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Future Human Image. Volume 7, 2017 35

Evil as a Subject of Sociological Cognition:

Methodological Reflections1

Temyr Khagurov - Doctor of Sociology, Professor

Kuban State University

(Krasnodar, Russia)

E-mail: [email protected]

In this article, the question of opportunities and boundaries of scientific research of the evil is considered. It is emphasized that the notion "evil" is widely used in politics and journalism for the description of the most vital issues of the present, for instance, international terrorism. It induces social scientists to the methodological reflection of scientific and philosophical attempts of conceptualization, description and analysis of a complex of the phenomena and processes determined by the term "evil." Abrief review of such attempts in science and philosophy of the 20th century is carried out.

Despite the marginal status of the notions of Good and Evil in modern scientific discourse, the main scientific and philosophical concepts of human and society recognized in the 20th century admit the possibility of using these notions. Despite the fact that the idea of Evil is difficult to interpret as a concept term, which is the major obstacle to a scientific application of this, it is inappropriate to name it as unidentified. Such interpretation seems relevant to both social phenomena and anthropological ones.

It is noted that the essential postulates of the modern scientific perception of "The Evil" analysis in sociology have been obtained in the writings of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Karl Popper, Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. Those were Marx and Nietzsche who stated the polar vision of the phenomenology of Evil on the socio-philosophical level. Herewith, the survey of the conceptualizations and approaches to this problem is not limited with the abovementioned scientists, but involves the ideas and researches of a quite wide range of sociologists, philosophers and psychologists of the 20th century.

Thus, the contents of the article, i.e. the overview of concepts and ideas, cannot be considered as the extensive one as the theme and the reference sources analyzed are boundless. This issue is to be regarded just as an introductory attempt to give an insight into the matter and get involved into the interaction on the subject.

Key Words: Evil, deviantology, positivism, postmodernism, objectivity, sociology and psychology of Evil.

In spite of the fact that the concept "evil" seems outdated,

A remnant of the past, far from the present <...>,

Nevertheless, the evil is for us a reality.

We see the evil, we create the evil and we are exposed to the evil.

Lars Svendsen "A Philosophy of Evil"

Today, international terrorism is considered to be the world"s main evil. This is what the President of Russia said in his annual address, drawing parallels between the fight against terrorism and the one against Nazism - the main scourge of the twentieth century [Epistle,

1 Article is prepared with financial support of the Russian scientific fund, the project No. 15-18-00038 "Extremism and the ethnosocial conflicts among young people of the polietnichny region: fore-casting and prevention."

╘ Khagurov, Temyr, 2017

36 Future Human Image. Volume 7, 2017

Evil as a Subject of Sociological Cognition: Methodological Reflections by Temyr Khagurov

2015]. In fact, the term "evil" quite frequently sounds in the speeches of politicians and journalists: let us recall the notorious phrase "evil empire", which is so relished by American presidents. Hence, a vital methodological question occurs: whether what is defined as "evil" can be the subject of a scientific rather than philosophical and journalistic analysis.

"Good" and "Evil" from the viewpoint of the 19th century positivists are considered in the social sciences and humanities to be incorrect notions. Undoubtedly, such direct assessment and value judgments should be excluded from the "truly scientific" text. Following Max Weber"s advice, they need to be replaced with reference to value: in a certain society, at a particular time people supposed that "X" stands for Good, while "Y" - for Evil [Weber, 1990]. These impersonal formulas, concealing the subjective position of a scientist, entirely permeated the minds of the modern humanities. The scientist must be objective, and thus, not putting forward a personal attitude to the subject, follow the facts. This sounds positive in theory, but an extremely difficult and controversial in practice - the principle borrowed from the experiential scientists (perhaps there have been some reasons at first, but then they were obviously lost) which was finally brought to an end by postmodernism. After all, it was vital to abandon the "subjective" attributing the phenomenon to the category of Good or Evil for the sake of objectivity. It was postmodernism which destroyed objectivity. There is simply none - penetrate into the works of Jean-François Lyotard or Jacques Derrida (as well as Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre-Félix Guattari or Paul-Michel Foucault) that contain no objectivity, no notions of Good or Evil. There is only the infinite variety of phenomena (even not phenomena), and an infinite number of interpretations, which is called "the death of meta-narrative" [Lyotard, 1998]. Any objectivity observed here?

However, our goal is not to clarify the dispute between positivism and postmodernism. The main thesis of this article is equal to the opposite of both of them and implies the approval of the real (and quite objectively comprehensible) existence of Good and Evil. Let remember that these categories are very important for the spirit level of human reality [Ostapenko, 2014]. We strongly believe that these notions are not just real (i.e. having an objective, "material" and the absolute nature), but the fundamental parameters of social and personal being, which requires the introduction of these categories in the space of social and humanitarian knowledge not only philosophically, but also on the conceptual and scientific level. This undoubtedly controversial statement is required to deploy the argument.