Evil as a social action

Bibliographic Data

ID4744482
AuthorsYuki Nakamura (0000-0003-0023-4985, Keio University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume144
Issue1
Pages46-58
Publication date2018-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThesis Eleven (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0725513618756090
OpenAlexW2794249155
LanguageEN
References cited13

This paper explores how to theoretically transcend the division that exists between nonautonomous and autonomous evil. Evil in the context of this paper is a social action that harms others against their will. Traditional social theory has explained the evil in modernity as a pathology or as the result of the organizational and bureaucratic structures of society that was beyond the agency of individuals. The concepts of nonautonomous and autonomous evil developed by John Kekes are used to clarify the types of evil as a social action. It follows that structural processes that entail agency can also be applied to unify the different approaches given to evil and fill the misleading gap that exists between nonautonomous and autonomous evil. Regardless of the event or the perpetrator, evil is agency-driven and is always composed of both nonautonomous and autonomous evil. What differs is the degree of nonautonomous or autonomous evil in the social action. It shows that evil is an important part of agency regardless of the agent's awareness of the evil that actions entail within modernity, and it is therefore the task of social theory to shed light on its social processes

Bureaucracy · Epistemology · Good and evil · Modernity · Moral evil · Political ponerology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

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