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Through a glass darkly: children are “only semi-socialised” PHOTOS ALAN HARVEY/MAGNUM ©DAVID

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THE NS ESSAY II Of men and monsters By Terry Eagleton

The murderers of James Bulger have been demonised as evil, as if they were born that way. But is evil really innate? And do we need religion to explain the ills of the world? Fifteen years ago, two ten-year-old boys tor- A police officer involved in the case of the and it followed that they could not be punished tured and killed a toddler, James Bulger, in the murdered toddler declared that the moment for it as severely as he might have wished. This north of England. There was an outcry of public he clapped eyes on one of the culprits, he knew mistakenly implies that an action that has a horror, though why the public found this par- that he was evil. This is the kind of thing cause cannot be freely undertaken. Causes in ticular murder especially shocking is not en- that gives evil a bad name. The point of demon- this view are forms of coercion. If our actions tirely clear. Children, after all, are only semi- ising the boy in this way was to wrong-foot have causes, we are not responsible for them. socialised creatures who can be expected to be- the soft-hearted liberals. It was a pre-emptive Evil, on the other hand, is thought to be un- have pretty savagely from time to time. If Freud strike against those who might appeal to social caused, or to be its own cause. This is one of is to be credited, they have a weaker superego or conditions in seeking to understand why they its several points of resemblance with good. moral sense than their elders. In this sense, it is did what they did. And such understanding Apart from evil, only God is said to be the cause surprising that such grisly events do not occur can always bring forgiveness in its wake. Call- of himself. more often. Perhaps children murder each other ing the action evil meant that it was beyond There is a kind of tautology or circular argu- all the time and are simply keeping quiet about comprehension. Evil is unintelligible. It is just ment implicit in the policeman’s view. People it. William Golding seems to believe, in his a thing in itself, like boarding a crowded com- do evil things because they are evil. Some novel Lord of the Flies, that a bunch of unsuper- muter train wearing only a giant boa constric- people are evil in the way that some things are vised schoolboys on a desert island would tor. There is no context which would make coloured indigo. They commit their evil deeds slaughter each other before the week was out. it explicable. not to achieve some goal, but just because of the Perhaps this is because we are ready to be- Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme sort of people they are. But might this not mean lieve all kinds of sinister things about children, or reason. An English Evangelical bishop wrote that they can’t help doing what they do? For the since they seem like a half-alien race in our in 1991 that clear signs of Satanic possession policeman, the idea of evil is an alternative to midst. Since they do not work, it is not clear included inappropriate laughter, inexplicable such determinism. But it seems that we have what they are for. They do not have sex, though knowledge, a false smile, Scottish ancestry, thrown out a determinism of environment only perhaps they are keeping quiet about this, too. relatives who have been coal miners, and the to replace it with one of character. It is now your They have the uncanniness of things which habitual choice of black for dress or car colour. character, not your social conditions, which resemble us in some ways but not in others. None of this makes sense, but then that is how drives you to unspeakable deeds. It is not hard to fantasise that they are collec- it is with evil. The less sense it makes, the more So people like the policeman are really pes- tively conspiring against us, in the manner of evil it is. Evil has no relations to anything be- simists, even though they would probably John Wyndham’s fable The Midwich Cuckoos. yond itself, such as a cause. bristle at the accusation. If Satan is what you Because children are not fully part of the social In fact, the word has come to mean, among are up against, rather than adverse social condi- game, they can be seen as innocent; but for other things, “without a cause”. If the child tions, evil would seem to be unbeatable. And just the same reason, they can be regarded as killers did what they did because of boredom this is depressing news for (among other peo- the spawn of Satan. The Victorians swung con- or bad housing or parental neglect, then – so the ple) the police. Calling the boys evil dramatises stantly between angelic and demonic views of police officer may have feared – what they did the gravity of their crime, and seeks to cut off

their offspring. was forced upon them by their circumstances; tender-hearted appeals to social conditions. t

