Museum as Medium: Temporality, Memory, and Intricacy of Evil in Museo

Background: Evil In Theory: Diachrony Vs. Synchronicity

To start with, evil is a term that is quite hard to pin down, particularly in its difference from the categories of bad, or wrongdoing. American Heritage Dictionary defines evil as something “morally reprehensible”, “causing discomfort or repulsion” or “causing harm” (n.d). This definition is still too broad and does not provide a satisfactory distinction from the category of bad, which is defined as “morally objectionable”, “injurious” and “harmful” by the very same dictionary (n.d). What is more, the word evil is even presented as a synonym of bad. Yet, evil is definitely more complex and multilayered than its basic definitions, and there is no consensus over a definition. For instance, according to Steiner evil is “wrong acts that are pleasurable for their doers” (2002, p. 189). This secular interpretation of evil is psychologically more complex and fundamentally different from wrongdoing (Calder, 2019, p. 221). Neidleman writes that Hillel’s interpretation of evil is limiting, on the basis that it reduces the term only to “the most diabolical actions” (2019, p. 106). There are other noteworthy attempts to distinguish evil from bad or wrongdoing. In this line, Goldberg writes that evil and wrongdoing are close to and/or far from each other as much as genocide and theft are related to each other (2019, p. 328), because there is a considerable moral threshold to pass in order to commit an evil act (Formosa, 2019, p. 264). Similarly, Eve Garrard separates wrong and evil through the example of massacres or genocide (2019, p. 189) but also states that secular perspectives and definitions of evil are still “quite limited” in terms of their explanatory power (2019, p. 200). Stephen de Wijze asks the same question on the difference between evil and wrongdoing, and states that evil and wrongdoing can be separated on the basis that the if the former is “left unchecked it could destroy or seriously undermine accepted and established moral/social/political boundaries,” which could “make viable social and political coexistence impossible” (2019, p. 204). Also, Todd Calder separates evil actions from non-evil acts by pointing to the form, when he writes that “evil actions have a quality of evilness that non-evil actions lack” (2019, p. 230). Based on the several definitions above, our first proposal is that the concept of evil is hard to define as it does not have an immediate essence or content. In other words, in a culture-specific context, evil may have different definitions, and this is why many scholars attempt to define it through its form, not its content, which is the exact reason for which finding an overall definition for evil is a grueling task.