A Good Look at Evil -a book review

I'm interested in the ontology of evil -or something like that. Partly because it seems to me that in popular culture we so often find dualism and the idea of 'goodies' and 'baddies' which hardly does justice to the reality that few of those who do evil actually think that's what they're doing and that it is impossible to do evil in an extended way unless one is able to construe it as 'right' or 'good' by some frame of reference. And Solzhenitsyn's quote about the battle between good and evil running through the heart of every human seems important here.

So with those things in mind it was quite intriguing to discover that the starting place for this examination of evil was with ones life story and our construction of one. The author (Abigail Rosenthal) makes the "claim that we live, or ought to live, corrigible nonfiction narratives ".  The core thesis of this book is, in the author's words; " to show conceptually and by many illustrations how the life of an evil-doer involves deliberate sabotage of the true story that inheres in a human life, which we must protect if we would protect our goodness."

At first sight I was a bit skeptical about this: is this not in danger of becoming hopelessly subjective in such a way as to, in effect, exonerate Eichmann (and others like him)? Is this a form of existentialism?

It is also intriguing that this book was originally finished in 1987 when it was rare to think about narrative as a philosophical tool or category. It does feel like the author was prescient! It is not a straight reprint, it has been reworked to some degree and new material brought into it, some of which is comment and work with materials not available at that point to do with Hannah Arendt and her arguments.

What helped me to get with the plot was in the first paragraph of chapter one. "Agents are good, then, insofar as they try to realise the ideal stories that belong to themselves, or to anyone affected by them" I think this made sense to me because, it seems to me, that our ideal stories are ones that are about fullness of life, good relationships, harmony, fulfilment of gifts and callings, and growing personal wholeness. And it is the 'anyone affected' that helps to anchor it in more than just a personal set of choices which could be arbitrary (shades of Nietzsche).

Definitely a proposition to engage with as Christians -we have a decidedly narrative foundation document ....

Links for more info

A Good Look at Evil on Amazon
Abigail Rosenthal’s Website
Abigail Rosenthal’s Blog
A Good Look at Evil video talk

Please tag your posts for this book as #AGoodLookAtEvil

I should point out this was a review copy but having it does not commit me to making favourable comment on it.

Abigail L. Rosenthal – Just another writer.