Evil as a Category of Modern Political Thinking

The article attempts to analyze the understanding of evil both in contemporary political discourse and in everyday word usage. For this purpose, it is proposed to revisit the problem of theodicy, since evil is almost always used in a religious sense. The article distinguishes between the process of secularization, as a result of which the omnipotence of God becomes the property and instrument of political power, and the deconstruction of Christianity, which allows us to move from political theology to secular theodicy, where our ability to think and recognize evil in the world, rather than the problem of Gods justification, comes to the fore. The author argues that this is impossible within the framework of political theology, where political evil always conceals and justifies itself. This is the fate of all theodicies, which Kant calls “doctrinal,” in which reason, making a claim against god (or transcendence) is always able to justify it. Kant considers the Book of Job to be the only “authentic” theodicy in which it is suffering itself, or Jobs conscience, immanent to the world, that sues god. This is an important step in the direction of secular theodicy, but it is also limited in its desire to be subsumed by deity or authority. The paper suggests that we should pay attention to Jobs wifes call to her husband to “curse the Lord and die.” These words become the origin of an alternative theodicy – a theodicy of action, a theodicy of the victim refusing to speak to god. The author finds the beginnings of such a theodicy in Jules Michelets historical analysis of the religious massacres of witches, where the latter appear as victims, as well as in Jean Amerys analysis of torture and his idea of the rehabilitation of the ressentiment. The line of rebellion leading from the words of Jobs wife to the unprecedented forms of violence of power provoked by the fear of this rebellion leads to the understanding of evil not as religious (opposing good), but as a political phenomenon of the modern world, manifested in excessive violence against the powerless victim.