Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Darkness and Silence: Evil and the Western Legacy
- 3 Constructivism and Evil
- 4 Systemic Evil and the Limits of Pluralism
- 5 Unreasonable or Evil?
- 6 Evil in Contemporary International Political Theory: Acts that Shock the Conscience of Mankind
- 7 Doing Evil Justly? The Morality of Justifiable Abomination
- 8 Evil and the Left
- 9 The Glamour of Evil: Dostoyesvsky and the Politics of Transgression
- 10 The Rhetoric of Moral Equivalence
- 11 Banal but not Benign: Arendt on Evil
- Index
7 - Doing Evil Justly? The Morality of Justifiable Abomination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Darkness and Silence: Evil and the Western Legacy
- 3 Constructivism and Evil
- 4 Systemic Evil and the Limits of Pluralism
- 5 Unreasonable or Evil?
- 6 Evil in Contemporary International Political Theory: Acts that Shock the Conscience of Mankind
- 7 Doing Evil Justly? The Morality of Justifiable Abomination
- 8 Evil and the Left
- 9 The Glamour of Evil: Dostoyesvsky and the Politics of Transgression
- 10 The Rhetoric of Moral Equivalence
- 11 Banal but not Benign: Arendt on Evil
- Index
Summary
[I]f you are confronted with two evils, thus the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether … The weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.
Hannah ArendtAt the end of a war, when peace is not concluded, it would not be inappropriate for a people to appoint a day of atonement after the festival of thanksgiving. Heaven would be invoked in the name of the state to forgive the human race for the great sin of which it continues to be guilty, since it will not accommodate itself to a lawful constitution in international relations.
Immanuel KantINTRODUCTION
When faced with a choice between courses of action both or all of which have significant attendant costs or drawbacks – a scenario to which politics is, by its nature, especially prone – we are wont to call the choice on which we settle ‘the lesser of two evils’ (or the ‘least evil’ if the options were more numerous). We employ this phrase when we believe our choice has incurred the least cost compared with the alternatives and, to that extent, it is proffered in justification of the choice made. But it is also an acknowledgement that there is a cost which we should not forget: the choice is not, or has not led to, an unalloyed good.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Evil in Contemporary Political Theory , pp. 124 - 142Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011