Luke Russell, "Being Evil: A Philosophical Perspective" (Oxford UP, 2020)
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What basic questions does the episode raise about the meaning of ‘evil’?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello, thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talise, I'm Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figder, Alexis McLeod, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Luke Russell. Luke is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. His research focuses in moral philosophy, where he pursues questions about virtue and vice, forgiveness, and evil. His recent book brings these concerns together. It is titled Being Evil and it's just been published by Oxford University Press. No. Evil is among our everyday moral concepts. In fact, it's common to hear politicians and others condemn certain acts, purposes, people, or even populations as evil.
But what does it mean to call something evil? Is evil simply the exceedingly bad or wrong? Is evil rather a distinctive kind of wrongness or badness? Is it a kind of wrongness at all? Maybe it's morally of its own kind. Are there acts that are evil regardless of the motives of those who commit them? Or is it that people are the things that fundamentally are evil or not? It takes only a few simple questions like the ones above to complicate our familiar conception of evil. And that's partly the point of Luke Russell's fascinating book. In it, he takes the reader step by step through a philosophical analysis of the concept of evil. Along the way, he develops and defends his own view of what evil is all about.
As usual, there's a lot to talk about, but we will also begin as we usually do with with our guest, the author. Hi Luke.
Hi Bob, thanks very much for inviting me to be on the show.
No problem at all. Thank you for the book. Um, you know, we usually start these um interviews uh with a little bit about the author. So um can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Sure. So I as you said, I am an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney. Um and I teach ethics and critical thinking here. Um and uh my uh I guess my um my approach to these philosophical questions is to um try and make sense of and bring some clarity to ordinary, everyday moral discussions that seem a bit confused and contentious. And that's certainly the case with discussion of evil.
It
sure does. Um
c can I ask these if if you don't mind, like um Sort of uh uh some people, let me put it this way, um, you know, there's a the there's a um a kind of methodological dispute, I suppose, among sort of value theorists in general about um where our philosophical reflections ought to begin. Some think that they ought to begin with um the kinds of uh ideas or concepts that That we reach for when things are going good. Like justice. And then there are those who think no that the really interesting philosophical starting points are um looking at places where things are going badly or things are falling apart or things are deteriorating. Um Uh in thinking about evil, now you've you've written a book about evil, you've edited a book about evil.
Is there some methodological commitment to thinking um you know uh in the in well in a way that sometimes is called the thinking of the non thinking in the non ideal circumstances?
Sure. So with um my approach to evil um was not so much motivated by, you know, a uh a fascination with failure, with with the extreme, but more motivated by what struck me as a a very unusual situation that occurred after the September eleven terrorist attacks in the United States. When George W. Bush uh condemned the terrorists as evil and said what they did was evil, and declared that certain nations constituted an axis of evil.
How does Luke Russell’s personal background shape his philosophical inquiry into evil?
And this is a very public announcement by a political figure that drew a lot of conflicting responses. And so one way of responding to what G. W. Bush said then was to say, well, isn't that kind of ridiculous and old fashioned and exaggerated and misled leading and perhaps even a dangerous way to think about what's happened. Um whereas there are others who applauded his response and said this is exactly the kind of language that we need and exactly the kind of conceptual tool that we need to respond to that kind of extreme wrongdoing.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What basic questions does the episode raise about the meaning of ‘evil’?
0:01–4:38
2
How does Luke Russell’s personal background shape his philosophical inquiry into evil?
4:38–12:16
3
Why does the post‑9/11 political discourse motivate a deeper analysis of the term ‘evil’?
12:16–25:02
4
What is the “philosophical puzzle of evil” and how does it differ from the theological problem of evil?
25:02–37:35
5
How do response‑dependent accounts (horror, disgust, revulsion) aim to explain evil actions?
37:35–53:20
6
Why do psychological‑hallmark theories (malice, sadistic pleasure) struggle to capture all cases of evil?
53:20–59:48
7
What is Russell’s final definition of an evil action and why does he consider it “extreme culpable wrong”?
59:48–1:04:04
8
How does the book distinguish between an evildoer and an evil person, and what moral implications follow?
1:04:04–1:04:58
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