The Devil: A Very Short Introduction by Darren Oldridge

These 'A Very Short Introduction' books from the Oxford University Press are always reliable pocket books to give you an overview into a topic [I've read about a dozen now],and this is no exception.

The author makes no bones about this being a historical analysis as much as a 'cultural' one, so I can't really complain about large parts of the book being concerned with the former, but the book really takes off and is at its most interesting, when Darren Oldridge looks deeper into the religious, socio-cultural and human psychological aspects of the Devil and his Works in human society, particularly the current one.

The idea that the Devil and Evil on the whole is based in an absence of belief and positive action and in the destruction of form and thoughts, rather than their development and enhancement, is of course spot on.  This leads to the neat observation of Baudelaire, that if the devil exists, it will be his primary purpose to encourage our ignorance him, and believe he does not exist.  If that is the case, in contemporary society he is doing a good job.

This book is so tight, well written and quickly digestible there's little point going over it's philosophical deliberations here- just give it a read, you can get hold of it for about a fiver- but just to reiterate my above point, it is when Oldridge discusses the contemporary cultural attitude to the Devil and Evil in general,that it becomes the most fascinating.  Because paradoxically, in a century [the 20th] when evil most blatantly romped across the planet on a grand scale, our understanding- even belief in it as a force- became fogged and diminished, and continues to do so.  In fact popular culture has parcelled up the Devil as not much more than a media actor, all darkness and demon-assisted and sinisterly sexy, á la Hollywood.  The reality may well be as St Paul and countless others have observed, that he actually comes as 'an angel of light.'  Because on the whole, humans do Bad Things, believing they are doing right.

In that way, real evil as W H Auden observed, in all likelihood works most effectively in contemporary society through our class and economic system, through the ruling bureaucracies and now, more than ever, the media outlets they control.  The simplest and most frighteningly damaging example of that for us in the West, was of course Nazi Germany, where an inherently liberal, gentile and educated middle class were within a matter of a few years transformed into rabid supporters of Fascism.  It's a timely reminder from history, and one to my mind inextricably linked to theories of Evil.

So an excellent introduction to the subject.  For a more in depth study of Evil in particular, I would recommend On Evil by Terry Eagleton which is a wonderfully thought provoking analysis of the subject. Starting here is as good a place as any though.