Fifth Global Conference

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Session 9b: The Construction & Meaning of Evil
Chair: Michael Perlin

Non-Human, In-human and Post-Human. Reflexions on Evil and the Construction of the Human
Gisele Szczyglak
Centre de Recherche en Ethique de l'Université de Montréal, Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Canada

Post-modern thought has made the idea of humanity more and more complex. Work in philosophy, ethology, and evolutionary biology has led to a general definition of the species involving all human beings, not just specific allegedly superior races. We are all product of hominization (becoming a species). However it is the process of humanization that is in question. It is at this level that the distinction is generally drawn between cruelty and animal violence. We are all sure of belonging to the human species, but less sure of being truly human.
Arendt suggested that it was impossible to define human nature with the classical catégories of history and nature, given the horrors of the Second World War. If evil has become banal, it is not because evil didn't exist before, but rather because we now see evil differently. Rather than sharply separating the inhuman from the human, Arendt located evil in the heart of ordinary, everyday life.
Starting from an analysis of the Arendtian concepts of the banality of evil, the superfluousness and the nudity of humanity, we will carry out a post-modern analysis of the occidental construction of the human identity, focusing on the polarity of the biological and what we might call the extra-biological. The analysis of this polarity affords us a better understanding of the twin process of hominization and humanization, out of which develops the distinction between humanity and inhumanity. Our multidisciplinary perspective will take into account the theoretical significance of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and ethology, as well as contemporary philosophical investigations of the concept of post-humanity by thinkers such as Fukuyama, Hayles, Lecourt, and Sloterdijk.

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The Garden of Eden. A Psychoanalytic Approach
Henry Gabriel
Novelist, playwright and essayist

Evil is humankind's greatest problem, and at the same time its greatest paradox. It is at once inexplicable, unfathomable, fascinating and petrifying. Its amazing paradox lies in the fact that in its essential nature, it appears to be as omnipotent today as when it first crawled out of its biological hideout. In that sense it is ahistorical.
Whether or not evil is exclusively a civilizing necessity, humanity is compelled to react to it as if it were . This reaction constitutes the hypothesis of an historical mission of evil. If valid, then the question must be posed if civilization has reached the crucial stage where evil has finally outlived its usefulness and accomplished its historical mission? Or is the accomplishment of its mission doomed to perpetual postponement, due to the weakness and deformation of will? Human beings cannot choose freely.
From a psychoanalytical perspective, this paper will explore the mystery of evil. Evil originated in and with the origin of life itself, in order to ensure the survival of the living organism. In all forms of animate existence, it serves the biological will to live at any cost. But only in humans has it become conscious of itself. Although Hegel declares ‘Freedom is given as a fact of consciousness,' the fact of the unconscious compromises free will at every turn.
Yet notwithstanding this biological antithesis at the centre of existence, in the heart of this conscious fact of freedom paradoxically lies the power of knowledge to overturn, enlist and master the will of the unconscious. If human beings can grasp this knowledge of power , then they can truly chose to permanently outlaw evil, undo its necessity, and so render it an anachronism for posterity.

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Anthropocentrism and Natural Suffering
Nathan Kowalsky
Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Environmental ethics faces its own problem of evil: if nature is rife with naturally-caused suffering (e.g., tsunami, predation, genetic deformity), how then can the natural be axiologically positive? But if we accept that a nonanthropocentric ecological ethic is imperative (as most environmental philosophers do), and if seeing natural suffering as axiologically negative is anthropocentric (as I argue below), then the real problem is thinking natural suffering problematic in the first place.
I argue that equating suffering with prima facie evil is anthropocentric for three reasons. First, interpersonal norms cannot be a template for nonhuman behaviour any more than animal relations can be a template for human relations (Holmes Rolston, III). In order to deny this claim, one must commit to an anthropocentric project of “humanising” nature. Thus is the application of the suffering=evil equation onto nature an anthropocentric move.
Second, the equation requires an is/ought dichotomy whereby nature is not as it ought to be. This dichotomy is an anthropocentric misunderstanding of the proper inter-/intra-species behaviour barrier (Holmes Rolston, III), and of the significance of evolutionary theory (Allen Carlson). Therefore, equating natural suffering with evil rests on an anthropocentrism.
Finally, the suffering=evil equation holds a suffering-free nature to be an axiological ideal. This ideal presupposes moral atomism and requires organismic invulnerability: only individuals suffer pain; only the vulnerable can suffer. But nature both (1) transcends individuals in species and ecosystems, and (2) is itself an economy of vulnerable things. Because the suffering=evil equation is both (1') extremely entity-specific, and (2') altogether incongruent with ecology, it is itself anthropocentric.
For these three reasons, even the presence of gratuitous suffering in nature cannot count as evidence against the value-claims of environmental ethics. This conclusion would also hold for the theological problem of natural evil.