love’ in a broad sense), one has reason to be ‘unconditionally’ glad that the bad came about since only upon its presence could the good have come. Note that by prescribing an ‘unconditional’ gladness about pain and disease insofar as they are necessary for the meaningfulness of nursing, Adams is not recommending that one exhibit only positive emotions towards pain and disease. His ultimate view, remember, is that one should have ambivalent attitudes towards badness. He believes that one should regret or hate evils such as illness and World War I as they are in themselves, but that, considering these evils as necessary conditions for certain goods such as a beloved’s existence or

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meaningful projects, we should avoid exhibiting a negative emotional reaction towards them and sometimes even be glad for them. In the rest of this chapter, I critically examine an interesting argument for this latter claim.

3.3

Love as a reason for positive emotions towards necessary evil

Adams ultimately appeals to the value of love in order to ground his claim that necessary evil can warrant positive emotional reactions such as gladness. I first present in standard form what I take to be Adams’ argument, and then spell out each of the major premises. Along the way, I also indicate how the premises are grounded in Adams’ essay; although my aim is not to provide a precisely accurate rendition of Adams’ intentions, I do strive to show that the following argument is at least a way of reading Adams that is worth taking seriously. (1) Love (of the best sort) for a person requires coherence in one’s emotional reactions to her. (2) Coherence in one’s emotional reactions towards a beloved requires having emotional reactions to evil insofar as it is known to be necessary for her existence. (3) Therefore, love (of the best sort) for a person requires having emotional reactions to evil insofar as it is known to be necessary for her existence (1 & 2). (4) If one had negative emotional reactions to evil insofar as it is known to be necessary for a beloved’s existence, then one would (or should) be wishing that the person not exist. (5) It would be incoherent for one who loves to wish that the beloved not exist. (6) Therefore, love (of the best sort) for a person forbids having negative emotional reactions to evil insofar as it is known to be necessary for her existence (1, 4 & 5). (7) Emotional reactions are either positive or negative. (8) Therefore, love (of the best sort) for a person requires having positive emotional reactions to evil insofar as it is known to be necessary for her existence (3, 6 & 7). The argument is valid, its claims are prima facie plausible, and it strikes me as a fair way to interpret several of Adams’ remarks. The first part

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of the argument, (1)–(3), is intended to capture these comments from Adams, which reject Manicheanism: I do not believe we can easily dismiss the Manichean view (as I am calling it) that all regret and gladness should be localized, refusing all invitations to form such attitudes on an all-things-considered basis. But I do find it difficult to refuse all invitations of the latter sort, and I suspect that the cost of refusing them all may be high, in blocking integration of our attitudes toward life and the world, and in leaving our loves surrounded with a cloud of attitudes that are consistent with them, not in substance, but only in being kept out of reach in a sort of emotional apartheid.17 On my reading of this passage and others,18 the most fundamental value is love, where love, or its best form, requires integration of one’s emotional reactions towards a beloved (1). This is plausible, on the face of it, as it would be inappropriate qua one who loves another to have incongruous emotions towards her, e.g., to be delighted that she is happy, on the one hand, and to be disappointed that she is happy, on the other. (2) indicates an essential condition of having coherent emotions with respect to a beloved, namely, exhibiting some kind of reaction towards what one is aware is necessary for her to exist. It would be incoherent, Adams suggests, to be glad that a person exists, but to withhold emotional appraisal of what one knows to be necessary for her existence. (3) follows logically from (1) and (2), and it implies both (A) and (B). If, as the first part has been meant to establish, love requires having some emotional reaction or other towards necessary evil that one is aware of, then the second part aims to show that positive emotions, in particular, are what love prescribes, which is (C). (4) is the claim that to regret, dislike, etc. the existence of a condition known to be necessary for the existence of a beloved is in effect to ‘wish away’ the existence of the beloved herself. Adams remarks, ‘[I] take it that wishing, all things considered, that not-q is wishing away q and everything of which q is a necessary condition’.19 But to ‘wish away’ the existence of a beloved is incoherent for one who loves, for surely a genuine love for a person involves wishing that she exists, or at least that she had existed (5).20 ‘[I]f our valuing of human lives is to rise to the level of love, it is important to be glad of our own existence and of other people’s existence’.21 (6) follows from (1), which says that love demands coherence, and from

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(4) and (5), which posit an incoherence in one who loves exhibiting negative emotional reactions to necessary evil. (7) is standardly accepted in the philosophy of emotion; emotions are characteristically classified as either positive or negative. (8) follows by virtue of disjunctive syllogism, for if there must be emotional reactions to necessary evil (3), and if they may not be negative (6), then, by virtue of (7), there must be positive emotional reactions towards it (8). Note that (8) is not intended to represent Adams’ complete view about how to react towards evil; it is merely a conclusion about how to respond emotionally to evil insofar as it is necessary for a substantial good, and leaves open the idea that one ought to exhibit negative emotions towards evil considered in itself. Having spelt out one intuitively compelling way to read Adams’ discussion of how to react emotionally towards evil that is necessary for a beloved to exist, it is time to evaluate it. In the next section, I provide reasons to doubt that (proper) love requires coherence of the sort that the argument indicates is essential to it.

3.4

Questioning love as a ground for positive emotions towards necessary evil

To start to question the loved-based argument for being glad about necessary evil, let us focus on the first part of the argument, which is meant to rule out Manicheanism. Consider the case of My Son. Suppose that I reflect on the fact that the molecular bonding of water is wondrously connected to the existence of my little boy, whom I love. The logic of the argument suggests that I ought to have some kind of emotional reaction towards this fact, but it does not appear that I would be any less loving of my son if I did not, even at the times when I am recognizing it to be a condition of his existence.22 Of course, the molecular bonding of water is not something bad in itself and so does not count as necessary evil, but that is irrelevant, for it is the fact of being required for the existence of a beloved that is doing the work in Adams’ thought that necessary evil warrants emotional appraisal. The only plausible way that I can see to respond on Adams’ behalf would be to appeal to the idea that two necessary conditions for an object can have differential degrees of responsibility for its existence (or perhaps for its particular nature). If I pose the question of what is responsible for the occurrence of a vehicular collision, both oxygen and a negligent decision are necessary conditions for it. Had there been no oxygen, there would not have been any driving to begin with and

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hence there would not have been a collision. However, even if oxygen is a ‘but for’ condition for the collision, it is not substantially responsible for it, not nearly as responsible as is the failure to take due care when driving. So, what Adams should say, it seems, is that even though the bonding of water is necessary for the existence of my son, it is not very responsible for his existence (or for his unique character), and that, for a condition to warrant emotional appraisal on grounds of love, it must not merely be necessary for the existence (or temperament) of a beloved, but also substantially responsible for it. I am going to suppose that there is a principled way to reformulate the argument from the previous section so that, by appealing to degrees of responsibility for a condition, it can avoid the counterexample of My Son. In the rest of this section I make two more objections that would continue to apply to the argument, both of which appeal in part to the idea that it can be sensible to wish for conditions that are impossible, as Derek Parfit has noted in passing.23 Parfit’s example is of the Pythagoreans wishing that the square root of two were a rational number, but consider a somewhat more common example: we all know that we cannot go back and undo wrongful deeds that we did in the past, but we do not typically deem ourselves to be irrational when we wish that we could. If anything, love for another person could prescribe wishing that one could do the impossible and change what one has done to her. Of course, in this case, the object of the wish is not a necessary condition for a beloved’s existence, and so does not directly target Adams’ argument. So, consider now a more germane case, that of My Brother, in which (genuine) love for another person permits not only having no emotional response to certain facets of what is recognized to be necessary for him to exist but also wishing for the impossible with regard to his existence. The case of My Brother is meant to apply to premises (1) or (2), which together are the idea that love requires coherence of a sort that includes emotional reactions to the known necessary conditions of one’s beloved. Suppose that I love my brother, who is a bass player and a wild fan of the jazz of saxophonist John Coltrane. Coltrane played his best in the 1960s, but my brother was born only in the 1970s. My brother would sacrifice a lot to play alongside Coltrane, and believes, reasonably in light of his desires and talents, that his life would have had a lot more meaning and happiness had he done so in the 1960s. Suppose as well, with most accounts of personal identity (and implicitly in Adams’ discussion of World War I), that one’s identity is determined by factors fixed by when an individual was born, in terms of either the

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brain, body or mental states with which she started out.24 That means that it is impossible for my brother to have been born at a time when he could have played with Coltrane. Now, it appears to me that love for my brother at least permits me to have the following combination of mental states: to have no emotional reaction whatsoever to the known fact that certain conditions regarding when my brother was born are necessary for his existence as a particular individual, and to wish that he had been born earlier. Adams must deny that I adequately love my brother, or love him properly, at least because of the ‘Manichean’ absence of any emotional appraisal of what I recognize to be necessary for his existence (and also substantially responsible for it). However, I submit that, at least in this case, I love my brother no less for this. To buttress my point, remember that while exhibiting no emotion with regard to what I recognize to be necessary for my brother’s existence, and while wishing that he had been born earlier, I can in addition exhibit positive emotions towards his existence in itself. That is, a ‘particularized’ or ‘localized’ gladness, a being happy about the bare fact that he exists, is compatible with having no ‘global’ (or, in Adams’ terms, ‘all-things-considered’) gladness about what I know to be necessary for his existence. And this, at least in combination with wishing that he had been born earlier so as to live a better life, seems sufficient for love insofar as it prescribes coherence in mental orientation towards a beloved, despite the absence of any emotional appraisal of facts about when he was born that I know to be necessary (and largely responsible) for his existence (and identity). Of course, facts about when my brother was born are not evil in themselves, and so do not count as ‘necessary evil’, even if they have hindered an ideal life for my brother. However, as noted above in the context of My Son, what is doing the work in Adams’ rejection of Manicheanism is not an alleged love-based need to respond to evil that is necessary for good, but to an event that may or may not be evil that is necessary for good. It is the fact of being necessary (and perhaps substantially responsible for) the existence of a beloved that is supposed to be what calls for emotional appraisal on grounds of love. A more promising reply to make on Adams’ behalf is to suggest that proper love requires an honest appreciation of reality, as opposed to whitewashing facts that one finds unpleasant.25 It might seem that if I lack an emotional response to what I know to be necessary for my brother’s existence, and if I wish that he had been born earlier, then I am being akin to an ostrich with its head in the ground.

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I submit, though, that these essentially cognitive failures do not necessarily apply to the case of My Brother. While it is true that human beings often lack emotional responses to facts because they are too painful to become aware of in the first place, that is not inherent to the present case, which supposes that I am fully aware of the fact that certain facets of my brother’s birth were necessary for him to exist. The case invites the reader to imagine that I have no emotional response to awareness of this fact, viz., that I am quite aware that I am wishing for the impossible when I wish that my brother had been born earlier. I conclude that there need not be any self-deception or other epistemic failure that would contaminate the value of love. Having questioned the first part of the argument I am ascribing to Adams, I now provide reason to doubt the second part of it. So far, I have argued that the normativity of love does not forbid Manicheanism, but let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that it does and instead prescribes some kind of emotional response towards what is necessary (and largely responsible) for a beloved. I question (6), the claim that love forbids having negative emotional reactions towards what is recognized as necessary for a beloved to exist, and I also am sceptical about a premise that entails (6), namely, (4), the claim that having negative emotions towards evil insofar as it is necessary for one’s beloved to exist implies (or requires) wishing that she did not exist. Here is a counterexample at least to (6) and probably to (4), My Wife.26 Suppose, for the sake of argument, that it were impossible for any creature to live that is not also going to die. Imagine that, in order to become a living being, one must be composed of fragile matter that will unavoidably decompose. Hence, a necessary condition of being alive is having to die.27 Now, qua someone who strongly loves his wife, I could exhibit all these emotions: be glad (‘locally’ or in a ‘particularized’ way) about the bare fact that she exists; wish for the impossible condition that she live forever; and, most crucially, hate (‘globally’ or ‘all-things-considered’) the fact that mortality is necessary for her to exist. Contra (6), hating the fact that mortality is necessary for my wife to exist would not mean that I would fail to love her in any respect, and contra (4), hating the fact that mortality is necessary for my wife to exist would not mean that I would (or should) wish her not to exist. Rather than ‘wishing away’ my wife under these conditions (or being committed to doing so), I would be wishing her to stay. What might lead Adams astray, with regard to My Brother and My Wife, is the implicit supposition that it is incoherent from the perspective of

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love to wish for impossible conditions. Adams seems to suppose that I would have only three choices with regard to My Wife. Either I can wish for my wife’s mortality and wish for her life that would come in the wake of it (in combination with other factors, of course); or, I can not wish for my wife’s mortality and not wish for her life; or I can wish that my wife were not mortal and wish that my wife were not alive. If wishes had to track relations of possibility and necessity, these would be the only options.28 However, I submit that a fourth option is available to me as one who loves his wife and hence wishes for her to exist, namely, to wish that my wife were not mortal and wish that she were alive. Although I grant that the objects of these wishes are not compossible, in having them I would be neither ‘wishing her away’ (or would not need to) nor otherwise failing to love her. After all, my reason for hating the fact that mortality is necessary for my wife to live is a wish for her to have eternal life. In order to defend (6) and the rationale for it, and in order to rebut the case of My Wife (and My Brother, to some extent), Adams needs support for the claim that wishes must track conditions of possibility and necessity. How might one buttress this latter claim? A plausible way is to suggest an analogy between coherence in willing and coherence in wishing. Nearly all practical philosophers deem adherence to the ‘hypothetical imperative’ to be an essential condition of rational willing. This imperative, in one of its guises, says that one may adopt or retain an end only if (a) there is a means that can realize the end, and (b) one takes any means that are necessary to realize the end. Adopting an end that one cannot realize, or adopting an end that one can realize but not taking a means that is necessary to do so, would both be ‘contradictory’, as Kantians say. Analogously, one might propose that one may wish for a state of affairs only if (a) the state of affairs is possible, and (b) one wishes for whatever is known to be necessary to realize it, or at least does not wish that its necessary conditions fail to exist. It might seem equally contradictory to wish for the impossible state of affairs in which my wife lives forever, as well as to wish for her existence but not to wish for – and even to hate – what is recognized to be necessary for her to exist, namely, her mortality. So the argument would go. In reply, I am inclined to doubt that proper love requires the kind of coherence when it comes to wishing that is clearly demanded in the context of rational willing. While one ought not strive for an impossible state of affairs, it is not objectionably incoherent to wish for one. Although one should neither try to go back in time to treat people one has wronged

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differently, nor try to eat ten chocolate bars everyday and not put on weight, it is perfectly sensible to wish that one could. Furthermore, although one ought not adopt or retain a certain end if one is not going to take whatever means are necessary to realize it, it does not seem problematically incoherent (at least from the standpoint of love) to wish for a state of affairs without wishing for whatever is recognized to be necessary for its realization. For example, there are times when I wish that all the lawns I see were as green and manicured as a typical golf course, and while I am aware of the resources and labour that would be required to make that possible, I never get around to wishing for that. Even stronger, upon disgust of how much it would take to make all lawns comparable to a golf course, I find myself in fact hoping that the project is not undertaken – while finding myself continuing to wish for lawns to be universally as beautiful as those on a golf course. And there is nothing troublesome about this to me, for a wish is just a wish. I conclude that there is serious reason to doubt the second part of the love-based argument for positive emotions to necessary evil. I can exhibit a negative emotional reaction to the fact that mortality is necessary for my beloved wife to exist without either failing to love her properly or, in particular, being committed to (or thereby) wishing that she not exist. It seems possible for me, qua someone who loves his wife, to be glad that she exists, to wish that she were able to live forever, and to regret that her mortality is a necessary condition for her to live.

3.5 Conclusion: Advancing the issues in future work It has not been my aim to come to a firm conclusion about whether one should have emotional reactions towards necessary evil, which emotions one ought to have towards it, or how love bears on the way to answer these two questions. I have had the more modest goal of taking the issues a few steps farther than they are found in Adams’ complex and suggestive discussion of them. Adams provides reason to believe that one who loves must exhibit a coherent set of emotions towards a beloved, which in turn requires that one exhibit emotions, and only positive ones such as gladness in particular, towards evil insofar as it is recognized to be necessary (and perhaps largely responsible) for the beloved to exist. I have questioned this rationale in two major ways, first, by wondering whether, to be loving of a person, one must have any emotional reaction at all towards what is known to be necessary for her to exist (My Son and My Brother), and, second, by providing reason

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to think that a negative emotional reaction towards what is known to be necessary for a beloved to exist is compatible with loving her and being glad that she exists (My Wife). I am unsure of whether these objections are sound, for the issues demand more consideration from the field. My hope is that the reader finds them worth thinking through on the road to making a firm judgement about love’s implications for the way one should emotionally react to necessary evil. If the objections turned out to be sound, then it would still be possible for there to be some other promising love-based argument for the conclusion that necessary evil warrants positive emotions. One should consider that possibility, as well as address these kinds of questions: Is love the most promising value with which to ground an argument for positive emotions towards necessary evil? Might justice instead be a foundational value worth invoking in favour of positive emotions towards necessary evil, and, specifically, is the following argument sound?: necessary evil deserves positive recognition, since necessary evil is an instrumental value and since all value deserves some kind of positive recognition.29 Or might there be a kind of emotional coherence that is not grounded in the value of love that would serve as a foundation for prescribing positive emotional reactions towards necessary evil? Must one’s emotions about necessary evil cohere with one’s intentions about it and actions with regard to it, and, if so, might this in fact be reason to exhibit negative emotions towards necessary evil that one ought not do or allow? Must evil in fact be necessary for good in order to warrant positive emotions, or would being sufficient for good also be enough? What reasons might there be to take seriously Manicheanism, the view that one ought not emotionally appraise relationships between evils and goods? Clearly, there is much hard philosophical work to be done and, perhaps, to welcome.30

Notes 1. Some contributors to this volume maintain that great evil is necessary for great meaning in life, but I doubt this claim. My hunch is that, even in a world with only goods and no bads, great meaning could accrue by virtue of realizing substantial good. Or so I suspect that most of us who have the concept of Heaven implicitly think. 2. Adams, pp. 1–13, in this volume. 3. There are passages suggesting that Adams holds only a weaker view, that one ought not exhibit negative emotions towards what is necessary for a beloved to exist, even if it is bad in itself. I draw on Adams’ paper, however, with the aim of critically examining the stronger view that one ought to exhibit

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

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positive emotions towards such evil, although one objection considered below equally applies to the weaker view (see note 26). Following Gordon (1987). Adams, pp. 6, 12, in this volume. Adams, p. 7, in this volume. Adams, p. 7, in this volume. Adams, p. 7, in this volume. For mention of ‘necessary’ conditions and connections, see Adams, pp. 3, 8–10, 12, in this volume. Adams, p. 10, in this volume. Adams, pp. 6, 7, in this volume. These pages indicates that, by ‘all things considered’, Adams means appraising a condition in light of its relational features, and, in particular, in light of being necessary for a world that includes substantial goodness. By this phrase Adams does not mean to connote anything akin to there being conclusive reason for having an emotion that would contrast with a pro tanto or prima facie reason (so he has explicitly said in correspondence with this author). Adams, pp. 6, 7, in this volume. Adams actually defends a more specific and robust account of the relationships that merit emotional response. According to him, one ought to emotionally appraise badness as it is necessary to facilitate a comprehensive, historical framework of goodness. That, however, is more controversial a claim than is needed for an interesting argument against, and alternative to, Manicheanism; all one need consider, and all I address in this chapter, is the claim that one ought to have (positive) emotions with regard to badness in its necessary relation to some substantial good. Adams, p. 11, in this volume. Adams, pp. 9, 10, in this volume. Adams, pp. 11, 12, in this volume. Adams, p. 12, in this volume. For instance, consider also: ‘The Manichean approach, as I conceive of it, requires us to insulate from each other, to some extent, our valuing of causally connected goods and evils. My question about it is how compatible that is with love’ (Adams, pp. 1–13, in this volume). Adams, p. 11, in this volume. For the meaning of ‘all things considered’, see note 11. In light of a situation in which a beloved is now facing a fate worse than death. Adams, p. 1, in this volume. Lucy Allais suggested this kind of case. Parfit (1984), p. 172. Note that even on a psychological continuity account of personal identity, one is identified not merely as a chain of self-consciousness, but as one with a particular history. Thomas Nagel somewhat famously takes this facet of the psychological continuity theory to be counterintuitive, leading him to posit the brain theory of personal identity as the best way to accommodate the intuition that a given person could have had substantially different mental states than she has had.

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25. Pedro Tabensky suggested that such a rationale might be implicit in the way Adams understands love to rule out Manicheanism. 26. The cases of My Brother and My Wife both apply to the strong claim that positive emotions are apt for necessary evil, while the case of My Wife also applies to the weak claim that it is at least apt to exhibit no negative emotions towards it. 27. Is the fact of having to die also largely responsible for the fact of life? In case not, then we could revise the case of My Brother so that it targets (4) and (6), imagining not that I have no emotional reaction towards the fact that when he was born is both necessary and largely responsible for his identity, but rather that I have a negative emotion such as regret towards it. 28. Compare Adams’ discussion of the nurse case, in which the options considered are only either to wish for disease and wish for the curing of it, or to wish that the disease not exist and wish that one did not cure it. 29. Or since we must give everything its due, as Robert Nozick puts it (1989, pp. 253–66). 30. I am grateful to Robert Adams for written comments that disabused me of some serious misinterpretations of his article in a previous, substantially different draft of this essay. He did not comment on the present draft, however, and so I cannot share responsibility for any major exegetical gaffes that remain. For additional written comments, which I found very helpful, I express my gratitude to Lucy Allais, Frans Svensson and Pedro Tabensky. Finally, I also thank Adila Hassim for conversations about the nature of my love for her.

4 Shadows of Goodness Pedro Alexis Tabensky

But it is also true that the most optimistic ethics have all began by emphasizing the elements of failure involved in the condition of man; without failure, no ethics; for a being who, from the very start, would be an exact co-incidence with himself, in a perfect plenitude, the notion of having-to-be would have no meaning. One does not offer an ethics to a God. Simone de Beauvoir Meaning is a human category, and must be won against a background. A life that was inevitably meaningful would defeat itself from the start. Between the adult who knows she won’t find reason in the world, and the child who refuses to stop seeking it, lies the difference between resignation and humility. Susan Neiman When a lioness closes her jaws on a zebra’s throat, she is feeding life and destroying life in one and the same action. Philip Hallie But where there is danger, there grows also what saves. Friedrich Hölderlin

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How could cheerfulness stream through us if we wanted to shun sadness? Pain gives of its healing power where we least expect it. Martin Heidegger In this piece I explore the general idea that the presence of large and small evils in our lives are a necessary condition for living morally worthwhile lives as opposed to bland lives significantly lacking purpose-bestowing challenges. Because of this, I argue, taking my lead from authors such as Nietzsche, de Beauvoir and Camus, our existence is fundamentally tragic. For our lives to be genuinely morally worthwhile they must be vulnerable to actual evils, large and small. Evil, I further argue, is both the excuse for being good and, also, actual evils and not merely imagined evils, are required for properly grasping the very idea of goodness; grasping, if you will, its genuine preciousness. In showing that multifarious evils are actually necessary for living the sorts of lives that we consider, after careful consideration, to be most worthwhile, I argue against the perfectionist ideal of the good and replace it with the idea of a plurality of goods, which are important to us in relation to the significant challenges that are actually strewn on our way; the specific obstacles to goodness – evils – that give shape to our vulnerable, tragic and, crucially, meaning-driven – meaning-thirsty, one could say – lives. Without actual suffering, without the labour of overcoming genuine hardship – a labour that often leads to failure – the opportunity of living morally worthwhile lives would be lost. And yet the conditions for living morally worthwhile lives are also the conditions that lead so many down the path of destructiveness, or, less dramatically, to live significantly unfulfilled lives from the moral point of view. Our situation is inherently tragic and yet there is scope for optimism, but the optimism is limited by the very conditions that permit us to live morally meaningful lives in the first place.

4.1

Preliminaries

This is a study about evil, about the complex interrelationship between goodness and evil. The central claim that I will defend is that evil, in the broad sense, is necessary for goodness, in the broad sense of ‘goodness’ that the Ancients had in mind when discussing human goodness. Evil is a complex notion and there is plenty of disagreement about its scope, so let me stipulate what the scope will be for the purposes of this study. There are evil actions, evil intentions, evil phenomena and evil

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circumstances. Evil can be understood narrowly and widely and there are different varieties of narrowness and wideness available for the picking. By ‘evil’ I do not mean solely first-rate moral perversity where evil actions flow from volitions informed by abject views, from wickedness. We often speak of natural evils, gauged as evil by their effects on those belonging to the moral fold, and people can do evil unintentionally. Good folk can also do evil intentionally insofar as doing what is good often involves sacrificing some goods on the altar of other goods. Tradeoffs are inevitable if one is to do what is best in this messy world, and this is one good reason why uncompromising idealism is as much a handicap as fatalism. In a morally rich world such as ours actions designed to bring about goodness often involve pernicious side-effects, which I also call ‘evil’. Justice for the many, for instance, often brings about injustice for the few. Dirty hands are a fact of life that can only be avoided by soiling our hands in the waters of indifference, which is to say that one cannot avoid soiling ones hands in one way or another. In this world, one cannot avoid having dirty hands, one cannot avoid evil, but of course I have said little of other worlds; fantasy worlds devoid of mud, where moral ends seldom if ever collide, seldom if ever induce tragic reversals. That evil is necessary for goodness cannot mean that we ought to desire evil in the same sort of way that we ought to desire goodness for, if we desired evil in this way, then it would be a good and this would seem to entail that what matters about the distinction between good and evil would be lost. Goodness has a positive value and evil a negative one, and it is crucial that we do not theorize these values away if we want to preserve the distinction. Something is not good simply because it helps bring goodness about, simply because it plays an instrumental role in bringing goodness about, contrary to crude utilitarianism. But, then, it seems that, at least in one sense, goodness must be kept apart from the impurities of evil, for goodness, and not evil, ought to be the guide to action. Even if, following Christopher Gowans,1 I must inevitably choose in some instances to do evil, I must do so ultimately for the sake of goodness, understood purely. The goodness we pursue is, in a sense, not of this world precisely because it lacks the impurities which are the hallmark of the worldly. Perhaps we must make a starker distinction than previously made between what motivates us to pursue goodness – motivations which involve the presence of evil – and goodness itself, which, arguably by definition, lacks evil, indeed, lacks lack. For goodness is what has been understood as a state of completeness, where lack has given way to the fullness of being (to use the language of ancient teleology).

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I must confess to being very uncomfortable with this conclusion and the reasons why my negative sentiments are warranted stem from my concerns with perfectionist ideals, such as the Platonic idea of The Good, which must not be confused with the idea, which I endorse, that there are goods which are the ideal guides to action. The Good, in all of its allegedly untainted splendour, is unachievable precisely because what motivates us to pursue goodness in the first place is laced with evil. And what this means, contrary to claims made in the previous paragraph, is that goodness is compromised by the conditions that motivate us to pursue goodness and which allow us to appreciate the genuine importance of goodness in the first place. It is hard to see what value goodness could have independently of the conditions that allow goodness to show up as valuable. There is something wrong with the very idea of The Good. To be honest, I know of no one, not even Plato, despite his own beliefs about what he was doing, whose life aims at The Good. Indeed, what do we mean by ‘The Good’? Can we even make sense of this idea? The very fact that goods conflict with one another, indeed are in contradiction with one another, shows that there is no unified set of goods that we can call ‘The Good’. Moreover, as far as I can see, people pursue a limited set of goods, have a limited and open-ended set of goals aiming ideally at this good or that. I pursue this career and not that one, care about these people and these causes and not much about these other people and these other causes. We have sound grounds for claiming that some beliefs about what is best are clearly wrong but what is left once bogus goods have been unmasked is a vast field of goods (some categorical and others context dependent, some in conflict with one another and others not – a messy indeterminate field). So, we can be saved from Platonism by ceasing to think in terms of The Good and, rather, as we have been thinking thus far, in terms of goodness. By doing this, we drag the ultimate aims of our pursuits back into this world, with all its evils, that by virtue of motivating are also constitutive of our pursuits of goodness. Evil is part of the space that allows goodness to happen. We must wish the obscure idea of The Good a safe journey to the colourful land of metaphysical fantasies.

4.2

Failed animals

Trivially, life is hard, unbearably hard at times, motivating us, violently pushing us, to dream of better worlds, better lives untarnished by unyielding pain; pushing us to excel, to go the extra mile; but also,


pushing us – perhaps with the force of resentful pain, perhaps with the lust for blood that stems from loss – down the path of darkness and into the abyss of doom. The risk is there, looming in the background, ideally motivating us to push forward in the direction of goodness or, shall I say, for reasons that will become even plainer below, in the directions of goodness. Without failure, as De Beauvoir (1976 [1948]) would put it, there would be no ethics. And, more generally, the erotic pull that pushes us to excel, to win in one game or another, only exists in a climate of instability, of great risk. Our identities are not pre-given, creating an entire gamut of problems for us, but also providing us with conditions required for full agency (and also for its dissolution). Relatedly, we must work to succeed in the game of life; work to avoid a fall. Life, for creatures of our species, is a problem – a conundrum – something that must be understood, and problems demand to be overcome in ways that are informed by this understanding. Indeed, the activity of understanding is, Arendt thought,2 a defining feature of our species, but it is not the only defining feature. We are also creatures of habit, imitators, and often imitators playing a role in multiplying terror (Eichmann). These two forces, understanding and blind habit, pull us in opposite directions and yet they also feed off each other. Imitation helps guarantee social cohesion, but it often, far too often, guarantees cohesion at the price of terror (Rwanda). Goodness comes about at the price of a tremendous risk, a risk expressed in Auschwitz and Rwanda. Thought typically pulls us in the opposite direction of habit for it forces us to step outside of the flow of everyday life informed by conventions that may as well be thought of as floating in the air that we breathe. Thought forces us to stand on our own feet and to avoid inhaling air that is often polluted with noxious ideals (consumerist ideals, racist and sexist ideals, totalitarian ideals), to doubt and to propel our bodies with the force of our own internal faculties, in ways that are the mark of responsible agents, even though few are willing or able to step out of the flow, for the risks are many. It is typically easier to live immersed in blind convention, passively breathing the air of the times, thus blinding ourselves to the fact that life is a conundrum, largely a mystery to us, even a problem, even a burden. What stops people from thinking, from stepping outside of the current of history, is not typically mere incapacity to think, although stupidity cannot be ruled out as a motivator. Rather, it is often fear of pain and loss, of stepping outside of the numbing comfort zone and challenging the direction of the flow. Our vulnerability, that precious and terrible feature of ourselves, is often

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to blame for our passive resistance to change what must be changed. Fear and pain guide with crushing force, either towards or away from the sources of light. And perhaps widespread passivity is a necessary condition for minimal social harmony. Perhaps societies require widespread passivity, widespread heard compliance to the norms of the day. Borrowing HansGeorg Gadamer’s technical term, prejudice,3 plays a core role in our lives, helping account for the rationale of history. Without prejudice there could be no thought for all thought requires a background of ‘blind’ belief, so that which often stops us from thinking is also a condition for the possibility of thought in the first place. This background of agreement includes the norms that inform day-to-day human living and which are largely responsible for at least a modicum of social order, even, at times, genocidal order fuelled by mass consensus. Without widespread agreement, genocides could not occur (and neither could democracy). Thought does not only have a positive function. Instigators of evil often step outside of the flow of everydayness that would perhaps otherwise keep them away from savagery (Hitler and Raskolnikov). Indeed, thought brings with it the possibility of an especially terrible variety of wickedness (thought, typically, that pushes for a denial of our natural propensity for affinity). The same faculty responsible for having a moral sense is also to be held responsible for some of the greatest bloodbaths that have lubricated the cogs of history. Only creatures able to think, indeed moral creatures, can develop a gleeful fascination with the mass production of corpses. The claim that our identities are not pre-given presupposes that life requires ignorance on our part, at least as a starting point. But I think it also requires ignorance throughout, for life is something we must continually come to terms with, continually work to understand and direct in accordance with endlessly partial understandings. Agency is processual, never static, always in search, adaptive, in danger. Indeed, this negative feature of our lives – ignorance – is a condition for the sort of movement that defines human existence, that defines us as creatures in search. After all, freedom of the will, what allows us to be the architects of our own destinies, is not available to the omniscient. For them life is but a guided tour. Freedom of the will is only available to finite adaptive creatures whose lives are to some extent, but not entirely, a mystery to themselves. This ignorance brings with it the risk of innumerable failures.


We must work, be permanently vigilant, to stay afloat. A vigilant mind is one that is awake, fully there, driving life forward, fuelled by the very risks that threaten extinction; fuelled indeed by the recognition of our finiteness, of our own mortality (for knowledge of our mortality brings with it a certain urgency that spurs us to act as genuine agents4). Indeed, we are creatures in search; in search for understanding, meaning, order, comfort, well-being, and so on. We are endlessly in search of what we don’t have or of what we have, but only imperfectly. This should not lead us to suppose, as the Ancients largely supposed, but not only them for most ethical systems seem to recommend the ideal of a final resting point of one sort or another (perfect harmony, perfect peace, perfect justice, perfect cooperation and so on), that there is an end, a resting point, a final destination where the lack that spurs us on to continue searching will give way to the kind of widespread peace we are especially keen to have when the going is particularly rough and which we are not so keen to have when tormented with too much ease, when our lives are too heavily under our control and when our basic material needs have been met many times over.5 We can never be fully satisfied for satisfaction brings with it the sort of anxiety that pushes us to roam. Our condition is to roam, to roam at dusk, not knowing fully what is in stall for us. Anxiety, search, peace, boredom, anxiety, search and so on. The dynamic, creative and destructive rhythms of life. Creative and destructive instability. We are dysfunctional animals, failed animals, endlessly incomplete animals, self-denying animals. Our instincts have turned against us, so we can no longer graze in peace. We are animals who hate our animality. Civilization, the walled city, walled from the threats of nature, allowing us to fantasize. We take bath to remove the animals smell from our bodies, we defecate behind closed doors, copulate behind closed doors, silence our unsavoury instincts. We bury our dead and keep them away from sight, keep the stench of death away from our nostrils (even, in some cases, cremate our bodies to avoid the maggots). Yes, we hate our animality. We like to think of ourselves either as God’s children, and if God is not there to console us, at least we can fantasize with technological transcendence. But, we do defecate, we do copulate, we get sick and we die, and we know this. Denial fuels anxiety. Anxiety fuels the creative urge that has moved us away from raw animality and made persons of us. Evolution has played a trick on us. Our mode of survival is to a large extent a mode of denial. Without ingenuity, the sort that pushes us away from nature, we could not survive. Survival could only be assured

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by a flight away from what can never be transcended, a flight away that ends up being nothing but denial, creative denial, generative denial. But this sort of denial comes at the price of self-hate, as psychoanalysts have reminded us. Nature has not allowed us to be at ease with ourselves. Socrates’ erotic myth is an early attempt to explain the existential anxiety fuelling human life. Our situation is pathetic. We hardly understand ourselves and, yet, we are the sort of creatures that move in accordance with our understandings. We are always struggling with ignorance and we are always largely ignorant. We could safely claim that the complexity of our behaviour exceeds our capacity to understand ourselves. And, yet, this frustrating situation, leading often to tragic results and always placing us at risk of a fall, is a condition for agency, precisely because choice is a function of ignorance, precisely because an awakened mind is one that is alert to the unexpected. We are agents insofar as we are adaptive creatures. We nose our way, largely by trial and error – spontaneously – through a penumbra of uncertainty. That is what makes us adaptive. If we were aware of the mechanisms pushing us forward, fully aware, that is, able fully to predict (assuming this were possible), our behaviour would be that of marionettes or zombies going through the motions of a fully mapped out life (a guided tour rather than a genuine adventure). Our eyes would glaze over and the edginess of the nocturnal prowling hunter would give way to vegetative dread. If our identities were pre-given, and also if they somehow remained stable across changing conditions, across the sudden and rather unpredictable eruptions of chance, we would not have to work to be who we are, to continue to be who we are, but our agency would be radically diminished and we would at best be the architects of our own destiny in a weak sense only. Wisdom must be won, and it is not won when things are too easy, when risks are small and dangers are almost non-existent. Evil, that great merciless pedagogue, cares nothing at all about its feeble pupils and yet without its pedagogical assistance our species, as a whole, would lose the dynamics that moves it into action. The furrowed hollows are necessary for the grassy valleys, as Nietzsche would say.

