Evil Artifacts and Extrinsic Value

Gwen Bradford (University of Toronto, St. George Campus)

Nazi memorabilia, medieval torture devices, “old sparky,” anthropodermic books, and other such things are examples of what we might call evil artifacts – historical artifacts that are in some important sense bad or evil. This paper explores the contours of the values of evil artifacts. Although this sounds at first like a question of first-order axiology, in fact it gives occasion to explore a thesis concerning formal axiology — specifically, a thesis concerning the relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic value. The value of evil artifacts is explained by appealing to familiar first-order goods and bads that come to bear extrinsically in ways that give rise to intrinsic value, both positive and negative.