Andrew Lobaczewski - Political Ponerology - A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
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- Название:Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
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- Год:2006
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Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
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Noon, from prewar Soviet life; Smoke over Birkenau the per-
sonal memories of Severina Szmaglewska5 from the Oswiecim
German concentration camp for women; The Other World, the
Soviet memoires of Gustav Herling-Grudzinski6; and the Solz-
henitsyn volumes turgid with human suffering.
The collection would include works on the philosophy of
history discussing the social and moral aspects of the genesis of
evil, but they would also use the half-mysterious laws of his-
tory to partly justify the blood-stained solutions. However, an
5 Szmaglewska, Seweryna, 1916-92, writer; 1942-45 prisoner in Nazi con-
centration camps; wrote Dymy nad Birkenau (Smoke over Birkenau, 1945);
witness at Nuremberg Trial; stories and novels mainly concerned with war
and occupation: Zapowiada sie piekny dzien (Looks Like a Beautiful Day,
1960), Niewinni w Norymberdze (The Innocent at Nuremberg, 1972); novels
for young people; anthology of memoirs 1939-45: Wiezienna krata (Prison
Bars, 1964). [Editor’s note.]
6 Herling-Grudzinski, Gustav: Polish writer who after WWII lived in Napoli,
Italy. Married the daughter of well known Italian philosopher Benedetto
Croce. He wrote an account of his time in a Soviet gulag: A World Apart .
[Editor’s note.]
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
39
alert reader would be able to detect a certain degree of evolu-
tion in the authors’ attitudes, from an ancient affirmation of
primitive enslavement and murder of vanquished peoples, to
the present-day moralizing condemnation of such methods of
behavior.
Such a library would nevertheless be missing a single work
offering a sufficient explanation of the causes and processes
whereby such historical dramas originate, of how and why
human frailties and ambitions degenerate into bloodthirsty
madness. Upon reading the present volume, the reader will
realize that writing such a book was scientifically impossible
until recently.
The old questions would remain unanswered: what made
this happen? Does everyone carry the seeds of crime within, or
is it only some of us? No matter how faithful and psychologi-
cally true, no literary description of occurrences, such as those
narrated by the above-mentioned authors, can answer these
questions, nor can they fully explain the origins of evil. They
are thus incapable of furnishing sufficiently effective principles
for counter-acting evil. The best literary description of a dis-
ease cannot produce an understanding of its essential etiology,
and thus furnishes no principles for treatment. In the same way,
such descriptions of historical tragedies are unable to elaborate
effective measures for counteracting the genesis, existence, or
spread of evil.
In using natural7 language to circumscribe psychological,
social, and moral concepts which cannot properly be described
within its sphere of utility, we produce a sort of surrogate com-
prehension leading to a nagging suspicion of helplessness. Our
natural system of concepts and imaginings is not equipped with
the necessary factual content to permit reasoned comprehen-
sion of the quality of the factors (particularly the psychological
ones) which were active before the birth of, and during, such
inhumanly cruel times
We must nevertheless point out that the authors of such lit-
erary descriptions sensed that their language was insufficient
and therefore attempted to infuse their words with the proper
7 Ordinary, everyday words which have various meanings, generally benign,
and often do not embrace a specific, scientific meaning. [Editor’s note.]
40
INTRODUCTION
scope of precision, almost as though they foresaw that someone
– at some point in time - might use their works in order to ex-
plain what cannot be explained, not even in the best literary
language. Had these writers not been so precise and descriptive
in their language, this author would have been unable to use
their works for his own scientific purposes.
In general, most people are horrified by such literature; in
hedonistic societies particularly, people have the tendency to
escape into ignorance or naive doctrines. Some people even
feel contempt for suffering persons. The influence of such
books can thus be partially harmful; we should counteract that
influence by indicating what the authors had to leave out be-
cause our ordinary world of concepts and imaginings cannot
contain it.
The reader will therefore find herein no bloodcurdling de-
scriptions of criminal behavior or human suffering. It is not the
author’s job to present a graphic return of material adduced by
people who saw and suffered more than he did, and whose
literary talents are greater. Introducing such descriptions into
this work would run counter to its purpose: it would not only
focus attention on some occurrences to the exclusion of many
others, but would also distract the mind from the real heart of
the matter, namely, the general laws of the origin of evil .
In tracking the behavioral mechanisms of the genesis of
evil, one must keep both abhorrence and fear under control,
submit to a passion for epistemological science, and develop
the calm outlook needed in natural history. We must never lose
sight of the objective: to trace the processes of ponerogenesis;
where they can lead and what threat they can pose to us in the
future.
This book therefore aims to take the reader by the hand into
a world beyond the concepts and imaginings he has relied on to
describe his world since childhood, in an overly egotistic way,
probably because his parents, surroundings, and the community
of his country used concepts similar to his own. Thereafter, we
must show him an appropriate selection from the world of fac-
tual concepts which have given birth to recent scientific think-
ing and which will allow him an understanding of what has
remained irrational in his everyday system of concepts.
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
41
However, this tour of another reality will not be a psycho-
logical experiment conducted upon readers’ minds for the sole
purpose of exposing the weak points and gaps in their natural
world view. Rather, it an urgent necessity due to our contempo-
rary world’s pressing problems, which we can ignore only at
our peril.
It is important to realize that we cannot possibly distinguish
the path to nuclear catastrophe from the path to creative dedica-
tion unless we step beyond this world of natural egotism and
well known concepts. Then we can come to the understanding
that the path was chosen for us by powerful forces, against
which our nostalgia for homey, familiar human concepts can be
no match. We must step beyond this world of everyday, illu-
sory thinking for our own good and for the good of our loved
ones.
The social sciences have already elaborated their own con-
ventional language which mediates between the ordinary man’s
view and a fully objective naturalistic view. It is useful to sci-
entists in terms of communication and cooperation, but it is still
not the kind of conceptual structure which can fully take into
account the biological, psychological, and pathological prem-
ises at issue in the second and fourth chapters of this book. In
the social sciences, the conventional terminology eliminates
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