What is Evil?

Catalog description

Students will explore the question “What is evil?” from the perspectives of the major World Religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. In addition they will explore how evil was conceptualized in core texts of Classical Greece and Ancient Rome. The course begins with a brief introduction to psychological and sociological research which attempts to answer the question “Why do good people do evil things?” It concludes with a short consideration of representations of evil in popular culture and influential texts written in response to the Holocaust.