Evil and human agency: understanding collective evildoing

Cover; Half-title; Series-title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Preface; A note on the cover image; Introduction; 1 The ordinariness of modern evildoers: a critique of Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust; 2 Hannah Arendt on conscience and the 'banality' of evil; 3 The psycho-logic of wanting to hurt others: An assessment of C. Fred Alford's work on evil; 4 The logic and practice of collective evil: 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia; 5 Responses to collective evil; 6 A political postscript: globalization and the discontents of the self; References; Index.

Evil is a poorly understood phenomenon. In this provocative 2005 book, Professor Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and causing serious and foreseeable harm. Vetlesen investigates why and in what sort of circumstances such a desire arises, and how it is channeled, or exploited, into collective evildoing. He argues that such evildoing, pitting whole groups against each other, springs from a combination of character, situation, and social structure. By combining a philosophical approach inspired by Hannah Arendt, a psychological approach inspired by C. Fred Alford and a sociological approach inspired by Zygmunt Bauman, and bringing these to bear on the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents