Perspectives on Evil

Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness is a wide ranging project which seeks to explore issues connected with evil, suffering, pain and the consequences of human actions. It recognises that even the language of ‘evil’ is a problem, and attempts to find ways of beginning to make sense of human wickedness.

Key themes that are central to the project include;

• the language of evil
• the nature and sources of evil and human wickedness
• moral intuitions about dreadful crimes
• psychopathic behaviour; is a person mad or bad?
• choice, responsibility, and diminished responsibility
• social and cultural reactions to evil and human wickedness
• the portrayal of evil and human wickedness in the media and popular culture
• suffering in literature and film
• individual acts of evil, group violence, holocaust and genocide; obligations of bystanders
• terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing
• the search for meaning and sense in evil and human wickedness
• the nature and tasks of theodicy
• religious understandings of evil and human wickedness
• postmodern approaches to evil and human wickedness
• ecocriticism, evil and suffering
• evil and the use/abuse of technology; evil in cyberspace

Related themes will also be identified for development and exploration. Out of our deliberations it is anticipated that a series of related cross context research projects will develop.