Articles and Chapters
- D. Wong, Evil and the Morality of Conviction,
in Naming Evil Judging Evil, edited by Ruth Grant
(2006), University of Chicago Press.
(last updated on 2007/10/27)
Abstract: This essay is about the moral psychology of
those who do evil as they wage war upon evil.
My focus is the “morality of conviction”
that simplifies and polarizes for the sake of
meaning, certitude and decisiveness. My
primary example will be the downward spiral
dance between those Islamists who invoke
fundamentalist views to motivate and justify
terrorist attacks on the U.S. and its allies
(many who hold radical fundamentalist views,
of course, deny that attacks on civilians are
justified), and those in the U.S. who oppose
them but are fundamentally alike in
misperceiving the motivations of the other
side. By saying they fundamentally alike in
this respect, I am not saying that what is
done on both sides is morally equivalent all
things considered, nor do I want to say that
the fact of one’s actions being somewhat or
even a lot less worse than those on the other
side constitutes a good excuse for those
actions. A final qualification to make clear
at the outset is that the perception of the
other side as malignantly evil is but one
motivating factor for the terrorist attacks
and the U.S. response, and there is no claim
here for the primacy of this perception as a
motivating factor. The assumption of this
paper, however, is that it was and continues
to be a significant factor in the readiness
to use violence without the usual
acknowledged constraints.
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