12 October 2008

Evil: What is it?

After an interesting discussion through the comments on a post of Jack Loveland's on his blog, it brought me to an interesting question: how does one define evil? The closest one can definitively say about that is that evil is the opposite of good. 

Can one define evil? Some would say that good and evil is relative and depends on circumstances and the individuals concerned. Others would say that good and evil do not exist at all, being merely a flawed construct of our collective minds. Some of the more interesting ones I've heard include the utilitarian idea that evil is what does the most harm to the most people (as opposed to the most good to the most people), and, one that I've come up with, the idea that evil is what takes away one's free will. 

None of these definitions seem to 'hit the spot', for me to define what evil really is. What do you think?

7 comments:

Alex said...

I think that evil is something that appears to be good, but ends up hurting you and/or other people.

Christian Swenson said...

What is good?

Puneet said...

Evil is something which is despised by our society, in reality there's nothing much of a evil or good thing in this world. We are all neutral.

Alex said...

Appears to be something that would benefit you or others I should say.

Christian Swenson said...

Would evil then be something that harms you or others?

Mr. Dye said...

Is it possible to define morality without falling into moral relativism (the idea that moral values are not absolute but defined by what is socially acceptable)?

Christian Swenson said...

There were the definitions that I gave: causing the most harm to the most people, taking away free will, and others like defining what is good or bad based on how a society would function if everyone did it.

Honestly, however, morality seems to be relative across cultures and backgrounds, but the one thing that seems to be common is an association between harm and evil.