Humans and Demons: Dissecting Evil in Evil Times

Recently, the talk of crises has been replaced by the discourse of evil. The crimes and human tragedies in Ukraine or Israel and Palestine have led us to identify monstrous, singular evils, yet we forget that evil lives among us. Even in our polarized world, there are vast moral gray zones, which can be weaponized by authoritarian forces. Humans and Demons, the 2023 edition of steirischer herbst, explored how people negotiate such gray zones, how evil can be confronted and ethical judgments still be made. Combining essays and shorter literary texts, the festival’s reader further examines the return of radical evil.