Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2001 22:04:45 +0000
Subject: Re: The Problem of Evil/Conclusion




Eric

Thanks I'll re-read these pages.

With regard to 'evil' I tend to not believe in it, either as a 'fact' or 
as a useful concept. The concept has a tendency to be used and thought 
of in terms that are not much more sophiscated than the use of the 
concept of 'evil' in the Harry Potter film recently released.  Its not 
clear how the concept of 'evil' can be recovered from the simple minded 
banality of  cheap fiction and supposedly exemplary evil acts and events...

In relation to Badiou he is writing an essay about a concept (evil) 
which is denied existence by default because the opposing concept (good) 
is only accepted in an extremely limited form. Beneath good and evil as 
you quoted, only history - "There is no History other than our own; 
there is no true world to come. The world as world is,  and will remain 
beneath the true and false..."  

The problem of naming social/political/personal actions remains - for 
example how do you name events such as the importation of child slaves 
from Nigeria, the state murdering of criminals,  the forced 
sterilisation of people due to race, eugenics and intelligence,  the 
bombing of abysinnian and sudanese by italian planes, the murdering of 
young gay men by a sociopathic man... the list could go on - are all 
these acts evil? or simply events within an imperfect society.

regards
steve

Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

>steve.devos wrote:
>
>>Does 'radical evil', can evil be said to exist as such?
>>
> 
>
>>Where does Badiou refer to Hitler as evil?
>>
>
>
>steve:
>
>Second question first.  Badiou discusses Hitler on pages 64-65, but my
>reference was more explicitly to p63 wehere Badiou discusses how Evil is
>first defined as radical Evil which can never be measured, but then is
>used to condemn other regimes in a political context. Badiou uses the
>example of "Nassar is Hitler, Hussein is Hitler and Milosevic is Hitler.
>I was simply changing the comparison to make it more current.
>
>By the way, I tend to agree with overall about Evil. The concept seems
>too supernatural and theological to be of any use and I tend to frame
>issues from a naturalistic perspective in terms of good and bad instead.
>
>My question is this.  Badiou clearly believes in some form of Evil, even
>though he critiques others such as Levinas.  Do you take issue with him
>over this?
>
>eric
>
>

HTML VERSION:

steve.devos wrote:

Does 'radical evil', can evil be said to exist as such?

Where does Badiou refer to Hitler as evil?

steve:

Second question first.  Badiou discusses Hitler on pages 64-65, but my
reference was more explicitly to p63 wehere Badiou discusses how Evil is
first defined as radical Evil which can never be measured, but then is
used to condemn other regimes in a political context. Badiou uses the
example of "Nassar is Hitler, Hussein is Hitler and Milosevic is Hitler.
I was simply changing the comparison to make it more current.

By the way, I tend to agree with overall about Evil. The concept seems
too supernatural and theological to be of any use and I tend to frame
issues from a naturalistic perspective in terms of good and bad instead.

My question is this.  Badiou clearly believes in some form of Evil, even
though he critiques others such as Levinas.  Do you take issue with him
over this?

eric