I was thirteen years old and in junior high school at the time of the 1999 shooting incident at Columbine High School, so the event remains a memorable one for me (as I’m sure it does for several others). At the time, rushed media coverage and personal gossip propagated several rumors about the shooters and their motives. Many of those rumors later … Read more

In his book Masters of Death, author Richard Rhodes draws on the research of criminologist Lonnie Athens in an attempt to explain how German soldiers could be humanly capable of executing thousands of innocent Jewish civilians at gunpoint. Through interviews with violent criminals, Athens ascertained a minimum sequence of violent socialization. These stages of violence were not present in those who … Read more

In her book New Demons, philosopher Simona Forti traces the genealogy of philosophical evil, beginning with what she calls the “Dostoevsky paradigm.” According to her reading of the great Russian novelist, individual evil stems from the will to achieve God-like omnipotence. Yet humans are incapable of creating objects out of nothing. Thus, the only path by which to approach God’s power … Read more

In his book The Mask of Sanity, Dr. Hervey Cleckley depicts psychopaths as individuals lacking a strong internal restraint mechanism. In most humans, this internal check discourages the performance of socially unacceptable actions. Lacking this restraint, psychopaths steal, lie, defraud, brawl, drink to excess, and engage in sexual promiscuity on a whim. Moreover, they perform these actions without any comprehensible motivating factor. The … Read more