4.3

Otherworldly ideals

Multifarious evils, petty and large, moral and natural, intentional and non-intentional, plague our lives and in the end death comes to crown our lives – a tight crown of thorns. Sure, some will protest, there are good deaths and bad, but the very idea of a final end – the difficulty of


coming to terms with the fact, good and bad embodiments alike – attests to the power of death’s darkness. In an important sense, after all, life is all we have, and death comes to take it away from us, to steal us of the opportunity of remaining alive. The fear of death can only be overcome – for indeed it must be overcome, at least to a limited extent, if we are to avoid being paralysed by fear – through forgetfulness, convenient otherworldly dreams or even this-worldly dreams of ‘immortality’ through fame or the memory of our offspring and their descendants. Indeed, we are endowed with a natural instinct to remain alive, and yet we know that we will die. This is our tragic fate and, as some have pointed out, it is also a condition for the possibility of living purposefully. Knowledge of our mortality brings with it a certain urgency, a certain need to rank our different projects and our different needs, an urgent need to choose one life option over another. Mortality also brings with it our own vulnerability to circumstances, the sort of vulnerability that makes life the genuine purposeful (imperfect) unity that it is. The fact of our mortality, if the relevant authors mentioned in note 4 & 12 are largely correct, is a two-edged sword, playing both positive and negative functions in our lives simultaneously; providing the tragic soil for purposive existence. More generally, life is largely about coming to terms: coming to terms with our finiteness, our specific flaws; coming to terms with the fact that we are not as important as we would like to think we are in the eyes of others, that we are vulnerable and that we must prove ourselves many times over. Each or at least most important steps in our lives involve going over hurdles: overcoming or winning in a challenging game. Every step involves difficulties and associated risks. A condition for such difficulties – and for the value we place on achievement – is the real possibility of failure. Indeed, as briefly discussed above, the very possibility of learning involves recognition of our ignorance, of the inadequacy of mere mortals, and learning is an uphill battle, and such a battle is a condition for the ensuing victory, if indeed one is lucky enough to be victorious. We are always struggling with our multiple inadequacies, our multiple temptations, and the threats from outside. Without these threats and inadequacies, learning would cease to be an accomplishment, a victory. It would be more like the easy, unconscious, flow of breathing. Indeed, learning to be ethical is also a challenge. We do not simply become better, ethically speaking. Rather, we must work hard on ourselves, and the work must be clearly directed, involving a considerable amount of insight and practical intelligence; something available to

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few and only after much directed work. So, few achieve what could be characterized as ethical excellence. There is a bias against excellence of this sort and, yet, without this bias; if, say, we were all born good, the value we attribute to being ethical would largely be lost. Indeed, without the obstacles strewn in front of us in our pursuits of ethical excellence, the occasions for learning to be deeply ethical would be lost. So we owe the possibility of being ethically proper to the dark side, to the obstacles – internal and external – strewn on our way; obstacles that often push us down the path of darkness and for the most part motivate us to be less than fully ethical. Ethical virtuosity, its genuine possibility, insures that it will always be a relatively rare skill; mastered only by few, thus helping maintain the utterly imperfect nature of human living.6 Those wanting to challenge the goodness of God, or indeed his very existence, if one assumes that, by definition, God and hence his creation must be good, indeed ‘perfectly’ good, assuming this idea makes sense, have reminded us of the rich gamut of evils plaguing our wretched lives. A perfectly good god could not have made a world such as ours, the argument goes. Some, Leibniz among them, have attempted to overcome this theological hurdle by trying to convince us that we live in the best of all possible worlds, but Voltaire (Candide: Or Optimism) and Mark Twain (Letters from the Earth) effectively show that, if God did exist, he may as well be called Satan. The motivation to save God from his creation has led to countless theodicies; desperate cries to save perfection from the footprints of imperfection, the anomalous footprints of God, the fossil records of his unholy machinations. However, I do not want to get bogged down with theological disputes here. My interest is with more earthly matters, but Leibniz’s insight might have something going for it, despite Voltaire and Twain’s effective rebuttals. Perhaps we do live in something like the best of all possible worlds and this is a world in which good and evil, together, are constitutive of the space which allows the ethical properly to happen in the first place and, more generally, which allows us to live the sorts of lives that best fit the human constitution. However, my concern here is less with Leibniz’s position as such as it is with matters that define and constrain the scope of ethics in its agnostic form. But there is something else that we must not fail to observe regarding Leibniz’s theodicy: if he is half-right to believe that we live in the best of all possible worlds, then goodness requires evil meaning that God, assuming he exists, cannot be perfectly good for the very idea of perfect goodness, if Leibniz’s reasoning about the necessity of evil is correct, is incoherent. God’s creation had to contain evil because perfect goodness


does not exist, because God too was constrained by imperfect laws that make goodness dependent upon evil. Of course, we could argue that God’s goodness is saved by Satan’s saving grace – that God can remain pure because Satan is there to do his dirty work – but the very admission that God needs Satan, that he cannot be ‘perfectly’ good without him, means that neither God nor his creation can be truly perfect, for dependence entails compromise. The perfect God cannot be saved and this should remind us all of the limits of moralizing, should remind us all of the impossibility of moral sainthood, borrowing Susan Wolf’s expression;7 of a sort of moral purity that can only exist in a world divested of the evils that Leibniz thought were constitutive of human moral existence. Purity, trivially, involves staying clean, but now we have reasons to suspect that even the most perfect manifestation of divinity cannot be pure, cannot be perfectly clean. But there is more. We care for God because of our pathetic conditions, because we are vulnerable to suffering and, above all, because we die. Our deep imperfection fuels the belief in a perfect God. Were we (quasi) perfect, invulnerable, indeed, demigods of sorts, then there would be no need in us, or very little need at any rate, to believe in a saving God, for there would be nothing to save, nothing for which we may require divine assistance. God would, at best, merely be a powerful neighbour, not someone to be admired and revered. More generally, otherworldly ideals – Plantonic ideals of sorts – are fuelled by our less than divine nature. That we are not there, that we suffer here, motivates us to dream of being there, over the hill where the grass is always greener. Lies, at times, have therapeutic qualities, but therapies of deceit often rob us of a certain sort of strength cultivated by direct exposure to fear-inducing truths (but such lies can always save us in moments of acute weakness). Strength is developed by looking not only at the Cyclops of history, to borrow Nietzsche words, but, more generally, at the Cyclops of existence, at the Dionysian forces of destruction that have robbed us of so much and, yet, without which so little would have been accomplished. The background to the views expressed above is that goodness is in the act, is in our sincere and caring modes of engagement with specific individuals and with the human lot at large (and also with non-human animals and with the biosphere at large, if we wish to extend the moral fold). I am not, by contrast, considering ethereal saints connected to the image of God in some mysterious way, but radically disconnected from this world, often living in caves or hiding in monasteries – Plato’s otherworldly disciples. Of these later individuals I have little to say, for

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my place and interests are in this world, among my imperfect peers; doomed, it seems, to endless suffering. My interest is to understand how to be in this ruthlessly imperfect world, how to act, particularly how to act towards others, and, with Wolf, Gowans and indeed Nietzsche, I find the perfectionism entailed by most of our moral theories to be tasteless, false and counterproductive. For the question of ethics emerges as a going concern in this concrete world, bustling with adversities.8 My primary concern here, my allegedly disturbing concern, is with the positive function of evil. What I want to show is that goodness would at best be severely limited were it not for the presence of evils that are, among other things, the excuses for being good (excuses which force us to exercise our capabilities to be good and which allow us to learn to be good in a genuinely practical way). One should not be tempted to think that the fact that evil has a positive function, not all evils but certainly many, means that it is a good although some goods are both good and evil (but never good because they are evil). Indeed, although Wolf does not make this claim in her discussion on moral sainthood,9 her conclusions entail that at times the best thing to do is immoral, at times the best thing to do is to pursue a non-moral good at the cost of not living up to the rigorous standards of moral goodness. Doing this, she thinks, is better for life. Gowans argues for a similar position in his Innocence Lost,10 a work defending the idea that there are inescapable moral wrongdoings, that at times the best thing to do is immoral; that being truly moral often involves being immoral. Being the victim of a gross violation can prove to be life transforming in a positive way, but this does not make the gross violation into something good (not even the crudest consequentialist would claim that rape is good in certain instances because it can bring about a positive moral transformation and a marked improvement in the quality of life of the victim). That said, the story of goodness will, I contend, inevitably be tainted by the presence of evil, the ultimate motivation for being good. Evils motivate us to deploy whatever existential resources we have in order to overcome whatever it is that must be overcome. But sometimes something could be good and immoral at the same time, good and evil at the same time. Musical pursuits could be immoral in the light of world hunger and injustice; pressing issues that demand undivided attention. The exclusive energy and time invested in those that are closest to us could also be immoral for similar reasons. Goods, moral and non-moral, are often in competition with one another and the competition leads us at times inevitably to commit a sin against goodness.


If we were invulnerable, there would be no love, for love presupposes a certain vulnerability and genuine dependence on others that is not available to the invulnerable. So, this tremendously negative feature about ourselves – our deep vulnerability to circumstances – ultimately responsible for most of our suffering, for most of what is bad in our lives, is indeed a condition for the possibility of what is arguably best in us. Goodness is laced with evil. Indeed, agent evil only afflicts moral agents. You could protest that evil is not a necessary feature of moral agency; that only the potential for evil is. I reply that the risk itself is also an evil and the risks in question are very real. Being moral involves being permanently vigilant, being cautions, overcoming temptations, fears and weaknesses, that push us away from goodness. Goodness needs its shadow, and if the shadows were not very real then we would sadly be a species of paranoids fuelled by a false understanding of what is likely (but we are not on the whole victims of such evil delusions, although many of us are deluded in this way and some of us even make wars on pretexts fuelled by paranoid delusions).

4.4

Utopia

This is one of relatively few philosophical pieces focusing on evil, the shady companion of the good and one of even fewer pieces focusing on the problematic idea that evils may, in many instances but not always, have a positive role to play in our lives, and I am not just referring to minor evils. Without the holocaust, there would have been no Primo Levi, no Hannah Arendt, more generally, no productive western self-doubt about the very arrogance that ultimately built the factories of death. But what a price to pay for self-reflection! The cost, I should assert, is clearly too high, but the cost of eliminating evils from this world altogether, even terrible evils, is also too high if one assumes that moral blandness is utterly undesirable; if one assumes, with Nietzsche, that the price of endless human self-evaluation, allegedly a condition for genuine agency, are the creative historical forces of destruction. Whichever way you look at it, whichever direction you choose to go, the price, it seems, will always be too high (we could have penny-pinching disputes about specific costs, but such disputes hide the fact that, whichever way we choose to go, the price will always be far too high). This is the matter of tragedies and, yes, perhaps it is true that human life is tragic, and perhaps our tragic fate is a condition for the possibility of the richness and depth that characterizes human existence at its best (and perhaps also at its worst). Eliminate evils, assuming, naively, that this was possible,

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and you eliminate sophisticated moral living. Allow evils to happen, assuming it was genuinely up to us to allow them to happen (it is, but only to a limited extent) and the ghosts of suffering will come to haunt us as they unremittingly have. Our Greek predecessors thought of The Good as the telos – the target of the archer of The Good – of creatures fitting our description. Evils, for them, are obstacles on the path towards The Good, but I disagree with them about how to understand the meaning of what it is to be an obstacle and I also disagree with them about the very idea of The Good, and I shall discuss this later disagreement shortly. I will focus on the first disagreement straight away. Obstacles, for our predecessors, for the most part play a purely negative role. They stop us from moving forward and hence they thought that ideally they ought to be eliminated. I agree that they stop us, but in stopping us they provide the friction necessary for displacing ourselves in the directions of goodness. Obstacles, of course, are there to be eliminated and to be overcome, but in order for us to eliminate and overcome them, they must be there in the first place. These obstacles come in many shapes and sizes and are not necessarily of our own making, but they often, far too often, are. I differ somewhat from pervasive Greek thought in my belief that, without these obstacles, goodness would at best matter little to us and at worst would not even exist. By virtue of being obstacles, evils are the pretext for goodness, shadows that allow goodness to show up, so our characterizations of evil cannot be reduced to pure denial of goodness. Evil’s role is somewhat more productive than typically acknowledged. I differ from the Greeks because I no longer dream of a perfect path towards goodness, a utopia, earthly (Aristotle’s) or otherworldly (Plato’s), that has never squared nicely with our messy world, the stage for our most naively optimistic dreams.11 Let us not forget that we dream of better worlds and we are optimistic about achieving our dreams only insofar as things are not too good at present, only insofar as there is pain to remind us that there is much yet for which to struggle. Were we to achieve our goals, all of them assuming this were possible – assuming also that the very idea of a complete set of this sort is intelligible – there would be nothing left to strive for and the source of anxiety, of the pain of hope, would be lost, and we would sink into an oblivion of existential boredom, not unlike Borges’ immortals living in shallow holes on the banks of the muddy river of immortality.12 Life is rich, ethically and non-ethically speaking, because there are obstacles to surmount; typically obstacles that present themselves as


threats, that are life-threatening or that threaten to destroy whatever little happiness we have managed, typically with great effort, to secure for ourselves and only for a limited period of time. This happiness that comes with effort, which comes as a consequence of overcoming dangers, is a happiness that we can appreciate; a happiness that cannot be taken for granted. As I was saying, life is hard for wretched creatures like us. We do not like this hardship and we wish for a world bereft of the circumstances that cause so much unspeakable torment, a world bereft of evils, moral and natural, a world of unhampered ease where we are no longer challenged beyond the limits of acceptable suffering which threatens to destroy our bodies, our minds and the moral fabric of our lives. Our wretched condition motivates us to dream up worlds in which human beings will respect each other as they ought, motivating us to think of ideal moral orders where justice prevails and where we can fulfil our most basic dreams with relative ease. Ethics become an issue of concern when found wanting, when the going gets rough. So, the conditions for goodness are also those that often invite us to take a stroll down the path of darkness. Imagine, a world of perfect harmony where one can surmise that nothing bad will ever occur, a world where one can safely presume that one will never be called to extend one’s moral endeavours beyond the limits of comfort; a world very different from our own. In such a world, allegedly, people will be fundamentally decent, kind and caring although the moral stamina of individuals will never be tested to its limits. In such a perfect world no circumstance would ever emerge where moral heroes could prove their mettle and hence, on final analysis, there would be no moral heroes and no need for them either. Such a world would be one bereft of significant risks. Such a world would, in the eyes of many if not most, be as perfect as the world can be, a kind of heaven; too perfect, perhaps. Let us explore.13 When we think of our most highly regarded moral heroes we think of them as having done good in ways that ought to be recognizable by all properly disposed individuals. We also wish that more individuals of this sort existed in order to cure our world of its multifarious evils. We see their lives as exemplary and, although we do not typically wish for the hardship that characterizes many if not most highly regarded moral lives, we wish that we could embody virtues comparable to those guiding such lives; we separate goodness from the source that makes goodness possible. Moral heroes are a permanent reminder of what is humanly achievable, of humanity at its best. A world without such

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individuals would, it seems, be rather impoverished. A world without moral heroes, one could say, would be a less than perfect world. But, perhaps, the price of harmony may be moral impoverishment and it is possible, despite what I have suggested above, that this is a price well–worth paying. Additionally, a world bereft of significant evils would not only be impoverished because of its lack of moral heroes, but also because occasions would rarely if ever arise for everyday people like you and I to properly exercise our moral capabilities. Ethics would, for the most part, collapse into etiquette; a set of pre-given standardized procedures applicable in largely familiar settings, requiring little imagination, if any, and little risk, if any. People would behave predictably, with arresting monotony: nicely, kindly, caringly, responsively, benevolently, civically. Hard decisions often involving painful compromises, where genuine goods are sacrificed in the altar of other goods, could have no significant presence. All moral decisions would be straightforward and bland; expressive, primarily, of truisms, allowing even the most morally inept to act with appropriateness. But, in a world bereft of significant evils, everyone would be morally inept for no occasions would arise for people to fully exercise their moral capabilities; a requirement for learning to be ethical. Strangely, in such a ‘perfect’ world it would be very easy to be good and very hard to be bad, making goodness into something drab, quotidian, expected, unremarkable, trivial. The seriousness we attribute to goodness would be considerably diminished. To be sure, the possibility of being properly ethical also rests on some degree of ethical success. An utterly imperfect world, very different from our own, in which any attempt to act ethically was met with utter failure is an incoherent world, for we can only make sense of the ethical as such if we have some idea of how good intentions translate into good actions and results, and this idea can only properly be had if we can actually experience how good intentions lead to good actions and results. So, ethics seem to happen properly in an intermediate world, a world very much like our own. Ethics, the practice rather than the discipline, most properly happens in a contested space, a dangerous space. In fact, it is the same space as the one allowing evil to prosper. Indeed, as discussed above, being good is largely a labour of overcoming evil, largely a labour of opposing resistance against the ever-present forces of destruction in the mundane everyday battlefield of life. Additionally, it is no secret that great moral heroes were formed in the trenches, in prisons, in the presence of abject poverty and gross social injustices or of killer plagues and other natural


catastrophes. But these occasions are also the occasions for opportunism to arise, for the bitterness that is expressed by pulling the trigger against a guiltless life, for theft, torture and genocide. Where all-too-rare moral heroes emerge, villains multiply like flies on a warm carcass.

4.5 The republic of desperation There is a clear bias towards evil and yet, without the conditions allowing evil to emerge in abundance, goodness would be stunted. Let us dwell for a while on the idea of overprotection for a ‘perfect’ order such as the one sketched above would indeed be one of overprotected subjects, stunted, if I may add, in order to focus attention on one possible scenario for the time being, by a control-obsessed parent-state. Plato’s utopian state, described in The Republic, is such a state and his quest for utopia is paradigmatic of such quests. Because of this it is worth exploring the problems with Plato’s quest in some detail. Three basic issues will be highlighted: first, the impossibility of eradicating evil; second, the productive role that evil plays as the facilitator of goodness and; third, the moral/psychological damage produced by thinking about perfectionist ideals aimed fully at eradicating evil. Plato was deeply preoccupied with the sort of endemic political corruption that expressed itself in the manner of Socrates’ death and consequently he sought to design a state where the conditions for corruption could never arise; a state that forced its subjects, through enforced habituation and threat, to be good, guaranteeing no occasions for evil to prosper – a perfectly safe state. Justice is allegedly achieved at the price of autonomy, the loss of which is, in actual fact, one of the greatest conceivable injustices. Plato’s paradoxical utopian vision is, on further analysis, a portrayal of a kind of Orwellian hell. In Plato’s sketch of utopia there is a not-so-hidden admission. Without force, without total control, centralized or dispersed, evil will always find its way into the social domain, and it will thrive. The picture one gets, after looking behind the veils of appearance hung up by Plato’s text, is of a battle, perhaps even a desperate battle, as attested by his radical vision of total control, a vision he never seems confident could ever be realized, to strengthen the moral dikes holding back the currents of evil. Underlying Plato’s text there is a deep pessimism about the human situation, a pessimism fuelled by his other-worldly vision of a perfect world. Yes, too much idealism can lead to great pessimism (as Nietzsche has famously pointed out). If, on the whole, we were

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truly good, the subtext goes, then of course there would be no need to implement a police state, a state patrolled by guardians, which Plato compares to ‘well-bred watchdogs’ (Republic 375a). But, we are not, and doing as Plato suggests amounts to attempting to extinguish the fire of evil with the gasoline of total control; a far from perfect solution for a far from perfect world. Plato’s this-worldly dread is expressed in his obsession with the overly hygienic fantasy world of the forms. That is the only place where human beings, philosophers at any rate, can find refuge. That is the only place where they can escape the actual world, construed, incredibly, as a quasi-fantasy world; a world for the lovers of sights and sounds. Indeed, Plato could not find any ultimate this-worldly rewards for being good and he goes so far as to argue that the ultimate reward lies beyond, in the fantasy domain of the forms. As mentioned above, his standards are too high. Incredibly, Plato goes so far as to claim that the watchdog rulers of his ideal state should not ‘regard human life as a thing of any great consequence’14 because they should be concerned fundamentally with things divine. This disregard for humanity, Plato thinks, will help make them into ideal rulers, but no satisfactory explanation, as one may expect, is given as to why they should want to rule mere things of no great consequence in the first place. Humans, Plato implicitly thinks, are too perverse to be regarded as creatures of value and yet, paradoxically, he dedicates most of his corpus to trying to make sense of these allegedly pathetic creatures. The only way to bring about a world starved of injustices is to control and suppress human agency to the point in which humans become nothing but organs of a state whose ultimate aim is to come as closely as possible to emulating the fantasy domain of the forms on earth. Plato’s attempt to rid the world of evil ends up doing quite the opposite. It leads him to despise humanity and to set watchdog guardians on them in order to control and suppress agency. Plato’s obsession with perfect goodness leads him to demand standards that are too high, tainting his perception of humanity, and leading him to propose a totalitarian regime that is far more perverse than the corrupt regime actually in existence in Athens at the time The Republic was written. Plato damaged his moral integrity, specifically his capacity to appreciate the value of being human, by advocating ideals that are too high for humans to achieve, and this motivated him to pursue his dystopian vision where humans are nothing more than organs of the state. A word of clarification: ‘too high’ does not mean ‘better than what we can achieve’. Rather, Plato’s mistake is not properly to appreciate


the very conditions for sophisticated moral life to exist. So, one should not be mislead by my language into thinking that Plato’s vision is on the top end of a continuum leading to moral bliss. Platonism only looks good at a distance, but when closely observed we see nothing but darkness. Plato’s mistake should be a lesson to all. Attempting to rid the world of all evils, moral evils in particular, will necessarily end up fostering the production of greater evils than those the original attempt set out to eradicate. Additionally, Plato’s watchdog rulers could hardly be described as robustly moral. They are more like blind enforcers of a law; more like automata than genuinely moral agents. The creative, compromise riddled, moral problem solving in our actual messy world could not obtain in Plato’s ideal world. For the guardians to be genuinely moral agents they would have to be living in a messy world which forces them to deploy their moral capabilities in an environment of risk, uncertainty and moral scarcity. Contrary to what I have claimed above, perhaps there is scope for dreaming up a utopia that is constituted in a non-coercive fashion, a state where free subjects possessing a clear conception of goodness act together to form an ideal state. However, on further analysis, this solution is not relevantly different from Plato’s ‘benevolent totalitarianism’. Plato also wanted the subjects of his ideal state, particularly the guardians, to act in accordance with an internalized conception of the good, but this internalized conception comes at the price of radical coercion. The only manner in which widespread agreement of the relevant sort could effectively spread is by the radical control of habit-forming institutions which are, in fact, most if not all social institutions. So, all existing alternatives designed to bring about utopia involve self-defeating coercion which threatens human agency and autonomy. Basic positive functions of evil have been identified, at least in general outline. Also, assuming that being moral is central to being the sorts of creatures that we ultimately want to be, we should not wish that all evil be eradicated (although we should certainly fight evil wherever possible). A revaluation of our basic values, in the light of a proper understanding of the positive function of evil, seems to be warranted. Evils are the shadows of goodness. They follow goodness around wherever it goes providing a backdrop of darkness that allows goodness properly to appear. The masters of chiaroscuro knew well that light shines forth from darkness and they also knew that the existences of light depends on the existence of darkness.

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Gowans (1994). See Arendt (1963). Gadamer, H.-G. (1988), particularly pp. 265–307. See particularly Malpas (1998), pp. 120–34. In this piece Malpas argues that for a life without end there need be no limit on the orderings [the organization of the aspects that constitute a life] that are possible within that life and no sense in which that life need depend on any finite number of choices. Given an endless span of time, the possibilities that a particular life might encompass are themselves endless. … It is precisely because we cannot play through an endless series of choices, an infinite series of possibilities, that the choices we do make become so important to us: those choices establish the character and identity of our lives; they allow certain things to show up as valuable; they establish a certain ordering of and orientation within the world. It is perhaps for this reason that the idea of immortality can seem to entail a loss of meaningfulness, even a form of boredom. (p. 131)

See also Tabensky (2003), pp. 100–23 and Williams (1973), pp. 82–100. 5. See William James’ discussion on the allegedly idyllic ‘Assembly Grounds’ next to Chautauqua Lake in his ‘What Makes a Life Significant’, in James (1899), pp. 49–94. I thank Thaddeus Metz for pointing this source out to me. 6. In note 15 of Tabensky (2009a) I argue: I am aware that this claim, and others that I have made above, seems to presuppose the perfectionism that I explicitly seek to reject. If we are able to gauge ourselves as being far from perfect then allegedly we must have some account of perfection in mind that we use as the measure of our imperfection. But this is not what I think. What I think is that all we have, whether we realize it or not, are notions of better and worse. It makes sense to say that we are imperfect because we are not as good as we recognize we could be, but this is a far cry from the otherworldly perfectionism that Plato had in mind (or from any form of perfectionism, whether this-worldly or other-worldly). We recognize ourselves not to be as good as we could be where ‘good’ is understood in accordance with certain standards that are derived from observation of phenomena. For instance, I recognize that I am not as good a runner as I could be, where good is defined in relation to certain ideas relating to how fast or far creatures of our species can run and to the rules of the sport of running (which are partly, but not completely, defined in relation to our species-specific abilities). We do not measure our ability to run in relation to some bizarre Platonic ideal of running, whatever that may be. Indeed, what would such an ideal look like, what would its basic features be? The general point is that ideals are made to our measure

Pedro Alexis Tabensky 65 (this is indeed a central point that separated Aristotle from his teacher, but Aristotle is still too much of a perfectionist for my liking insofar as he has in mind a conception of harmony which is ultimately not of this world [I have more to say about this point in the piece from which this passage is taken]). Something else can be extrapolated from the case just briefly explored. Running excellences, so to speak, are determined in relation to certain socially contingent ideals, for the sport of running, and the ideals that define such an undertaking, are social constructs in a way that is not analogous to the social construct of language, which is a contingent necessity (all cultures must have some language, but not all cultures must promote the ideals that define the sport of running). This is not to say that all ideals are contingent in this way. Ideals are determined as such – and this is not meant as an exhaustive list – relative to species, sub-group, individual or environment, or to an amalgam of these. 7. Wolf (1982). 8. Smilansky (2007), pp. 77–89, argues that the value of morality is parasitical upon context, meaning that the value of morality is parasitical upon a world of adversities, large and small, and that if we manage to rid ourselves of most adversities, something we ought to do, then we should welcome the retirement of sophisticated moral life. Smilansky’s fundamental unspecified presupposition is that morality floats free of meaning and agency, and this piece in part aims to show that this is not the case. So, a world of the sort that he thinks would be best, a world where morality would at best be a kind of etiquette, would also be a world largely devoid of meaning and a world where full-blown agency could not exist. A fuller elaboration of the intricate relationships between morality, meaning and agency will have to wait for a book on the subject that I am currently writing, which, like this piece, will be called Shadows of Goodness. I may mention that Aristotle’s ethics can be read as a largely successful attempt to relate the three concepts of morality, agency and meaning. For a defense of the Aristotelian project see Tabensky (2003) and for a recent qualification of my endorsement of Aristotle, see Tabensky (2009a). In this latter piece, following Nietzsche and particularly Philip Hallie, I argue for the central role that adversity plays in our lives. For a short but incisive piece that endorses views that I defend see Radford (1996, pp. 137–44). 9. Wolf (1982). 10. Gowans (1994). 11. For a critique of perfectionist eudaimonism see Tabensky (2009a). 12. Borges (2000), pp. 135–49. 13. See Tabensky (2009b). 14. Plato (2003 [360 BCE]), 486a. The point I make is put as a question by Plato through Socrates, but solely for rhetorical purposes.

5 “Moral Beauty Happens” Richard H. Bell

This essay explores examples where “moral beauty” has broken through a certain darkness that seems to envelope our human spaces with an overwhelming sense of evil. I look at the faces of this evil and discuss how moral beauty shows itself in a chorus of acts of hope, compassion and generosity, remorse, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Introduction I take my title from a remark in Philip Hallie’s book, Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm, where he writes: “Moral beauty happens when someone carves out a place for compassion in a largely ruthless universe.”1 This often happens when least expected, when one reaches a point where all hope of good seems lost, where a simple act of compassion, or a pause—a different way of looking or listening—changes one’s perspective on our human actions, when goodness breaks into our all too fragile human world. I will explore several examples where “moral beauty” has broken through a certain darkness that seemed to have enveloped our human spaces with an overwhelming sense of evil or oppression, threats of war or genocide, or the annihilation of the very meaning of one’s humanity. Such “threats” are not just catalysts for “good,” they are like seed beds, without which there would be no new life asserting and re-asserting itself. The genius of any robust goodness is that it is a response to the embedded “evils” of life. My examples are drawn from several sources: the writings of Simone Weil, Philip Hallie, Jonathan Glover, Raymond Gaita, and episodes related to the South African Commission on Truth and Reconciliation during the 66

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decade 1994–2004. With respect to the South African case, Fanie Du Toit wrote: graciously and unexpectedly the truth borne by the suffering did not silence discourse permanently. Rather like a symphony of frogs after heavy storms, these tales of suffering have released a myriad of new voices and ideas, prompting dialogue to renew and reinvigorate itself. Just as we thought we have lost the ability to write at all, just as we were about to become mute, the unrepresentable truth of victims gracefully reinvigorated our discourse.2 I will look at the face of harm-doing and evil in our recent history and exercise the moral and literary imagination to see how moral beauty has broken into and been carved out of moral evil through a pause or a glance, and in a chorus of acts of hope, compassion and generosity, remorse, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Nihilism and “Camus’ Hug”—The Plague and Le Chambon I had a colleague who always insisted that the writings of all “existentialists” were “nihilistic”; that there were no redemptive features in their message. The more that I read and taught from works of Albert Camus, however, the more I found cause for hope. Perhaps this was because of the legacy I inherited from my undergraduate teacher, Philip Hallie, who introduced me to “existentialist” writers. I wish to share some insights into Camus from Hallie’s own writings. I heard Camus’s voice calling to me, “allie!” “allie!” “allie!” He was pounding down the stairs [from his office at Gallimard]. . . . He stood in front of me with my glasses in his left hand and a big happy smile on his face. . . . Right after I took them he raised his open arms so that his hands fell on my shoulders, and he said, as he squeezed my shoulders, “t’ai trouvé!” “t’ai trouvé!” “I’ve found you!” “I’ve found you!” . . . his hug had warmed me to him as nothing else he had ever said or written had warmed me. . . . Months later in January of 1960, I was back in Nashville, Tennessee, reading a term paper for a philosophy course when my wife turned on the radio. Before I could ask her to turn the volume down,

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I heard that Albert Camus had just been killed in an automobile wreck south of Paris. . . . I am almost certain that I wrote something on the back of the paper [I was grading] while I was sobbing with rage. I think I wrote: “Camus is dead.” This was no more and no less than the truth.3 I was in Philip “allie’s” class that term. It was not my paper he was grading. That same day, however, he came to class and gave a passionate lecture on Camus—still “sobbing with rage.” He had told us earlier about “Camus’s hug.” Hallie’s passion transferred into his philosophy—a philosophy embedded in human stories that were always “no more and no less than the truth.” He called this “narrative ethics.”4 Among his many stories is another about Camus’ life while Camus was writing The Plague. This was during the War. In 1942 Camus spent a year in Le Panelier. This was at the same time as “the rescue machine of Le Chambon was in full operation.”5 Le Panelier was—and is—a gray, granite fortress-farm on the outskirts of the village of Le Chambon. Of Camus’ novel, Hallie writes: The plague is not only inguinal fever carried by fleas on dead rats; it symbolizes the cruel German occupation of France at the time Camus was writing; and, above all—or rather at the bottom of it all—it symbolizes the capacities of man—and indeed of the world at large— for killing and for letting killing happen. Trocmé and his villagers saved those thousands of children without hating or hurting anyone (he did not hate the Germans; he was trying to keep them from doing more evil by killing more children); and Doctor Rieux and the other workers against the plague in Camus’s novel were trying to save people’s lives—simply that. The novel was as much about Le Chambon during the rescue years as it was about continental Europe in the first four years of the forties. And they were both about the pathos and beauty of goodness.6 Hallie remarks in his essay on narrative ethics: These people [in Le Chambon] were trying to destroy no one. All the Chambonnais wanted to do was to shelter refugees, and then to spirit as many of them as possible across the Cévennes mountain range up to neutral Geneva. And they did these things for more than four years, without killing and without wanting to kill anyone, even during the last bloody summer of the occupation in 1944.

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. . . I did not have to be a student of the history of ethics to know what Mary Warnock called “a plain fact,” namely that these people who cared for their fellow human beings were better than those who did not.7 When you read a story about “helping” and trying to save lives, no more and no less, this is a long way from nihilism. It opens the way for compassion and creates new possibilities for building solidarity with others.

