Evil

Evil is commonly seen as the opposite, or sometimes absence, of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, although in everyday usage it is often more narrowly used to talk about profound wickedness and against common good. It is generally seen as taking multiple possible forms, such as the form of personal moral evil commonly associated with the word, or impersonal natural evil (as in the case of natural disasters or illnesses), and in religious thought, the form of the demonic or supernatural/eternal.^[2] While some religions, world views, and philosophies focus on "good versus evil", others deny evil's existence and usefulness in describing people.

Evil can denote profound immorality,^[3] but typically not without some basis in the understanding of the human condition, where strife and suffering (cf. Hinduism) are the true roots of evil. In certain religious contexts, evil has been described as a supernatural force.^[3] Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its motives.^[4] Elements that are commonly associated with personal forms of evil involve unbalanced behavior, including anger, revenge, hatred, psychological trauma, expediency, selfishness, ignorance, destruction and neglect.^[5]

In some forms of thought, evil is also sometimes perceived in absolute terms as the

The root meaning of the word is of obscure origin though shown to be akin to modern German übel (noun: Übel, although the noun evil is normally translated as "das Böse") with the basic idea of social or religious transgression.^{[citation needed]}

Chinese moral philosophy

As with Buddhism, in

In response to the practices of Nazi Germany, Hannah Arendt concluded that "the problem of evil would be the fundamental problem of postwar intellectual life in Europe", although such a focus did not come to fruition.^[12]

Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza states

1. By good, I understand that which we certainly know is useful to us.
2. By evil, on the contrary, I understand that which we certainly know hinders us from possessing anything that is good.^[13]

Spinoza assumes a

• Proposition 8 "Knowledge of good or evil is nothing but affect of joy or sorrow in so far as we are conscious of it."
• Proposition 30 "Nothing can be evil through that which it possesses in common with our nature, but in so far as a thing is evil to us it is contrary to us."
• Proposition 64 "The knowledge of evil is inadequate knowledge."
  • Corollary "Hence it follows that if the human mind had none but adequate ideas, it would form no notion of evil."
• Proposition 65 "According to the guidance of reason, of two things which are good, we shall follow the greater good, and of two evils, follow the less."
• Proposition 68 "If men were born free, they would form no conception of good and evil so long as they were free."

Psychology

Carl Jung

Carl Jung, in his book Answer to Job and elsewhere, depicted evil as the dark side of God.^[14] People tend to believe evil is something external to them, because they project their shadow onto others. Jung interpreted the story of Jesus as an account of God facing his own shadow.^[15]

Philip Zimbardo

In 2007, Philip Zimbardo suggested that people may act in evil ways as a result of a collective identity. This hypothesis, based on his previous experience from the Stanford prison experiment, was published in the book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.^[16]

Milgram experiment

In 1961, Stanley Milgram began an experiment to help explain how thousands of ordinary, non-deviant, people could have reconciled themselves to a role in the Holocaust. Participants were led to believe they were assisting in an unrelated experiment in which they had to inflict electric shocks on another person. The experiment unexpectedly found that most could be led to inflict the electric shocks,^[17] including shocks that would have been fatal if they had been real.^[18] The participants tended to be uncomfortable and reluctant in the role. Nearly all stopped at some point to question the experiment, but most continued after being reassured.^[17]

A 2014 re-assessment of Milgram's work argued that the results should be interpreted with the "engaged followership" model: that people are not simply obeying the orders of a leader, but instead are willing to continue the experiment because of their desire to support the scientific goals of the leader and because of a lack of identification with the learner.^[19][20] Thomas Blass argues that the experiment explains how people can be complicit in roles such as "the dispassionate bureaucrat who may have shipped Jews to Auschwitz with the same degree of routinization as potatoes to Bremerhaven". However, like James Waller, he argues that it cannot explain an event like the Holocaust. Unlike the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the participants in Milgram's experiment were reassured that their actions would cause little harm and had little time to contemplate their actions.^[18][21]

Religions

Abrahamic

Baháʼí Faith

The Baháʼí Faith asserts that evil is non-existent and that it is a concept reflecting lack of good, just as cold is the state of no heat, darkness is the state of no light, forgetfulness the lacking of memory, ignorance the lacking of knowledge. All of these are states of lacking and have no real existence.^[22]

Thus, evil does not exist and is relative to man.

