Good and evil


In philosophy, religion, and psychology, "good and evil" is a common dichotomy. In religions with Manichaean and Abrahamic influence, evil is perceived as the dualistic antagonistic opposite of good, in which good should prevail and evil should be defeated.
Evil is often used to denote profound immorality. Evil has also been described as a supernatural force. Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its motives. However, elements that are commonly associated with evil involve unbalanced behavior involving expediency, selfishness, ignorance, or negligence.
The principal study of good and evil is ethics, of which there are three major branches: normative ethics concerning how we ought to behave, applied ethics concerning particular moral issues, and metaethics concerning the nature of morality itself.

History and etymology

Every language has a word expressing good in the sense of "having the right or desirable quality" and bad in the sense "undesirable". A sense of moral judgment and a distinction "right and wrong, good and bad" are cultural universals.

Ancient world

The philosopher Zoroaster simplified the pantheon of early Iranian gods into two opposing forces: Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu which were in conflict.
This idea developed into a religion which spawned many sects, some of which embraced an extreme dualistic belief that the material world should be shunned and the spiritual world should be embraced. Gnostic ideas influenced many ancient religions which teach that gnosis may be reached by practising philanthropy to the point of personal poverty, sexual abstinence and diligently searching for wisdom by helping others.
Similarly, in ancient Egypt, there were the concepts of Ma'at, the principle of justice, order, and cohesion, and Isfet, the principle of chaos, disorder, and decay, with the former being the power and principles which society sought to embody where the latter was such that undermined society. This correspondence can also be seen reflected in ancient Mesopotamian religion as well in the conflict between Marduk and Tiamat.

Classical world

In Western civilisation, the basic meanings of κακός and ἀγαθός are "bad, cowardly" and "good, brave, capable", and their absolute sense emerges only around 400 BC, with pre-Socratic philosophy, in particular Democritus. Morality in this absolute sense solidifies in the dialogues of Plato, together with the emergence of monotheistic thought. The idea was further developed in Late Antiquity by Neoplatonists, Gnostics, and Church Fathers.
This development from the relative or habitual to the absolute is also evident in the terms ethics and morality both being derived from terms for "regional custom", Greek ήθος and Latin mores, respectively.

Medieval period

According to the classical definition of Augustine of Hippo, sin is "a word, deed, or desire in opposition to the eternal law of God."
Many medieval Christian theologians both broadened and narrowed the basic concept of Good and evil until it came to have several, sometimes complex definitions such as:
Today the basic dichotomy often breaks down along these lines:
  • Good is a broad concept often associated with life, charity, continuity, happiness, love, or justice.
  • Evil is often associated with conscious and deliberate wrongdoing, discrimination designed to harm others, humiliation of people designed to diminish their psychological needs and dignity, destructiveness, and acts of unnecessary or indiscriminate violence.
The modern English word evil and its cognates such as the German Übel and Dutch euvel are widely considered to come from a Proto-Germanic reconstructed form of *ubilaz, comparable to the Hittite huwapp- ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European form *wap- and suffixed zero-grade form *up-elo-. Other later Germanic forms include Middle English evel, ifel, ufel, Old Frisian evel, Old Saxon ubil, Old High German ubil, and Gothic ubils.
The nature of being good has been given many treatments; one is that the good is based on the natural love, bonding, and affection that begins at the earliest stages of personal development; another is that goodness is a product of knowing truth. Differing views also exist as to why evil might arise. Many religious and philosophical traditions claim that evil behavior is an aberration that results from the imperfect human condition. Sometimes, evil is attributed to the existence of free will and human agency. Some argue that evil itself is ultimately based in an ignorance of truth. A variety of thinkers have alleged the opposite, by suggesting that evil is learned as a consequence of tyrannical social structures.

Theories of moral goodness

Chinese moral philosophy

In Confucianism and Taoism, there is no direct analogue to the way good and evil are opposed, although references to demonic influence is common in Chinese folk religion. Confucianism's primary concern is with correct social relationships and the behavior appropriate to the learned or superior man. Evil would thus correspond to wrong behavior. Still less does it map into Taoism, in spite of the centrality of dualism in that system, but the opposite of the basic virtues of Taoism can be inferred to be the analogue of evil in it.

Western philosophy

Pyrrhonism

holds that good and evil do not exist by nature, meaning that good and evil do not exist within the things themselves. All judgments of good and evil are relative to the one doing the judging.

Spinoza

states:
Spinoza assumes a quasi-mathematical style and states these further propositions which he purports to prove or demonstrate from the above definitions in part IV of his Ethics :
  • 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."

    Nietzsche

, in a rejection of Judeo-Christian morality, addresses this in two books, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals. In these works, he states that the natural, functional, "non-good" has been socially transformed into the religious concept of evil by the "slave mentality" of the masses, who resent their "masters", the strong. He also critiques morality by saying that many who consider themselves to be moral are simply acting out of cowardice – wanting to do evil but afraid of the repercussions.

Psychology

Carl Jung

, in his book Answer to Job and elsewhere, depicted evil as the dark side of the Devil. 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.

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.

Religion

Abrahamic religions

For the Abrahamic religions, explaining and finding a religious answer to the dichotomy of Good and Evil is more difficult compared to polytheistic religions. Religious scholars argue that "particularly for the Abrahamic religions, providing an explanation for the origin of evil has never been an easy task. Several attempts were made to preserve together both monotheism and God’s attributes from types of dualism and the idea of God’s reduced number of attributes, due to the tension between the existence of evil and the divine omnipotence and omnibenevolence."
Baháʼí Faith
The Baháʼí Faith asserts that evil is non-existent and that it is a concept for the lacking 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.
Thus, evil does not exist, and is relative to man. `Abdu'l-Bahá, son of the founder of the religion, in Some Answered Questions states:
"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."
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 evil cannot have a true reality.
Christianity
draws its concept of evil from the Old and New Testaments. The Christian Bible exercises "the dominant influence upon ideas about God and evil in the Western world." In the Old Testament, evil is understood to be an opposition to God as well as something unsuitable or inferior such as the leader of the fallen angels Satan. In the New Testament the Greek word poneros is used to indicate unsuitability, while kakos is used to refer to opposition to God in the human realm. Officially, the Catholic Church extracts its understanding of evil from its canonical antiquity and the Dominican theologian, Thomas Aquinas, who in Summa Theologica defines evil as the absence or privation of good. French-American theologian Henri Blocher describes evil, when viewed as a theological concept, as an "unjustifiable reality. In common parlance, evil is 'something' that occurs in experience that ought not to be." According to 1 Timothy 6:10 "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil"
In Mormonism, mortal life is viewed as a test of faith, where one's choices are central to the Plan of Salvation. See Agency. Evil is that which keeps one from discovering the nature of God. It is believed that one must choose not to be evil to return to God.
Christian Science believes that evil arises from a misunderstanding of the goodness of nature, which is understood as being inherently perfect if viewed from the correct perspective. Misunderstanding God's reality leads to incorrect choices, which are termed evil. This has led to the rejection of any separate power being the source of evil, or of God as being the source of evil; instead, the appearance of evil is the result of a mistaken concept of good. Christian Scientists argue that even the most evil person does not pursue evil for its own sake, but from the mistaken viewpoint that he or she will achieve some kind of good thereby.