Evil – How Can We Think About It?

“To say that a murderer has killed because she or he is evil is really to point to an absence of motive. Far from the usual muddle of human motivation, evil has a cold, horrifying purity. Phrases like ‘unthinkable evil’ or ‘unspeakable evil’ highlight the way the word is used to say the unsayable, to explain the inexplicable. So how can we think about evil?”