Read David Loye's article: The Concept of Evil

April, 2022

David Loye's article titled The Concept of Evil was recently published in the Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, edition 3, vol. 4.

In the article, Loye dives into the following topics around the concept of evil:

Cultural sources of evil
Physiological sources of evil
Biological and evolutionary sources of evil
Existential sources of evil
Evil: a religious view
Evil: a philosophical view
Violence as evil and what to do about it

Read David Loye's introduction to The Concept of Evil

Today, the question of what is evil has become relevant in new and ever more urgent ways. Climate change, xenophobia, prejudice, pandemics, inequality, threats of nuclear and biological warfare, terrorism, and the rising tide of authoritarianism make the question of what really “is” evil ever more pressing.

If we go back into history and what we know of human evolution, it seems likely that ever since the first humans began to abstract concepts out of, perhaps, the experience of unjustified or unnatural death, the problem of evil has been centrally troublesome. One stream of Christianity has defined evil as what happens when one goes against or falls away from “God,” attributing everything of this sort to “Satan.” A stream of Hinduism defines evil as an illusion, only “Maya.” Philosophers have further tried to define evil in various ways on which they often widely disagree. We will further pursue these traditions in which a far richer heritage of thought exists about what evil is than in science. But, we open here with science because evil is so seldom addressed from the scientific perspective, yet it is this perspective that we must above all now understand if we are to more effectively solve the problems—particularly those of climate change, inequality, and violence in an age of nuclear and biological weaponry proliferation—that give rise to the concept of evil.

We invite you to read Loye's article The Concept of Evil in entirety, in the Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, edition 3, vol. 4. below:

This article was originally published in Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, 3rd Edition, published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for non-commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution's administrator.

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