 By way of analogy: suppose that ordinary moral wrongdoing is like making a bad move in chess, or like cheating by moving one’s pieces in an illegal way when one’s opponent isn’t looking. A radically evil act on the present conception, by contrast, would be like crushing all of the opponent’s pieces and upending the table. The player who does the latter is no longer or perhaps never was a player: she cannot explain her behavior by saying that she was trying to win by making what turned out to be a bad move or a cheat. She cannot explain her behavior in terms of chess at all. Likewise, a radically evil act is supposed to transcend the terms of moral rationality.