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t It makes the culprits harder to forgive. But it freedom are bound closely together. For those Wouldn’t a truly wicked Fagin succeed in cor- does so only at the cost of suggesting that this who do not grasp this point, trying to account rupting that will? Doesn’t the child’s un - kind of malignant behaviour is here to stay. for wicked acts is always a devious attempt assailable virtue unwittingly let the old rascal If the young killers of the toddler could not to let their perpetrators off the hook. But to off the hook? We might also ask ourselves, help being evil, however, then the fact is that explain why I spend my weekends cheerfully with Oliver’s impregnable innocence in mind, they were innocent. Most of us, to be sure, boiling badgers alive is not necessarily to con- whether we really admire a goodness that can- recognise that small children can no more be done what I do. Not many people imagine that not be put to the test. The old-fashioned puri- evil than get divorced or enter into purchase historians seek to explain the rise of Hitler in tan view that virtue must prove its credentials agreements. Yet there are always those who order to make him look more alluring. in strenuous combat with its enemies, and in believe in bad blood or malevolent genes. If It is also odd to assume that understanding doing so must expose itself to something of some people really are born evil, however, they is bound to lead to greater tolerance. In fact, their depraved power, has something to be said are no more responsible for this condition than the reverse is often true. The more we learn of for it. being born with cystic fibrosis. The condition the futile massacres of the First World War, which is supposed to damn them succeeds only forexample, the less we feel they can be justi- s far as responsibility is con- in redeeming them. fied. Explanations may sharpen moral judge- Men and women who are evil are sometimes cerned, Kant and a right-wing ments as well as soften them. Besides, if evil tabloid such as the Daily Mail said to be “possessed”. But if they really are the really is beyond explanation – if it is an unfath- helpless victims of demonic powers, they are to have a good deal in common. omable mystery – how can we even know Morally speaking, both hold that be pitied, not condemned. The film The Exor- enough about it to condemn evildoers? The cist is interestingly ambiguous about whether we are entirely responsible for word “evil” is generally a way of bringing argu- what we do. In fact, such self-responsibility we should feel loathing or compassion for its ments to an end, like a fist in the solar plexus. A diabolical little heroine. People who are sup- is thought to be the very essence of morality. Either human actions are explicable, in which On this view, appeals to social conditioning are posedly possessed raise the hoary old question case they cannot be evil; or they are evil, in of freedom and determinism in thrillingly simply a cop-out. Many people, conservatives which case there is nothing more to be said point out, grow up in dismal social conditions theatrical form. Is the devil inside the Exorcist about them. child the true essence of her being (in which yet become law-abiding citizens. This is rather The police officer’s use of the term “evil” was like arguing that because some smokers don’t die case we should fear and loathe her), or is it an clearly ideological. He was probably afraid alien invader (in which case we should feel pity of cancer, nobody who smokes dies of cancer. for her)? Is she just the defenceless puppet of It is this doctrine of absolute self-responsibility this power, or does it spring straight from who If evil is beyond which has helped to overpopulate the death she is? Or is evil a case of self-alienation, in the explanation, how can we rows of US prisons. Human beings must be seen sense that this hideous force is both you and as wholly autonomous (literally: “a law unto not you? Perhaps it is a kind of fifth columnist, condemn evildoers? themselves”), because to invoke the influence yet one installed at the very core of your iden- of social or psychological factors on what they tity. In that case, we ought to feel pity and fear do would be to reduce them to zombies. In the that people would go easy on the offenders cold war era, this was equivalent to reducing at the same time, as Aristotle thinks we should because of their tender years, and saw the need when watching tragedy. them to that worst horror of all: Soviet citizens. to insist that even ten-year-olds are morally So killers with a mental age of five, or battered responsible agents. (In fact, the public did not wives who finally turn on their pugnacious hose who wish to punish others go easy on them at all, and there are still those husbands, must be as guilty as Goebbels. Better for their evil, then, need to claim who are eager to kill them.) So “evil” can be a