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Ordinary Evil
Fathom
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| Seminar Introduction |
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On some days it can seem that we find ourselves in a world marked by malignity with no motive--we learn that some of our fellow citizens conspire with others to murder ordinary people in their places of work, or creep around under cover of darkness preying on defenseless people, or use their offices to conceal losses in a way that ultimately deprives lesser employees of any hope for security in their retirement. Reading newspapers, watching television, or listening to reports on the radio, it can be very hard to understand why. You survey the damage and think, "How could someone do that?"  In this seminar, Candace Vogler (right) addresses this sense of mute incomprehension in the face of wrongdoing as one root of an old philosophical question about whether it is irrational to be immoral. It is closely linked to another root of that question, the conviction that people who do spectacularly bad things, or routinely engage in bad acts on a lesser scale, are making some kind of a mistake. In philosophy, the problem that emerges from such convictions involves trying to say what sort of mistake they are making. Vogler will not answer that question. What she does instead is discuss viciousness, drawing heavily on work by Thomas Aquinas (and offering a reading of a short story by Edgar Allan Poe), with an eye toward giving an account of some kinds of immorality. Once that account is in place, it becomes possible to understand why it is very hard to give a compelling answer to the deeper question.
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| Learning Objectives |
- Describe Aquinas's notion of practical good.
- Compare Aquinas's view with the Manichean perspective on evil.
- Explain the difference between natural evil and moral evil.
- Recount Aquinas's notion of a unified account of practical good and the distinction between acting well and faring well.
- List the capital vices and explain their relation to virtue.
- Contextualize the use of the term "evil" in contemporary political discourse.
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| Sessions |
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| Credits |
Copyright 2003 the University of Chicago.
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| Technical Requirements |
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