There are no evil people. Some specific actions can be regarded as evil, but people themselves cannot ever be regarded as evil. This claim is justified on the basis that the very notion of an “evil person” is self-contradictory.
Let us start by defining “evil” as “doing harm for the sake of doing harm.” While we all recognize that people very often do harm without realizing it or intending it, we are usually not inclined to regard such people as evil. We recognize that people can make mistakes, or can feel forced into corners sometimes with moral dilemmas, but if we have the sense that they are doing the best they can, and especially if they recognize the harm they’ve done and apologize, we will not regard them as evil. And so “doing harm” is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for “doing evil.” For an action to count as truly evil, it must both cause harm and it must have been intended to cause harm.
But even “intent to cause harm” is a necessary but still not sufficient condition for “evil.” Anyone who believes that punishment is sometimes justified would refuse to call the person who metes out punishment as evil. While that person is inflicting harm with intent to inflict harm, the deeper intent is to bring about greater good. Punishment is supposed to aid in the restoration of justice. (Admittedly, the ethical justification of punishment itself is debated, but a full discussion of this is not the intent of this present essay.)
That is why I framed the original definition of evil as “doing harm for the sake of doing harm” – to contrast it with “doing harm in order to ultimately bring about a greater good” as in the intended case of punishment.
So, those who accidentally do harm are not evil; those who intentionally do harm, but in hopes of bringing about greater good are not evil; the only people who possibly could be considered evil would be those who intentionally do harm just for the sake of doing harm.
But to be considered evil in themselves, they would also have to be wholly evil. If they sometimes do good, they could not be regarded as evil, because the good that they do is real and benefits the world in a substantial way. So, if there could be a truly evil person, he or she would at least have to be someone who does harm all the time, for the sake of doing harm.
But it is important to note that such a person would have to be capable of moral choice. Such a person would still have to have a basic understanding of the difference between goodness and harm: otherwise, he or she could not understand “harm” enough to recognize it, choose it, and intend it. Also, the person would have to have the ability to freely choose. If the person were simply programmed to do harm all the time (and could not do otherwise) then the person could not be said to be intending harm for the sake of intending harm, because intention requires choice.
Since the person is capable of moral choice, and understands the difference between good and evil, then the person does have some understanding of goodness. On this basis, we can conclude that the person therefore is not wholly evil. Having the capacity to understand goodness, and having the capacity for choice means that there is always the possibility that sometime in the future this person might decide to choose good. So there is in the person still the potential for some goodness.
Therefore, it is self-contradictory to assume that there could be evil people.
What do you think? Does this argument work? To reply, click on "comments" below.
Friday, March 10, 2006
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9 comments:
I like your analysis, but am still left with a couple questions. I think you are right that "intent to cause harm is a necessary but insufficient condition for evil.” I also think you must be right that evilness requires moral agency. I'm still left wondering about the following (counterexample?): a person who inflicts harm 90% of the time with calculating intent and as an end in itself. In other words, consider a person who willingly and knowingly makes it their business to create harm for its own sake 85% of the time, while the other 15% of their existence is devoted to perhaps sleeping and eating...and maybe they make a mistake in their calculations one and a while, accidentally doing good. But this raises another question: why must evil be done with intention while good can be done accidentely? What, if anything, does this asymmetry rests on?
Hi John! And thanks for responding! Your analysis and questions are interesting. But I see the argument not as resting on the asymmetry you identify, but on the fact that intending to do harm relies on an ability to distinguish good from evil, which holds open the possibility that the person might in the future decide to choose good.
To expand on this a little more: the reason a person even such as you describe could not be regarded as wholly evil is because, even in choosing evil again and again, they still are distinguishing evil from goodness and so still have awareness of goodness. Hence there is the possibility that they might choose to do something good at some point later on.
When i have more time i would live to delve further into this discussion. But to leave you with something to chew over...
Since the person is capable of moral choice, and understands the difference between good and evil, then the person does have some understanding of goodness. On this basis, we can conclude that the person therefore is not wholly evil. Having the capacity to understand goodness, and having the capacity for choice means that there is always the possibility that sometime in the future this person might decide to choose good. So there is in the person still the potential for some goodness.
If this argument is correct (for now we will say yes) then could you not also draw the conclusion "there are no good people"?
There is a knowledge of what is evil and there is the possibility to do evil.
what do you think?
Hi Laura, hmmm....I see your argument. I am finding the following train of though very interesting: ``they still are distinguishing evil from goodness and so still have awareness of goodness. Hence there is the possibility that they might choose to do something good at some point later on." So the upshot is that someone is good just in case it is (logically? physically?) possible for them to do good in the future - and by doing good I assume we mean doing good with intent to do good.
Question: what if they never do good? That is, once the 'evil' person dies and has (presumably) no more chances to do good, are they evil then? Seeing it this way, I think your argument might be touching on some existentialist themes (have you asked Erin McCarthy about your argument?): might we make the same argument about a 'cowardly' person and bravery? If someone has an idea (or definition?) of bravery [or is knowing X different that being acquainted with the concept of X] and the 'cowardly' person has the chance to take a courageous stance or risk in the future, does it follow that they are brave now? I'm not sure.
Hi Kyle,
Good to hear from you! Thanks for commenting on this blog!
My reply to your response does now connect with the asymmetry that John points out in his previous comment.
This asymmetry is a deep difference between the nature of good and the nature of evil.
