Confronting Evil: Two Journeys [Paperback]

Fred Emil Katz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2004

Using insights from behavioral science, a Holocaust survivor explores how evil actions can seem moral to the perpetrators and how we must alter our thinking to prevent this.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Confronting Evil describes Fred Emil Katz's two journeys in response to surviving the Holocaust. One journey is that of a survivor who tries to come to terms with his own survival, and who must cope with survival guilt as well as the sense of rootlessness that can go along with it. The other journey is that of a behavioral scientist who, after years of psychological denial, gradually attempts to develop ways of understanding and addressing genocide and other acts of social evil. Responding constructively to some of the major horrors of the past one hundred years, Confronting Evil explores the failure of the human sciences to predict, prevent, or even convincingly explain these horrors and the millions of violent human deaths that have resulted. The author emphasizes the moral context under which we live, which he calls the "Local Moral Universe." This Local Moral Universe can provide the umbrella for the most magnificently humane activities, yet it can also underwrite horrendously evil deeds. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how this Local Moral Universe comes about, how it exists as a distinct and identifiable entity, and the impact it has on human behavior. Only then can societies hope to prevent such horrors from happening in the future. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Fred Emil Katz is a former Professor of Sociology who taught at various universities in the United States and Israel, including the State University of New York at Buffalo and Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil: A Report on the Beguilings of Evil, also published by SUNY Press, and Immediacy: How Our World Confronts Us and How We Confront Our World. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr; First edition. edition (July 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791460304
• ISBN-13: 978-0791460306
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,376,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Fred Emil Katz, author of Our Quest For Effective Living: How We Cope In Social Space/ A Window To A New Science Holocaust survivor; worked in factories for six years; served in U.S. army; professor in several major universities; lived in five countries; author of six previous books, including ORDINARY PEOPLE AND EXTRAORDINARY EVIL, and CONFRONTING EVIL.
Yes, my previous books deal with evil, but they do so in a way that shows that we don't need to remain victims, at the mercy of forces we can't control. We CAN get mastery over evil, by listening to my message on how evil is actually produced. In the present book -- How we Cope in Social Space -- I take this a step further. That we humans live not only in physical space, about which physicists have taught us a great deal. We also live in Social Space, about which I open up an entirely new vision, giving us many new insights about what is going on in our life.

I address much of this in my recent Blogs.