Why do people fail to acknowledge the reality of evil? My progressive friends––a list which is getting shorter and shorter––were baffled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. They lacked a vocabulary and worldview to describe what happened. If British literary critic Terry Eagleton is right, there are at least three reasons for the failure to acknowledge evil: the first being a semantic divorce between “sin” and “evil,” the second being a change in the story that the West is telling itself, and the third being a suspicion about the uses of rhetoric on evil. The first two reasons signal the apatheism of our age while the last reason signals the culture wars between religious and secular humanists. With his characteristic humor and insight, Eagleton writes in his latest book:
People differ on the question of evil. A recent poll reported that a belief in sin is highest in Northern Ireland (91 percent), and lowest in Denmark (29 percent). Nobody with a first hand acquaintance with that pathologically religious entity known as Northern Ireland (the greater part of Ulster) will be in the least amazed by that first finding. Ulster Protestants clearly take a dimmer view of human existence than the hedonistic Danes. One takes it that Danes, like most other people who have been reading the newspapers, do indeed believe in the reality of greed, child pornography, police violence, and the barefaced lies of the pharmaceutical companies. It is just that they prefer not to call these things sin. This may be because they think of sin as an offence against God rather than as an offence against other people. It is not a distinction that the New Testament has much time for.
On the whole, postmodern cultures, despite their fascination with ghouls and vampires, have had little to say of evil. Perhaps this is because the postmodern man or woman––cool, provisional, laid-back and decentered––lacks the depth that true destructiveness requires. For postmodernism, there is nothing really to be redeemed. For high modernists, like Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, or the early T. S. Eliot, there is indeed something to be redeemed, but it has become impossible to say quite what. The desolate, devastated landscapes of Beckett have the look of a world crying out for salvation. But salvation presupposes sinfulness, and Beckett’s wasted, eviscerated human figures are too sunk in apathy and inertia even to be mildly immoral. They cannot even muster the strength to hang themselves, let alone set fire to a village of innocent civilians.
To acknowledge the reality of evil, however, is not necessarily to hold that it lies beyond all explanations. You can believe in evil without supposing that it is supernatural in origin. Ideas of evil do not have to posit a cloven-hoofed Satan. It is true that some liberals and humanists, along with the laid-back Danes, deny the existence of evil. This is largely because they regard the word “evil” as a device for demonising those who are really nothing more than socially unfortunate. It is what one might call the community-worker theory of morality. It is true that this is one of the world’s most priggish uses… But to reject the idea of evil for this reason works better if you are thinking of unemployed council-estate heroin addicts rather than serial killers or the Nazi SS. It is hard to see the SS as merely unfortunate. One should be careful not to let the Khmer Rouge off the same hook on which delinquent teenagers are impaled.
I welcome your feedback on this passage from Eagleton. Why do you think some people fail to acknowledge evil?
Cross posted at Mere Orthodoxy
July 17th, 2010 | 8:31 am | #1
Given your interest in postmodernism, Christopher, I think that it should be obvious to you that this problem is essentially a postmodern problem — specifically as it has undermined the Christianization of the West.
Do you really not see this as a direct result of the undermining of trust in all metanarratives as controlling semantic devices — including the biblical narrative?
Let me put it another way which is probably more palatable: given that Eagleton plainly disabuses the reader of the cloven-hoofed person “Satan”, how can the Biblical narrative work in conversation with postmodern thought to produce something which points people to their own fault, their own sin, and their need for a man to die on a cross for them so that they do not bear the punishment for their own misdeeds? How can it call them to repent?
July 17th, 2010 | 9:53 am | #2
You say the “failure to acknowledge the reality of evil” led to bafflement among your progressive friends after 9/11. Here’s another picture of the same, from just a few weeks after the event (emphasis added):
This denial of evil is dysfunctional, for it is a denial of reality. But atheists/agnostics have little or no conceptual space in their worldview for evil, especially an objective view of it, so they have a philosophical stake in denying its existence—against all the empirical evidence.
