This topic was especially interesting to me. I was a violent crimes and homicide detective for many years and was involved in two death penalty cases involving people who committed multiple murders. I agree with the person whose comment you shared that said "You don't define evil, you know it" and "You know it because it walks into the room. You know it because it talks to you. You know it because you feel it." I have met evil face-to-face, talked to it, and felt it. It's not something you ever forget. I can tell you unequivocally that evil is an entity unto itself. I agree with McGilchrist, but will go one step further and say evil IS a thing in its own right, and it certainly does have a "drive" and "energy". I think most people, during the course of their lives, never really meet or experience true evil. Saying you know or understand evil because you've watched depictions of evil in movies or read about it in a books is tantamount to saying you know or understand real cold by watching depictions of brutally cold environments and believing you know what "cold" is. Until you've stood on the north slope of Alaska in minus 70 degree temperature (as I did on Prudhoe Bay in my youth) you really have no conception of what real cold feels like. Until you've sat in an interview room with a person who has committed multiple and indescribable crimes, and felt what emanates from them, I suspect you really don't know what evil is. Fortunately most readers of my comment will never have that experience. Consider yourself blessed.
I can relate so much to your comments that it sends chills down my spine. I work in psychiatry and have treated people with histories of crime and violence in state facilities and hospitals. The rare encounter with “evil” is not a good vs bad concept. It isn’t about hate vs love. It’s about the “absence” of all and most definitely a state of its own. When you see it, know it, feel it when you encounter “it” it creeps inside of you and literally makes you cold. Thankfully, it’s not been often, but when I’ve “known “ this in the presence of a person who has done despicable things, there is no contrasting/opposing possibility. They just are “evil”
Babies suck all necessary elements and vitamins from feeding mothers with milk.
Women who gave birth many times lost teeth/health grew older quicker in case
of bad nutrition and hard duties. But nobody cares. Mothers are supposed to be happy to give part of themselves to their babies.
Narcissists suck the good out of those who permit them to do that. Do no worry
they will not touch "inappropriate" victim. That is wolf can not catch the crow and he does not want to. But if he is hungry he catches bunny or goat or deer
and we say: "OKAY, that's the predatory/prey law of nature. Life is still going on".
I won't get into my background, but I really relate to your experience. I wonder, though, would you agree with my assessment that evil is found only when someone gives up entirely on the good? That is, what distinguished the people you call "evil" from simply, say, someone who is very selfish?
I would like to nitpick for a moment as is my wont as a philosophy geek. Physically speaking, the difference between minus 70°F in Prudhoe Bay Alaska and 28°F in Dallas Texas is in the amount of thermal energy in the air. It is known as a "difference of degree" both literally and in the sense of unequal intensity, whereas a "difference of kind" would be what the difference between water and fire is. Technically, the difference between minus 70°F in Prudhoe Bay Alaska, and 112°F in Phenix is a difference of degree and not of kind. Cold is not its own substance. Of course, that is not how we experience these temperatures. We experience separate sensation for hot and cold. Prudhoe Bay does not feel less warm than Arizona, it feels cold whereas Phenix feels hot. I would also grant, on the basis of your testimony, that the sensation of Prudhoe Bay cold is its own kind of senation separate from Dallas cold. The point is that the situation on the level of experience has its own logic distinct from situation on the level of things in themselves perceived or unperceived.
Interestingly enough, another user in the comments promotes a theory that evil is an absence of regard for another person's life or well-being. By coincidence, your argument uses an analogy to cold which is the absence of termal energy. Moreover, the extremity of Alaska cold is of no minor significance. Even if just a difference of degree from Dallas cold, the consequences of the temperatures differ in kind. The later gives one goose bumps while the former makes one loose their reason before it takes their life. Likewise, the level of apathy where another person's life means nothing and atrocities are committed for causual problems, is unfathomable to most of us. If at a fundamental level, all that is different is a lack of empathy, still the extreme deficit makes it right to feel nauseous at the sight of such.
