ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the destruction or disabling of practical reason and what its consequences are. The idea of such disablement amounts to the question of whether Aristotle has a theory of radical evil.
The chapter begins by explaining that the expression “radical evil” is used in line with Aristotle’s own terms eschatos, teleutaios, and akratos (which, in the Politics, describe extreme cases of deviant or bad constitutions) and by alleviating some initial worries about whether there is indeed a notion of radical evil in Aristotle (4.1). It then turns, first, to the Nicomachean Ethics and the analysis of beastliness (thêriotês) and the excess of intemperance to shed light on radically evil individuals who manifest a total atrophy of practical reason (4.2) and, second, to the Politics to explain how Aristotle describes radically degenerated political communities on the basis of considerations regarding political justice and the common good (4.3). It proves that in both the Ethics and the Politics, Aristotle employs two complementary notions of kakon—namely, badness as the opposite of virtue and as a privation. The chapter closes by addressing the issue of evil’s curability: redemption is always an open possibility, and, hence, evil populates the practical domain without compromising its existence (4.4).