July 17th, 2010 | 10:57 am | #3
Of course, one could argue that the people of Northern Ireland are (statistically) narrow-minded and hateful, being more likely to believe that their enemies are evil and thus to inflict evil on their enemies than are the Danes. I’m not sure that that’s true, but I’d guess that it’s more likely than that the Danish people are simply ignorant of reality.
July 17th, 2010 | 11:01 am | #4
I think the author is right on. I really want to read the book now. There is an idealistic utopianism wrapped around all wrong being somehow connected to justifiable in motive (not action) relational dysfunction or an injustice breeding destructive behavior. This keeps pure evil in a false check (in our minds) instead of the reality that evil is real and affects our lives whether we like it or not.
Also, our Western world looks at everything as an option. Our general approach to religion is a shopping mentality. Whatever we think fits best with this or that accessory … discard what doesn’t work … change with the season.
We can’t do that with evil. Evil is its own tyrant. We don’t get to pick evil. We don’t get a choice in its timing or manifestation. Reframing through psychological terms or natural results of injustice from the past takes the personal sting of the evil that echoes in our soul to options we can pick and choose to apply to other people.
We also can’t seem to want to accept that larger manifestations of evil all start in a single heart. That is a direct threat to the god of self-sufficiency we hold so dear here in the West.
I didn’t know I had all that to say :). I hope it makes sense.
July 17th, 2010 | 1:20 pm | #5
Steve W,
What makes your proposal concerning the Irish and Danes more likely than that evil really exists? (Technically it’s a privation, but I trust you know what I mean.)
July 17th, 2010 | 1:29 pm | #6
Tom,
I would agree with the Irish that evil does “exist,” but I would also find it possible that this certitude on their part is linked to relative character defects. I mean this in the sense that a saint might be so loving as to “believe all things” while in a certain sense no one is so distrustful as the devil. That’s not to say that we ought to be naive about evil, only that such naivete is probably not as bad as knowledge of evil gained by participation in it.
I’m more trying to defend the Danes here than to insult the (Northern) Irish. And I’m certainly not saying that I agree with the Danes on the factual question.
July 17th, 2010 | 5:35 pm | #7
Evil or malice has somethig to do with intruding into the deepest privacy of another person, going beyond limits that decent people instinctively know they should honor. Examples are an inordinate desire to control, manipulate, harm, destroy another person. It can be subtle or it can be brutal. It can even be an excessive interest in another person. I have noticed that decent people are able to turn away from such feelings or behavior. It seems to have something to do with respecting the dignity of another person.
July 17th, 2010 | 9:11 pm | #8
Mr. Turk thinks the failure to recognize evil is “essentially a postmodern problem” whereas I think the postmodern condition has exacerbated the problem. Terry Eagleton offers a nice description of the postmodern condition, where “there is nothing to be redeemed”: the denial of sin will result in the denial of salvation. Failure to recognize evil is essentially an anthropological problem insofar as we are fallen creatures who are deceived about our own wickedness, assuming righteousness, and our need for salvation, assuming self-reliance.
July 17th, 2010 | 10:26 pm | #9
Christopher –
Maybe it’s me. Maybe I am somehow doing something which is confusing you as I type here. Let me try again in the spirit of fair play.
As I see it, the topic/thesis of your post is, “People today fail to acknowledge the presence of evil.” Not people at all times, but people -today-. If that’s not the topic, then my concerns are a non-starter.
But if that is your topic, think about this: why do people today think about the world the way they do? See: 300 years ago, people thought about the world the way they did morally and ethically (specifically in the West) because they were culturally seeped in the mores of the Christian faith. That didn’t make them morally perfect, but it did give them a consistent view of good and evil even if they could not live by it. That view is not the view people hold today.
Since then, Modernism took its bite and Postmodernism has had its seat at the table as well. Their various children — nihilism, existentialism, foundationalism, etc. — have been the means by which the West has lost its Christian philosophical moorings.
Is this actually some kind of news?
If not, please help me understand: if you and I share the concern that people today cannot identify evil as such, and they do so because of the causes I have listed here, how is it that you do not share my concerns that postmodernism is itself an adversary to the Christian faith?
