ABSTRACT

Several connected approaches are available to those who would resurrect the understandings of earlier epochs. The one most frequently adopted is intellectual history with its focus on major philosophers. Its chief limitation is that leading philosophers seldom reflect the general perspectives of their age and often treat of their subjects in ways too abstract to illuminate the thinking of their time. The history of law, especially as it pertains to concepts of insanity and responsibility, provides so useful and important a supplement. The law in every epoch must dispose of concrete cases and solve actual problems in ways and words intelligible to disputants and defendants, judges and juries alike. In the essays comprising this volume, ‘evil‘ is examined in the on-going dialogue between legal and extra-legal conceptions of human nature.