ABSTRACT
This essay analyses representations of the devil found in Part I of Goethe’s Faust and in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, using Kant and Arendt’s accounts of the nature of modern evil. It argues that Arendt’s view captures more precisely the modern devil’s evil. For, his impact on the moral agency of the principal characters in Goethe’s Faust and in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita demonstrates that modern evil is not founded on intention, as Kant maintained, but on thoughtless and petty motives that serve to disrespect the intrinsic value of rational humanity on an unprecedented scale.