This is the root of my nagging about this: treating this ideological enemy of faith and moral reasoning as a companion of faith & moral reasoning is ill-advised at best. At some point you have to come to grips with that.
July 17th, 2010 | 10:45 pm | #10
There’s another part of this as well, which is not from Christopher’s desk but JMR’s desk — and that’s the ho-hum view of the issue that Po-Modernity is dead and we should just move on.
I suspect this is an overly-optimistic view of the matter, to say the least. I am sure, for example, that student in Dr. Reynolds’ classes have no time for Foucault or Derrida because their writing is, frankly, eye-crossing. It was interesting when it was new, but now it’s old, and who wants to read that.
Here’s my take on it: these kids are actually the product of this stuff, and that’s why it’s so critical to continue to uncover it and unmask it and therefore undermine it. None of thee kids are hard poststructuralists, but they own the strident cynicism of it by simply acting as if there is no authority which can teach then anything.
It’s utterly brilliant that the society which has been birthed by postmodernism is not an intelligent society where meaning is hard-scrabbled by people concerned with their own meaningfulness: it’s a society which makes Paris Hilton, Heidi & Spencer, and the Kardashian sisters famous and admired.
At this point, post-modernity is not the pollen in the air: it has pollenated the culture, and born fruit and seed, and has raised up a generation. We may yawn as (for example) the “Emerg* Church” makes itself into its own caricature, but that doesn’t dig up the roots of the weed. It will be back like crab grass.
July 17th, 2010 | 11:31 pm | #11
Mr. Turk hasn’t read me closely. Here and elsewhere he makes unwarranted inferences about what I’ve said. I began my post asking “Why do people fail to acknowledge the reality of evil?” but Mr. Turk infers that my “topic/thesis” is “people today fail to acknowledge the presence of evil.” Because that’s not the topic, “[your] concerns are a non-starter.” Obviously, my question was asked in the context of our postmodern condition, but an answer to the question isn’t limited to our context. That’s why I said the essential problem is anthropological, which persists generation after generation.
July 18th, 2010 | 8:14 am | #12
Frank Said, “Here’s my take on it: these kids are actually the product of this stuff, and that’s why it’s so critical to continue to uncover it and unmask it and therefore undermine it. None of thee kids are hard poststructuralists, but they own the strident cynicism of it by simply acting as if there is no authority which can teach then anything.”
A beautiful and aptly descriptive paragraph. Biblically it is a case of ‘sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.”
Let it be said that the desire to distance ourselves from sin and evil is in every era; the Enlightenment, Modernism and PoMo are not different in that regard. “Lord, the woman that you gave me made me eat the fruit!”
July 18th, 2010 | 2:17 pm | #13
I love the exchanges between Mr. Turk and Mr. Benson. If they sometimes lack charity for one another’s points, they are still riveting and well-informed positions.
That said, I think I understand Mr. Benson’s points and agree with them. We don’t need to point to total depravity, original sin, or the postmodern destruction of the metanarrative to merely say that sin is sin and some people refuse to see evil for what it is.
For proof, I give you Isaiah 5:20- “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…” It’s not merely that ancient near-eastern cultures thought that evil didn’t exist, it’s that they engaged in evil and called it good. It’s not that they denied evil’s existence, it’s that they engaged in it and didn’t see a problem with it. This seems a more dangerous position than the cognitive denial of a category called evil, though the latter can certainly lead to the former.
Now the denial of moral categories altogether- that may indeed be an ultra-modern problem, a result of Nietzsche and other atheistic/pantheistic existential thinkers. But are we talking about the denial of evil, or the denial to recognize that ANYTHING is neither good nor evil? If we’re merely talking about the denial of evil, then I submit that this problem has been around for centuries and is not a uniquely postmodern problem.
July 18th, 2010 | 2:27 pm | #14
Mr. Strunk: Thanks for stopping by. My post was intended to facilitate a discussion on the denial of evil, which “has been around for centuries and is not a uniquely postmodern problem,” as you rightly observe.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact