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Rereading Frankenstein : What If Victor Frankenstein Had Actually Been Evil?
Author(s) -
Robert Jason Scott
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
hastings center report
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.515
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1552-146X
pISSN - 0093-0334
DOI - 10.1002/hast.933
Subject(s) - philosophy , psychoanalysis , moral evil , art history , environmental ethics , sociology , epistemology , art , psychology
As we reread Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at two hundred years, it is evident that Victor Frankenstein is both a mad scientist (fevered, obsessive) and a bad scientist (secretive, hubristic, irresponsible). He's also not a very nice person. He's a narcissist, a liar, and a bad “parent.” But he is not genuinely evil. And yet when we reimagine him as evil—as an evil scientist and as an evil person—we can learn some important lessons about science and technology, our contemporary society, and ourselves .