Many Thinkers are Natural Skeptics

Evil-skeptics

In contemporary secular ethics, "evil-skeptics" are philosophers who argue that we should abandon the concept of "evil." They contend that the term can be intellectually lazy, psychologically unhelpful, and politically dangerous. Instead, they urge us to use more precise terms such as gross wrongdoing, extreme cruelty, or moral badness.¹

Evil-skeptics may sincerely doubt that evil is a real thing.

An evil-skeptic can still commit conduct that others would call evil; skepticism about the concept does not change the nature or consequences of the act. If harmful behavior can be explained without invoking evil as an independent reality, perhaps evil is not a force acting upon human beings at all, but a judgment produced by human consciousness about behavior, intention, and consequence. The same question necessarily applies to good.

Examples in political discourse illustrate how readily the word evil is used in ways that can rob it of its objective meaning.

Robert De Niro publicly called Donald Trump “evil” in a statement prepared for The New Republic’s October 2023 Stop Trump Summit. Because De Niro was ill with COVID-19, the statement was read on his behalf by Miles Taylor. De Niro is hardly alone in using the term. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump “dangerous” and “evil”; former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said that “the president of the United States is evil”; and former Trump administration official Miles Taylor described prospective Trump lieutenants as potentially “even more evil than he is.” Trump himself is not shy to call his many detractors evil. These examples illustrate how readily the word evil enters political discourse, often as a moral judgment rather than as a carefully defined philosophical category.²

The gap between obnoxious and evil is vast, and passionate people are prone to exaggerate when they describe the actions of people with whom they disagree.

When is skepticism considered a virtue?

Skepticism is generally considered a virtue when it promotes intellectual humility, careful reasoning, and a rigorous pursuit of truth. Specifically, skepticism is virtuous when it:

• Encourages critical thinking: Questioning assumptions helps avoid dogmatism and fosters rational inquiry.
• Leads to open-mindedness: It prevents premature judgments and promotes willingness to adjust beliefs based on evidence.
• Prevents manipulation: Healthy skepticism guards against deception, propaganda, and misinformation.
• Promotes intellectual humility: It acknowledges human fallibility and uncertainty, thus facilitating constructive dialogue.

This intellectual attitude has important roots in Socrates, whose persistent questioning and recognition of the limits of his own knowledge influenced later skeptical traditions. Montaigne and David Hume subsequently developed different forms of philosophical skepticism concerning the limits of human knowledge.

Pyrrhonian skepticism, named after Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–270 BCE) and developed by later skeptics, emphasizes suspension of judgment (epoché) when the available arguments do not justify a confident conclusion. Rather than asserting that truth is impossible to know, the Pyrrhonist avoids making that dogmatic claim as well. Where competing arguments appear equally compelling, the appropriate response is continued inquiry rather than premature certainty. Classical Pyrrhonists associated this suspension of judgment with ataraxia, or tranquility.

Does skepticism have underpinnings in Stoic philosophy?

Tranquility is an important aim of Stoic practice, but Stoicism is especially concerned with virtue, freedom from destructive passions (apatheia), and the disciplined assessment of impressions.

While Stoicism isn’t explicitly a skeptical philosophy (in the sense of Pyrrhonian skepticism), it shares some fundamental attitudes:

• Epistemic humility: Stoics emphasized the importance of recognizing limits in human understanding and the role of assent—carefully deciding which perceptions to accept.
• Critical examination of impressions: Stoics practiced withholding assent from impressions that had not been adequately examined. Epictetus urged students to question their assumptions before accepting impressions as true.³

Thus, Stoicism indirectly embodies skeptical virtues through its rigorous practice of questioning initial judgments and impressions. Stoics had a distinct view of “good” and “evil.” For Stoics like Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca:

• External events are morally indifferent (“adiaphora”): They are neither inherently morally good nor evil. For the Stoics, virtue alone is morally good and vice morally evil; our judgments and choices are central to both.
• Natural events such as death, disease, poverty, and misfortune are not considered “evil.” Rather, evil stems only from wrongful internal judgments and moral corruption.

Marcus Aurelius succinctly stated a central tenet of Stoicism:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” (Meditations 8.47)

In other words, Stoicism reframes the moral relevance of conventional ideas about evil. Evil, according to Stoicism, is not an external destructive event, but rather an internal moral failure: ignorance, irrationality, and vice.

Philosophers

Not all secular philosophers are evil-skeptics. Some retain the concept of evil while attempting to explain it without supernatural assumptions. Rather than treating evil as a sin against a deity or a puzzle to reconcile with an all-powerful creator, these thinkers analyze it in terms of human choice, social institutions, or human psychology.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

Kant introduced the concept of “radical evil” (das radikale Böse) in his work

The Core Idea: Kant argued that human beings have an innate, universal propensity to prioritize their own self-love and desires over the universal moral law (the Categorical Imperative).

Non-Theological Framing: For Kant, evil does not stem from a devil or a corrupted spirit, but from a deliberate, rational choice to subordinate duty to self-interest.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

As history's most famous philosophical pessimist, Schopenhauer viewed evil not as an anomaly, but as a core component of reality.

