For a lot of people in Western culture the concept of “evil” is not one which we generally spend a lot of time thinking about. Talking to most children reveals that the word “evil” is linked directly to some kind of religious belief and, if they don’t identify themselves as theists, they will tell you that evil (like God) does not exist… at least until they rock up in my RE class.
What is Evil?
There are some events in life that many people might choose to describe as “evil”.
- The 9-11 attacks in 2001 were described by most of the news media as evil.
- The murder of young children is usually also labelled as evil.
- Sexual abuse in most forms is a third example of something many would regard as evil.
Evil can begin in our minds as being as simple as “something that we don’t like”.
When the kids in my RE classes play the excellent “Evil Game” (actually called “The Worst Things in the World”) published by RE Today, they are confronted by a range of candidates for “The Most Evil of All”. In that list, originally created from interviews with 11-16 year old British school kids, are such wildly ranging items as “Murder”, “Sexism”, “Bullying”, “Lack of Love”, and “Sad Trainers”. This last point, while it gets a giggle, is often fairly soon relegated down the list of potential candidates for “The Most Evil of All” because even 14 year old kids can tell the difference between fashion tastes and genocide.
Moral Evil
Evil is often categorised into three broad types. The first of these is Moral Evil.
Moral Evil is that stuff that gets carried out by people and which causes suffering to other people: cruelty, greed, war, terrorism, sexual abuse… and so on. The list, when you start thinking about it, is pretty long.
For the atheist, who will likely refuse the terms “evil” and “moral” anyway, this problem is the responsibility of the human beings who perpetrate it. If I choose to bully a colleague, or to order the mass execution of a whole race of people, or to kill another person… well, then it is I who is responsible.
The religious believer may have a whole range of addition ideas that help them to come to terms with Moral Evil. Certainly most religious believers will assert the responsibility of the perpetrator of moral evil. Yet, depending on their religious belief, they may also assert that these acts are a direct failure to follow one’s path in life (Hinduism), or to obey God’s will and purpose (Islam), or of abusing the human capacity to choose the good (Judaism, Christianity), or part of the cosmic and spiritual battle between Good and Evil (some Christians).
The challenge for the post-Christendom West is to ask if we are allowing some people to fail to accept responsibility for their acts of Moral Evil perpetrated against others. How many times do we hear of mitigating circumstances for quite shocking acts of suffering inflicted upon another? Is it right for students in London to smash up property and put lives at risk in the name of protest? Is it ok for a school teacher to lose their temper, leading to beating a child almost to death, and then claim psychological imbalance? Is it enough for Catholic Priests who abuse children to simply say sorry, as if their actions were comparable to stepping on a foot?
Moral Evil challenges all of us to question ourselves: are we willingly causing suffering to others?
Natural Evil
This is the suffering that is inflicted by nature: floods, forest fires, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, drought… again, the list goes on.
Again, for our atheist, Natural Evil is generally regarded as a natural consequence of life upon our planet. To live upon a ball of rock which is thankfully unstable, allowing for life to thrive and develop, has the unfortunate side-effect of subjecting that life to the risk of natural disaster. This is, however, not a question of deliberate cruelty perpetrated against our species… it’s simply the way our world is, following on from its random formation in the universe.
Theists, however, tend towards complicating the question when they talk about Natural Evil. Some, having a faith in God or gods, begin to claim that natural disaster is somehow the deliberate action of that deity; perhaps this disaster is a punishment from God, meted out as a deliberate punishment for some perceived Moral Evil committed by those people who suffered. You can see this kind of thinking as originating way back around 1500-2000 BCE in stories from ancient religions in places like Sumeria, not to mention within the Old Testament in the story of Job.
Other theists, however, see the evil in nature as a matter of limitation and dependence from which both suffering and good can be found. From the Californian forest fire comes new life; some disasters have the effect of limiting pests and diseases, despite the terrible short-term suffering that they cause. For many theists, natural evil reminds us of our frailty and helps to keep humanity mindful of its responsibility to live within a complex ecosystem to which we are incredibly dependent.
Metaphysical Evil
Step into the light, Philosopher.
Metaphysical Evil is that which limits all things to the the cycle of birth and decay: pain, sickness, and death… and bereavement. These are the things to which we are all bound and from which, for all our efforts to reduce them and limit them, we are all ultimately vulnerable.
