Evil in Modern Thought
Evil in Modern Thought

Author: Susan Neiman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0691168504

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Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts--combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade--eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.

How About Demons?
How About Demons?

Author: Felicitas D. Goodman

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1988-05-22

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 025301462X

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The author of the Exorcism of Anneliese Michel “is to be commended for a stimulating and wide-reaching treatment of a compelling and much-debated subject” (Journal of Folklore Research). As part of a series that strives to introduce new or previously unrecognized folkloric phenomena—as well as new approaches and theories that result from discovery and investigation—How About Demons? provides an overview of a topic that has for many years captured the imagination of people from all walks of life. Rich in detail derived from the author’s fieldwork and anthropological literature, this work contemplates possession and exorcism in a holistic manner—discussing their effects on both the body and soul. How About Demons? paints a picture of possession as a usually positive experience occurring in a wide variety of cultures and religions around the globe. It also details the ritual of exorcism which is applied when things go wrong. “Quite an interesting book.”—Religious Studies Review “It is by far superior to anything else on demons we have seen in the past few years.”—The American Rationalist

Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles

Author: Jeffrey Burton Russell

Publisher:

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

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Mephistopheles is the fourth and final volume of Jeffrey Burton Russell's critically acclaimed history of the concept of the Devil, continuing in this volume the story from the Reformation to the present.

Evil in the Modern World
Evil in the Modern World

Author: Laura Dryjanska

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-03-10

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 3030918882

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This interesting volume focuses on a set of phenomena which increasingly alarm the political world and public opinion: from the more obvious ones like torture, disease, human trafficking, abuse, genocide, displacement, to more subtle forms found in sports, technology and law. It looks at how and why these phenomena are universally condemned, and could be considered to threaten the very foundations of modern democracy; yet continue to be tolerated. The volume therefore goes beyond what Hannah Arendt has called the "banality of evil" and discusses the presence of condemned and heinous practices in society as fluid and chaotic but as non-trivial; capable of great transmutations through various epochs. Practices and actions considered as "evil" manifest in situations where individuals or groups hold power or seize power, and the contributions in this volume explore the close relation between power and evil. The volume draws upon sociology, psychology, cultural studies, political science, as well as philosophy, theology, anthropology, and neurology of the individual and of the group to provide a comprehensive understanding of the multiple facets of evil in the contemporary world.

The History of Evil in the Early Modern Age
The History of Evil in the Early Modern Age

Author: DANIEL. ROBINSON

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-30

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9781032095141

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The third volume of The History of Evil encompasses the early modern era from 1450-1700. This revolutionary period exhibited immense change in both secular knowledge and sacred understanding. It saw the fall of Constantinople and the rise of religious violence, the burning of witches and the drowning of Anabaptists, the ill treatment of indigenous peoples from Africa to the Americas, the reframing of formal authorities in religion, philosophy, and science, and it produced profound reflection on good and evil in the genius of Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Teresa of Avila, and the Cambridge Platonists. This superb treatment of the history of evil during a formative period of the early modern era will appeal to those with interests in philosophy, theology, social and political history, and the history of ideas.

Demons of the Modern World
Demons of the Modern World

Author: Malcolm Mcgrath

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2010-10-05

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1615927239

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...probably the first thorough review of modern demonology...superb. Recommended... - Library Journal...a terrifically contextualized debunking that is sure to generate debate among the faithful. - Publishers Weekly...a fascinating book on the psychology of modern Western culture. - Science & Spirit MagazineThis fascinating discussion of modern demonology focuses on our ability to differentiate the physical world, with its mechanical laws, from the inherently less predictable psychological realm of thoughts and beliefs. McGrath points out that this ability was a hard-won historical development, and today must be learned in childhood through education. Because of this historical background and our rich fantasy life in childhood, each of us unconsciously suspects, or fears, that supernatural forces may break through the borders of our everyday commonsense order at any time. Indeed, at times of personal stress or societal crisis, the modern boundaries between fantasy and reality begin to slip, and then a magical world of demons and other phantasms can come flooding back into our disenchanted reality.Through this innovative thesis McGrath goes a long way toward explaining both our fascination with fantasy entertainment, such as horror stories and films, and bizarre crazes such as witch-hunts, Satanism scares, and even claims of alien abduction. Despite our demystified culture the lure of childhood's magic kingdom with its monstrous shadow realm remains strong.Malcolm McGrath (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at Oxford University.

The Devil in the New World
The Devil in the New World

Author: Fernando Cervantes

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 9780300068894

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Until the end of the eighteenth century, missionaries to the New World agreed that diabolism lay at the heart of the Native American belief system and at the root of their own failure to establish a church purged of Satan and pagan superstition. The Devil mattered, and he occupied a central place in discussions of all non-Christian religious systems and in the bitter disputes over how to combat them. In this elegant and sensitive analysis, Fernando Cervantes gives the Devil his due, illuminating a neglected aspect of the European encounter with America and setting the full history of the "spiritual conquest" in a rich and original context. He reveals how Native Americans reinterpreted the view of Christianity presented to them, how they refused to see the world as the missionaries saw it. Drawing on archival sources, he brings into clear focus the complex, often bewildering, and sometimes tragic clash between a theology that posited the existence of competing forces and one that insisted that all deities were multiform beings within which good and evil coexisted. He deals in compelling and persuasive detail with the social history of the interaction between the two cultures, explaining not only the impact of European ideas upon the New World but the influence of diabolism on the ideology of the Old. And he provides a subtle account of the role of diabolism in the emerging baroque culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that strikingly challenges conventional explanations of the growth of skepticism in the period.

The Voice from the Whirlwind
The Voice from the Whirlwind

Author: Stephen J. Vicchio

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2001-02-23

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1597524522

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ÒThis book is concerned with why the world is not such an easy place in which to live. Human beings, as its apparently most sentient creatures, live daily in a morally ambiguous environment. Most of us experience contentment, happiness, and even profound joy. But these experiences are all too often interspersed or punctuated with unwarranted suffering, excruciating pain, and sometimes irrational violence. Although human life may at times seem like heaven on earth, it can also be more like scenes from a Kafka novel or a scarred canvas of Edvard Munch. This book is primarily concerned with the problem of reconciling these two kinds of experiences with belief in a God who is said to be all good, all knowing, and all powerful. ÒThroughout the book, I continually refer back to three criteria for what I think would count as a good answer to the problem. . . . First, any serious philosophical or theological response to the problem of evil must be true to the tradition from which the problem originates. The problem of evil is a peculiarly Judeo-Christian problem because of the attributes of God in that tradition. . . . Second, any answer to the problem of evil should be one that is logically consistent. . . . Third, a good answer to the problem of evil must take the individual sufferer seriously. --from the Introduction