The Roots of Evil [Hardcover]

John Kekes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 2005

"Evil is the most serious of our moral problems. All over the world cruelty, greed, prejudice, and fanaticism ruin the lives of countless victims. Outrage provokes outrage. Millions nurture seething hatred of real or imagined enemies, revealing savage and destructive tendencies in human nature. Understanding this challenges our optimistic illusions about the effectiveness of reason and morality in bettering human lives. But abandoning these illusions is vitally important because they are obstacles to countering the threat of evil. The aim of this book is to explain why people act in these ways and what can be done about it."-John KekesThe first part of this book is a detailed discussion of six horrible cases of evil: the Albigensian Crusade of about 1210; Robespierre's Terror of 1793-94; Franz Stangl, who commanded a Nazi death camp in 1943-44; the 1969 murders committed by Charles Manson and his "family"; the "dirty war" conducted by the Argentinean military dictatorship of the late 1970s; and the activities of a psychopath named John Allen, who recorded reminiscences in 1975. John Kekes includes these examples not out of sensationalism, but rather to underline the need to hold vividly in our minds just what evil is. The second part shows why, in Kekes's view, explanations of evil inspired by Christianity and the Enlightenment fail to account for these cases and then provides an original explanation of evil in general and of these instances of it in particular.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Evil is here defined as harm in excess and examined with the lucidity and clarity that distinguish John Kekes's books. His focus is on the thrill of evil, and his examples are stunning. This is a work of philosophy for every serious reader."-Harvey C. Mansfield, Professor of Government, Harvard University

"This is a wonderful book. The writing is beautifully clear, brisk, and memorable. The organization of the argument is excellent, and the surefootedness and balance throughout are admirable. John Kekes provides a thoroughly secular account of the nature and sources of evil as opposed to ordinary wrongs."-Lawrence Becker, author of A New Stoicism

"This is an interesting, systematic, nondogmatic, and informed attempt to make sense of evil on secular grounds."-Saul Smilansky, Times Literary Supplement, 3 March 2006

"The principal value of The Roots of Evil is that the author squarely faces the challenge of evil, a task of no small importance when Islamofascism and much else are testing the mettle of the West. While some obsess over the 'root causes' of the appalling things people do to one another, Kekes reminds us that evil actions find their origin in the individual. His book closes with some sensible if currently unfashionable recommendations for coping with evil: attending to its internal conditions by exposing people to the humanities and attending to its external conditions by a firm commitment to punishment. Indeed, the book contains much by way of sturdy good sense."-Max Gooses, The New Criterion, March 2006

"Since it reflects aspects of human nature-envy, ambition, the need for belonging-evil is a permanent threat. We can best combat it, John Kekes believes, by cultivating 'moral imagination.' . . . An education in the litearary and philosophical classics helps nourish the moral imagination. . . . There is much to admire in this lucid and morally serious book. Its concreteness sets it apart from the arid abstraction of many works of analytic philosophy. Its insistence on the existence of evil is refreshing in an age of academic relativism. Its modest conclusions are wise and generally right."-Brian C. Anderson, First Things, April 2006

From the Inside Flap

"This is a wonderful book. The writing is beautifully clear, brisk, and memorable. The organization of the argument is excellent, and the surefootedness and balance throughout are admirable. Kekes provides a thoroughly secular account of the nature and sources of evil as opposed to ordinary wrongs."-Lawrence Becker, author of A New Stoicism

"Evil is here defined as harm in excess and examined with the lucidity and clarity that distinguish John Kekes's books. His focus is on the thrill of evil, and his examples are stunning. This is a work of philosophy for every serious reader."—Harvey C. Mansfield, Professor of Government, Harvard University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 278 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Press (May 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801443687
• ISBN-13: 978-0801443688
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,822,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting discussion, June 30, 2010

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S. B. Volchan (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Roots of Evil (Paperback)

This book provides a cogent analysis of evil and along the way presents many interesting topics linked to moral values, responsibility and ethics. One important point is the recognition that evil is not mysterious but is part of the ambivalence, contradictions and propensities of human nature. Hence, contrary to the Enlightenment naive optimism, it is implausible (in view of human history) that evil will ever be completely
eradicated from human society. What one can expect is to minimize it and protect society from its terrible effects.

To do that one needs to understand the mechanism (internal and external) and causes that lead to evil actions. First step is to recognize there are different types of evil and the author tries to extract some pattern from unequivocal instances of evil, namely the Albigensian crusaders, Robespierre's reign of terror, Stangl's command of Treblinka, Argentinian "dirty-war" torturers, Charles Manson murders and a psychopath's career.

Overall it provides a rational, secular and objective discussion. The weak point is the proposed solutions to deal with evil. One proposal is to help people develop a "moral imagination", sources of which could be found in reading the classics. This sounds like the usual naive Enlightenment optimism once again. After all classical education didn't prevent the horrible instances of evil in the recent past; moreover, how on earth one is supposed to instill an interest in the classics nowadays, in our age of fast and superficial information, in which new media formats compete, through direct emotional appeals, to an increasingly impatient audience? Maybe the author develops these ideas in his other books.