cover image THE NATURE OF EVIL

THE NATURE OF EVIL

Daryl Koehn, . . Palgrave, $35 (320pp) ISBN 978-1-4039-6894-4

Taking a kind of Nietzschean-Buddhist approach to ethics, Koehn argues that evil results from a single source: "human suffering caused by our lack of self-knowledge"—with violence, malice and vice as evil's most visible symptoms. Executive director of the Center for Business Ethics and a chaired professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Koehn (Rethinking Feminist Ethics ) illustrates categories of evil-fostering self-delusion with a variety of dense but lucid readings from literature, including chapters devoted to "Evil as Flight from Narcissistic Boredom" (The Talented Mr. Ripley ) and "Evil as Losing the Ability to Act" (Klaus Mann's novel Mephisto ). The book's main draw is chapter eight's 30-odd pages, "Evil as Fanatical Impiety," which take September 11, Oklahoma City and other horrific events as extreme instances of fanaticism. For Koehn, fanaticism is an unhealthy attachment to an idea or cause that takes one away from knowledge of the self and toward some ultimate, unrealizable idealization of moral or civic life. The chapter centers on Plato's dialogue Euthyphro ; the ideology of its eponymous main character bears more than a passing resemblance to that of a young jihadi . For Koehn, understanding "what is holy or just" begins only in "the moment we relinquish our certainty." It's a familiar notion, but this nicely engaged set of readings gives it fresh grounding. (Apr. 16)