Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

our bones. We would think of questions: why did people lose

all their humanity, what was the reason for all this? Some sort

38

INTRODUCTION

of apprehensive premonition choked its way into our young

minds; unfortunately, it was to come true in the future.

~~~

If a collection were to be made of all those books which de-

scribe the horrors of wars, the cruelties of revolutions, and the

bloody deeds of political leaders and their systems, many read-

ers would avoid such a library. Ancient works would be placed

alongside books by contemporary historians and reporters. The

documentary treatises on German extermination and concentra-

tion camps, and of the extermination of the Jewish Nation,

furnish approximate statistical data and describe the well-

organized “labor” of the destruction of human life, using a

properly calm language, and providing a concrete basis for the

acknowledgement of the nature of evil.

The autobiography of Rudolf Hoess, the commander of

camps in Oswiecim ( Auschwitz) and Brzezinka ( Birkenau), is a

classic example of how an intelligent psychopathic individual

with a deficit of human emotion thinks and feels.

Foremost among these would be books written by witnesses

to criminal insanity such as Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at

Noon, from prewar Soviet life; Smoke over Birkenau the per-

sonal memories of Severina Szmaglewska5 from the Oswiecim

German concentration camp for women; The Other World, the

Soviet memoires of Gustav Herling-Grudzinski6; and the Solz-

henitsyn volumes turgid with human suffering.

The collection would include works on the philosophy of

history discussing the social and moral aspects of the genesis of

evil, but they would also use the half-mysterious laws of his-

tory to partly justify the blood-stained solutions. However, an

5 Szmaglewska, Seweryna, 1916-92, writer; 1942-45 prisoner in Nazi con-

centration camps; wrote Dymy nad Birkenau (Smoke over Birkenau, 1945);

witness at Nuremberg Trial; stories and novels mainly concerned with war

and occupation: Zapowiada sie piekny dzien (Looks Like a Beautiful Day,

1960), Niewinni w Norymberdze (The Innocent at Nuremberg, 1972); novels

for young people; anthology of memoirs 1939-45: Wiezienna krata (Prison

Bars, 1964). [Editor’s note.]

6 Herling-Grudzinski, Gustav: Polish writer who after WWII lived in Napoli,

Italy. Married the daughter of well known Italian philosopher Benedetto

Croce. He wrote an account of his time in a Soviet gulag: A World Apart.

[Editor’s note.]

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

39

alert reader would be able to detect a certain degree of evolu-

tion in the authors’ attitudes, from an ancient affirmation of

primitive enslavement and murder of vanquished peoples, to

the present-day moralizing condemnation of such methods of

behavior.

Such a library would nevertheless be missing a single work

offering a sufficient explanation of the causes and processes

whereby such historical dramas originate, of how and why

human frailties and ambitions degenerate into bloodthirsty

madness. Upon reading the present volume, the reader will

realize that writing such a book was scientifically impossible

until recently.

The old questions would remain unanswered: what made

this happen? Does everyone carry the seeds of crime within, or

is it only some of us? No matter how faithful and psychologi-

cally true, no literary description of occurrences, such as those

narrated by the above-mentioned authors, can answer these

questions, nor can they fully explain the origins of evil. They

are thus incapable of furnishing sufficiently effective principles

for counter-acting evil. The best literary description of a dis-

ease cannot produce an understanding of its essential etiology,

and thus furnishes no principles for treatment. In the same way,

such descriptions of historical tragedies are unable to elaborate

effective measures for counteracting the genesis, existence, or

spread of evil.

In using natural7 language to circumscribe psychological,

social, and moral concepts which cannot properly be described

within its sphere of utility, we produce a sort of surrogate com-

prehension leading to a nagging suspicion of helplessness. Our

natural system of concepts and imaginings is not equipped with

the necessary factual content to permit reasoned comprehen-

sion of the quality of the factors (particularly the psychological

ones) which were active before the birth of, and during, such

inhumanly cruel times

We must nevertheless point out that the authors of such lit-

erary descriptions sensed that their language was insufficient

and therefore attempted to infuse their words with the proper

7 Ordinary, everyday words which have various meanings, generally benign,