On Studying Evil

Keywords
language, value, virtues, positive psychology

When you bump up against the limits of your own honesty it is as though your thoughts get into a whirlpool, an infinite regress: You can say what you like, it takes you no further.

(Wittgenstein 1984, 8e)

The more we learn about some things, the harder they become to define (James 1902/1982). Although language is an indispensable tool, what can be said in words is finite and necessarily approximate (Wittgenstein 1922, 1953). As Morton (2005) points out, when we choose a definition of evil, our definition will cover some aspects of evil and exclude others. This, however, does not necessarily mean that different definitions do not refer to things that are all part of the same phenomenon; it may merely reflect the limitations of language and the many perspectives on evil. Different definitions of evil can focus our attention (and potentially resources) on specific aspects of the phenomenon for detailed study.

Baumeister's (1996, 8) definition of evil as "intentional interpersonal harm" is perhaps the best definition for studying atrocities. "Militant ignorance"—exterminating the evidence for what one wants to be false—is only one of the definitions used by Peck. This definition is not limited to extremely abhorrent actions: evil is the enemy of truth, which dovetails with the notion of evil being connected with lies; but it includes a greater range of problems on which to spread, rather than focus, our limited resources. Some of these problems may not be amenable to scientific research, although they are not, for that reason, unimportant. Another definition Peck (1983, 42) uses is that evil is "live spelled backwards"—that which destroys life, and not only corporeal life but human spirit—evil is anti-love. (I once saw a bumper sticker that read "EVOL"—love spelled backward.) Yet another Peck (1978) definition of evil is using power to impose one's will on others by overt or covert coercion to protect a sick, unloving self. Ultimately, Peck (1983) believes that evil is a diseased will. According to Dostoyevsky (1864/1972), the human will is the one thing science will never be able to neatly categorize.

No one definition of evil will suffice. I also agree with Stein (2005) that rigorous research is likely to uncover details that cannot be accounted for by any one theory. This is the purpose of science, and for this very reason Peck (1983) explicitly states that nothing he says about evil should be taken as the last word.

We also do not define narcissism, the self, love, and truth because we are eager to impose the limits of language on realities that are not limited by our ability to express them in words, but because we must do so in order to have discourse with each other. Perhaps some things we define only because we need to defend our views of these things when they are challenged. Psychology has at least seven definitions of the self (Weston 1990). What definition of the self is deceived in self-deception, and what definition of truth is withheld? Western tradition recognizes four kinds of love (Lewis 1960; May 1969). If narcissism is self-love, which definition of the self do narcissists love, and with what kind of love? In pathologic narcissism, a false self—an unreality, a lie—is "loved," usually with something that, if scrutinized, turns out not to be love at all; the true self is ignored or even hated and exterminated, because it is not what the person wants to be true. Morton (2005) points out that we often maintain our self-respect if at all possible. One of the many uses of narcissism is as a synonym for self-esteem (Pulver 1986), but self-esteem is not the same as self-love. A thorough Wittgensteinian analysis, looking at how the words are used and how they came to have those uses, would be most helpful (Kubarych 1999).

Because of the extreme complexity of...