32 Philosophy Now ●August/September 2019Evil
This bias can be seen in all four criteria. The relations of the
Nazis to the Jews can clearly demonstrate this. (Please note that
many of these factors are connected.)
First, asymmetry. The Germans experienced their defeat in
World War I as a great disgrace. The Versailles peace treaty
forced on Germany huge reparations, permitted Germany only
a very small military force, and took away lands. After the war
German citizens suffered from continuing poverty and wors-
ening economic conditions. The defeat was widely seen as the
result of betrayal by communists and Jews (this is called the ‘stab
in the back’ legend). Germans who supported the Nazi Party
did not experience themselves as
strong and powerful and generally
did not perceive Jews as weak and
helpless. On the contrary, they
thought the Jews were too power-
ful, dangerous, and threatened the
safety of the German people.
An observer errs if he assumes
that the perpetrator sees the same
relatively powerless victim he does.
Whereas the observer perceives the
victim as needy, weak, and helpless,
the perpetrator often sees some-
thing very different.
Secondly, linked with that idea,
studies have found that in severe
cases of criminality perpetrators
often believe that their conduct was
justified in response to what they
perceived as an act of aggression by
their victim. From the observer’s
perspective, the Nazis must have
acted in full awareness of the Jews’
vulnerability; but from the Nazi per-
spective the Jews were not vulnera-
ble. In fact, many Germans saw
themselves as victims of Jews, not
the other way around. Similarily,
sadistic people have often them-
selves experienced severe abuse in
their childhood, and it is likely that
they perceive themselves as victims
of others. Raphael did not provoke Gabriel in any way, we may
suppose; but perhaps Gabriel the sadistic sports teacher feels con-
tinually put upon and disrespected by those around him, and
somehow has the illusion that poor Raphael is connected with
his oppressors. His abuse of Raphael is his way of reasserting con-
trol (see Cracking Up, Christopher Bollas, 1995, p.170).
Third, the sheer incomprehensibility of the Nazi actions –
the fact that the Holocaust seems to the observer senseless and
arbitrary – shows the observer’s limited capacity to understand
the Nazi mind. Many books explain the Nazis’ motives and cru-
elty, but (thankfully) they can’t make readers take the perspec-
tive of the Nazis or identify with their motives. However, per-
petrators often believe that they have good reasons to act in
what others think of as an evil way, and the Nazis were no excep-
tion. Moreover, the people who took part in that genocide weremostly normal by standard criteria of psychological health. In-
depth interviews and psychological testing revealed no sign of
psychological disturbance.
Fourth, after the evil act, an observer might hope that the per-
petrator will undergo a radical transformation, recognizing at last
the harm he inflicted through the victim’s suffering or death.
Sometimes this might happen, but in many cases the perpetrator
simply continues to blame the victim, or anyway to minimize his
own responsibility. Such was the ‘just following orders’ argument
of Nazi leaders like Eichmann in their war crimes trials. The con-
victed Nazis remained loyal to their past actions, often to their
hatred for the victims, and refused to
acquiesce to the observer’s perception
of the horror. Unfortunately, the
observer’s expectation of repentance
is motivated not by rationally-justified
hopes, but by their need to alleviate
their shock and horror by finding some
recognition within the perpetrator of
the horrendous nature of their acts.
The observer hopes that such recog-
nition might help restore their trust in
the world and in humanity.
These four misplaced perceptions
support the idea that what I’ve been
calling the standard perception of evil
was favored by natural selection over
an accurate and objective perception
of perpetrators. In other words, it’s
an evolved cognitive bias. However,
like many other such cognitive biases,
the way of looking at evil embodied
in those four perceived aspects is not
a design flaw, but rather a positive
design feature of our minds. In terms
of our own survival we are fortunate
to err in this way. If people were to
perceive evildoers in a more ‘objec-
tive’ way – by taking the perpetrator’s
perspective into account, for exam-
ple – they would probably be in
danger. More than anything, the per-
ception of evil involves fear: it signals
a potential threat to the individual or their society. This fear
would arguably be lessened if we were to see things the way the
perpetrator does; it would weaken our defences.
That said, the usual perception of evil is also not without its
dangers. Behind the most horrific violence people have inflicted
on each other there was a claim by the aggressor that the victims
deserved their fate because of their own wickedness. In the years
before the Holocaust, the Nazi campaign of incitement painted
Jews as evil, and as enemies of the German nation. So the normal
perception of evil, so crucial to maintaining the stability and secu-
rity of society, has also contributed to humanity’s worst crimes.
© DR ANER GOVRIN 2019
Aner Govrin is a psychoanalyst and philosopher at Bar-Ilan
University, Israel, and the author of Ethics and Attachment: How
We Make Moral Judgments (Routledge, 2019).EV
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