ABSTRACT

There are many theories about what makes certain acts, or agents, evil. What constraints govern such theories? The most obvious is that our theories should be about evil, rather than some adjacent concept. But the concept of evil is itself contentious: We consider three distinct views about it. Eliminativism claims that the term carries misleading religious or metaphysical overtones and should be entirely abandoned. For assimilationism, the term ‘evil’ does no more than pick out acts that are, roughly, extremely wrong or harmful. Distinctivism (which is our own view) claims that ‘evil’ picks out a property distinct from wrongness, however extreme.

Eliminativism is implausible: ordinary people, often in entirely secular contexts, competently use and understand the term ‘evil’. Luke Russell attempts to distinguish evil acts from all others via conceptual analysis: A list of platitudes about our usage reveal the contours of the concept, which, Russell claims, support assimilationism. We argue that his technique, though legitimate for descriptive terms, is inadequate in the case of evaluative terms. We suggest that the concept of evil picks out those acts which evoke, and merit, a response of moral horror; this is a distinctivist position.