The Holocaust and genocide Raymond Gaita provides us with another example of “narrative ethics.” In trying to understand the meaning of the Holocaust, the very concepts of suffering and injustice of such proportion stand as major stumbling blocks to the idea supposedly generated by the Enlightenment of human moral progress in the West. Even though the Nuremburg Tribunals coined a new and important phrase that entered our modern moral and legal vocabulary, “crimes against humanity.” Gaita says that the Nazi crimes against the Jews were, in fact, more than that. They were not just one such terrible crime against humanity that all genocidal acts are. Rather, the Holocaust is uniquely evil. To distinguish the Holocaust from other terrible acts against humanity has proven to be very difficult and not everyone agrees with this view. Gaita, however, makes a stab at identifying its distinctiveness. He says: “the Holocaust did not merely crush the hopes of continuous human progress, the hopes of the enlightenment. It did so in ways that put in doubt our understanding of ourselves as moral and political beings.”8 After reading Primo Levi’s book If This Is a Man (a work Gaita says is one of the great spiritual achievements of human kind), Gaita remarks that it became apparent to those in the Warsaw Ghetto as they began receiving news of the “massive and unrelenting scale” of the killings in the east, “that something different and more terrible in kind had begun.” He continues: Some people realized what was really being done in the ghettos when they heard of the killings in the [death camps in the] east. . . . In the east the Nazis’ genocidal purpose became transparent. In the death camps . . . something even more terrible than genocide was being committed. The death camps are essential to our understanding of the Holocaust, not because they were horrifically efficient killing centers,

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but because there occurred in them an assault on the preciousness of individual human beings of a kind never seen before. That, I think, is the truth in Avishai Margalit’s claim that the Holocaust was unique because it combined mass murder with demonic efforts to humiliate those who were destined to be murdered.9 What we are led to imagine is an assault on the meaning of what it is to be a human being; the total disregard plus the humiliation of human dignity; a racism that crossed known moral boundaries and neutralized all possibility of sympathetic understanding on the part of the Nazis with regard to a Jew. There was no meaningful way of using the moral concept of “respect” much less, “mutual respect.” To the Nazis there was no “other” human being to face! Another historical example that challenges our moral imagination is found in Jonathan Glover’s account of the Cuban missile crisis. There are several aspects in the narrative unfolding of the Cuban missile crisis in October of 1962 that bear on our moral imagination. The one aspect I want to briefly discuss is the moral tone found in the resolution of the crisis—the tone that brought the possibility of a nuclear holocaust to a peaceful resolution. This is seen primarily in the words and actions of the Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev, President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and US Secretary of State Dean Rusk. The very first decision made by President Kennedy—against the advice of his military advisors who wanted to go immediately into Cuba and take out all the missile bases—was to blockade Soviet ships from bringing any more offensive or defensive weapons into Cuba. Of this decision President Kennedy said: “we don’t want to push him [Khrushchev] to a precipitous action—give him time to consider. I don’t want him put in a corner from which he cannot escape.”10 Glover notes that both Presidents Kennedy and Khrushchev “were emotionally responsive to [the] enormity [of the crisis and its potential dark consequences].”11 Any decision or set of decisions taken were not a simple result of “rational” calculation. One had to think about the consequences of possible nuclear war. President Kennedy and Dean Rusk had, upon coming to office, been briefed on such consequences and given a scenario of some 200 million dead. Robert Kennedy estimated that had the Soviets unleashed their missiles on the US it would have killed 80 million Americans. The risk was too large! On the other side, Khrushchev’s experiences in two World Wars was revealed in his first letter (or formal response) to President Kennedy during the early days of the crisis—a letter Glover notes that “had a conciliatory and human tone.” This letter, some argue, had “changed the

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atmosphere” from one of anger to one of a willingness to listen, to not overreact, and to compromise. Part of this letter read as follows: Should war indeed break out, it would not be in our power to contain or stop it, for such is the logic of war. I have taken part in two wars, and I know that war ends only when it has rolled through cities and villages, sowing death and destruction everywhere. . . . If people do not display wisdom, they will eventually reach the point where they will clash, like blind moles, and then mutual annihilation will commence. . . . You and I should not now pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied a knot of war, because the harder you and I pull, the tighter this knot will become. And a time may come when this knot is tied so tight that the person who tied it is no longer capable of untying it, and then the knot will have to be cut.12 Neither leader wanted to pull the knot in the rope too tight. Both of their memories of being in war, and President Kennedy and Dean Rusk having learned from reading of mistakes that led to World War I in Barbara Tuchman’s book, The Guns of August, helped defuse the crisis. Robert Kennedy sums up this “emotionally responsive” reaction as follows: “We spent more time on [the] moral questions during the first five days than on any other single matter. . . . We struggled and fought with one another and with our consciences, for it was a question that deeply troubled us all.”13 After the crisis Khrushchev wrote to President Kennedy that “we had to step over our pride, both you and we, in order to reach this agreement.”14 Note the number of cues that caused what Simone Weil would call a halt, or pause in this episode—those “intervals of hesitation, wherein lies all our consideration for our brothers in humanity”:15 • • • • • •

“give him time to consider” “display wisdom” a “human tone” avoidance of “sowing death and destruction everywhere” “emotionally responsive” “step over our pride”

These are vivid images, not unlike du Toit’s “chorus of frogs,” intoning a way forward that give shape for our moral imagination to grasp. This example, again, reminds us that this piece of “narrative ethics” speaks of a truth no more and no less. In this our moral and political dimensions

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of life are intertwined and there remains a human capacity for compassion rather than hatred, even as the horizon appears dark.

Overcoming “an ethos of remorselessness” In this last example of “narrative ethics,” I turn to the present—to the aftermath of the terrible 45 plus years of apartheid oppression of the majority nonwhite South Africans by the minority white Afrikaner government. I want to discuss how the “soul” of South Africa came to the surface and found a mode of expression in the testimony and practices of both those associated with apartheid’s most horrible crimes and with ordinary black South Africans and others oppressed by the apartheid system. This was made possible in a creative manner through the instrument of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC came into existence in 1995 by an act of the newly elected majority democratic South African Parliament and was active for a period of about five years. The various facets of the TRC have had a continuing impact on the struggle for identity and reconciliation in the transformation of this new nation; they have helped carve out a new moral space in a landscape shrouded by oppression. The testimony of both victims and perpetrators of crimes were an expression of the face, or the physiognomy, of the apartheid and postapartheid era. South Africa’s scarred soul found a kind of cathartic mode of expression in the TRC process. Partly as a result of the TRC a new grammar of self-understanding is finding its way into the fabric of the everyday life of South Africa through the language and activities of “forgiveness and reconciliation.” I feel privileged to have lived among an extraordinarily forgiving people in South Africa—a people willing to embrace a reconciliatory spirit when they could have taken revenge. I want to discuss first the idea set forth by South African philosopher, Johan Snyman, that his country during the apartheid era had become one that lost the capacity for “remorse”—they had become “soul-less.”16 Then I will discuss several examples from the South African experience that illustrate the transformation from remorselessness to confession, and from remorse and regret toward forgiveness and reconciliation. This is like a new attitude toward, and a revelation of, what might be called the “soul” of a nation. Or we might say there is in the activities, or grammar, of this public process, “a picture of the soul” of South Africa.17 And this picture provides us with a clearer sense of how “good” wrests its way from the grip of “evil.”

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Snyman noted: “At its best, the achievements of the apartheid society took place within the context of a moral and intellectual desert.”18 One could say that in spite of some achievements it had no soul to show; it had cultivated an “ethos of remorselessness” over a period of 50 or more years. To be in such a state of remorselessness is like living without a soul. With a changed political and social system—the 1994 Constitutional Democracy, led by Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress party—South Africa had to come to terms with its new reality. This reality was based on a political culture of universal human rights, and that the nation wanted to move forward with a new spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. The Afrikaner culture, along with “all” of its new citizens, had to learn “to reinscribe remorse on a landscape, to stop the expansion of a moral and intellectual desert,” said Snyman.19 This required active “resistance to this ethos of remorselessness” and a “struggle to liberate (at least the Afrikaans) language to remorse.”20 It would be “an uphill path,” said Snyman.21 This was partially done through the continuous reporting of the TRC’s daily victims and perpetrators hearings for almost five years. This process went a good way toward making “the marginalized audible.”22 Their stories formed a new and different landscape for the culture – one that had been repressed and/or denied. The TRC hearings took away the deniability of the horrible crimes of apartheid, silencing the commission’s critics and restoring the audibility of the human soul.23 To illustrate this I will first characterize some features of the TRC’s mission as it was focused in public hearings to underscore the emergence of this new grammar of the soul of South Africa. Then, second, I will look at the case of Eugene de Kock. We can see in de Kock several states of emotion—the states that a human being or a community travel through—from “remorselessness” to a public grammar of remorse, forgiveness and reconciliation. Unlike previous Truth Commissions—commissions that issued final reports after just a few months of investigations and interviews in mostly closed hearings (as in Argentina, Chile and Nicaragua)24—the heart and soul of the South African TRC was to be a vast public hearing with confessions of the grievances and defenses of the South African people that had taken place over a dark period between 1960 and 1994. The commission’s work would spend nearly five years listening to the stories of victims of the apartheid system, the perpetrators of “gross human rights violations” on both sides of the struggle—all of which were publicly broadcast and reported daily. It would also include

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“public hearings of major institutions such as political parties, the legal system, business, labor and health sectors, the faith communities, and the armed forces.”25 In all of these the soul of South Africa was laid bare. Ronald C. Slye, an American human rights law scholar who worked with the commission, comments: “There is no question that the South African amnesty process provided more accountability than any other truth commission, not to mention any other amnesty.” Furthermore, Slye continues: Examples of acts of reconciliation between victims and perpetrators of gross violations of human rights can act as proxies for a process of reconciliation among groups in society, for examples, between blacks and whites; between coloured and blacks; between supporters of the IFP [Inkatha Freedom Party] and the ANC [African National Congress]; and between black policemen and their immediate communities. . . . There are few, if any, who can now argue that death squads operations like Vlakplaas did not exist; that people were not tortured; that civilians were not targeted or terrorized. This is so in no small part because some individuals came forward and took responsibility.26 This kind of truth-telling, or coming forward and taking responsibility is a path toward reconciliation. The human narratives, the truth-telling, the confessions, the amnesty hearings and more all led to a new and more open moral climate. What emerges through the TRC process is an act of corporate confession and grief. In this we begin to see the emotions of a people who have agreed—even if reluctantly—to publicly “bare” their soul. The TRC made remorse possible for those who previously had not been willing to look at or see the face of their black neighbors. The TRC shaped a new grammar that gave the country a human face; it gradually began to reveal a public soul of a nation. Such grammar unveil’s what may be called a positive function of evil in the restoration of humanity in black South Africa. Martha Minow has noted the following: Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist who served on the Human Rights Committee of the TRC, recounts how one mother testified about her pain of losing a child to torture and then death. She said later that she did not intend to cry before the commission, but nonetheless she did cry. Knowing that the testimony was broadcast, she concluded: “I wanted the world to see my tears.” There is pride and strength

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in seeing oneself as an actor on a world stage, and as one who can educate the world while also exposing personal suffering in a public way. Tears in public will not be the last tears, but knowing that one’s tears are seen may grant a sense of acknowledgment that makes grief less lonely and terrifying.27 A second example of truth-telling is found in the narrative confession of Eugene de Kock. De Kock, the director of the assassin-training farm called Vlakplass, became widely known to the South African public through the latter decades of the apartheid era as “Prime Evil.” Wrapped in his persona, in his evil acts and his personal confessions is found a story of forgiveness and reconciliation. The soul of “prime evil” is unveiled in his own public confessions before the TRC amnesty hearings and to clinical psychologist Pumla Gobado-Madikizela. This example illustrates links between evil and good in the movement from remorselessness to remorse and forgiveness to reconciliation. In Gobodo-Madikizela’s book, A Human Being Died That Night, she discusses her life and de Kock’s life as experienced through 42 hours of interviews with de Kock at South Africa’s notorious Pretoria Central Prison where he is serving a 212-year sentence. Gobodo-Madikizela writes that she saw “two sides of de Kock: one evil [Prime Evil], and the other—the one I was more afraid of confronting—a human being capable of feeling, crying, and knowing pain.”28 Here was a man painted into a corner of sub-humanity; one whose persona had been so circumscribed by the publicity of his coldly calculated evil acts that there seemed little chance that another aspect of his soul could be revealed. She wanted to know “how and why [his humanity] had been silenced.”29 In her prison interviews and in brief meetings at a number of amnesty hearings where de Kock testified, she began to see in his conflicted behavior that he had “trouble showing emotion.”30 This, of course, was not odd given his decades of cold conditioning as an assassin. But surely, she thought, there was another way for a human being to show a different “emotion.” She became convinced that “he was in some emotional pain about the things he had done.”31 Although he lived in his cell with “ever-present images of death”—they were there with him “like a daily calling card”—there was more to be shown. You don’t see the evil “inside” a person, you can see it only in his or her acts. The emotions lay in their “face”32—in what they say and do to reveal their emotions! The interviews with de Kock and the TRC amnesty proceedings drew out the evil and the good; the evil and the good became known in their “publicity!” Gobodo-Madikizela

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concluded, “for all the horrific singularity of his acts, de Kock was a desperate soul seeking to affirm to himself that he was still part of the human race.”33 When de Kock is brought to reflect on his moral life, his own moral confusion surfaces. He comes to see how it is possible to be manipulated and to have one’s very soul redefined by one’s environment, by the activities that surround one.34 On one assignment in Namibia, rooting out SWAPO guerrillas, de Kock noted his surprise to find a well-worn Bible in the knapsack of a “killed or captured guerrilla.” He queried to himself: “on whose side is God now? . . . They’ve got exactly the same Bible.”35 In moments of confrontation with his ANC (or SWAPO) enemies, de Kock said: “You don’t allow yourself to think of the faces you see.”36 When de Kock did come to “face” his past life and his lost cause, he said: I think that I lost—it’s a feeling of loss. Well, the first thing that goes is innocence. I mean there’s no more tales and Bambi. That is gone. We killed a lot of people, they killed some of ours. We fought for nothing, we fought each other basically eventually for nothing. We could have all been alive having a beer.37 Finally, I want to say something about the emotions of remorse and forgiveness, and how they have led to public reconciliation in the case of South Africa and also reflect the linkage of evil with good. Remorse is basically a public emotion—you show remorse. It is brought to another’s attention. The “other” is usually one who has been injured by the one showing remorse. Here, again, the show of remorse is like du Toit’s “chorus of frogs,” intoning some deep sorrow. Furthermore, to show remorse is usually an open plea for forgiveness—a sign that evil has somehow lost its grip on a perpetrator of an evil act. That is, a response that brings a measure of closure to an open wound. A show of remorse or regret invites the possibility of forgiveness, and this is prerequisite to reconciliation. Gobodo-Madikizela writes: The most crucial sign [a perpetrator of a crime can give to a victim] is an expression of remorse . . . A genuine apology focuses on the feelings of the other. . . . It seeks to acknowledge full responsibility for an act, and does not use self-serving language to justify the behavior of the person asking forgiveness.38 An important feature of remorse connected to the amnesty hearing of the TRC was to see a measurable and reasonable ground on which

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to grant mercy to a perpetrator. Remorse in this context suggests that the perpetrator is on a road toward a shared humanity. There is in this exchange of remorse and forgiveness a public and personal transaction between two human beings. “Remorse,” says Gobodo-Madikizela “transforms a public and personal transaction between two human beings.”39 And what about reconciliation? In her book A Change of Tongue, Antjie Krog tells us something of the story of a distressed black woman, Deborah Matshoba, from her testimony before the Truth Commission. Deborah says of her life in prison: “The worst was not the torture, the solitary confinement. When I was inside, unbeknown to me, they had killed Steve Biko. And when I heard that, it was like they had taken the soul out of me.”40 Her testimony during the TRC led to the return of her soul. Then Krog asks: “How do you see reconciliation?” Deborah replies: “For me reconciliation is ‘uxolelwano.’ When Jesus Christ was on the cross, he said: forgive them, because they don’t know what they are doing . . . that is how I understand it—forgiveness is creating a culture of ubuntu, humaneness, medemenslikheid.”41 So now we are left to ask what is this culture of ubuntu that embodies forgiveness and reconciliation and restores our humanity? Krog concludes: “We make tea on the stove. Ubuntu. The most profound opposite of apartheid. More than forgiveness and reconciliation. More than ‘turn the other cheek.’ [Ubuntu] is what humanity has lost.”42 Apartheid literally means separateness—ubuntu means bringing together or I complete myself in the other; that my humanity depends on the reciprocal humanity of neighbors—or even strangers. When I see another’s soul and respect it, then I become complete in myself. This completeness is an act of solidarity. This completeness is not found in our “drinking tea” or “having a beer” together. That follows the hard work of remorse and forgiveness, and remorse and forgiveness are the narrative of the good that responds to evil. In A Change of Tongue, Krog is poetically trying to show how after apartheid the heart of Afrikaner culture had to find a new moral vocabulary. Not, however, by introducing new words into the language. Rather, she is pushing for a wholesale change in the soul of the people. This change requires a change in the physiognomy—the shape and the very grammar—of Afrikaner existence. She sees, for example, that Afrikaners had no way of giving concrete expression to ubuntu—that they refused to see their majority neighbor, black South Africans, as human beings. By her title, A Change of Tongue, she is advocating the need for “a sea

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change”—not for a change of words, but for a change of a “form of life.” They needed to shape a new human ethic to begin to see differently—to open their eyes to some form of reconciliation; to what they had failed to see in their black brothers and sisters: their souls, their humanity.

Conclusion Philip Hallie concludes his essay “Camus’s Hug” with an insight from his reading of and encounter with Camus. It points us away from nihilism and toward hope and moral beauty. Hallie writes: Two French words summarize the mood (for it is a mood and not a philosophic system) that Camus expressed in his writings and in his life and death. The words are: solitaire and solidaire. Only one consonant separates the two words from each other, but the difference between aloneness and union is immense. We are born into separateness; then, after a while, we die into it; and, in between our birth and our death, we are strangers and afraid in a world we never made. And yet we feel solidarity with others, love, from time to time. We live out our lives apart from others and as a part of others.43 There is an urgent need for solidaire (solidarity with our neighbors) or ubuntu rather than solitaire (aloneness) or apartheid (separateness) to restore the spirit of our humanity; to overcome evil’s darkness and to grow in a trust and transparency toward our brothers and sisters. As Hallie says “I can be solidaire [in solidarity] with the defenseless of the earth by fighting the plague, [that is, fighting] the need in mankind to kill and to let others kill.”44 This calls us to a new moral consciousness— ubuntu. “Moral beauty happens when someone carves out a place for compassion in a largely ruthless universe.” Carving out compassion however, is not always our most natural course of action. We must be shown new ways of acting with our fellow human beings—“we can feel solidarity with the victims we can embrace; we can feel the joy of helping a few people a few times.”45 Just a few months before author Iréne Némerovsky was taken to Auschwitz where she was put to death on August 17, 1942, she wrote in notes to her epic unfinished novel about German occupied France, Suite Francaise: In the face of evil and harm doing “what lives on” is “our humble day to day lives.”46 This is neither to diminish evil nor to show good as triumphant. It rather lifts up the need to value moral goodness whenever and wherever it surfaces in human life.

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Hallie (1997), p. 173. du Toit (1999), p. 354. Hallie (1995), pp. 431–2. Hallie (1984–5). See especially pp. 35ff & 44ff. The “rescue machine” of the Huguenot village of Le Chambon was that of saving more than 5000 Jewish children from certain death through the course of the War. Hallie (1995), p. 433ff. In 1979, Hallie published his well-known book on the rescue efforts of the villagers of Le Chambon during Nazi occupation. His story leaves us with the feeling of “solidarity with the victims we can embrace; we can feel the joy of helping a few people a few times.” On pages 248ff, of Hallie (1979), Hallie also talks about links between The Plague and Le Chambon. Hallie (1984–5), p. 38. Gaita (2000), p. 146. Gaita (2000), p. 140ff, my emphasis. I have also used this example and the one that follows from Jonathan Glover (2001) in Bell (2007). See Chapter 4. From Robert Kennedy’s memoir (1969), p. 213. My emphasis. I do not intend to recount the sequence of the whole crisis—Glover, Robert Kennedy, and others do that well. Rather, I will focus on some relevant aspects for our discussion of evoking the moral imagination. Glover (1999), p. 219. Glover (1999), p. 202. Glover (1999), p. 221. An interesting recent account of this crisis is told in retrospect by Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, in the 2004 documentary film “The Fog of War.” This, too, confirms the “moral tone” in the resolution of the crisis. Glover (1999), p. 222. This remark comes from Weil (1981). Snyman (1999). My emphasis. In a larger companion essay of mine entitled “On Seeing the Soul,” I have discussed how one can come to “see the soul.” The examples from the TRC offer us a unique view of the soul of a people as they engage their oppressors in acts of forgiveness—transforming evil to good. Snyman (1999), p. 295. Snyman (1999), p. 284. Snyman (1999), p. 285 Snyman (1999), p. 285. Snyman (1999), p. 292. This was poetically documented by Antjie Krog (1998). See Hayner (2001) for a study of over 20 truth commissions that have taken place around the globe since the mid-1980s. Perhaps the best collection of essays on the TRC’s work and significance is found in Rotberg & Thompson (2000). See especially details to be found in essays by André du Toit, Alex Boraine, Ronald C. Slye and Martha Minow, among others. For example, Boraine notes: “Perpetrators came forward, not in their scores, not in their hundreds, but in their thousands, to confess their

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26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

“Moral Beauty Happens” involvement in gross human rights violations” (Rotberg & Thompson, 2000, p. 155). Slye (2000), pp. 180–3. Minow (2000), p. 244. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 38. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 38. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 43. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 44. The concept “face” used here is similar to that found in Wittgenstein (1953), Part I, paragraphs 455 & 457, and Part II, p. 178; also see Wittgenstein (1980), p. 23e. See also Emmanuel Levinas’ idea of “face” as the starting point of all ethics as found in Levinas (1993), p. 35, and Levinas (1989), p. 83. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 47. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003) discusses a number of psychological theories that seek to explain this behavior in Chapter 4, “The Evolution of Evil,” pp. 48–78. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 71. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 76. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 78. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 98ff. Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), p. 130. The TRC Report (1998) chronicles numerous cases where remorse and confession led to forgiveness and reconciliation. Krog (2003), p. 156. Deborah’s whole story is told by Krog on pp. 155–9. In many ways this book is a sequel to Country of My Skull. Krog (2003), p. 157. Krog (2003), p. 159. Hallie (1995), p. 434. Hallie (1995), p. 434. Hallie (1995), p. 434. Némerovsky (2007), p. 356.

6 Murdochian Evil and Striving to be Good Heather Widdows

For Iris Murdoch the good is the primary value of the moral universe (which is co-extensive with the human universe), and attempting to ‘see’ the good and striving to ‘be’ good is what constitutes morality. For Murdoch the moral life is a journey towards the (unreachable) good and the moral agent is ‘moving through a continuum within which we are aware of truth and falsehood, illusion and reality, good and evil’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 250). However, despite the importance of good as an inspiring and drawing force in the moral life, evil (which presumably lies at the other end of the moral continuum) is not described in detail and has received little attention from Murdochian scholars. This chapter will attempt to address this imbalance and will explore the place of evil in the Murdochian schema. In order to outline this conception of evil this chapter will first explore Murdoch’s view of morality as ubiquitous and her focus on the good. Second, it will consider the place of evil in the moral life as an opposite and potentially equal actor to the good. It will be suggested that evil in this schema is real and active and must be shunned and fought against rather than accommodated, and thus there is an active role for evil in the Murdochian picture. However, this positive function of evil is tempered by evil’s capacity to delude and to ape the good.

Murdoch’s endeavour To understand Iris Murdoch’s conception of evil one must first understand a little of her conception of moral philosophy, value and the place of the good in her vision of the moral life. The impetus for Murdoch’s philosophy is to redress what she saw as a wrong turn in philosophy, namely the tendency to be merely descriptive – something she regards as being born out of pseudo-scientific 81

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pretentions. In contrast Murdoch argues that ‘philosophy is not a kind of scientific pursuit, and anyone who resorts to science is falling straight out of philosophy’ (Murdoch 1997 [1978], p. 8). Instead moral philosophers must (should) appeal to our general knowledge of human nature. Morality is and ought to be connected with the whole of our being. … The moral life is not intermittent, or specialised, it is not a peculiar separate area of our existence. It is into ourselves that we must look. … The proof that every little thing matters is to be found there. Life is made up of details. (Murdoch 1992, p. 495) For Murdoch then, philosophy should present an accurate, believable and realistic picture of human being and one which we can recognise in our own experience. She argues that philosophy should not only be descriptive but prescriptive – that ‘ethical theory has affected society, and has reached as far as to the ordinary man, in the past, and there is no good reason to think that it cannot do so in the future’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 76). Thus ‘ethics should not merely be an analysis of ordinary mediocre conduct, it should be a hypothesis about good conduct and about how this can be achieved. How can we make ourselves better?’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 78). Murdoch argues that any realistic moral philosophy must have goodness at its centre, thus she states ‘if a moral philosophy does not give a satisfactory or sufficiently rich account of what we unphilosophically know to be goodness, then away with it’ (Murdoch 1997 [1959], p. 205). Moreover moral philosophy must be about the whole of life: ‘the area of morals, and ergo of moral philosophy … [should] … be seen, not as a hole-and-corner matter of debts and promises, but as covering the whole of our mode of living and the quality of our relations with the world’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 97). For Murdoch philosophers must embrace the ‘positive task of finding a simple open mode of discourse concerning ordinary evident (for instance moral) aspects of human life’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 212). It is precisely this which she attempts in her own philosophy. Foremost among these ordinary and essential aspects of human being is the place of value, especially the good, in human life – evidence for which is found by reflection on experience; the starting point and means of verification for her philosophy.

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The Murdochian moral universe Morality is at the heart of Murdoch’s picture as for her human beings are fundamentally and primarily moral beings. She argues that ‘it is impossible to describe the mind philosophically without including its moral mobility, the sense in which any situation is individualised by being pierced by moral considerations, by being given a particular moral colour or orientation’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 241). At the heart of Murdoch’s moral vision, then, is the conviction that human being equates with moral being. In her words: The human scene is one of moral failure combined with the remarkable continued return to an idea of goodness as unique and absolute. What can be compared to this? If space visitors tell us that there is no value on their planet, this is not like saying there are no material objects. We would ceaselessly look for value in their society, wondering if they were lying, had different values, had misunderstood. (Murdoch 1992, p. 427) From this illustration we can see the centrality of value for Murdoch and that human beings are primarily evaluative beings; ‘good and bad “seep” through our moment-to-moment experiences’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 265) and moral judgements are ‘like eating or breathing’ (Murdoch 1992, p 458): ‘all awareness includes value as the (versatile) agility to distinguish true from false’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 221). Value is known intuitively and instinctively, a normal part of experience, informing activities of ‘scholarship, science, art, everyday life’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 195). This to Murdoch is simply true – known by reflection on our experience. Thus she states that ‘the ordinary person does not, unless corrupted by philosophy believe that he creates values by his choices. He thinks that some things really are better than others and that he is capable of getting it wrong’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 97). Thus, morality for Murdoch is the background which makes the distinctively ‘human elements’ of life possible. It is necessary and essential and cannot be removed from the human picture without removing the essence of human being and the possibility of human knowledge. To use her words, value ‘must go all the way, to the base, to the top, it must be everywhere, and is in this respect unlike other things. … It adheres essentially to the conception of being human, and cannot be detached’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 426).

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In essence then for Murdoch the world is ‘morally coloured’, all facts are viewed in a value-ridden way – the world is always perceived morally as ‘in many familiar ways various values pervade and colour what we take to be the reality of our world; wherein we constantly evaluate our own values and those of others, and judge and determine forms of consciousness and modes of being’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 26). For Murdoch ‘the evidence is everywhere in our experience’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 439); for ‘we feel, it must live, morality must be fundamental in human life’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 467). Morality then is all encompassing and the primary means by which human beings negotiate the world and something which for Murdoch is known by reflection on experience. In the same way her key moral concept of the good, the value at the heart of her philosophy, is revealed and known.

The Murdochian good Murdoch’s good was revealed as the guiding principle of her philosophy in her early work, The Sovereignty of Good (1970a), a topic to which she returned 20 years later in her largest and most detailed philosophical work, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. The good is the reality which, though difficult to define, is the determining principle of human life and proved by all aspects of life. The good, like all moral values, is discovered in everyday life, and its recognition is part and parcel of life. Recognising and comprehending the good is neither difficult nor mysterious, and ‘there is no complicated secret doctrine’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 74). However, although we know of the good and see intimations of it all around offering a comprehensive definition of it is difficult. The aim of the moral life is to gradually perceive the good more clearly (a lifelong endeavour which can never be fully achieved) and thus our ability to define the good is limited for the ‘idea of good, perceived in our confused reality, also transcends it’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 405). Accordingly while we know the good and are drawn to it we cannot perceive it clearly for the good ‘lives as it were on both sides of the barrier and we can combine the aspiration to complete goodness with a realistic sense of achievement within our limitations’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 93). Given this, definition, especially definition of the analytical kind, is impossible. However, while a comprehensive definition eludes us, our knowledge of the good is not slight for ‘we ordinarily conceive and apprehend goodness in terms of virtues which belong to a continuous fabric of

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being’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 30). Therefore, although imperfectly, one always has some sense of goodness, for, the authority of the Good seems to us something necessary because the realism (ability to perceive reality) required for goodness is a kind of intellectual ability to perceive what is true. … The necessity of the good is then an aspect of the kind of necessity involved in any technique of exhibiting fact. (Murdoch 1970a, p. 66) Thus, although one struggles to define the good one recognises it in experience and it is this everyday experience of the good, though limited, which makes partial description possible. Thus the ‘idea of good (goodness, virtue) crystallises out of our moral activity’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 426). In other words, a partial recognition of the good itself is contained within the experience of goodness in ordinary life and these experiences of goodness further our knowledge of goodness more broadly. In this vein Murdoch suggests that ‘there is … something in the serious attempt to look compassionately at human things which automatically suggests that “there is more than this”’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 73): namely this ‘inexhaustible reality’, the ‘ideal end-point’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 42), the good. For Murdoch, then, the good is evident all around and the ‘allimportant knowledge of good and evil is learnt in every kind of human activity’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 418). We know of the good and make judgements accordingly, for, at the level of serious common sense and of an ordinary nonphilosophical reflection about the nature of morals it is perfectly obvious that goodness is connected with knowledge: not with an impersonal quasi-scientific knowledge of the ordinary world, whatever that may be, but with a refined and honest perception of what is really the case, a patient and just discernment and exploration of what confronts one, which is the result not simply of opening one’s eyes but of a perfectly familiar kind of moral discipline. (Murdoch 1970a, p. 38) Accordingly goodness, reality and knowledge are connected, part of a true account of the human, and it is in light of our knowledge of goodness and reality that our (moral) judgements are made. To illustrate her concept of the good, Murdoch refers to Plato’s picture of the cave.1

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In Plato’s imagery the good is ‘unique, it is “above being”’ and yet ‘it fosters our sense of reality, as the sun fosters life on earth’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 399). Plato uses the image of the sun to elucidate his understanding of the good. The sun is presented in images and stories which are ‘deliberately cast as explanatory myths and must not be mistaken for anything else’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 38).2 Hence, the good, like the sun, is ‘beyond’ but it is knowable, just as the sun has influence and can be known in part from its effects. Therefore, ‘we do really know a certain amount about the Good and about the way it is connected with our condition’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 97). The good then is ‘an idea, an ideal, yet it is also evidently and actively incarnate all around us’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 478). Thus although ‘beyond’ it is active, for ‘what is fundamental here is ideal or transcendent, never fully realised or analysed, but continually rediscovered in the course of the daily struggle with the world’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 427). As we recognise in our experience of ‘lower things the shadow of higher things, and thereby our continual (daily, hourly, minutely) sense of the connection between the good and the real can lead us to believe in the supreme reality of what is perfect: the unique place of God, or Good, in human life’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 398). Thus for Murdoch goodness and value are known and active in human life and it is our knowledge of them and movement through the moral terrain in light of them that constitutes the moral (human) life.

Murdoch’s argument from perfection Murdoch presents two main arguments for the good (although for her such arguments are secondary, ways of philosophically articulating what she holds to be already known and proved by experience). The first argument, from perfection, we will consider as it helps clarify the way the good is known – which will help us understand more clearly the role of the good (and hopefully by extension of evil) in the moral life. The second argument, her own version of the ontological argument, Murdoch introduces to provide a logical articulation of our awareness of the good, an awareness which is not ‘something unusual, specialised or remote’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 398), but part of everyday life. In essence, her use of the ontological argument is an attempt to systematise and reveal in philosophical form the reality of the good. However (as I have argued elsewhere), this argument does not add to the argument in terms of clarifying the function of the good in the moral life (and indeed may even confuse her claims) (Widdows 2006, p. 82–7).

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Murdoch’s argument from perfection revolves around the comparable meaning of the term ‘perfection’ which is used in contrast with that which is imperfect. She argues that that which is truly perfect is never attainable and hence is always an ideal. However, though unattainable, the concept of perfection enables one ‘to see that A … is really better than B’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 62). The comparative nature of the term means that one can judge between actions and objects, for ‘we learn of perfection and imperfection through our ability to understand what we see as an image or shadow of something better which we cannot yet see’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 405). This ability to contrast and compare means that it is possible to intuit what is not already visible, in that ‘we know of perfection as we look upon what is imperfect’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 427). By extension, the good is known when one looks upon that which is not good. Murdoch’s claim, then, is that though human beings cannot fully know perfection, we do know in which ‘direction’ it lies; something which is deduced from imperfect objects and situations which we encounter. This knowledge is immediate in that ‘we are not usually in doubt about the direction in which good lies’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 97). Murdoch argues that this transcending order of perfection is ‘characteristic of morality’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 427), for it is only in the light of perfection – which for Murdoch means what is perfectly good – that ‘better’ alternatives can be judged. Because perfection is not attainable, but always lies beyond and transcends any particular instance; it provides an ideal, a standard against which particulars can be assessed. Murdoch argues that perfection functions in any field of human activity (she uses art as an example). She holds that increasing understanding of any aspect of life ‘involves an increasing revelation of degrees of excellence and often the revelation of there being in fact little that is good and nothing that is perfect’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 61).3 Murdoch argues that exactly the same revelation occurs in the moral realm, as ‘we come to perceive scales, distances, standards and may incline to see as less than excellent what previously we were prepared to “let by”’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 61). Thus we gradually learn to be better and to be attracted by higher goods as we move towards the good. Murdoch argues that the fact that perfection can never be attained increases its capacity to inspire us in a way that a mediocre standard does not; thus she recommends the command ‘Be ye therefore perfect’ rather than ‘Be ye therefore slightly improved’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 62) and she asserts that ‘for all our frailty the command “be perfect” has sense for us’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 93). Perfection as unattainable is a

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primary feature of Murdoch’s platonic picture and defining of the function of the good.4 It is inspiring and motivating in the moral life, for ‘the idea of perfection moves and changes us … because it inspires love’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 62), therefore although perfection is ‘beyond … it exercises its authority’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 62). It inspires, in our partial recognition of it in daily life and it causes us to aspire, to stretch our limitations and it attracts us as it is ‘mysterious because of the immense distance involved’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 99). The perfect good then is ‘the magnetic centre towards which love naturally moves’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 102). In sum, for Murdoch, the good provides a constantly attractive ‘single perfect transcendent non-representable and necessary real object of attention’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 55). However, one must not, because of this discussion of objects of attention, conclude that the good is an ‘object’ or that she is some kind of two-world Platonist. She is not. What she wishes to capture is the ubiquitous nature of value and for this she looks to Plato stating that his ‘image of the Good as a transcendent magnetic centre seems to me the least corruptible and most realistic picture for us to use in our reflections on the moral life’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 74). However, despite her allegiance to Plato the good is not some ‘out there’ Platonic form (a reading Murdoch disagrees with) but rather ‘in an important sense goodness must be an idea’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 478). Murdoch states that in response to the question, ‘do you then believe that the Idea of Good exists?’ I reply, ‘No, not as people used to think that God existed’. All one can do is appeal to certain areas of experience, pointing out certain features, and using suitable metaphors and inventing suitable concepts where necessary to make these features visible. (Murdoch 1970a, p. 74–5)5 Moreover she is adamant that there is no external telos and one must ‘love good for nothing’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 344). Thus her concern is always the human world, not some metaphysical or esoteric doctrine. Her focus on the good emerges from her concern for human moral living, and here, despite the difficulty of clear definition, Murdoch is in no doubt that the good is known and active. Accordingly she argues that ‘the decent man has probably always, if uncertainly and inexplicably, been able to distinguish between the real and the good’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 93). It is in ordinary moral living, in ‘efforts of attention directed upon individuals and of obedience to reality as an exercise of

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love’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 42), that the good is known. At this point ‘“reality” and “individual” present themselves to us in moral contexts as ideal end-points … this surely is the place where the concept of good lives. “Good”: “Real”: “Love”. These words are closely connected’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 42). Thus the moral life enlivened by goodness is connected ultimately with the detail of moral living: ‘apprehension of good is apprehension of the individual and the real, then good partakes of the infinite elusive character of reality’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 42). The experience of the good informs decision-making and constructing of individual lives, and this for Murdoch is proved by experience. In this sense good is active in the intimacies of our moral lives, the good draws us and ‘we are constantly in process of recognising the falseness of our “goods”, and the unimportance of what we deem important’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 430). Likewise ‘we know when we are being satisfied with superficial, illusory, lying pictures which distort and conceal reality’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 462). Thus, though difficult to define, the good is present and informing in daily evaluation and moral decision making.

