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Cruelty, Horror, and the Will to Redemption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Lynne S. Arnault
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Abstract

Americans cherish the idea that good eventually triumphs over evil. After briefly arguing that a proper understanding of the moral harm of cruelty calls into question the credibility of popular American idioms of redemption, I argue that the epistemic dynamics of horror help account for the commanding grip of this rhetoric on the popular imagination, and I suggest that this idiom has morally problematic features that warrant the attention of feminists.

Type
Special Cluster: Feminist Philosophy and the Problem of Evil
Information
Hypatia , Volume 18 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Indigenous Women in the Americas , Spring 2003 , pp. 155 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by Hypatia, Inc.

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