ABSTRACT
This argument employs evil obliquely, in order to consider the patterns certain positions fall into when oriented around that idea. Evil is associated with transgression of divine authority, with interruption of natural grace, with unnatural pride, with lust, with justification for the necessity of authority to restrain and punish evil. Evil interrupts the steady flow of the quotidian. Evil is exceptional, evil is
at the extreme other pole to the everyday. Evil is invokedwhen the behaviour so categorized is inexplicable. Evil is not an explanation; evil is the denomination of the exhaustion of explanation. However, circulating around the notion of evil, a certain disposition of
forces can be described schematically: knowledge of good and evil is the temptation which induces Adam into disobedience of god’s taboo, and the prize of this rebellion, which makes Adam a challenger to god’s authority. After the fall, there is human authority, god-proxies who take Adam’s gain, knowledge of good and evil, as a justification for aping god. And there is punished humanity which has to evade being the object of moral judgement in asserting, first, aesthetic distance, second, human intimacy.
