Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation [Paperback]

Richard J. Bernstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 9, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0745629547 | ISBN-13: 978-0745629544 | Edition: 1

At present, there is an enormous gulf between the visibility of evil and the paucity of our intellectual resources for coming to grips with it. We have been flooded with images of death camps, terrorist attacks and horrendous human suffering. Yet when we ask what we mean by radical evil and how we are to account for it, we seem to be at a loss for proper responses.


Bernstein seeks to discover what we can learn about the meaning of evil and human responsibility. He turns to philosophers such as Kant, who coined the expression 'radical evil', as well as to Hegel and Schelling. He also examines more recent explorations of evil, namely the thinking of Freud and Nietzsche on the moral psychology of evil. Finally, he looks at the way in which three post-Holocaust thinkers - Emmanuel Levinas, Hans Jonas, and Hannah Arendt - have sought to come to grips with evil "after Auschwitz."

Bernstein's primary concern throughout this challenging book is to enrich and deepen our understanding of evil in the contemporary world, and to emphasize the vigilance and personal responsibility required for combating it.


Radical Evil will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy, social and political theory, and religious studies.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

About large solutions to the issue of evil, Bernstein is pessimistic: there can't be a general theory of evil, and we can't finally understand evil. There can be no happy ending to human history. But he is cautiously optimistic about overcoming particular evils. He brilliantly untangles the strings with which Kant tied himself in knots and looks at Hegel's attempts to disentangle them. But, he says, "we can no longer accept Hegel's dialectical account of good and evil." There is no final reconciliation that could allow Hegel's "Spirit" to heal "without leaving any scars." Nietzsche and Freud are used to cast light on "our ineradicable psychic ambivalence." Bernstein, who now teaches at the New School in New York after a career at Yale and Haverford, has latterly focused on continental philosophy: as Susan Neiman does in the final parts of her recent Evil in Modern Thought a work this book complements he devotes his final discussions to it. Emmanuel L vinas, Hans Jonas, and Hannah Arendt take center stage. It would have helped to connect Hegel's use of the infinite with L vinas's, as L vinas does not believe in happy endings because he does not believe there can be an ending. Yet in a world fueled by the infinite there is always hope. Readers will also miss the hopeful philosophers Teilhard de Chardin, Alfred North Whitehead, and, more recently, John Leslie (Infinite Minds). Bernstein addresses academics, but he writes clearly, and his subject will attract others. Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“Richard Bernstein takes us through the most baffling question of all, the one that in the end defies philosophical understanding, that of evil. The last century put this irresistibly on our agenda, and we cannot avoid it. No-one has the answer, but Bernstein takes us through a number of the most important and insightful thinkers, who can help us in our search. With the admirable clarity and great philosophical sympathy which always characterizes his work, he defines their understanding of evil, and puts them into conversation with each other. One emerges from this work still baffled, but in a much more fruitful way, empowered to go on thinking. This is a striking achievement for a work on this subject. Bernstein has once again pushed the debate forward several steps.”

Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, McGill University

"Richard Bernstein's work represents the best of an American tradition in philosophy, inspired by pragmatism and the analytical requirements of jargon-free clarity and drawing extensively and powerfully on traditions within Continental philosophy. To my ears Bernstein's is a hugely important voice in contemporary philosophical debate – it is sane and humane."

Simon Critchley, Centre for Theoretical Studies, University of Essex

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Polity; 1 edition (August 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745629547
• ISBN-13: 978-0745629544
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #484,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The history of the term 'radical evil', March 8, 2003

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation (Paperback)

Much discussion of the Holocaust, perhaps influenced in part by Hannah Arendt, invokes the phrase 'radical evil'. But the term springing from Kant, in his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, speaks what seems a different almost technical language of the will, in the context of the critique of practical reason. There the surface complexity of the lore of Kant's distinction of Wille and Wilkur seem to obscure the analyis, although Kant, too out of fashion, and bespeaks the question with underhanded profundity. One needs perhaps to get the knack of noting, if not understanding, the implications of these abstractions blind before the noumenal dragon's lair--of what do we speak, if of the 'will'??! As Arendt seems to suggest, Kant was not quite letting on.
This work is an invaluable history and compendium to any discussion of 'radical evil', and of the passage of the them via Kant through Hegel and Schelling to Nietzsche and Freud, concluding with the post-Holocaust thinkers Levinas, Johas, Arendt. This history should be better known in an age when the discussion is either positivistic discussion of the next robot advance in value free science or some mythical strain from the spiritual Hollywoods of too long ago. After Kant, 'at war with himself'(the point is debatable),the author critiques Hegel's great system with the sure fate of this question in a tighly conceived teleology, and then the surprisingly refreshing views of the less well known Schelling. It is hard to take the analysis of the inscrutable beyond these seminal sources (in my view,I find Nietzsche less profound that his reputation would suggest), but the remaining discussions are compelling none the less as the question explodes from its airy quality in the context of the twentieth century. Very fine study, although one might have thought Marx/anti-Marx a pole of this history. The question of 'radical evil' in relation to Hannah Arendt is also considered in the author's Hannah Arendt and the Jewish question.

0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The book, March 22, 2010

By 

Andres Jose Nelken - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation (Paperback)

since i,m abroad,( a relative is bringing it to my country) i haven't seen the book, but i guess it must be ok.