The Core Idea: He posited that the universe is driven by a blind, irrational, and aimless cosmic force he called the "Will-to-Live." Because this Will is constantly desiring and never permanently satisfied, existence is inherently defined by frustration, competition, and suffering.

Non-Theological Framing: Schopenhauer argued that "moral evil" occurs when an individual's intense Will-to-Live asserts itself so aggressively that it actively tramples, injures, or destroys the well-being of another individual to satisfy its own desires.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

Nietzsche took an "evil-skeptic" approach, arguing that the traditional concept of "evil" should be abandoned entirely.

The Core Idea: In , he claimed that the concept of "evil" was invented through "slave morality"—a psychological defense mechanism born out of envy and resentment (ressentiment) by the weak to demonize the strong.

Non-Theological Framing: He viewed "good and evil" as an artificial linguistic framework used to manipulate social power dynamics, rather than an objective reality.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

Arendt fundamentally reshaped modern political philosophy with her account of the “banality of evil.”

The Core Idea: While covering the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official who organized mass deportations to killing centers, she argued that immense, horrific destruction does not require demonic wickedness or sociopathic malice. It can also be committed by people whose thinking appears strikingly shallow.⁴

Non-Theological Framing: Arendt associated Eichmann’s evil with thoughtlessness, clichés, and a failure to consider the perspective of others. This did not mean that he was a passive subordinate or bore less responsibility for his crimes.

Claudia Card (1940–2015)

A modern feminist philosopher, Card proposed "The Atrocity Paradigm" to ground the definition of evil in tangible human suffering.

The Core Idea: In her 2002 book, Card argued that evils involve reasonably foreseeable, intolerable harms produced by culpable wrongdoing. She later reformulated the second element as “inexcusable wrongs” in Confronting Evils (2010).⁵

Non-Theological Framing: Card places the suffering of victims at the center of her account, while also requiring culpable or inexcusable wrongdoing by perpetrators (e.g., genocide, domestic abuse, or war crimes).

Atrocity Paradigm vs. The Banality of Evil

Evil revivalism retains a secular concept of evil. Two influential secular approaches are Hannah Arendt’s account of the banality of evil and Claudia Card’s atrocity paradigm.

Both thinkers approach evil without relying on theology, but their emphases differ: Arendt examines a perpetrator’s thoughtlessness, while Card foregrounds the victim’s suffering and also requires wrongdoing by an agent.

Key Philosophical Divergence

Arendt’s view suggests that terrible wrongdoing need not arise from sadistic motives. Her account of Eichmann’s thoughtlessness does not make him an unthinking or innocent cog in a machine.

Card’s view directs attention to the victim as well as the perpetrator. Even if a bureaucrat is “thoughtless,” the result of the action can be an atrocity to those subjected to it. For Card, evil requires both foreseeable intolerable harm and culpable or inexcusable wrongdoing; harmful consequences alone do not suffice.

Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism places human interests at the center of judgments about value and morality. In its strongest form, it treats the nonhuman world chiefly as a resource for human use.

Arendt’s analysis is primarily concerned with human wrongdoing. Card’s atrocity paradigm begins with human atrocities, but her discussion also reaches environmental destruction and the harms it can cause.⁶

Schopenhauer also points to predation in nature to illustrate the suffering and conflict inherent in the will-to-live: one animal tears apart and consumes another in order to survive. Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, regards conflict and exploitation as features of living processes rather than grounds for conventional moral condemnation. For Schopenhauer, the necessity of predation reveals the painful struggle built into existence; for Nietzsche, life cannot be judged by a morality that condemns its basic conditions.

Notes

1. See “The Concept of Evil,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, §1.3, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/. The account of evil-skepticism and the examples of alternative moral concepts are adapted from this entry. ↩
2. For a documented example, see Donald Trump’s description of Nancy Pelosi as “evil” at a November 2024 rally, reported in People, https://people.com/donald-trump-calls-nancy-pelosi-crazy-b-final-campaign-rally-8740081. ↩
3. See “Stoicism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on assent and withholding assent, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/. Epoché and ataraxia are especially associated with Pyrrhonian skepticism. ↩
4. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Adolf Eichmann,” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/adolf-eichmann. Eichmann played a central role in deporting more than 1.5 million Jews; see also Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). ↩
5. Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford University Press, 2002), introduction, https://academic.oup.com/book/2292/chapter-abstract/142414547; Card, Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide (Cambridge University Press, 2010), introduction, https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/99611/excerpt/9780521899611_excerpt.pdf. The 2010 book substitutes “inexcusable wrongs” for the earlier “culpable wrongdoing.” ↩
6. Card lists massive destruction of rainforests among the events shaping her inquiry in the preface to Confronting Evils (2010), https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/confronting-evils/preface-and-acknowledgements/062D63ED21626D932EA9EA0F35CB7584. Her discussion therefore extends beyond a strictly human-only list of harms, though her paradigm centers on atrocities affecting lives. ↩