Evil

[speed]

What is evil? Who becomes evil, and why? Can nations become evil? How do we define evil in the postmodern world? Who defines evil?--is it religion, politics, philosophy, collective society? What is philosophy's take on evil over the last century? Is there even evil in any sense?

Just some very broad questions I offer, after recently contemplating, and discussing the subject.

 

[Sacred Profane]

Ohh jeez, so many questions

I think evil is actions that in some way make other people feel bad. So it can be basically anything depending on the other person.

Nations can be evil, I know of a few.. *cough*

I think an interesting question is why people are so narrowminded and only seeing black and white. Today it seems a lot of people are living Bush's mantra of 'with us or against us' ... good vs evil. IE it's either good or it's evil.
I don't believe anything is all evil. Anyway.. blablaing perhaps.

 

[Jrgen]

Evil is a stupid concept.

 

[Silver Incubus]

Evil is the lack of love, compassion, and understanding.

 

[Norsemaiden]

Taking a holistic view there is no good or evil. Something may seem very bad and yet out of that bad thing come consequences, and sometimes those consequences are good - so this blurs the distinction.

However the view I prefer is based on the eternal laws of nature. For all living creatures the ultimate good is that which helps their species to survive and the ultimate evil is that which kills their species. We are only in existence because we have evolved to behave in accordance with this.

 

[Cythraul]

Evil is a stupid concept.

good analysis!

 

[Norsemaiden]

Taking a holistic view there is no good or evil. Something may seem very bad and yet out of that bad thing come consequences, and sometimes those consequences are good - so this blurs the distinction.

However the view I prefer is based on the eternal laws of nature. For all living creatures the ultimate good is that which helps their species to survive and the ultimate evil is that which kills their species. We are only in existence because we have evolved to behave in accordance with this.

The thing is with that last statement that it is still a rejection of the dualistic nature of good and evil because what is good for one species may well be harmful for another. Nature is full of competition after all, with a continual arms race taking place.

 

[Cythraul]

Taking a holistic view there is no good or evil. Something may seem very bad and yet out of that bad thing come consequences, and sometimes those consequences are good - so this blurs the distinction.

It just looks like you're playing on the notion of intrinsic goodness here but then equivocating by suggesting that something "bad" can be good if it leads to good outcomes, thereby making it seem as though something's intrinsic goodness/badness is irrelevant.

Suppose I ask the question "Is action X good?" and you say "Well, it looks bad, but look at all the good things that resulted from action X".

My response to that: You are claiming that the consequences of X are good; in effect, you seem to suggest that the consequences of X are intrinsically good since you make no mention of the consequences of the consequences of X. But if you are judging the consequences of X to be good in themselves then what bars you from evaluating the intrinsic value of X itself? After all, the question was "Is action X good?", not "Are the consequences of action X good?"

 

[Norsemaiden]

It just looks like you're playing on the notion of intrinsic goodness here but then equivocating by suggesting that something "bad" can be good if it leads to good outcomes, thereby making it seem as though something's intrinsic goodness/badness is irrelevant.

Suppose I ask the question "Is action X good?" and you say "Well, it looks bad, but look at all the good things that resulted from action X".

My response to that: You are claiming that the consequences of X are good; in effect, you seem to suggest that the consequences of X are intrinsically good since you make no mention of the consequences of the consequences of X. But if you are judging the consequences of X to be good in themselves then what bars you from evaluating the intrinsic value of X itself? After all, the question was "Is action X good?", not "Are the consequences of action X good?"

Yes you are right. There is no instrinsic good and bad, it is all subjective. What I meant, which should have been made clearer, was that any objective concept of good and evil is impossible because anything we perceive as "good" could be "bad" in another context or perspective, or could alternatively bring about a consequence that one would consider "bad".

 

[Norsemaiden]

Here is a fascinating excerpt from Theodore Dalyrymple's book "Our Culture, What's Left of It".

"Violent conflict, not confined to the home and hearth, spills out onto the streets. Moreover, I discovered that British cities such as my own even had torture chambers: run not by the government, as in dictatorships, but by those representatives of slum enterprise, the drug dealers. Young men and women in debt to drug dealers are kidnapped, taken to the torture chambers, tied to beds, and beaten or whipped. Of compunction there is none - only a residual fear of the consequences of going too far.

Perhaps the most alarming feature of this low-level but endemic evil, the one that brings it close to the conception of original sin, is that it is unforced and spontaneous. No one requires people to commit it. Inthe worst dictatorships, some of the evil that ordinary men and women do, they do out of fear of not committing it. There, goodness requires heroism. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, for example, a man who failed to report a political joke to the authorities was himself guilty of an offense that could lead to deportation or death. But in modern Britain, no such conditions exist: the government does not require citizens to behave as I have described and punish them if they do not. The evil is freely chosen.

Not that the government is blameless in the matter - far from it. Intellectuals propounded the idea that man should be freed from the shackles of social convention and self-control, and the government, without any demand from below, enacted laws that promoted unrestrained behaviour and created a welfare system that protected people from some of its economic consequences. When the barriers to evil are brought down, it flourishes; and never again will I be tempted to believe in the fundamental goodness of man, or that evil is something exceptional or alien to human nature.

