Thoughts on Philosophy and Evil

Philosophers should be passionate about this subject, if they are passionate about anything. But we should try not to let our passions blind us to sober, good faith reasoning, otherwise we will cease being philosophers at all. So, at the risk of repetition, let me underscore one last time very clearly what I have argued in this paper, and what I have not. 1. Evil involves the knowing desire to cause crippling life-, meaning-, or world-destroying harm to (an)other morally salient being(s), for no publically justifiable reason(s); 2. Not all philosophy “is” evil, or forms or justifies evil beliefs, motivations, or actions; 3. Philosophy’s training of people to challenge their own and others’ beliefs, as well as the immoderate beliefs at play in strong passions, can play a small but vital role in challenging the intellectual preconditions and rationalizations of forms of evil; 4. Some philosophies nevertheless have formed and rationalized evil-generative beliefs, motivations, and actions, including justifying the very worst historical evils, which makes a metaphilosophical reflection on this subject morally serious; 5. The only justifications evil agents can seek for their actions must be supramoral, calling into question ordinary beliefs, and as such they will tend to be “philosophy-like” or “pseudophilosophical”, if not formally philosophical; 6. Evil-justifying beliefs such as those positing malign invisible conspiracies which must be combatted, like philosophical visions, posit hidden causes and principles shaping apparent actions and events which call into question standard opinions and perceptions, and to this extent also are pseudophilosophical (but see 3); 7. We should be very careful about attempts to deny 4, including by suppressing reference to disturbing passages in renowned philosophers, lest this action inadvertently participates in one dimension of evil, the need to publically deny its existence or possibility; 8. The denial that any putative philosophy that propounds evilgenerative beliefs or prescriptions can be “philosophical” is understandable, but insufficient; 9. Philosophy’s search for hidden causes, natures, structures and functions that explain reality as we ordinarily experience it, outside or “above” the “city” of most human life presents a vocational hazard that philosophers should guard against: that of looking down with scorn, contempt, or even hatred of nonphilosophers; 10. looking down with scorn, contempt, or even hatred of nonphilosophers is one possible evil-generative belief, or it can cross-pollinate other evil-generative beliefs appealing to other, non-philosophical morality-trumping reasons to scorn, hate, and thus potentially justify cripplingly harming others; 11. a metaphilosophy which does not address the relationship between philosophy and evil, as Plato did by including Callicles and Thrasymachus amongst Socrates’ interlocutors, will be decisively incomplete.