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KEKES, John. The Roots of Evil. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. xiii + 261 pp. Cloth, $29.95.-Kekes's latest book is a perceptive, clear, and carefully considered illustration of the fable of "the six blind men and the elephant" (p. 181) to explanations of human evil: most of the usual explanations, which attribute evil variously to internal or external or activeor passive causes, seize on an element of the truth but go wrong when they deny the relevance of the other elements. The first part of the book describes in fascinating detail six paradigm cases of evil, and the second, more theoretical, part considers leading metaphysical, biological,and psychological explanations as a context for his own view. This book can be understood quite independently of Kekes's earlier work, Facing Evil (Princeton, 1990); where there is overlap Kekes does not change his conclusions but does provide what he regards as better reasoning for them.
The evil that concerns Kekes here tends not to be the dreary but minorstuff that gets so much attention on the local newscasts. Definingevil as involving three components-"the malevolent motivation of evildoers;the serious, excessive harm caused by their actions; and the lackof morally acceptable excuse" (p. 2)-he focuses on six actual and horribleexamples: the 13th century Albigensiaii Crusade against the Cathars,Robespierre's terror during the French revolution, the Nazi FranzStangl's participation in the murder of almost one million victims at Treblinka,the murders by Charles Manson and his "family" in 1969, the...