Dimensions of evil : contemporary perspectives / Terry D. Cooper.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cooper, Terry D.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Good and evil.

Human behavior.

Physical Description:

285 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : Fortress Press, [2007]

Summary:

* Interdisciplinary focus captures insights from theology, philosophy and psychology * Clearly separates natural, personal, and social evil * Allows readers to wrestle with the nature and dynamics of evil

Contents:

Evil and evolution : Darwin and the brutalities of nature

Natural history without religion

The voyage and the emerging conviction of natural selection

Nature's cruelty : philosophical and religious implications

Darwin's struggle with theodicy

Does evolution necessitate atheism?

Evolution as religion : Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Evolution and the God of classical metaphysics

Providence and purpose after Darwin

Metaphysical impatience and emerging purpose

Summary

Evil, ethics, and evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and Darwinian anthropology

Darwin and ethics

From Darwin to evolutionary psychology

The controversial issue of altruism

Aggression and reproductive competition

Evolutionary psychology and religion

Determinism and transcendence : the central problem

Original sin and evolutionary psychology

Evil and the psychoanalytic tradition

Freud's gradual turn to the death instinct

Freud, evil, and religion

Tillich, Niebuhr, and Freud

Erich Fromm and human destructiveness

"Life lovers" and "death lovers"

Fromm's syndrome of decay

Fromm and Tillich on estrangement and healing

Ernest Becker : evil and the denial of death

Fear of death and evil

Does Becker exaggerate our narcissism?

Human potential and human destructiveness : the psychology of hate

Threat, anxiety, and reactive thinking

The role of egocentricity

Reactive offenders and psychopaths

Mental distortion and enemy making

The other side of hate

Hate and the shadow

Jesus, Paul, and the shadow

The Jekyll and Hyde story

Varieties and transformations of hate

Reasons for hate

The first experience of hate

Hatred, absolutes, and the "evil imagination"

Purifying our hatred

Evaluating these three theories of hate

Ordinary people and malevolent circumstances : the social context of evil

Destructive obedience

How much do social-psychology experiments tell us about evil?

The breakdown of self-regulation

Social critiques of excessive individualism

Individual and sytemic evil : should one be privileged over the other?

Sin reaffirmed : Langdon Gilkey and Shantung compound

Niebuhr, anxiety, and sin

Pride and self-obsession

From the anxious individual to the corrupt system

Original violence : Marjorie Suchocki's objection to Niebuhr

The shift from the individual to the social in pastoral care

A Niebuhrian response to feminist and liberation charges

Summary.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 266-280) and index.

ISBN:

9780800662172

0800662172

OCLC:

123968133