Out of Eden

Paul W. Kahn is Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School and Director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr., Center for Human Rights at Yale University. His books include "Putting Liberalism in Its Place" (Princeton); "Law and Love; The Cultural Study of Law; The Reign of Law;" and "Legitimacy and History".

• Acknowledgments vii Introduction: The Study of Evil 1 Chapter 1: A Preliminary Meditation on Oedipus and Adam 16 Chapter 2: Evil and the Image of the Sacred 53 Chapter 3: Love and Evil 106 Chapter 4: Political Evil: Slavery and the Shame of Nature 143 Chapter 5: Political Evil: Killing, Sacrifice, and the Image of God 174 Conclusion: Tragedy, Comedy, and the Banality of Evil 211 Index 223

"A book which begins with the sentence 'Evil makes us Human' must surely compel attention. This is no ordinary account of what is usually meant by the problem of evil... Instead, Paul W. Kahn's aim is to explore the nature of evil itself... A rich and fascinating book full of unusual conjunctions and insights."--John Habgood, Times Literary Supplement "Kahn makes a powerful case for the reality of good (which he calls 'love') as a form of self-sacrifice, and of its opposite, evil, which constitutes a denial of one's finitude."--Whitley R. P. Kaufman, Philosophy in Review "Brilliant and essential... [Kahn] establishes an enormously clarifying political theology of modernity, one that investigates the limits of our contemporary imagination."--Igor Webb, Common Review "In Out of Eden, Paul W. Kahn ... argues that the human condition--rather than political or social conditions--is the locus of evil. Using the lenses of political and cultural theory, law, and philosophy, Kahn takes a hard look at modern forms of evil, namely slavery, torture, and genocide. Evil, Kahn posits, in an existential problem."--Yale Law Report