"Nevertheless a doubt occurs to the mind—that is, scorpions and serpents are poisonous. Are they good or evil, for they are existing beings? Yes, a scorpion is evil in relation to man; a serpent is evil in relation to man; but in relation to themselves they are not evil, for their poison is their weapon, and by their sting they defend themselves."[22]

Thus, evil is more of an intellectual concept than a true reality. Since God is good, and upon creating creation he confirmed it by saying it is Good (Genesis 1:31) evil cannot have a true reality.^[22]

Christianity

There is no concept of absolute evil in

A typical understanding of evil is reflected by

In Judaism and Jewish theology, the existence of evil is presented as part of the idea of free will: if humans were created to be perfect, always and only doing good, being good would not mean much. For Jewish theology, it is important for humans to have the ability to choose the path of goodness, even in the face of temptation and yetzer hara (the inclination to do evil).^[31][32]

Ancient Egyptian

Evil in the religion of

The primal duality in Buddhism is between suffering and

In adherence to the core principle of spiritual evolution, the Sikh idea of evil changes depending on one's position on the path to liberation. At the beginning stages of spiritual growth, good and evil may seem neatly separated. Once one's spirit evolves to the point where it sees most clearly, the idea of evil vanishes and the truth is revealed. In his writings Guru Arjan explains that, because God is the source of all things, what we believe to be evil must too come from God. And because God is ultimately a source of absolute good, nothing truly evil can originate from God.^[37]

Sikhism, like many other religions, does incorporate a list of "vices" from which suffering, corruption, and abject negativity arise. These are known as the

• Moh, or Attachment
• Lobh, or Greed
• Karodh, or Wrath
• Kaam, or Lust
• Ahankar, or Egotism

One who gives in to the temptations of the

• Sewa
  , or selfless service to others.
• Nam Simran, or meditation upon the divine name.

Question of a universal definition

A fundamental question is whether there is a universal, transcendent definition of evil, or whether one's definition of evil is determined by one's social or cultural background. C. S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, maintained that there are certain acts that are universally considered evil, such as rape and murder. However, the rape of women, by men, is found in every society, and there are more societies that see at least some versions of it, such as marital rape or punitive rape, as normative than there are societies that see all rape as non-normative (a crime).^[41] In nearly all societies, killing except for defense or duty is seen as murder. Yet the definition of defense and duty varies from one society to another.^[42] Social deviance is not uniformly defined across different cultures, and is not, in all circumstances, necessarily an aspect of evil.^[43][44]

Defining evil is complicated by its multiple, often ambiguous, common usages: evil is used to describe the whole range of suffering, including that caused by nature, and it is also used to describe the full range of human immorality from the "evil of genocide to the evil of malicious gossip".^[45]: 321 It is sometimes thought of as the generic opposite of good. Marcus Singer asserts that these common connotations must be set aside as overgeneralized ideas that do not sufficiently describe the nature of evil.^{[46]: 185, 186}

In contemporary philosophy, there are two basic concepts of evil: a broad concept and a narrow concept. A broad concept defines evil simply as any and all pain and suffering: "any bad state of affairs, wrongful action, or character flaw".^[47] Yet, it is also asserted that evil cannot be correctly understood "(as some of the utilitarians once thought) [on] a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as a plus, and pain as a minus".^[48] This is because pain is necessary for survival.^[49] Renowned orthopedist and missionary to lepers, Dr. Paul Brand explains that leprosy attacks the nerve cells that feel pain resulting in no more pain for the leper, which leads to ever increasing, often catastrophic, damage to the body of the leper.^{[50]: 9, 50–51} Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia, is a neurological disorder that prevents feeling pain. It "leads to ... bone fractures, multiple scars, osteomyelitis, joint deformities, and limb amputation ... Mental retardation is common. Death from hyperpyrexia occurs within the first 3 years of life in almost 20% of the patients."^[51] Few with the disorder are able to live into adulthood.^[52] Evil cannot be simply defined as all pain and its connected suffering because, as Marcus Singer says: "If something is really evil, it can't be necessary, and if it is really necessary, it can't be evil".^[46]: 186

The narrow concept of evil involves moral condemnation, therefore it is ascribed only to moral agents and their actions.^[45]: 322 This eliminates natural disasters and animal suffering from consideration as evil: according to Claudia Card, "When not guided by moral agents, forces of nature are neither "goods" nor "evils". They just are. Their "agency" routinely produces consequences vital to some forms of life and lethal to others".^[53] The narrow definition of evil "picks out only the most morally despicable sorts of actions, characters, events, etc. Evil [in this sense] ... is the worst possible term of opprobrium imaginable”.^[46] Eve Garrard suggests that evil describes "particularly horrifying kinds of action which we feel are to be contrasted with more ordinary kinds of wrongdoing, as when for example we might say 'that action wasn't just wrong, it was positively evil'. The implication is that there is a qualitative, and not merely quantitative, difference between evil acts and other wrongful ones; evil acts are not just very bad or wrongful acts, but rather ones possessing some specially horrific quality".^[45]: 321 In this context, the concept of evil is one element in a full nexus of moral concepts.^[45]: 324

