Wonder and Generosity: Their Role in Ethics and Politics

Chapter 6: Wonder, Radical Evil, and Forgiveness

135 6 Wonder, Radical Evil, and Forgiveness i declared myself ready to forgive my enemies, and perhaps even to love them, but only when they showed certain signs of repentance, that is when they ceased being enemies.in the opposite case,that of the enemy who remains an enemy, who perseveres in his desire to inflict suffering, it is certain that one must not forgive him: one can try to salvage him, one can (one must!) discuss with him, but it is our duty to judge him, not to forgive him. —Primo Levi, The PeriodicTable in previous chapters, i have concentrated on the ways in which wonder and generosity could overcome sexist and racist oppression, bring about a more open, respectful, and loving ethics and politics and be part of a richer, more hospitable approach to asylum seekers.yet some phenomena appear to challenge the resources of these two concepts. as i noted in the first chapter, evil presents a question for comprehending wonder, in the sense that it is a difference that we cannot simply wonder at, unlike sexual and cultural differences, for example.When we come to understand the world well enough we know what is “worthy” of wonder and what not.there may be differences we properly find threatening and frightening, when human beings are indifferent to the welfare of others or actively wish to destroy the lives of others.these are not like the differences that misogynists or racists perceive or magnify and distort in differently embodied others. in such cases, our feelings must very different from wonder and may stretch the limits of generosity or respect for others.While faced with some evil that we do not understand we may wonder at it due to the surprise, but once we grasp its 136 Wonder and Generosity nature, we must make a judgment. But how do we respond? do we regard evil with horror or disgust or contempt or understanding and forgiveness? it is useful to return to descartes at this point because he, with irigaray, is my starting point for thinking about wonder and generosity as responses to others and as he represents a philosophical and theological tradition that tries to explain evil in spite of the existence of an all-powerful benevolent God.First,descartes believes that evil is only a privation,unlike good (1991, 269). He thinks we are likely to hate whatever we perceive as evil or harmful (1989, 53), and also to feel sad (1989, 54).thus far, he is only speaking about“evil”in the sense of something that we do not value.that is one way of dealing with natural evil. in relation to the problem of moral evil, descartes, of course, believes that free will allows that possibility. in other words, he allows that people may do evil things. However, he believes that moral evil is based on mistaken judgments. in The Passions of the Soul, descartes’s conception of wrongdoing involves “weak souls” who, in spite of being aware of appropriate judgments concerning good and evil, allow themselves to be carried away by passions that represent situations in distorted ways (1989, 46). on the question of evil actions, descartes says they cause indignation if done to others and anger if done to us (1989, 55). His only remedy is for us to remove ourselves from the presence of the cause of evil, and even that, he feels, may have disadvantages. in a very mild portrayal of an appropriate response to evil, descartes suggests that hatred for “someone’s evil habits likewise takes us away from his company; and we might otherwise find in the latter some good which we should be sorry to be deprived of” (1989, 94).1 Furthermore, his view that generosity involves the recognition of the capacity for free will in others, which is the capacity to do both good and evil, suggests that generosity applies to someone who commits evil actions as much as it does to those who do good. this universal respect is one aspect of his thought that is a significant legacy and has implications for our understanding of evil, as i will discuss farther on in the chapter. However, although descartes’s account of evil can deal with minor wrongdoing, he appears to have no sense of the great evils that can be perpetrated (although in fact he must have), and is inadequate to deal with the evils on a large scale of the twentieth century that have prompted...