Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-89wxm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-06T01:00:35.632Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Comprehending “Evil”: Challenges for Law and Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Douglas Klusmeyer  and
Astri Suhrke
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the aftermath of the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, the categories of “good” and “evil” have come to dominate the rhetorical response of the U.S. government. This article investigates the implications of using the concept of “evil” as a major public policy rationale. The article focuses on the Bush Administration's attempts to frame its policy around this term in the current campaign against terrorism, but also considers recent uses of the term in the growing literature on war crimes, genocide, and domestic repression. Because the concept of evil has deep roots in various theological understandings, we examine its religious meanings (largely within the Christian tradition) and the problems that arise when applying it in the secular context of government policy. In assessing these problems, we focus on Hannah Arendt's efforts to comprehend the evils of totalitarianism within a secular perspective.

We argue that in contemporary policy discourse, “evil” is mostly invoked as a term of condemnation rather than an analytical concept, and that this usage tends to inhibit rather than encourage the search for explanation. It facilitates evasion of accountability within a secular framework of justice based on positive law. The alternative is to approach terrorism in the language of secular law, which rests on fixed criteria to regulate the use of force (in situations of war) and to prosecute and punish (in matters of crime). Such an approach complements and should encourage parallel efforts to comprehend events by examining their causes and historical context.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 2002 , pp. 27 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Arendt, , “Nightmare and Flight” (1945), trans. Chevalier, Haakon, in Hannah Arendt: Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1994), p. 134Google Scholar.

2 Arendt, Preface to the 1st edition (1951) in The Origins of Totalitarianism, new edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. viii.Google Scholar

3 United Nations, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, A/55/305, S2000/809, August 21,2000Google Scholar.

4 Cited in Mirko Klarin,” ANALYSIS: SrebrenicaGenocide Judgment,” Institute for Warand Peace Reporting, http://availableatzwpr.net/index.pl?archive/tri/tri_232_l_eng.txtGoogle Scholar.

5 Nino, , Radical Evil on Trial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

6 Brauman, , Devant le mal: Rwanda, un génocide direct (Paris: Arlea, 1994)Google Scholar.

7 Berkeley, , The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. 5Google Scholar.

8 United Nations, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations para. 50Google Scholar.

9 See Bush's press conference in the Washington Post, October 12, 2001, pp. A20–21; also, bin Laden's 1998 fatwa at http://www.ciaonet.org/cbr/cbr00/video/cbr_ctd/cbr_ctd_28.htmlGoogle Scholar

10 See Frost, Mervyn, Ethics in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 The Washington Post has reported President Bush observing in the early days after September 11: “This will be a monumental struggle between good and evil. But good will prevail,” January 28,2002, p. A10Google Scholar.

12 Washington Post October 12, 2001, p. A21Google Scholar.

13 Text of President Bush's address, Washington Post, September 21, 2001, p. A24Google Scholar.

14 IbidGoogle Scholar.

15 The text of this speech is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/new/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.htmGoogle Scholar.

16 Washington Post September 21,2001, p. A24Google Scholar.

17 IbidGoogle Scholar.

18 Juergensmeyer, Mark, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 145–86.Google Scholar

19 Text of message reprinted in “A Closer Look at the Words of an Image Maker,” Washington Post October 28, 2001, p. B2Google Scholar.

20 See “Message of His Holiness Pope John ll for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace” from December 8, 2001. Available on theVatican Web site at http://www.vatican.va.

21 Koh, and Slye, , eds., Deliberative Democracy and Human Rights (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999Google Scholar).

22 Minow, , Between Vengeance and forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass 'Violence (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

23 Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Fuľlp. 5Google Scholar.

24 Arendt, , The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973)Google Scholar.

25 Kohler, Lotte and Saner, Hans, eds., Robert Kimber and Rita Kimber, trans., Correspondene of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers: 1926–1969 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), p. 62Google Scholar.

26 Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem:A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin 1994, originally published 1963)Google Scholar.

27 In our discussion of Arendt, we are particularly indebted to the insights of Robert Kunath of Illinois CollegeGoogle Scholar.

28 Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 107–10Google Scholar.