A Murdochian evil In Murdoch’s picture of the moral life and in the argument for the good from perfection evil is conspicuous by its absence. One way of reading this absence in a moral universe so dominated by the good is to construe evil as little more than the absence of good (indeed this might be a Platonic reading). If this is the case then there is little space for any robust understanding of evil and even less scope for evil to have a positive function in the moral life; evil would simply be a lack of goodness. However, an alternative reading and one suggested by Murdoch’s talk of a continuum between good and evil is to construe a more active function for evil in the moral life and postulate a parallel role to that of the good. For instance if good is inspiring and draws one towards it the question is: Could a role be devised where evil, at the opposite end of the spectrum, is an object of revulsion to be fought against? If we construct evil in this way we would indeed be able to allot it an active role and positive function in the moral life. In order to assess whether evil can function in this way we need to consider the Murdochian moral life in a little more detail. Our discussion so far would suggest that it might be plausible to construct evil in a parallel manner to the good. For example, to argue that if one can judge what is better in light of the good then can one also judge what is less evil with a knowledge of evil? If this is the case then could evil

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have a similar comparable function to that of the good and be active in revealing the contours of the moral world? To construct evil in this way as having a parallel function to the good of helping one to see the moral world more clearly would indeed seem to be in accord with some aspects of Murdoch’s moral vision such as statements which define the moral task as ‘to come to see the world as it really is’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 91). For instance, if in the moral task we are helped by our knowledge of value and the good and ‘we are not usually in doubt about the direction in which good lies’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 97), could not knowledge of evil and knowing the direction in which it lies equally help us? For Murdoch the recognition of the good is almost automatic. She claims that [n]on-philosophical people do not think that they invent good. They may invent their own activities, but good is somewhere else as an independent judge of these. Good is also something clearly seen and indubitably discovered in our ordinary unmysterious experience of transcendence (the progressive illuminating and inspiring discovery of other) the positive experience of truth, which comes to us all the time in a weak form and comes to most of us sometime in a strong form (in art or love or work or looking at nature) and which remains with us as a standard or vision, an orientation, a proof of what is possible and a vista of what might be. (Murdoch 1992, p. 508) In Murdoch’s picture then, where the experience of value is primary, would not the experience of evil be equally useful in mapping the moral world and helping us to determine the real and see what is good? This reading would seem to be supported by Murdoch’s assertion that the ‘all-important knowledge of good and evil is learnt in every kind of human activity’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 418). Likewise her continual construction of the moral life as a continuum within which ‘we are aware of truth and falsehood, illusion and reality, good and evil’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 250) also suggests that evil could have a useful and active role in the moral life. Drawing on Murdoch’s understanding of the place of the good and taking seriously her picture of the moral life as a pilgrimage from evil to goodness would imply that evil could be constructed as functioning as a positive spur to the moral life. This is borne out by claims that we progress in the moral life by learning ‘from our experience, as we move all the time in the continuum between good and bad. This is our everyday existence’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 507). Murdoch in this vein equates

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the moral life directly with true knowledge of reality, and thus evil, as much as good, is surely valuable in mapping the moral terrain. This reading is further supported by statements such as the ‘all-important knowledge of good and evil is learnt in every kind of human activity’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 418); that it is ‘in the tissue of life that the secrets of good and evil are found’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 54); and that ‘people know about the difference between good and evil, it takes quite a lot of theorising to persuade them to say or imagine they do not’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 497). Alternatively, these statements which place evil at the opposite end of the spectrum to the good could be read as nothing more than equating evil with the absence of good. That rather than evil being substantive it is nothing more than the negation of good: the continuum is strictly being ‘no good’ to good rather than evil to good. However, if we turn to the reasons she gives for rejecting philosophies which aim to harmonise good and evil within the soul evil is revealed as much more than the absence of good. Murdoch’s absolute rejection and fear of evil suggests a powerful notion of evil as real and active. Murdoch argues that ‘we must see evil, and reject any pact (Heraclitus, Jung) between evil and good’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 447). She denies such philosophies asserting that ‘self contained soul experience obscures, and is no substitute for, the struggle with an alien reality which engenders and imposes and develops absolute distinctions between good and evil and truth and falsehood’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 135). Thus Murdoch does indeed appear to regard evil as a substantive concept with reality and which is to be challenged: evil is powerful and to be feared and not merely an absence of good. This substantive notion of evil though rare in Murdoch’s work is explicit and unambiguously stated in her conviction that ‘there is no harmonious balance whereby we suddenly find that evil is just a “dark side” which is not only harmless to good, but actually enhances it. Evil may have to be lived with, but remains evil, and we live too with the real possibility of improvement’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 506). If more evidence were needed of Murdoch’s awareness of the reality of evil we can turn to her writings on art. For example, she deems Shakespeare a great artist and his work the standard for great art because his ‘plays are pre-eminently about the difference between illusion and reality, and the battle between good and evil, they shine with a positive sense of goodness’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 142).6 Moreover, Murdoch praises Shakespeare particularly for his understanding of human nature – ‘from its deepest evil to its highest good,

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together with its funniness, its happiness and its beauty’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 142) – and for his successful portrayal of evil and evil characters (Iago and Macbeth), for showing us that ‘evil is terrible and also very close’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 103). In a similar vein Murdoch discusses evil in relation to literature suggesting that like all good art good novels for Murdoch ‘concern the fight between good and evil and the pilgrimage from appearance to reality’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 97). Murdoch contends that although in the contemporary climate the struggle between good and evil may be ‘covert, unclear, secret, ambiguous’ (Murdoch 1997 [1972], p. 255), it is still this struggle that underlies the structure of good novels. Given that Murdoch herself is a novelist as well as a philosopher such a claim is not insignificant and much has been written on good and evil in her novels (Conradi 1989; Dipple 1981; Ramanathan 1990; Pachuau 2007).7 It has been suggested that her fear of the power of evil is represented by characters such as Julius King, in A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970b), Charles Arrowby in The Sea, the Sea (1978) and Mischa Fox in The Flight from the Enchanter (1956). In addition to her novels Murdoch apparently had a strong awareness of evil and Conradi writes in her biography speculating on this that ‘her friend and co-philosopher Patrick Gardiner intuited that something in Iris’s past had introduced her to the idea of evil’ (Conradi 2001, p. 373). Such musings on her own novels and life do not add to our construction of a Murdochian evil directly, however, they do suggest that it is unlikely that, given her concern for evil in other spheres, she regarded it as relatively unimportant, for example as simply the absence of goodness, in her philosophical work. Thus it would seem that even though evil is not a prominent concept in Murdoch’s philosophy we have nonetheless uncovered a robust concept of evil. Evil is real and to be fought, and in occupying the opposite end of the moral continuum to good, could be regarded as having a positive function in helping one see the moral terrain and as a spur to moral striving. However, to conclude this would be to ignore some of the difficulties involved in the moral life – for example the danger of illusion. In particular, one imagines that the function of evil may not be so simple or so positive as simply helping one to see the moral terrain clearly. If we delve further into Murdoch’s vision of the moral life other possible roles for evil emerge. For example evil may ape the good and thus delude rather than help the moral pilgrim. In order to consider the connection between illusion, delusion and evil we need to go into a little more detail regarding Murdoch’s view of the human condition.

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A deluding evil Murdoch considers human beings to be naturally selfish and egoistic beings who are usually deceived by their own self-consoling delusions. The good person is one who manages to escape her illusions and to see other people and the world truly. Murdoch dismisses ‘the idea of a really good man living in a private dream world [as] … unacceptable … he must know certain things about his surroundings, most obviously the existence of other people’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 59). The desires of the ego run contrary to that of the committed moral pilgrim, for the ego wishes to escape reality and all external demands (including those made by other people): ‘it constantly seeks consolation, either through imagined inflation of the self or through fictions of a theological nature’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 79). The human tendency is to falsely aggrandise the self and hide from the realities of other people and the world; in this self-protective endeavour ‘our minds are continually active, fabricating and anxious, usually self-preoccupied’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 84). As human beings then it is our ‘natural impulse to derealise our world and surround ourselves with fantasy’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 503). To this end we rationalise situations and create justifying narratives in order to shield our fragile selves from reality and its demands (Murdoch 1970a, pp. 84, 165). The task of the moral life is to break through such selfobsessed fantasy and to try to see what is outside the self and the ego – to see other people, the world and most importantly the good. For Murdoch at its simplest ‘morality is loss of egoism’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 468) and ‘the enemy is the fat relentless ego’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 52). Thus morality is more complex than a clear and simple movement towards the good. For even though one is not usually in doubt of the direction in which the good lies seeing the moral world truly is hard and we are beset by illusions and self-delusions. Seeing truly is a capacity one has to work to develop and ‘how we see our situation is itself, already, a moral activity’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 315) as perception is a mode of evaluation: ‘I can only choose within the world I can see, in the moral sense of “see” which implies that clear vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 37). According to Murdoch morality depends on what one is capable of seeing for ‘the selfish self-interestedly casual or callous man sees a different world from that which the careful scrupulous benevolent just man sees; and the largely explicable ambiguity of the word “see” here conveys the essence of the concept of the moral’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 177). Thus, morality is about broadening our vision, about seeing as clearly and disinterestedly

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as possible. It is about the images we choose and the way we choose to imagine ourselves and the world (for just as perception is not morally neutral, neither is imagination) (Murdoch 1992, p. 314). In her words: The world is not given to us ‘on a plate’, it is given to us as a creative task. It is impossible to banish morality from this picture. We work, using or failing to use our honesty, our courage, our truthful imagination, at the interpretation of what is present to us, as we of necessity shape it and ‘make something of it’. We help it to be. (Murdoch 1992, p. 215) The moral life then is one where we fight our selfish fantasies and, if we do so successfully, our ego is reduced and we are able to see more clearly, our vision is broadened and we achieve an ‘increased sense of the reality of, primarily of course other people, but also other things’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 52). Seeing this spectrum of good and evil is not a simple task but one in which we must use our creative, truthful imagination as we constantly fight against illusions and delusions. Given this complexity and struggle one imagines that evil in the moral life is not easy to see clearly and thus unlikely to have the unambiguously positive function of encouraging moral striving as suggested in the previous discussion. The role of evil is likely to be far more complex and rather than helping the moral task might not evil delude the moral pilgrim by aping the good and so hinder moral progress? Moreover given Murdoch’s emphasis on the ubiquity of value, moral colour and habit any sustained attempt to see evil might serve to colour one’s moral world and make the difficult task of seeing the good more difficult still. This deluding role of evil is somewhat implied by Murdoch’s total equation of the pilgrimage from evil to good to the pilgrimage from illusion to reality: her equation of the real with the good paralleled by an equation of illusion with evil. Here the role of evil may be to present us with false pictures of the good to lure us away from truth and reality and towards ‘false love … [which] … moves us to false goods’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 102). Given that Murdoch already fears both self-knowledge and art (even though both are potentially aids to the moral life) for their capacity to ape the good is it not even more likely that evil will be at work in such processes of delusion? When considering self-knowledge, for example, Murdoch equates it with the second level of the Cave. The journey from the cave to the sun (the good) is arrested by the fire which fascinates and consumes. In this analogy Murdoch equates the delusion of the fire for the sun as a product of the ‘self, the old unregenerate

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psyche, that great source of energy and warmth’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 100). In order to progress morally, we must escape the delusions and illusions of the ego and ‘break the barriers of egoism’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 297). We must not be confused by the fire, but strive to feel the true warmth of the sun, of reality beyond our ego and the delusions of the self. In a similar way when considering art Murdoch again draws on Plato’s fears and suggests that in the lure of art ‘the pull of the transcendent as reality and good is confused and mimicked. The true sense of reality as a feeling of joy is deceitfully imitated by the “charm-joy” of art’ (Murdoch 1997 [1976], p. 444). In this pretence, of offering knowledge, art deceives and obscures the real and the good and, though honestly attempting to pursue the good, the pilgrim is tricked and falsely satisfied with a lower form of life. Art then, ‘practices a false and degenerate anamnesis where the veiled something which is sought and found is no more than a shadow out of the private storeroom of the personal unconscious’ (Murdoch 1997 [1976], p. 444). Art can be, despite Murdoch’s praise of it, a dangerous enemy to the moral life and capable of ‘deluding even the decent man by giving him false self-knowledge based on a healthy egoism: which is mistaken for the sun, and where one may comfortably linger, imagining oneself to be enlightened’ (Murdoch 1997 [1976], p. 444). Again the danger for the moral pilgrim is being lead astray by false goods, of being satisfied by the fire instead of seeking the sun. If art and self-knowledge are both deluders and capable of aping the good and metaphorically halting the moral pilgrim at the fire is not evil likely to be even more adept at this misdirection? One imagines evil is a powerful deluder fascinating and captivating the moral pilgrim with the promise of moral knowledge in all its terrible detail. It would seem that Murdoch is alive to this compulsive aspect of evil and when commenting on evil in Shakespeare’s characters she muses that they show us ‘evil as “duty”, or “inevitable fate”, the natural irresistible exercise of a depraved vision, taken for granted as an aspect of sexual cynicism or ambition, the circumstantial working of “original sin”’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 103). She goes on to elaborate on Macbeth’s condition, as one which rings true both in life and fiction that ‘evil, once deeply entered into, seems “forced” to continue’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 104). Just as goodness is about habit and the moral colour, so is evil, yet even so she argues that ‘evil people are not usually (morally) excused on the plea that “once started they couldn’t stop”’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 104). In this reading evil is a robust and substantive concept and very different from an absence of good reading – however, in this aspect of evil as deluder and captivator of the moral pilgrim the function is far from positive.

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Evil’s dual function In sum then by considering the ubiquitous place of value for Murdoch and the centrality of the good in her moral vision we have succeeded in constructing a picture of Murdochian evil. This notion of evil is one which is substantive and robust, and in the Murdochian moral world evil is real and active and must be shunned and fought not accommodated. In light of this we have rejected the view that evil is simply the absence of goodness and suggested that evil may have a positive function in the moral life. Evil serves the moral life in two ways; first as an object of revulsion at the opposite end of the moral spectrum to the good evil helps to map the moral terrain revealing the direction in which both evil and good lie; and second, as an object of revulsion it provides motivation to the moral life and acts as a spur to moral striving. However, this positive function of evil is complicated by the deluding possibilities of evil. Evil may not help one see the moral terrain more clearly, but may mislead and ape the good. Thus evil may confuse and hinder the moral pilgrim and so undermine the moral life. Murdochian evil then is indeed active in the moral life and has a positive function in revealing the moral terrain and inspiring moral striving and progress. However, it is Janus-faced and capable of captivating the moral pilgrim so tempering any positive function. Evil in the Murdochian world is something to be feared and even hidden from in our flight towards the good.

Notes 1. Plato's Cave is perhaps his most famous image, and it is an analogy of the moral life. We begin as prisoners in the cave facing the wall, with a fire behind us and seeing only the shadows on the cave wall of those who walk between us and fire. Naturally, as these are all we can see, we assume these shadows to be real. From here we progress in stages: first we turn around and see the fire, next we leave the fire and walk out of the cave into the light and finally we look at the sun itself. At each of these stages we reassess what is real and gradually our knowledge of what is real grows until eventually we are able to recognise the sun, which for plato is the source of light and knowledge. 2. Images, metaphors and pictures are an important means of inspiration, communication and explanation for Murdoch and are prominent in her philosophy and as tools to the moral life. Pictures of who we want to be and how we would like to live are instructive and inspiring and for this reason Murdoch praises the novel and speaks of it as a ‘moral training ground’. Murdoch uses Plato’s images, particularly the cave which she describes ‘an endlessly instructive image’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 399): ‘a spiritual guidebook, a myth of the soul’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 388). In the same way religious images can be useful

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

to the moral quest – although like all images they are ‘ladders to be thrown away after use’ (Murdoch 1992, p. 318) – they help us to move towards clearer vision. This is very much Murdoch’s view of art and she claims that ‘the true artist is obedient to a conception of perfection to which his work is constantly related and re-related in what seems an external manner’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 62). This is in stark contrast to other arguments in this volume, for example, Pedro Tabensky disagrees arguing that ‘[i]f we are able to gauge ourselves as being far from perfect then allegedly we must have some account of perfection in mind that we use as the measure of our imperfection. But this is not what I think. What I think is that all we have, whether we realise it or not, are notions of better and worse. It makes sense to say that we are imperfect because we are not as good as we recognise we could be, but this is a far cry from the otherworldly perfectionism that Plato had in mind’ (Tabensky, Chapter 4, note 6, of this collection). Murdoch claims that this is not just true of her method, but is often all that philosophy can do, and that ‘no more, and no less, than this is done by the most empirically minded of linguistic philosophers. As there is no philosophical or scientific proof of total determinism the notion is at least allowable that there is a part of the soul which is free from the mechanism of empirical psychology’ (Murdoch 1970a, p. 75). Murdoch divides good or great art from bad or mediocre art. To bad/mediocre art she applies Plato’s criticisms, while denying their validity to good/great art; to which she attributes all the truth-telling, morally inspirational qualities of Plato’s beauty. Indeed she is perhaps better known as a novelist, publishing 26 novels between her first, Under the Net, in 1954, and her last, Jackson’s Dilemma, in 1995. As a novelist she has been critically acclaimed and her 1978 novel, The Sea, the Sea, won the Booker Prize.

7 Tragedy and Reparation Elisa Galgut

The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. Virginia Woolf The Kleinian psychoanalyst Hanna Segal argues for the reparative nature of art, and especially of the genre of classical tragedy. According to Kleinian theory, healthy psychological development requires that early infantile aggressive and destructive emotions are worked through; such ‘working through’ is necessary for the development of conscience, for feelings of empathy, as well as for cognitive development. It is also a necessary condition for creative activity. Segal examines the roots of the impulse to create by looking specifically at the genre of classical tragedy; she argues that the pleasure we derive from tragedy is non-contingently related to the distressing elements of the drama. Thus not only are the formal and aesthetic elements important for the containment of powerfully distressing emotions, but the distressing emotions themselves are a necessary ingredient of the aesthetic pleasure. This paper will examine Segal’s discussion of tragedy in the light of her commitments to Kleinian theory, and it will attempt to explore more fully the contributions of difficult or painful emotions towards aesthetic pleasure.

Introduction The non-contingent relationship between the aesthetic pleasure and the painful elements of tragedy lies at the heart of some of the great philosophical explorations of literature: David Hume writes of the spectators of a well-written tragedy how the ‘more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle’, and that they ‘are pleased in proportion as they are afflicted, and never are so 98

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happy as when they employ tears, sobs, and cries to give vent to their sorrow’.1 In his Poetics, Aristotle too agrees that the aim of tragedy – katharsis – is a pleasure which is derived from the feelings of pity and fear, while recently Carolyn Korsmeyer notes that ‘it is evident that beauty is equally present in art that demands confrontation with discomforting subjects such as loss, grief and death’.2 We are drawn to such works of art because, rather than in spite, of their painful and difficult subject matter, and we seem to value such works often far more highly than plays and novels that make us feel good, simpliciter. Of the plays of Shakespeare, it is his tragedies that earn our greatest admiration and praise, and draw us back time and again – and it is his most complex, difficult and painful tragedies that are considered the most magnificent.3 The literary critic Harold Bloom writes that, ‘King Lear, together with Hamlet, ultimately baffles commentary. Of all Shakespeare’s dramas, these show an apparent infinitude that perhaps transcends the limits of literature’.4 Difficult as it is to watch the sufferings of the likes of Lear, Gloucester and Othello – and Samuel Johnson was purportedly so upset by the death of Cordelia that he was unable to re-read the final act of King Lear for years – we would be horrified by any suggestions5 that the plays should end happily. In great works of tragedy, the playwright recognises the most painful aspects of human experience, and confronts them with brutal honesty. And yet, of course, the mere recognition of the tragedy that lies at the core of the human condition is not a sufficient condition for pleasure: there are many truths, about us or the world, that do not – and more importantly, perhaps – should not fill us with joy. Recent movies about the genocide in Rwanda, or depictions of the Holocaust, are difficult to sit through, and it would be inappropriate to suggest that it is enjoyment we seek in watching them. It cannot be that the mere depiction of horrific events is pleasurable – divorced from its context in King Lear, the blinding of Gloucester would be unwatchable, and we would shrink from its violence. We are not drawn to literary tragedies in order to satisfy our instinct for violence in some socially acceptable form; on the contrary, our ability to engage with such works seems to be a mark of our emotional and psychological maturity – not only are we pleased, but we ought to be pleased. Why is this so? How do such artworks provide pleasure?

Kleinian theory In an early paper on art, the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein says of the painter Ruth Kjär6 that ‘[i]t is obvious that the desire to make reparation, to make good the injury psychologically done to the mother and also to

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Tragedy and Reparation

restore herself was at the bottom of the compelling urge to paint these portraits of her relatives’.7 Before she became an artist, Kjär, who was ‘beautiful, rich and independent’ spent much of her time travelling; her artistic gifts were exercised in the decoration of her house, upon which she spent a great deal of care and taste. Kjär suffered from severe inexplicable bouts of depression that were often accompanied by thoughts of suicide; she explained her melancholia as being like an empty space, which she could never fill. On Klein’s account, Ruth Kjär became a painter almost magically, accidentally; in an attempt to fill an empty space on the wall, left when her brother-in-law took away one of his paintings, Kjär ‘in a perfect fever’ ordered some paints and, despite never having ‘squeezed paint out of a tube’, she painted a picture of the most extraordinary brilliance. According to Klein, the impetus behind Kjär’s creative impulse was a desire to relieve an anxiety (an ‘empty space’) which, left unattended, threatened the artist’s mental health and possibly her life. Klein explored Kjär’s creative output by understanding it as the outcome of an attempt to make reparation – to mend and repair – a state of mind or an emotional state that Kjär felt, on an unconscious level, was broken or in disrepair. Klein’s account of the reparative nature of creativity is to be understood within her wider psychological theory. According to Klein, our earliest experiences are characterised by powerful and conflicting drives and feelings, and she postulated that many destructive impulses such as rage and envy are primitive and present from birth. The earliest phase of our lives – termed by Klein the ‘paranoidschizoid position’ – is a stage dominated by primitive impulses, both positive and negative in tone. The phase is characterized by ‘schizoid’ feelings, because the infant’s mind splits between feelings of loving and hating: each is felt with an intensity that precludes being tempered by the opposite feeling. In the grip of its paranoid and persecutory feelings, the infant feels jealousy and rage, and experiences phantasies8 of attacking and destroying the mother’s body. Such attacking phantasies give rise to concomitant persecutory fears of being attacked in turn, which leads to great and often unbearable anxiety.9 Klein writes of this anxiety as it is experienced by little girls10 in the following way: ‘The little girl has a sadistic desire, originating in the early stages of the Oedipus conflict, to rob the mother’s body of its contents … and to destroy the mother herself. This desire gives rise to anxiety lest the mother should in her turn rob the little girl herself of the contents of her body (especially of children) and lest her body should be destroyed or mutilated’.11 The paranoid-schizoid stage is dominated by ‘part-objects’; the mother is not experienced as a complete, fully rounded, person, but is split into parts that correspond to the infant’s emotional stage: if the

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child has been fed, and feels loved and protected, the mother is experienced as loving and protective; but if the infant feels hungry or soiled, the mother may be experienced as withholding and hostile. Since the infant at that stage cannot conceive of loss or absence, she experiences the absent mother as a hostile mother that is present, but indifferent to the child’s needs. Indeed, any negative feeling caused by loss – such as hunger – is experienced as the presence of something hostile, so that the child who is hungry and cold will perceive herself as being threatened by aggressive inner demons, bent on the child’s destruction. During the paranoid-schizoid phase, the child is unable to distinguish clearly the boundaries between herself and the external world, between her own ego and that of another. So the loving-mother and the persecutorymother are felt to be alternately loving and persecuting internal objects. The attacks against the mother-in-phantasy are thus also experienced as attacks against objects in the child’s internal world, as attacks against the child’s own mental processes. The psychoanalyst Bion12 has argued that the hostile impulses characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position may be inimical to the very act of thinking, as mental items such as thoughts may be experienced with such dread and anxiety that the infant mind cannot bear, literally, to think them. The paranoid-schizoid position is thus a time of great uncertainty and anxiety because the child feels emotions and fears she is unable to name and understand. In normal development, as the child grows and develops and gains mastery over aspects of both her internal and external worlds, she moves to the ‘depressive position’, where the injured and attacked parts of the self are restored by reparative activity. The development of cognitive abilities enables the child to distinguish between her own phantasies and the reality of an external world. This enables the child to engage in ‘reality testing’ – internal painful feelings like hunger may be relieved when an external presence brings food. The child begins to learn that many of the objects or situations that are fearful have no correlate in reality; the presence of a loving caregiver further enables the child to trust that the external world may also be a source of regular – although not constant – nourishment. Such engagement with reality helps prevent the development of persecutory feelings, as the infant learns that the cause of a negative feeling may reside outside the self: this aids in lessening anxiety, as the infant does not feel that all bad things arise internally. The depressive position is characterised by love – which enables the development of empathy – and guilt, the consequence of empathising with loved ones attacked in phantasy. The child begins to realise that the adored-mother and the hated-mother are not separate part-objects, but rather aspects of a real, whole person. This realisation

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brings both relief, as well as guilt and anxiety: relief because the hostile aspects of the mother can now be tempered by her love and care, and guilt and anxiety because the infant sees that her attacks upon the hated-mother are also attacks upon the loved-mother. Such realisation leads to a process of reparation, by which the child tries to repair the damage caused by her phantasised attacks on the mother’s body. The process of reparation is simultaneously a process of repairing the child’s internal world – her own mind – by bringing together pieces of the self that were split off from one another; the child is able, quite literally, to think in ways that were impossible while under the dominance of the paranoid-schizoid position. In the paranoid-schizoid position, mental activity could only defend against hostile and aggressive phantasies, but the infantile mind did not have the resources to engage or repair such negative feelings. In the depressive position, the activity of the mind is experienced as being capable of tempering negative thoughts with positive ones, or warding off hostile phantasies by replacing them with reality-tested beliefs. The move to the depressive position is thus crucial for psychological development and maturity, both cognitive and emotional; the more fully is the child able to move to the depressive position, the less likely is she to regress to the paranoid-schizoid phase in times of distress, or suffer from neurotic breakdowns.

Empathy and reparation Although Klein stresses the negative and destructive aspects of the self which dominate the paranoid-schizoid position, and although she thinks of emotions like envy, anger and destructive greed as basic and primary emotional13 states, it would be a mistake to think of the move from the paranoid-schizoid to the depressive position as involving a renunciation or repudiation of these negative emotions. It is rather the case that positive emotions such as empathy have their roots buried deeply in the soil of these negative emotions, which inform, shape and imbue them with emotional depth. The move to the depressive position involves a working through, not an overthrow of, potentially destructive emotions. In a paper examining the roots of empathy, Sarah Richmond writes that ‘empathy has its basis in projective identification, an unconscious mechanism of defence’.14 Richmond writes that this may, initially, seem startling, because ‘it grounds the capacity for empathy, which we typically regard as benign, in a psychological mechanism that, as Klein describes it, is not only primitive and defensive, but also

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irrational, and typically aggressive’.15 But it is precisely this grounding in defensiveness that allows for empathy with others later – empathy requires not only an acknowledgement of similarity between oneself and another but crucially a recognition of difference. By defining the boundaries between self and other, we are able to distinguish our inner worlds from those of other people, and thus do not confuse our own feeling with those of another. Healthy aggression creates the borders of the self that protect us from annihilation; it is in delineating these borders in a healthy and constructive way that determines our sense of self, as well as our relationships with others. In ‘Love, Guilt and Reparation’, Klein explores how early infantile experiences shape the way we relate, in later life, to our parents, siblings, children and loved ones. It is thus not the existence of these negative or destructive emotions as such that leads to aggressive, maladaptive or neurotic behaviour in adulthood, but rather the inability to come to terms with and work through unconscious destructive phantasies, such that they remain alive as phantasies in the life of the adult. As Klein writes: ‘But to act as good parents towards other people may also be a way of dealing with the frustrations and sufferings of the past’,16 and later she states that ‘[t]his making reparation is, in my view, a fundamental element in love and in all human relationships’.17 The activity of reparation can be seen perhaps most clearly in the practice of art-making. As Klein illustrates in her discussion of Ruth Kjär, the creative impulse can be borne out of guilt and a desire to make reparation for destructive unconscious phantasies. ‘It is obvious’, writes Klein, ‘that the desire to make reparation, to make good the injury psychologically done to the mother and also to restore herself was at the bottom of the compelling urge to paint these portraits of her relatives’.18 For Kjär, the creation of paintings that represented various members of her family such as her mother and sister enabled the artist to overcome her ambivalent feelings towards them, in two ways: firstly, by engaging in a constructive activity, such as painting, Kjär was able to sublimate her own emotional energies in ways that she experienced as worthwhile, rather than try to escape her ambivalent emotions by travelling extensively, say, as she had done in the past. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Kjär’s paintings also functioned as symbolic representations of the mended relationships with her family. The internal figure of an attacked mother in the paranoid-schizoid position was replaced with an external representation of her mother, reworked by the creative process. The Kleinian psychoanalyst Hanna Segal has written extensively on play, art and literature from a psychoanalytic perspective; she

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too understands the creation of a work of art as the result of the process of reparation. The focus of this essay will be Segal’s groundbreaking paper, ‘A Psychoanalytic Approach to Aesthetics’, originally published in 1952. In his introduction to Segal’s paper in a later collection on Kleinian thought, the editor John Phillips writes that Segal argues ‘that the artist’s achievement is to give full expression to the tension and union between the death and the life instincts, between ugliness and beauty. Tying the aesthetic function to the destructive impulse, Segal thus implies that the most powerful aspect of aesthetic experience lies in the degree to which the death instinct can be acknowledged’.19 Segal discusses the relationship between art and reparation in her reading of classical tragedy, and in her discussion of the writer Marcel Proust. The aim of Segal’s paper is to examine why we take pleasure, not only in works of art, but also in those artistic genres, such as tragedy, that deal with difficult and painful subject matter. Freud did discuss creativity in many of his papers on psychoanalysis, but his focus was more on the nature of unconscious processes that gave rise to creativity, rather than with the creative act itself. By setting her sights on the work of art, and not only on the creative impulse, Segal explains how formal aesthetic features contribute to our enjoyment of artworks by containing and reworking the negative emotions.

Segal: Aesthetic form Segal’s account runs as follows: the creative artist is able to engage in imagination with unconscious conflicts and anxieties. By reworking these unconscious emotions in artistic form, the artist or writer transforms them – negative and painful feelings, bad or destructive internal objects, and destructive and aggressive phantasies are transformed via the creative process into feelings that are positive and tolerable, complete and fully rounded objects, and phantasies that are now constructive rather than destructive. Aesthetic form is crucial to such reworking because it provides the parameters according to which destructive feelings and phantasies are reworked. If one recalls that the paranoidschizoid phase is characterised by a lack of coherence and an inability to distinguish between self and other, between good and bad internal objects, it makes sense that formal criteria will be vital for the ordering of mental content. As Aristotle pointed out, the formal elements of a tragedy are vital for emotional resolution, as they impose order and structure on events that might otherwise seem inchoate and overwhelming. Artistic form brings with it a logic according to which events are ordered and classified – as Aristotle noted, ‘a well-constructed plot …

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cannot either begin or end at any point one likes’,20 and its duration must be ‘of a length to be taken in by the memory’. The beginning, middle and end of a well-written tragedy are defined in logical relation to one another – propter hoc, rather than simply post hoc – as action in the middle of the play comes about because of initial events – so much so that the tragic plot has an air of inevitability about it. Aesthetic structure, however, not only orders aesthetic content but transforms it from something potentially overwhelming to an experience that is not only tolerable but enjoyable.21 This is the function of aesthetic form: by unifying the experiences of tragedy, the work of art enables not only its emotional understanding but also a sense of restitution. The mother that was attacked in phantasy can – through the work of creativity – be repaired, be restored.22 The importance of aesthetic form for emotional resolution is noted too by the philosopher Jenefer Robinson, particularly with respect to works of literature. Robinson makes the claim that ‘formal or structural devices in literature play the role of coping mechanisms’.23 She puts it in another way by saying that ‘our emotional responses to literature are guided or managed by the formal devices in the work in such a way that we are enabled to cope with what we encounter emotionally in a literary work’. What does Robinson mean by such containment? It’s not simply the case that the formal structures remind us that ‘this isn’t life’, and thereby create a sense of distance between ourselves and the fictional world, which mitigates against painful or distressing feelings. Robinson makes a stronger claim that formal devices manage and guide our emotional responses so as to enable our ability to cope with them. Literature serves to ‘contain’ our emotional responses, providing the opportunity to rework what might otherwise be distressing or overwhelming emotions. According to Robinson, our immediate response to the portrayal of the tragic events constitutes a primary emotional response, which, if bare and uncontained, might threaten to overwhelm us emotionally. Literary form enables what she terms a ‘secondary emotional appraisal’, which contains, shapes and modifies the primary emotional appraisals felt in response to the content of the literary work. Thus my fear and trembling at the horror of the plight of Oedipus (content/primary appraisal) is mollified and contained by formal elements of the drama – the genius of Sophocles’ dramatic pacing, the echoing of themes, the elegance of the language, the clarity of vision, and so on. Such formal aesthetic elements provide for the secondary appraisal, which brings about a lessening of the fear and trembling and makes space even for the very enjoyment of the tragedy, so that we leave the theatre feeling enriched and inspired, rather than drained. Segal would agree in part

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with this sketch of the ways in which formal elements enable secondary reworkings of primary emotional states, although on her account the role literary form plays in structuring tragic pleasure is linked to its reparative activity. However, important as formal elements are for the creation of good works of art, order, regularity and harmony are not, in themselves, sufficient for meaningful aesthetic experience. If they were, it would be enough to ‘contemplate a circle or listen to a regular tattoo on a drum’.24 Segal also criticises ‘classical beauty’ – which exhibits the greatest formal harmony – as failing ‘to stir and rouse anything but boredom’.25

Segal: Art and reparation Ugliness, maintains Segal, ‘is a most important and necessary component of a satisfying aesthetic experience’.26 She concludes that ‘two factors are essential to the excellence of tragedy: the unshrinking expression of the full horror of the depressive phantasy and the achieving of an impression of wholeness and harmony’.27 The audience identifies with the creative artist’s struggles with his fears and anxieties, and it is these struggles that lie at the heart of tragedy. Again to quote Segal: In a simplified way one can summarize the listener’s reaction as follows: ‘The author has, in his hatred, destroyed all his loved objects just as I have done, and like me he felt death and desolation inside him. Yet he can face it and he can make me face it, and despite the ruin and devastation we and the world around us survive. What is more, his objects, which have become evil and were destroyed, have been made alive again and have become immortal by his art. Out of all the chaos and destruction he has created a world which is whole, complete, and unified’.28 Thus, the creative artist goes in search of what we fear, what we mourn and what we have lost, and, through the work of art, makes reparation, and brings back to life what has been destroyed. In her discussion of Proust, Segal notes that, by returning to the events of his childhood, Proust was attempting to remember and then reclaim difficult experiences: writing echoed the activity of mourning, by which painful feelings are confronted, worked through, and finally replaced by feelings of love and acceptance. But such love and understanding would have been impossible without the full engagement with and recognition of the painful experiences of the past. Creative activity, however, can surpass

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the normal process of mourning in its emotional achievement – because past experiences remain elusive, in order to ‘capture them, to give them permanent life, to integrate them’ with the rest of life, one must ‘create a work of art’.29 It is of central importance that the creative act brings about a created object: the work of art is a concrete entity whose real presence in the world reassures both artist and spectator that the act of reparation is effective. This is one of the central differences between daydreaming and artistic creation. The daydreamer retreats from the world, and replaces an unpleasant reality with a temporary fantasy world; the artist, on the other hand, creates a work of fiction steeped in the reality of experience. Speaking on artistic expression, Richard Wollheim notes that ‘for the artist, unlike the neurotic, the phantasy is the starting point, not the culmination, of his activities. The energies which have initially driven him away from reality, he manages to harness to the process of making, out of the material of his wishes, an object that can then become a source of shared pleasure and consolation’.30 Longevity is one of the values we place on works of art – the fact that the plays of Sophocles speak to us more than two centuries after being written is testament of their aesthetic virtue. It’s not just the case that longevity is a sign of aesthetic virtue, but also that longevity itself is regarded as a virtue. This is so because the enduring nature of a work of art is an indication of the robustness of the creative act: we feel that the work of reparation must be effective if it results in an art-object31 that can endure for centuries. Reparation can restore the damaged mother-parts, and place in her stead a whole body whose robustness is an indication of the restorative process of creativity. But reparation makes sense only if there is an acknowledgment of destructiveness – the reader identifies with the creative writer not only because she wants the pleasure of the end product but because the creative writer acknowledges the painful feelings of destructiveness. Creativity is understood, both in its nature and in its emotional resonance, as the corollary of our destructive phantasies. Segal notes this when she argues that ‘to realize and symbolically express depression the artist must acknowledge the death instinct, both in its aggressiveness and self-destructive aspects, and accept the reality of death for the object and the self’.32 Instead of defending himself against his painful phantasies of destructiveness by fleeing from them or by mounting a manic defence against them (as Segal argues works of comedy may do), the tragic poet returns to those feelings of loss and despair in order to work through them. This working through, although not to be identified with the ‘working through’ of psychoanalytic therapy, is nevertheless a process of healing.

