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ISSUE 5 WINTER 2001/02

On Evil
An Interview with Alenka Zupancic

CHRISTOPH COX

In the past several years, we have seen a marked return to "the

question of evil" among philosophers and psychoanalytic
theorists. Is there something about our particular historical
moment that forces us to rethink what "evil" might mean? Or is
the question of evil perennial, something repressed that
continues to return and assert itself?

The theoretical necessity of rethinking the concept of evil is linked to

the more general interest in the question of ethics. To a considerable
extent, this interest is polemical: The way the word "ethics" has been
used lately in public discourse is bound to provoke some theoretical and
conceptual nausea. It is used either to back up some political or legal
decision that nobody is willing to assume fully, or else to keep in check
certain developments (in science, for instance) that seem to move much
more quickly than our "morals" do. To put it simply, "ethics" is thought
of as something strictly restrictive; something that, in the hustle and
bustle of our society, marks a place for our intimate fears. In philosophy
as well as in psychoanalysis, a conceptual revolt against this notion of
ethics took place. The question of evil and its possible definitions arose
in reaction to this broader conceptual frame.

The fact that something keeps returning usually means that we are
dealing with a conjunction of the impossible and the necessary. Evil
seems to be a perfect candidate for such a conjunction. Why is this
return happening today? The best I can do to provide a general answer
to this question is to point out that the political, economical, and
technological events of the recent past have had an important impact
on our notion of "the impossible." The impossible has, so to speak, lost
its rights. On the economic level it seems as if what was once referred
to as an economic impossibility (i.e. the limits that a given economic
order sets to our projects, as well as to our life in general) is being
redefined as some kind of natural impossibility or natural law, (i.e. as
something that cannot be changed in any way). The explosion of new
technologies inspires something that one could call a "desperate
optimism." On this level, it seems that almost everything is possible,
but in a way that makes us feel that none of these possibilities contains
what Lacan calls a Real, an "absolute condition" that could catch and
sustain our desire for more than just a passing moment. On the political
level, the fall of Communism has made western democracies lose sight
of their own contradictions and all alternatives are declared impossible.
So, if we consider all this, what you call the return of the question of
evil might be a way for the impossible to remind us that we have not
yet done away with its necessity.

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The philosophical category of evil can also introduce some distance and
reflection into what isand always has beenan inherent bond between
evil and the Imaginary. Evil has always been an object of fascination,
with all the ambiguity and ambivalence that characterize the latter.
Fascination could be said to be the aesthetic feeling of the state of
contradiction. It implies, at the same time, attraction and repulsion.
"Evil" is not only something that we abhor more than anything else; it is
also something that manages to catch hold of our desire. One could
even say that the thing that makes a certain object or phenomenon
"evil" is precisely the fact that it gives body to this ambiguity of desire
and abhorrence. The link between "evil" (in the common use of this
word) and the Imaginary springs from the fact that we are dealing
precisely with something that has no image. This is not as paradoxical
as it might sound. Strictly speakingand here I am drawing more on
Lacanian psychoanalysis than on philosophythe Imaginary register is
in itself a response to the lack of the Image. The more this lack or
absence is burdensome, the more frenetic is the production of images.
But also (and here we come back to the question of evil), the more
closely an image gets to occupy the very place of the lack of the Image,
the greater will be its power of fascination.

Within reality as it is constituted via what Lacan calls the Imaginary and
the Symbolic mechanisms, there is a "place of the lack of the Image,"
which is symbolically designated as such. That is to say that the very
mechanism of representation posits its own limits and designates a
certain beyond which it refers to as "unrepresentable." In this case, we
can say that the place of something that has no image is designated
symbolically; and it is this very designation that endows whatever finds
itself in this place with the special power of fascination. Since this
unrepresentable is usually associated with the transgression of the
given limits of the Symbolic, it is spontaneously perceived as "evil," or
at least as disturbing. Let us take an example: When it comes to the
stories that play upon a neat distinction between "good" and "evil" and
their conflict, we are not only more fascinated by "evil" characters; it is
also clear that the force of the story depends on the strength of the
"evil" character. Why is this so? The usual answer is that the "good" is
always somehow flat, whereas "evil" displays an intriguing complexity.
But what exactly is this complexity about? It is certainly not about some
deeper motives or reasons for this "evil" being "evil." The moment we
get any kind of psychological or other explanation for why somebody is
"evil," the spell is broken, so to speak. The complexity and depth of
"evil" characters are related to the fact that they seem to have no other
reason for doing what they are doing but the fun (or spite) of it. In this
sense, they are as "flat" as can be. But at the same time, this lack of
depth can itself become something palpable, a most oppressive and
massive presence. In these stories, as well as in what constitutes the
individual or the collective Imaginary, evil is usually precisely this: that
which lends its "face" to some disturbing void "beyond representation."

