Abstract
The purpose of the introductory chapter is to make as clear as possible what will (and, just as importantly, what will not) be the focus of the book. The central question of the book is this: what makes someone an evil person? A secondary question is this: what makes an action evil? In order to make decent sense of these questions, though, I have to contrast my own use of the term “evil” with a few other common ways in which the term is used. I also clarify the notion of an evil person by contrasting it with the notion of an evildoer. The end of the chapter is an outline of the rest of the book. Part I (Chaps. 2–4) will focus on the psychology of evil, and Part II (Chaps. 5–7) will focus on the philosophy of evil.
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Sias, J. (2016). An Introduction to Evil. In: The Meaning of Evil. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56822-9_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56822-9_1
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