RELI 101 - Radical Evil: The History of Wickedness in the West

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

This course addresses a set of theological and moral questions: what does it mean to be evil? Is evil something external, foreign, and Other, or does it abide in us all? Is evil a product of circumstances, psychology, or the exercise of free will? Can the concept of evil be useful for explaining devestating phenomena such as genocide, white supremacy, and institutionalized sexual abuse? What are the intellectual and cultural sources of the idea of evil and how has it evolved through different moments and locations in history? Why are certain personifications of evil (demons, the Devil, heretics, monsters, witches, ghosts, racialized-Others) most visible at a given time and what do these forms of evil say about the values and anxieties of a given culture or civilization? In this course we investigate the different stories that get told about evil in Judaism, Christianity and broadly across North Atlantic societies from antiquity to the present in order to defamiliarize, contextualize, and re-interpret this persistent and mysterious moral concept. Klaus Yoder.

Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS