Rethinking Evil - Contemporary Perspectives

Suitable for moral and political philosophers, social scientists, and those who reflect seriously on the twentieth century's heavy burden of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other evidence of people's desire to harm one another, this title brings together the essays that reexamine evil in the context of a 'postmetaphysical' world. "In an environment in which philosophy increasingly shies away from the big questions, this volume takes them on in a conscientious, analytical, and enlightening way. For Lara, the problem is not just that human beings suffer but that other human beings intentionally want to make them suffer, and to suffer in such extreme ways that the explanations offered by natural and social science seem as insufficient as those offered by older theodicies. The volume makes for engrossing reading; it sheds new light on an age-old issue."—Georgia Warnke, author of Legitimate Differences "An important work because it inaugurates a distinctive secular approach to the problem of evil, which has generally been the province of theology and the philosophy of religion."—David M. Rasmussen, editor of The Handbook of Critical Theory This innovative volume will be welcomed by moral and political philosophers, social scientists, and anyone who reflects seriously on the twentieth century's heavy burden of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other evidence of people's desire to harm one another. Maria Pia Lara brings together a provocative set of essays that reexamine evil in the context of a 'postmetaphysical' world, a world that no longer equates natural and human evil and no longer believes in an omnipotent God. The question of how and why God permits evil events to occur is replaced by the question of how and why humans perform radically evil acts.