Image: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, 14 December 2026
Campaigning in Transalpine Gaul in 55 B.C., Julius Caesar composed a two volume response on Latin grammar to Cicero’s De Oratore. The issue in contention was whether grammatically correct everyday speech designed for clarity was always preferable to more ornate oratorical speech intended to persuade or incite. A debate still pertinent to today’s politics.
Take the use of the word evil. The word evil is notoriously polysemic, and many philosophers and theologians would probably observe that it is used too unstintingly; even though viscerally it often seems only too apt in public discourse. It is usually reserved for acts of such enormity or depravity that other terms seem inadequate.
At Bondi, Australians were confronted with actions that were ordinarily inexpressible and inexplicable. The horrific attack on a Jewish gathering was described by the Prime Minister as an “act of evil antisemitism”. He said that “The evil that was unleashed at Bondi Beach today is beyond comprehension.” Evil is the worst possible term of opprobrium imaginable. Was the use of ‘evil’ here for clarity or oratory?
The Prime Minister later added that the government would “stamp out the evil ideology of what would appear to be … an ISIS inspired attack”. He said of the perpetrators that “They are evil”, and that this means that “calling out evil when we see it” is necessary. This was a moment “where we have seen evil perpetrated”. “You know”, he said, “these people are evil”. The Prime Minister’s comments suggested the logical scalability: “There was pure evil at Bondi on Sunday”.
On Christmas Day he continued in the same vein, “but at the same time, as we’ve seen the worst of evil and the worst of humanity”. Adding that “We need to root out any evil that is antisemitism across the board”, the Prime Minister asked, “What sort of evil ideology and thoughts at a time like this would motivate someone?” Stating that “We know that there is evil presence (sic)”. Evil is employed interchangeably as a noun, adjective, and an adverb by the Prime Minister.
It would be unreasonable to expect the Prime Minister to have attenuated his comments in the moment for reasons of philosophical rigour. And his descriptions would have undoubtedly passed the ‘pub test’. In the pragmatic world of politics and policy, the use of the term evil is not held to any demanding tests of logic and meaning. In the circumstances, no Aquinas, or Kant, or Arendt would have dissected his public use of the word evil, nor should they have. Cicero might have applauded it. Certainly Cicero would have concurred with the Prime Minister’s evocative usage of the term. But because it lacks explanatory power, Caesar might have said that the correct choice of words was important.
The Prime Minister indicated that evil is something that can be ‘unleashed’, that it is a real but unattached force. That is inconsistent with the idea that evil could be ‘eradicated’: that is, that it is a material thing. Yet, he said both people and ideologies can be evil which also seems inconsistent. Evil is so distinctive, he seems to argue, that it can be easily detected and distinguished from other immoral acts. But in the absence of a shared understanding of evil this seems problematic.
It’s not pedantry to ask how this repulsive act, the calculated and deliberate murder and wounding of innocent, unsuspecting, and unprotected people during a religious event, is ‘evil’. It was undeniably immoral, illegal, inhuman, and therefore reprehensible and repugnant. But was it evil? Is the “I know it when I see it” test sufficient for framing government legislation and regulation?
Some might understand evil acts as the inversion of supererogatory acts; that is, as acts beyond normal understandings of right and wrong, virtue and vice, good and bad. With evil acts and supererogatory acts residing at opposite end of the moral spectrum. No-one would have condemned Ahmed al Ahmed if he had remained safely out of sight, and everyone recognised that tackling the gunman was heroic and beyond what could have been reasonably expected of someone in similar circumstances.
In moral theory, supererogatory acts are those beyond what ordinary, even the most exacting, moral obligations demand of an individual. This implies some sort of moral boundary beyond which such acts take place; failure to perform the supererogatory act is not morally blameworthy. If symmetrical, at the opposite end of the spectrum, there would be people therefore that are evil beyond even what is morally forbidden, beyond what is conceivable.
Supererogatory acts are those that involve not just right intentions but the voluntary acceptance of very significant, even unimaginable, elements of sacrifice, loss, pain, and physical, psychological, and emotional suffering, in order to do good. The symmetrical evil mirror image would have the perpetrator of evil acts deriving unusually satisfying pleasure from acts that lack any intention or motivation apart from simply being evil; of somehow being fulfilled by an evil act itself.
The concept of moral justification requires rationality; it presupposes being able to justify actions or condemn them on the basis of the reasons for any act. Evil on the other hand must be incomprehensible or utterly unfathomable or else someone could mount a justification that is understandable, even if totally and utterly unacceptable. On those grounds it is the unreason that makes an act evil. In the Prime Minister’s own words the shooting was “beyond comprehension”, and he couldn’t imagine a “motivation”.
If evil acts are the result of a disembodied, inhuman metaphysical causal force in the universe then they are the province of theologians, clerics, inquisitors, and witch-burners, not politicians. The ontological commitments associated with such an assumption take it well out of the realms of ordinary policy-making.
Policy-makers cannot treat the shooting at Bondi as the work of evil. If they did there’s no action open to them. A Royal Commission or an ‘independent’ review is ill-suited to explore ‘evil’. Assuming bad actors have motives enables comprehension, allows for some level of prediction or anticipation, a recognition of conditions conducive to – or behaviours indicative of – future violence, and allows for precautions, monitoring, prevention, and response.
It is not possible to formulate a policy to ‘eradicate’ evil. The shooters at Bondi, as the killer at Christchurch, all have a reason that they can fall back on; a political or moral justification, no matter how reprehensible, despicable, and impermissible. That said, political figures trying to put outraged public feelings into common language to help people deal with tragedy conceptually, and to gain support for measures designed to prevent repetitions, are generally understandably Ciceronian.
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