Burning Times: Evil, Witch-Hunts and Social Control.
 This paper will look at the ways in which ‘evil’ has been used as a means of social control. The term evil is used here in the way it is understood by the Western Christian tradition, other cultures and faith systems have different understandings of the concept or may not include it in their mythology. In this paper a range of theories are used to outline how evil has been understood and applied to social control, including those of Durkheim, Nietzsche and Jung. The paper uses the ‘witch craze’ of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries as a case study to examine how the association between evil and witchcraft was used to control groups within individual communities and in wider Early Modern European society who were perceived to pose a threat to the established order. This is followed by a brief concluding section suggesting an alternative approach to evil in a more secular and diverse society.
 From pleasing God to pleasing ourselves:
 The concept of evil is a constant in some form across all human cultures, one that Emil Durkheim saw as being used to explain all the miseries humans face in their daily lives (Durkheim, 1968:281). Religious faith, he argued, is the source of life and anything that acts to disrupt it is therefore evil. This causes all faith traditions to create a differentiation between what he termed the ‘sacred’, those things society develops collectively and the ‘profane’, the concerns of the individual focussed mainly on the body (Durkheim, 1968; Pickering, 1984:119). Although both categories are distinct and have no common features they function as two poles in a binary system (Durkheim, 1968:38-39; Pickering, 1984:117).
 Post-Aristotelian philosophy portrays evil as the ‘privation of all form and order in the world’, identifying it as the absence of good (Hamlyn, 1990:89). This position would be adapted by Christian thinkers including Thomas Aquinas to identify evil with the failure by individuals to seek happiness through their relationship with God, the source of all good (Hamlyn, 1990:95;108). Later thinkers including Leibniz argued that evil exists because God willed it into existence to grant humans true free will, to be expressed through triumphing over sin and temptation. (O’Hara, 2010:50).
 The implication in terms of social control is clear, if individuals wished to avoid encountering evil and its consequences then they were required to follow unquestioningly the teachings of the church. In an age when church and state power had a symbiotic relationship this meant also conforming to the rules and expectations imposed by secular authority.
 Although characterised by an optimistic view of human nature thinkers of the Enlightenment expressed some ambiguity about human nature. The darkest manifestation of this seen in the view expressed by Joseph de Meistrie that all idealism regarding human nature and our propensity for evil is mistaken, order, so far as it exists in the world is maintained solely by the threat of violent retribution (O’Hara, 2010:183).
This fits with the view expressed by orthodox Christian teaching that humans can only be kept from sin and evil by the fear of damnation, Hume saw this as driving them to a ‘true sense of religion’ through ‘superstition’ (Garrett, 2015:295). The existence of evil, Hume suggested, was a challenge to the omnipotence of God since it represented a clear limitation to his powers. Instead, he suggested, the power causing order in the universe, if one can be said to exist, is at best indifferent to human ideas of good and evil and the consequences of its actions (Garrett, 2015:297).
 If the power of the creator had limitations; then so surely did that of the state, this led prominent Enlightenment thinkers including William Godwin to see evil as resulting from ‘ignorance’ caused by ‘faulty education, perpetrated by tyranny and greed’ (O’Hara, 2010:112). These things could be shown to result from the decisions and actions of human beings in positions of power, not those of a remote deity and so were open to be questioned and even overturned.
 Emmanuel Kant would further distance evil from the actions of God, locating it in the choices made by human beings. Religion, he argued, can provide a guide to living a moral life, but the choice to do good or evil rests entirely with human beings (Guyer, 2006:226). The resulting choices, Kant suggested, were shaped by human priorities, the competing demands of self-interest and the needs of the wider community, with the adverse consequences of any such decision resembling the moral evil identified by Hume (Garrett, 2015:296) in arising from individual actions. Kant, like the church, may have seem humans as having been evil in the past; he however suggested that redemption, or at least not doing evil in the future, was dependent on our capacity for making choices (Guyer, 2006:228).
 Friedrich Nietzsche, a staunch opponent of Christianity, which he described as imposing a ‘malicious slavery’ on human beings (Welshaw, 2004:15), would take the role of human choices in morality a radical step further. He argued that the debate around the existence of evil had been ‘debased’ by the ‘slave morality’ of the weakest groups within society, who had accepted the version of morality handed down to them by the powerful that presented evil and suffering as things to be endured to earn the rewards of faith (Welshaw, 2004:16-22).
 Nietzsche argued that in order to be truly moral human beings had to accept autonomy over and responsibility for their actions. In the process rejecting the false comforts offered by the ‘slave morality’ offered by the church and embracing instead their instinct for freedom and desire for power. The suffering they encounter in this process and might previously have described as evil becomes instead a spur to strive onwards that gives appoint and purpose to their lives (Welshaw, 2004:25-33).
