Thoughts on defining evil
Curious what others thoughts on evil are, and how it can be defined.
(My undestanding is that "evil" today usually refers to malevolent or cruel human behavior, however in other contexts, it refers to "adversity" or "hardship" in general, such as disease, famine, poverty, natural disasters, not necessarily evil acts or intentions by people).
(My undestanding is that "evil" today usually refers to malevolent or cruel human behavior, however in other contexts, it refers to "adversity" or "hardship" in general, such as disease, famine, poverty, natural disasters, not necessarily evil acts or intentions by people).
Comments (54)
You could also add to that that “evil” is sometimes viewed as a force, as in the “forces of good and evil.” If I’m not mistaken, this is what Nietzsche was getting at in “Beyond Good and Evil.”
Also, somewhat related, is Mary Midgley’s book “Wickedness,” where she comes to the conclusion that wickedness should be defined in a negative way, as an inability or unwillingness to “do the right thing.”
It seems your conflating consequential decisions with "rightness" or "wrongness"; my argument is that a person choosing to "do" such and such a thing doesn't make it "right" for them.
If what you say is true then evil is, quite possibly, the cause of suffering.
So is your question about ethical relativsm vs. objectivism? In other words, are some actions inherently wrong, regardless of an individual's persuasion, and how can that concept be defined? Just trying to understand.
It can be defined better or worse, as "perfectly" as pure mathematics, no not quite.
One defining "good" as putting Jewish people in gas chambers, and "evil" as promoting peace, is obviously doing a piss poor job of it.
1] Evil, in terms of human actions, may be thought of as a violation of a standard of behavior.
From there it gets very messy.
The universe, when sensed, produces data that is in accord with mind, more than it is with any ledged doctrine about the universe.
The process of producing fecal matter, shows that a cycle completes, which, in accord with mind and not doctrine, shows that morality exists.
If a human eats, a cycle occurs, and feces is produced.
Evil is not ultimately wrong, but it is anti good or good parasitical, in the same way the start of a cycle is opposite to the end.
Evil can be defined or not by various means and for different purposes.
Different ways to approach it as an experience are inextricably joined with whatever narrative brings it into view.
Is it something that has its own life or a myth of some kind? The only way to find out is to try and find out by using yourself. Maybe that won't be enough.
I encourage feelings of inadequacy regarding the topic.
'Evil' is too absolute a term, but 'sin' can be re-immanentized, if you like. Call it a bone in the throat of flourishing. If I self-phenomenologize, certain things I do give me endless grief. Others make me feel better. It's not a matter of pleasure vs pain, but of a background ok-ness that allows me to focus on immediate pleasure and pains without tending to old memories and obsessively rub old sins, like dirty coins.
But is that just the programming I inherited, and if I could be free from that programming....?
I don't think so, though of course I could be fooling myself. I think you know what is right action & what isn't through a concatenation of sub-religious things (for example: memories of how the mood of a gathering changed when someone did this or that; knowing a person well and seeing how pain accumulates as they do one thing, seeing when they emerge brightly from it when they do another, and how that happened; so forth)
It seems like something we know instinctively. We learn, through slow-dripped hints, what is good and what isn't, as we grow. But - I don't think there's any choice but to flow from that emotional medium forward. You're 'thrown' into it, to use another language. And you work out from there.
At the same time others have advanced similar ideas, while also doing ethically unconscionable things. They know the inner textures of their ethical system, while not being able to see its contours from without. That's for sure a constant in human history. How to bridge that gap, I'm not sure, but it seems like there's no way but to bring in both poles.
... isn't, as I recall, any less "absolute". Some immanent fat to chew on though. :chin:
Evil is the outpouring of a failure to partake in one's humanity, of not recognise the diverging, organic nature of people; of not seeing oneself as having a choice; the thoughtlessness of Eichmann the mere uncritical functionary.
Quoting 180 Proof
Quiet the opposite.
(edit: but I think you knew that, 180...)
Well, then, Arendt's "evil" distinction from bad doesn't make much of a practical difference to me.
Ignorance of what makes us happy is what causes evil.
Evil is ignorance.
E.g. - nature is creator and destroyer. It decides how long a species will exist. Humans are aware of death, our gift and curse. Instead of resisting death, we should accept it. Otherwise a malign and insidious evil will arise as a displacement of and substitution for death.
As I said before, see: cycles.
You run, and get tired; both are good, but you may notice the fact tiredness is a cycle completed and running is the process of that cycle.