Philosophical questions

Approaches

Views on the nature of evil belong to the branch of philosophy known as ethics—which in modern philosophy is subsumed into three major areas of study:^[8]

1. Meta-ethics, that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties
   , statements, attitudes, and judgments.
2. Normative ethics, investigates the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally speaking.
3. Applied ethics, concerned with the analysis of particular moral issues in private and public life.^[8]

Usefulness as a term

There is debate on how useful the term "evil" is, since it is often associated with spirits and the devil. Some see the term as useless because they say it lacks any real ability to explain what it names. There is also real danger of the harm that being labeled "evil" can do when used in moral, political, and legal contexts.^{[47]: 1–2} Those who support the usefulness of the term say there is a secular view of evil that offers plausible analyses without reference to the supernatural.^[45]: 325 Garrard and Russell argue that evil is as useful an explanation as any moral concept.^{[45]: 322–326 [54]} Garrard adds that evil actions result from a particular kind of motivation, such as taking pleasure in the suffering of others, and this distinctive motivation provides a partial explanation even if it does not provide a complete explanation.^{[45]: 323–325 [54]: 268–269} Most theorists agree use of the term evil can be harmful but disagree over what response that requires. Some argue it is "more dangerous to ignore evil than to try to understand it".^[47]

Those who support the usefulness of the term, such as Eve Garrard and David McNaughton, argue that the term evil "captures a distinct part of our moral phenomenology, specifically, 'collect[ing] together those wrongful actions to which we have ... a response of moral horror'."^[55] Claudia Card asserts it is only by understanding the nature of evil that we can preserve humanitarian values and prevent evil in the future.^[56] If evils are the worst sorts of moral wrongs, social policy should focus limited energy and resources on reducing evil over other wrongs.^[57] Card asserts that by categorizing certain actions and practices as evil, we are better able to recognize and guard against responding to evil with more evil which will "interrupt cycles of hostility generated by past evils".^[57]: 166

One school of thought holds that no person is evil and that only acts may be properly considered evil. Some theorists define an evil action simply as a kind of action an evil person performs.^[58]: 280 But just as many theorists believe that an evil character is one who is inclined toward evil acts.^[59]: 2 Luke Russell argues that both evil actions and evil feelings are necessary to identify a person as evil, while Daniel Haybron argues that evil feelings and evil motivations are necessary.^{[47]: 4–4.1}

American psychiatrist

References

Notes

Further reading

• Baumeister, Roy F. (1999). Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. New York: W.H. Freeman / Owl Book^{[ISBN missing]}
• Bennett, Gaymon,
  ISBN 978-3-525-56979-5
• Katz, Fred Emil (1993). Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil, SUNY Press,
  ISBN 0-7914-1442-6
  ;
• Katz, Fred Emil (2004). Confronting Evil, SUNY Press,
  ISBN 0-7914-6030-4
  .
• Neiman, Susan (2002). Evil in Modern Thought – An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ^[ISBN missing]
• Oppenheimer, Paul (1996). Evil and the Demonic: A New Theory of Monstrous Behavior. New York:
  ISBN 978-0-8147-6193-9
  .
• Shermer, M. (2004). The Science of Good & Evil. New York: Time Books.
  ISBN 0-8050-7520-8
• Steven Mintz; John Stauffer, eds. (2007). The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform. University of Massachusetts Press.
  ISBN 978-1-55849-570-8
  .
• Stapley, A.B. & Elder Delbert L. (1975). Using Our Free Agency. Ensign May: 21^[ISBN missing]
• Stark, Ryan (2009). Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-Century England. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 115–45.
• Vetlesen, Arne Johan (2005). Evil and Human Agency – Understanding Collective Evildoing New York:
  ISBN 978-0-521-85694-2
• Wilson, William McF., Julian N. Hartt (2004). Farrer's Theodicy. In David Hein and Edward Hugh Henderson (eds), Captured by the Crucified: The Practical Theology of
  ISBN 0-567-02510-1

External links

Look up evil in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Evil.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Evil.

• Evil on In Our Time at the BBC
• "Concept of Evl" entry by Todd Calder in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Good and Evil in (Ultra Orthodox) Judaism
• ABC News: Looking for Evil in Everyday Life
• Psychology Today: Indexing Evil
• Booknotes interview with Lance Morrow on Evil: An Investigation, October 19, 2003.
• "Good and Evil", BBC Radio 4 discussion with Leszek Kolakowski and Galen Strawson (In Our Time, Apr. 1, 1999).
• "Evil", BBC Radio 4 discussion with Jones Erwin, Stefan Mullhall and Margaret Atkins (In Our Time, May 3, 2001)