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Just as the move from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position brings with it – indeed, is made possibly by – a repairing of the infant’s own mind, so too by making reparation towards the other – the mother attacked in phantasy – the creative artist repairs damage done to his own internal world. Indeed, since the hated-mother and the lovedmother are figures in phantasy, and are not to be identified with the real mother, creative reparation is essentially an act of self-repair. And by identifying with the creative writer, the reader or listener can share in this process of reparation, which is a necessary ingredient for insight. Another important aspect of this identification between reader and writer is a sense of shared guilt and responsibility. When reading or watching works of tragedy, the reader takes consolation in the fact that the creative writer shares many of her destructive phantasies. This helps to relieve the enormity of the sense of guilt, because, by being brought to understand that destructive phantasies may be shared by others, the reader or listener need not bear the entire burden of guilt. Identification with another recognises both that I am like the other in some respects, but also that the other is like me. In the theatre, this sense of a shared experience is emphasised by the communal nature of theatre-going. We watch tragedies sitting in an audience, and often in the dark. It is precisely in this ‘community of sentiment’ that the philosopher Flint Schier places the value of tragedy. Schier also maintains that one of the reasons we seek out tragedies is because they tell us the truth about life – the pleasures of tragedy reside in their unflinching portrayal of life’s suffering.33 Segal would agree with the emphasis on a work of tragedy’s ability to engage with the truth, because it is only by dealing with our most painful anxieties with focused vision that we can find happiness unclouded by schizoid denial or repression. The creative writer uses the genre of fiction to bring home emotional truths – suffering is part of life: it forms us, and informs the human condition. But the artist also provides a sense of hope and redemption – even though suffering cannot be avoided, by engaging with our deepest painful phantasies, we can find a way to happiness. Segal contrasts the true creative writer with the writer of pulp fiction; the latter provides us with the escape route of denial, which ‘is pure escapism, making even day-dreaming easy, since someone else has made the effort to plot it’. She notes that ‘the difference between fantasy and imagination is the degree of denial of reality’.34 Works of literary tragedy are works of the imagination, in this sense, not works of fantasy: in engaging imaginatively with our most painful fears and anxieties, with our feelings of guilt, our shame, our sense of

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vulnerability in a world that does not conform to our desires, works of tragedy speak directly to what makes us most profoundly human. Creative writers are able to make reparation – both for themselves and on our behalf – precisely because we realise that they take such fears seriously. The work of art is a gift the artist gives not only to himself but to the world. Segal recounts the story of Picasso’s visit to Madrid as a teenager: ‘he went into a deep depression which lasted about a year. This seems to have been stimulated by seeing real great art which he felt he could not emulate, particularly Velázquez. In old age he painted the magnificent Las Meninas, in which he fragmented, dismantled, then reconstructed in his own way the painting of Velázquez. It is as though it took him nearly a lifetime to reconstruct what in his mind he wanted to break up, or had broken up inside himself in his depression’.35 Picasso, however, did not attempt to recreate Velázquez’s artistic style; Las Meninas breaks with tradition even as it reinvokes it. Picasso uses artistic form to recreate the very tension – between despair and hope, between envy and reparation – that is fundamental to the artistic act itself, and without which new developments of aesthetic style would be limited. It is thus in the recognition of these potentially destructive impulses that the root of artistic creativity takes hold. Great artists literally break (with) tradition in order to create their own artistic forms. Segal’s point is that such destructive phantasies are necessary to great art – not only because they enable reparation, which provides the impulse to creativity, but also because the vibrancy and power of art has its roots in intra-psychic conflict. There is of course much to be said – although I will not say it here – of the particular forms reparation can take, both within and between genres. Painting and sculpture, for instance, are much more corporeal artistic genres than literature: the painter and sculptor ask the viewer to look at their artworks, which exists independently of and separate from the viewer; Klein postulated that Kjär created paintings in order to provide an external correlate to her reparative phantasies – object she could see and touch. Literature, on the other hand, although it may incorporate bodily elements, such as rhythm, is often experienced as a looking in, and the distance between literary work and reader is much closer. This enables a more intimate sense of identification between reader and author, and the reader’s own thoughts in reading may echo or follow the poetic or narrative voice. This strong sense of identification may strengthen too the identification with the psychological process of mourning and reparation with which the writer engages. In Ray Bradbury’s famous science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451, set in a world where books are burnt, works of literature

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are preserved by being remembered. Remembering may be a way of re-membering; for the tragic poet, destructive phantasies are kept ‘in mind’, and are brought under the reparative activity of the imagination; by engaging with such literary works, we not only bring them to mind, but are reminded of who we, essentially, are.

Notes 1. Hume (1987 [1742]), p. 216. 2. Korsmeyer (2006), p. 51. 3. ‘I consider it [King Lear] one of a handful of the very best things a human being has ever made’, Lear (1999), p. 3. 4. Bloom (1999), p. 476. 5. Such as the one provided by Nahum Tate in his The History of King Lear, a rewriting of the play which leaves Cordelia alive at the end and married to Edgar. 6. Identified as the Danish painter Ruth Weber; see Olsen (2004). 7. Klein (1998), p. 218. 8. Phantasy: ‘Imaginary scene in which the subject is a protagonist, representing the fulfilment of a wish (in the last analysis, an unconscious wish) in a manner that is distorted to a greater or lesser extent by defensive processes’, Laplanche & Pontalis (1985), p. 314. 9. Klein develops these concepts more fully in her groundbreaking paper, ‘Love, Guilt and Reparation’. See Klein (1998), pp. 306–43. 10. The anxiety experienced by little boys at that stage is often expressed as a castration anxiety. See Klein (1998), p. 217. 11. Klein (1998), p. 217. 12. See for instance Bion (1991). 13. They should perhaps rather be though of as emotion-like states, since, as phantasies, they lack the cognitive structure and intentionality of emotions. 14. Richmond (2004), p. 265. 15. Richmond (2004), p. 246. 16. Klein (1998), p. 312. 17. Klein (1998), p. 313. 18. Klein (1998), p. 218. 19. Segal (1998), p. 204. 20. Bywater (1909), p. 23. 21. In his Critique of Judgement, Kant too notes the importance for the experience of beauty of the formal structures of the understanding; it is the absence of such formal structures that contribute to the feelings of awe and terror characteristic of the sublime. 22. In Shakespeare’s late play, The Winter’s Tale, the ‘dead’ Hermione is, literally, brought back to life. 23. Robinson (2004). See also Robinson (2005). 24. Segal (1998), p. 217. 25. Segal (1998), p. 218.

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32. 33.

34. 35.

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Segal (1998), p. 217. Segal (1998), p. 216. Segal (1998), p. 216. Segal (1998), p. 208. Wollheim (1992), p. 116. Whether works of literature can be considered objects of art is not a question I shall pursue here; it is sufficient for the purposes of this discussion if they can be experienced as art-objects, which does seem to be the case. Segal (1998), p. 219. ‘But why do we seek such news? Because, I think, many people feel that that is how things are and that it is better to know how things are than not to know’. Schier (2004), p. 201. Segal (2004b), p. 107. Segal (2004a), p. 91.

8 The Psychology of Evil: A Contribution from Psychoanalysis Michael Lacewing

It has often been noted that evil – by which I mean evil in human motivation and action – is difficult to understand. We find it hard to make sense of what ‘drives’ a person to commit evil. This is not because we cannot recognize or identify with some aspect of the psychology of evil; we all experience feelings of envy, spite, cruelty, and hatred. But somehow this shared experience can seem insufficient, and we are left at a loss as to how such natural, universal human motivations could have resulted in this. There are two fundamental reasons for this, relating to how we make sense of human motivation and action. First, as Aristotle observed, we standardly explain what someone does and why they do it in terms of the good they aim at, understood from their perspective. But is there always some (deviant conception of the) good at which the evil person aims? Or is evil better understood in terms of an attack on the good? Second, we often make sense of another’s motivation and action by adopting their perspective, identifying with them ‘off-line’. However, it is rare that a person understands their motives as evil. The apparent lack of an ‘internal perspective’ on evil casts our attempts at understanding adrift. The aims of this chapter are modest, to do no more than point our attempts to understand the psychology of evil in a particular direction. § 8.2 is a synoptic overview of what I shall call the ‘traditional’ picture of the psychology of evil. In § 8.3, I argue that this picture is explanatorily inadequate. §§ 8.4–8.6 develop the traditional picture by suggesting some resources drawn from psychoanalytic theory that can meet the explanatory challenge. My argument here is schematic, seeking only to motivate a research project. § 8.7 situates the psychology of evil in relation to ‘normal’ psychology by noting the positive functions of mental processes involved in the psychology of evil. 112

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Individualism

First, however, a word on approaching evil from the perspective of individual psychology. There is a debate in the social sciences over whether we can explain human motivation and action in terms of the individual, or whether such ‘individualism’ misrepresents the relation between individual and society. For example, some have argued that had Hitler not existed, some other person would have occupied a role in events similar to his. We cannot, therefore, understand the evils perpetrated by the Nazis without looking at their historical and social context. The approach of individual psychology, e.g. what went on in the minds of the Nazi leaders, is simply too narrow. Bernard Williams helpfully distinguishes between ‘formal’ and ‘substantial’ individualism in the explanation of human motivation and action. Formal individualism makes the following two claims. First, there are deliberative or practical questions that are ‘individually first-personal’, i.e. an agent can only answer them by answering the question ‘what shall I do (here and now)?’ They cannot, for instance, be answered in terms of what one or we should do. Second, what an individual does is often explained in terms of their deliberation, and insofar as their action is intentional, it can be explained in terms of a deliberation that they could have conducted. ‘It follows from the two claims together that intentional action can always be explained by reference to a consciousness which the agent at least could have had and in many cases did have, and which refers to the agent’ (Williams, 1995, p. 125). Formal individualism is necessary for the usual discriminations we want to make regarding voluntariness, and otherwise fits well with our explanatory practices. But it importantly leaves open the question of the extent to which we must appeal to an individual’s social environment and historical heritage to explain their deliberations, intentions, and consciousness. This is taken up by the question of substantial individualism, a question that we need not tackle. Formal individualism is enough to secure the relevance of an attempt to understand the structure of individual psychology, while allowing that this approach can be usefully complemented by social and historical analyses. It is not my purpose to provide an account of how and why an agent came to acquire an evil motivation, nor to address the question of responsibility and its location in individual or society, only to outline what such a structure of motivation may look like.

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The Psychology of Evil

8.2 The traditional picture There is a line of thought running through many accounts of the psychology of evil, whether theological or naturalistic, literary or historical, philosophical or psychological. We can find it, in various formulations, in Augustine, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s Othello, Goethe’s Faust, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, in psychological and historical studies of the Nazis by Fromm (1973), Arendt (1963), Rosenbaum (1998), and Sereny (1995), and in book length treatments of the ‘nature’ of evil by Scott Peck (1983) and Midgley (1984). The line, which I call the ‘traditional picture’, is that the psychology of evil centrally involves pride, envy, and self-deception. On this picture, there need be no single motive behind evil actions, between one agent and another or even between the various evil actions of a single agent. Evil is not the pursuit of a particular goal, nor is it necessarily an expression of fear or anger or desire. It may be, but it is not necessarily, motivated by a distinct desire or intention to do what is evil. Even when it is, we can helpfully understand this motivation, in part, in relation to the agent’s pride and/or envy. Milton’s Satan provides an initial example: To do aught good never will be our task; But ever to do ill our sole delight, As being contrary to his high will Whom we resist. (Paradise Lost, I. 159–61) Here at last We shall be free; … Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven. (I. 258–63) Evil be thou my good; by thee at least Divided empire with heaven’s king I hold. (IV. 110–11) For whatever reason (if there is a further reason in his case), Satan’s pride will not accept submissiveness to God, and he adopts evil as a means of resistance. But this is not healthy defiance of an unjust dictator. While his actions protect his liberty, it is as important to him to rule over others.

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In this we see his envy of God (made explicit very early on in I. 35). His pride connects not to a stable and realistic sense of self-worth, but to a hateful rejection of anything that has claim to be superior. Milton brings out these connections further with Satan alone and tormented: Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven. O then at last relent! Is there no place Left for repentance, none for pardon left? None left but by submission; and that word Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame. (IV. 73–82) It would be a gross mistake to adopt this passage as a model for the psychology of evil, as though all evil people not only suffer terribly but are fully aware of their suffering, their motives, their situation, and the connection between them. Milton’s Satan is highly unusual in his self-awareness. We can, however, tentatively generalize this complex of (a) circumstance that threatens self-esteem, combined with (b) an inability to tolerate such a threat or adjust one’s self-image in consequence. We should add (c) faults of character, first-personal knowledge of which we all struggle to gain and preserve. It is on this complex that pride and envy play: ‘The trouble is not, of course, that vanity is the worst of the vices. It is just that it is the one which makes admitting all the others unbearable’ (Midgley, 1984, p. 122). The situation is all the more unbearable when complicated by envy, which imagines others, in their goodness and power, being free from such humiliating challenges to self-image. It is not merely admitting one’s faults that pride and envy make unbearable; it is realistically recognizing one’s situation and adjusting oneself to it. In his discussion of evil, Adam Morton notes that empirical studies suggest that ‘[v]iolent individuals are more likely to have inflated than deflated beliefs about their own capacities and the attitudes of others to them … these beliefs are often wildly at variance with the facts. … Their self-esteem is thus both inflated and vulnerable’

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(Morton, 2004, pp. 44–5). It is notable that, in various studies of Nazi leaders, the alternatives they faced prior to their rise within Nazism were, from their points of view, bleak and frustrated their enormous ambition. As is well known, Hitler was a failed artist and virtually a tramp. Goebbels had a deformed leg, which excluded him from military service, and was failing in a literary career. Eichmann was a travelling salesman with the Vacuum Oil Company, ‘a failure in the eyes of his social class, of his family, and hence in his own eyes as well’ (Arendt, 1963, p. 33). Himmler was constitutionally frail, and his family had suffered a loss of social prestige at the end of the Imperial system (Fromm, 1973, pp. 299ff.). The damage to self-esteem threatened by a realistic recognition of oneself and one’s situation invites (d) self-deception. To suggest that an evil agent is self-deceived calls to mind the Socratic doctrine that ‘no one does evil knowingly’. But the two are not equivalent, and the traditional picture need not suffer from the implausibility of Socrates’ optimism. While it is rare that an agent admits that they intend to do evil, nevertheless, it is not impossible. Further, they may also know what they refuse to admit. What remains unknown to them, in a form that could impact on their deliberation and action, is their structure of motivation. (I shall clarify this claim in § 8.4.) Self-deception, then, may or may not involve the agent’s deceiving themselves about the morality of their actions. It more centrally involves the agent’s deceiving themselves about the fundamental motivations at play in their deliberations. There is some aspect of the agent’s psychology to which the adoption of an evil project is a psychological solution, and it is this that typically remains outside awareness. In this sense, Midgley’s remark (1984, p. 59) that ‘[t]here does not seem to be an inside point of view on vice’ is correct. Self-deception, however, is a matter of degree, the truth more or less out of reach and cognizance. Different agents exhibit different degrees of it, leaving interpreters to wonder – ‘Did he know what he was doing?’ Rosenbaum repeatedly remarks on the degree to which deceptions of one kind or another surrounding everything the Nazis did and said, so that it becomes very difficult to judge what e.g. Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels believed and what they did not. In her study of Eichmann, Arendt (1963, p. 51) notes that his self-deception was supported by just how widespread self-deception and mendacity had become in Germany at the time. Sereny’s study of Speer, reflecting in the 1960s on his involvement with Nazism, illustrates vividly the great difficulty he had in coming to accept the truth. But there is no reason to think that

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this struggle should mark every evil agent at the point of deliberation, to cause the kind of suffering Satan expounds. Self-deception can be far enough gone to leave behind only ripples. Furthermore, the degree to which an agent must invest in self-deception may diminish in proportion to the degree to which society carries the burden of deception. Where self-deception has become a habit, protecting the agent’s self-esteem against the intolerable threat it faces, it can grow to include an attack on thinking or thoughtfulness. Arendt’s concludes (1963, p. 287) that ‘Eichmann was not Iago. … Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. … He merely … never realized what he was doing … [a] lack of imagination. … It was sheer thoughtlessness’. Sheer thoughtlessness, however, is not a quality anyone is born with. So why or how had Eichmann come to be so very thoughtless? It is plausible to think of it as a trait cultivated in the service of self-deception. Self-deception and thoughtlessness connect in a refusal to explore the truth. The contrast with Iago is telling, for, like Satan, Iago has a good degree of self-awareness, but he poses another puzzle. He has come to hate Othello, and seeks to destroy him through arousing his jealousy, because there was a merest rumour that Othello had slept with his wife. The provocation is inadequate for the strength and depth of Iago’s feeling. And, Midgley points out, we wonder what has happened to other motives that would normally balance feelings of revenge. In Iago’s case, what has grown is not the degree of self-deception but the feelings of jealousy and hate, fuelled by Iago’s pride and envy (Othello has been promoted over him, as well). Iago refuses, at the end of the play, to explain himself: ‘Demand me nothing; what you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word’. Midgley (1984, p. 148) interprets this as his recognition that ‘[t]o admit any of this [the extent of his jealousy and so on] would make himself not just odious, but contemptible and ridiculous. … He would seem childish and foolish. But pride is the centre of his life. So he takes the only course which might preserve his dignity’. If this is intended as a description of the content of Iago’s deliberation, i.e. if Midgley is claiming that he recognizes that he is contemptible and childish, but (merely) doesn’t want others to reach that conclusion, then I think she attributes too much self-awareness to Iago. Because he is so proud, he would struggle to recognize these traits in himself. As plausible an interpretation is that he covers over his inability to say anything with the thought that he will not justify himself to others. This permits him not to think about how he would try to do so.

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8.3


An objection

On examining the traditional picture, one can be left with the sense of ‘But how?’ For instance, how has self-deception worked to conceal reality, both the reality of the situation one is in and the reality of one’s psychology, so extensively? How can pride or envy work to extinguish other motives, even to work against one’s self-interest? How do pride, envy, and self-deception – from which we all suffer to some degree or other – develop to such an extent to produce evil? It is possible to supplement this account of the psychology of evil, for instance, by appealing to genetic factors and socialization. Human beings are naturally prone to feelings of hatred, resentment, and feel threatened by challenges to self-esteem. These are the ‘natural resources’ on which pride, envy, and self-deception can work. Or again, accounts of particular forms of socialization, e.g. repeated exposure to violence, may contribute to our understanding of why one individual rather than another develops the structure of motivation described. Broader social factors regarding what forms of thoughtlessness, deception, or violence are acceptable also play a part. But such supplements, even if true and valuable, lack depth in terms of giving an account of the state of the agent’s mind at the time of deliberation and action. We are still left with the question of how the structure of motivation works. If the question is not quite, ‘what was he thinking?’, then ‘what was he not thinking, and how was he able not to think it?’ While we should not think that this focus on the individual’s state of mind provides the whole story, it is an important part of the story, a part that it is worth getting clearer on. If we try to understand the kind of self-deception involved within a framework of rational means–end reasoning, it becomes very difficult to answer the explanatory challenge. The end: to protect one’s self-image and self-esteem against threat; the means: to deceive oneself (however, this is to be understood, e.g. forming false beliefs, refusing to admit to consciousness certain evidence, etc.) regarding one’s situation, desires, and emotions and, furthermore, to act on this deception in such a way that the threat disappears. One trouble is that the means taken are commonly not rationalized by the end. For example, the end is part of one’s self-interest; the consequences of low self-esteem can be appalling. Yet the path of action taken, apparently in the service of this end, does not always heed self-interest. Hitler’s redeployment of troops from the Eastern Front to concentration camps at a time when Russia was gaining the upper hand has often been cited as an example. Self-interest itself

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is overridden by obsession; Satan and Iago provide further cases. We are therefore still left with the questions above – how could the agent’s thought about reality have become so distorted?

8.4 Projection: A promissory note In the rest of this chapter, I shall restrict myself to discussing the psychology of those whom Midgley (1984, Chapter 7) calls ‘instigators’. Many more people participate in evil practices, e.g. in the anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany, than originate such practices. For those who ‘merely participate’, those who are led rather than lead, much more needs to be said about group and social psychology. While there are still issues of self-deception, it is possible that quite a different account of the underlying structure of motivation that supports self-deception is necessary, e.g. to do with identification with the leader and the group. It is easily and commonly recognized that the distortions in an agent’s thoughts about their ‘internal world’ and the distortions in their thoughts about the ‘external world’ are closely related. For example, traits, feelings, and the internal origins of feelings that an agent cannot admit to are projected onto situations and into other people. The occurrence of projection has long been recognized, and some, e.g. Midgley, have recognized it as involved in the psychology of evil. But unless we make explicit reference to psychoanalytic theory, both our understanding of how projection is supposed to work, and the implications for our understanding of the mind, and so our understanding of the psychology of evil, tend to be undeveloped. Before undertaking – all too briefly – that task of development, a promissory note that projection introduces to our explanation of the psychology of evil. Working with the ‘commonsense’ understanding of projection, we develop the traditional picture as follows. The evil agent is faced with feelings, whatever their source, that are intolerable. Typically, they experience the feelings as a threat to their self-image and self-esteem, an affront to their pride, and enviously imagine that others – not in their situation – are free of similar feelings. This is intended not as a description of their consciousness but their structure of motivation. So, for example, someone faced with intolerable feelings of impotence and envy will, under projection, come to think of others as weak, stupid, or even degenerate, and envious of the agent’s power (or the power of the group with whom the agent identifies). These feelings and/or the traits or causes from which they arise are projected outside the mind of the agent, usually into others, some of whom become the victims of their actions.

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In order to shore up the projection, to confirm its validity, e.g. in the face of contrary evidence, the agent may act in ways to bring reality into line with how it is imagined to be. They seek to elicit feelings of impotence and envy in others, e.g. through humiliation, and to control and eliminate their own feelings of impotence and envy by controlling and eliminating those of others into whom they have projected these feelings. In the extreme case, this means killing them. Or again, the ‘belief’ (perhaps more accurately described as a piece of imagination than a belief) that their victims are less than fully human is validated by treating them in dehumanizing ways. Projection does not resolve the initial feelings, although it may provide a psychological balm depending on how successful it is. Hence their self-esteem tends to be both inflated and vulnerable. The deliberations and actions of the agent are therefore motivated by an attempt to cope with, control, eliminate the feelings that are intolerable. I said in § 8.2 that there is an aspect of the agent’s structure of motivation that remains unknown to them in a form that could impact on their deliberation and action. In saying this, I had in mind their projection, the complex of feelings to which it is a response, and the origin of their thinking and acting in projection. We have two ways of knowing about our own psychology, two perspectives on our mental states – very roughly, there is first-personal knowledge, by acquaintance, and third-personal knowledge, by description. For example, I may first come to the belief that I am jealous through accepting this account of my behaviour from a friend; and I can hold this belief without being aware of my jealousy ‘from the inside’, or directly and non-inferentially. This third-personal knowledge, however, would not normally count as ‘self-awareness’, and we are rightly doubtful of the integrity of anyone’s deliberations that are based on such indirect beliefs.1 So, an agent may form a belief about a projection of theirs, yet fail to have the ‘inner’ experiences that confirm the projection. It transpires that to fully recognize one’s projection from the inside is not compatible with maintaining the projection. (An analogy may be drawn with Moore’s paradox regarding belief: I cannot coherently maintain that I believe that p, but it is true that not-p. This can be no more than an analogy, as Moore’s paradox rests on the place of rationality in belief formation, while rationality plays no such part in the formation of projections.) Therefore, at the time of deliberating or acting on the basis of projection, the agent must be unaware of the projection in a way that would suitably inform and modify that deliberation and action. If they were to become aware of the projection (not itself an easy matter), this

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would undermine the course deliberation takes. Gaining awareness of one’s projections goes side by side with withdrawing them, at the very least, if one is to maintain any kind of coherence in thought. We may worry: If the deliberation of an agent directed towards evil actions cannot take into consciousness the agent’s projections, does this mean that evil actions are not intentional? And would it then follow that they were not responsible? Neither conclusion follows. First, we quite rightly hold people responsible not just for what they intended, but frequently for what they did not. For example, in a charge of culpable ignorance, we hold them responsible for acting in ignorance of the consequences of their action when they are responsible for gaining that knowledge. Second, all that follows from the account of projection is that, through their actions, the agent who does evil does not intend to control or eliminate the feelings they have projected. It does not follow that they do not intend to harm their victims or even ‘to do evil’.

8.5 Psychoanalytic defence mechanisms So much for the promissory note. What is lacking in the commonsense understanding of projection, which I believe psychoanalysis can uniquely supply, is an adequate theorization of the mental processes involved. In psychoanalytic theory, projection takes several forms. What we have been discussing, the projection of traits or feelings of the subject into others, is the sub-species known as ‘projective identification’. (The ‘identification’ relates to the psychological connection set up by the projection between the self and the other, such that the fate of (some parts of) the self is connected to the fate of the other.) It is one of a number of mental operations which, when they occur in the service of defending the subject against mental pain, are sometimes called ‘defence mechanisms’. As we shall see in § 8.7, these mental operations are not always ‘defensive’ nor lead to a distortion of the agent’s grasp of reality; and even when they are defensive, they can nevertheless be useful. Defence mechanisms operate on mental content that causes, or threatens to cause, mental pain, such as anxiety or guilt. Their purpose is to transform that content in such a way that pain or its threat is reduced or eliminated. Many prominent schools of psychoanalysis understand defence mechanisms to operate via unconscious phantasy, a concept first proposed by Freud (1911) but greatly developed by Melanie Klein and her colleagues.

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Phantasy – the ‘ph’ spelling is used to indicate a distinction from conscious fantasy – is a form of imagination, but not one under the control of the agent’s will. It is, in a number of important respects, like dreaming. At the time of dreaming, a dream is typically experienced as ‘real’, i.e. as an experience rather than a piece of imagination. Phantasy likewise has the power to produce a psychic sense of the reality of its product. For example, the phantasy that some intolerable part of oneself is not part of oneself, but part of some other, results in a state of mind that represents this to be the actual state of affairs. The agent comes to behave, feel, think, and in certain respects ‘believe’ that this is so. In this way, the mental pain caused or threatened by the part of the self, now ‘expelled’ in phantasy, is diminished or even eliminated. For example, in the simplest examples of projective identification, a sense of worthlessness is replaced by a sense of the worthlessness of (particular) others; envy is replaced by a sense that (particular) others are envious. However, while pain may have diminished, the sense of threat typically remains. The agent is not free to simply ignore (these worthless or envious) others into whom parts have been projected. The parts, because they are projected parts of the self, continue to demand a response. There is a very unclear, but compelling, sense that one’s identity is involved in responses to these others. Staying with our examples, ‘worthless’ others must be made aware of their worthlessness or treated as worthless; and it is by comparison with their worthlessness that one’s own sense of worth (pride) is maintained. Projective identification is typically supported by ‘acting out’. The imaginative phantasy of projection in isolation alters the mind of the subject, but cannot alter the world outside their mind. Acting out does this, thus confirming and shoring up the imaginative project. The agent behaves in a way that seeks to make others feel worthless or envious. The feelings aroused in them confirm the projection. As already noted, projective identification is just one of a number of defence mechanisms. We were led to it by the discussion of the psychology of evil. But it is unlikely that it is the only defence mechanism employed in this psychology. This is one matter that a fuller account of the psychology of evil would need to investigate. Defence mechanisms are not intentional, nor can they be accurately described within the standard structure of intentional explanation used for actions. A number of philosophers of psychoanalysis describe the mental operations as ‘sub-intentional’.2 The operations occur for a purpose, but they do not operate, for instance, via means–end reasoning. On the standard picture, beliefs and desires both motivate and rationalize

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the action. But while we might say that the end of reducing mental pain is desired, subjects do not pursue this end on the basis of beliefs such as ‘if I project this part of myself, I shall reduce mental pain’. The end does not rationalize the mental operation, though the mental operation occurs precisely because it fulfils the end. If, therefore, we attempt to understand evil actions in terms of reasons the agent may have for pursuing these actions, we will always come up short. As remarked at the end of § 8.2, any reasons we find – such as the rumour that Othello had slept with Iago’s wife – seem, in the normal course of things, inadequate to explain the action. It is this inadequacy that Midgley seeks to make good by appealing to projection. Psychoanalytic theory accounts for why appealing to reasons is inadequate. Projective identification does not operate rationally, nor does it provide the agent with a reason for their actions. In response to a sense of the intolerable, it distorts their sense of themselves and of others. This representational and emotional distortion is then drawn upon in deliberation, while remaining outside the agent’s consciousness (the origin, extent, and structure of the distortion cannot become fully conscious while the projective identification remains in play). A rational account, even one that appeals to self-deception, cannot describe the psychology of evil because that psychology rests fundamentally on non-rational factors. This is part of the explanation of our bewilderment by evil.

8.6

Further developments

Analysing the psychology of evil in terms of defence mechanisms is a first step in employing the resources of psychoanalysis in application to this issue. I briefly indicate here two further steps that could be taken in using psychoanalytic theory to develop a fuller account of the psychology of evil. Again, a reminder that I am discussing only the psychology of instigators, rather than those who participate through following. It is worth noting that the account so far suggests that the distortion of the agent’s relation to reality may be quite piecemeal, such that only that part of reality, those others, that serve as the recipients of projection is misrepresented. In developments after Freud, psychoanalysts increasingly came to appreciate that unconscious phantasies in the service of defence mechanisms related to a restructuring of the subject’s whole relation to reality. Jonathan Lear indicates this reconceptualization by talking of the subject’s ‘world’. Phantasies do not operate in isolation from each other. Instead, the way in which the subject understands and

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relates to reality, especially the realities of their own and others’ psychology, forms a ‘structured totality’ (Lear, 2003, p. 199). The issue of worth, power, threat – whatever content the phantasy works with – is dominant in experience, not an isolated issue against a backdrop of well-adjusted emotional response and understanding. If we are able to, teasing out this structure, which will most likely be idiosyncratic, may help us further understand the psychology of individuals who do evil acts. A second development relates to Melanie Klein’s theory of two ‘positions’, originally put forward in relation to stages in child development, but which can be clinically identified independently of this.3 Klein argued that mental functioning (in relation to desires and emotions, and so all thoughts informed by these) can take different forms. The ‘paranoid-schizoid position’ is marked by high levels of (paranoid) anxiety, a sense of intolerable threat, to which the subject responds with the defence mechanism of ‘splitting’ off those parts of the self that are involved in producing the anxiety. Klein’s central example is of an infant, feeling furious with its mother, being terrified of both its own fury and its mother’s imagined fury in response, and so splitting off its fury. It also splits its experience of its mother, relating to her as good (loving, providing) mother or bad (furious, depriving) mother. Splitting – the separating out of parts of the self – is a prerequisite to projective identification, used as a form of defence. The ‘depressive position’ is initially marked by depressive anxiety that is caused by the psychological unification of split parts or split experiences. In recognizing that the loved mother is the same person as the one with whom it feels furious, the infant fears losing the loved mother and senses its dependence and lack of control. In an adult, withdrawing a projection and reclaiming a part of oneself that has been split off results in a similar experience. The part was projected because of the mental pain, perhaps the threat to one’s self-image that it caused. Reclaiming it initially re-presents the threat to one’s self-image, with the consequence sense of impotence and depressive anxiety. However, this constellation of feeling is, to a certain extent, overcome by making (typically symbolic) reparation to that which one loves (including, in the adult case, oneself), and the reduction of destructive impulses. This aspect of depressive position functioning leads towards emotional maturity and creativity. Depressive anxiety can, however, lead to a return to paranoid-schizoid functioning. That painful part of oneself, or the recognition of a painful aspect of reality, can provoke feelings of worthlessness, dependence, guilt, that prove too much, and result in a renewed bout of splitting and projection.

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Recent theorists have argued that we do not simply – at some point in development – achieve the latter stages of the depressive position and remain there. Instead, we all constantly move between the two forms of functioning, though one or the other may predominate.4 The psychology of evil, as we have described it, fits centrally within paranoid-schizoid functioning. A fuller account, therefore, can draw upon a more richly detailed theorization of the nature of this functioning and its effects.

8.7 The positive function of defence The operations involved in defensive phantasy, and in paranoid-schizoid functioning, are universal, and not ones that we are able to do without. I finish with some remarks relating to the positive functions of those mental operations that also make possible the structure of motivation that leads to evil actions. It is commonly recognized that defence at some level is generally protective of and necessary for mental functioning. Defence mechanisms first occur in early childhood because the feelings defended against are literally overwhelming. The child cannot cope with them. George Eliot remarks in Middlemarch that ‘[i]f we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence’. Arendt (2001, p. 266) notes that without ‘standardized codes of expression and conduct [that] have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality … we would soon be exhausted’. We must, therefore, have or develop ways of failing to pay attention to or be moved by what we experience, which are forms of splitting off in relation to thought and emotion respectively. A specific example of the latter, in which the defence is intentionally developed by the subject, is the suppression, necessary in a good surgeon or pathologist, of disgust, horror, or other disturbing but immediate and natural reactions. The types of phantasy involved in defensive functioning – positive or negative – also play roles in functioning that is not defensive. For example, splitting also occurs in idealization, as the latter involves the projection of good parts of the self. While this can be defensive, idealization is necessary for the emotional development and strengthening of the self. It is through identifying with figures we have idealized that we gain a greater capacity for dealing with anxiety without using defence mechanisms. We come to develop and draw upon the strength, power,

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and resilience that we imagine they have. This leads to less need for splitting and projection, yet the process begins with it.5 Lear (2003, p. 201) notes that projections can lend ‘a richness and texture to life’. Gifts I have received acquire a variety of sentimental values; places I have been are imbued with emotional resonances; and so on. Finally, projective identification is implicated in our empathic understanding of others.6 The aim of the imaginative project of ‘putting oneself in someone else’s shoes’ is not to rid oneself of some part but to form an imaginative connection between oneself and another to affect one’s understanding and feeling. There must, therefore, be the willingness, characteristic of the depressive position, to bear pain and to resist splitting one’s understanding of the other into good vs. bad. Nonetheless the mental operations that enable empathy overlap significantly with those that enable projective identification in the service of defence. If the psychoanalytically informed reading of the psychology of evil is correct, we can conclude that evil is inevitably a permanent possibility for human beings. Our psychological structure is such that we could not live or function, nor experience one of our most important sources of joy, our loving relationships with others, without mental operations that equally ground our capacity for evil.

Notes 1. I have defended this conclusion in Lacewing (2005). 2. See Wollheim (1984, Chapter II), Gardner (1993, Chapter 6), Gardner (1991), Hopkins (1991). For critical discussions, see Pataki (2000) and Marshall (2000). 3. See Klein (1975 [1952]). 4. See Britton (1998). 5. See Segal (1973), Chapter 3. 6. See Heimann (1950), Money-Kyrle (1956), Richmond (2004).

