Evil Roots

Download or read book The Roots of Evil written by John Kekes and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Evil is the most serious of our moral problems. All over the world cruelty, greed, prejudice, and fanaticism ruin the lives of countless victims. Outrage provokes outrage. Millions nurture seething hatred of real or imagined enemies, revealing savage and destructive tendencies in human nature. Understanding this challenges our optimistic illusions about the effectiveness of reason and morality in bettering human lives. But abandoning these illusions is vitally important because they are obstacles to countering the threat of evil. The aim of this book is to explain why people act in these ways and what can be done about it."—John KekesThe first part of this book is a detailed discussion of six horrible cases of evil: the Albigensian Crusade of about 1210; Robespierre's Terror of 1793–94; Franz Stangl, who commanded a Nazi death camp in 1943–44; the 1969 murders committed by Charles Manson and his "family"; the "dirty war" conducted by the Argentinean military dictatorship of the late 1970s; and the activities of a psychopath named John Allen, who recorded reminiscences in 1975. John Kekes includes these examples not out of sensationalism, but rather to underline the need to hold vividly in our minds just what evil is. The second part shows why, in Kekes's view, explanations of evil inspired by Christianity and the Enlightenment fail to account for these cases and then provides an original explanation of evil in general and of these instances of it in particular.

Download or read book The Roots of Evil written by Ervin Staub and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-07-31 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can human beings kill or brutalise multitudes of other human beings? Focusing particularly on genocide, Erwin Staub explores the psychology of group aggression. He sketches a conceptual framework for the many influences on one group's desire to harm another and within this framework, considers four historical examples of genocide.

Download or read book Roots of Evil written by Sarah Rayne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-11-17 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'She has a crisp and intelligent style, and a real way with tension' MO HAYDER When schoolteacher Trixie Smith turns up asking questions about legendary film actress Lucretia von Wolff, Lucy Trent is not unduly alarmed. She rather enjoys the notoriety surrounding her glamorous but infamous grandmother, whose lovers were legion, whose scandals were numerous, whose life ended abruptly in a bizarre double murder and suicide at the Ashwood film studios in 1952. Trixie Smith has uncovered information which she believes throws new light on the Ashwood case. In particular, she wants to know more about Alraune, the illegitimate child Lucretia was alleged to have borne at the outbreak of WWII. The child whose existence is surrounded in mystery. The child who may never have existed at all. But Trixie Smith's enquiries are brought to an untimely end. Some days later, her mutilated corpse is discovered at the derelict site of the old Ashwood studios. In the ensuing murder investigation, Lucy is to discover disturbing facts about her family's poignant and often tragic history - a history which stretches from the glittering concert halls of 1920s Vienna to the bleak environs of wartime Auschwitz - and at the heart of it all lies the shocking truth about the mysterious child called Alraune.

Download or read book Return to Daemon Hall written by Andrew Nance and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2011-07-19 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A year has passed since that fateful night in Daemon Hall's house of horrors. Bestselling macabre author Ian Tremblin decides to hold another writer's contest but this time in the safety of his own home. Tremblin is excited to share with contestants a very old book he has recently acquired that once belonged to Rudolph Daemon, the millionaire builder of Daemon Hall who later went mad and killed his family. But the book, like the mansion, is powerfully evil and soon transports the group to the burned out shell of the haunted mansion. Flesh eaters, voodoo, a proficient sociopath, and the root of the house's malevolence are all part of the mix. Who will get out alive?

Download or read book Twisted Roots of Evil written by Susan Kesegich and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true story of incest, physical abuse and mental torment and how one young girl fought back! For 17 years Louise was married to this man she had come to hate. Along with her were her five innocent children. For every year of their lives they watched their father brutally batter their mother. Each of the children were subjected to one or more of the following types of abuse. Incest. Physical Beatings. Mental Abuse. Deprivation. Rape. For years this family lived in fear and in 1977 they were failed by the judicial system when they tried to escape. They were able to get away but he only got a slap on the wrist. In 1994, seventeen years later he would not walk away. During that seventeen year period he married a severely mentally handicapped cousin and raised five more children. This second family was more severely abused. Learn from this story how a police captain from a small southern town finally brought about justice for all these victims and touched the lives of both families. This is a story of survival and strength and a story for survivors everywhere.

Download or read book The Roots and Flowers of Evil in Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Hitler written by Claire Ortiz Hill and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Hitler-a poet, a philosopher, and a politician-each profoundly understood the seductive attraction of evil. All three clearly and candidly depicted evil in idealized garb. Underheath superficial appearances of contradiction, we find in their writings uncanny insight into the human essence behind the masks of convention and hypocrisy.

Download or read book Just Babies written by Paul Bloom and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society—and especially parents—to transform them from little sociopaths into civilized beings. In Just Babies, Paul Bloom argues that humans are in fact hardwired with a sense of morality. Drawing on groundbreaking research at Yale, Bloom demonstrates that, even before they can speak or walk, babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; feel empathy and compassion; act to soothe those in distress; and have a rudimentary sense of justice. Still, this innate morality is limited, sometimes tragically. We are naturally hostile to strangers, prone to parochialism and bigotry. Bringing together insights from psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Bloom explores how we have come to surpass these limitations. Along the way, he examines the morality of chimpanzees, violent psychopaths, religious extremists, and Ivy League professors, and explores our often puzzling moral feelings about sex, politics, religion, and race. In his analysis of the morality of children and adults, Bloom rejects the fashionable view that our moral decisions are driven mainly by gut feelings and unconscious biases. Just as reason has driven our great scientific discoveries, he argues, it is reason and deliberation that makes possible our moral discoveries, such as the wrongness of slavery. Ultimately, it is through our imagination, our compassion, and our uniquely human capacity for rational thought that we can transcend the primitive sense of morality we were born with, becoming more than just babies. Paul Bloom has a gift for bringing abstract ideas to life, moving seamlessly from Darwin, Herodotus, and Adam Smith to The Princess Bride, Hannibal Lecter, and Louis C.K. Vivid, witty, and intellectually probing, Just Babies offers a radical new perspective on our moral lives.