『スター・ウォーズ』から聖アウグスティヌスへ（Giles Fraser)

Giles Fraser*1 “What Star Wars: The Force Awakens can teach us about modern evil” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/05/star-wars-force-awakens-evil-vatican-kylo-ren

ヴァティカン教皇庁の事実上の機関紙であるL'Osservatore Romanoが先月『スター・ウォーズ：フォースの覚醒』 *2を批判するレヴューを掲載した。何故駄目かというと、『フォースの覚醒』はKylo Renを「悪」として描ききれていないから*3。それに対して、フレイザー先生は、ヴァティカンは再度聖アウグスティヌス *4に立ち戻るべきなのではないかと説く。

Because what the Vatican should have learned from its own master theologian of the dark side, St Augustine, is that all evil is a fake, an absence, a lack, a hole, an emptiness. Nothingness is its abiding characteristic. The problem with Vader’s evil is that it pretends too much existential gravity, too much substance. Like so many formulaic depictions of evil – and like the Star Wars universe itself – it imagines a Manicheistic cosmos split between the competing forces of good and evil. As a follower of the Persian prophet Mani, this was the religion of Augustine’s youth.
But on converting to Christianity, Augustine broke with a dualistic worldview, believing that because God is the creator of all things, all of creation must be good. Therefore, following the logic, evil has to be non-existent. This remarkable conclusion doesn’t mean that evil stuff doesn’t happen, but rather that evil has an empty heart, its mode of existence is non-existence. For those who don’t like old-fashioned metaphysics, something similar is echoed in both Freud’s idea that the death instinct contains a dangerous will-to-nothingness, and in Hannah Arendt’s depiction of the Nazi Eichmann as banal*5.

「悪」は善の欠如としてしか定義できないというのはカトリックの正統的な解釈だと思っていたのだが。