What is evil?

In an english class a number of years ago, we sat down one day and had a class discussion on how you would define Evil (this might have been in conjunction with our reading of Macbeth). Interesting topic, horrible results. I sat there in amazement as the conversation ended up being something like this:

“Well, wanting to cause harm is evil”
“So, pushing someone down a stairway is evil?”
“Only if it’s a long stairway”
“What if you weren’t sure if permanent harm would come to the person?”
“But a long stairway would almost ensure damage”
“What if you didn’t really WANT to push them down, you just sort of did?”
“Well say you were laughing while pushing them down, that would be evil!”
“What if you laughed as you pushed but were no longer laughing when they actually aquired the permanent damage?”

I’m still scarred from that particular day.

Can we have a discussion about the nature of Evilness, how it appears, why it appears, whether it’s inherent in human nature, whether it actually is or is just percieved, etc?

I push people down long stairways all the time and I don’t consider myself evil.

Evil is subjective, is it not? Saddam might think that he was doing lots of good bullying his citizens, and some other authoritarians might be inclined to agree with him…

I’ve heard it used as a proof that the devil exists. Humans are naturally sinful, but it takes the existence of the devil to explain evil. Or something like that (which obviously I don’t buy.)

What do you mean by evil? In common parlance it is used to mean people who intentionally do something bad, simply because it is bad. Hence it is a step up from common criminals who do bad things because they reap profit from it, but otherwise would refrain from doing those acts.

Whether such evil exists is an open question. I doubt whether it can be empirically proven or disproven, since it relies heavily on assumptions of the motivational structure of the person in question. Serial killers might look like an example of pure evil, but it could be claimed that they are in fact all seriously deranged by some thing in their past or psychic make-up. (Of course that wouldn’t be an argument against locking them up, but we are not talking here about punishment. The topic is the meaning of evil.)

The thing is that evil, in the provisional definition given above, is hard to reconcile with the common presumption of human rationality. Being evil is close to being plain stupid: why would you intentionally act in a way which offers you no profit and will only get you severe problems with the community?

A very old alternative approach says that if people would be really rational, they would see that it would be in their considered best interest to act ‘good’. They still would prefer to act ‘evil’ because they are innately disposed to derive pleasure from hurting other people. Then people acting ‘bad’ would be people whose rationality doesn’t function completely correctly. I do not subscribe to such a view of human nature, but it is common in large groups of Christianity (ultimately derived from Saint Augustine). I have also found it with some secular proponents of a free market society, who hold the opinion that people only act good if they are motivated by material benefit.

In this latter view everyone is innately evil, so the only difference is in the way it is acted out.

A third view is that evil doesn’t exist. People only act bad because they are brought up incorrectly, or because they suffer from lesser rationality. Everything that exists is ultimately good. Bad things happen out of bad luck, but that is only our limited viewpoint of things. Hence ‘bad’ is simply a lack of goodness, privatio boni as the medieval philosophers said. Evil would denota a ‘positive’ (in the non-moral sense) quality, but that is irreconcilable with the idea that existence is good.

There are more views on the nature of evil, but those are the ones I find most common.

Consciously and voluntarily engaging in wrong conduct. Doing so without remorse and repeating said misconduct without reflecting upon its ramifications. Willful ignorance falls under this definition as well.

Preempting Game 7 of the NBA Championships to show a Billy Graham Crusade, and the damn thing was a re-run to boot! The local CBS station would pre-empt the National Elections to show Billy Graham, I swear!

I think evil is causing harm, either physically or emotionally, to another just because you can do it.

Ooh, Zenster, I know a few people you would really upset over in gobear’s pit thread about willful ignorance with that comment! :slight_smile: Fortunately, I’m not one of them.

I think evil is what Zenster and Czarcasm said, but add enjoyment of the commitment as well. Sometimes you do bad things because you don’t have a choice or you pick the “lesser of two evils.” Sometimes you do it because you like it.

I guess that brings another question. Is a person who commits evil acts evil? Or, can circumstance excuse a person who commits evil on a regular basis? Even if it’s not for the greater good?