Evil is not a concept, but a name for the threatening that can confront free consciousness and be enacted by it. It appears in nature where it closes itself off from the desire for meaning, in chaos, in contingency, in entropy, in the act of consuming and being consumed. In the emptiness of outer space as well as within the self, in the black hole of existence. And consciousness can choose cruelty and destruction for their own sake. The reasons for this are the abyss that opens up within humanity. This book carves a path through the thicket of the experience of evil and the contemplation of it.