Evil and Human Agency
Understanding Collective Evildoing

This 2005 book investigates why and in what sort of circumstances evil desire arises, and how it is channeled into collective evildoing.

Arne Johan Vetlesen (Author)

9780521856942, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 December 2005

328 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.61 kg

'Vetlesen brings to light the paradox of moral responsibility in Arendt's analysis of Eichmann's actions. … Evil and Human Agency is both timely and deserving of wide readership, not only by sociologists, philosophers, and psychologists, but also by politicians and political scientists. Vetlesen stresses the moral failure of bystanders who, in wishing to remain neutral and impartial, did nothing to stop atrocities from occurring. … Vetlesen's thoughtful approach in Evil and Human Agency challenges both the Aristotelian and the Kantian view that egoism is at the root of evildoing …Vetlesen's approach to evildoing, then, is useful to show how we might avoid such atrocities in the future.' The Journal of Value Inquiry

Evil is a poorly understood phenomenon. In this provocative 2005 book, Professor Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and causing serious and foreseeable harm. Vetlesen investigates why and in what sort of circumstances such a desire arises, and how it is channeled, or exploited, into collective evildoing. He argues that such evildoing, pitting whole groups against each other, springs from a combination of character, situation, and social structure. By combining a philosophical approach inspired by Hannah Arendt, a psychological approach inspired by C. Fred Alford and a sociological approach inspired by Zygmunt Bauman, and bringing these to bear on the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents.

1. The ordinariness of modern evildoers: a critique of Zygmunt Bauman's The Modernity and the Holocaust
2. Hannah Arendt on conscience and the banality of evil
3. The psycho-logic of wanting to hurt others
4. The logic and practice of collective evil: ethnic cleansing in Bosnia
5. Responses to collective evil
6. A political postscript: globalization and the discontents of the self.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Social & political philosophy [HPS]