monster than a machine. that they are evil of their own free translated here as “answerable for one’s own There is, however, no absolute distinction will. Perhaps they have deliber- actions”, just like its opposite, good. Goodness between being influenced and being free. A ately chosen evil as their end, like is also sometimes thought to be free of social good many of the influences we undergo have Shakespeare’s Richard III, with his conditioning. The greatest of modern philoso- to be interpreted in order to affect our behav- defiantT “I am determined to prove a villain”; phers, Immanuel Kant, held just such a view. iour; and interpretation is a creative affair. It is the Satan of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with his This is why Dickens’s Oliver Twist remains not so much the past that shapes us as the past “Evil, be thou my good”; or Jean-Paul Sartre’s untainted by the lowlife of criminal London as we (consciously or unconsciously) interpret Goetz in the play Lucifer and the Lord, with his into which he is plunged. Oliver never loses it. And we can always come to decipher it dif- boast “I do Evil for Evil’s sake”. Yet you might his sweet countenance, moral rectitude and ferently. Besides, someone free of social influ- always claim that people like these, who con- mysterious ability to speak standard English ences would be just as much a non-person as sciously opt for evil, must already be evil to do despite having been brought up in a work- a zombie. In fact, he or she would not really be a so. Maybe they are somehow opting for what house. (The Artful Dodger, one suspects, human being at all. We can act as free agents they already are, like Sartre’s waiter playing at would have spoken broad cockney even if he only because we are shaped by a world in which being a waiter. Maybe they are simply coming had been raised in Windsor Castle.) But this this concept has meaning, and which allows us out of the moral closet, rather than assuming is not because Oliver is a saint. If he is immune to act upon it. None of our distinctively human an entirely new identity. to the polluting influence of thieves, thugs behaviour is free in the sense of being absolved The policeman in the toddler killing case, so and prostitutes, it is less because he is morally from social determinants, which includes such it would seem, was trying to discredit the lib- superior than because his goodness is some- distinctively human behaviour as poking peo- eral doctrine that to understand all is to forgive how genetic, as resistant to the mouldings of ple’s eyes out. We would not be able to torture all. This might be taken to mean that people are circumstance as freckles or sandy hair. If and massacre without having picked up a great indeed answerable for what they do, but that an Oliver just can’t help being good, however, many social skills. Even when we are alone, awareness of their circumstances will incline his virtue is surely no more to be admired it is not in the sense in which a coal scuttle or us to treat them leniently. But it might also be than the size of his ears. Besides, if it is his the Golden Gate Bridge is alone. It is only be- taken to suggest that, if our actions are ration- purity of will which renders him immune to cause we are social animals, able through lan- ally explicable, we are not responsible for them. the malignancy of the underworld, can the guage to share our inner life with others, that The truth, on the contrary, is that reason and underworld really be as malignant as all that? we can speak of such things as autonomy and

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self-responsibility in the first place. They are be redeemed. For high modernists such as Franz There are, so to speak, “horizontal” forms of not terms that apply to earwigs. To be respon- Kafka, Samuel Beckett, or the early T S Eliot, transcendence as well as “vertical” ones. Why sible is not to be bereft of social influences, but there is indeed something to be redeemed, but should we always think of the latter? to relate to such influences in a particular way. it has become impossible to say quite what. The modern age has witnessed what one It is to be more than just a puppet of them. The desolate, devastated landscapes of Beckett might call a transition from the soul to the “Monster” in some ancient thought meant, have the look of a world crying out for salva- psyche. Or, if one prefers, from theology to among other things, a creature that was wholly tion. But salvation presupposes sinfulness, and psychoanalysis. There are many senses in independent of others. Beckett’s wasted, eviscerated human figures which the latter is a stand-in for the former. Human beings can indeed achieve a degree of are too sunk in apathy and inertia even to be Both are narratives of human desire – though self-determination. But they can do so only in mildly immoral. They cannot muster the for religious faith that desire can finally be the context of a deeper dependence on others