Responding to Evil: Banality, Testimony and Terrorism

This chapter considers Murdoch’s engagement and response to historical evils. It begins by linking her exploration of bearing witness to evil in The Message to the Planet to discourses on post-traumatic testimony. The similarities between Murdoch’s engagement with evil and Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil are examined, drawing on Hilary Burde in A Word Child and George McCaffrey in The Philosopher’s Pupil. Finally, it explores how Murdoch’s engagement with terrorism in The Red and the Green and The Book and the Brotherhood resonates with the discussions of evil reinvigorated in response to 9/11. Murdoch’s exploration of evil, trauma and terrorism underscores the need to continuously reflect on and understand evil, to see it not as an incomprehensible force but as a challenge that needs to be regularly examined.