The thing about evil as an at-base-hate idea is that it doesn’t seem to fit examples of selfishness. If a person steals the money and keeps it instead of sharing it with the staff, it’s not that he hates the staff. He disregards the staff (as most CEO’s disregard their employees in favor of greed and profit). Where does one put disregard or apathy? Whereas hate feels directed, disregard feels like…an absence of, well, regard.
I would offer that it’s fear rather than hate that is the opposite of love. Hatred is at root a fear of the unknown or that which is perceived as evil or bad. Love may also be the antidote to fear, but knowledge is up there too, along with compassion. In a way, love and hatred are false binaries because they describe nothing completely—not cause or constitution. Just some thoughts.
I think the best answer to the “what is the opposite of love” question is not hate. It’s indifference. Love or hate is a response to the other person, an acknowledgment that there’s someone there who merits your attention and your reaction. Indifference doesn’t see or feel that person. That’s scary or worse. Hate is poison to the one who feels it and - potentially - to the one who is its object. Indifference, by definition, is the absence of feeling. It has no effect on the indifferent one and can provoke any of a wide range of responses - or none at all - from the other.
I think the evil=hate, good =love is not nuanced enough. I see evil also happening because of too much love that is so absorbed it smothers the loved or only self love that care nothing for others. I think good/evil occur in one’s interactions. Can evil exist without an interaction? Perhaps instead of love it is kindness and compassion that make good and a self-centeredness along with the hate that makes evil.
That leads us to the question, if evil is a thing (and not a privation), is a world which has both good and evil better than a world which only has good? Logically, that sounds like an absurd suggestion, but if it's true, then you wind up with a pretty effective theodicy.
I just wrote about this today, oddly. As you say, "evil" cannot just be everyday cruelty or selfishness, because we are all subject to that. To me evil is defined by having given up on the good: as with Satan, in the mythology. When you no longer hold good as a standard, when you stop aspiring to be better, but instead embrace and validate your worst instincts: yes, that is evil, it is real, and it can swallow the world.
Evil hides and disguises really well in its clothing of lies, it knows very well that its continuence depends on that and our not speaking up and out against it. It is not a black and white appearance but comes in all shades of grey.
You have not seen evil until you have known a narccist. They suck all that is good in a person out of that person often without the person knowing it. It is an insipid vampire kind of evil. They prey on good people who are the most vulnerable. They serve only themselves at the expense of others. Thy are truly EVIL.
Early in XIX century North America's masters possessed as many as 500 slaves from Africa each, and suck all their life forces to gain wealth. Russian "pomeschiks" possessed up to 1,000 peasants as things, beat,kill, gilded, suck blood from them,forced them to give birth, to work hard in the fields. Those peasants were white,the same slavonics as their masters.
Could we name slavery "an insipid vampire kind of evil" or "the predatory/prey law of Nature"???
Slavery was officially abolished in 1834 in North America and in 1861 in Russia, it was started in ancien Babilon, Greece and Rome BC.
But it's roots still remain in national consciousness,they are very deep and hard to extract.
Slavery of the bodies leads to the slavery of the minds,lacking the freedom of thought and the freedom of speech in authoritarian societies,which,in it's turn,slows down the social progress and development of the thought.
"Evil to him who thinks evil", the old British proverb says.
Could we say today : "Good for him who thinks good?"
Evil does not exist as anything but a concept. Like god. There is ignorance, desire, selfishness, and illness, or some other factor we don't know which cause behavior that some folks like to be able to call something, so they use evil. As Richard Feynman said, "It is much more interesting to live without knowing than to have answers that might be wrong."
I think evil takes pleasure in pain and chaos. Good and bad depend on who your friends are. If a fox eats one hen, that's good for the fox and bad for the hen, but life goes on. A predator-prey system works with restraint. If a fox kills all the hens for the thrill of the kill, that's evil. Our notions of good, bad, and evil are useful in modifying our behaviour so we care for ourselves without destroying the system that sustains us.
