Session 12(b): Evil and the Philosophers

Concurrent Session 12b: Evil and the Philosophers
Chair: Charles Nuckolls

The Role of Reflection in Good and Evil
Karen Hoffman
Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hood College, Frederick, MD, USA

In Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt suggests that Adolf Eichmann’s failure to engage in rational reflection and deliberation constitutes one of his central flaws and that if Eichmann had been more of a thinker, he would have been less of a contributor the Holocaust. The implication, then, is that reflection can act as an important bulwark against evil. Yet a review of the accounts of those who helped victims of the Holocaust seems to indicate that their choice to provide assistance was not typically the result of rational reflection and deliberation. So what role do these play in assisting individuals in doing good and in avoiding evil? My paper aims to answer this question. I begin by exploring Arendt’s account of the significance of reflection and deliberation. I then show how many of the reports of helpers in the Holocaust pose a potential challenge to Arendt’s view. Finally, I argue that this potential problem can be overcome by recognizing some of the ways in which a seemingly spontaneous judgment can itself be the result of rational reflection and deliberation

In this paper I will look at the Tractatus’ theory of meaning, which leads Wittgenstein to argue for the founding nature of ethics. For Wittgenstein, the world is made good or evil by the willing subject who has power over his own happiness and renounces the right to influence events. The non-contingent meaning of evil, by contrast, cannot be investigated scientifically.
In the phenomenological intermezzo of the thirties, Wittgenstein’s snapshots on ethics are contrasts: nothing can assure us that our past evil actions occurred; only memory witnesses our guilt.  Comparable reflections on the nature of evil are found in Lyotard’s Le Differend. In this regard, I will discuss Lyotard’s notion of non-speculative discourse.
In the Investigations, language-games are diverse to an indefinite degree. It makes sense to ask whether a single action, not a moral standard, is right or wrong (we can use the metre, but not ask for its length, cf. Luckardt’s Wittgenstein and ethical relativism). Wittgenstein is the weak draughtsman who can trace sketches of ‘landscapes’ without indicating the way out of evil. The more Wittgenstein’s language analysis grows complex, the more the theme of evil is concealed, while the importance of the unsayable leads to extremes in the Tractatus, where the word is a dead sign.
Is On Certainty nihilist? Some of its accounts are metaethically paraphrasable. Doubt about good and evil can show within a world-picture framework which is not a conventional point of departure, as the element in which arguments occur. Yet, even Wittgenstein finds it difficult to avoid ambiguously trying to go back beyond the initial framework. It is no more the abysmal lyric of the juvenile Notebooks, as the therapeutic stoicism of aphoristic that the dying Wittgenstein addresses to himself.

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Teaching and Evil: Is Philosophy Pointless When Dealing With Extremes?
Rachel Waterstradt
Loyola Marymount University, USA

In this paper I intend to address pedagogical issues concerning discussing genocide in a core philosophy course, the use of philosophy in considering the responses available for me as an individual to something as horrendous as genocide, and lastly, I will raise some possible responses for discussion in the larger forum.
This paper first addresses three key pedagogical questions.  First, what does the student gain through her philosophy class that is central to her development as a student?  Second, is philosophy to remain mute on such issues as genocide and atrocity?  Third, without logical argument, can any progress be made regarding such seemingly intractable evils?  To respond in order, first, the student gains the tools of argument without which no position can ever be defended or asserted; second, if philosophy says nothing it proclaims its own futility and uselessness; third, with people in the philosophy department and out in the community armed with the tools of logical argumentation, then progress can be made rather than merely throwing up our collective hands, quitting and going about ‘business as usual’.  Some of this progress will be examined in the possible solutions offered for discussion by the forum.
Second, one of the key uses of philosophy is its intense focus on the individual and the argument behind the choices and decisions she makes, and this is especially relevant when one considers the choices and decisions that are made with regard to genocide responses and scholarship.  I will be briefly examining the need Kierkegaard argues for in Works of Love to change the standpoint I have when I consider what is possible for me to do in order to avoid the defeatist attitudes that would lead to merely throwing up my hands and quitting – teaching or considering such large issues and problems.
Lastly, I intend to include several examples of concrete argumentation for responses to genocide and genocide scholarship – some included from my discussions with my students in my ethics seminar – including especially some insights concerning the need for changes in policy and decision-making, ethical scholarship, responsible media consumption, and the real need for people to talk to each other and learn about the issues which can, in itself, lead to solutions.  Concrete application will be made not only to the ongoing genocide in Congo, but also to Darfur and possible solutions or ways toward a solution will be raised for discussion in the larger group forum.