The important point to remember here is that this "void" is structural

and not empirical. It is not some empty space or no man's land that
could be gradually reduced to nothing or conquered by the advance of
knowledge and science. The fact that science itself can function as the

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embodiment or the agent of evil is significant enough in this regard.

Take the recent example of Dolly, or of cloning in general. It is clear
that here we are dealing with a striking transgression of the limits of
our Symbolic universe. In this example, we can also grasp what makes
the difference between image and Image. Dolly looks like any other
sheep; her "image" is just like the image of any other sheep. And yet,
her place in the Symbolic, or rather, the fact that there is no established
place for such a being in the given Symbolic order, endows her image
with a special "glow."

So, the first important thing that the philosophical (as well as
psychoanalytical) perspective can bring to the question of evil is thus to
establish and maintain the difference between this void, which is an
effect of structure, and the images that come to represent or embody it.
Not to confound the two is the first step in any analysis of phenomena
that are referred to as "evil."

I'm interested in the idea that "evil has no image." In our

reservoir of images, is there an adequate image of evil? Is there
an image of evil that "occupies the very place of the lack of the
Image"? Those images that spring to mind (monsters, the face
of Hitler, representations of the devil) always seem somehow
inadequate.

Let's start with Hitler. It is probably no coincidence that the two best
movies about Hitler are comedies: Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be and
Chaplin's The Great Dictator. The image of Hitler is funny. It is funny
because it is so inadequate. In Chaplin's movie, the image of Hitler is
the same as that of the Jewish barber, which is precisely the point.
Images of monsters and devils are inadequate because they try to
"illustrate" evil. The point is not that real evil cannot be illustrated or
represented, but that we have tendency to call "evil" precisely that
which is not represented in a given representation. As to the question of
whether there is an image of evil that occupies the very place of the
lack of the Image, I would say yes, there is. It is what we could call a
"sublime splendor," "shine," "glare," "glow," or "aura." It belongs to the
Imaginary register, although it is not an image, in the strict sense of the
word; rather, it is that which makes a certain image "shine" and stand
out. You could say that it is an effect of the Real on our imagination, the
last veil or "screen" that separates us from the impossible Real.

In To Be or Not To Be, Lubitsch provides a very good example of "the

image that occupies the very place of the lack of the Image." At the
beginning of the film, there is a brilliant scene in which a group of actors
is rehearsing a play that features Hitler. The director is complaining
about the appearance of the actor who plays Hitler, saying that his
make-up is bad and that he doesn't look like Hitler at all. He also says
that what he sees in front of him is just an ordinary man. The scene
continues, and the director is trying desperately to name the mysterious
"something more" that distinguishes the appearance of Hitler from the
appearance of the actor in front of him. One could say that he is trying
to name the "evil" that distinguishes Hitler from this man who actually
looks a lot like Hitler. He is searching and searching, and finally he
notices a photograph of Hitler on the wall, and triumphantly cries out:

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"That's it! This is what Hitler looks like!" "But sir," replies the actor, "this
picture was taken of me." Needless to say, we as spectators were very
much taken in by the enthusiasm of the director who saw in the picture
something quite different from this poor actor. Now, I would say that
there is probably no better "image" of the lack of the Image than this
"thing" that the director (but also ourselves) has "seen" in the picture
on the wall and that made all the difference between the photograph
and the actor. One should stress, however, that this phenomenon is not
linked exclusively to the question of evil, but to the question of the
"unrepresentable" in general.

At left is a photograph of Yakov Peters, the chief of Stalin's secret police, as he

appeared in the 1935 political album Ten Years of Uzbekistan designed by
Alexander Rodchenko. When Peters and other party members were later
liquidated by Stalin, posessing images of them became illegal. Rodchenko used
thick black India ink to defaace their portraits in his own copies of the album.
The defaced copies remained in his apartment until they were discovered by
David King during a 1984 visit to the late artist's studio where three generations
of Rodchenkos were still living together. Photos courtesy of David King Collection

Why is it that evil captures the imagination but the good does
not? Ethics would seem to be bound to the idea that the good is
attractive, allied with the beautiful and, as such, something that
solicits our desire. But, as you suggest, the opposite is perhaps
more plausible. The combination of attraction and repulsion one
finds in evil seems, perversely, more attractive to us. What does
this tell us about our desire and about the nature of evil and the
good?

