Evil and Human Agency
Understanding Collective Evildoing
$58.99 (C)
Part of Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
- Author: Arne Johan Vetlesen, Universitetet i Oslo
- Date Published: December 2005
- availability: Available
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521673570
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Arne Johan Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and cause 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. Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents.
Read more- Provides a provocative and original approach to evil, stressing its experiential and existential dimensions
- Critiques the received wisdom in the field, in particular Hannah Arendt's notion of 'the banality of evil'
- Combines philosophical discussion with historical material drawing on recent scholarship on the Holocaust and on 'ethnic cleansing'
Reviews & endorsements
"This book is an excellent and brave contribution to a complex topic - balanced, well-argued, informative. I recommend it to all philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists who have research interests in understanding large-scale atrocities."
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×Product details
- Date Published: December 2005
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521673570
- length: 328 pages
- dimensions: 229 x 152 x 19 mm
- weight: 0.48kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
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.
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