The problem is how we categorise actions etc. as "good" or "bad". Is there a rational basis for doing this? I suspect not. And yet we do it all the time. Somehow we recognise good and bad actions. But I don't think there's any justification for saying that "good" and "bad" are metaphysical entities which somehow (supernaturally?) have a reality or being of their own (or even that "good" is real and "bad" is its absence). We think, for example, of the Nazis as "evil", but they didn't see themselves that way. I doubt there's anyone who deliberately carries out actions that they themselves see as "bad", except perhaps where they're in the grip of an uncontrollable compulsion or because they believe it to be necessary for the sake of a greater good (which, if that belief is correct, turns it into a "good" action). And I think it's unsustainable to say that good actions are those which are motivated by love and all bad actions are motivated by hate, because the motives really don't matter - what matters is what is actually done. We would have no time, for example, for someone who commits war-crimes or genocidal acts and defends themselves by saying that they are only acting out of love. Even if they really believe it, and for that matter even if we accept it as true. What we care about is what they've done. Is it possible to commit an evil act out of love? Say, burning a heretic at the stake in order to save their immortal soul? Personally, I think it is.
This topic was especially interesting to me. I was a violent crimes and homicide detective for many years and was involved in two death penalty cases involving people who committed multiple murders. I agree with the person whose comment you shared that said "You don't define evil, you know it" and "You know it because it walks into the room. You know it because it talks to you. You know it because you feel it." I have met evil face-to-face, talked to it, and felt it. It's not something you ever forget. I can tell you unequivocally that evil is an entity unto itself. I agree with McGilchrist, but will go one step further and say evil IS a thing in its own right, and it certainly does have a "drive" and "energy". I think most people, during the course of their lives, never really meet or experience true evil. Saying you know or understand evil because you've watched depictions of evil in movies or read about it in a books is tantamount to saying you know or understand real cold by watching depictions of brutally cold environments and believing you know what "cold" is. Until you've stood on the north slope of Alaska in minus 70 degree temperature (as I did on Prudhoe Bay in my youth) you really have no conception of what real cold feels like. Until you've sat in an interview room with a person who has committed multiple and indescribable crimes, and felt what emanates from them, I suspect you really don't know what evil is. Fortunately most readers of my comment will never have that experience. Consider yourself blessed.
I can relate so much to your comments that it sends chills down my spine. I work in psychiatry and have treated people with histories of crime and violence in state facilities and hospitals. The rare encounter with “evil” is not a good vs bad concept. It isn’t about hate vs love. It’s about the “absence” of all and most definitely a state of its own. When you see it, know it, feel it when you encounter “it” it creeps inside of you and literally makes you cold. Thankfully, it’s not been often, but when I’ve “known “ this in the presence of a person who has done despicable things, there is no contrasting/opposing possibility. They just are “evil”
Narcissists
Narcissists suck the good out of others. They feed on goodness.
Babies suck all necessary elements and vitamins from feeding mothers with milk.
Women who gave birth many times lost teeth/health grew older quicker in case
of bad nutrition and hard duties. But nobody cares. Mothers are supposed to be happy to give part of themselves to their babies.
Narcissists suck the good out of those who permit them to do that. Do no worry
they will not touch "inappropriate" victim. That is wolf can not catch the crow and he does not want to. But if he is hungry he catches bunny or goat or deer
and we say: "OKAY, that's the predatory/prey law of nature. Life is still going on".
Thank you for sharing the experience.
God bless you.
I won't get into my background, but I really relate to your experience. I wonder, though, would you agree with my assessment that evil is found only when someone gives up entirely on the good? That is, what distinguished the people you call "evil" from simply, say, someone who is very selfish?
Just watch the movie "PRODIGY"(2017) by Alex Haughey. It will explain you how to distinguish people.
