Download or read book Evil and Human Agency written by Arne Johan Vetlesen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evil is a poorly understood phenomenon. In this provocative 2005 book, Professor Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and causing serious and foreseeable harm. Vetlesen investigates why and in what sort of circumstances such a desire arises, and how it is channeled, or exploited, into collective evildoing. He argues that such evildoing, pitting whole groups against each other, springs from a combination of character, situation, and social structure. By combining a philosophical approach inspired by Hannah Arendt, a psychological approach inspired by C. Fred Alford and a sociological approach inspired by Zygmunt Bauman, and bringing these to bear on the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents.
Download or read book God s Own Ethics written by Mark C. Murphy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every version of the argument from evil requires a premise concerning God's motivation - about the actions that God is motivated to perform or the states of affairs that God is motivated to bring about. The typical source of this premise is a conviction that God is, obviously, morally perfect, where God's moral perfection consists in God's being motivated to act in accordance with the norms of morality by which both we and God are governed. The aim of God's Own Ethics is to challenge this understanding by giving arguments against this view of God as morally perfect and by offering an alternative account of what God's own ethics is like. According to this alternative account, God is in no way required to promote the well-being of sentient creatures, though God may rationally do so. Any norms of conduct that favor the promotion of creaturely well-being that govern God's conduct are norms that are contingently self-imposed by God. This revised understanding of divine ethics should lead us to revise sharply downward our assessment of the force of the argument from evil while leaving intact our conception of God as an absolutely perfect being, supremely worthy of worship.
Download or read book Evil in Modern Thought written by Susan Neiman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts--combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade--eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.
Download or read book Kant s Theory of Evil written by Pablo Muchnik and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kant's Theory of Evil: An Essay on the Dangers of Self-Love and the Aprioricity of History presents a novel interpretation and defense of Kant's theory of evil. Pablo Muchnik argues that this theory stems from Kant's attempt to reconcile two parallel lines of thought in his own writings: on the one hand, a philosophy of the history of Rousseauian inspiration and naturalistic tendencies; on the other, the meta-physical project of founding morality exclusively on a priori grounds. The syncretism of Kant's view, as exemplified by the resulting moral anthropology in Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason, explains its persistent allure and elusiveness among Kantian readers. Solving some of the most intractable problems surrounding Kant's position, Muchnik's reconstruction is designed to break the deadlock existing between contemporary rival schools of interpretation, torn between Kant's naturalistic tendencies and his moral individualism. This book will certainly influence the way we approach Kantian ethics and the problem of evil in general. Book jacket.
Download or read book The Existence of Evil Spirits Proved written by Walter Scott and published by . This book was released on 1843 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Divine Providence and Human Agency written by Alexander S. Jensen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divine Providence and Human Agency develops an understanding of God and God's relation to creation that perceives God as sovereign over creation while, at the same time, allowing for a meaningful notion of human freedom. This book provides a bridge between contemporary approaches that emphasise human freedom, such as process theology and those influenced by it, and traditional theologies that stress divine omnipotence.This book argues that it is essential for Christian theology to maintain that God is ultimately in charge of history: otherwise there would be no solid grounds for Christian hope. Yet, the modern human self-understanding as free agent within certain limitations must be taken seriously. Jensen approaches this apparent contradiction from within a consistently trinitarian framework. Jensen argues that a Christian understanding of God must be based on the experience of the saving presence of Christ in the Church, leading to an apophatic and consistently trinitarian theology. This serves as the framework for the discussion of divine omnipotence and human freedom. On the basis of the theological foundation established in this book, it is possible to frame the problem in a way that makes it possible to live within this tension. Building on this foundation, Jensen develops an understanding of history as the unfolding of the divine purpose and as an expression of God's very being, which is self-giving love and desire for communion. This book offers an important contribution to the debate of the doctrine of God in the context of an evolutionary universe.
