What is it about?
Few social scientists, including psychologists, have studied evil. Existential humanist Ernest Becker and social psychologist Stanley Milgram were exceptions. Both experienced the consequences of the evil of the Holocaust early in their lives and made evil an object of their subsequent research. By contrasting their personal life experiences, it is possible to better understand the very different methods and theories they developed to understand evil. When combined, their approaches to evil yield unique insights into evil in general and into the evil of the Holocaust in particular.
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Why is it important?
To combat evil it is necessary to understand it and the contexts within which it arises.
Perspectives
I first read Ernest Becker’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Denial of Death as a graduate student and was fascinated by the way in which it seemed to speak directly to issues that concerned me at that time and, of course, as a student of social psychology, I was familiar with Milgram’s famous studies of obedience to authority. However, it only occurred to me to consider Becker’s and Milgram’s studies of evil in comparison to each other and in the context of their own lives much later in my academic life when I became interested in biography as an important tool in the history and theory of psychology.
Jack Martin
Simon Fraser University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ernest Becker and Stanley Milgram: Twentieth-century students of evil., History of Psychology, January 2016, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/hop0000016.
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