Evil's Place in the Ethics of Social Work

Abstract

This article argues that the concept of evil is needed in normative ethics in general as well as in the professional ethics of social work. Attention is drawn to certain shortcomings in the classical theories of normative ethics when it comes to recognizing the profound destructiveness of certain types of acts that exceed the mere ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ applied in the most common theories of moral philosophy. Having established the category of morally evil acts in general, the author turns to the field of social work and applies it to some paradigm cases of evil that many social workers are likely to be confronted with during the course of their service. In the final part of the article, the concept of moral evil is discussed in relation to the professional ethics of social work in general, with reference to certain value assumptions that are found to be inherent to social work.

Keywords:

• Moral evil
• Social work
• Professional ethics

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for Ethics & Social Welfare for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. He would also like to thank his colleagues in the Department of Social Studies at the University of Stavanger for useful feedback on his work.

Notes

1. It should be noticed that the discussion is confined to act-ethics as opposed to agent-ethics. An important difference between the two kinds of normative ethics is that the first focuses on the question ‘what are the characteristics of right and wrong acts?’ whereas the second addresses the question ‘what characterizes the good or bad person or agent?’ This difference has been accounted for by Laird (1946).

2. We may consider an example more relevant to social work: some scientists believe that there is empirical evidence for the claim that moral evil is often performed by agents who suffer defects in normal brain functions that generate their inclination to perform evil acts (Stein 2000). If we keep in mind that humans, too, are part of nature, then such moral evil may be interpreted also as a case of natural evil which in principle can be prevented by human intervention.

3. One may distinguish between reductionism in semantical, epistemological, methodological and ontological senses. Although methodological reductionism logically implies both semantical and epistemological reductionism, it does not imply ontological reductionism (cf. Barbosa da Silva 1982, p. 72).

4. We ought to adjust or modify our principles and theories when they run against our moral judgments or strong moral intuitions. One such strong intuition is represented by the principle of volition, another by the principle of utility, as pointed out by John Rawls: ‘It may be asked whether intuitionistic theories are teleological or deontological. They may be of either kind, and any ethical view is bound to rely on intuition to some degree at many points’ (1999, p. 35; emphasis mine).

5. Kant's anthropology has been criticized at this point for being both incoherent and inconsistent. Formosa (2007) argues that Kant's doctrine may hold if one removes the claim that radical evil is a universal disposition.

6. At this point Kant seems to be guided by his Lutheran background. Central to the Lutheran anthropology is the doctrine of Original Sin. It has been argued that the theory of radical evil is an attempt to rationalize the doctrine of Original Sin (Quinn 1984).

7. Consequences may be subjective or objective or both. Objective consequences are the consequences that actually occur as a result of the act. Subjective consequences are the consequences that the agent either intends (wishes for) or foresees (expects), or both wishes for and expects to be the result of the act that has not yet been performed. One should notice that this definition makes it sufficient that the harm is foreseeable; it does not have to be intended. Pain and suffering, on the other hand, have to be intended for an act to be a morally evil act.

8. The concept of ‘the banality of evil’ was coined by Hannah Arendt with her Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil (1994). Although this volume does not contain any theory on the subject, A. J. Vetlesen (2005, pp. 52–103) argues that she has developed a rudimentary theory of evil consistent with this term, according to which evil is seen not merely as the result of a wanting, reflective mind but also as the result of a lack of conscience.

9. The distinction between ‘instrumental’ and ‘idealistic evil’ is applied in Roy F. Baumeister (1996). The labels are, of course, agent-centered as opposed to victim-centered, referring to a moral evaluation of means and ends.

10. Some may wonder why I don't apply the case of sexual abuse of children (cf. Brown & Barrett 2002) when accounting for a paradigm example of moral evil in social work. My first two cases are chosen not from the extremes but from episodes of everyday life familiar to many of the clients who social workers meet. I do this in order to show that acts of moral evil, statistically speaking, are fairly common.

11. As MacIntyre points out, this has been a main theme in Western anthropology since its earliest times, and one may also add that it is reflected in the importance of the principle of volition in the two types of act-ethics considered in this paper. Kantian deontology recognizes this principle quite explicitly as the cornerstone of morality, but one will also find it presupposed in utilitarian ethics, since volition is essential to the concept of an act (cf. Laird 1946, p. 129).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jon Vegar Hugaas

Jon Vegar Hugaas is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stavanger, Norway