Download or read book The Atrocity Paradigm written by Claudia Card and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-12 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What distinguishes evils from ordinary wrongs? Is hatred a necessarily evil? Are some evils unforgivable? Are there evils we should tolerate? What can make evils hard to recognize? Are evils inevitable? How can we best respond to and live with evils? Claudia Card offers a secular theory of evil that responds to these questions and more. Evils, according to her theory, have two fundamental components. One component is reasonably foreseeable intolerable harm -- harm that makes a life indecent and impossible or that makes a death indecent. The other component is culpable wrongdoing. Atrocities, such as genocides, slavery, war rape, torture, and severe child abuse, are Cards paradigms because in them these key elements are writ large. Atrocities deserve more attention than secular philosophers have so far paid them. They are distinguished from ordinary wrongs not by the psychological states of evildoers but by the seriousness of the harm that is done. Evildoers need not be sadistic:they may simply be negligent or unscrupulous in pursuing their goals. Cards theory represents a compromise between classic utilitarian and stoic alternatives (including Kants theory of radical evil). Utilitarians tend to reduce evils to their harms; Stoics tend to reduce evils to the wickedness of perpetrators: Card accepts neither reduction. She also responds to Nietzsches challenges about the worth of the concept of evil, and she uses her theory to argue that evils are more important than merely unjust inequalities. She applies the theory in explorations of war rape and violence against intimates. She also takes up what Primo Levi called the gray zone, where victims become complicit in perpetrating on others evils that threaten to engulf themselves. While most past accounts of evil have focused on perpetrators, Card begins instead from the position of the victims, but then considers more generally how to respond to -- and live with -- evils, as victims, as perpetrators, and as those who have become both.
Download or read book Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God written by Marilyn McCord Adams and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When confronted by horrendous evil, even the most pious believer may question not only life's worth but also God's power and goodness. A distinguished philosopher and a practicing minister, Marilyn McCord Adams has written a highly original work on a fundamental dilemma of Christian thought—how to reconcile faith in God with the evils that afflict human beings. Adams argues that much of the discussion in analytic philosophy of religion over the last forty years has offered too narrow an understanding of the problem. The ground rules accepted for the discussion have usually led philosophers to avert their gaze from the worst—horrendous—evils and their devastating impact on human lives. They have agreed to debate the issue on the basis of religion-neutral values, and have focused on morals, an approach that—Adams claims—is inadequate for formulating and solving the problem of horrendous evils. She emphasizes instead the fruitfulness of other evaluative categories such as purity and defilement, honor and shame, and aesthetics. If redirected, philosophical reflection on evil can, Adams's book demonstrates, provide a valuable approach not only to theories of God and evil but also to pastoral care.
Download or read book Evil in Africa written by William C. Olsen and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-30 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William C. Olsen, Walter E. A. van Beek, and the contributors to this volume seek to understand how Africans have confronted evil around them. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. These studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity.
Download or read book Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment written by John M.G. Barclay and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-examines Paul within contemporary Jewish debate, attuned to the significant theological issues he raises without imposing upon him the frameworks developed in later Christian thought
Download or read book Ethics and the Problem of Evil written by Marilyn McCord Adams and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provocative essays that seek “to turn the attention of analytic philosophy of religion on the problem of evil . . . towards advances in ethical theory” (Reading Religion). The contributors to this book—Marilyn McCord Adams, John Hare, Linda Zagzebski, Laura Garcia, Bruce Russell, Stephen Wykstra, and Stephen Maitzen—attended two University of Notre Dame conferences in which they addressed the thesis that there are yet untapped resources in ethical theory for affecting a more adequate solution to the problem of evil. The problem of evil has been an extremely active area of study in the philosophy of religion for many years. Until now, most sources have focused on logical, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, leaving moral questions as open territory. With the resources of ethical theory firmly in hand, this volume provides lively insight into this ageless philosophical issue. “These essays—and others—will be of primary interest to scholars working in analytic philosophy of religion from a self-consciously Christian standpoint, but its audience is not limited to such persons. The book offers illustrative examples of how scholars in philosophy of religion understand their aims and how they go about making their arguments . . . hopefully more work will follow this volume’s lead.”—Reading Religion “Recommended.”—Choice
Download or read book A Secular Age written by Charles Taylor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 889 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.
