The Christian Science Monitor has an article that upon reading the title and tag line appears extremely intriguing:

Calling Evil by name

A word once reserved for atrocities is now used liberally. But does the rude guy at the airport deserve the label?

The article itself indeed follows up on the title and is well worth reading. A taste to prompt further reading:

“You need to ask why is it that we’re so surprised when the alleged BTK killer [in Wichita] ends up being someone who lives among us and works in our church and is a Cub Scout leader,” says Daryl Koehn, an ethicist at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and author of a new book, “The Nature of Evil.” “We want evil to be monstrous,” she says, “because if evil is monstrous, then by definition it doesn’t look like us.”



On some level, it’s appropriate for people to be able to name evil when they see it, to help identify behaviors that are profoundly destructive, says Professor Schmidt, an ordained Episcopal priest. But he cautions that such labeling should be done carefully – and humbly.



“The difficulty is that that kind of language can obscure a more sophisticated analysis of people’s behavior,” he says. “To call people evil potentially dehumanizes them and therefore makes them potentially the object of punitive actions taken without regard to their humanity.”



It also may shift the gaze away from considering society’s own responsibility for events, and for their causes.



“For example,” he says, “what are the roots of racism? What are the dynamics that cause someone to become a suicide bomber? What are the dynamics behind those kinds of activities; how do you address them?”

There’s much more, all extremely thought provoking, so read the whole thing as they say…


—
Cross-posted at Random Fate.