Evil and Moral Psychology

Barry (philosophy, Saginaw Valley State U.) presents a novel inquiry into evil personhood and what separates those persons from other morally dubious individuals. He provides a "psychologically thick" account of evil that aims to be more consistent with our pre-theoretic intuitions about evil. To this end he compares what he calls evil-skepticism and evil-realism. Against the concern of Nietzscheans who would have us abandon the emotional language of evil altogether, Barry sticks to the language of evil, and even argues in a later chapter on capital punishment that if putting people to death is ever "morally permissible" it is when they are evil. In this vein he speculates on the contemporary ramifications of "evil" in politics as well as abnormal psychology, but he also takes issue with the "myth of pure evil" and how it need not haunt sober assessments such as he provides. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Peter Brian Barry is AssociateProfessor of Philosophy at Saginaw Valley State University, USA.