Forti, Simona. “Evil and Power”

Simona Forti’s chapter “Evil and Power” was published in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil (2002), which discusses the importance of learning about evil, what it is, how it takes form, and where it comes from. The Handbook is an essential read for researchers in the fields of ethics and philosophy of psychology; however, its discussion of evil is also relevant to those working within the field of perpetrator studies. “Evil and Power” provides an overview of how philosophers have theorized the concept of “political evil in the twentieth century through a hegemonic paradigm” (306). In this chapter, Forti works her way through the history of philosophy to her main point surrounding obedience which is the basis for the book she later published on this subject, named New Demons: Rethinking Power and Evil Today (Forti, 2015).

In her argumentation, Forti discusses several well established concepts within the theorization of evil, among which the absence of good as discussed by Plato, who states that people commit evil because they do not know the right thing to do. In this case, evil is a form of ignorance, stating that if people had all the information, they would do good. In this situation, those in a position of power are the ones that should know better but usually do not. Forti adds that, according to Hegel, power and evil are two sides of the same coin.

Forti then discusses religious conceptions of evil, which construct the disobedience of Satan, Adam and Eve towards God as the original form of evil. It is their free choice to disobey, but as a result, evil has traditionally been coded as transgression. In this conception, freedom thus becomes the absolute transgression; however, in order to disobey, people need power, which is where power and evil become interconnected.

Forti moves on to the concept of the shepherd and his flock: if power is evil then how can one justify or legitimize wanting to be in a position of power? By claiming that the need for power is not to “dominate” but to “care” (Forti 309). Here Forti discusses how intent determines the nature of power and how this can illustrate whether or not evil is connected to it. While, initially, this comes out of the religious context, it can also be applied to other structures in which we recognize a “model of power … between shepherds and their flocks” (310). In this model it is determined that using power for care is good, in which case disobedience is evil; however, power for personal gain is evil, in which case disobedience can be good. Forti then mentions how there is essentially evil in all of us, how power creates a degree of “oppression and domination” (312), and that attempting to understand where evil comes from (both in terms of the shepherd as well as the flocks) does not mean justifying the evil acts committed.

Forti then discusses what she calls the “Dostoevsky paradigm” to further explain the conception of evil as the absolute transgression, of using power to destroy. This paradigm, she then states, is too easy, as it would assume a too simplistic connection between evil and destructive intentionality, which, in turn, creates a binary between absolute victims and perpetrators. Here is where Forti then moves to biopolitics, the politics of life, where people destroy in order to preserve life. In this paradigm, the perpetrators do not actually want to destroy, but rather want to maximize the value of life. Here, evil is in the service of life and not in the service of death. This new paradigm she discusses further in her book New Demons (see the bibliography entry on this book for more information on the deconstruction of the Dostoevsky paradigm and biopolitics).

Forti concludes the chapter by discussing the issue of obedience in Nazi Germany as an example of the exclusion of others to maximize life and security. Lastly, she refers to Levi’s discussion of the grey zone, where people are ambiguous rather than either victims or perpetrators, stating the focus of inquiry should not be on how and “why we become malevolent subjects but rather [on]… how we become compliant subjects” (314).

Further reading

Forti, Simona. New Demons: Rethinking Power and Evil Today. Translated by Zakiya Hanafi. Stanford University Press, 2015.

Barry, Peter Brian. “Evil Characters.” The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil, edited by Thomas Nys and Stephen De Wijze. Routledge, 2019, pp. 234-244.

Nys, Thomas and Stephen De Wijze. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil, edited by Thomas Nys and Stephen De Wijze. Routledge, 2019.

Author of this entry: Alyssa Vreeken.

Forti, Simona. “Evil and Power.” The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil, edited by Thomas Nys and Stephen De Wijze. Routledge, 2019, pp. 306-316.