Abstract

The article sketches a possible argument for the objectivity of the evil. In a first stage the author deals with the emotivist thesis according to which evaluative judgments are nothing other than the expression of our positive or negative emotions toward an object. Although this thesis is rejected, the idea that emotions play a central role by the uttering of an evaluative judgement is retained. It is only by critically examining such judgments that one can eviscerate the objective core they contain. The author proposes a conception of the objectivity of the evil that relies on the notion of social agreement, on which every human society is based. According to this conception, which draws on the philosophical tradition, objective evil is a privation of social agreement, which can take the form of legal or moral faults.