Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring We regularly encounter appalling wrongdoing, with the media offering a depressing parade of violent assault, rape, and murder. Yet sometimes even the cynical and world-weary amongst us are taken aback. Sometimes we confront a crime so terrible, so horrendous, so deeply wrong, that we reach for the word ''evil''. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were not merely wrong, but evil. A serial killer who tortures his victims is not merely a bad person. He is evil. And as the Holocaust showed us, we must remain vigilant against the threat of evil. But what exactly is evil? If we use the word ''evil'', are we buying into a naive Manichean worldview, in which two cosmic forces of good and evil are pitted against one another? Are we guilty of demonizing our enemies? How does ''evil'' go beyond what is merely bad or wrong? This Very Short Introduction explores the answers that philosophers have offered to these questions. Luke Russell discus