Here I turn to Kantian ethics, which utterly breaks with the idea that the
good is attractive and, as such, can solicit our desire. Kant calls this
kind of attractionthis kind of causality"pathological" or nonethical.
Moreover, Kant rejects the very idea that ethics can be founded on any
given notion of the good. In Kantian ethics, we start with an
unconditional law that is not founded on any pre-established notion of
the good. The singularity of this law lies in the fact that it doesn't tell us
what we must or mustn't do, but only refers us to the universality that
we are ourselves supposed to bring about with our action: "Act only
according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it

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should become a universal law," goes the famous formulation of Kant's

categorical imperative. The only definition of "good" in Kantian ethics is
that of an action which, firstly, satisfies this demand of the universal
and, secondly, has this demand for its only motive. The Kantian notion
of the good has no other content. Only an action that is accomplished
according to the (moral) law and only because of the law is "good." If I
act out of any other inclination (sympathy, compassion, fear, desire for
recognition, etc.), my action cannot be called ethical (or "good"). The
uneasiness that this aspect of Kantian theory often provokes springs
from the fact that he rejects as "non-ethical" not only egoistic motives
but also altruistic ones. Kant doesn't claim that altruism cannot be
genuine or that it always masks some deeper egoism. He simply insists
on the fact that ethics is not a question of lower or higher motives, but
a question of principles.

Recall that, in Hannah Arendt's famous example, Nazi

functionaries like Eichmann took themselves to be Kantians in
this respect: They claimed to act simply on principle without any
consideration for the empirical consequences of their actions. In
what way is this a perversion of Kant?

This attitude is "perverse" in the strictest clinical meaning of the word:

The subject has here assumed the role of a mere instrument of the Will
of the Other. In relation to Kant, I would simply stress the following
point, which has already been made by Slavoj Zizek: In Kantian ethics,
we are responsible for what we refer to as our duty. The moral law is
not something that could clear us of all responsibility for our actions; on
the contrary, it makes us responsible not only for our actions, but
alsoand foremostfor the principles that we act upon.

Returning to the question of the good, what is most intriguing in Kant's

conception of ethics is that, strictly speaking, there is no reason (or
necessity) for the good being good. The good has no empirical content
in which its goodness could be founded. The good is good for itself; it is
good because it is good. With this conception, Kant revolutionized the
field of ethics. By separating the notion of good from every positive
content, preserving it only as something which holds open the space for
the unconditional, he accomplished several important things. One that
should interest us in this discussion is that he undermined the classical
opposition between good and evil. In my reading of Kant, this is related
to the fact that the moral law is not something that one could
transgress. One can fail to act "according to the principle and only out
of the principle"; but this failure cannot be called a transgression. This
has some important consequences for the Kantian notion of evil. Let me
briefly sketch this notion.

Kant identifies three different modes of "evil." The first two refer
precisely to the fact that we fail to act "according to the (moral) law and
only because of the law." One technical detail that will help us to follow
Kant's argument: Kant calls "legal" those actions that are performed in
accordance with the law, and "ethical" those which are also performed
only because of the law. Now, if we fail to act "ethically," this can
happen either because we yield to motives that drive us away from the
"legal" course of action, or because our course of action, "legal" in itself,

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is motivated by something other than the (moral) law. An example:

Let's say that someone is trying to make me give a false testimony
against someone that he wants to get rid of, and he threatens to hurt
me if I refuse. If I give the false testimony because I want to avoid
being hurt, this implies the first configuration described above. But it
can also happen that I refuse to give the false testimony because, for
instance, I fear being punished by God. Which means that I do the right
thing for the wrong (Kant would say "pathological") reasons. My action
is "legal," but it is not "ethical" or "good." One can see immediately that
these two modes of "evil" have little to do with what we usually call
"evil." In these instances, "evil" simply names the fact that the "good"
did not take place.

Kant goes on to formulate a third mode of evil, which he calls "radical

evil." A simple way of defining this notion is that it refers to the fact that
we give up on the very possibility of the good. That is to say, we give
up on the very idea that something other than our inclinations and
interests could ever dictate our conduct. Here again, the term "radical
evil" does not refer to some empirical content of our actions or to the
"quantity of bad" caused by them. In my view, it is completely wrong to
relate this Kantian notion to examples such us the Holocaust, mass
murders, massacres, and so on. Radical evil is not some most horrible
deed; its "radicalness" is linked to the fact that we renounce the
possibility of ever acting out of principle. It is radical because it perverts
the roots of all possible ethical conduct, and not because it takes the
form of some terrible crime. I said before that the principal function of
the Kantian notion of the good is to hold open the space for the
unconditional or, to use another word, for freedom. Radical evil could be
defined as that which closes up this space.

<

Photographs of Trotsky from a 1927 album Ten Years of Soviet Power. The
imgae to the right is from a defaced copy of the book found by David King at a
Moscow bookstore. It is unknown who defaced the book. Photos courtesy of
David King Collection

Is your conclusion, then, that our "contemporary ethical

ideology" is "radically evil," insofar as it gives up on the idea of

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"the impossible," of anything beyond the empirical?

