On Evil

It is possible for the term ‘evil’ to appear in all the affairs of men—war crimes, animal testing in labs, economic disasters, scientists making super weapons, and the silence about crimes in our vicinity. In attempting to give meaning to this term evil philosophy has a unique relation to it, even an intimacy.

Philosophers define evil variously, by producing linkages with other concepts such as knowledge, will, bad heart, banality, sorrow, and silence. Philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, and philosophy itself, have been implicated in the evil that men do. What is the meaning of evil in our own time? To which other concepts is evil interlinked? What is the relation between technology and evil? How did we inherit the present weight of meaning that evil has come to have? These are the questions through which this conference will proceed.

SPEAKERS
Robert Bernasconi
TITLE: “The Malice of Rage: Heidegger on Evil”
Robert Bernasconi is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies, Penn State University, USA. His areas of expertise include Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy (Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas), Critical Philosophy of Race, Social and Political Philosophy, Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Ethics, and Aesthetics.

Divya Dwivedi

Divya Dwivedi
TITLE: “Everyone Does It, No One Does It”
Divya Dwivedi is a philosopher based in the Subcontinent. She teaches philosophy and literature at the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Her research interests include Metaphysics, Philosophy of Literature, Psychoanalysis, Narratology and Political philosophy. She is the co-editor of The Public Sphere from Outside the West (Bloomsbury Academic, London 2015) and Narratology and Ideology (Ohio State University Press 2018).

© Shaj Mohan

Shaj Mohan
TITLE: “What Turns Out So Badly”
Shaj Mohan is a philosopher based in the Subcontinent. His recent research and publications have concerned metaphysics, reason, philosophy of technology, and politics. His philosophical monograph on Gandhi with Divya Dwivedi titled Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-Politics is forthcoming (Bloomsbury Academic, London).