Goodness is real in itself and does not require the (substantive) existence of evil to gain its meaning. But evil is not real in itself -- it gains all of its meaning by being defined in opposition to goodness. That is, evil is the absence of goodness. (This line of reasoning about the nature of evil traces back to Augustine.)
There are other "opposites" that also share this kind of asymmetry. For example, consider light and darkness. Light is a real something (energy), whereas darkness in itself is not real: darkness is simply the absence of light.
This is why the presence of the possibility of goodness in the human soul is enough to claim that it is impossible for someone to be considered totally evil.
But the presence of the potential to do evil is not enough to determine that a person is wholly evil, because of the nature of evil to be dependent on the existence of goodness. That is, to be able to do evil at all requires the ability to intend evil, which requires the ability to distinguish good from evil, which requires the ability to recognize goodness, which implies the potential to perhaps do good in the future.
Also, while the potential for goodness is enough to count against calling a person "wholly evil," the same does not hold true in reverse. That is, the potential to do evil does not count against the possibility of a person's being wholly good. Again, this is due to the asymmetry.
An argument by analogy: Imagine a star that is enclosed within an opaque dust cloud, so that it is invisible. A viewer outside the dust cloud might regard the star as totally dark since they cannot see it from their vantage point, but an observer within the star itself or far enough into the dust cloud to see some of the light would disagree -- it is still a star; it still is radiating light. The star itself is not totally dark -- it only appears dark from a vantage point in which its light is obscured. So because there is light at all, we cannot say that the star itself is totally dark.
Now imagine another star, not enclosed in a dust cloud at all. We can say that it is totally light. Even though there is the theoretical possibility that a passing dust cloud may someday obscure it from those between the dust cloud and the star, this does not lead us to say that this star is not totally light. The star is totally light. (That just is what stars are, sources of light, generators of light.)
Because light, and goodness, are real in themselves, but darkness, and evil, are defined negatively in terms of the absence of something, and therefore are not real in themselves, the asymmetry in both arguments appears.
Now a response to John's newest comment:
"What if they never do good? That is, once the 'evil' person dies and has (presumably) no more chances to do good, are they evil then?"
The way I've phrased things may make it seem that way, but I regard the argument as hinging on the point that the ability to choose evil as evil relies upon the ability to distinguish good from evil which relies on an ability to recognize goodness. This is the source of the potential to do good. The existence of this potential alone is enough to count as a spark of goodness existing in someone's soul, even if they never actually do good in their lives.
Of course this means that this argument relies on a metaphysical claim that "actuality" is not the only mode of existence that counts as "real." Other modalities, such as possibility and necessity, also count as real.
And this of course is a debatable metaphysical point.
But to put it into historical context: most of the history of Western philosophy took seriously these different modalities. It is only relatively recently, in positivist versions of philosophy, that some philosophers wish to simplify metaphysics by only considering "actuality" (perhaps even only "contingent actuality") to count as "real."
But I would like to point out that this metaphysical stance itself requires argument. Being a convenient simplification doesn't make it true. (If reality is complex, simple explanations are less likely to be true than more complex ones.)
One more clarification: in my reply to Kyle, although I use an argument about light/dark as an analogy to arguments about good/evil, I do not mean to imply that light is good and darkness is evil. Because light is energy, and too much energy (heat, brightness) can sometimes be a bad thing (burning; causing blindness), this was not the parallel I intended in my argument by analogy. Instead,
I was trying to point out that many "opposites" have a similar metaphysical character: that one is substantive, and the other only exists as the lack of the first.
Not all "opposites" are this way. Some "opposites" are such that both are real and exist in complementary relationship to each other (such as male/female).
It is also interesting to point out that physicists and artists recognize the difference between light (amount of light or brightness) and color. Different colors (blue, green, red, etc.) are different forms of light and thus are all real and contribute to the intelligibility and beauty of the visual world.
Hi Dr. Rediehs,
I would like to briefly comment on the definition of good and evil. I think that you were correct in your assertion that evil has only gained meaning through opposition. However, why stop at evil? If we did not first succumb to our culturally mandated necessity for dichotomy, would the mere existence of good not also be threatened? How is good 'real in itself'? To me, it seems just as much of a player in the word game as evil; they are both symbolic representations of ideas or feeling, which we applied to the reality that only we see. I define ‘good’ as fulfillment of purpose. For example, a gun is 'good' if it shoots. Religion is good, if it provides meaning. Therefore, I believe, good is dependent on our intentions and not pure or real existence.
In conclusion, I agree, there are no evil people. However, equally true is the assertion that there are no good people. All qualitative assertions are subjectively based, and therefore, do not exist out side of our consideration.
Laura, that argument makes sense to me now.
In that line of thinking it seems that you could simply say it’s is impossible to be totally evil since evil is dependent on good. On the other hand, Good needs no dependencies
I do have a slight tangent…
If Evil is designated as
Let us start by defining “evil” as “doing harm for the sake of doing harm.”
What does this actually mean? Is Evil the end in itself, is there an example of this?
Hitler, Big Brother (inner party in 1984), Darth Vader never thought themselves as the bad guy. All the killing and suffering they were causing was for a greater good (or end). (My SLU Fellowship was on Happiness as the Greatest End.) I would say that any evil action has some form of good intent. Even a madman that wants to set off a bomb that destroys the universe is only trying to escape from the torment the world has caused him.
Does this fly with your original definitions of Good and Evil?
Ryan, I liked your post. I too feel that vantage points play a role on what is good or evil and that there is no universal “good” that is inherent in human nature.
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