By Katharina Bracht

By Brigitte Obermayr

By Isabella Willinger

By Wilhelm Roskamm

By Michael Zinganel

The basic problem of the presence of evil in the world- which was as obvious in the times of Early Christianity as it is still today - had only since the second century C.E. become a central theme of ancient intellectual thought . In both ancient philosophy as well as early Christian theology it was held as opinio communis that Evil (malum) should be considered as a deprivation of the Good (privatio boni). In this essay different manifestations of this consensus are portrayed. Three questions are used as hermeneutical key: What is Evil? Whence does Evil originate? What purpose does Evil serve? Three responses to these questions within ancient intellectual thought are presented here: Plotinus (the founder of Neoplatonism), Augustine (as leading intellectual of the Latin speaking Western theological tradition) and Methodius of Olympus as well as Gregory of Nyssa (representing the Greek speaking Eastern theological tradition).

The article treats the issue of place and space in aesthetic experience. Referring to deconstructive theories on aesthetic experience, the article claims aesthetic experience to be immoral in certain respects: Providing crisis of real life experience rather than reasonable or irreconcilable qualities, aesthetic experience kidnaps the recipient, luring him or her into an immoral space of desire. As aesthetic experience is taken to be exclusively depending on the object of aesthetic perception and reflection, this space cannot be taken as an area of freedom or choice. The structure of the aesthetic object forces the recipient to undergo an experience that cannot but be made any other place but at the very spot provided by the aesthetic structure of the text. These considerations are shown on two examples: On Nikolaj Gogol's novella »Šinel'« (»The Overcoat«, 1842) and on Thomas Bernhard's »Gehen« (»Walking«, 1971; English: Chicago University Press 2003). The analysis takes as an initial point the fact, that both texts treat ‚sparse spots' in cloth, in both of the cases leading to death and/or insanity. Thus, it is shown, how the aesthetic structure, performing insanity, becomes a twofold lieu du mal: For the aesthetic perception it is this very structure that provides the aesthetic experience. For a moral understanding of the text, though, it would cause to blame both authors of cynism or even inhuman sadism. Aesthetic experience resists transfer into non-aesthetic areas of experience.

The article describes the field of operations of human rights organizations, focusing as an example on the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch. It depicts the struggle for the implementation of human rights as being largely limited to informational work. On one level, the title »Defeating Evil by Words« refers to the verbal nature of this struggle. At the same time, though, it raises questions regarding the term evil in connection to human rights violations. Obviously, human rights transcend beyond a common global understanding of evil deeds, such as genocide. They support values that originate from a Western tradition of liberalism and individualism. Following Michael Ignatieff, the article argues against human rights as trumps of Western culture and calls for a global human rights culture instead - a worldwide system of reference by means of which rights, values and duties must be negotiated.

In Alain Badiou's complex philosphy fidelity is the hinge connecting ontology and ethics. Truth only exists because subjects are constituted through fidelity to single, contingent events. Subjects can testify to the truth of these events in different situations and thereby they offer new possibilities of thinking and acting that resist given states. Without fidelity - understood not as recallection but as practice - there is neither science nor politics, neither art nor love. Since fidelity towards these processes of truth is always precarious, the central ethical problem is how these processes can be continued and how the dangers which inhabit the good - the three forms of the evil - can be averted. Thus, the aim of Badiou's ethics of truths is not the battle against an exernal evil which is pre-existent to the good. In this regard, Badiou's philosophy can be distinguished from other contemporary ethical conceptions. In opposition to the bad and cruel, the evil is a "distortion of the good". And only by thinking the good, one can grasp the evil out of the conditions of its development and possibly prevent it.

Crime pays very well indeed - not always for the ›criminal‹ or his unfortunate victim, but certainly for ›society‹. Because according to Marx, the criminal not only produces the crime itself, but also the preventive measures against crime. The anxiety generated by real or imagined crime is not only portrayed in numerous aesthetic forms of expression, like the wax museum, crime novels and cop movies, which serve the psychological processing of crime. It is also enshrined in countless preventive structural, architectural and town-planning measures. In this way, suppositional crime opens up a sizeable market, and contributes more (according to Marx) to national income than many more reputable business sectors. If crime threatens to disappear, it is reinvented by those with a vested interest in anxiety: the police, politicians, planners, the building materials, security and insurance industries, but also artists, authors, and academics like myself whom have made this field of production the focal point of their ›research project‹. And because the debate about fear is also being conducted by feminist planners, women, too, are finally managing to capture public attention, as well as a modest share of the market - and by that they are contributing to further production of fear.