Abstract

In my contribution I intend to reconstruct the sociological debate on the topic of evil, through some of the most representative voices of this debate. In particular, I will consider the perspectives of Bauman, Elias and Alexander. If the first two authors, albeit with different outcomes, closely link the theme of evil to the birth of Modernity and the concepts of civilization and progress, Alexander fills a gap in sociological thought, founding a sociology of evil and demonstrating how the Holocaust be affirmed as a collective cultural trauma, a bridge metaphor of all forms of evil, capable of refuting every absolute and ahistorical categorization of Good and Evil. In light of this last consideration, the conclusions are entrusted with the task of developing some reflections on the difficulty in “managingµ, today, the categories of good and evil.