Nature of Evil

Koehn (business ethics, U. of St. Thomas, Texas) sorts out the evil doers from the evil deeds, and finds that those who practice evil do so out of suffering rather than malicious intent, and that suffering comes from not knowing one's true identity, an anxiety-fraught situation that leads to lashing out at those who know whom they are and eventually to destruction for both the sufferers and their targets. In this light she examines evil as vice, as losing the ability to act, as flight from narcissistic boredom, as hypocritical repression, as imagined portent, as the loss of humanity, as an act of making ourselves, others and God satanic, and as fanatical impiety. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR