ABSTRACT
The fact that we may know what should be done, deducing it from rational argument, does not imply that we are able to do it. Despite all clever arguments, the gap between theory and practice is still the biggest riddle of our ethical-philosophical issues. In rare moments of sincerity we may perhaps admit that best arguments are still not enough to face the multiple faces of evil. The face of one’s suffering; the face of one who provokes the suffering of others; the evil face of egoism and indifference, of despair and madness, of
hunger and death continues to surpass reason. Here we face an ‘I don’t know what to say or to think’. Nevertheless, we remain convinced that reason – in its widest philosophical spectrum of meanings – is the only way of interrupting evil. It seems that we have first to know what evil is in order to act for the sake of interrupting evil. Western philosophical tradition has developed some knowledge of evil,
which centres evil in the heart of the metaphysical question about negativity. As a negative concept, evil is what negates the Good and what can be thought only in relation to the Good. Negation of the Good has traditionally been conceived in two major senses: as privation and as perversion. Defined as privatio boni, recalling the Augustinian definition, evil is not only what is negatively related to the Good but privation as such is evil. Privation, absence, lacking, losing – all these words name the worst of all sins, that is the sin of not having, which constitutes the negative economy of evil. As privation, evil expresses what is lacking and wanting, something that is unaccomplished and incomplete. Metaphysically, evil as privation is located in finitude. Evil, placed in finitude and defined as deprivation or absence of the Good, appears as ‘condition for the Good’, and as ‘almost nothing’, recalling Leibniz’s expression: a little thing if compared with the incommensurable plenitude of the Good. Evil is thus non-Good. But even if evil is to be conceived from the perspective of the incommensurable plenitude of the Good as ‘almost nothing’, this still does not answer why evil exists. We do not have to be a Castilian king to wonder that God could have created a better world than ours – a world without evil. Does not evil hide at the end a nature which is independent from the Good? However, to affirm that evil has an independent nature outside the totality of the Good both threatens the absolute plenitude of the Good and denies the negativity of evil. It seems that ontologically, as well as theologically and logically, there is no other way left than to admit that evil is located within the Good as much as lacking finitude is located within infinite plenitude. At this point there appears a dangerous insight, namely that the Good is somehow evil and evil is somehow the Good. The danger of pantheism is the danger of the identity of good and evil. Kant’s concept of radical evil is an attempt to clear up the danger of possible identity of the Good and evil defining evil as perversion of the Good.2 Assuming evil as perversion, Kant had also to admit the possibility of perverting this perversion, the possibility of evil becoming good. Admitting that the perversion of evil can be perverted, Kant reaffirmed the sovereignty of the Good. Kant’s position seems to be a position of hope: radical evil implies the possibility of perverting the perversion of evil. From this point of view, the Good would be non-evil. But we still have to ask what kind of Good is the one that emerges from the perversion of evil? Is non-Evil good enough? As perversion of evil perversion, the Good could be considered a normalized Good, but is normalized Good enough or even able to interrupt evil? All these questions need to be asked. However, in order to answer them
it is necessary to ask a very principal question, the one about how to conceive interruption as such? In order to reflect upon this question, I will follow Schelling’s and Heidegger’s thinking, concentrating on Schelling’s essay on human freedom3 and Heidegger’s dialogue between a younger and an older prisoner-of-war in Russia.4