For the atheist these things simply are. Metaphysical Evil, especially pain and sickness, might inspire the doctor to seek cure and pain relief… but they are, in the end, things we simply must endure.
The theist might choose to see Metaphysical Evil as a part of the design for the world and humanity, perhaps with the purpose of ensuring our growth and development, both physically and spiritually. The desire to survive and thrive is pitted against the cycle of birth and death, pushing us to discover our purpose and place in the universe.
It is perhaps the Buddhist who has the strongest sense of the value that Metaphysical Evil places upon the human being. Birth, loss and death are part of the rich and varied life that we experience which also creates within us emotion, feeling, empathy and care. Facing death forces upon us a maturity of spirit. What you might regard as evil is, for the Buddhist, simply a cycle of death and rebirth which seeks to bring about perfection and ultimate understanding.
What’s Your Response?
Having given a very brief introduction to the questions that surround the concept of Evil I am left wondering what you might choose to do with it. Perhaps, like so many, you will simply dismiss it as irrelevant.
On the other hand, perhaps you will take the time to consider your own actions in relation to the suffering of others. This kind of thinking has inspired folk to think again about what they buy (preferring to lessen the suffering from sweat-shops) or to simply rein in their tongues (aiming to reduce the emotional pain they inflict in the workplace).
In relation to natural evil, some have chosen to rethink their suffering. As they have endured, has there been anything they have learned or gained from the experience? In adversity is where many humans are inspired to serve one another, building better communities and learning to value that little which remains.
Finally, in relation to our metaphysical suffering, many are wise enough to consider their mortality and harness it to motivate them away from hours of Xbox gaming (or whatever else passes their time) and instead turn them towards purpose. The Existentialists may tell us that we need to create our own meaning, that there is nothing external to give us purpose, but they always end up finding some meaning for the short lives that they live. You too can discover that evil can be turned into an opportunity for growth and goodness.
I suppose as an atheist I understand two things when it comes to Evil. The first is the concept of morality. Like evil, morality would be claimed b y religons as a speciality or even a creation; a gift in which to allow mankind to live more peaceably and productively under a set of organised beliefs. Morality for me is a survival mechanism, a part of the complex web of social skills and values built up overtime in reaction to, and to support, man’s natural need to build social networks in order to survive. Pound for pound we are amongst the weakest animals on this planet, with little or no physiological physical adaptations to allow us to survive and prosper in a natural world. Yet three things have allowed us to prosper; ingenuity, opposable thumbs and the need to be apart of a society. The development of language as allowed all three of those aspects to develop at a fearsome rate, beyond normal evolutionary rates. Morality is a way of projecting a set of universal values from one society to another via communication, and expecting a common set of reactions and behaviours, strengthening the bonds between those societies (leading to nations alongside common language perhaps? Another day …)
So evil. Evil appears to be a relatively recent linguistic creation, and is tied closely to morality. This then makes sense with the above. If a society sees something as so immoral that it would never be considered, then that can become a class of immoral act on its own. Evil then becomes a simple descriptive word of a set of actions which the society in question will have no negotiations over. It then follows suit that religion, being a form of mass control, would align itself against, and eventually be associated as the only arbitrator of, evil within the society. Eventually, given religions’ impact on the human world, it would become natural to associate moral and evil with religion. And I say that very carefully!
In the end evil, like all morality, becomes a choice for the individual and defines his or her place within the societies around them. You cannot get better examples of this than the selection of dictators the modern world has thrown up since the Enlightenment.
It’s interesting to read your comment, FH, and notice that you are focused very much on the concepts of ‘morality’ and ‘evil’ without mentioning the impact of suffering. If I am reading you correctly, morality is a social construct which allows groups of human beings to get along better and, thus, improve their chances of survival. For you, suffering does not seem relevant; it’s the threat to human survival that is being combated by the construction of moral rules, labelling unproductive behaviours as ‘evil’.
For me, speaking as a theist, your focus on ‘moral evil’ as not really evil at all is slightly alien. Once more, as I have commented on many occasions without any negative judgement being implied, this shows the gap between our worldviews – something that I value and always seek to explore. For me, many years ago, it was the suffering inflicted by humans upon both one another and on animals that moved me to ask, “Why do we allow this?”
