ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how phenomenological philosophers approached the topic of evil in the first half of the twentieth century. Influenced heavily by Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations, Max Scheler pursued a phenomenological research program. Martin Heidegger's influence in phenomenology and beyond is hard to overstate. His discussions in Being and Time anticipate key points from Ricoeur's The Symbolism of Evil. In the summer semester of 1936, Heidegger offered a seminar on Friedrich Schelling's Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom. Heidegger argues that Schelling roots the condition for the possibility of evil in the separability of two principles of our being that are associated with our individuation. The first of the principles in question is that of our being distinguished from God. The principle of self-will is the second of the principles at issue. Phenomenologists appear to agree that evil is experienced as something disharmonious, disruptive, as something unpleasant – even the object of one's hatred.
