Apologizing for Evil

“There can be no morally adequate apology for true evil.” This intuition is so widespread it remains largely unargued for; I unpack it, responding to five interpretations of the claim that to be evil is to be beyond apology. I conclude that what motivates the assumption evildoers can’t apologize well is not so much the absence of certain necessary conditions or even a broad assessment of apologetic quality, but deeper fears about the moral significance of allowing that someone ‘apologized well’ and what it means for our limited ability to hold serious perpetrators morally accountable. Yet we do better when we abandon our transformative aspirations and focus on adequacy in accountability.