Introduction: Where Does Evil Reside?
Evil does not reside in libraries, but in the muscles of our hands and the rhythm of our pulse. For centuries, philosophical thought has attempted to tame it. Thomas Aquinas saw it merely as the absence of good (privatio boni), Kant trusted in the power of reason, and Schopenhauer perceived it as a cruel will to live. Nietzsche, in turn, saw violence as a pure manifestation of strength. However, the greatest breakthrough came with Hannah Arendt, who diagnosed the banality of evil—a situation where the criminal is not a demon, but a mindless bureaucrat following procedures.
The Evolution of the Concept of Evil: From Metaphysics to Banality
The experiments of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo provided evidence for the situational origins of cruelty. It turned out that the authority of the "white coat" or an imposed role as a guard is enough for an ordinary person to begin inflicting suffering. Klaus Theweleit goes further, however, by performing a deconstruction of the murderer's profile. He argues that perpetrators of mass murder are not necessarily "ordinary people," but individuals with a specific psychophysical structure. In their case, normalcy is merely a mask, and crime becomes the product of a rational society that suspends ethical norms.
The Fragmentary Body and the Biology of Murder
The central point of Theweleit's theory is the fragmentary body—an identity experienced as incomplete and threatened by disintegration. For such a perpetrator, the act of killing serves the function of homeostasis, acting as a biological regulator of tension. At the moment of the crime, protodiacrisis occurs—a state in which the boundary between the living and the dead is blurred. The victim ceases to be a person, becoming a "stain to be removed."
In this context, the laughter of murderers is a psychophysical phenomenon—an acoustic sign of bodily stabilization and neurochemical discharge (a dopamine rush). It differs from civilizing laughter in that it does not build bonds but manifests absolute dominance. Instrumental aggression here becomes a form of self-therapy, restoring the perpetrator's sense of integrity through the destruction of the Other.
Social Vacuum and the Technological Staging of Crime
Violence escalates in conditions of a social vacuum, where traditional institutions lose their power. This void is filled by brutal structures based on coercion. Modern media and technologies are not just a backdrop, but tools for the staging of crime. From propaganda in Rwanda to ISIS livestreams, violence becomes a spectacle that desensitizes the audience. A key element here is the hygienic reflex—the dehumanization of victims (labeling them "vermin" or "pests") allows the perpetrator to maintain a sense of purity. Traditional protection methods often fail because they focus on ideology, ignoring deep, bodily mechanisms of fear and discharge.
Summary: Beyond the Limits of Normalcy
Analyzing the mechanisms of violence teaches us that effective prevention requires bodily tools: working on the regulation of arousal and rebuilding the boundaries of the "self" through safe rituals. Working solely at the level of beliefs is like wallpapering over a cracked wall. Memory and justice must understand the logic of ressentiment to avoid unconsciously reinforcing it. Public spectacles, in which perpetrators once again appear as the heroes of their own narrative, only serve as fuel for their destructive loop. We need the bitterness of this knowledge to never mistake "normalcy" for innocence.
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