Introductory Essay: The Myth of Evil

The world of literature is filled with evil characters, some of them portrayed with great subtlety, others more crudely, but do any of them shed light into the darker corners of the human condition? In my book, The Myth of Evil, I argue that they rarely do – the idea of evil they appeal to is often mythical, that of an enemy who seeks our suffering and destruction for its own sake rather than for any other human purpose.

However, these fictional characters do reveal something about us, not an innate capacity for evil but rather an ever-present fear of monsters. Despite our belief in reason, science and technology, we remain scared of the dark. My concern is that this fear become dangerous when it is exploited by political leaders, who transform it into a community-wide fear of an evil enemy intent on destroying our society.

My talk at the Edinburgh International Book Festival gives me the opportunity to discuss this myth of evil in a city which experienced it in a particularly intense form. Scotland was ruled by the politics of fear during the witch trial period of the 16th and 17th centuries, during which perhaps 4,000 people were executed as 'witches'. These trials and executions took place throughout the country, but the period 1590-1591 saw a large number in Edinburgh itself. The victims of these trials were tortured, strangled and burnt, or in severe cases burnt alive.

The intensity of the trials and punishments is explained by the fact that witchcraft was seen as a vast conspiracy against Christian civilization in general, and against the rule of James VI in particular. Any person discovered to be a witch had to be members of that conspiracy, working in league with others and with Satan. James VI's Demonology, printed in Edinburgh in 1596, shows how seriously he took the existence of this evil enemy.

Of course, we know now that this enemy was imaginary, but I wonder if we have learnt the lessons of this history. We seem to be ruled once more by the politics of fear, and legal rights are being suspended or abolished, and torture is being seriously considered as an acceptable weapon in our current war against evil.

But is the picture we have of the present enemy any more real? We imagine them as an enemy so powerful and dangerous that we must grant those who seek to protect us all possible powers so that they can be hunted down and destroyed, without the inconvenience of legal rights and public trial. They are an enemy without motivation, without grievance, indeed without a history, and as such we cannot reason or negotiate with them. They attack us, as it were, out of the blue.

If we were to look beyond this myth, we may discover people very different to those we have imagined.

© Phillip Cole