Von Hildebrand on the Roots of Moral Evil
In this article, I sketch, both in broad outlines and in selected details, the new, richer picture of von Hildebrand’s account of moral evil as it emerges from my discovery of extensive materials in von Hildebrand´s <i>Nachlass</i> at the Bavarian State Library in Munich dealing with the...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2023-06-01
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| Series: | Religions |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/7/843 |
| _version_ | 1797587645723836416 |
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| author | Martin Cajthaml |
| author_facet | Martin Cajthaml |
| author_sort | Martin Cajthaml |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | In this article, I sketch, both in broad outlines and in selected details, the new, richer picture of von Hildebrand’s account of moral evil as it emerges from my discovery of extensive materials in von Hildebrand´s <i>Nachlass</i> at the Bavarian State Library in Munich dealing with the “roots of moral evil”. These manuscripts and typescripts, the critical edition of which will be published at the same time as this article or shortly thereafter, show that von Hildebrand´s account of moral evil is much richer, more nuanced, and complex than the one we can glean from the final section of <i>Ethics</i>, his magnum opus in moral philosophy. In this article, I also aim to situate von Hildebrand´s analysis of the roots of moral evil in the context of both Christian religious thought and the Western philosophical tradition. Von Hildebrand was, to be sure, an heir to both of these traditions, despite the thrust of his phenomenological method to “bracket” all extant theories and turn “back to the things themselves”. The mind-boggling feature of the tension between von Hildebrand´s existential rootedness in the Catholic tradition and his methodological distance to it, including the Aristotelian–Thomist philosophy, is the following: On one hand, he claims that the two ultimate roots of moral evil are pride and concupiscence, which sounds perfectly traditionally Christian. On the other hand, however, he strips these concepts of most of their traditional connotations and endows them with the meaning they acquire in the context of his phenomenological analyses. The intriguing result of this approach is the transformation of religious or moral theological concepts of pride and concupiscence into descriptive phenomenological categories which encompass an almost inexhaustible wealth of various subspecies and subordinate forms of moral evil. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T00:41:50Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-3668362426d04e1fb70da3048eb530d7 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2077-1444 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-11T00:41:50Z |
| publishDate | 2023-06-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Religions |
| spelling | doaj.art-3668362426d04e1fb70da3048eb530d72023-11-18T21:09:27ZengMDPI AGReligions2077-14442023-06-0114784310.3390/rel14070843Von Hildebrand on the Roots of Moral EvilMartin Cajthaml0Sts Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology, Palacky University, CZ-779 00 Olomouc, Czech RepublicIn this article, I sketch, both in broad outlines and in selected details, the new, richer picture of von Hildebrand’s account of moral evil as it emerges from my discovery of extensive materials in von Hildebrand´s <i>Nachlass</i> at the Bavarian State Library in Munich dealing with the “roots of moral evil”. These manuscripts and typescripts, the critical edition of which will be published at the same time as this article or shortly thereafter, show that von Hildebrand´s account of moral evil is much richer, more nuanced, and complex than the one we can glean from the final section of <i>Ethics</i>, his magnum opus in moral philosophy. In this article, I also aim to situate von Hildebrand´s analysis of the roots of moral evil in the context of both Christian religious thought and the Western philosophical tradition. Von Hildebrand was, to be sure, an heir to both of these traditions, despite the thrust of his phenomenological method to “bracket” all extant theories and turn “back to the things themselves”. The mind-boggling feature of the tension between von Hildebrand´s existential rootedness in the Catholic tradition and his methodological distance to it, including the Aristotelian–Thomist philosophy, is the following: On one hand, he claims that the two ultimate roots of moral evil are pride and concupiscence, which sounds perfectly traditionally Christian. On the other hand, however, he strips these concepts of most of their traditional connotations and endows them with the meaning they acquire in the context of his phenomenological analyses. The intriguing result of this approach is the transformation of religious or moral theological concepts of pride and concupiscence into descriptive phenomenological categories which encompass an almost inexhaustible wealth of various subspecies and subordinate forms of moral evil.https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/7/843moral evilakrasiavalueprideconcupiscencehatred |
| spellingShingle | Martin Cajthaml Von Hildebrand on the Roots of Moral Evil Religions moral evil akrasia value pride concupiscence hatred |
| title | Von Hildebrand on the Roots of Moral Evil |
| title_full | Von Hildebrand on the Roots of Moral Evil |
| title_fullStr | Von Hildebrand on the Roots of Moral Evil |
| title_full_unstemmed | Von Hildebrand on the Roots of Moral Evil |
| title_short | Von Hildebrand on the Roots of Moral Evil |
| title_sort | von hildebrand on the roots of moral evil |
| topic | moral evil akrasia value pride concupiscence hatred |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/7/843 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT martincajthaml vonhildebrandontherootsofmoralevil |