I may check it out... but I don't think a fictional movie is a good reference point for understanding evil.
Movies are not created for "checking".
As all art pieces, they are supposed to give some pleasure to the tired soul.
I would like to nitpick for a moment as is my wont as a philosophy geek. Physically speaking, the difference between minus 70°F in Prudhoe Bay Alaska and 28°F in Dallas Texas is in the amount of thermal energy in the air. It is known as a "difference of degree" both literally and in the sense of unequal intensity, whereas a "difference of kind" would be what the difference between water and fire is. Technically, the difference between minus 70°F in Prudhoe Bay Alaska, and 112°F in Phenix is a difference of degree and not of kind. Cold is not its own substance. Of course, that is not how we experience these temperatures. We experience separate sensation for hot and cold. Prudhoe Bay does not feel less warm than Arizona, it feels cold whereas Phenix feels hot. I would also grant, on the basis of your testimony, that the sensation of Prudhoe Bay cold is its own kind of senation separate from Dallas cold. The point is that the situation on the level of experience has its own logic distinct from situation on the level of things in themselves perceived or unperceived.
Interestingly enough, another user in the comments promotes a theory that evil is an absence of regard for another person's life or well-being. By coincidence, your argument uses an analogy to cold which is the absence of termal energy. Moreover, the extremity of Alaska cold is of no minor significance. Even if just a difference of degree from Dallas cold, the consequences of the temperatures differ in kind. The later gives one goose bumps while the former makes one loose their reason before it takes their life. Likewise, the level of apathy where another person's life means nothing and atrocities are committed for causual problems, is unfathomable to most of us. If at a fundamental level, all that is different is a lack of empathy, still the extreme deficit makes it right to feel nauseous at the sight of such.
The thing about evil as an at-base-hate idea is that it doesn’t seem to fit examples of selfishness. If a person steals the money and keeps it instead of sharing it with the staff, it’s not that he hates the staff. He disregards the staff (as most CEO’s disregard their employees in favor of greed and profit). Where does one put disregard or apathy? Whereas hate feels directed, disregard feels like…an absence of, well, regard.
I would offer that it’s fear rather than hate that is the opposite of love. Hatred is at root a fear of the unknown or that which is perceived as evil or bad. Love may also be the antidote to fear, but knowledge is up there too, along with compassion. In a way, love and hatred are false binaries because they describe nothing completely—not cause or constitution. Just some thoughts.
I think the best answer to the “what is the opposite of love” question is not hate. It’s indifference. Love or hate is a response to the other person, an acknowledgment that there’s someone there who merits your attention and your reaction. Indifference doesn’t see or feel that person. That’s scary or worse. Hate is poison to the one who feels it and - potentially - to the one who is its object. Indifference, by definition, is the absence of feeling. It has no effect on the indifferent one and can provoke any of a wide range of responses - or none at all - from the other.
I think the evil=hate, good =love is not nuanced enough. I see evil also happening because of too much love that is so absorbed it smothers the loved or only self love that care nothing for others. I think good/evil occur in one’s interactions. Can evil exist without an interaction? Perhaps instead of love it is kindness and compassion that make good and a self-centeredness along with the hate that makes evil.
I once had someone ask me, "What is evil?" And I never stopped thinking about it since. This article may actually provide some perspective.
Great conversation.
One of my favourites
That leads us to the question, if evil is a thing (and not a privation), is a world which has both good and evil better than a world which only has good? Logically, that sounds like an absurd suggestion, but if it's true, then you wind up with a pretty effective theodicy.
Jonny Thomson: "I’ve never felt evil walk into a room or talk to me — but that might be my gilded, genteel Oxfordshire life. What do you think?"
I think you was born in a shirt.
Can someone let me know where these polls are posted, please?
