Rethinking Evil
Contemporary Perspectives
1st Edition
Published on 30. November 2001
Book
Hardback
314 pages
978-0-520-22632-6 (ISBN)
Description
This innovative volume will be welcomed by moral and political philosophers, social scientists and anyone who reflects seriously on the 20th century's heavy burden of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing and other evidence of people's desire to harm one another. Maria Pia Lara brings together a provocative set of essays that re-examine evil in the context of a "postmetaphysical" world, a world that no longer equates natural and human evil and no longer believes in an omnipotent God. The question of how and why God permits evil events to occur is replaced by the question of how and why humans perform radically evil acts.
Reviews / Votes
"In an environment in which philosophy increasingly shies away from the big questions, this volume takes them on in a conscientious, analytical, and enlightening way. For Lara, the problem is not just that human beings suffer but that other human beings intentionally want to make them suffer, and to suffer in such extreme ways that the explanations offered by natural and social science seem as insufficient as those offered by older theodicies. The volume makes for engrossing reading; it sheds new light on an age-old issue." - Georgia Warnke, author of Legitimate Differences "An important work because it inaugurates a distinctive secular approach to the problem of evil, which has generally been the province of theology and the philosophy of religion." - David M. Rasmussen, editor of The Handbook of Critical Theory.More details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
590 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-22632-6 (9780520226326)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Maria Pia Lara is Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Iztapalapa, Mexico.
Content
Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Contemporary Perspectives 1 Maria Pia Lara Part One: A Critical Review of Evil 1. Is God Evil? Isabel Cabrera 2. What's the Problem of Evil? Susan Neiman 3. "Radical Finitude" and the Problem of Evil: Critical Comments on Wellmer's Reading of Jonas Peter Dews Part Two: Evil and Moral Philosophy 4. Radical Evil: Kant at War with Himself, Richard J. Bernstein 5. Reflections on the Banality of (Radical) Evil: A Kantian Analysis, Henry E. Allison 6. The Polyhedron of Evil, Gustavo Leyva 7. An Evil Heart: Moral Evil and Moral Identity, Maeve Cooke 8. Understanding Evil: Arendt and the Final Solution, Robert Fine Part Three: Postmetaphysical Approaches for a Theory of Evil 9. Toward a Sociology of Evil: Getting beyond Modernist Common Sense about the Alternative to "the Good," Jeffrey C. Alexander 10. The Evil That Men Do: A Meditation on Radical Evil from a Postmetaphysical Point of View Alessandro Ferrara 11. Major Offenders, Minor Offenders, Sergio Perez 12. On Pain, the Suffering of Wrong, and Other Grievances: Responsibility, Manuel Cruz 13. Forgiveness and Oblivion: A New Form of Banality of Evil?, Carlos Pereda Part Four: Narratives of Evil 14. "Happy Endings" hrs/hrs Unendings: Narratives of Evil, Carol L. Bernstein 15. Narrating Evil: A Postmetaphysical Theory of Reflective Judgment, Maria Pia Lara Notes List of Contributors Index