Sartre, J. P. (1942). Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr. NY: Pantheon.
From Good to Evil
He will define himself narrowly by traditions, by obedience, by the automatism of Good, and will give the name temptation to the live, vague swarming which is still himself, but a himself which is wild, free, outside the limits he has marked out for himself. His own negativity falls outside him, since he denies it with all his might. Substantified, separated from any positive intention, it becomes a pure negation that poses itself for its own sake, a pure rage to destroy that goes round in circles, namely evil (25).
Meditation on Aspects of Evil
Evil is the unity of all his impulses to criticise, to judge, to reject insofar as he refuses to recognise them and regard [them] as the normal exercise of his freedom and insofar as he relates them to an external cause. It is his dangerous inclination to develop his ideas to their ultimate limits when decency or discipline bids him stop midway. It is his anxiety, his fundamental disbelief or his individuality that comes to him from without, like Another himself, to tempt him. It is what he wants but does not want to want. It is the object of a constant and constantly rejected will which he regards as other than his “true” will.
Contradictions within Evil
- Self and Other
- Being and Nonbeing;
- Absolute and Relative;
- Principle and Person;
- Self-Respect and Self-Hatred;
- Order and Disorder (27).
Self and Other
In short, [evil] is the maxim, both in him and outside him, of the Other’s will. Not the will of some particular Other, nor even all Others, but of that which in each individual is other than himself, other than self, other than all (26).
Evil is the Other. And it is himself insofar as he is for himself Other than Self. It is the will to be other and that all be Other. It is that which is always Other than that which is (26)
Being and Nonbeing
Absolute and Relative, Principle and Person
Absolute and relative at the same time, it is both an abstract principle and a particular will. Insofar as all kinds of attrition and ruin are ascribed to it, including those which are the effects of natural agents, it is a pneumatic principle that circulates through the world. There is an evil which is peculiar to consciousness as there is to everything, a leprosy that eats away at it and that is called hebetude, imbecility, darkness. But, in another sense, just as there is Good only in a will that wills itself as unconditionally good, so there is Evil only in an intention that wills itself expressly evil (26-7).
Self-Assessment: Respect and Hatred
It is not sufficient that his [the evildoer’s] conduct have harmful consequences for others or that it seem blameworthy in the eyes of others. If Evil wants to become absolute, it must be an object of loathing to the one that commits it (27).
The Evil of consciousness, which is opacity, and consciousness in evil, which is transparency, must meet at the limit. The fact is that in this free and radical undertaking of demolition which claims responsibility of its acts, including its own ruin, one takes pleasure in recognising at the same time an absolute servitude. […] Hence, the evil man, who is negative in essence, is a man possessed whose destiny, whatever he may say, will always be to harm. He is free to do evil; for him the worst is always certain (27).
In other words, Sartre believes that the evildoer has a self-harming aspect implied within his being: he is condemned to do evil even unto himself.
The evil man approves and loathes himself; he loathes himself for approving himself, he approves himself for loathing himself. His entire consciousness is darkness at the core of his translucidity (27).
Order and DisorderAwareness and Pursuit
Evil is then consciousness itself at the height of its lucidity, for an evil mind is all the more perverse in that it is more aware of its damnation and wills it more (27).
[The evil mind] pursues both its triumph and its ruin; firstly, because it will be engulfed in its victory along with Good, secondly, because its passion for destruction must know no limits and because it must end by turning this passion against itself (27).
Evil is negation, separation, disintegration.
How does a criminal become evil?
The criminal that they were to others is now ensconced deep within them, like a monster.
Such is the case of the child Genet. Society has charged him with personifying the Evildoer, that is, the Other. Now, as we have seen, Evil is a concept for external use only. Nobody will say voluntarily, before being recognised as guilty, “I want Evil” (Sartre 1942: 34).
Evil is a judgement applied to others.
Evil, which springs from the right-thinking man’s fear of freedom, is originally a projection and a catharsis. It is therefore always an object (ibid).
Evil as only the conceptual-reflective object of consciousness.Moreover […] if we attempted to establish it within ourself, the contradictory terms composing it would repel each other violently and would collapse separately. But this matters little to us, since the fact is that we perceive it in Others. Yes, for us Evil is impossible. Therefore, we do no seek to actualise it. Evil is always attributed to others. Attributing ‘evil’ to self has implications of conceiving self as both object and subject.But since this Other desires Evil, it is for him to take over its contradictions. Let him manage the best he can. The proof, moreover, that one can make everything hang together, with the aid of an efficacious grace that probably comes from Hell, is precisely the fact that there are evildoers. There are evildoers, therefore Evil is possible. Such is our proof a posteriori (35).