Download or read book Between Good and Evil written by Roger L. Depue and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2005-02-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He was a pioneer in modern law enforcement, a trailblazing leader in the hunt for serial killers. But after decades of staring deep into the darkness, he entered a seminary to search for the good... BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL No one gets closer to evil than a criminal profiler, trained to penetrate the hearts and minds of society's most vicious psychopaths. And no one is a more towering figure in the world of criminal profilers than Roger L. Depue. Chief of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit at a time when its innovative work first came to prominence, he headed a renowned team of mind hunters that included John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and Roy Hazelwood. In a subbasement sixty feet under the Academy gun vault in Quantico, he broke new ground with analytical techniques and training programs that are still used today. After retiring from the FBI, he founded an elite forensics group that consulted on high-profile cases, including the Martha Moxley and JonBenet Ramsey murders, and the Columbine school shootings. But coming face-to-face with the darkest deeds human beings are capable of took a horrific toll. After suffering a devastating personal loss, Depue, on the brink of despair, walked away from the outside world and joined a seminary. For three years this was his safe haven, a place where he exorcised personal demons and found a refuge from terrifying memories of real-life monsters. And it was there, while counseling maximum security inmates, that he rediscovered the capacity for goodness in people, and made the decision to return to the world to resume his work. Here is Depue's extraordinary personal account, from growing up as a police officer's son to tracking down some of today's most brutal murderers. With its harrowing descriptions of human depravity and passionate call to fight against evil, BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL is both a riveting dispatch from the front lines of a war against human predators...and the powerful story of one man's journey between darkness and redemption.
Download or read book Theology and the Problem of Evil written by Kenneth Surin and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2004-10-29 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most profound problems that theologians are called on to address is the presence of evil and suffering in the world, and how this can be reconciled with the assertion of an omnipotent and morally perfect God. This book begins by showing how the problem of evil has been inextricably bound up with the problematic deity created by the philosophical theism of the Enlightenment and perpetuated ever since, demonstrating how contemporary theodicists have failed to perceive the historical and cultural determinants which affect their theorizing. Dr. Surin argues that thinking on the problem of evil consists of two fundamental perspectives. He labels these the theoretical and the practical approaches and examines the work of a number of theologians who typify each. Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, the process theologians, and John Hick exemplify the theoretical approach; Dorothee Soelle, Jurgen Moltmann, and P. T. Forsyth the practical. He uses the views of Dostoevsky's character Ivan Karamazov and the protagonists in Elie Wiesel's writing as a paradigm for evaluating the two approaches, and concludes that only the practical approach has the merit of both rooting itself in the realities of human suffering, and grounding itself in the fundamental rule of what he calls an adequate grammar of salvation, namely that God justifies himself by justifying sinners on the cross. Finally, Dr. Surin explores this grammar of the notion of an incarnate salvation with particular reference to the need for a messianic and practical solidarity with those who are afflicted. This thought-provoking book will serve both as an introduction to those new to the ideas of theodicy, and as a stimulating essay for those dissatisfied with conventional studies of theology and the problem of evil.
Download or read book Kant and the Ethics of Humility written by Jeanine Grenberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-02-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Evil Matters written by Zachary J. Goldberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-06 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an inquiry into particular matters concerning the nature, normativity, and aftermath of evil action. It combines philosophical conceptual analysis with empirical studies in psychology and discussions of historical events to provide an innovative analysis of evil action. The book considers unresolved questions belonging to metaethical, normative, and practical characteristics of evil action. It begins by asking whether Kant’s historical account of evil is still relevant for contemporary thinkers. Then it addresses features of evil action that distinguish it from mundane wrongdoing, thereby placing it as a proper category of philosophical inquiry. Next, the author inquires into how evil acts affect moral relationships and challenge Strawsonian accounts of moral responsibility. He then draws conceptual and empirical connections between evil acts such as genocide, torture, and slavery and collective agency, and asks why evil acts are often collective acts. Finally, the author questions both the possibility and propriety of forgiveness and vengeance in the aftermath of evil and discusses how individuals ought to cope with the pervasiveness of evil in human interaction. Evil Matters: A Philosophical Inquiry will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in philosophy working on the concept of evil, moral responsibility, collective agency, vengeance, and forgiveness.
Download or read book Witchcraft Accusations and Persecutions as a Mechanism for the Marginalisation of Women written by Samantha Spence and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-21 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This books draws on feminist commentary from the disciplines of anthropology, history, law, politics and sociology in order to deal with the phenomenon of modern-day witchcraft. It focuses on the re-emergence of witchcraft beliefs in contemporary society, suggesting that witchcraft accusations and persecution are being used as a marginalisation mechanism of women. The re-emergence of witchcraft beliefs in contemporary society and the prevalence of the violence associated with such beliefs has received little attention within academic literature, yet witchcraft-related violence against women is, progressively, becoming one of the most pervasive forms of violence facing women today. This book addresses this gap in the literature, discussing the return of witchcraft beliefs to contemporary society, whilst assessing the effectiveness of international human rights law in protecting women from witchcraft accusations and persecution.
