Book launch: “Shifting Paradigms of Evil in Philosophy: Reading the Armenian Genocide with the Shoah” by Imge Oranli, part of ASU Humanities Week

College of Integrative Sciences and Arts Assistant Professor Imge Oranli will dive into her new book, unpacking a series of limiting assumptions that define the philosophical study of evil. These assumptions crystallize in the idea that evil is an inscrutable phenomenon, what Oranli calls the paradigm of evil’s inscrutability. Tracing this paradigm through the legacies of five key philosophers — Plato, Augustine, Kant, Arendt and Levinas — Oranli shows that by the time we arrive at the 20th century, the framing of political evils like the Shoah as inscrutable and exceptional is profoundly constraining.

This event is part of ASU Humanities Week programming and will be co-sponsored by The Melikian Center at ASU.