What or who is evil?

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I was just wondering what others considered evil. My first reaction is something or someone who harms another but is an earthquake 'evil'?

On a lighter note for me evil is needing to get up before 10AM.

 

In my book "evil" always implies a choice. No natural phenomenon is "evil" - nature doesn't plan good or evil things (I'm sure many will disagree with this statement though). I'm not a religious person, so I find the use of terms like "sinful" or "morally reprehensible" a bit off. The third definition (causing harm) would be mine, with the understanding that it implies a conscious decision to cause harm.

 

I don't really believe in evil. Everything a human does has its reasons somewhere in the said persons head. In my opinion evil is just something which humans came up with when they could not explain the actions of a criminal. Therefore I generally think that using the word evil to describe a person or his deeds only stems out of ignorance.

 

I know there are many flaws in my definition but I can say a person is evil if (s)he choses to harm someone with no valid reason.

 

So Argohir, if I chose to.. I don't know, cut someone open because I liked the sight of blood, would that be evil? There's a valid (if twisted) reason.

I tend to agree with Ziad, but would say a net effect of harm. A small amount of harm to someone can sometimes do a greater amount of good.

 

And I tend to agree with Rotku.

But I also think that it depends to some extent on the attitude of the person being harmed.

A child being punished may feel harmed but the parent intends the punishment to do good.

A country attacking another country may believe it has a good reason but the country being attacked will feel harmed and that the act is evil; also probably consider the attacking country evil.

 

In my view, I suppose evil is most simply described as harmful. As a noun, it could even be synonymous with harm. For example, if I'm attacked by someone and kill him in self-defence, his death is an evil thing, but I'm not evil for killing him and neither is my killing him an evil act. This is because I didn't choose that and no alternative.

Similarly, a mentally ill person killing someone while not being able to assess and/or control his behaviour does not commit an evil act.

Consequently, if we talk about evil in nature, it has much less of a moral connotation than if we judge people's actions. Such a person commits an evil act who knows what he's doing and is able to choose.

But if I am to say who is evil... I don't know. It appears a bit self-contradictory: on the one hand, it implies the person can't do good anymore or abstain from doing evil; on the other hand, a person unable to choose wouldn't be evil in any different sense from an evil beast, a natural disaster, an evil device.

 

The word "evil" is a pretty pejorative term. People (typically) don't call themselves or the things they like evil; they reserve it for the races, the ideas, the actions, etc. that they don't like and won't stand for. Five hundred years ago, the Jew was evil. Sixty years ago, the "Jap" was evil. Today, we perceive (for example), corporations as evil, but corporations aren't sentient beings capable of making choices.

Suffering is a different matter, since you at least, on a crude level, quantify it and know what it is when you see it. You may want to define suffering as "that which is not preferred", which leads us into (arguably) the realm of economics. In any case, we obviously have the choice to create suffering or not at our own gratification.

 

Evil is largely dependent on one's own moral concepts. Anything that is immoral is inherently evil. Evil cannot exist outside a moral construct.

Evil is only definite within the moral system it exists and is prone to radical change from system to system.

 

Evil is something that you dislike a very great deal.

IMO it's not a very useful word for it though, as people attach all other things to it as well. When it boils down to it though - that's about all it means...

 

I can't shake the gut feeling that, in the end, all things are neutral and that 'evil' is a meaningless human construct. Although, I can never reconcile this feeling with reason.

It is interesting that humans are not the only animals who exhibit evil behavior. Chimps murder other chimps (apparently) for the sport of it. Adolescent elephants have been known to kill rhinos without provocation and dolphins will sometimes brutalize and rape dolphins.

 

Evil depends on your own perspective. Everything is neutral, its how we respond to the situation that makes it 'evil' or 'good'.

 

It's kind of disturbing that they all are some of the most 'intellectually advanced' species.

 

Harming another person deliberately or through neglect. Not just physical harm.

Sure, sometimes it's necessary to harm a person to prevent that person from harming another--but doing so is evil. It may be a necessary evil, but a necessary evil is still...

well, y'know.

 

We could take Nietzsche's approach and claim that so long as we have the power to do so, evil is whatever we claim it to be. In "Beyond Good and Evil", Nietzsche basically states that Altruistic action is evil (at the very least degenerate and unnatural).

 

Evil and good is just the "colour" of an act really. Its just mother nature affecting us in one direction or another, thats all.

 

OTOH, it turns out that that's at least in part due to socialization. Yes, primates can be socialized too.

article (long, but worth reading): http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/47/18139
Interesting bits

 

As I said it had many flaws, it was the first thing that came to my mind. What makes a reason valid? Maybe it is about crime and punishment; but it also has a lot of questions inside. But in the end, there are so many different situations to make a clear definition of evil.

Today in class, we were talking about Plato's Republic and the teacher asked "What is good?" because it is argued in a part of the book. Nobody was able to give a good answer and of course, the teacher didn't expect to get an answer from us. Because good&evil is not so simple. But I am interested in Ethics, so I like thinking about it.

 

Obviously it depends on a person's own moral compass as to what is evil. In my case the act is one performed where the (harm to victim)benefit to executor) ratio is heavily in favor of the harm aspect. Stealing a loaf of bread from a bakery because if you didn't you would die and had no other means of procuring sustinance short of mugging somebody in the street for their money indeed harms the owner of the bakery yet the harm would be tiny compared to the benefit of the thief who would get to live.

I believe there must be a choice involved. The choice to do the easy thing that harms another when one could do a slightly more difficult thing yet harm nobody, the former is obviously an evil act.

An evil person would be a person who performs evil acts with abandon or simply doesn't care about the amount of harm he causes or even revels in the harm he causes.

Murder and killing is not always an evil act, as always there are mitigating circumstances. I wouldn't call a soldier an evil person for killing another soldier from a country they are at war with but I would call the same soldier evil if they harmed or killed a submissive and innocent civilian (if the civilian is attempting to harm/kill/disrupt the military operation they're fare game).

There are always mitigating circumstances and before one can call an act evil they should first see the whole picture of what occured rather than just the act itself.

 

It's all relative.

Although I find it interesting that a bunch of people who use the words "good" and "evil" every day in the D&D worlds, can't agree on what "evil" actually means.