9 Good Citizens and Moral Heroes Adam Morton

If men were angels no government would be necessary. James Madison

le secret de l’Europe est qu’elle n’aime plus la vie. Ces aveugles ont cru puérilement qu’aimer un seul jour de la vie revenait a justifier les siècles de l’oppression. C’est pourquoi ils ont voulu effacer la joie au tableau du monde, et a la renvoyer à plus tard. Albert Camus

it is extremely unlikely that my parents would ever have met and married, and hence extremely unlikely that I would ever have been born, if the First World War had not occurred. How should I and others think and feel about the dependence of my existence on that great evil? Is it wrong for me to be glad that I exist? At least as important, is it wrong for anyone who loves me to be glad that I exist? Robert Adams

I argue that philosophical approaches to morality rarely take account of moral scale, the way in which our concern changes from low-stakes to high-stakes situations. Too free use of the word ‘evil’ encourages this. I claim that we do see a positive function for some kinds of low-stakes misbehaviour, but that this fades when the stakes get high. 127

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I am going to argue for two claims. The first may seem banal, though many contributions to this book will be making it seem less secure. And the second may seem outrageous. I do not think that many of my co-authors will endorse it. But I believe the banal and the outrageous are connected here, so that when we understand both we are inclined to believe both. The gradations claim: Some acts are worse than others, indeed some are much worse than others, so that we have little slips of moral judgement and horrendous evils. There is a continuous series of actions of intermediate badness. We are tolerant of the minor wrongs, which may vary the texture of life in worthwhile ways. But of each real atrocity we cannot but wish that it had not occurred. The personality claim: There are people who tend to do the right thing under ordinary circumstances. That is, there are people who have a helpful and benevolent attitude to those with whom they regularly interact and who deal with them in a fair and principled way. There are also people who do the right thing – or what can be seen retrospectively to have been the right thing – in extreme conditions, when there are radical conflicts between different people’s interests and some people’s suffering is awful. These tend to be different people. The good citizens are rarely the moral heroes, and vice versa. So the traditional image of the simply good person is a myth. Such personalities are almost unknown in our species. Neither of these claims entails the other. But there are connections between them, and the purpose of this article is to bring them out.

9.1

Some distinctions

The quotation from James Madison at the head of this essay is false. However well meaning and intelligent we were, we would need to coordinate our actions, and this would not be something that we could think out one-by-one. Some of the coordination would be arbitrary: what side of the road to drive on. Some would go further than simple coordinating convention: in classic prisoner’s dilemma cases we would need to have bound ourselves in advance lest self-interest lead to outcomes no one would prefer. Suppose for example that you own a watch that I want to have more than I want to keep my laptop, and you also want to have my laptop more than you want to keep your watch. And suppose these facts are known to both of us. Should I just then leave my laptop where you can find it, assuming that you will leave your watch where I can find it? Surely not: we have to set up some understanding between us in advance. This understanding may be one-off, as is likely in this case, or it may be based on a general set of expectations. Many

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such expectations are the common property of humanity, but many also are particular to a culture – for example those establishing and refining a pre-legal concept of property. So most people will have some inclination to do the intuitively cooperative thing in a wide range of coordination problems, prisoner’s dilemmas and free-riding situations, especially when the person or persons they would be cooperating with are of a similar background. One reason that similarity of background, and superficial signs of it, typically make people more cooperative is the greater likelihood that the other will share an understanding of what counts as cooperation and when it is called for. (The concept of the intuitively cooperative action is not completely unproblematic. But it is not the object of worry here.) Many people are disposed to routine cooperation with many other people. They’re good neighbours. Lend them your lawn mower and it will come back in good shape. Cooperation is facilitated by empathy, which I will characterise vaguely as the capacity to understand the experiences and aims of another from that other person’s point of view. (There is a lot more to say here, see the essays in Coplan and Goldie, forthcoming.) Of course there is a lot of fine structure here, and variation between people who are good neighbours in different ways. This is partly captured in the variety of virtue terms found in different cultures. Very specific advice about how to treat others is contained in traditional moral codes. Specific suggestions about the structure of the norms that can be extracted from such codes are found in the works of moral philosophers. Of course, these are often of great rigour and intellectual complexity. It may be that some such philosophical theory is right. And it may be that some moral code is the one that sufficiently thoughtful people would adopt. The two claims are independent. For myself, I am confident only of the more superficial facts that people need to cooperate and that cooperation needs a certain mentality which is found to a fair degree among most people. For many purposes that is enough. (The game-theoretical tradition in moral philosophy, from David Gauthier to Ken Binmore, develops this attitude in great detail, but often in the end does not say more than I have in this paragraph.) Since people are often cooperative, in fact often go out of their way to be helpful, it is noticeable when they are not. People can be selfish, short-sighted, petty, uncharitable and unsympathetic. (The beginning of a long list.) There is a vague line here between actions which though uncooperative are within the permissible limits and those which evoke explicit disapproval. In fact we have a variety of attitudes here, from

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grumbling to condemnation, and depending on the society and on the relation between the people different attitudes from this range will be engaged. (Think of a man who refuses to lift a finger to help with housework.) Since cooperation is facilitated by empathy, uncooperativeness is facilitated by its lack, by indifference, anomie or detachment. The subtlest form of un-empathy is failure to attend carefully to another person, which can coexist with kind intentions. To fail as a good neighbour is not to be an enemy. Indifference to another’s good is not to want their harm. We do sometimes wish harm on others, wanting them to fail or suffer. Sometimes this is the result of a basic human trait of thinking of people as opponents, whose good must automatically be bad for one. There are two kinds of archetypal enemies: members of groups which are in conflict with one’s own group, and individuals in one’s own group who are conspiring or manoeuvring to frustrate one’s ambitions. Simpleminded enmity usually mischaracterises the situation: there are very few truly zero-sum situations. But it is one that we are easily subject to. It would be a very rare person who did not take some satisfaction in the downfall of someone who had opposed her plans for years, even if that downfall was inconvenient in terms of current intentions. Another motive for wanting harm to others is to bring them down to our own level. It is pleasant to see a proud or powerful person slip on a banana peel. The proud or powerful person does not have to be an enemy. Cooperation, empathy, indifference, enmity are aspects of human interaction. They involve one person’s feelings or actions towards another. Not everything that is an object of approval or disapproval is like that. When someone slips on the ice, rather than on a banana peel deliberately placed in his way, we say ‘that’s bad’ (sometimes). People get cancer or depression; their projects fail for bad luck or want of ideas; well-intentioned people fail to agree and end up in disastrous conflict. Bad things happen: plagues, famines and floods. We wish that these did not happen. We regret their occurrence though no one does or should feel remorse about them. It is as if fate or the gods treat us as enemies, and this is how some people mistakenly think of them. Among the causes of this attitude to disaster is a tendency to personify causation and an inability to accept the reality of random processes. Putting these distinctions together, we have small-scale everyday undesirables, which divide into failures of cooperation and failures of luck, and large-scale awful events, which divide into atrocities and disasters. Many cases combine several elements of each, and the lines between them are not sharp, but there are fundamentally different things going on. One dimension of contrast is between lack of cooperation and malice, failure

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to produce a potential good and production of actual harm. Another dimension contrasts goods and harms produced by human agency and those produced by chance or natural causes. On both dimensions there is a range from minor misfortunes to enormous disasters or atrocities. The English word ‘evil’ can disguise how different these dimensions are. Epidemics are evils, and murderers are evil. But the microbes that produce the epidemics are not evil and the evil actions of some evil persons do not result in evils, because of their incompetence or the compensating actions of others. I shall speak of disasters and of atrocities, and of bad behaviour and misfortune. I shall avoid the word ‘evil’ when it is important to be clear what kind of undesirable event is in question. (I have done some work on unscrambling the concept of evil and the quirks of the English word ‘evil’ in Morton 2004.)

9.2 The continuity puzzle1 Contrast small broken promises with minor rudeness. As an example of the first think of missing an appointment which one has made personally with an individual acquaintance in order to indulge a whim. And as an example of the second think of an unnecessarily sharp remark on someone’s appearance, expressing a bad mood one happens to be in. A small-scale failure of cooperation and a small-scale failure of good will. We react differently to them. We may disapprove of both, but in different ways. Liars and promise-breakers are doing wrong, and rude people are just rude. We think of the person who has broken her promise as having acted immorally. We think of the rude person as indulging a not very attractive character trait, in a way that is within his rights even though it may not reflect well on him. Our judgement in the first case is of the act, and of the second of the person. Moreover our judgements of people’s personalities are typically not well focussed around a moral/non-moral distinction: we are just inclined to like the person less. Another way of putting it: you can do what you should with bad grace, bruisingly, and you’ve still done what you should. But you cannot cover your failure to do what you should with kindness or consideration or respect. Of course this is not meant to suggest that it is alright to be rude or insensitive, but just that judgements about this have a different impact on our moral thinking than judgements about small-scale obstructiveness or dishonesty. Politeness and consideration in small matters is analogous to supererogation in more serious affairs, valuable but not required. Suppressing your sharp retort is like falling on a tiny grenade.

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Now contrast big broken promises with serious cruelty. As an example of the first think of reneging on an offer to buy a house, which one had made only in order to prevent a sale to someone else. As an example of the second think of grinding a lighted cigarette into someone’s face as a warning that one’s threats should be taken seriously. A medium-scale failure of cooperation and a medium-scale failure of good will. (If you think that these are large-scale you don’t know the world we live in.) In these cases we do react to both with moral outrage. People should not falsify expectations that they have deliberately created, and people should not inflict serious pain on others. If anything, our sense of wrong is greater in the second case. After all, if the offer was made in a way that is not legally enforceable then the other person should have known that there might be trouble, and economic agents often create an illusory impression of their intentions in order to give themselves freedom of manoeuvre. To complete the pattern compare an enormous broken promise with hideous cruelty. Think of the president of a country deciding not to honour a mutual defence pact with a neighbouring country which had got itself into a pointless and potentially catastrophic war. In this case breaking one’s promise may save many lives. Contrast this with the actions of a sadistic killer, raping and murdering victims in part for the pleasure of seeing their terror. There is absolutely no doubt about which we condemn more, and have more revulsion for. There is a general phenomenon here. When the stakes are low we put more weight in our moral judgements, our opinions about what people ought to or must do, on cooperation rather than on goodwill or absence of malice. The higher the stakes get the lower the importance of cooperation in comparison with goodwill. In the extreme, when the numbers of people seriously affected are high, or individuals are in danger of awful harm, almost nothing matters except the intention to avoid suffering. This is not an arbitrary asymmetry: the point of everyday social interaction is that the cumulative effect of cooperation with respect to what are normally small stakes is a general benefit. On the other hand in extraordinary large-scale issues we have departed from the runof-the-mill profitable interaction and our focus instead is on riskmanagement, on not losing too much. There is a lot more to say about the pattern here, and it calls for more work defining more carefully what the factors whose relative importance changes are, and what is involved in the contrast between lower and higher stakes. I will not do any of this work here. I will assume that

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there is a real phenomenon to explain, though it could do with more description, and discuss its causes and consequences.

9.3 When people come into their own You have two neighbours. The person on your right is a model neighbour, returning borrowed tools on time and in good condition, telling you of dangerous situations in the neighbourhood, catching your dog when it has got loose and sheltering your children when they come back from school and you are not there. The person on your left is far from ideal as a neighbour, occasionally taking tools from your garage without telling you, coming home singing loud happy songs late at night and putting out trash in an insecure way that stray dogs and ravens can get at. So you have more regular neighbourly commerce with the neighbour on the right. Then one year moral disaster strikes and the social fabric is torn. The country is governed by members of a majority who maintain their fragile hold on public opinion by suppression of a minority. You have defended the rights of the minority, but the situation has moved from political debate to physical action, and members of the minority and those who support them are being rounded up for no one knows what mistreatment. You fear for your safety and for the future of your country. You plan to disappear from public view and work in secret opposition. But you need a safe haven for your children, and you need it in a hurry. You could appeal to one of your neighbours. You realise that you know very little about them besides their superficial behaviour as neighbours and the fact that they are both of the majority group. Which one should you approach? Here is a way you should not reason. ‘The neighbour on the right has always been friendly and cooperative, so the evidence is that she is a good person, so she will take personal risks, if need be, to protect my children.’ That is treacherous thinking for several reasons. In the first place the personal characteristics that sustain judgements of moral character in low-stakes cases are reactions to situations of a very limited variety. Social psychology tells us that human behaviour is less consistent from case to case than we tend to assume, even within a given social context, and inference from one context to a very different one is even more dubious. Moreover the fact that your neighbour on the right is cooperative in small everyday matters suggests that she may appreciate the goodwill of those around her, and be uncomfortable with the lack of it. Such a person is unlikely to stand up to the opinion of a majority. Cooperative people are often conformists, and indeed a preference

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for conformity makes many everyday interactions proceed much more smoothly. So some of the possible causes of cooperative behaviour in low-stakes situations are possible barriers to moral insight and moral courage in high-stakes situations. One might indeed reason in the opposite direction. ‘My neighbour on the left is nonconformist and independent-minded. He makes up his own ideas about what to do, not particularly trying to please those around him. So if either of the two neighbours is able to see through the dominant public mood, it is more likely to be him.’ Small-scale bad behaviour is certainly no guarantee that someone will do the right thing in a crisis, but some forms of bad behaviour – rebelliousness, lack of deference, inappropriate reflectiveness, insubordination, cantankerousness, a self-willed mentality – are correlated, roughly and weakly, with resistance to large-scale atrocity. And since some of the characteristics that foster small-scale good behaviour also foster spinelessness in the face of atrocity, we have reasons at least to consider the bad neighbour as a possible good resource in a crisis. These considerations raise the startling possibility that there may be no such thing as a good person, that is, a person who can be absolutely counted on to do the right thing in all circumstances. Of course such people must be very rare, on anyone’s account, and of course any account of moral competence will have to take account of the fact that some situations are just too complicated for any real human being to find the best response. (I have discussed such situations in Morton [2007].) But the possibility being raised now is that there may be no pattern of moral development that results in an agent very likely to satisfy the requirements of morality throughout its range. Developing the characteristics and skills that make one good in one kind of situation may make one less good in others. (And this in turn suggests another kind of startling possibility, that deeply embedded aspects of moral philosophy may mislead us about the nature of moral life, in a way that can interfere with vital shared aims. That is certainly not a topic for this paper. But it would concur with remarks Bernard Williams makes in a number of places. See particularly Williams (1972).) Even if one does not appeal to the ideal of the morally good person, one may think that some standard human virtues, such as honesty or kindness, will operate in the same way at low and high stakes. Well, this is just the kind of theory-based intuition that may or may not be psychologically real. It is a particularly important instance of the current debate over the psychological plausibility of virtue ethics, as found in Doris (2002), Harman (1999) and Sreenivasan (2002).

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9.4 The positive function of something Humour is often malicious. The most interesting people often have an unkind streak. Leadership sometimes builds on egotism. If the human race consisted entirely of perfect neighbours and citizens, then life would be poorer for all, including the good citizens. Children’s malice is a good example. Children delight in some misfortunes of some grown-ups. A stuck-up teacher sitting on a pin is a wonderful event. A policeman who takes a heavy tumble while running after a kid drawing graffiti is an object of delight. When the mayor cannot prevent herself farting while addressing the school, the event is a gift from the gods. The children’s delight in these things is not kind and need not be innocent. They know that the mayor is mortally embarrassed, that the policeman may have broken a leg, and that the teacher’s bottom may hurt for days. Still, they appreciate the nicely placed suffering. Just as they appreciate the naughty ones among them who frustrate the attempts of teachers and parents to make everything go smoothly and to get everyone to work and play peacefully together. (I take it that these remarks are in tune with those in Radford (1996), pp. 137–44.) We are all children in this respect. We appreciate minor misdeeds. Especially, of course, when the pin is not in your own backside. The traditional attitude to this is that it shows an unregenerate pre-moral sensibility that must be suppressed in more serious matters, but which is usually too much trouble to prevent or entirely to weed out. That traditional attitude misses something vital, though. We do not just tolerate the childish appreciation of the naughty, we approve of it. We think there is something wrong with a child who does not share in it, and as parents and teachers we find ourselves in dilemmas, torn between our responsibility to maintain order and our desire that the children be properly human. We even encourage a certain level of inconsiderateness in children, for example in some sports, though we are biased as parents and teachers by our need to maintain order. There is an obvious explanation of our undercurrent of approval of childish bad behaviour. We know that the characteristics that are revealed in it include traits of character that may be of vital importance when things get really serious. When bullies need to be stood up to, when institutional injustices need to be addressed, or when a few people stand against many, the grown-up naughty children may be just what we need. Or so I argued in the previous section. I would not describe this as a positive function of evil. But it is a positive function, a vital function, of a predisposition to awkward behaviour. And what

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the real psychology is here, linking the maverick hero and the disobedient child, is and ought to be treated as a very open and very important question.

9.5

Real atrocity

Awkward behaviour is nothing, on the scale of what people do to one another. There is no need to list examples. One can accept what I have been saying, without thinking that there is a positive function of anything like real atrocity. The crucial difference lies in a point I made above. Our comparative tolerance of small-scale insensitivity to others’ distress has a reason. In fact it has two reasons. The one I have just been discussing, the function that difficult character can play in obstructing atrocity, is probably the smaller one in the formation of most common sense moral mentalities, since unreflective common sense is willing to put up with a certain amount of not too noticeable horror for the sake of a smooth ride. A bigger reason is the shift in focus between smaller and larger scales. Small-scale is where most human interaction happens, and we count on it to produce the benefits of social life. So, to put it simplistically, maximising shared utility is the principal focus. At larger scales we are concerned with larger, rarer, events and histories, with usually unpredictable dangers and benefits. One focus of moral thinking then is damage-limitation, disutility-minimisation. So we are intolerant of large-scale cruelty and aggression just because at large scales minimising just that is a major concern. So, given a small breach of civility or kindness, even small-scale malice, conventional reaction can turn away, disapproving but choosing to concentrate more on the main business of coordinated action. And less conventional reaction can condone, thinking of potential benefits of blocking complacency and too-easy authority. Neither will happen with large-scale malice. We don’t look away, and the harm is a major concern. This does not mean that atrocities cannot have desirable consequences, or that on occasion we are not forced to do or allow awful things in order to prevent even worse. But that is different from the kind of acceptance of small-scale bad behaviour that I have been describing. It is like neither our tolerance of a rude but helpful colleague nor our tacit encouragement of a cheeky child. Still, one may think that we can have another kind of approval of larger evils, based on the consequences that sometimes flow from them. Many of the essays in this collection discuss this point, and I am not

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going to engage directly with it. Here is a thought-experiment, however, that connects these attitudes with the issues I have been discussing. A war is about to break out that will result in the deaths of many people and the ruin of many lives, all pointlessly. You have the power to stop it, by one simple action. But this simple action will prevent your only child from having the only child she will ever be able to have. Assume that the details can be told so that the action really is available to you, really will have this consequence, and really is the only thing you can do to prevent the war. In effect, you would be sacrificing your potential grandchild to prevent the deaths of many actual people. Should you do it? Of course: I take it that the choice is not even controversial, even though it might be difficult to make. You should do it even if you are sure that human history will go on in its usual way, with other wars and the ruination of other lives. Otherwise you will have counted the lives of these many people for less than that of one (who doesn’t yet exist). Now suppose that you do not take the action. And suppose that people are bemoaning the war and its effects. Can you say ‘well, it wasn’t that bad; after all, if it hadn’t happened my grandchild would not exist’? Of course not. You cannot wish away the existence of someone you love, and to that extent you have some sort of gladness that you did not do the simple act. But you should still think you should have done it; you should feel guilty for not having done it, complicit in many deaths. And if you think there is a god who did not perform such a simple act, you may be glad that he did not, because your grandchild then exists, but that should not block you from thinking that the god did wrong, that he was a morally inferior god for allowing the war to happen. (I take myself here to be arguing against the attitude expressed in the quotation from Robert Adams at the head of this paper. It is curious that Adams takes himself to be arguing against Camus in the quotation also above, although Camus is in favour of single happy days, as both Adams and I are, though, being nearer to my view and against something that is similar but not the same as Adams’ view, he does not think that this does or would justify past oppression. I suspect Adams has been misled by the translation.) I said that you have ‘some sort of gladness’ that you did not do the act. It is hard to find the right words for the attitude in question. It is not acceptance or approval or any delight. It is an attitude one can have to the holocaust or the destruction of Hiroshima or the murder of a neighbour. The core of the attitude is something very weak, simply the recognition that something good came of the event. This is much

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weaker than the attitude one can have to the cheeky child, the neighbour on the left or the insensitive colleague. In those cases one can take it as a good thing that they are the way they are. The difference in our attitudes goes deep, and is rooted in deeply engrained asymmetries in our attitudes to human interactions at larger and smaller scales.2

Notes 1. Some readers may take this section as a digression. They may think that the main claims of the paper would be better supported with an empirical argument. Empirical data would be welcome! But I also think that an analysis of our attitudes to good and bad behaviour is needed, and this section is my attempt to supply grounds for what I realise will seem wrong to some. The argument is not as powerful as I hope eventually to make it. 2. I have been discussing related topics with Jennifer Welchman and Wes Cooper for several years. I am grateful to Wes and to Justin Jalea for comments on a draft of this chapter. I also profited from discussions of an ancestor of it at Western Ontario and Oxford.

10 The Moral Significance of Evil John Kekes

Evil is the strongest one-word condemnation our moral vocabulary affords. In its primary sense, evil is predicated of actions. An action is evil if the agent performing it has a malevolent motive, the action causes grievous, gratuitous harm to innocent victims, and lacks a morally acceptable excuse. Understood in this way, evil is prevalent. The moral significance of evil is that it is the most serious obstacle to human well-being. There are numerous religious and secular thinkers who go to extraordinary lengths, proposing the most ingenious evasions, to deny the moral significance of evil. They attempt to explain it by explaining it away. The three most influential attempts to do so are the Socratic view that no one does evil knowingly, the StoicSpinozistic view that evil is illusory, and the Leibnizian view that evil is the byproduct of much greater good which could not exist without it. I argue that there are obvious and conclusive reasons for rejecting each of these attempts. There is no reasonable alternative to acknowledging the discouraging fact that evil is prevalent, because we are ambivalent beings. Malevolent and benevolent motives are both part of human nature. As a result, neither religious nor secular optimism about the human condition is warranted. This may be viewed as a secular version of original sin. It should lead to the realization that there is not only a theological but also a secular problem of evil. The conclusion that follows is that it is a dangerous mistake to refuse to face the fact that evil is the enemy of human well-being. If, unlikely as it is, evil has some good consequences, they are incidental and dwarfed by the terrible injury evil actions inflict on innocent people.

10.1

Facing evil

Evil is the most serious threat to our well-being and the strongest reason against optimism about our prospects. But evil is caused by human actions and the moral significance of this distressing fact is that we are 139

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our worst enemies. There are numerous religious and secular thinkers who go to extraordinary lengths, proposing the most ingenious evasions, to deny the moral significance of evil. They want to think well of us, they want to cling to optimism about the future. They do so either by treating evil as something other than evil, something that does not reflect on us too badly, or by claiming that evil is redeemed, or at least ameliorated, by the good that may come of it. They say that we cause evil only out of ignorance, or that evil is an illusion, or that we must have it, because without it we cannot have the far greater good. One feature shared by such widespread denials that evil is really evil is the sentimental falsification of undeniable but lamentable facts. These denials confirm that “human kind/Cannot bear very much reality.”1 Facing the moral significance of evil, however, is something we better do, because if we fail, we allow evil to become even more prevalent than it already is. In order to resist such sentimental obfuscation I begin with some concrete cases.2 They are hard to take, but I do not apologize for the distress they are likely to cause. Facing evil is distressing. The Vendean massacre took place during the French Revolution. “Every atrocity the time could imagine was meted out to the defenseless population. Women were routinely raped, children killed, both mutilated. . . . At Gonnard . . . two hundred old people, along with mothers and children, [were forced] to kneel in front of a large pit they had dug; they were then shot so as to tumble into their grave. . . . Thirty children and two women were buried alive when earth was shoveled into the pit. . . . Robespierre had rejoiced that ‘a river of blood would now divide France from its enemies.’”3 When the future Kommandant of Treblinka first encountered the death camp, here, in his own words, is what he found: I drove there with an SS driver. We could smell it kilometers away. The road ran alongside the railway tracks. As we got nearer Treblinka but still perhaps fifteen, twenty minutes’ drive away, we began to see corpses next to the rails, first just two or three, then more and as we drove into what was Treblinka station there were hundreds of them—just lying there—they’d obviously been there for days in the heat. In the station was train full of Jews, some dead, some still alive. . . . Treblinka was the most awful thing I saw all during the Third Reich. . . . It was Dante’s Inferno. . . . When I got out of the car . . . I stepped knee-deep into money . . . I waded in paper notes, currency, precious stones, jewellery and clothes. . . . The smell was indescribable: the hundreds, no, the thousands of bodies everywhere, putrefying, decomposing.4

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After the military coup in Argentina, suspected enemies of the new regime were systematically tortured long after all information had been extracted from them. One survivor describes what was done to him: For days they applied electric shocks to my gums, nipples, genitals, abdomen and ears. . . . They then began to beat me systematically and rhythmically with wooden sticks on my back, the backs of my thighs, my calves and the soles of my feet. At first the pain was dreadful. Then in became unbearable. . . . This continued for several days, alternating two tortures. Sometimes they did both at the same time. . . . In between the torture sessions they left me hanging by my arms from hooks fixed in the wall of the cell where they had thrown me. . . . On two or three occasions they also burnt me with a metal instrument. . . . One day they put me face down on the torture table, tied me up . . . and began to strip the skin from the soles of my feet . . . they were doing it with a razor blade or a scalpel. I could feel them pulling it . . . with a pair of pincers. . . . Then they . . . began to torture my testicles. . . . I’d never experienced such pain. It was as though they were pulling out all my insides.5 Among the victims of the Tate-La Bianca murders in Los Angeles were numerous corpses. A young man outside the house was shot four times. He was lucky. A woman inside was stabbed 16 times on the chest and the back. The wounds were deep, penetrating her heart, lungs, and liver, causing massive hemorrhage. She was eight months pregnant. The other woman was stabbed 28 times. One of the men fought. He was struck over the head 13 times, shot twice, and stabbed 51 times. The last man was shot, stabbed seven times, and bled to death. He had a rope tied around his neck. The rope was thrown over a rafter and its other end was tied around the pregnant woman’s neck. The rope forced both to stand. The murderers used a towel immersed in the pregnant woman’s blood to write various words on the walls.6 To these cases may be added accounts of the evil done to millions of innocent victims in the Gulag, in German concentration camps, in torture chambers throughout the world, and in China, Cambodia, Rwanda, the Congo, ex-Yugoslavia, and at many other places and times.7 These cases, and countless others that may be cited, establish beyond reasonable doubt that evil is prevalent. They also provide prima facie reasons for doubting that evil is merely the result of ignorance about the good, or illusory, or necessary for the greater good. Prima facie reasons can be defeated, of course, by stronger countervailing reasons, but these cases show that the countervailing reasons must be very strong indeed.

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I will argue shortly that attempts to provide such reasons are conspicuous failures. First, however, I must make clear why the cases I have just described are cases of evil.

10.2 What evil is Evil is the strongest one-word condemnation our moral vocabulary affords. The primary subjects of which evil may be predicated are actions. Individuals, societies, laws, customs, institutions, and so forth may also be evil, but only in a secondary sense that derives from the pattern of evil actions which may characterize them. Actions are evil if they have a certain motive and consequence, if they are gratuitous, and if they lack excuse. The motive of evil actions is some form of malevolence. The actions are performed in order to harm their victims. The malevolent motive may be hatred, rage, envy, revenge, resentment, or similar emotions that involve passionate ill will directed toward some person or group. Such was the motive of Robespierre’s henchmen who buried alive innocent women and children; of those who ran the Nazi death camps; of the torturers of the Argentinean junta; and of the Tate-La Bianca murderers. The consequence of evil actions is that they cause grievous harm to innocent victims. Harm is grievous if it permanently or lastingly prevents a person from normal functioning. This is the kind of harm that was done to the victims in the cases I have described: being buried alive or tortured for weeks; suffocating in sealed trains or in gas chambers; or bleeding to death from dozens of knife wounds while being suspended from a rope. The gratuitousness of evil actions consists in actions that cause greater grievous harm than what can be explained as a means to some external goal toward which the actions are directed. The harm caused by evil actions must be explained, at least in part, in terms of the malevolent motives of their agents. Evil actions are not just unscrupulous ways of pursuing immoral goals but ways of venting the overflowing malevolence felt by their agents. The Jacobins did not just want to put down a rebellion, but also to terrorize a population; the Nazis did not just want to get rid of Jews, but also to dehumanize them; the junta’s torturers did not just want to extract information, but also to make supposed opponents suffer; and the Tate-La Bianca murderers did not just want to kill, but also to vent their rage on decent people. They all wanted to express the violent ill will they felt and they wanted their victims to suffer from it.

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Lastly, there is no morally acceptable excuse for performing evil actions. It is not easy to specify what a morally acceptable excuse is, because agents and circumstances vary greatly. I propose, however, the following very rough account, as no more than a guide to what to look for. If an action is not one that an agent would normally perform; if the agent did not intend to perform it, but was compelled to do so by circumstances that others in that situation would also find compelling; or if the agent, as a result of incapacity or debilitating circumstances, could not be expected to understand the moral significance of the action, then there may be a morally acceptable excuse for performing it. If, on the other hand, the action is part of a characteristic pattern of the agent’s conduct; if circumstances did not compel the agent to perform it; and if the agent could understand the moral significance of the action, then it lacks a morally acceptable excuse, and it is appropriate to blame the agent for it. It is conceivable, although hard to imagine, that there may be a morally acceptable excuse for actions that have a malevolent motive and cause grievous and gratuitous harm to innocent victims. Perhaps the actions are the lesser of two evils, perhaps their agents are insane or have abnormally low intelligence, or perhaps the harm they inflict is after all deserved punishment. But no such excuse can be reasonably proposed for the actions involved in the cases I have described. Actions, then, are evil if they have a malevolent motive, cause grievous and gratuitous harm to innocent victims, and lack a morally acceptable excuse. The justified ascription of evil to actions is not an allor-none matter. There are degrees of evil, depending on how malevolent is its agent’s motive, how grievous or gratuitous is the harm it causes, and how convincing is the excuse that may be given for it. Evil actions, therefore, shade into merely morally bad actions, and no sharp distinction can be drawn between them. But it is clear, I hope, that immoral actions range from being clearly evil, as in the cases I have given, to being merely the sort of morally bad actions that we may all be guilty of from time to time, such as telling a convenient lie, breaking an onerous promise, or being thoughtlessly unkind. It is possible to extend this account of evil actions to the justified ascription of evil in a secondary sense. Individuals are evil if they habitually perform evil actions. And societies, laws, customs, or institutions are evil if they regularly lead individuals to perform patterns of evil actions. It will be generally recognized, I think, that it is often justified to ascribe evil both in its primary and secondary senses. If we face this fact, we will want to come to terms with its moral significance. We will want to know how the prevalence of evil is likely to affect our

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well-being, what it augurs for the human prospects in general, and why human beings cause evil. There is an enduring temptation to delude ourselves with optimistic answers. I will now examine three most often given answers and show how untenable they are.

10.3 The Socratic view The philosophically most influential attempt to evade the moral significance of evil is one that Plato attributes to Socrates: no one does evil knowingly.8 People always aim at what they believe is good, but their unruly feelings or inadequate understanding may lead them to mistake evil for good. Evil actions are thus the result of ignorance of the good. It follows that if people were not ignorant of the good, they would aim at it and their actions would be good. The way to cope with evil, therefore, is to teach people about the good. The emerging optimistic view is that evil actions are not due to malevolent motives, but to removable obstacles that prevent us from acting on our native dispositions to aim at the good. Our natural inclination is to act reasonably and morally. Evil results from interference with this inclination. We can be optimistic about our prospects, because people can be made to understand that evil is contrary to their well-being. Once they understand it, they will aim at the good and avoid evil. This Socratic view has been transformed by Augustine into the religious doctrine that evil is the result of insufficient love of God9 and by Rousseau and some Enlightenment thinkers into the secular view that evil is the result of being corrupted by external, usually political, influences.10 Not all religious and secular thinkers hold this view, but those who do have strong reasons to embrace the Socratic view, because it enables them to go on holding, for very different reasons, the optimistic belief that there is a moral order permeating reality. They both hold that human well-being depends on living in conformity to this order and that evil is the result of misguided feelings or beliefs that lead us to act contrary to it. Of course, religious thinkers believe that the moral order is supernatural, whereas secular ones think that it is natural. But this difference does not affect their shared beliefs that there is moral order, that it is good, that human well-being depends on living according to it, that they know what it requires us to do, and that those who know it will act on their knowledge and not against it. If these beliefs were true, evil would not be as dire a threat as I take it to be and at least modest optimism about our prospects would be warranted. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe any of them.

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Let us start with the supposed moral order that exists independently of us, much as the laws of nature do. What reason is there for this supposition? The only reason that could be given must be based on inferences from the world as we know it. The form of such inferences would have to be that there are certain facts whose existence cannot be reasonably doubted and the moral order is the best explanation of them. What might these facts be? They could not just be that there are some objective conditions of human well-being, such as the satisfaction of our basic physiological needs. There undoubtedly are such facts, but it can be reasonably inferred from them only that there is a natural order, not a moral one. The optimal existence of anything animate or inanimate depends on some objective conditions, but this is just a brute fact devoid of moral significance. The facts that would have to be explained by reference to a moral order would have to be that morally good actions were means to or parts of the well-being of their agents and morally bad actions were detrimental to it. There can be no reasonable doubt that sometimes this is so and at other times it is not. If the fact that good actions sometimes contribute to our well-being is taken to count in favor of the inference to a moral order, then the fact that good actions sometimes fail to contribute to our well-being must be taken to count against the inference to a moral order. The fact is that our morally good and bad actions both yield benefits and harms and it is uncertain whether they will contribute to or detract from our well-being. There is no law-like or even statistical regularity that would guarantee, or at least make it likely, that good people have good lives and bad people have bad lives. As a result of the contingencies of life, we often do not get what we deserve and get what we do not deserve. If there were a moral order, this would not happen. That it happens, and happens often, is part of the moral significance of evil. For malevolently motivated actions often cause grievous, gratuitous, and morally inexcusable harm to people who do not deserve it and evildoers often escape scot-free the blame and punishment they deserve. Suppose, however, contrary to the reasons against it, that there is a moral order. Do we know what it is? There are deep disagreements among religions, moralities, cultures, and societies, and within each one of them, about what is good and bad. This is a strong reason for doubting that we know what the moral order is, even if we assume that there is one. Do we know when killing a human being is justified? When to obey or disobey authority? Whether competition, ambition, humility, pride, chastity, or teenage sex, to pick some examples, is good, bad, neutral, or different from case to case? If we think we know what

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is good for ourselves, or for those we love, or for our country, religion, ethnic group, or cause, or for all of humanity, then do we know how to resolve the inevitable conflicts among the supposed goods for these possible recipients of it? Nor should we forget the immense harm that has been caused by religious, moral, and ideological dogmatists who claimed to know what the moral order required and felt duty-bound to impose their supposed knowledge on others who rejected it. We often do know, of course, that some things are morally better or worse than others: liberty better than slavery, prosperity better than poverty, truth better than falsehood. But knowledge of the moral order requires much more. It requires that we should be able to judge the moral goodness or badness of any action by applying to it the knowledge derived from the moral order. And it requires also reasons for supposing that the knowledge is derived from the moral order rather than from accumulated human experience that appeals to nothing outside of our trials and errors. Knowledge of the moral order would have to be like knowledge of the legal order that enables judges to decide the legality of any action by applying to it their knowledge of the law, which exists independently of their knowledge and provides a generally accepted standard for determining whether judges really know what they claim to know. There is no generally accepted comparable standard for judging the reliability of the supposed knowledge of the moral order. Let us, however, ignore these doubts as well and suppose for the sake of argument that there is a moral order and we know from it what is morally good. Do we have reason to think, then, that the knowledge will lead to good actions? It is obvious, I think, that this is often not so. It is virtually impossible for evildoers not to know what is regarded as morally good or bad in their society. The evildoers in the examples I have given certainly knew it. The Jacobins who raped, murdered, and buried alive their innocent victims deliberately did what they knew was morally abhorrent in order to terrorize their opponents. The Kommandant of Treblinka could not have described the death camp as Dante’s Inferno if he had not realized the horror of what was done. Many of the torturers of the Argentinean junta were devout Catholics who could not have failed to know that it is sinful to do what they were doing. And the Tate-La Bianca murderers could not have been brought up in American society without knowing that their actions will outrage the prevailing moral sensibility. Indeed, that is why they were doing them. All these people, and countless others, knew perfectly well that what they were doing was immoral.