Precisely. It is noteworthy that in the Critique of Practical Reason

(1788), when Kant speaks of "empiricism in morals," he describes this
empiricism with exactly the same words that he later uses to describe
"radical evil" (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone [1793]). A
radically evil man is not someone whose only motive is to do "bad
things," or someone who couldn't care less about the law. It is rather
someone who willingly conforms to the law, provided that he can get
the slightest benefit out of it. In Kantian theory (which has little to do
with what I was speaking about earlier in terms of "the collective or
individual Imaginary of evil") radical evil refers only to two things. It
refers, firstly, to the fact that our inclinations are the only determining
causes of our actions and, secondly, to the fact that we have consented
to our inclinations functioning as the only possible motives of our
actions. This consent or decision is, in fact, a matter of principle. But it
does not imply that we do "bad things" (in the sense of actions that are
not in conformity with the moral law) out of principle. It implies that, on
principle, our inclinations are the exclusive criteria upon which we
decide the course of our actions. These actions may very well be "legal"
in the Kantian sense of the word. They may well be in conformity with
the law. There needs to be nothing "horrible" about them.

I should, perhaps, point out that there is yet a fourth notion of evil that
Kant speaks about: so-called "diabolical evil." Within the architectonic of
practical reason, diabolical evil is the conceptual counterpart of the
supreme good. Kant claims that diabolical evil is conceptually
necessary, but empirically impossible. In my view, one should rather
say that this notion is conceptually redundant, since, strictly speaking, it
implies nothing other than what is already implied in the notion of the
supreme good. Here I am, so to speak, going with Kant against Kant.
Let me explain. According to Kant, "diabolical evil" would occur if we
were to elevate opposition to the moral law to the level of a maxim. In
this case the maxim would be opposed to the law not just negatively (as
it is in the case of radical evil), but directly. This would imply, for
instance, that we would be ready to act contrary to the moral law even
if this meant acting contrary to all our inclinations, contrary to our
self-interest and to our well-being. We would make it a principle to act
against the moral law and we would stick to this principle no matter
what (that is, even if it meant our own death).

The difficulty that occurs with this concept of diabolical evil lies in its
very definition: Namely, diabolical evil would occur if we elevated
opposition to the moral law to the level of a maxim (a principle or a
law). What is wrong with this definition? Given the Kantian concept of
the moral lawwhich is not a law that says "do this" or "do that," but
an enigmatic law that only commands us to act in conformity with duty
and only because of dutythe following objection arises: If opposition
to the moral law were elevated to a maxim or principle, it would no
longer be opposition to the moral law; it would be the moral law itself.
At this level, no opposition is possible. It is not possible to oppose
oneself to the moral law at the level of the (moral) law. Nothing can
oppose itself to the moral law on principle (i.e., for non-pathological
reasons), without itself becoming a moral law. To act without allowing

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pathological incentives to influence our actions is to do good. In relation

to this definition of the good, (diabolical) evil would then have to be
defined as follows: It is evil to oppose oneself, without allowing
pathological incentives to influence one's actions, to actions which do
not allow any pathological incentives to influence one's actions. And this
is just absurd.

Earlier, in your discussion of evil and the image, you described

"evil" as occupying the space of the impossible. Yet, on your
view, "the impossible" is also precisely the space of ethics.
What, then, is the relationship between evil and the impossible,
evil and ethics?

All along, I have been speaking about evil on two different levels: One
is the Kantian theory of evil; the other is the question of what we
generally tend to call "evil." Your question is related to this second
level.

I would agree that the space of ethics and the space of "evil" meet
around the question of the impossible. However, the "impossible"
shouldn't be understood here simply as something that cannot happen
(empirically), although we (as ethical subjects) must never give up on
it. I believe that one should reformulate this concept of the impossible,
which is predominant in Kant, in terms of what Lacan calls the "Real as
impossible." The point of Lacan's identification of the Real is not that
the real cannot happen. On the contrary, the whole point of the
Lacanian concept of the Real is that the impossible happens. This is
what could be so traumatic, disturbing, shatteringbut also
funnyabout the Real. The Real happens precisely as the impossible. It
is not something that happens when we want it, or try to make it
happen, or expect it, or are ready for it. It always happens at the wrong
time and in the wrong place. It is always something that doesn't fit the
(established or the anticipated) picture. The Real as impossible means
that there is no right time or place for it, and not that it is impossible
for it to happen. This notion of the impossible as "the impossible that
happens" is the very core of the space of ethics. There is nothing "evil"
in the impossible; the question is how we perceive its often shattering
effect. The link that you point out between the impossible and evil
springs from the fact that we tend to perceive, or to define, the very
"impossible that happens" as (automatically) evil. If one takes this
identification of evil with the impossible as the definition of evil, then I
would in fact be inclined to say, "Long live evil!"

Christoph Cox teaches philosophy, critical theory, and contemporary

music at Hampshire College. He is a contributing editor at Cabinet.

2003

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