Arresting Karadzic: Mark of Cain

This week's news of the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who is accused of the genocide of many thousands of Bosnian Muslims, prompted me to reflect on the baleful presence in history of what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called "radical evil." What did Kant have in mind? In the absence of the legal or moral constraints of civilization, mankind descends into barbarism with terrifying swiftness. Radical evil is, by definition, ineradicable — it is rooted deep within us, beyond the reach of culture or society. Radical evil is what Augustine meant by original sin, but the truth that such abstract concepts embody is even older, at least as old as the Hebrew Bible. The third chapter of the Book of Genesis tells the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve, a story so sublime and awesome that it provided the... [read full story]