In response to the tragedy of Gaza, many react to the culpable loss of proportion in the Netanyahu government’s reaction by treating Israel as a foreign body rather than as a founding member of our civilization. On a completely different level, that of daily life, the tragedy of femicides shocks because it denies the belief that evil cannot dwell in the closest human relationships. And yet, evil exists, it endures, and it does not come only from outside. Evil also lives within us, and sometimes it takes command of our wills and our institutions.

The scandal of evil leaves no escape: if one ignores it, one automatically becomes complicit; and one also becomes complicit if one merely judges it as an innocent spectator. The tragedy of the West lies also, and perhaps above all, in having erased the scandal of evil—by considering it removable, attributing it always to external causes, or by seeking to become indifferent to it.

Imagine, the beautiful song by John Lennon, sings of the illusion into which the West collectively fell from the 1960s onward. In those years, individually and together, we gave in to the illusion of living as if evil did not exist, or as if it could be eliminated from society and history. Reality soon began to slap us in the face, yet we reacted by shutting our eyes even tighter. Since the Twin Towers, however, that trick no longer works. This first quarter of the 21^st century is reminding the West that evil exists, persists, and can come both from outside and from within.

The weakness of the West arises largely from pretending that evil does not exist, or that it can be eliminated through willpower and/or reason and its techniques. This is precisely the core of that 40% of infected modernity — that rationalist and arrogant Enlightenment which, at certain moments, managed to overpower the critical and self-critical Enlightenment. For several decades now, we have been living through the twilight and the night that follow such moments.

Max Weber taught that a decisive part of the software that allows a civilization to function lies in the way it responds to the scandal caused by the experience of evil. Most of the answers with which known civilizations have sought to protect themselves from this scandal can be grouped into two categories. One teaches techniques for becoming insensitive to evil, letting it slide off oneself. The other holds that reason and/or will are capable of eliminating evil from the world and from history.

A third group consists of those who make use of evil without restraint, counting on the fact that sooner or later they will meet someone more evil than themselves.

Is that all? No, not yet. In the catalogue of answers to the scandal of evil there is another one — the one upon which “the West” is founded. It is made up of four parts:
(i) Evil exists (in individuals and in social life); it exists, it is not an illusion, and it cannot be eliminated from this world or from human history.
(ii) Evil can and must be fought; sometimes it will win, but at the End of History it will not have the final word, and meanwhile — or regardless of this belief — resisting it makes us worthy and allows us to enjoy a full humanity.
(iii) To resist evil, it is inevitable to use means that themselves produce a certain amount of evil, and this choice is morally acceptable as long as the evil produced is not greater than the particular evil one seeks to defeat.
(iv) Resisting evil requires vigilance and struggle — both inner and public.

The blend of these four elements characterizes the “Western” solution to the scandal of evil, a solution profoundly different from all others. Its driving force is hope — the fiercest enemy of deceptive and misleading imagination — hope which, for Kant, is the keystone of modernity, of course, of modernity in its critical version as opposed to its dogmatic rationalist form.

Since the 1960s, however, the “Western” solution to the scandal of evil has become a minority view within its own home. In the broad Western public opinion, an objective alliance has prevailed — a vast field of irenicism, cynical will to power, naïve and superficial rationalism, and the illusion of being able to become indifferent to evil. Almost the entire West has lain down under a blanket of torpor, sinking into a heavy sleep. Despite its increasingly harsh slaps, history — which we had declared “over” — is still trying in vain to wake us up.

In this sleep we have grown accustomed to consenting to evil, to denouncing it intermittently, and to feeling justified when we do not fight it within ourselves or around us. We have preferred illusion to hope and fallen into a night in which, not by chance, no more children are born. We have loosened, if not broken, the “social chain” (Leopardi).

On paper, the originality and attractiveness of the “Western” answer to the scandal of evil remain intact. However, without a widespread return to the practice of hope, it is difficult to see how this answer can have a future. In a time when, despite the most recent efforts of Leo XIV, even a Jubilee is often interpreted as a festival of irenicism — as bait for dreams rather than a provocation to consciences — the calls to a hope that cannot, for now, rely on optimism risk no longer being heard.

See, Luca Diotallevi: Il male esiste e non si può ignorare