Destined for evil? : the twentieth-century responses / edited by Predrag Cicovacki.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Cicovacki, Predrag.

Series:

Rochester studies in philosophy 1529-188X ; 9.

Rochester studies in philosophy, 1529-188X ; 9

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Good and evil.

Ethics, Modern--20th century.

Ethics, Modern.

Physical Description:

vii, 286 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2005.

Summary:

This collection brings together a variety of responses to the ancient questions of whether we are-individually and collectively-destined for evil. The history of the previous century brought this question into the open more poignantly than perhaps any other before it. Not surprisingly, then, what you will find here is a wide spectrum of opinions concerning the mystery of evil formulated throughout the twentieth century and at the very threshold of the twenty-first, which has inherited all of its open wounds and nightmarish memories. The pieces included here come from diverse fields: philosophy, religious studies, psychology, history, political science, and art; they also assume a variety of forms: essays, treatises, stories, correspondence, and interviews. The reader should not expect that the pieces collected here offer proven recipes for how to eliminate evil from the world; rather, they present a compelling testimony of human struggle with an aspect of our lives we cannot afford to ignore.

Contents:

Introduction: The Anatomy of Evil / Predrag Cicovacki 1

Part I Historical Perspectives on Evil

1 Two Thousand Years and No New God / Gil Bailie 19

2 Identifying Good and Evil / Nicholas Wolterstorff 45

3 Kant and Radical Evil / Emil L. Fackenheim 59

4 Uprooting Evil and the Building of Ethical Communities / Sharon Anderson-Gold 75

5 The Reality of Radical Evil / Jeffrey B. Russell 81

6 Roads to Hell / Susan Neiman 91

Part II Confronting Evil in Our Divided World: On Genocide, Self-Destruction, and War

7 The Banality of Evil: Failing to Think / Hannah Arendt 113

8 Ordinary People and Extraordinary Vices / Tzvetan Todorov 119

9 Are Wars Inevitable? / Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud 133

10 From Relative to Absolute Evil / Svetozar Stojanovic 147

11 Killing in Vietnam: What Have We Done to Our Soldiers? / Lt. Col. Dave Grossman 155

12 Thou Shalt Not Kill / Hermann Hesse 165

Part III Facing the Darkness Within: On Our Spiritual Crisis

13 Searching for Self-Knowledge and Divine Wholeness / Carl Gustav Jung 171

14 Love and Cruelty: A Blue Spot in the Middle of the Hurricane / Philip Paul Hallie 177

15 Goodness at the Heart of Being / Rabbi Michael Lerner 183

16 We Are Prodigals in a Distant Land: An Essay on Thomas Merton / John P. Collins 197

17 Recovering Paradise: Thomas Merton on the Self and the Problem of Evil / Thomas Del Prete 205

18 Exposing the Deceitful Heart: A Monk's Public "Inner Work" / Jonathan Montaldo 213

Part IV Portrayals of Evil in Art

19 Lamentations and Losses: From New York to Kabul / Daniel Berrigan 223

20 Evil as Mystery: Primal Speech and Contemporary Poetry / Michael True 241

21 The Trial of Man and The Trial of God: Job and Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor / Predrag Cicovacki 249

22 The Resurrection of Hell / Leo Tolstoy 261

23 The Gulag Archipelago (A Fragment) / Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn 273

24 Helen's Exile / Albert Camus 277.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

158046176X

OCLC:

57694758