Evil in the Western Philosophical Tradition

Gavin Rae is Associate Professor (accredited to Professor) in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. His research interests lie in nineteenth and twentieth century European philosophy, where he works at the intersection of socio-political philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, ontology, and ethics. Besides over sixty published articles and book chapters, he is the author of eight monographs, the most recent of which are The Politics of Reason: A Postfoundational Approach (Edinburgh University Press, 2026), Questioning Sexuality: From Psychoanalysis to Gender Theory and Beyond (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), and Poststructuralist Agency: The Subject in Twentieth Century Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). He has also co-edited six volumes, the most recent of which are Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism (Routledge, 2025—with Cillian Ó Fathaigh), Philosophy across Borders (Routledge, 2025—with Emma Ingala), and Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Routledge, 2021—with Emma Ingala).

Rae eschews what he calls the divide between pre- and post-Kantian conceptualizations of evil [...] and aims to show that theological language, assumptions, and motifs are implicit in secular analyses of evil.

• PrefaceIntroductionPart I: Theological Foundations1. The Rise of the Problem of Evil2. Augustine, Free Will, and Evil3. Aquinas, Privation, and Original Sin4. Descartes and the Evil of Error5. Leibniz and Theodicy: Evil as the Good Part II: From Autonomous Reason to History6. Kant on Radical Evil7. Schelling and the Metaphysics of Evil8. Nietzsche and the Genealogy of Evil Part III: Socialisation and Psychoanalysis9. Arendt on Evil: From the Radical to the Banal10. Lacan and the Symbolic Function of Evil11. Castoriadis: Evil and the Social Imaginary Part IV. The Subjects of Evil12. The Perpetrators of Evil13. Remembering the Victims ConclusionBibliographyIndex