Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness is a wide ranging project which seeks to explore issues connected with evil, suffering, pain and the consequences of human actions. It recognises that even the language of 'evil' is a problem, and attempts to find ways of beginning to make sense of human wickedness.

Key themes that are central to the project include;

• the language of evil
• the nature and sources of evil and human wickedness
• moral intuitions about dreadful crimes
• psychopathic behaviour; is a person mad or bad?
• choice, responsibility, and diminished responsibility
• social and cultural reactions to evil and human wickedness
• the portrayal of evil and human wickedness in the media and popular culture
• suffering in literature and film
• individual acts of evil, group violence, holocaust and genocide; obligations of bystanders
• terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing
• the search for meaning and sense in evil and human wickedness
• the nature and tasks of theodicy
• religious understandings of evil and human wickedness
• postmodern approaches to evil and human wickedness
• ecocriticism, evil and suffering
• evil and the use/abuse of technology; evil in cyberspace

The project is now in its sixth year, and centres around an annual conference held each March in Prague in the Czech Republic. Over 70 delegates from across the world gather to discuss a range of questions and issues; 7 publications have been and are in the process of being published. There is an ISSN ejournal supporting the work of the conference project and publishing cutting edge inter- and multi--disciplinary research material. There is an email discussion group which continues many of the engaging conversations started in the conferences; a new eForum has also been opened.

© Wickedness.Net 2004