29 Durkheim, Émile, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Cosman, Carol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 315–16Google Scholar.

30 Quoted in Mann, William E., “Augustine on Evil and Original Sin,” The Cambridge Companion Augustine, ed.Eleonore Stumpp and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 46–47Google Scholar.

31 Augustine, , City of God, trans. Bettenson, Henry (New York: Penguin Books, 1984),Google ScholarBook XIV, chap. 14, p. 574.

32 Ibid., p. 571Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., p. 573Google Scholar.

34 Mann, “Augustine on Evil and Original Sin,” p. 47Google Scholar.

35 In Christian scripture, even the Apostle Paul acknowledged his own painful, personal struggles to overcome his sinful inclinations to do right before God: Romans 7:15–25Google Scholar.

36 There is no similar contradiction between a legal discourse and the search for social scientific explanations. At an institutional level, however, there is a certain tension between the objective of trial in court—which seeks to establish individual guilt or innocence—and the objective of telling a broader historical narrative. Some courts try to pursue both objectives, though without entirely escaping the contradictions between them. See Mark Osiel, Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory and the law (New Brunswick, N.I: Transaction, 2000)Google Scholar.

37 Washington Post October 12, 2001, p. A21Google Scholar

38 Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Blitics (New York: Charles Scrib-ner's Sons, 1960, originally published 1932), p. xxGoogle Scholar.

39 Ibid., p. 107Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., p. 97Google Scholar.

41 Næss, Arne, Gandhi (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2000)Google Scholar gives an excellent recent discussion of this point.

42 This executive order was reprinted in the New York Times, November 14, 2001, p. B8Google Scholar.

43 Both the Washington Post (November 16, 2001) and, especially, the New York Times (November 16, 2001) have editorially criticized this order as a “travesty of justice” and as a dangerous step toward “undermin [Ing] the rule of law.” See also the New York Timeseditorial of December 2,2001Google Scholar.

44 For a much more extended analysis, see Ronald Dworkin's “The Threat to Patriotism,” Newark Review of Books XLIX, no. 3 (February 28, 2002), pp. 44–49Google Scholar.

45 Under the provisions of the draft, an offense is committed if a person unlawfully and intentionally carries out an act to cause death or serious bodily injury, or serious damage to a state or government facility, a public transportation system, or communication system or infrastructure facility with the purpose of compelling a government or an international organization to commit to or abstain from carrying out an act. Cited in United Nations, Press Release, “Legal Committee hears calls for global collaboration in the fight against international terrorism,” GA/L/3167, November 13, 2000Google Scholar.

46 Ratner, Steven R. and Abrams, Jason S., Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities in International Law: Beyond the Nuremberg Legacy, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 331Google Scholar.

47 The ICC will have a highly limited jurisdiction that comprehends only the most egregious international crimes. Its governing statute has incorporated significant procedural safeguards to protect the prerogatives of state sovereignty. Among these safeguards, the ICC will exercise jurisdiction only when a state does not have a functioning judiciary or is unwilling to pursue in good faith a case involving its nationalsGoogle Scholar.

48 Sewall, Sarah B., Kaysen, Carl, and Scharf, Michael P., “The United States and the International Criminal Court: An Overview,” in The United States and the International Criminal Court, ed. Sewall, Sarah B. and Kaysen, Carl (New York: Rowman & little field, 2000), pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

49 Slaughter, Anne-Marie, “Al Qaeda Should Be Tried before the World,” New York Times, November 17, 2001, p. A23Google Scholar.

50 Under article II, the convention defines “genocide” to mean “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its p hysical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”Google Scholar

51 Halberstam, David, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 2001), pp. 274–78Google Scholar; Power, Samantha, “Bystanders to Genocide,” Atlantic Monthly 288, no. 2 (September 2001), pp. 84–108Google Scholar; Burkhalter, Holly J., “The Question of Genocide: The Clinton Administration and Rwanda,” World Policy Journal 2 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 44–54Google Scholar.

52 Skinner, Quentin, The foundation of Modern Political Thought, Volume Two: The Age of Refrmation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 352Google Scholar.

53 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 269Google Scholar.