Certainly the religions do not have the monopoly on responses to what philosophers (atheist and theist) have agreed to call ‘moral evil’, but they all respond in some way. It is of concern to me to be living within a society which continually finds ways to cause great suffering and fail to accept responsibility for that suffering, all in the name of survival. It is our society that subjugates weaker groups of human beings, takes their resources and gives them little in return, all in the name of providing our society with cheap products to sell at market. The modern idea that the fittest should survive has been warped into the idea that the strongest should survive, and we calmly ignore the suffering we inflict.
As a theist, morality is to me not a mere survival strategy. It is a response to an outside power, one that is active within the world, and a power that is concerned that human beings respond to one another in a way that minimises suffering. As humans have developed, the thread of human religion has broadly been to move away from violence to one another and towards peaceful reconciliation of issues. Certainly people exist on the fringes of religion and continue to act as though they were living in a different age… but the majority of modern theists are a lot more sophisticated in the way in which they choose and act than many critics give them credit for. Yet, let’s not forget… for the theist, whether Hindu or Christian, Muslim or Jew, there is an authority outside and above them who is guiding their footfalls. Guiding them towards the ‘good’ and away from the ‘evil’… that which inflicts suffering.
Great stuff as always. I think part of FH’s argument comes to context.
Morality, and by extension moral evil; exists within the context of society and culture; and these things are different from place to place. What is seen as evil in western cultures, can be completely acceptable in other cultures, and vice versa. In practice, good and evil are defined by the society we are part of.
Suffering on the other hand is neutral (in my world at least). It may be caused by a (morally) evil act, act of nature, or by the inherit design of the world; but however unpleasant and horrible, it is not evil, it simply is.
A few thoughts.
In his most recent book, Terry Eagleton (“On Evil”, 2010) argues for evil as a metaphysical concept. As a theist, it really surprised me to read an atheist so arguing, even if he did try to restrict what exactly “metaphysical” can mean. By definition, metaphysics is generally treated as a separate entity from moral philosophy, and they only generally intersect when discussing philosophy of religion, and theodicy (i.e. the problem of evil) in particular. It raises a large number of issues (for another time). However, I found his most valuable insight was o argue that the 20th Century’s main problem was to make evil attractive. If the ratty one doesn’t mind I may explore this at a later date.
A few year’s ago, Susan Neiman published a now very important work, “Evil in Modern Thought: an alternative history of philosophy” (2002) in which she argues that philosophy from roughly the Enlightenment onwards is about the problem of evil. To make this clear she points out that the classic distinction between natural and moral evil is a response to the Lisbon earthquake (18th Century). I do have an issue with the distinction, but generally note that ‘natural’ evil is normally the physical mechanisms of the world taking place, and only being questioned as evil dependent on whether humans are affected/killed, and, often, the number thereof. By definition no one cares if a tornado touches down in a desert, but do care if it happens in a heavly populated area.
A recent work by Tom Wright, now the former Bishop of Durham as he has resigned to return to full time academia, “Evil and the Justice of God” (2005) notes that the post-modern world has real difficulty understanding what evil is and how to deal with it. As a theist, of course, he has a particular position to reinforce, but his point is well made.
I take FH to be coming from a generally phenomenological position. This was an impoortant development, but it is largely questioned and rejected in current studies of religion. The most important reason being that it is difficult to see how a large number of disparate cultures spread over the globe can develop the same core principles of morality, despite their differences, and it also suffered from the presupposition that monotheism was the natural and inevitable evolutionary conclusion to the religious quest.
So, whereas an instantiated example of murder leads to legally sanctioned murder (whether in war or duelling) and non-legally sanctioned exapmles (i.e. 1st or 2nd degree), cultures do acknowledge that murder per se is wrong. I would argue that moralit is not simply a social construct, but something so much more.
I’ve always been curious about people’s ideas on this. Personally I don’t believe in it as a concept or an idea, I can see it’s uses in proto-societies to create laws and guidelines, it’s far easier to persuade someone not to do (and inherently to commit) acts against societies laws by branding acts “evil” and threaten retribution not only in their lifetime but post mortem divine vengeance for transgression. Natural evil again a tsunami, avalanche is just nature, outside a Disney film, nature is not nice it’s a harsh mistress and given (most people’s idea of a miracle child birth) is from the get go a violent struggle, is a lion killing a prey animal evil? is an owl slaying a field mouse evil, no it just is. I have to say though not religious I feel more inclined to the Buddhist ideology, I feel it’s our species capacity to over analyse the simplest things and draw patters within sometimes to comfort sometimes to control.
Perhaps it’s the nihilist in me 😉