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A defender of the Socratic view may agree that what all these people were doing was not just morally bad but evil and continue to hold that the evildoers did not do it knowingly. They did what they did, because they believed that it was in some sense good. And with this we have finally reached one of the deepest psychological sources of evil. Perhaps all these evildoers would have agreed that what they were doing was normally immoral, but they would have claimed that their actions were good from a religious, political, or personal point of view, and these non-moral goods were more important in their situation than the moral good. We can recognize, then, the important truth in the Socratic view that people do what they do because they believe it is good. But we should also recognize the no less important mistake in the Socratic view that what people believe is good need not be morally good. There are many different kinds of goods: moral, political, religious, aesthetic, personal, scientific, historical, commercial, and so forth. People pursuing one of these types of good may find that they are acting contrary to another type, and that other type may be moral. This is what happened in the cases I have discussed. But when people act contrary to the moral good, because they believe that some other type of good is more important in a particular situation, then they know what they are doing and have reasons for it. Defenders of morality, of course, will say the evildoers’ reasons for regarding some non-moral good as more important than the moral in question are bad reasons. They will say that the moral good should override any non-moral good that may conflict with it. But this claim will not convince those who do not already accept it. For the unconvinced will want to know what the force of the ‘should’ is in the claim that the moral good should always override conflicting non-moral goods. If its force is said to be moral, then defenders of morality simply beg the question by assuming what needs to be shown, namely, that moral goods should override non-moral goods. If, on the other hand, the ‘should’ is said to have the force of reason behind it, then it would have to be shown why individuals would be unreasonable if they thought that the achievement of great political, religious, scientific, personal, or aesthetic goods is more important than avoiding evil. Why should a momentous scientific discovery, the creation of a great work of art, living a meaningful life, or defending one’s country, cause, or religion be an insufficient reason for doing evil if that is the only way to achieve such great non-moral goods? This is the hard question defenders of the Socratic view must answer.

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There are, I think, good answers, but the point I want to stress is that it does not follow from them that evildoers can have no reason for doing evil. Evildoers may act rationally. And that means that even if there were a moral order and we knew what it was, we may still have reason not to act on our knowledge. Hence the Socratic view that has been accepted in one form or another by many religious and secular thinkers is mistaken. People may do evil knowingly and have reasons for it. This makes evil a far more serious threat to human well-being than either religious or secular optimism has managed to face.

10.4 The Stoic-Spinozistic view Let us consider next the Stoic-Spinozistic view that evil is illusory.11 Its central claim is that what appears to be evil is really an illusion whose source is the frustration of desires we ought not to have in the first place, because they are contrary to the moral order. Many of our desires are for satisfactions we do not deserve to have, or for unnatural, impossible, or destructive satisfactions we mistakenly take to be good. When such desires are frustrated, we suffer, and we call our suffering evil. The suffering is real, but the evil is not. For the causes of suffering are not evildoers, but the wrong desires we have and try to satisfy. We fail to understand that the desires are misdirected, or, if we understand it, we fail to exercise sufficient control over them. If human desires conformed to the moral order, there would be no evil. The Stoic-Spinozistic view is undoubtedly right to claim that what appears to be evil may not be. We are as fallible about evil as about anything else. It is also right to claim that there are many ill-advised desires whose frustration is not a bad thing, and certainly not evil, even if it seems evil to those who have the desires. But this view is committed to the far stronger claim that all evil is illusory and that all evil is caused by misguided desires. This stronger claim is indefensible for several reasons. First, it cannot be reasonably held that all desires are misdirected, for we can survive only if some of our desires are satisfied. We naturally desire, for instance, nutrition, rest after exertion, and the absence of pain, terror, and torture. If having or satisfying such desires were contrary to the moral order, then our well-being could not possibly depend on conforming to it. Furthermore, natural desires are often frustrated by evildoers who malevolently deprive people of deserved satisfactions, and it is absurd to claim that the resulting grievous harm is illusory. It cannot be reasonably supposed, for instance, that the evil inflicted

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on innocent people in the cases I have described is illusory and that a better understanding of the moral order would reveal that being buried alive, or suffocating in a gas chamber, or being flayed, or bleeding slowly to death from multiple knife wounds is not really evil. Second, defenders of this view may bite the bullet and claim, as Buddhists are said to do, that, contrary to our belief, the very existence of desires is detrimental to our well-being, because all desires are by their very nature misdirected. Perhaps it might be better not be born and, once born, it might be better to die as soon as possible, but neither of these heroic options could be supposed to serve human well-being. For our well-being depends on being alive, which we could not be if we had no desires, and would not be if we had not been born or died. Third, if our belief that some actions are evil were always false, because all evil is illusory, then we would have to rescind fundamental moral prohibitions that constitute the bulwark between civilized life and barbarism. We would have to revise radically our understanding of what constitutes harm for human beings. And we would have to abandon assumptions on which all hitherto developed views of morality rest. This would be inconsistent not merely with our basic moral beliefs but also with the possibility of a moral order. For if there were a moral order, there would have to be some possible violations of it that were bad enough to be called evil. By treating all evil as illusory, the StoicSpinozistic view denies this possibility, and with it the very moral order of which it was meant to be a defense. In sum, if reasonable people realize that these absurd consequences follow from the Stoic-Spinozistic view, I doubt that they would hold it. All human beings are vulnerable to being harmed and some harms inflicted in the way I have specified constitute evil. This can be denied only by enemies of humanity or by thinkers in the grip of a metaphysical abstraction who have lost contact with the facts about which they theorize.

10.5 The Leibnizian view Another attempt to evade moral significance of evil is to treat it as a byproduct of much greater good that could not exist without it. According to this view, the very existence of a moral order requires the existence of evil. Part of the goodness of that order is that it keeps evil to the unavoidable minimum. Evil appears bad, because we fail to understand that the moral order makes the world in which we live the best one possible.

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Consider as an illustration fighting a just war. If a nation ruled by a vicious tyrant attacks another nation without a morally acceptable excuse, the nation attacked is surely right to resist the aggressor. But in the course of resistance people will be killed, maimed, many lives will be irreparably damaged, and the families of the dead and the incapacitated will also suffer. This is unavoidable, however, because there is no other way of avoiding even greater evil. What the moral order requires is that in the course of fighting the war the least possible amount of evil be caused. One must regret, of course, the evil there is, but a larger view, based on a fuller understanding, will recognize that what is happening is, all things considered, for the best, because any alternative would be worse. The assumption on which this view rests, then, is not only that a moral order permeates the scheme of things but also that it sustains the most favorable ratio between good and evil, given that some evil is unavoidable. It ingeniously acknowledges the facts and frequency of evil, recognizes the misery and suffering of humanity, and makes them necessary parts of the best possible moral order. The most sustained attempt to defend this view and the optimism that goes with it is Leibniz’s.12 His attempt was criticized almost as soon as he made it public by Voltaire, who, in Candide, ridiculed the claim that this is the best possible world on the grounds that it is blind to the existence of evil. Voltaire was wrong about this. Leibniz did not deny the facts. He denied Voltaire’s interpretation of them on the ground that any other world would be worse than ours, because it would have even more evil. Leibniz and Voltaire, therefore, did not disagree about the facts of evil but about the moral significance of these facts. Leibniz denied and Voltaire asserted that the facts of evil are incompatible with a moral order. Although Voltaire failed to appreciate the depth and logical ingenuity of Leibniz’s view, there are three reasons why his interpretation is still right and Leibniz’s is wrong. The first is that if we grant, if only for a moment, that a morally good order requires that there be immoral actions, it does not follow that immoral actions have to cause as horrible suffering to innocent people as evil actions do. The required immoral actions may just be morally bad. There may be good reasons to tell a lie or break a promise (e.g. to avoid aiding an evildoer) and even to commit murder (e.g. of a tyrant), but evil actions are much worse than morally bad. They cause grievous, gratuitous harm. Only those who ignore the concrete details of evil actions can suppose that they are unavoidable parts of a moral order. Perhaps the French Revolution was necessary for the moral

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improvement of humanity, but it was not necessary to murder, rape, or bury alive innocent women and children. And it is offensive even to speculate about the good consequences the Nazi death camps might be supposed to have had. It may be argued, albeit perversely, that the moral order required the Argentinean torturers to extract information from enemies of the regime, but it could not have required the torture of innocent people, nor guilty ones after they gave all information they possessed. And, even more perversely, the moral order may be supposed to have required the Tate-La Bianca murders, but it could not have required murdering the victims in the extremely vicious way in which it was done. To respond to such evils by seeking good consequences that may follow from them involves an unreasonable degree of moral insensitivity and skewed judgment. Regarding evil as the unavoidable minimum required by a moral order systematically ignores that evil actions cause malevolently motivated, gratuitous, and grievous harm; that is, more harm than is necessary for the achievement of whatever aim the actions may have. Such actions reflect the impassioned cruelty, rage, fanaticism, and hatred of the evildoers. Their excesses are not means to or parts of any conceivable moral order. They are the self-expressions of evil people who vent their corrupt urges at the cost of causing enormous harm to their wretched victims. Any view of evil that glosses over the gory details that evil actions concretely involve is inadequate. Although the indignation and ridicule this optimistic view has elicited are readily understandable, they are not sufficient reasons for rejecting the view. A sufficient reason is that it fails to account for the relevant facts. It may be said in defense of the Leibnizian view that its failure to account for the malevolence and gratuitousness of evil actions is not the fault of the explanation but yet another indication of our limited understanding. If we understood fully the moral order, we would see that just because something seems evil to us does not mean that it really is evil. And even if it were, it may be an instance of those unavoidable evils that the moral order keeps to the absolute minimum. This, or something close to it, is in essence what God said to Job when he complained about what happened to him. The second reason against this view is that its claim—namely, that supposedly evil actions are incompatible with the moral order is the fault of our understanding, rather than of the moral order—has unacceptable consequences that its defenders certainly do not intend. To begin with, any criticism of the view could be deflected in this way, because any reason against it could be attributed to our limited understanding. In that

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case, however, since the view is compatible with everything that could be said against it, it cannot explain anything. An explanation must say, “the reason why evil exists is . . .,” and then replace the dots with its account. But this view replaces the dots with saying that limited understanding prevents us from seeing the reason. And that is simply an admission that the promised explanation has not been delivered. It is a complicated way of saying what an explanation of evil cannot say, namely, that we are incapable of understanding how evil fits into the moral order. But, since the view was proposed precisely in order to provide that understanding, it fails in its own terms. Suppose for the sake of argument, however, that there is a moral order and we cannot explain how evil actions fit into it. All we know is that they must fit in some way or another. This would have the consequence that the condemnation of evil actions would be morally wrong, since it would be the condemnation of the moral order into which evil actions fit. And if it were wrong to condemn evil actions, it would be wrong to try to prevent them or to hold people responsible for doing them. If we lacked the understanding, then the whole of morality—which rests on our supposed understanding of good and evil—would have to be abandoned. People could then do whatever they pleased, thinking of themselves as acting in conformity to the moral order. If they happened to do evil, they and we could be confident that it was for the good, even if we do not understand how. The immediate consequence of this explanation is that if it were correct, we would have to approve of the actions of evildoers in the examples I have given, because our limited understanding prevents us from seeing their actions as unavoidable parts of the best moral order we could possibly have. The ultimate consequence of this view would be moral anarchy. No morally committed person could accept a view that led to such a conclusion. The third reason against this view is the failure of an often-cited argument in favor of it. This argument is that the moral order must have evil in it, because there could be something good only in contrast with evil. The contrast may be thought of in factual or evaluative terms. In factual terms, the relation between good and evil is seen on the model of mountain peaks and slopes, or obverse sides of a coin. Having one requires having the other. But whatever may be true of facts in general, it is not true of the relation between good and evil. It is absurd to suppose that there can be kindness only if there is cruelty, or freedom only if there is tyranny. Defenders of this argument, therefore, tend to think of the contrast as evaluative. The problem with this is that even if the contrast between

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good and evil were necessary for moral evaluation, it would not require the existence of evil. The good could be properly appreciated even in contrast with imaginative depictions of evil. It is, for instance, unnecessary to have people actually buried alive in order to maintain a lively appreciation of being able to breathe. Nor is it required for the appreciation of the good that it be contrasted with evil. Contrasts with neutral, or indifferent, or merely morally bad actions would serve just as well. The knowledge that people may be painlessly killed, without being tortured to death, is sufficient for one’s appreciation of the good of being alive.

10.6 The moral significance of evil The moral significance of evil, I have claimed, is that it is the most serious threat to our well-being and the strongest reason against optimism about our prospects. I have examined and given reasons against what I take to be the three strongest attempts to deny that evil has the moral significance I have attributed to it. In their different ways, each of these attempts falsifies the relevant facts and refuses to face evil. The supposition that evil has a positive function is a symptom of this refusal. It misleads by stressing trivial and uncertain consequences in comparison with the hard facts of the depravity of evildoers and the certainty of the suffering of their innocent victims. The supposition is a sentimental falsification that is an obstacle to facing and resisting evil. Any reasonable response to evil must acknowledge that evil is prevalent, because we cause it, and that we often cause it, because malevolent motives lead us to cruel, enraged, greedy, destructive, envious, or vindictive actions that grievously and gratuitously harm innocent people. Such actions have different forms in different contexts, but in one form or another they are to be found always and everywhere. Evil is the enemy of our well-being, and the enemy is us. This is not to say, of course, that all of our actions are evil or that all of our motives are malevolent. On the contrary, some of our actions are good and some of our motives are benevolent. Our nature is neither basically good, nor basically bad. It is basically ambivalent. There are religious thinkers who acknowledge this in ascribing original sin to all of us. There are also secular thinkers—Sophocles, Thucydides, Euripides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Freud, among others—who explicitly or implicitly accept a secular version of original sin. These religious and secular thinkers recognize that the moral significance of evil is that we are ambivalent, morally flawed beings. They do not think that we do

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evil only because we are ignorant of the good; or that evil is an illusion nourished by our imperfect understanding of the moral order; or that the moral order makes evil unavoidable. The religious or secular acknowledgment of the ambivalence of our nature is incompatible with optimism about the human prospects. The reason against such optimism is not merely the prevalence of evil. For, after all, it may be optimistically thought that although evil is prevalent, it is in our power to make it less so by better moral education, better legislation, and better self-knowledge and self-control. The deepest reason against optimism is that our efforts to make evil less prevalent are also the flawed consequences of the same ambivalence that makes evil prevalent in the first place. The only remedy available to us is permeated with the same ambivalence that it attempts to overcome. That is why out of the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight has ever come, nor, I want to add, could come.

Notes 1. Eliot (1971), p. 118. 2. These cases are drawn from Kekes (2005) where I discuss them and others in their historical contexts and in much greater detail. 3. Schama (1989), pp. 791–2 4. As told by the Kommandant to Gita Sereny. See Sereny (2001), pp. 117–9. 5. Argentine Commission (1986), pp. 23–4. 6. The description is drawn from the prosecutor’s account of the murders. Bugliosi & Gentry (1974). 7. For communism, see Conquest (1990) and Courtois et al. (1999). For Nazism, see Hilberg (1985) and Gilbert (1985). And for other places and times, Glover (2001). 8. See e.g. Plato (1985 [380 BCE]), 77d–78e. 9. For Augustine’s view see Evans (1982) which has detailed references to original sources. 10. For Rousseau’s view and its connection with the Enlightenment, see Neiman (2002) which cites the original sources. 11. For the Stoic view, see Julia Annas (1993). References are scattered throughout the book. Spinoza’s view is Spinoza (1985 [1675]), Parts IV–V. 12. Leibniz’s view is in Leibniz (1951 [1710]). See also Neiman, op cit.

11 The Virtues of the Useless: On Goodness, Evil and Beauty* Samantha Vice

Speechless Evil Borrowed the language of Good And reduced it to noise. W.H. Auden, ‘The cave of Making’ (‘Postscript’), in About the House, p. 12. This chapter rejects the view that goodness is dependent upon evil, and so the view that if we are to have value in the world we must be prepared to accept the evils which are their condition. I argue that if we understand goodness as analogous in certain respects to beauty, the temptation to make goodness dependent upon its opposite should be less strong. The analogy rests on the fundamental uselessness or pointlessness of both values, and the nature of intrinsic value itself. My aim is not to draw a relation of necessity or identity between beauty and goodness; rather, it is to draw out certain conceptual and practical similarities between the two concepts, in order to argue for the autonomy of our notion of goodness. This chapter sets itself against the kind of secular theodicy that many chapters in this collection attempt to explain and defend. This theodicy is undoubtedly attractive. It rightly reminds us that evils of all sorts are often the occasion for good and for the instantiation of values that we rightly treasure, like heroism, mercy and more quotidian acts of kindness and generosity. We remember, too, that it is often in times of hardship that we can most fully appreciate the goods that remain. These claims I am happy to accept, as I am the claim that certain values – certain virtues of character, for instance – could only exist in an imperfect world, requiring evils which may partly define them and against which they set themselves. However, my concern is to rescue our fundamental notions of goodness or value from being tainted by acquaintance. I argue that 155

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we should think of them as autonomous, essentially independent of any practical or conceptual connections to disvalue and evils. And I will argue that if we understand beauty and goodness as analogous in certain respects, the temptation to make goodness dependent upon its opposite should be less strong. Evil then, may have accidentally good consequences and it may even be the condition for certain virtues, but it has no intrinsically positive aspect and it is not essentially connected to our notion of good or value per se. I hope to argue for these conclusions through the perhaps unfamiliar route of exploring our attraction and attitudes towards beauty. However, I do not claim any relation of identity or necessity between beauty and goodness, nor do I argue that beauty and goodness are alike in all significant respects. My aim is much more modest: it is to draw out certain similarities between the two concepts, in order to evaluate the claim that goodness could not exist without evils and that, therefore, our attitude towards (at least some) evils should be, as Robert Merrihew Adams puts it, ‘ambivalent’.1 The nature of beauty’s value is made vivid for us in some works of fiction, and I hope that a literary exploration will help us to isolate important elements and help us to recognise them, too, in our notion of good. The terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and their cognates are used broadly in this collection, to capture all kinds of values and disvalues. However, moral value and disvalue bite most deeply and urgently in the context of secular theodicy and though what I say applies more generally, moral value is also my focus. The first two sections of this chapter briefly outline a certain vicious relationship to beauty and moral goodness, which is familiar to us from many novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I call this relation ‘vicious aestheticism’ (and when I omit the adjective it is to be understood unless otherwise indicated) to indicate a particular character and way of being in the world. I will then broaden out this aestheticism from a trait of individual character to that of a social and cultural attitude towards beauty. In sections 11.3 and 11.4, I will argue that when we attempt to lessen the essential evil of evils, and dilute the purity of our notion of goodness, we are doing something analogous – we are treating goodness like vicious aestheticism treats beauty.

11.1 Vicious aestheticism Aestheticism in general is a movement most familiar to us from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in the English artists and critics, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde and Dante Gabriel

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Rossetti, who developed and expressed in art and criticism an exquisite aesthetic sensibility, in the service of the autonomous experience and appreciation of art. My interest, however, is broader than this movement, which in its relation to art is far more complex than this bland description suggests.2 I am, instead, concerned with a particular kind of evil that we certainly find in some of the novels explicitly identified with this movement (notably, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray), and also in novels not so obviously connected – Edith Wharton’s novel, The House of Mirth, and Henry James’s great novel, The Portrait of a Lady are my examples later;3 Wilkie Collins’ villain, Count Fosco, in The Woman in White and Harold Skimpole in Dickens’s Bleak House are earlier examples of the character that interests me, and we find a kind of self-aestheticising in Gwendolen Harleth, heroine of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, too. In fiction, the aesthete is not always evil; often his character is ambivalent or uncertain (for example, other James characters, like Adam Verver in The Golden Bowl, Gabriel Nash in The Tragic Muse, Milly Theale’s self-aestheticising in The Wings of the Dove), as writers struggle with the undeniable importance of art and a receptivity to beauty.4 The exemplary vicious aesthetes of literature, however, value artefacts, ‘art’ or ‘beauty’, or varied and pleasurable experience (the root, after all, of our term ‘aesthetics’) over people. As a result, these particular novels suggest, aesthetes consider people in two related, objectionable ways: firstly, they consider people as they do objects, valuing them and assessing their worth in aesthetic terms. And secondly, their aesthetic evaluation of people then extends into treating them as only extrinsically valuable, as tools for furthering their own ends – in Kant’s familiar terminology, they treat others merely as means, not ends in themselves. So aesthetes view and evaluate people aesthetically and then, as a result, accord them merely extrinsic, instrumental value. Gilbert Osmond in The Portrait of a Lady is a clear example, as the novel’s heroine, Isabel Archer, discovers too late. ‘[O]ne ought to make one’s life a work of art’, he tells Isabel (p. 261),5 and his daughter, Pansy, is as literally as possible his creation: ‘if he regarded his daughter as a precious work of art it was natural he should be more and more careful about the finishing touches’ (p. 442), Isabel realises, and Pansy has ‘a kind of finish that was not entirely artless’ (p. 219). Ignoring the ominous implications of this, and the warnings of her cousin, Ralph, who dismisses Osmond as a ‘sterile dilettante’ (p. 292), she marries this ‘incarnation of taste’ (p. 291) and soon finds herself an object in the collection in which he invests his life with any interest

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or some – lazy, indifferent – purpose. She ‘had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice objects’ (p. 258), and if she had not had ‘[t]oo many ideas’ (p. 244), ‘she would have been as smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm’ (p. 259). The movement of the novel is towards Isabel’s realisation that her sole value in Osmond’s world is instrumental. His former lover, the perfect, the ‘too complete’ (p. 216) Madame Merle, she realises, connived her marriage to Osmond. Madame Merle, herself Osmond’s tool, has learnt her lesson well from him; she says to him when offering Isabel as his bride, ‘I don’t pretend to know what people are meant for … I only know what I can do with them’ (p. 207). And Isabel must face ‘the dry staring fact that she had been an applied handled hung-up tool, as senseless and convenient as mere shaped wood and iron’ (p. 459). While Osmond is obviously vicious, it is important to realise that his attitude is the distorted version of something genuinely good, and it is just this that makes these aesthetes especially troubling. Firstly, they are, after all, responsive to real value – aesthetic value – while at the same time, we shall see, misunderstanding it and dismissing another value – the unconditional value of persons as ends in themselves. It is a fairly common and hopeful thought in the humanities that art and good character have some kind of relation: We can become better people by improving our artistic appreciation, and, perhaps, a refined artistic sensibility is an indication – though a fallible one – of a refined moral character. Much ink, often with a hint of desperation, is still spent arguing for this. The immoral aesthete, however, casts doubt on this already obscure relation, and on any inclination we may have to think that sensitivity in one area of value generously spills over into another.6 Secondly, aesthetes are usually presented as persons with some charm, whose artistic sensitivity gives them a patina of authenticity and of indifference to the sordid commercial world. Their charm represents the dubious attractions of evil and, in a more sinister light, counterfeits the deeper attraction of goodness. That beauty can be used in the service of both good and evil is a familiar thought in the western literary and philosophical tradition; there are plenty of examples that would demonstrate both a deep suspicion of beauty, as a mask for evil, and a celebration of it as the fitting outer correlation of inner virtue. Beauty is pulled into the service of both evil and goodness and understanding how this is possible will help to shed light on their nature and relation.

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11.2 ‘The Great Round World Itself’ Madame Merle, says Ralph, is ‘the great round world itself’ (216), and Osmond tells Isabel, ‘I’m convention itself’ (265). It might be useful if we take up these images and look at aestheticism ‘writ large’, as a social as well as personal attitude, and which is portrayed in all its shallow viciousness in Edith Wharton’s early twentieth-century novel, The House of Mirth. But the novel does more than bitterly denounce the pretensions and values of such a world; it too, like James’s novels, struggles to recognise the evils of aestheticism and still give an appropriate place to beauty. I wish to look briefly at the world in which Lily Bart plays a starring, and then discarded, role. Along with the previous discussion, this will lead us to the deep conceptual connections between beauty and goodness. The charms of the beautiful Lily are universally acknowledged, and it is made clear in the novel that hers is a fundamentally decent character, warped by the cynical instrumentalising of women (and relations between men and women) in turn-of-the-century New York. She doesn’t have much chance of escaping such attitudes, as her mother trains her from childhood to think of her remarkable beauty as a commodity that will retrieve the collapsed family fortunes: Only one thought consoled [her mother], and that was the contemplation of Lily’s beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though it were some weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance. It was the last asset in their fortunes, the nucleus around which their life was to be rebuilt. She watched it jealously, as though it were her own property and Lily its mere custodian; and she tried to instil into the latter a sense of the responsibility that such a charge involved. (249)7 Lily learns to think this way about herself; she studies and cossets her appearance as the means to the life of ease and adulation she yearns for. Nearing marital success after an episode of doubt, she considers herself: How should she have distrusted her powers? Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have been in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind of permanence. She felt she could trust it to carry her through to the end. (262)

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Descriptions of, and reactions to, Lily’s beauty form the core of the novel; people in and out of her ‘set’ revolve around her in admiration and jealousy; she is watched with the sense of expectation such beauty arouses in a world in which a woman’s appearance and social grace fixes her value. And Lily is comfortable in this world – until, that is, she reaches a point at which her prize is within her grasp. Then she incorrigibly, unconscionably recoils, and again and again loses the marriage that would have made her small fame and influence complete. The detached and cool Lawrence Selden realises something within her, a ‘noble buoyancy’ of attitude and ‘touch of poetry’ (330), that distinguishes her in her best moments from her world, and which he has to fight to keep in awareness. He watches Lily at the tableau vivant in which her beauty and charm are at their height, displayed as the greatest prize of the world she inhabits: In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where he felt an overmastering longing to be with her again. (330) The ‘suppliant hands’ of beauty is a significant and pregnant image. Beauty welcomes, promises, beckons; this will be important later. As a suppliant, it also demands sympathy and places a responsibility on us, which we can be blameworthy if we fail to honour. Selden fails to meet this responsibility and betrays both Lily and his own insight into her, treating her in the end as the world does, mistrusting that ‘poetry’ in her that makes her potentially better than the callow group she moves in. It is his desertion of Lily that is the novel’s central betrayal and tragedy, and it also marks his capitulation to the sordid world that he prided himself on being able to move easily within, but keep morally aloof from. Out of love with her after a misunderstanding that casts suspicion on her virtue and purity, he coolly judges her months later: It was in just such company, the fine flower and complete expression of the state she aspired to, that the differences came out with special poignancy, her grace cheapening the other women’s smartness as her finely-discriminated silences made their chatter dull. … Yes, she was matchless – it was the one word for her. (395)

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Selden’s betrayal of what is best in Lily, her subsequent inability to keep herself socially unblemished, and her descent into poverty and the dreariness she had dreaded since a child, also figures the betrayal of beauty itself. The crass Rosedale, an eager suitor when her reputation was intact, tells her bluntly (making ‘her feel herself no more than some superfine human merchandise’) that while the falsity of the rumours would ‘alter the situation’ in novels, ‘it don’t in real life’ (427). Beauty is cheapened and vulgarised when it is made a public commodity of exchange; its ‘matchless’ gift lost and misunderstood.

11.3 ‘Good for Nothing’ We ought to acknowledge the real attraction of beauty, which aesthetes to a greater or lesser degree respond to. The tragedy of Lily’s life would be lost if there weren’t something valuable and, The House of Mirth suggests, morally significant about the beauty that she and others then cheapen. Lily’s beauty is valued as a sign of her economic and symbolic worth in New York society, but the novel shows us that this response is mistaken about the value of beauty. The value of her beauty is essentially (though of course not only) intrinsic; we ought to celebrate it for its own sake and because of its value in itself, independently of its instrumental relations to anything else. Furthermore, however, her beauty also has another kind of non-extrinsic value, that of ‘signatory’ value – it is a sign of the potential in her to live a richer, more meaningful and more moral life.8 The link between beauty and moral goodness is, as the debate on ethicism in aesthetics still shows, contentious and not at all clear,9 but one under-explored connection should come out in what follows. It is important for the connection I hope to draw between goodness and beauty that Lily’s beauty is abused when its value is reduced simply to its social or personal usefulness.10 The claim that I will try to render plausible in the rest of this chapter is that goodness is similarly misunderstood and abused when it is taken to be necessarily dependent upon its opposite. Considering our fundamental value terms in that way is to consider them extrinsically, as relying for their being valuable at all on the existence of disvalue. The exploration of aestheticism in the first half of this chapter reminds us of the essential uselessness of beauty, and uselessness or pointlessness is, I submit, a feature of some intrinsic values themselves. The argument to come depends on a couple of assumptions and if you are unhappy with them you will not follow me very far. Firstly, my

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argument depends on the thought that morality is properly understood in terms of intrinsic value. Now, it goes against the traditional categories of modern moral philosophy to speak of morality in axiological terms at all. Usually value and morality are taken to be distinct categories; values, it is thought, do not conceptually bring with them the language of ‘ought’, ‘should’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ that marks the moral realm.11 While my starting point is that morality is profitably thought of as an instance of intrinsic value, I hope that this chapter will also provide some support for the assumption. We ought, then, to respond to value in certain way, so our deontic notions would then be grounded in our axiology.12 It is by thinking of morality as one instance of intrinsic value that we can find our way through some muddles in moral philosophy. Secondly, my story makes sense only on some kind of realist, cognitivist view of values and morality. What I say will not persuade non-cognitivists or error theorists, for on those views, it makes no sense to speak of morality or value generally as independent of human needs or desires. Non-cognitivism is the view that value judgements are not truth-apt, as they are not statements at all, but rather expressions of attitudes; on an error theory, while our judgements of value are indeed statements, they are whole-scale false in what they assert and assume. On both views, morality, then, is tied to human needs or attitudes and just is what we need or want it to be, a claim at odds with the position to be defended here. With this in mind, let us first explore beauty in more detail. Beauty has had an oddly mixed reception, and its value cannot just be assumed. Despite its obvious and deep appeal, for instance, twentieth century artists and critics have been famously uncomfortable with it, dismissing it as a matter of surfaces, of appearances or stultifying custom, of unpalatably conservative politics. It is also a matter of luck. Beauty is not deserved or earned and is therefore, the conclusion seems to be, either trivial or immoral, taking our attention away from the injustices of the world.13 And moreover, it is gratuitous; there is no apparent reason why a value-neutral world would contain it and this might tempt us to think it something negligible, something we could do without. In fact, I suggest that its gratuitous and generous presence is part of our attraction towards it, and it is just here that we find the connection between beauty and goodness that will ground my claims about the independence of goodness. On the other hand, many writers not convinced by these political and moral criticisms see the very existence of beauty in this world as a symbol of hope and the possibility of redemption; this is perhaps why

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experiences of beauty are so often tinged with melancholy despite the immediate pleasure they bring us. We are reminded that the world is not always so perfect, but that it could be – if only we could be better. The sight of a rainbow, of the composed self-sufficiency of birds, of the purity of the flower that gives Lily her name, of a beautiful face – these are gifts that remind us of our ‘incorrigibly plural’ world, its endless variability and promise, the ‘drunkenness of things being various’, in Louis MacNeice’s words.14 Beauty is the promise not just of happiness, as Stendhal wrote,15 but also of improvement and perfection. We have, again, the signatory value we saw in Lily’s beauty, and it is here, too, that a neglected connection to moral value can be found. The thought is not that an appreciation of beauty necessarily indicates moral virtue or sensitivity, but that a proper experience of beauty brings with it a recognition of hope and possibility, which moral fellowship and striving depends on. Aesthetes fail to see this because they fail properly to experience and respond to beauty, and so fall into another kind of moral error. Importantly, beauty achieves its work alone. We need not link its existence necessarily to ugliness for the point to be made. As goodness does in fact exist in a world of evil, beauty does exist amidst its opposite and this gives it its special poignancy, but beauty – and, I hope to show, goodness – does not require these opposites either to exist as a value, or to be understood and appreciated. Goodness and beauty are, I will say, autonomous. Lily Bart’s presence reminds Selden (often despite himself) and us of the autonomy of beauty. The aesthete and the world that instrumentalises beauty, however, deny its essential independence from anything else. By relating to beauty primarily for its usefulness to him, the aesthete conceives of its value extrinsically and relationally, with a source outside itself and valued in relation to something other than itself – for its efficacy in achieving public prestige and self-esteem, for the control of others and the power that brings, for the categorisation and enclosure of the endlessly variable world. Besides neglecting the moral dimension of beauty’s promise, he uses people as instruments to his purpose, and in doing so acts immorally. Or, in the public sphere, beauty and people are collapsed into a commodity of exchange, as both House of Mirth and, more subtly, The Portrait of a Lady show us. Embodied in the aesthete, then, we see together the aesthetic and the moral mistakes that interests me, and they are mistakes in the same way: in using people and beauty as instruments for personal gratification, by treating the value of beauty and moral goodness as extrinsic, the autonomy of the concepts is ignored and their value misconstrued. More precisely,

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my claim is that a commitment to the dependence of goodness upon evil demonstrates a misunderstanding of its nature as intrinsic value. A proper understanding of intrinsic value, then, requires us to regard moral goodness (and beauty) as essentially autonomous, independent of its opposite, despite the contingent connections between forms of goodness and the presence of evil I granted at the start. But so far, of course, I have just asserted the intrinsic value of goodness and beauty, and the autonomy of the concepts. What reasons are there for thinking this is true? Iris Murdoch provides a good starting point, as she does so often. She writes: The Good has nothing to do with purpose, indeed it excludes the idea of purpose. ‘All is vanity’ is the beginning and the end of ethics. The only genuine way to be good is to be good ‘for nothing’ in the midst of a scene where every ‘natural’ thing, including one’s own mind, is subject to chance, that is, to necessity.16 Her remarks are made in the context of her conviction that life is ‘chancy and incomplete’,17 lacking an ultimate telos, and that only art and the ‘idea of perfection’ can place on life some order and unity. Setting these particular commitments of hers aside, however, I wish now to develop her thought about the vanity of ethics in a different direction, by considering the troubling meta-ethical issue of the grounds of morality. The most obvious way of describing the ‘purposelessness’ of the good would be to say that the concept of goodness does not contain essentially the notion of a prudential benefit to the agent. I am not (or ought not to be) good for the sake of any benefit I might receive. Further, we could say that the notion of moral goodness does not contain as its internal end prudential benefit to anyone – thus removing utilitarianism as well as forms of eudaimonism from the scene. These are familiar thoughts, which Kant insisted on by separating the domains of prudential and moral value. But of course, it is not this simple, because any viable system of morality must make lives better in some respect, even if welfare for the agent or all those affected is not the proper moral end of individual action and choice. The deeper point to make, I think, arises from the context of moral scepticism. At the end of the day, and despite astonishing effort, we still have no proofs for morality – what the source of normativity is; how to justify our moral practices; why, in short, we ought to be moral and care about it. There is of course plenty

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to say – about human nature, about welfare and harms, about dignity and respect, about the necessity of community for flourishing – before we get to this point. But at the most abstract meta-ethical level, at the end of our questioning, we find, not eudaimonia as Aristotle supposed, but the apparent lack of reasons for goodness. It is at this point that the ultimate pointlessness of asking ‘Why be moral?’ stares us in the face. ‘All is vanity’. I now want to argue that we can find value and comfort precisely in the fact of this pointlessness, provided we understand the nature of intrinsic value. This discovery, however, need not then be understood as yet another attempt at providing conclusive reasons for being moral – except insofar as morality, like beauty, like autonomy, like many other things, is simply in itself valuable. Being valuable is sufficient (if not conclusive) reason for us to pursue something. By ‘pointless’, then, I do not mean that goodness has nothing to say for itself, nor that it is ultimately of no value. On the contrary, I want to say that just from the fact that goodness is valuable, we have reason enough to respond to it. We are good ‘for nothing’ except that goodness is valuable. That this should sound (virtuously) tautologous is why, despite its being a reason to respond appropriately, we are still good ‘for nothing’. Thinking about the metaethical pointlessness of morality therefore shows us that the value of morality cannot be extrinsic. If it were, we would not be good ‘for nothing’, but ‘for something’ from which it gains its value. How would it be to treat morality as gratuitous, useless – and precious precisely because of that? To be good, ultimately, if it comes to ‘ultimately’ at all (and it need not; the many considerations we meet on our way down to the ground are reasons), is to make a choice to live in a certain relation to value, though if we are committed, as Murdoch also insisted, ‘at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over’.18 But the ultimate pointlessness of goodness shouldn’t induce too much vertigo if we have an adequate understanding of intrinsic value. Robert Nozick’s wonderful work on this, for instance, builds in as a condition on intrinsic value what he calls ‘allure’. If we admit that something is valuable then we admit that we are drawn to it. This is what it is to be intrinsically valuable. The example of people ‘whose lives are infused by values’ ‘lures and inspires us’, he says.19 Like beauty, we are drawn towards value, not for anything, but simply because of an attraction that certainly depends on both our own psychology and upon the nature of the object20 (for Nozick, this would be its degree of organic unity). However, our attraction and the value of the object still are not about or reducible to us. Our responses to

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value are responses to something that explains and warrants our attention and attraction, a claim not just Nozick makes.21 We can say more, however. As I discussed earlier, a beautiful object, for example, beckons, promising something beyond itself. Isabel discovers the consequences of indifference to this fact about beauty. Rather than ‘the infinite vista of a multiplied life’ she had expected, life with Osmond is ‘a dark, narrow alley with a dead wall at the end’; an alley that ‘led … downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression’ (Portrait, 356). Elaine Scarry, in contrast, reminds us of the expansion that beauty, properly recognised, brings: ‘beautiful things … always carry greetings from other worlds within them’;22 a beautiful object ‘fills the mind yet invites the search for something beyond itself’,23 ‘with a kind of urgency as though one’s life depended on it’.24 And Alexander Nehamas agrees: Beauty points to the future, and we pursue it without knowing what it will yield. … Beauty inspires desires without letting me know what they are for, and a readiness to refashion what I already desire without telling me what will replace it. … It is an overwhelming feeling, that sweeping sense that all will be well – and it is often wrong. Stendhal was right: beauty is only a promise of happiness.25 I think that Nozick’s term ‘allure’ is just right, and is consistent with what Scarry and Nehamas say about beauty’s particular way of being alluring – of ‘promising’, enlarging us, offering more than ourselves, all as it keeps itself elusive, open to endless interpretation, endless visiting, the possibility, always, of getting it wrong. On this model, then, like any value, moral goodness has allure; it invites us, promises us more than ourselves and more than itself, but that is not the point of it. At the end of the day, we do not live morally because of anything, except that it is valuable, which just means that we are drawn towards it, that its goodness is simply our reason. Like beauty, we can delight in it and desire it, without wishing, in Murdoch’s words again, to appropriate it ‘into the greedy organism of the self’.26 Art and morality are ‘impersonal’ in this sense; we desire beautiful and good objects, but our desire enlarges both us and the objects rather than reducing or restricting them into what, contingently, is. Beauty and morality promise us more, better, and if we follow this invitation, we can become more and better ourselves. Murdoch writes that ‘the greatest art is “impersonal” because it shows us the world, our world and not another one, with a clarity which startles and delights us simply because we are not used to looking at the real world at all’.27 If we then sought

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to reduce the value of their objects to extrinsic usefulness, we would be restricting experience and its objects, making them small, unimaginative, turning them from gifts into resources, and, if Nozick is correct, not conceiving of them as intrinsically valuable at all. Like the aesthete, we would be in the way all the time, our self intruding between our awareness and the world as it really is, the receding world our moral vision is always trying to see clearly. So my point about the uselessness of good is not just a familiar point about the nature and content of proper moral motivation – that we oughtn’t to be good for self-interested reasons. Rather, at issue are our conceptual commitments and the related phenomenology of value, its ‘allure’. At the end of our philosophical reflections and justifications, we find we cannot be good for any object or reason at all except that part of what it is to be valuable is that we are attracted towards value. It is just this attraction and the recognition it offers of the value of the object that are reasons.