On my Instagram! Here:
https://www.instagram.com/philosophyminis
Thank you :)
I just wrote about this today, oddly. As you say, "evil" cannot just be everyday cruelty or selfishness, because we are all subject to that. To me evil is defined by having given up on the good: as with Satan, in the mythology. When you no longer hold good as a standard, when you stop aspiring to be better, but instead embrace and validate your worst instincts: yes, that is evil, it is real, and it can swallow the world.
https://sanityparty.substack.com/p/what-maga-taught-me-about-evil
(To be clear, I'm not saying that anyone who supports Trump is evil-- just that, in my estimation, MAGA has embraced evil as an operating system.)
Evil hides and disguises really well in its clothing of lies, it knows very well that its continuence depends on that and our not speaking up and out against it. It is not a black and white appearance but comes in all shades of grey.
Narcissim
You have not seen evil until you have known a narccist. They suck all that is good in a person out of that person often without the person knowing it. It is an insipid vampire kind of evil. They prey on good people who are the most vulnerable. They serve only themselves at the expense of others. Thy are truly EVIL.
What about slavery?
Early in XIX century North America's masters possessed as many as 500 slaves from Africa each, and suck all their life forces to gain wealth. Russian "pomeschiks" possessed up to 1,000 peasants as things, beat,kill, gilded, suck blood from them,forced them to give birth, to work hard in the fields. Those peasants were white,the same slavonics as their masters.
Could we name slavery "an insipid vampire kind of evil" or "the predatory/prey law of Nature"???
Slavery was officially abolished in 1834 in North America and in 1861 in Russia, it was started in ancien Babilon, Greece and Rome BC.
But it's roots still remain in national consciousness,they are very deep and hard to extract.
Slavery of the bodies leads to the slavery of the minds,lacking the freedom of thought and the freedom of speech in authoritarian societies,which,in it's turn,slows down the social progress and development of the thought.
"Evil to him who thinks evil", the old British proverb says.
Could we say today : "Good for him who thinks good?"
Think hard before you will respond.
Evil does not exist as anything but a concept. Like god. There is ignorance, desire, selfishness, and illness, or some other factor we don't know which cause behavior that some folks like to be able to call something, so they use evil. As Richard Feynman said, "It is much more interesting to live without knowing than to have answers that might be wrong."
I think evil takes pleasure in pain and chaos. Good and bad depend on who your friends are. If a fox eats one hen, that's good for the fox and bad for the hen, but life goes on. A predator-prey system works with restraint. If a fox kills all the hens for the thrill of the kill, that's evil. Our notions of good, bad, and evil are useful in modifying our behaviour so we care for ourselves without destroying the system that sustains us.
It should be insane fox.
I found this to be interesting, Bonhoeffer literature- Reel by @yourtotaldetox
Hunter Biden explains quote by Bonhoeffer
"Theory of Stupidity"
The problem is how we categorise actions etc. as "good" or "bad". Is there a rational basis for doing this? I suspect not. And yet we do it all the time. Somehow we recognise good and bad actions. But I don't think there's any justification for saying that "good" and "bad" are metaphysical entities which somehow (supernaturally?) have a reality or being of their own (or even that "good" is real and "bad" is its absence). We think, for example, of the Nazis as "evil", but they didn't see themselves that way. I doubt there's anyone who deliberately carries out actions that they themselves see as "bad", except perhaps where they're in the grip of an uncontrollable compulsion or because they believe it to be necessary for the sake of a greater good (which, if that belief is correct, turns it into a "good" action). And I think it's unsustainable to say that good actions are those which are motivated by love and all bad actions are motivated by hate, because the motives really don't matter - what matters is what is actually done. We would have no time, for example, for someone who commits war-crimes or genocidal acts and defends themselves by saying that they are only acting out of love. Even if they really believe it, and for that matter even if we accept it as true. What we care about is what they've done. Is it possible to commit an evil act out of love? Say, burning a heretic at the stake in order to save their immortal soul? Personally, I think it is.
* We think of the Nazis as "evil" because they did bad things...