EVIL

Public policy analyst Hart (Arizona State Univ.) takes on the nastiest subject of all and finds it complex, slippery, and discomfiting—downright wicked, in a word.

For his debut, the author employs a light, even frothy tone whose effervescence almost (but not quite) vitiates his intent. Like characters in an airplane disaster film, Plato and Kant, Hannah Arendt and George Bernard Shaw sit alongside Jerry Springer, Charles Manson, and Jerry Falwell in a literary work designed to be comfortable for everyone from professors and poets to couch potatoes and fundamentalist Christians. Hart begins with Americans’ paradoxical attitude toward evil: our fear and revulsion exist simultaneously with our delight in it. We love movies with really bad guys, or even Satan himself; we demand that CNN cover celebrity murders 24/7. Hart eventually arrives at a definition of evil as “an intentional human act that causes extreme harm to innocents and attacks our basic moral order.” He considers various explanations of how evil can exist in a world God created, examines Satan and other personifications of evil, and declares that he/she/it (probably) doesn’t exist. Hart then turns to a discussion of how evolutionary biologists have come to understand evil: we’re basically wild animals in clothes, and our jungle-and-savannah behavior remains with us because we haven’t really had much time to mature. Cursing and lying get demoted in two clever, funny chapters. Our swearing is not very interesting or creative, Hart contends, and everyone lies, so how can such minor transgressions be evil? One of the best chapters concerns the widely held view that the US overflows with satanic cults. Not so, asserts the author, quoting one law-enforcement official who claimed there has not been a single documented murder ever committed by such a group. Men will not like his chapter about how they have demonized women throughout history.

Entertaining and naughty, learned and light. (12 b&w photos)