11.4 The autonomy of good What, then, does this have to say about the connection between good and evil that is the concern of this book? Firstly, what I want to argue is contained in the necessary allure of value. Conceptually and experientially, the notion of value contains that of attraction, of promise, of possibility. Granted this, we can finally see that goodness must be autonomous, independent of the notion of evil, which conceptually – if not experientially (and I’ll come back to this) – includes repulsion, the opposite of allure. We mistake what value is, as well as the characteristic relation to and experience of value, when we think that in some necessary way goodness requires evil. From the thought that evil often provides the occasion for good or the chance for it to be recognised, nothing further follows about the value of goodness or its conceptual or metaphysical relations to its opposite. In order for goodness to play its characteristic role in our lives (and this role is not its purpose) – of providing ideals, promises of progress, self-enlargement, meaning, imaginative play – it cannot be in any way dependent upon the existence or concept of evil. How can goodness offer these gifts if an element of evil is necessarily – in some way – ‘attached’ to it? Evil in itself, as evil, does none of these things. Instead, it destroys or disappoints ideals and sets back progress; it reduces the self, rendering it mean and narrow; it stops the play of imagination (for instance, by flattening the horizon of awareness to the shallow contours of the self); and, most obviously,

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it harms rather than benefits us. Conceptually isolated, in themselves, value attracts, disvalue repulses. What happens when we are attracted to evil – whether in action, thought or philosophically when we link it essentially to our notion of good – is that we ‘borrow the language of good’, as Auden expresses it in the passage quoted at the start, and misplace it. We take the fact of our desires or instinct for what is evil to transfer some ‘allure’ to evil itself; there is always something to be said, it is felt, for evil and this gives us some sort of reason for doing it, even if only to ourselves. Another way that evil is rendered attractive is by using what is good or beautiful for evil ends, disguising them under the decoy of what is really valuable; only in this way can it allow the imagination to wander. Aesthetes attempt to put beauty to their personal use, and must clothe their evil in beauty or it would be too repellent to succeed. In this way, the language of good is ‘reduced to noise’. Goodness doesn’t need to use beauty to illuminate itself or hide itself; it is beautiful. That, perhaps, is a fundamental relation between beauty and truth. In Section 11.1, I said that beauty can be used in the service of both good and evil; that this is true in no way degrades beauty or goodness. Rather, that evil’s appeal is borrowed shows its essential poverty and pays an unhappy compliment to the beauty it needs, and to goodness, which needs nothing besides itself. A critic could insist that the notion of allure itself shows that value is relative to its opposite, and only possible in a world in which its opposite exists. ‘A world in which everything is beautiful or good is an impossible world because our attraction, value’s allure, is itself dependent upon a lack of attraction, or upon the rarity of achieving value.’28 Or, it could be said, something is alluring relative to a background and never ‘in itself’. I see no real reason (yet) to accept this assertion, for it seems simply to repeat the assumption that this chapter has argued against – that the fact of actual evil in the world, the fact of human struggles and inadequacies, indicates that there is a necessary, internal relation between value and disvalue. And while it is true that the achievement of some value is rare, prized partly because of that, and perhaps relative to certain backgrounds or contexts, this is no reason to transfer to the value itself some necessary component of disvalue. Again, that would be to ignore the necessary allure of value and so render obscure the role value plays in ethical inquiry and in our small attempts to make ourselves better. At this point, until some new and independent reason is given for thinking my claim mistaken, the debate is destined to go in circles.

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Second, if I am correct, then ambivalence is not the appropriate attitude to take towards the evils of this world, despite Robert Adams’ subtle and forceful argument. Adams writes that on a ‘theistic’ or ‘nonManichean view’, ‘we would locally regret particular evils but view them in the framework of a world regarded as comprehensively good’.29 And he worries later that the cost of ‘refusing all invitations to form such attitudes on an all-things-considered basis’ may be high in blocking integration of our attitudes toward life and the world, and in leaving our loves surrounded with a cloud of attitudes that are consistent with them, not in substance, but only in being kept out of reach in a sort of emotional apartheid. I want to have room for ambivalence, but I also want to have room for integration.30 However, ambivalence is incompatible with the allure of values and the repulsion of disvalue and could itself cause some emotional and psychological difficulties – maybe not apartheid, though perhaps schizophrenia. I cannot be ambivalent about the evils which are the necessary conditions for things and persons I love, in other words, but must wholeheartedly consider them to be bad, just because they are not values. And I can acknowledge their causal relation to things I value and love but feel no compulsion to come to an ‘all-things-considered’ view of the evil in its causal relation to a good outcome. It is terrible that a bad thing was the condition of a good thing; I admit the latter is good and it is not clear to me that I’m compelled to go further for the sake of emotional harmony or the protection of what I love. ‘If we adopted this alternative view’, Adams writes, ‘we would try to evaluate each event in itself, rejoicing and regretting without regard to the causal connections between the goods and the evils’.31 This seems to me to be the best option, and not a psychologically fraught one, if we are to retain the Nozickian condition on values, that they have allure. In their fundamental nature, evils are not alluring, they repel rather than attract, and so they cannot be accommodated or loved or ‘put up with’, or just considered with ambivalence. This claim is, however, compatible with some accommodation of evil in exigent circumstances. We can, for instance, have some reason to choose an evil if it is the lesser of two evils, but this does not mean that qua evil it is desirable; it is qua the lesser of two evils that it is, always unhappily, chosen. My argument for the autonomy of goodness began by considering our appropriate relation to beauty. It ought not to be surprising that we got to the one from the other – to goodness from beauty – as beauty

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has so often been thought of as the visible manifestation of goodness. In a crucial respect, beauty and goodness indeed reflect each other. It is in these two aspects of our lives that we are able, even if fleetingly, to escape the presence and urgency of evils.

Notes * My thanks to Pedro Tabensky for comments on an earlier draft, and for many spirited and helpful discussions over the years; to Veli Mitova for her insightful and very valuable help with an earlier draft; and to Wendy Jacobsen, for help with references on aestheticism. 1. See Adams pp. 1–13, in this volume. 2. See Jonathan Freedman’s fascinating book on Henry James and the aesthetic movement, Professions of Taste (1990). 3. Freedman argues that James’s fiction was crucially shaped by his encounter and dialogue with the writers and artists who identified themselves with the aesthetic movement. 4. See Freedman (1990). 5. Page numbers in parentheses in this section refer to Portrait (1975 [1908]). 6. Of course, we may discover that the aesthete’s taste is not really so refined, that they also go wrong in matters of aesthetic judgement, but most of the novels I’ve mentioned seem happy to grant them good taste. Portrait may be an exception: Osmond’s sister dismisses his collection of ‘old curtains and crucifixes’ (p. 219). 7. Page numbers in parentheses in this section refer from now on to The House of Mirth (1994 [1905]). As Veli Mitova reminded me, this passage recalls Miss Haversham’s relation to Estella, in Dickens’s Great Expectations. 8. Ben Bradley refers to this kind of value in Bradley (1998). 9. See the essays in Jerrold Levinson (ed.) (2001). 10. Here, and throughout the chapter, I am not denying that beauty and morality can be useful, and appropriately so. My claim is that this usefulness is not essential to their being values, and the aesthetic and moral value of objects should not be reduced just to their extrinsic value. 11. E.g., see William Frankena (1963), Chapter 5. 12. Roderick Chisholm argues for this claim; see (1981), p. 100. 13. For these and other criticisms, see Elaine Scarry (1999), Part Two, and Arthur Danto (2006). 14. MacNeice, ‘Snow’, in MacNeice (1988), p. 23. 15. Referred to in Nehamas (2007). 16. Murdoch (1970a), p. 71. 17. Murdoch (1970a), p. 87. 18. Murdoch (1970a), p. 37. 19. Nozick (1984), p. 436, and the whole of Chapter 5. This position on intrinsic value commits us to internalism about value judgements. 20. Nozick writes, ‘[v]alues can have effects, qua values, in an environment that contains value perceivers; however, values have no causal power to operate apart from value perceivers’, (1984), p. 437.

Samantha Vice 171 21. Franz Brentano (1969) is usually cited as one of the earliest proponents of this view; also see Roderick Chisholm (1981) and Elizabeth Anderson (1993), Chapter 1. 22. Scarry (1999), p. 47. 23. Scarry (1999), p. 29. 24. Scarry (1999), p. 30. 25. Nehamas (2007), p. 6. That we can be wrong in our judgements of value, and that what is promised may not be delivered, does not detract from my claim. These problems have to do with the ways of the world – we are not perfect in judgement, character and action, and nature is always potentially threatening. 26. Murdoch (1970a), p. 65. 27. Murdoch (1970a), p. 65. 28. Pedro Tabensky has expressed this claim and similar ones in correspondence and conversations. 29. Adams, pp. 1–13, in this volume. 30. Adams, pp. 1–13, in this volume. 31. Adams, pp. 1–13, in this volume.

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Index A Change of Tongue (Krog), 77–8 A Fairly Honourable Defeat (Murdoch), 92 A Human Being Died That Night (Gobodo-Madikizela), 75–7 Adam, 2, 3, 14, 16–19, 21, 22, 26–7 Fall, 6, 17–19 happy fault (felix culpa), 14, 16–19, 23, 25–7 see original sin, theodicy, felix culpa (happy fault) Adams, Robert, xii, xvi, xvii, 15, 28–42, 137, 156, 169 adversity, xv, xvi, xvii, 65 aesthete, 157–8, 161, 163, 167, 168, 170 aesthetic, 104 evaluation, 157, 170 experience, 157, 162–3 sensibility, 157 value, 158, 170 see beauty, good aestheticism, 156–9, 161, 163 compare with ethicism African National Congress (ANC), 73, 74, 76 Agency, xiii, xvii, xviii, 22–3, 25–7, 49, 50–1, 52, 57, 62, 65, 113, 114, 118, 119–23, 131, 132, 134 evil, 57, 116–17, 119, 142–3, 145 moral, 63, 81, 139 supernatural, 7 virtuous, 21, 27 aggression, 98, 101, 102, 107, 136, healthy, 103 all-things-considered valuing (contextualized valuing), 11–12, 32, 39, 43 evaluations, 6–7, 32 gladness, 13, 38 joy, 12 judgments, 150, 169 regrets, 12

wishes, 11, 33, 35 see localized valuing allure (Nozick), 165–9 ambivalent, attitude, xvi, 6, 12, 31, 33, 156, 169 beings, 139, 153–4 character, 157 feelings, 103 moral, xv, 21 response, 1 anger, 70–1, 102, 114 anti-perfectionism, 56, 64 anxiety, 51–2, 58, 100–2, 110, 121, 124, 125 apartheid, 72–3, 75, 77–8 emotional, 12, 35, 169 Aquinas, St Thomas, 18–19, Arendt, Hannah, 49, 57, 114, 116–17, 125 Argentinean junta, 141, 142, 146, 151 Aristotle, 58, 65, 99, 104, 112, 165 art, xvi, 83, 98, 99–100, 103–5, 106–8, 109 artist, 104, 156, 162 great, 91 tormented, xvi, 100, 103, 106, 107–9 true, 97 atrocities, 128, 130–1, 134, 136, 140 autonomy, loss of, 61 of beauty, 163–4, 165 of good, 155, 163–4, 165, 167, 169 bad(ness), xii–xiii, 6, 10, 32, 124, 149 appraisal of, 43 art, 97 as lack, 16 behavior (or act), 24, 128, 131, 134, 135, 136, 138 causes, 14–16 condition, 31 conscience, 10

178

Index deaths, 52–3 emotion, 131 emotions toward, 43 evaluating as, 83, 145 events, 12, 14–15, 137 human behaviour, 6, 143, 145 internal object, 104 luck, 130 morally, 143, 146, 147, 150, 153 mother, 124 neighbour, 134 person, 60, 145 small scale, 134 things, 14, 15–16, 28, 30–1, 33, 36, 42, 57, 59, 101, 130, 169 treatment, 23 vs. good, 126 see ambivalence, evil, good beauty, 66–7, 68, 78, 92, 98, 104, 106, 155–70 allure of, 156, 161, 165–8 at the service of good and evil, 158–61 autonomy, 163–4, 165 classical, 106 of happiness, 92, 163 pathos of, 68 pleasure, 157, 163 related to goodness, 155, 162, 165, 169–70 symbol of hope, 162, 163 uselessness of, 155, 161 see, aestheticism, aesthete, truth, good(ness) behaviour, xiii, 23 awkward, 135, 136 bad, 131, 134, 135, 136, 138 complex, 52 cooperative, 134 good, 134 maladaptive, 103 neurotic, 103 objectionable, 23 superficial, 133 Biko, Steve, 77 Binmore, Ken, 129 Bion, Wilfred, 101 Bleak House (Dickens), 157 Bloom, Harold, 99, 110

179

Bradbury, Ray, 109, 111 Buddhists, 149 Camus, Albert, xv, 12, 13, 46, 67–8, 78, 79 see Hallie, Philip Candide, or Optimism (Voltaire), xiv, 54 caring, 4, 5, 9, 10, 31, 33, 48, 52, 55, 59, 60, 69, 101–2, 130 causal nexus, 3, 4, 5–11, 13, 29–30, 31–2, 33, 43 challenges, 46, 49, 53, 54, 59, 70 character, 5, 37, 64, 115, 131, 133, 135, 136, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 171 choices, 3, 8, 10–11, 26, 40, 52, 64, 83, 137, 158, 164, 165 dilemma of, 26 endless series, 64 ignorance required, 52 Christ, 14, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 77 redemptive sacrifice, 14, 16, 17, 18, 21 see God Christian tradition, xii, xviii, 14, 16 cognitivism, 162 non-, 162 see error theory Cole, Phillip, xii–xiii Collins, Wilkie, 157 Compassion, 10, 66–7, 69, 72, 78, 85 compromise, 48, 55, 60, 63, 70–1 condemnation, 17, 18, 19, 129–30, 132, 141–2, 152 conflict, xiv, 7, 75, 100, 104, 109, 128, 145–6, 130, 147 between drives, 100 between goods, 48, 147 inevitable, 145–6 unconscious, 104, 109 conscience, 10, 22, 71, 98 bad, 10, 22 consciousness, 78, 113, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123 fantasy, 122 moral, 78 see unconscious

180

Index

consequence, 10–12, 15, 17–18, 30, 59, 70, 101, 118, 121 good (happy), 27 bad (ruinous), 17–18, 101, 118 necessary, 10–12, 15 consequentialism, 19, 22, 56 cooperation, 129–34 coping mechanisms, 105 Coplan, Amy, 129 creative, xvi, 51–2, 57, 63, 72 , 94, 98, 104, 105 activity, 98, 104 artist, 104 denial, 51–2 historical forces, 57 imagination, 94 impulse, 100, 103 moral problem solving, 63, 72 rhythms of life, 51 see phantasy, psychoanalysis task, 94 urge, 51 cursed with good fortune, 16 danger, 45, 50, 52, 59, 60, Daniel Deronda (Eliot), 157 Dante’s Inferno, 140, 146 daydreaming, 107 see phantasy, fantasy De Beauvoir, Simone, xv, xvi, 45, 46, 49 De Kock, Eugene (Prime Evil), 73, 75–6 death, 51, 52–3, 99, 104, 106, 107 fear of, 53 instinct, 104, 107 tragedy, 99, 106 see life instinct defence mechanisms, 102–3, 107, 110, 121–26 dehumanizing, xiii, 120, 142 depression, 100, 101–2, 106–9, 124, 125 phantasy, 106 symbolically express, 107 depressive position, 101–102, 108, 124–6 dilemmas of choice and appraisal, 26 divine, 19, 22, 27

doing-ill-that-good-may-follow, 21 Du Toit, Fanie, 67, 71 Eichmann, 49, 116, 117 Eliot, George, 157 emotional, 169 achievement, 106–7 apartheid, 12, 35, 169 appraisal, 105–6 development, 125 distortion, 123 harmony, 169 maturity, 102, 124 resolution, 104, 105 resonances, 107, 126 responses to literature, 105 responses toward necessary evils, 9, 28–44 responses, 124 responsiveness, 70, 71 truths, 108 understanding, 105 see ambivalent, emotions, necessary evils emotions, 9, 12, 28–44, 73, 74, 75, 76, 118, 124, 125 ambivalent, 103 appropriate, 28–44 aggressive and destructive, 102–3 positive and negative, 28–44, 102, 104, 142 remorse, 66, 67, 72–7, 80 sublimation, 103 unconscious, 104 empathy, 98, 101, 102–3, 126, 129, 130 envy, 100, 102, 109, 112, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122 epistemic, xii counterpoint, xiv failure, 39 error theory, 162 see cognitivism escapism, 62, 103, 108 eschatology, 13 ethicism, 161 compare with aestheticism eudaimonism, 65, 164, 165 Exultet, 16, 19

Index Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury), 109–10, 111 failure, xvi, 6, 46, 49, 50, 53, 60, 83, 116, 130–2 Fall, 6, 17–18 fantasy, 107, 108 see phantasy Faust (Goethe), 114 fear, 49, 50, 53, 55, 57 felix culpa (happy fault), 14–28 finiteness, 50–1, 53, 64 see infinite First World War, 2–4, 7, 9, 11–2 Flourishing, 164–5 forgiveness, and reconciliation, 66, 67, 72, 73, 75, 77 and remorse, 76–77 and ubuntu, 77 and ignorance, 77 transformative power, 79 and repentance, 21, 23 regenerative power, 23 unwarranted, 24–5 formal and substantial individualism, 113 French Revolution, 140, 150–1 Freud, Sigmund, xvii, 104, 121, 123 Fromm, Erich, 114, 116 Gadame, Hans-Georg, 50 Gaita, Raymond, 66 Gauthier, David, 129 Genesis, 16, 27 genocide, 50, 61, 66, 69, 99 German occupation, 68, 78 glad(ness), 1, 2, 8–13, 21, 28–36, 41–2 unconditional, 10 global, 38 localized, 7, 10, 12, 38–9 conditional, 9–10 all-things-considered, 11, 12–13 Glover, Jonathan, 66, 70, 79 Gobodo-Madikizela, Pumla, 74–7, 80 God, 1, 2, 4, 13, 16, 17, 18–9, 20, 27, 45, 54, 55, 76, 114–5, 144, 151 as consolation, 51 boundless love, 16 cosmic utilitarian, 19

181

creation, xiv, xv, 13 Good, 86, 88 grace, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25 jealous, 27, 114–5 -made-man, 17, 19, 21 perfectly good, 12, 54–5 permits evil, 18 predestination, 18 redemptive sacrifice, 14, 16, 17, 18–9, 21–2 see Adam, Christ, eschatology, Exultet, Fall, felix culpa, Satan, theodicy Goebbels, 116 Goldie, 129 good(s)(ness), xii–xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, 5, 6–7, 10, 13, 14–27, 28, 29–30, 31–3, 36, 38, 42, 43, 45–65, 66, 68, 72, 75–6, 77, 78, 79, 81–97, 99, 103, 104, 112, 115, 123, 130–1, 132, 134, 137–8, 139–40, 141, 144, 145–8, 150–4, 155–71 absence of, 91, 92 and beauty, 155–71 and knowledge, 85–6 and reality, 85–6 and truth, 90 ape the, 81, 92, 94–5, 96 art, 106 autonomy of, 155–71 beauty of, 68 bogus, 48 deaths, 52–3 evil is, xiv, 16 for its own sake, 28 god, 12, 54–55 life, xiii, xv moral and non-moral, 56 mother, 124 Mudochian perfectionism, 81–97 non-moral, 147 obstacles to, 46, 54, 58 parts of the self, 125 people, 47 perfect, xvi pointlessness of, 155–71 -producing-evil, grater, sacrificing, 47

182

Index

good(s)(ness)—(continued) slave and master morality, xiii supremely, comprehensively, 7 The Good, 46, 48, 58, 61–3, 88 viewing the beloved as, 28 will, 17, 131, 132, 133 Gowans, Christopher, 56 grace, 17–19, 21–3, 25 guilt, 101–2, 103, 108, 121, 124, 137

metaphysical, 5 see reparation Infantile aggression (psychoanalysis), 98, 100–2, 124 see loving and hating mother, paranoid-schizoid position, phantasy, reparation Inferno (Dante), 140, 146 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), 74 intra-psychic conflict, 100, 104, 109

Hallie, Phillip, 45, 66, 67, 68, 78, 79 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 99 Hani, Chris, xvi happiness, 37, 59, 91–2, 108 promise of, 163, 166 un-, 29, 31 Heaven, 59, 114–15 see Hell Hell, 114–5 see heaven high and low-stake situations, 127, 132, 133, 134 Himmler, 116 Hiroshima, 137 Hitler, 50, 113, 116, 118 Holocaust, 57, 69–70, 99, 137 Hope, 58, 108, 109, 163 Hugo, Victor, 19–20 Hume, David, 98

Jackson’s Dilemma (Murdoch), 97 Jacobins, 142, 146 James, Henry, 157, 159, 170 Jekyll and Hyde (Stevenson), 114 Jung, Carl, 91

Iago, 117, 119, 123 Identification (psychoanalysis), 102, 108, 109, 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126 If this Is a Man (Primo Levi), 69 imagination, 122, 167–8 artistic, 104 belief, 120 fantasy, 108 lack of, 117 literary, 67, 108 moral, 70, 71, 79, 93–4 projective, 126 reparative activity, 110 truthful, 94 see, phantasy individual identity, 4, 37–8, 43, 122 counterfactual, 3–4, 13

Kant, Immanuel, 110, 157, 164 Katharsis, 99 Keller, Helen, 4–5, 13 Kennedy, John F., 70–1, 79 Kennedy, Robert, 70–1, 79 Khrushchev, Nikita, 70 King Lear (Shakespeare), 99, 110 Kjär, Ruth, 99–100, 103 Klein, Melanie, 98, 99–100, 102–4, 109, 110 Korsmeyer, Carolyn, 99 Krog, Antjie, 77 Lau Tzu, xvi Le Chambon, 67–8, 79 Lear, Jonathan, 123 Leibniz, Gottfried, xiv, xvi, 2, 13, 54–5, 139, 150–1 Les Misérables (Victor Hugo), 19–20 Letter to the Romans (St Paul), 17, 18, 21–2 Letters from the Earth (Twain), xiv, 54 life instinct, 104 see death instinct localized valuing (view), 7, 10, 31–2, 35, 39 non-, 11 regret, 7, 11–13, 32, 35, 169 see all-things-considered valugin, gladness, Manicheanism love, 1–14, 23–4, 28–44, 57, 78, 88–9, 90, 100–3, 106, 137, 144, 145–6

Index best of a bad bargain, 6, 7 boundless, 16 of mankind, 20–1 see depressive position, loving and hating mother Lovejoy, Arthur, 17–18 loving and hating mother (psychoanalysis), 99, 100–2, 103, 105, 107–8, 124 see infantile aggression, paranoid-schizoid position, phantasy, reparation Macbeth (Shakespeare), 92, 95 Madison, James, 127 Malice, 130, 132, 135, 136, Malpas, Jeff, 64 Mandela, Nelson, xvi, 73 Manicheanism, 7, 12, 31, 32, 35, 36, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44 Margalit, Avishai, 70 Matshoba, Deborah, 77 Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (Murdoch), 84 Middlemarch (Eliot), 125 Midgley, Marry, xvii, xviii, xix, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 123 Milton, 17, 26, 27 Minow, Martha, 74, 79 Moore’s paradox, 120 Murdoch, Iris, 81–97, 164, 165, 166 Nagel, Thomas, 43 narrative ethics, 68–9, 71–2 Nash, Gabriel, 157 Naude, Beyers, xvi Nazism, 8, 13, 69–70, 79, 113, 114, 116, 119, 142, 151, 154 Nehamas, Alexander, 166 Neiman, Susan, xii, 45 Némerovsky, Iréne, 78 Nietzsche, Friedrich, xiii, xv, xvi, 46, 52, 55, 56, 57, 61, 65 nihilism, 67, 69, 78 Nozick, Robert, 165–7, 169, 170, Nuremburg, 69 Oedipus (Sophocles), 100, 105 Olivier, Laurence, 24

183

optimism, xiv, 54–5, 139–40, 144, 148, 150, 153, 154 see pessimism original sin, 14, 17–18, 22 Othello (Shakespeare), 99, 114, 117, 123 overcoming obstacles (evils), xiv, 46, 49, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60 see strife Paradise Lost (Milton), 17, 26, 27 paranoid-schizoid position, 100–2, 104, 108, 124–5 Parfit, Derek, 8, 10, 11, 37 Peck, Scott, 114 perfection(ism), 45, 48, 55–6, 58, 61–2, 64–5, 86–8, 89, 96–7, 158, 163, 164 anti-, xv world, xvi, 59–62 Fall from original, 6, 46 god, 12, 19, 45, 54–5 see good(s)(ness) , The Republic, Plato, Murdoch pessimism, 61 see optimism phantasy (psychoanalysis), 101, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 121, 122, 124, 125 see, fantasy, unconscoius daydreaming, 107, 108 see fantasy, phantasy Phillips, John, 104 Picasso, Pablo, 109 Plato, xvii, 55 cave, 85–6, 96 no one does evil knowingly, 144 see Symposium, The Republic, perfection(ism) sun, 86 The Good, 48, 58, 61–3, 64, 86, 88, 89, 97, 95, Poetics (Aristotle), 99 Primo Levi, 57, 69 prisoner’s dilemma, 128–9 projection (psychoanalysis), 102, 119–26 Proust, Marcel, 104, 106

184

Index

Radford, Colin, xv, 65 reconciliation, 66–7, 72–8 regret, 1–14, 28–9, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 41, 44 see localized valuing (view), all-things-considered valuing (contextualized valuing), Manicheanism reparation (psychoanalysis), 98–111, 124 repentance, 17, 21, 23, 115 repression (schizoid denial), 108 Richmond, Sarah, 102 Robinson, Jenefer, 105 Rorty, Amélie O., xix Rosembaum, Ron, 114, 116 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 156–7 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 144, 154 Ruskin, John, 156 Rwanda, 49, 99 Sartre, Jean-Paul, xv Scarry, Elaine, 166, 170 Segal, Hanna, 98, 103–9 self-deception, 25, 39, 55, 93, 95, 114, 116–9 Sereny, Gitta, 154 Shakespeare, 91, 95, 99, 110 shame, 108–9, 115 sin (original), 2, 14–27 Slye, Ronald C., 74, 79–80 Smilansky, Saul, xv, 65 Snyman, Johan, 72–3 Socrates, xvii, 52, 61, 65, 116, 139, 144, 147–8 Socratic doctrine (‘no one does evil knowingly’), 116, 139, 144, 147–8 solidaire (solidarity) and solitaire (aloneness), 78 Sophocles, 105, 107, 153 South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 66, 72 Speer, Albert, 116 Spinoza, Baruch, 154 splitting (psychoanalysis), 100–1, 102, 124–6 see reparation

St Paul, 17, 21–2, 24 Stendhal, 163, 166 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 114 Stoic-Spinozistic view, 139, 148, 149, 154 Suite Francaise (Némerovsky), 78 Swinburne, Richard, 13 Symposium (Plato), xvii Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm (Hallie), 66 Tate-La Bianca murders, 141, 142, 146, 151 The Flight from the Enchanter (Muroch), 92 The Golden Bowl (James), 157 The Guns of August (Tuchman), 71 The House of Mirth (Wharton), 157, 159, 161, 170 The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde), 157 The Plague (Camus), 67, 68, 78, 79 The Portrait of a Lady (James), 157, 163 The Republic (Plato), 61, 62 The Sea, The Sea (Murdoch), 92, 97 The Sovereignty of Good (Murdoch), 84 The Tragic Muse (Nash), 157 The Wings of the Dove (Theale), 157 The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare), 110 The Woman in White (Collins), 157 Theale, Milly, 157 theodicy, xii, xiv, xvii, 1, 2, 54, 155, 156 theology of history, 13 thoughtlessness, 117, 118 Thucydides, 153 tragedy, 57, 98–111 tragic pleasure, 98–9, 104–6, 108 Treblinka, 140, 146 Truth Commissions, 73, 79 Tuchman, Barbara, 71 Tutu, Desmond, xvi Twain, Mark, xiv, 54 Ubuntu, 77–8 unconscious, 100, 102, 103, 104, 110, 123

Index Under the Net (Murdoch), 97 uselessness of values (good and beauty), 155–71 utilitarianism, xiv, 16, 19, 22, 24, 26, 47, 136, 164 utopia, 57, 58, 61, 63 Velázquez, Diego, 109 Vendean massacre, 140 virtue, 24, 15, 16, 21, 22. 28, 54, 59, 84–5, 129, 134, 155, 156, 158, 160, 163 aesthetic, 107 Vlakplass, 74, 75 Voltaire, xiv, 54, 150 vulnerability to evil, xvii, 55, 57

Walter, Peter, 156–7 Warsaw Ghetto, 69 Weil, Simone, 66, 71 well-being, 51, 139–40, 143–5, 148–9, 153 see happiness Wharton, Edith, 157, 159 wickedness, xvii, 18, 47, 50 see bad Wilde, Oscar, 156–7 Williams, Bernard, 19, 113, 134 wisdom Wolf, Susan, xvi, 55, 56 Wolf, Virginia, 98 Wollheim, Richard, 107 Woodward, James, 8–9, 11, 13

185

The Positive Function of Evil

Positive Teaching, Positive Learning

The Function of Reason

The Function of Consciousness

The Function of Reason

The Birth Of Evil

The Garden of Evil

The Mind of Evil

The Planet of Evil

The Garden of Evil

The Face of Evil

The Scent of Evil

The Idea of Evil

The Power of Positive Thinking

The Power of Positive Criticism

The Power of Positive Criticism

The Positive Theory of Capital

The Positive Theory of Capital

The Power of Positive Th

The Power of Positive Thinking

The Power of Positive Living

The Encyclopedia of Positive Psychology

The Garden of Evil

The Mind of Evil

The Face of Evil

The Face of Evil

The Mind of Evil

The Tower of Evil

The Planet of Evil

The Mind of Evil

The Positive Function of Evil

Positive Teaching, Positive Learning

The Function of Reason

The Function of Consciousness

The Function of Reason

The Birth Of Evil

The Garden of Evil

The Mind of Evil

The Planet of Evil

The Garden of Evil

The Face of Evil

The Scent of Evil

The Idea of Evil

The Power of Positive Thinking

The Power of Positive Criticism

The Power of Positive Criticism

The Positive Theory of Capital

The Positive Theory of Capital

The Power of Positive Th

The Power of Positive Thinking

The Power of Positive Living

The Encyclopedia of Positive Psychology

The Garden of Evil

The Mind of Evil

The Face of Evil

The Face of Evil

The Mind of Evil

The Tower of Evil

The Planet of Evil

The Mind of Evil

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