Perhaps nothing really fascinates
like good and evil. Perhaps there is nothing more human, or indeed inhuman.
Perhaps there is nothing more profound or, as Hannah Arendt famously reminds
us, more banal. Perhaps there is nothing that so appeals to the rhetoric of
political leaders and nothing that is less examined by rational argument.
Perhaps also, there is no better time than to consider these issues in the
light of modern social psychology scholarship and examine the way in which the
contemporary understandings and uses of the terms illuminate our current
situation.

The book is an edited volume.
Miller, the editor, has his own area of interest in the legacy of Stanley
Milgram and the obedience experiments, but he canvasses opinion and argument
from a wide and sometimes contentious field. In 18 chapters the authors
evaluate the central questions of inquiry. The situationist perspective is described
by Philip Zimbardo who, while drawing on his own seminal work in the Stanford
Prison Experiment, gives a concise and clear overview of the essential debate:
can and do good people do evil things? Zimbardo argues that they can and do,
and that by locating evil, however it may be defined, in the person alone
rather lets situational arrangements off the hook. Yet it remains true that
most people who do evil do not regard themselves as such. How then can these
tensions be relieved? Zimbardo contends that significant and profound changes
occur in the psychology of individuals when they are embedded in situationally
defined roles. Norms shift, social pressures mount and group behaviors can
dominate. It is not a great leap of imagination to consider the relevance of
these arguments to recent scandals in the Iraq war. Can, or should, the
behavior of soldiers in Abu Grahib prison be explained in this way? Although
the book was written before many of current issues in Iraq came to light the
inference is clear, and there is a noteworthy section on suicide bombers. The
chapter also contains an interesting analysis in which the notion of heroism is
redefined as resistance to, or rising above these social pressures. It is
easier to go along than to resist, although resisting may be what we all
imagine ourselves doing.

However, Zimbardo’s perspective is
not the only way of examining the issue. Does basic human need dictate matters?
If so, as Ervin Straub suggests, participating in genocide or acting in a
benevolent way are dependent on the manner in which life circumstances promote
either the frustration or fulfillment of basic needs. Morality does not appear
in the equation, and while many may contend that is a flaw, the text is about
social psychology and not morality; it is more concerned with what people do
than what they should. Mores and norms are of more concern than philosophical
debate, but sometimes they may need to be examined more thoroughly. While, for
example, self-esteem may be widely regarded as a positive virtue, the unlimited
pursuit of self gratification may also result in the increase of narcissism and
the decrease of social awareness, both leading in their turn to a more
unfettered social behavior. It is at points like this that the argument becomes
both more complicated and more interesting.

Evil and violence, so often
conflated, are explained in another chapter as having four root causes:
instrumentality or the means to an end; threatened egotism; idealism, that is
to say the belief of doing good by doing bad; and simple sadism. Of these only
the last seems not to need to justify itself. The others may all be seen to
employ justifications and rationalizations of one form or another. Even the
most atrocious of acts are cloaked with some good intent; genocide has its
apologists too. As we said, before, those who do evil do not usually see
themselves as such.

Happily though, the book is not
solely concerned with evil or evildoers. The final five chapters all consider
the "possibilities of kindness". Perhaps the one connecting thread in
all of these is the centrality of empathy. From that first empathetic moment
comes a sense of compassion and understanding; once we see others as being like
ourselves can evil persist? An empathetic connection may also hold the
possibility of reducing hostility, developing altruism and supporting
connectedness. Altruism may have its own reward. It may be more socially
productive and more individually rewarding. Empathy may also, although this is
not a topic covered by the authors, be the keystone to forgiveness — what,
after all, do we do after evil has been performed?

It may be said that the collection
in this volume are provocative and essential to our current understanding of
our world. They have relevance at many levels. At the macro level, as in the
global political situation full of empires and axes of evil, we see war and
terror continually justified and reviled in terms of good and evil (remembering
of course that we are good and they are evil). Good and evil, or perhaps
evil, have become political commodities, characteristics that differentiate us from them. These may be times of extremes and we should beware. At a
psychiatric level we wrestle with the mad and the bad, the personality
disordered and the criminal, the treatable and the incurable. And, at the most
individual and personal level we may see ourselves only one step away from
atrocity, we see ordinary men and women apparently unable to explain their
actions but shamed and perplexed; are we all capable of acts like that?

Throughout a reader is reminded of
Cassius telling Brutus, "the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But
in ourselves" or perhaps in our circumstances. But although the question
is not new, it is still relevant.

It is a fine book, rich in
scholarship and argument, rarely tendentious and often stimulating, clear and
perceptive. It is to be recommended to scholars and the interested reader
alike. It is timely and welcome.

© 2005 Mark Welch

Mark Welch, Ph.D. Assistant Professor in the Faculty of
Nursing at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta and Co-Director of the
PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing & Mental Health.

Categories: Ethics, Psychology