 Although the way humans have understood evil can be shown to have changed over history, moving away from the absence of a relationship with God to a consequence of human choices and actions, its presence remains a constant. This demonstrates its necessity as a way in which belief systems represent all of existence, including those parts deemed repulsive (Durkheim, 1968:420-421). As such it has been a powerful tool for exercising social control.
 ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live:[1]
 The use of evil and the power it exerts over the human imagination can be seen in operation in the witch-hunts that occurred in Europe and the then American colonies from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. There is a strong link between the events of this period and the anxieties of government and communities about the religious and economic changes that characterised the Early Modern period (Levack, 1995:125). Many of those who accused neighbours and family members of involvement with witchcraft were responding, not always consciously, to the upheavals caused by the beginnings of a capitalist economy, population growth and urbanization (Levack, 1995:127). These to some extent mirror the stresses Durkheim (1964) would identify in operation during a later period of rapid industrialization and social change.
 ‘Witches’ could be seen as rebels against the conventions around issues like gender and class contemporary to their time and had links with ‘radical’ ideas that were potentially a threat to the authority of the church and state. This led them to be implicated in a possible conspiracy against the state that though it has Satan at its head was driven by decidedly temporal motives. (Levack, 1995:165; Maxwell-Stuart, 2004:109-110). An example of this can be seen in the Salem ‘witch-craze’ where Samuel Parris, one of three ministers serving the town, used suspicion of witchcraft to increase demand for his services and to resolve an ongoing dispute with his congregation (Weisman, 1984; Boyer & Nissenbaum, 1974; Mixon, 200, in King & Mixon, 2010).
 The Salem witch trial arose at a time of heightened tensions between settlers and the colonial authorities. These would later sow the seeds for the American War of Independence and a growing challenge to the church represented by ‘unauthorized’ ministers such as Anne Hutchinson, who used her sermons to preach on equality and women’s rights (Breen & Foster, 1973; Faber, 1970, in King & Mixon, 2010). Through their role in identifying and prosecuting potential witches local ministers were able to maintain social control by curtailing anti-social behaviour and projecting the insecurities of a (male) establishment onto women who had no political power or access to the law (Demos, 1970, in King & Mixon, 2010). In doing so they were following an established practice within Christianity of blaming sin, particularly where it relates to sexuality, on women and using the need to counter the resulting evil to justify repression (Fontana, 2003:173)
 This link between evil and gender may have been one of the factors resulting in most accusations being made against females during the period under discussion. Although some men were accused of practicing witchcraft this was usually linked to another form of heresy (Levack, 1995:133-135). There is a definite current of misogyny in accusations against women where the evidence cited related to their being ‘unnatural’ in their sexual behaviour, this relates to fears harboured by the authorities that recent outbreaks of plague had created a ‘surplus’ of women who were not under the authority of either a husband or their family. Popular tracts of the time such as the Mallus Malificarum gave these fears a spurious academic and legal authority (Levack, 1995:147; Maxwell-Stuart, 2004:79).
 Female witches were also open to accusations that related to the roles they occupied in the community, in many cases as cooks, midwives or ‘healers’ with skills in folk medicine that made them both valued and held in suspicion by their neighbours. As a result, although not uniformly from the lowest economic groups many of these women lived on the margins of society (Levack, 1995:136:149). They were also characterised by exhibiting behaviour the contemporary attitudes saw as ‘unwomanly’ this could include being ‘sharp tongued’ and independent in their lifestyle, making them easy targets since they had little recourse to law to solve the disputes that inevitably arose with their neighbours (Levack, 1995:148-149)
 An example of this can be seen in the case of the Pendle Witches (1612), which began with a dispute between the matriarchs of the Southern and Whittle families[2], both of whom had a reputation for being involved with witchcraft that had resulted in their marginalization (Winsham, 2018:51-64).
 The panic around witchcraft during the Early Modern period represents an attempt by small communities to preserve their mechanical solidarity in the face of rapid change (Durkheim, 1964, in Lemert, 2010:74). Concerns around the inappropriate behaviour of women accused point to the need in such communities to have fixed gender roles and a moral code backed by strong sanctions for transgressors (Durkheim, 1964, in Lemert, 2010:74-75). The ‘gossip’ on which many such accusations were based could, therefore, be seen as being symptomatic of a threatened community seeking to ‘identify’ a convenient enemy who could them be defeated in the name of preserving solidarity (Briggs, 1998:392-393).