Other examples; fecal matter, life and death, day and night.
Evil, then, is dis-harmomics.
The chances of a humans organic system becoming chaotic are slim. Yet there is this action that is more relevant to a completed cycle than it is to cycling. Neglect of cycles using completed cycles, is evil. Again, activity as such is not ultimately wrong, but we must control evil to prosper.
Again, you have it exactly wrong.
Not addressed to me, I know, but ... Assuming, for discussion's sake, a non-supernaturalistic / non-theological (i.e. wholly secular) agency-centered, negative utilitarian/consequentialist ethics, consider this way of distinguishing
• Bad is suboptimal agency conditioned, or reinforced, by ONE'S OWN wrong conduct or wrong practices.
• Evil is ANY conduct, practice or event that gratuitously destroys agency.
It's the difference between (inadvertently) cultivating 'vice' on the one hand and needlessly amputating, so to speak, any capacity to cultivate, or (reflectively) exercise, 'virtue' on the other. The latter may often - though not necessarily - be aided & abetted, of course, by the former. Makes sense, no? If not, then ... :chin:
Destruction of agency is a nice way to put it. I’m certainly more inclined to go with virtue ethics than side with strong subjectivity (I by no means dismiss highly nuanced scenarios though).
This sums it up the nuance for me: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/63?fbclid=IwAR1Of9Panlkd4jPstu31iRYemGijUF1Goc--eFq6MVdE-a18HDO0upUIIfU
Then you're arguing that it's evil to "not partake in one's humanity" or "recognize the diverging, organic nature of people.
So again, you're arguing that "denying one's own agency" is evil.
Simply by living and partaking in the acts you currently are, you're already "denying" your agency in other potential ways, since you could always invest the same amount of time you do posting here in raping, murdering, torturing children if you were so inclined.
Whether or not you invoke "natural law" (which arguably isn't any more relevant in this discussion than "God is"), or simply your own agency or "free will" to choose to post here instead of raping, murdering, torturing children, the end result is the same.
So it's evil to be dishonest to oneself as well? One doesn't have a choice as to whether to be honest with themselves as well.
If it's not evil to destroy agency, then who cares, if that is what someone wishes to do (whether it actually means, anyway).
In the book "Between Good and Evil", the author asserts that the world is "in a war" between good and evil, and that evil "adapts" and takes on more subtle forms; I thought it was a fascinating read.
I do not think you can define evil by itself, I think you need to define what is evil and what is good at the same time, as one is meaningless without the other.
Wouldnt it be best to keep it simple, and define evil as that which opposes good? I realise thats shifting the burden but I think thats where it belongs (rather than shifting the burden as a dodge of the question).
Evil as the destruction of agency is interesting, but wouldn't that make all punishment immoral. It would also mean people would be constantly committing evil unawares, as their actions will almost certainly, at some point, effect the agency of others. Not sure if thats the best way of defining evil that way. What is the utility of that definition?
No, but it may be I think of agency as more inclusive than anything remotely mindful of an algorithm, or AI/machine based models of mental plane of existence. There is agency and event. Even if we have our agency perfectly defined, leaving nothing to chance or intuition, it is still informed by the ongoing event or informational environment, which itself is informed by incomplete information (at least the limitations of your agency would, in honesty, have to admit it is incomplete information). So the concept of God or nature, what have you, shows up again in incomplete information or the wholly other.
Taking the concept of agency too far risks mistaking self and other in oneself and the other (in the most abstract sense of supreme systemic network, or nature, anima mundi), resulting in interloping of personal space, frigidity, and monotone values. The limits of agency are what needs to be sketched out in an honest fashion. Would instinct be informed by nature? If not, then what would it be?
Anyway, as I see it the limitations of an individual are the limitations of mankind. We can't mistake what is and has been known by our species for all there is to know. The Abstract will always be a limitation no matter the ascension of someone or everyone. Agency is informed by abstraction. Extra-human, precisely.
"Evil" for me is "that which threatens the state of existence /stability of being of something which has been attributed a positive value. Evil is not inherent but applied."
If I see what I believe is a beautiful masterpiece and someone comes along and alters it a little and I suddenly no longer see the beauty, I could argue that they have destroyed a wonderful work. It should have been left as it was and the act was evil or malicious or idiotic. But if someone else saw the same masterpiece being altered and they said "Wow you've just improved it so much! And they now see more beauty. They would see the act as good and my reaction as harsh, critical or negative.
