The Devil Is in the Details: What Social Psychology Can Tell Us About Good and Evil

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 49 (Supplement 10) ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Devil

The Affinities Between J.-K. Huysmans and the “Rosicrucian” Stories of W. B. Yeats

PMLA ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 74 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 464-469
Author(s):  
Michael Fixler
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
The Self ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Group ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Guardian ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Devil

In march of 1890, after a preparatory experience with Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, W. B. Yeats joined the Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn. Like Joris-Karl Huysmans, who at about this time became interested in the activities of the French counterpart of the Golden Dawn, “Le Grand Ordre Kabbalistique du Rose Croix,” Yeats's interests were largely aroused by the willingness of the members of the group to experiment with magical practices. Where Yeats, however, committed himself by oaths and rituals to a cult which pretended to be the guardian of ancient insights into the super-sensory life, Huysmans stood apart, first skeptical, then fascinated, and finally outraged. The eccentric MacGregor Mathers headed the London Rosicrucians, and he and his French wife, the sister of Henri Bergson, were acquainted with all the principal figures involved with the slightly older French order. The latter had been founded in 1888 by Sâr Joséphin Péladan and the self-styled nobleman Stanislas de Guaita. The French group existed on the shady fringe of clerical politics in the hostile rationalism of the early Third Republic, and it was in search of documentary material for a novel about this fantastic circle of clerical Royalists that Huysmans was first drawn to them. Like Saul who only sought lost asses, this quest led him, as he came to believe, to God's grace.Before he became a Catholic Huysmans was, in effect, something of a Manichean. As Yeats did, he sought experimental evidence to confirm the existence of opposing forces of good and evil, and when he had this evidence he rejected forcefully the Devil through whom he had found God. Yeats was more equivocal. The inversion of values in Huysmans' A rebours, and of ritual in his Là-bas never confounded or reconciled the opposition of good and evil and of false and true worship, as Yeats tried to do in his Rosicrucian stories of 1896. But then Huysmans was never so deeply involved as Yeats in constructing out of the farrago of late nineteenth-century occult beliefs a systematic basis for his life. The Rosicrucian Golden Dawn did provide the beginnings for such a systematic basis, and in his three stories of 1896, “The Tables of the Law,” “Rosa Alchemica,” and “The Adoration of the Magi,” Yeats draws on the beliefs and rituals of his cult. It seems to me that there are elements in the first two of these Rosicrucian stories which have curious affinities to the writings of Huysmans, and these become significant in the context of other relations between the two writers.

scholarly journals Butt-dialing the devil: Evil agents are expected to disregard intentions behind requests

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Joy Dunk ◽  
Brandon W. Goulding ◽  
Jonathan Albert Fugelsang ◽  
Ori Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Devil

Evil supernatural beings are often depicted as responding to unintended requests, whereas this may be less common in representations of good supernatural beings. This asymmetry suggests that people may expect good and evil agents to differ in their sensitivity to other people's intentions. We investigated this proposal across five experiments on 2231 adult US residents. In Experiments 1 to 4, participants judged whether good or evil agents would grant requests from individuals who varied in their understanding of what they requested, and in whether they executed requests correctly. Across experiments, the good and evil agents were either supernatural beings or regular humans. Participants predicted good agents would be sensitive to intentions behind requests, but predicted evil agents would be comparatively insensitive to these intentions. In some experiments, they also predicted that evil agents would be more sensitive to whether requests were executed correctly. In Experiment 5, participants rated explanations for why an agent would grant a request from someone who did not understand what they were requesting. Participants thought evil agents might grant such requests because they are indifferent to the others' intentions, but participants did not strongly endorse this explanation for good agents. Taken together, our findings suggest that people have distinct expectations of how moral character affects decision-making. They also suggest that people's beliefs about good and evil supernatural beings may be grounded in their views of ordinary humans.

scholarly journals Intertekstualiteit en die Bose in Kroniek van Perdepoort (Anna M. Louw)

Literator ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-38
Author(s):  
E. Linde ◽  
D. H. Steenberg
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Sound And The Fury ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Constituent Element ◽  
Similar Theme ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Devil

In Anna M. Louw’s novel Kroniek van Perdepoort the primal conflict between good and evil is an important constituent element. Well-known authors in world literature have been fascinated by this problem, and it is an enriching experience to bring together allusions and to investigate points of contact with authors such as Feodor Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann. William Faulkner and Patrick White. In Kroniek van Perdepoort there is a meeting between Klaas Kamer and the devil. Similarities between this meeting and similar meetings in Dr Faustus (Thomas Mann) and The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky) are pointed out.Subsequently the portrayal of sin in Kroniek van Perdepoort is compared with Faulkner’s novels The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, in which a similar theme is represented.Patrick White is also an author of religious literature to whom Anna M. Louw is attracted by her own admission. His novels. The solid Mandala and Riders in the Chariot are studied, and similarities with Kroniek van Perdepoort indicated.

Babylonian and Hebrew Demonology with reference to the supposed borrowing of Persian Dualism in Judaism and Christianity

1934 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
S. Langdon
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Independent Existence

Dualism is a term introduced into modern theology by the Englishman, Thomas Hyde, in 1700, and was first used to describe sthe fundamental principle of Persian Zoroastrism, namely the independent existence of good and evil. Ormazd the good god and Ahriman the evil god in the theology of the Persians represent an absolute dualism. For them Ahriman, corresponding to Satan of Judaism and Christianity, is entirely independent of the creator god. Good and evil, God and the Devil, are primeval supreme powers. Now I wish to trace the history of Satan or the Devil in Christianity back through Judaism, Hebrew, and Babylonian religion to its origin among the Sumerians. I shall endeavour to prove this Persian dualism, which admits that God did not create the Devil, to be totally foreign to Sumerian, Babylonian, and Hebrew speculation; and I shall then briefly examine the evidence on which modern scholars admit dualism to have been held by the Jews of the Apocalyptic period and by early Christianity as set forth in the New Testament. It is my conviction that Persian religion never had any influence upon Judaism or early Christianity. Satan, the Devil (diabolus), is traceable directly to Babylonian theology; there he is the creation of the gods.

The Problem of Good and Evil

1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-212
Author(s):  
Ronald Sandison
Keyword(s):  
Special Section ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Joint Institute ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Group Matrix ◽  
Evil Spirits ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Devil

In my contribution to the Group Analysis Special Section: `Aspects of Religion in Group Analysis' (Sandison, 1993) I hinted that any consideration of a spiritual dimension to the group involves us in a discussion on whether we are dealing with good or evil spirits. But if we say that God is in the group, why is not the Devil there also? Can good and evil coexist in the same group matrix? Is the recognition of evil `nothing but' the ability to distinguish between good and bad? If not, then what is evil? Is it no more than the absence of good? These and other questions were worked on at a joint Institute of Group Analysis and Group-Analytic Society (London) Workshop entitled `The Problem of Good and Evil'. We considered the likelihood that good and evil coexist in all of us, as well as in the whole of the natural world, not only on earth, but in the cosmos and in God himself What we actually do with good and evil is to split them apart, thereby shelving the problem but at the same time creating irreconcilable opposites. This article examines this splitting and how we can work with it psychoanalytically.

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