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1 results

  • 12 - Room 101

  • from Part III - Questions
  • Edited by Nathan Waddell, University of Birmingham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to <I>Nineteen Eighty-Four</I>
    Published online:
    18 September 2020
    Print publication:
    01 October 2020, pp 181-196

  • Summary

    While George Orwell often distanced himself from philosophical theorizing, he does implicitly take some sides in philosophical debates about evil. In particular, Orwell curiously straddles a philosophical divide between evil-realism and evil-scepticism and Nineteen Eighty-Four provides evidence of his sympathies with each. On the one hand, Orwell spoke of evil often and the narrative of Nineteen Eighty-Four is pretty clearly driven by agents and events that are reasonably regarded as evil. Yet Nineteen Eighty-Four also suggests some reasons for abandoning talk of evil altogether and anticipates at least some contemporary arguments for scepticism about evil and evil people. Nineteen Eighty-Four poses many questions about evil, not the least of which is whether we ought to be talking about it at all. This chapter illuminates some of Orwell’s thinking about evil and situates Orwell in current and live philosophical debates about evil.