Introduction
Theodore Dalrymple, physician and essayist, subjects the modern tendency to relativize the concepts of evil, guilt, and ugliness to critical analysis. In a world dominated by statistics, the author defends classical moral intuition against two temptations: reductionism (replacing evil with risk factors) and determinism (treating crime as a function of genes). The reader will learn how the naturalization of evil and the industrialization of ugliness lead to the erosion of responsibility, and why, in the age of the technological revolution, we must reclaim the language of ethics to avoid becoming mere data points in a predictive algorithm.
Reductionism and Evil as a Boundary Category
Reductionism and relativism are theoretical traps that remove the concept of evil from serious discourse. Dalrymple argues, however, that evil as a boundary category is essential—it marks the point where the analytical language of conditioning surrenders to the mystery of human freedom. The author warns that biological determinism paralyzes the penal system: if actions are determined by genes, punishment becomes either unjust or serves merely as the technical neutralization of the offender.
Pointing to the legacy of eugenics, Dalrymple reminds us that genocentrism in science has historically legitimized projects for the selection of the "unfit." While modern behavioral genetics provides valuable data, it cannot replace the moral call to responsibility. Without acknowledging that a person could have acted otherwise, the judicial process becomes a redundant theater of risk management.
Blame Culture and Ethics in the Shadow of Litigation
In the economic sphere, blame culture has become a profit mechanism, allowing corporations and states to diffuse responsibility. Dalrymple notes with concern that lawsuits are displacing classical ethical principles. Instead of asking "what is right?", managers calculate the probability of losing in court, which turns ethics into a post-factum assessment.
In this system, the fraudster becomes a mirror image of the economic system. He uses intelligence for the parasitic capture of value, which represents a perversion of the ideal of efficiency. Just as the criminal constructs a narrative about his trauma, corporations surround their mistakes with stories of "systemic ambiguities" to avoid the burden of guilt.
Aesthetics, AI, and Global Models of Responsibility
The collapse of the canon manifests through tattoos and aesthetic relativism, where ugliness becomes a commodity and Sid Vicious an icon of empty authenticity—transgression without craft. Today, AI algorithms are creating a new metaphysics of innocence and guilt, replacing moral judgment with recidivism prediction. These systems favor the logic of efficiency at the expense of justice.
Analyzing global contexts, the author sees the USA vs. Europe as two models: the American language of moral guilt versus the European language of systemic errors. Meanwhile, the Arab world combines modern technology with traditional religious morality. In the face of these changes, Dalrymple postulates prudent catastrophism—the necessity of protesting against the tyranny of scientific naturalism before algorithms finally institutionalize the lack of freedom.
Summary
In an era where algorithms promise the objectification of guilt and ugliness becomes a commodity, Chesterton’s cry "before I am hurt" resonates with new power. In a world of programmed prediction and learned ugliness, will there still be room for freedom of choice and authentic beauty? Dalrymple reminds us that abandoning the concepts of evil and guilt does not make us more humane, but rather turns us into objects of technical manipulation. We must defend the lived world, where responsibility is a fact, not a bug in the code.
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