Radical Evil in Modernity: on Genocide, Totalitarian Terror and the Holocaust

The world has always been a dangerous place, and it remains so. There are different kinds of dangers, for there are different kinds of evils. Some of those evils are termed natural evils, some others, moral evils. Both of them are called evils for they cause death, sickness, devastation. Natural evil like death by old age is a common human lot. Other natural evils, like earthquakes or the pestilence, hit us contingently. Among the natural evils some are preventable, some others are not. Some are unforeseeable, some others foreseeable. Men are responsible for them only if they fail to prevent foreseeable evils. Moral evil is ‘evil that man does’, to quote Shakespeare. Yet even those men or women who infl ict evil on others are not necessarily also morally evil. If they cause evil unwillingly they are in principle not considered morally evil. Yet even if they infl ict evil voluntarily, they are not necessarily considered morally evil either. They will be judged morally evil creatures only if they infl ict a kind of evil that breaks the moral code, the law, the values of their world. This moral code, law, value provides them with the maxims which guide their actions as well as their judgements. If the maxim of their actions and judgements is accepted by their world, their ‘culture’, they can do evil without being, or being regarded as, morally evil. They can even be highly respected as heroes.