The social norm of a society dictates what is evil and what is not. Slavery used to be the norm now it is considered evil. Unrestricted plundering of our planets resources is still somewhat the norm now but I suspect in the next few decades it will be reflected on as a great evil against mother nature.
Legal philosophy isn't based on "norms", it's based on harm and defined acts (e.x. murder, rape, and so forth), popular "opinion". is irrelevant.
I'm not aware of any modern "society" that runs on norms such as "ambiguously defined popular opinions" to begin with - such as how "popular opinion" has no bearing on the interpretation of a law by the federal courts, and was never intended to to begin with.
(Much as saying that if "popular" opinion is that the earth is flat, that this dictates whether or not it actually is flat, is rather absurd, I'd view this as absurd for the same reasons).
Likewise, the rationale behind something becoming a popular "norm" to begin with obviously plays a role (e.x. abolitionists considered slavery evil for various reasons even before it became ambiguously "popular" to think so).
I subscribe to the view that every human is capable of good and evil. The problem of good and evil is definitely through actions and looking at these actions through a moral lens. However, sometimes people do bad things or good things with no intention. So, the intention is where one needs to look.
If someone plots murder and also revels in the fact of what if they are going to do and carry out the act, I would say this an example of evil. The Nazi government's decision to intentionally exterminate millions of people through gas chambers, firing squads, and reveling in the fact that they did it, evil. Joseph Stalin intentionally holding faux courts on his people that opposed any action he did and to instill cruelty and fear into the minds of his people, evil. These leaders and individuals committed atrocities, but they didn't just commit an atrocity, they reveled in the fact that they did and they planned to do so as well. So, if there is a plan, if there is an act, and their pride in the act, I would constitute this as what evil is. To get more specific, if someone murders someone as a part of gang violence due to the pressure of someone else killing them or their family, is this considered evil? I don't think so. This is a typical example of where we must examine dilemma's like so by going 'Beyond Good and Evil' as Nietzsche would prescribe. The absurdity and odd dilemma's life presents require one to go beyond good and evil to examine them properly. Not examining problems like so would be to assume that things are evil when they are not as clear as one thinks...However, the problem of good and evil is nothing I am an expert on, this is all just my humble opinion.
I think I was in 6th grade at a new school, for troubled students. The classrooms are windowless as were the doors, so turning off the light switch was a funny yet understandably dangerous thing people would do on occasion. We were about to go to lunch or something and were lined up more or less by the door. Someone flipped the switch. Once the teacher turned the light back on she demanded to know who was responsible with the ultimatum that we would stand there and miss whatever if nobody fessed up. Selflessly or perhaps in a state of hunger I said "It was me" and was told I would face later punishment for doing so. After that I kind of backed out softly like "I was just saying that to get the line moving". Nevertheless I was not believed the second time. As I walked to the back of the line I eyed each of my peers intensely. Was I 'evil' for doing that?
That said, there's this feeling of uncertainty, a sense that something's off, in defining evil as simply causes of suffering. I mean when an agency, a person for example, is evil it implies this person is inclined to, has a propensity for, maybe even prefers/likes being, evil but the same can't be said of an earhquake or flood or a tornado.
I'll leave it at that.
I'm simply working with the official position on the issue - natural evil?!
By the way, evil as causes of suffering doesn't actually cut it since punishment for criminal behavior counts as causing suffering but no one would treat that as evil. Another poster made a mention of this. Hopefully, fae sees this post.
Ideologies like Nazi Fascism, Islamic State etc. purposefully do to others what they would not have done unto themselves, they are therefore easily identifiable as evil. They invoke a dog eat dog survival of the fittest rationale to apply to human races / religions.
Thieves, rapists, murderers, do the same, they purposefully break the Golden Rule, and their acts are therefore considered evil.
I would hope you realize that’s a little ridiculous. Your view has to be more nuanced than that. Vaccines cause suffering (getting stuck with needles hurt), and doing anything you don’t want to do causes mental distress (paying taxes, going to school/work, etc.), cognitive dissonance is also unpleasant, but surely you wouldn’t consider all these things evil? If this post happens to rub you the wrong way and makes you upset, does that make me evil?
Even aside from these issues there’s the issue of who’s suffering to consider. I think we would be surprised at the amount of suffering we cause others just by going about our daily lives. Virtually all products we consume rely on exploitation. If your goal is to make everyone appear evil, then you’ve accomplished it.