Devil: concept, origins, and cultural roles

The word 'devil' is from Ancient Greek Διάβολος Diábolos, literally 'muddler' in the sense of 'confuser, fact-twister, slanderer' from διά dia 'apart, (in the middle) in pieces' and βάλλειν bállein 'to throw', compounded into διαβάλλειν diabállein to cause discord, slander; Latin diabolus.

Moral Philosophy

In the work Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason, Immanuel Kant uses the devil as a personification of maximum moral turpitude. In a departure from the common Christian conception, Kant does not locate the sensual urges in the morally reprehensible. Since evil must be intelligent, it can only be considered reprehensible through the conscious superiority of the sensual over the moral. Therefore, the devil would also have to have an understanding of the moral, but as a spirit being has no relation to sensual pleasure. The devil must undoubtedly be a spiritual being, for if the devil were also a sensual being, there would be the possibility that he, seduced by pleasure, would not choose the maximum of reprehensibility. The devil acts against morality, not to satisfy a sensual lust, but solely for the sake of evil. As such, the devil is selfless, for he does not profit by his evil actions. Kant, however, rules out a wholly diabolical man. Although there are devilish vices (ingratitude, envy, and schadenfreude), i.e., vices that bring no personal advantage, a man can never be entirely a devil. In his Lecture on Moral Philosophy (1774/75) Kant gives an example of a tulip seller who is in possession of a rare tulip, but when he learns that another seller has the same tulip, he buys it from him and then destroys it instead of keeping it himself. Had he acted according to sensuality, the seller would have kept the tulip but not destroyed it. Nevertheless, the destruction of the tulip cannot be wholly divorced from the sensual impulses, since still, with the destruction of the tulip there accompanies a sensual pleasure or relief, and therefore cannot be thought of as solely for the sake of the offence against morality.

Psychoanalysis

In 1922, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud addressed the Christian popular belief in the devil. In the 1923 essay A Devil's Neurosis in the Seventeenth Century (XIII, pp. 317-353), he assessed church pastoral care as unhelpful in dealing with sick people. The diagnosis for the clinical picture of the Bavarian Catholic Christian, painter and devil's advocate Christoph Haitzmann, who had dedicated himself to the devil with his own blood in 1669, was: "Unresolved depression as a result of the loss of a close person". Legend has handed down the following events concerning this: On 8 September 1677 on the day of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, during an exorcistic practice at midnight in the pilgrimage church of Mariazell, the devil appeared as a winged dragon to Christoph Haitzmann in the presence of monks.

According to the psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek not only the devil functions "as diabolos (from diaballein: to separate, to pull apart the one into two) and Jesus Christ as its opposite, as symbol (to symballein: to gather and unite)". Rather, according to Lk 14,26 EU, Jesus Christ Himself is the separator (diabolos) and both the devil and Judas Iscariot are merely his supporters in this.