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Components of Evil: An Analysis of Secular Moral Evil and its Normative and Social Implications

邪恶的组成部分：世俗道德邪恶及其规范和社会含义的分析

基本信息

批准号：
320754925
负责人：
Dr. Zachary Goldberg
金额：
--
依托单位：
Lehrstuhl für Philosophie V: Praktische Philosophie und Ethik
依托单位国家：
德国
项目类别：
Research Grants
财政年份：
2016
资助国家：
德国
起止时间：
2015-12-31 至 2018-12-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/320754925?language=en
关键词：
Components Evil Analysis Secular Moral

项目摘要

The secular moral concept of evil purports to have ontological and normative priority; it describes an extant category of agential action and affords apt normative judgments of acts falling under that category. This project seeks to analyze and redefine the ontological and normative features of evil. The first section will identify the essential features of an evil act. I first ask whether the Kantian theory of radical evil can be saved from established criticisms. This analysis uncovers Kantian insights concerning the nature of evil that have been previously dismissed in the philosophical literature and leaves us with a more nuanced view of Kantian arguments. Subsequently, I offer a hypothesis regarding which aspects embody an evil act in contradistinction to a merely wrong act. While extant theories claim that either a psychological feature of the perpetrator or severe harm is distinctive of evil, I provide a relational theory that explains evil through a specific concomitance held between victims and perpetrators. Severe harm is representative of evil due to victims of evil inhabiting a status of extreme vulnerability in relation to agents who are in a unique position to exploit this status. The second main section is normative in focus and investigates moral responsibility for evil acts. While I concur with prevailing views that argue that perpetrators of evil often do not satisfy the necessary cognitive and volitional conditions of individual moral responsibility, I dispute the conclusion of many contemporary philosophers that these perpetrators in fact lack moral responsibility. In contrast, I suggest that individualistic theories of moral responsibility inadequately capture relevant features evil acts and agents. Next, in order to answer the challenge posed by the preceding section, I demonstrate that evil acts are either inherently or de facto collective. While the current literature focuses on individual moral responsibility and evil, I shift attention to collective responsibility for evil. Evil occurs due to asymmetrical power relations that provide unique opportunities for collective agents to exploit the extreme vulnerability of others. The third section is practical in focus. First, I examine the conflict in some democratic societies between the duty to protect the freedoms of expression and association and obligations of moral repair following historical evil. Through an analysis of the EU ban on genocide denial, I examine the challenge of balancing these two political/societal commitments through a consideration of extreme vulnerability and collective agency and responsibility. In the final subsection, I investigate the question of how one ought to react to the prevalence of evil in human interaction. I argue that accepting evil without attempts at its rationalization is itself a normative stance that prepares the individual to respond to evil in an appropriate way.

邪恶的世俗道德概念声称具有本体论和规范性的优先权；它描述了一种现存的代理行为类别，并对属于该类别的行为提供了恰当的规范性判断。这个项目试图分析和重新定义邪恶的本体论和规范特征。第一部分将确定邪恶行为的基本特征。我首先要问的是，是否可以将康德的激进邪恶理论从已有的批评中拯救出来。这一分析揭示了康德关于邪恶本质的见解，这些见解在哲学文献中被忽视了，并让我们对康德的论点有了更细致入微的看法。随后，我提出了一个假设，关于哪些方面体现了邪恶的行为，而不是仅仅是错误的行为。虽然现有的理论声称，犯罪者的心理特征或严重伤害是邪恶的特征，但我提供了一种关系理论，通过受害者和犯罪者之间的特定共同性来解释邪恶。严重伤害是邪恶的代表，因为邪恶的受害者处于一种极端脆弱的状态，而代理人处于一个独特的位置，可以利用这种状态。第二部分是规范性的重点，探讨了邪恶行为的道德责任。虽然我同意流行的观点，即邪恶的肇事者往往不满足个人道德责任的必要认知和意志条件，但我不同意许多当代哲学家的结论，即这些肇事者实际上缺乏道德责任。相反，我认为道德责任的个人主义理论没有充分捕捉到邪恶行为和行动者的相关特征。接下来，为了回答前一节提出的挑战，我将证明，邪恶行为要么本质上是集体的，要么事实上是集体的。当前的文献关注的是个人的道德责任和邪恶，而我将注意力转移到集体对邪恶的责任上。邪恶的发生是由于不对称的权力关系，为集体代理人提供了独特的机会来利用他人的极端脆弱性。第三部分是实践性的。首先，我考察了在一些民主社会中，保护言论和结社自由的义务与在历史罪恶之后进行道德修复的义务之间的冲突。通过对欧盟禁止否认种族灭绝的分析，我考察了通过考虑极端脆弱性和集体机构和责任来平衡这两种政治/社会承诺的挑战。在最后的小节中，我调查了一个人应该如何对人类交往中普遍存在的邪恶做出反应的问题。我认为，接受邪恶而不试图将其合理化，本身就是一种规范的立场，使个人能够以适当的方式应对邪恶。