This paper argues for the moral significance of the notion of an evil person or character. First, I argue that accounts of evil character ought to support a robust bad/evil distinction; yet existing theories cannot plausibly do so. Consequentialist and related theories also fail to account for some crucial properties of evil persons. Second, I sketch an intuitively plausible “affective-motivati...

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. We introduce a scale designed to assess the belief in moral vitalism. High scorers on the scale endorse items such as “There are underlying forces of good and evil in this world.” After establishing the reliability and criterion validity of the scale (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), we exami...

Moral agency is the capacity to do right or wrong, whereas moral patiency is the capacity to be a target of right or wrong. Through 7 studies, the authors explored moral typecasting—an inverse relation between perceptions of moral agency and moral patiency. Across a range of targets and situations, goodand evil-doers (moral agents) were perceived to be less vulnerable to having good and evil do...

Moral agency is the capacity to do right or wrong, whereas moral patiency is the capacity to be a target of right or wrong. Through 7 studies, the authors explored moral typecasting-an inverse relation between perceptions of moral agency and moral patiency. Across a range of targets and situations, good- and evil-doers (moral agents) were perceived to be less vulnerable to having good and evil ...

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 pesti...

Recently Richard Swinburne has argued that the well-known Free Will Defense can provide an explanation of God's permitting moral evil (i.e., evil intentionally brought about by human agents) only if there is also natural evil (i.e., evil not intentionally brought about by human agents). 1 Ultimately his argument aims to show that there must be natural evil if we are to have the knowledge we nee...

For a moral consequentialist, the connection between business ethics and quality of life is very close and direct. In general, moral philosophers may be divided into two very broad groups: deontologists and consequentialists. Deontologists hold that some human actions are inherently morally good or evil—for example, murder is inherently bad, whereas telling the truth is inherently good. Consequ...

Discussions of the problem of evil presuppose and appeal to axiological and metaethical assumptions, but seldom pay adequate attention to those assumptions. I argue that certain theories of value are consistent with theistic answers to the argument from evil and that several other well-known theories of value, such as hedonism, are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with theism. Althoug...

The age-old ploy of justifying the commission of atrocities by one group by citing examples of atrocities committed by another must be condemned. Evil deeds remain evil deeds, and evil and evil deeds beget evil deeds. Our only hope is to stop focusing on the bad and start focusing on the good. For conflicting ideologies to learn tolerance for each other, common moral ground must be found. What ...

Moral rationalization is an individual’s ability to reinterpret his or her immoral actions as, in fact, moral. It arises out of a conflict of motivations and a need to see the self as moral. This article presents a model of evil behavior demonstrating how situational factors that obscure moral relevance can interact with moral rationalization and lead to a violation of moral principles. Concept...