ABSTRACT
In Friedrich Nietzsche's philologically based "genealogy" of evil, no equivalent of the notion "bose" had been present in the life of an ancient slave-holding society, a society which was clearly meant to be understood as that of the classical Greek polis. The modern conscientious agent manifests the most developed form of moral will. To understand why the stance of the conscientious subject must be taken to be evil requires that will go beyond the narrowly Kantian individualistic standpoint typical of modernity. In Hegel's account in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the treatment of the evil implicit in the moral worldview will lead through the dialectic of the so-called "beautiful soul" into discussions of the religious community. The existence of "evil" in the world has traditionally been seen as posing a problem for religions which, like Christianity, start from the idea of a perfect – omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent – God.