Dalrymple also holds that "Most men and women must suppress the good within them to be evil; just as, to be good, they must suppress the evil. There is no final victory of one over the other."

 

[dcat]

Evil is the lack of love, compassion, and understanding.

nooo your thinking about greed imho

evil is the devil with the d omited sorry for the simplistic view but I have lots to do

out

 

[Silver Incubus]

nooo your thinking about greed imho

evil is the devil with the d omited sorry for the simplistic view but I have lots to do

out

I said that mostly because the actions by people that are considered evil usually have to do with Hate, disdain, and ignorace

 

[Cythraul]

Yes you are right. There is no instrinsic good and bad, it is all subjective. What I meant, which should have been made clearer, was that any objective concept of good and evil is impossible because anything we perceive as "good" could be "bad" in another context or perspective, or could alternatively bring about a consequence that one would consider "bad".

Well, I happen to think that things can be intrinsically good or bad, even though the intrinsic worth of an action very well may be relativized to a certain kind of sensibility, namely a human sensibility. My initial problem with your view was that you can't consistently maintain that an action cannot be judged on its intrinsic merit or that there is no such intrinsic merit to be found because it may have consequences which merit an opposite judgment. That is problematic because the question then becomes "In what sense are you judging the consequences of the action?" If you say those consequences are good, then you can just as well determine whether or not the initial action was good or bad in itself.

That said, I don't think I agree with the qualification of your initial view. You say that actions cannot be intrinsically good or evil and that an objective concept of good and evil is impossible. Your reason for this is that the goodness or badness of an action is relativized to a particular context. But it's not immediately obvious how this is supposed to be damaging to an objective concept of moral value. For I can still ask "In this context, is this action good?" and that, it seems, is not relative or subjective according to you. But the fact that you are putting "good" and "bad" in quotes suggests to me that you do not take those concepts literally, as if there is no property of goodness or badness that actions or things can have. So if that is what you maintain then you would have to hold that "good" just means "preferred" or "pleasurable" or something else which the concept of good can purportedly be analyzed into. But it seems that when one asks whether something is good they clearly don't mean "Is this pleasurable?" or "Is this preferred?"

Anyway, interesting topic. More on this later.

 

[Horus]

Evil is a disregard for one's own morals , as well as the will, feelings and well being of others, in the process of getting what you want. That is what evil is, in my opinion.

 

[derek]

I'd like to add that an objective scale of good/evil may exist, but we just cannot comprehend it.

As parts of the narrative, it's unlikely we'll ever see the full story, but that's not to say it does not exist.

 

[OldScratch]

I don't believe "evil" as a concept in and of itself exists. As already stated, evil as an ideal or broader motivation is such a subjective thing. The closest thing I could probably classify as evil, would be an action, consciously calculated and undertaken to intentionally hurt someone directly or indirectly, simply for the sake of doing serious harm and no other valid reason. This would not include revenge or the like...only harm for harm's sake, lucidly carried out...inflicting suffering simply for the sake it(personal gratification notwithstanding).
Well, that's what popped into my head anyway - I would have to think deeper about this to really answer correctly I suppose. If there is any "correct" answer of course...

 

[Keltoi]

Depends on a person's spiritual or unspiritual take on the word. For most religious peoples, the word evil translates as counter-balance to the overwhelming goodness embodied in G*d. To those without religious conviction, the word doesn't have the same power. So when you get past the semantics, the word "evil" is either the opposite of good(meaning the opposite of G*d), or it is simply another colorful word in the english language good for fantasy novels.

 

[Dushan S]

It is easy to make good/evil relative and meaningles considering cultural differences and different morality/lows in different societies.

Also "Evil" is one of those words, like "Love" that everyone get in a different way and has a lot of different possible meanings. So there are different levels we can treat "evil" and on most of them it may seem relative, but it really isn't.

All evil comes from unawareness, (lack of empathy, knowledge, understanding etc) and lack of responsability, these are lowest common denominators. Now we can put those into pracitce and filter them thru different social lenses, but if you are aware, and responsible, you are not capable to make evil, except in a form of "collateral damage" because in some situations there is a need to sacrifice a bit of something to achieve higher goal (which is often missuesed for evil deeds actually)
Good or evil are identifiable in intentions of subject, and in meaning of his deeds in social matrix he is involved, no matter if his deeds appear like benefit to society, or those close to him at the first glance.

 

[fah-q]

Evil can be so many things. It is actions as well as thoughts. We each have our very own idea of what evil is. Our ideas of what evil is are unique because we each have a slightly different set of values and principals. What one may consider as an objectionable act, another may find completely acceptable. That makes defining evil a difficult task.

 

[derek]

Yeah, but probably not impossible. I've mentioned this before but there may well be an objective scale of good->evil, but we just cannot understand/see it. Interestingly, this means we may indeed have it the wrong way round.