The Nature of Evil

Acclaimed Norwegian philosopher and academic, Lars Svendsen, discusses the fact that despite the overuse of the word in movies, political speeches, and news reports, "evil" is generally seen as either flagrant rhetoric or else an outdated concept: a medieval holdover with no bearing on our complex everyday reality.

Svendsen argues that evil remains a concrete moral problem: that we're all its victims, and all guilty of committing evil acts. "It's normal to be evil," he says — the problem is that we've lost the vocabulary to talk about it. Evil is an ordinary aspect of contemporary life, with implications that are moral, practical, and above all, political. Lars Svendsen’s new book, A Philosophy of Evil , is published by Dalkey Archive Press.

→ FT.com article - The Faces of Evil