of strength to hang themselves, let alone set fire consummated in the kingdom of God, whereas their kind, a dependence which is what makes to a village of innocent civilians. for psychoanalysis it must remain tragically them human in the first place. It is this that evil To acknowledge the reality of evil, however, unappeased. In this sense, psychoanalysis is denies. In Shakespearean drama, those who is not necessarily to hold that it lies beyond all the science of human discontent. But so, too, is claim to depend upon themselves alone, claim- explanation. You can believe in evil without theology. With Freud, repression and neurosis ing sole authorship of their own being, are al- supposing that it is supernatural in origin. play the role of what Christians have tradition- most always villains. You can appeal to peo- Ideas of evil do not have to posit a cloven- ally known as original sin. In each case, human ple’s absolute moral autonomy, then, as a way hoofed Satan. It is true that some liberals and beings are seen as born in sickness. But they are of convicting them of evil; but in doing so you humanists, along with the laid-back Danes, thereby not beyond redemption. Happiness is are pandering to a myth that the evil them- deny the existence of evil. This is largely be- not beyond our grasp; it is just that it requires selves have fallen for in a big way. cause they regard the word “evil” as a device for of us a traumatic breaking down and remaking, People differ on the question of evil. A recent demonising those who are really nothing more for which the Christian term is conversion. poll reported that a belief in sin is highest in than socially unfortunate. It is what one might Both sets of belief investigate phenomena Northern Ireland (91 per cent) and lowest in call the community-worker theory of morality. which finally outstrip the bounds of human Denmark (29 per cent). Nobody with any first- It is true that this is one of the word’s most knowledge, whether you call this the enigmatic hand acquaintance with that pathologically priggish uses. But to reject the idea of evil for unconscious or an unfathomable God. religious entity known as Northern Ireland this reason works better if you are thinking The theory of evil I have expounded here (the greater part of Ulster) will be in the least of unemployed council-estate heroin addicts draws heavily on the thought of Freud, not amazed by that first finding. Ulster Protestants rather than serial killers or the Nazi SS. It is least on his idea of the death drive; but I hope clearly take a dimmer view of human existence hard to see the SS as merely un fortunate. One that this kind of argument also remains faithful than the hedonistic Danes. One takes it that should be careful not to let the Khmer Rouge to many a traditional theological insight. One Danes, like most other people who have been off the same hook on which delinquent teen - advantage of such an approach is that it ranges reading the newspapers, do indeed believe in agers are impaled. more widely than most recent discussions of the reality of greed, child pornography, police evil have done. A lot of these inquiries have violence and the barefaced lies of the pharma- ven though evil transcends every- been wary of straying too far from Kant, ceutical companies. It is just that they prefer not day social conditioning, this does a philosopher who has much of great interest to call these things sins. This may be because not mean that it is necessarily to say of evil, and from the Holocaust. In the they think of sin as an offence against God supernatural, or that it lacks all end, evil is indeed all about death – but about rather than as an offence against other people. human causality. Many things – the death of the evildoer as much as that of It is not a distinction that the New Testament art and language, for example – are those he annihilates. l has much time for. more than just a reflex of their social circum- Terry Eagleton is professor of English On the whole, postmodern cultures, despite E stances, but this is not to say that they drop literature at the National University of Ireland, their fascination with ghouls and vampires, from the skies. The same is true of human be- distinguished professor of cultural theory at have had little to say of evil. Perhaps this is ings in general. If there is no necessary conflict Lancaster University and professor of English because the postmodern man or woman – cool, between the historical and the transcendent, literature at the University of Notre Dame. provisional, laid-back and decentred – lacks it is because history itself is a process of self- This is an edited extract from his next book, the depth that true destructiveness requires. transcendence. The historical animal is one “On Evil” (Yale University Press, £18.99) For postmodernism, there is nothing really to who is constantly able to go beyond itself. newstatesman.com/writers/terry_eagleton

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