TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Roger Scruton, in openDemocracy
‘Solzhenitsyn was far from endorsing the thesis of the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt had expounded it. Nor did he see totalitarianism as the ultimate source of the evil that it promotes. Rather totalitarian government is the great mistake, made for whatever noble or ignoble purpose, of putting the final goal before the present dilemma. It is this which gives evil intentions the same chance as good ones, which enables the criminal and the psychopath to compete on a level with the saint and the hero. Yet even in totalitarianism the evil belongs to the human beings, and not to the system. This is the remarkable message that Solzhenitsyn, crawling from the death-machine, carried pressed to his heart.’
. . . “But now, looking back on it, we must surely recognise, not merely the courage and integrity of the man, but also the truth of his message to our times. If there are evil systems, he is telling us, it is because there are evil people, evil intentions, and evil states of mind. The best we can achieve through amending the system of government is to ensure that mistakes can be corrected and evil condemned. But we should not deceive ourselves into believing that the solution to the problem of evil is a political solution, that it can be arrived at without spiritual discipline and without a change of life. It is to us human beings that the call to the good life is addressed. And it is only when we recognise that “the line separating good and evil is drawn through the human heart” that we will have finally understood the lesson of the 20th century.”
Sightings, Arts and Culture, Being Human, Mon 11 Aug 2008
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