Word: evil
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...except possibly the great ocean voyages that led to the discovery of the New World -and to the transformation of Western man. In Columbus's day, as German Author Joachim Leithauser has pointed out, mankind believed itself to be in its old age, destined for poverty, sickness and evil. The famous Nurnberg Chronicle of 1493 predicted: "Conditions will be so terrible that no man will be able to lead a decent life. Then will all the sorrows of the Apocalypse pour down upon mankind: Flood, Earthquake, Pestilence and Famine; neither shall the crops grow nor the fruits ripen...
...Vatican's laggard communications methods, his encyclical Humanae Vitae was released to the press before most of the world's bishops had received their copies. Its teaching, moreover, disturbed a number of national hierarchies, which subsequently modified its harsh condemnation of contraception as an absolute moral evil. The new encyclical, many bishops hope, will not only provide more clarity but also reflect a larger consensus of Catholic opinion...
...trying to help is Lionel Rubinoff, an associate professor of philosophy at Toronto's York University. For Rubinoff, the image of evil has never been farther away than the nearest mirror. That individual man is both the creator and perpetrator of evil is hardly a new idea, and Rubinoff acknowledges his indebtedness to thinkers from Plato to Sartre. It is, however, in the analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that the assumption underlying The Pornography of Power is most readily grasped. Of Stevenson's portrayal of the ambivalence of human nature, Rubinoff...
Stumbling Blocks. Few men can comfortably contemplate the concept of the natural supremacy of evil over good in humanity. The Judaeo-Christian tradition eases the anguish by holding out the hope of salvation through the exercise of a semblance of free will in the worldly fight with the Devil's forces. What is an increasingly secular age to do with its knowledge that evil is an inextricable part of man's nature? Face it, says Rubinoff. Bring it out into the open...
Predictably, the process is not easy. Besides the individual's own natural shiftiness, Rubinoff argues, one of the great intellectual stumbling blocks to such self-knowledge is liberal humanism, a near-religion that obscures the truth about human nature by assuming that evil is to be found not in man but in social and political institutions, and preaching that they, and indeed man himself, are perfectible through the application of discipline and reason. With the aid of this and other rationalizations, modern man tends to repress the natural knowledge of evil and of his own demonic urges. The result...