Extremity of Vice and the Character of Evil

Abstract

it is plausible that being an evil person is a matter of having a particularly morally depraved character. i argue that suffering from extreme moral vices-and not consistently lacking moral vices, for example-suffices for being evil. alternatively, i defend an extremity account concerning evil personhood against consistency accounts of evil personhood. after clarifying what it is for vices to be extreme, i note that the extremity thesis i defend allows that a person could suffer from both extremely vicious character traits while possessing some modest virtue as well. By contrast, consistency theses rule out this possibility by definition. this result does not suggest that extremity accounts are flawed, however, since, as i argue, the thesis that evil people must lack moral virtue altogether effectively defines evil people out of existence and prematurely privileges skepticism about evil personhood. Ultimately, i contend that an extremity account is most consistent with common intuitions about putative evil persons as well as plausible assumptions about aretaic evaluations of character quite generally. the main fallacy which prevents people from recognizing potential Hitlers before they have shown their true faces. .. lies in the belief that a thoroughly destructive and evil man must be a devil-and look his part; that he must be devoid of any positive quality; that he must bear the sign of Cain.. .. There is hardly a man who is utterly devoid of any kindness, of any good intentions.. .. Hence, as long as one believes that the evil man wears horns, one will not discover an evil man.-erich Fromm (1973, 432) i. intrODUCtiOn ny plausible account of evil personhood must take seriously the above observation that many evildoers, even the perpetrators of great atrocities, are in some

In defense of the mirror thesis

“…On one view of things, an evil person must be consistently and thoroughly vicious, lacking any good side (Haybron 2002a, p. 269). Russell rejects this sort of consistency account of evil personhood (Russell 2010) and I concur (Barry 2009(Barry , 2010. There are, after all, plausible putative examples of evil persons who do seem to have some ''good side'' insofar as they do sometimes seem to possess morally appropriate motivation and affect; even Hitler could have cared a bit for Eva Braun.…”

“…There are, after all, plausible putative examples of evil persons who do seem to have some ''good side'' insofar as they do sometimes seem to possess morally appropriate motivation and affect; even Hitler could have cared a bit for Eva Braun. And, importantly, we are certainly not rationally required to revise our overall judgment of Hitler's character simply because he had some slight morally redeeming qualities since those qualities are altogether trumped and overwhelmed by his extreme moral vice (Barry 2010). However, while Russell allows that evil people need not be morally depraved through and through, he rejects a corollary thesis about moral saints-that is, he insists that moral saints must be morally admirable through and through, lacking any moral vice.…”

“…The sort of virtue-at least, the sort of virtue possessed by creatures like us-captured on this weaker reading only requires possession of a sufficient number of morally significant virtues possessed to rather significant degrees. And arguably, this weaker sense of virtue is sufficient for moral sainthood (Barry 2010;Wolf 1982). So, absent some independent argument for the stronger version of the unity of the virtues thesis, there seems to be little reason to adopt, and good reason to reject, the demanding (MS).…”

“…(MT*) implies that moral saints are the morally best sort of person in virtue of their extreme moral virtue, that evil persons are the morally worst sort of person in virtue of their extreme moral vice, and that their respective characters are constitutive of being saintly and evil (Barry 2009(Barry , 2010. I take it that (MT) is correct if (MT*) is, such that if the characters of evil people and moral saints are both marked by extreme aretaic properties then the mirror thesis is correct.…”

“…At present, I consider his rejection of the mirror thesis-roughly, the thesis that evil people are mirror images of the morally best sort of persons. Having discussed and defended the mirror thesis elsewhere, I count myself as one of its adherents (Barry 2009(Barry , 2010. Initially, I clarify just what the mirror thesis entails.…”