The Myth of Evil

Reviews / Votes

Cole has written the best book on evil to date; it deserves a place on the shelves of both academic and public libraries. Choice Does evil really exist? No, thinks Phillip Cole, but it is extremely useful as a political myth. His varied and interesting cultural study of the idea begins by tracing the literary development of Satan, from a part of God himself or a kind of prosecutorial accuser at God's side in the Pentateuch, to the fully fledged anti-God in the New Testament. Thence we take in Faust, Kant and Nietzsche, child murderers and the Holocaust, with a luridly fascinating interlude for witch-hunting and the less familiar epidemics of vampires in 18th-century central Europe. The Guardian Philip Cole's work takes an important stance against the belief that we are helpless in the face if evil. Cole rejects this impotence point blank and his book is a comprehensive analysis of the theme with a cool, direct and non-nonsense approach. -- Claudia Nielsen Network Review Cole has written the best book on evil to date; it deserves a place on the shelves of both academic and public libraries. Does evil really exist? No, thinks Phillip Cole, but it is extremely useful as a political myth. His varied and interesting cultural study of the idea begins by tracing the literary development of Satan, from a part of God himself or a kind of prosecutorial accuser at God's side in the Pentateuch, to the fully fledged anti-God in the New Testament. Thence we take in Faust, Kant and Nietzsche, child murderers and the Holocaust, with a luridly fascinating interlude for witch-hunting and the less familiar epidemics of vampires in 18th-century central Europe. Philip Cole's work takes an important stance against the belief that we are helpless in the face if evil. Cole rejects this impotence point blank and his book is a comprehensive analysis of the theme with a cool, direct and non-nonsense approach.