 The ‘witch-craze’ may have burnt out in the eighteenth century as the advance of capitalism saw an organic solidarity based on the division of labour  and the power of the market replace earlier means of social control (Durkheim, 1964, in Lemert, 2010). This provided the holders of authority with new means to control individuals, however evil, with its ability to speak to primal human fears continues to exert a pull, even following the decline of religious faith[3]. The hunt for ‘witches’ goes on even if the name has fallen out of our vocabulary, as evidenced by the highly punitive attitudes towards gun crime in the US expressed by people who saw media reports attributing their actions to ‘evil (Vesturia et al, 2018)[4].
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil that all morality is ‘a piece of tyranny against nature and reason’ (Nietzsche, 2003:110). His position may have been an extreme one, but it is arguable that the way evil has been understood and used by Western Christianity is outmoded. As Durkheim predicted the decline of religious faith has led to a degree of moral poverty (Pickering, 1984:451), old forms of restraint no longer work, opening the way for a rethinking of our moral system and relationship with evil.
 Perhaps even for the creation, as Durkheim envisaged, of an alternative, secular, morality which retains elements of Christian ethics, but without the associated dogma, ritual or church hierarchy (Pickering, 1984:499). A project that continues the ongoing human search for meaning (Fontana, 2003:170), but embraces an autonomy dogmatic religion was reluctant to grant to individuals.
 Humans have a need to locate causality for the misfortunes they face with a higher power, one that brings such evils into the world for the purpose of promoting their spiritual growth (Fontana, 2003:170). A more philosophically mature approach may be to adopt a more existentialist view, drawing inspiration from thinkers like Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger and attempting to see the world as it is, not as being shaped by the twin poles of good and evil (Hamlyn, 1990:323).
 This would allow individuals to take a materialist view of evil as existing in the world as the result of human value judgements, a position not dissimilar to that expressed by Kant. Morality in such a system would be understood as a construct assembled to protect property and to facilitate social living (Fontana, 2003:170)
 The value judgements used to create such a morality would be demonstrably the product of human thought and action unmediated by a higher power. This, as Nietzsche argued, would require acceptance of autonomy over and responsibility for their actions by individuals (Welshaw, 2004), along with the rejection of the false comforts offered by organised religion and later the state in return for unquestioning compliance.
 Individuals, as Sartre argued, would have the ability to make themselves ‘free’ through accepting their capacity to make choices, and to see any attempt to transfer the consequences of their actions to some outside ‘evil’ as an act of bad faith (Hamlyn, 1990:326).In order to do so individuals would be required to accept their own capacity for doing and being evil. Recognising this as what Karl Jung termed ‘the shadow’ within our human nature, failure to do so can lead to it being ‘projected’ onto marginalized groups (Fontana, 2003:173), a process which, as this paper has suggested, was at work during the ‘witch-craze’. In more recent times it has been a driving force of moral panics that have targeted groups on the margins of society, identifying them as enemies to be eradicated as a means of protecting the social order (Becker, 1975; Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 2009; Cohen, 2002, in Hardie-Bick, 2012).
 Recognizing and naming the potential to be evil that resides within all human beings may be a spur to greater understanding and tolerance of difference. As Durkheim argued the goals of society are different from those of individuals, if one of those goals is the creation of a workable system of morals; then we must all be actors in its creation.
This paper has set out to examine the role of evil as a means of social control. In doing so it has traced how the concept has been understood from the simple absence of good, through the Western Christian view that evil was the product of a faulty relationship with God, to a more modern location of evil as a possible outcome of human value judgements. The ‘witch-craze’ of the Early Modern period has been used as a case study to show how evil, represented by the practice of witchcraft, was used to justify actions that sought to address political and economic tensions at both a state and community level. In the final section the suggestion is made that adopting an existentialist understanding of our capacity to be and do evil may be the basis for a more modern and secular form of morality.
1.   British Social Attitudes: Record number of Brits with no religion, 04 September 2017, http://natcen.ac.uk/news-media/press-releases/2017/september/british-social-attitudes-record-number-of-brits-with-no-religion/, accessed 4/12/2019
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5.   Exodus, Chapter 22, Verse 18, King James Bible
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17. Vasturia, D., Webster, R.J. & Saucier, D.A. 2018, "Demons with firepower: How belief in pure evil relates to perceptions and punishments of gun violence perpetrators", Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 122, pp. 13-18.*
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19. Winsham W, (2018), England’s Witchcraft Trials, Barnsley, Pen & Sword
 [1] Exodus, 22:18, King James Bible
[2] Willow Winsham gives a full account of the trial in Chapter 3 of England’s Witchcraft Trials, Pen and Sword (2018)
[3] The number of Britons claiming to be religious fell from 48.6% to 43% according to the 2017 British Social Attitudes Survey.
[4] The researchers presented participants with copies of USA Today giving details of an invented shooting incident, where the crime was described as ‘evil’ they showed a preference for harsher punishments, even where the perpetrator was reported a suffering from a brain injury impairing his ability to be responsible for his actions.
