Being Evil by Luke Russell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

Abstract

Luke Russell’s Being Evil is an extraordinarily clear and succinct presentation of the leading accounts of the nature of evil action. Russell surveys these theories, offering concise criticisms of each, thereby paving the way for a defense of his own view according to which evil actions are just extreme cases of certain types of wrongdoing. The clarity and range of Russell’s discussion, in conjunction with the brevity of the book – the text itself is only 127 short pages –make it an excellent choice for someone wanting a quick overview of the field with some critical content, an accompaniment to an undergraduate course on the topic, or as a unit in amorewide-ranging ethics course. Russell notes that there are some who think that we should get rid of the concept of evil because it is a ‘myth’ requiring supernatural commitments to some sort of demonic entities. Thus, he says, ‘those...whowant to defend this concept are required to give a plausible and informative definition of evil, and to show that this definition accurately describes some things in the real world’ (p. 45). Beginning in Chapter 2 he surveys accounts of evil which see it as qualitatively different from ‘ordinary wrong-doing,’ accounts which attempt to locate that qualitative difference in either (i) our reactions to the action, (ii) the psychology of the agent, or (iii) the nature of the harm caused by the action (p. 45). In responding to each of these appeals to some special feature that marks off evil actions from non-evil wrongdoing, Russell progresses through several versions, refining them until he reaches a final version. I will discuss his general objections to appeals to each of the three features that have been suggested as possible candidates for what makes a qualitative difference between evil and ordinary wrong-doing. Chapter 2 discusses ‘response-dependent’ accounts of evil action, i.e. accounts which hold ‘that the qualitative difference that marks out evil actions is a distinctive response from victims or third-party observers’ (p. 43). Such a response might be emotive (horror or