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313Patriotism: Philosophical and political perspectivesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (1). 2009.A review of Patriotism: Philosophical and Political Perspectives
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2364Is radical evil banal? Is banal evil radical?Philosophy and Social Criticism 33 (6): 717-735. 2007.There has been much recent debate concerning how Hannah Arendt's concepts of radical evil and the banality of evil `fit together', if at all. I argue that the first of these concepts deals with a certain type of evil, in particular the evil that occurred in the Nazi death camps. The second deals with a certain type of perpetrator of evil, in particular the banal `nobody', Eichmann. As such, bar a localized incompatibility in regard to Arendt's early account of the motivation of perpetrators of r…Read more
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1678A Conception of EvilJournal of Value Inquiry 42 (2): 217-239. 2008.There are a number of different senses of the term “evil.” We examine in this paper the term “evil” when it is used to say things such as: “what Hitler did was not merely wrong, it was evil”, and “Hitler was not merely a bad person, he was an evil person”. Failing to keep a promise or telling a white lie may be morally wrong, but unlike genocide or sadistic torture, it is not evil in this sense. In this paper we analyze the specific moral difference between “evil” and “mere wrongdoing”. In so do…Read more
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590Understanding Evil ActsHuman Studies 30 (2): 57-77. 2007.Evil acts strike us, by their very nature, as not only horrifying and reprehensible, but also as deeply puzzling. No doubt for reasons like this, evil has often been seen as mysterious, demonic and beyond our human powers of understanding. The question I examine in this paper is whether or not we can (or would want to) overcome this puzzlement in the face of evil acts. I shall argue that we ought want to (in all cases) and can (in at least most cases) come to understand why people perpetrate evi…Read more
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1541Kant on the Limits of Human EvilJournal of Philosophical Research 34 189-214. 2009.Kant has often been accused of being far too “optimistic” when it comes to the extremes of evil that humans can perpetrate upon one another. In particular, Kant’s supposed claim that humans cannot choose evil qua evil has struck many people as simply false. Another problem for Kant, or perhaps the same problem in another guise, is his supposed claim that all evil is done for the sake of self-love. While self-love might be a plausible way to explain some instances of evil, it seems to be an impla…Read more
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4021Dignity and Respect: How to Apply Kant's Formula of HumanityPhilosophical Forum 45 (1): 49-68. 2014.Kant’s Formula of Humanity (FH) is considered by many, Kant included, to be the most intuitively appealing formulation of the categorical imperative. FH tells us that to treat persons with dignity and respect we must always treat them as ends in themselves and never as mere means. One set of issues raised by FH revolves around how FH is to be justified or grounded and how it relates to the other formulations of the categorical imperative. This set of issues, though important, is not our focus he…Read more
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3679Thinking, Conscience and Acting in the Face of Mass EvilIn Andrew Schaap, Danielle Celermajer & Vrasidas Karalis (eds.), Power, Judgement and Political Evil: In Conversation with Hannah Arendt, Ashgate. pp. 89-104. 2010.If there is one lesson that Hannah Arendt drew from her encounter with Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem it was that the moral and political dangers of thoughtlessness had been grossly underestimated. But while thoughtlessness clearly “has its perils”, (LMT 177) as the example of Eichmann illustrates, thoughtfulness has its own problems, as the example of Heidegger illustrates. In the course of her 1964 interview with Günter Gaus, Arendt recalls her distaste for “intellectual business” that arose from…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
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Kantian Ethics |
Computer Ethics |
Ethics of Artificial Intelligence |
Value Theory |
Moral Evil |
Video Games |