Evil

“If you see a blind man, kick him. Why should you be kinder than God?”

As we look around us in the world sometimes we see atrocities that no matter how happy and positive we might be, it is simply hard to think that this might be a good world, and even more so that there might be a good God out there. We look around us in this world and there seems to be so much pain, suffering, abuse, death, in one word: evil. In fact, as we categorize evil into moral and natural evil, one stemming from nature whereas the other stems from man, we are intimately aware that there seems to be an overabundance of acts and events that we can categorize. We can explore the theories of Leibniz and the critique that Voltaire applies to him as an example on the central question of religion and human nature in general of the how there can be a benevolent God ruling over us and who yet would allow this much evil to take place. So maybe instead of bringing a moral judgment to life itself we can look at evil as a moral judgment that we bring to life and the natural chaos that is our existence.

In order to categorize evil, first we want to explore what it is that we even mean when we use the word evil. Is it evil for a person to steal money from another? Is an Earthquake evil? We can categorize evil as moral which would include acts of men that cause suffering like genocides, war, murders, rapes, theft, etc. Moral evil “results from a moral agent misusing his or her free will such as the agent is blameworthy for it. It includes human actions as well as character traits” (JE). We can also categorize evil as natural and that would include Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, plagues and epidemics. “Natural evil is evil that results from natural phenomena and is not brought about by the free will of a moral agent. It includes natural disasters and certain human illnesses” (JE).

The question of moral and ethics associated with the categorization of evil is heavy with biases. Is it evil that if we kill an ant that is eating out of our plate of food? Most people would agree that this is not serious evil, although it is certainly evil to the ant. Is it evil to kill an animal to eat it? Jain Hindus are vegetarian because taking any life is murder yet most people in the word are omnivores. Is it evil if we kill a man? In most cultures this is one of the taboos as Freud calls them, and killing is considered immoral, evil and a crime. Is it evil if we kill a dying man who wishes to die? Now the question becomes more interesting, and touches on a long debate about euthanasia that has been ragging. People would agree that it is humane to kill an animal with no hope of survival to reduce the suffering, yet the same people are divided on whether it is considered killing a person who is suffering in agony as they are dying in a prolonged fashion or whether it makes sense to reduce their suffering. Is it evil if we kill a man who is about to kill many other people? In society, we tend to almost put a killer who saves many lives in the position of a hero. Was it evil to kill Hitler? Most people would agree that Hitler was evil and needed to be stopped but to his followers he was an idol to follow and die for. So it is starting to be apparent that there is difficulty on where to draw the line between good and evil.  Evil seems to almost depends on our definition of the word and our perception. Ethically and morally it is hard to agree on what is right and wrong so universally it is hard to determine what is evil making evil as very personal perception. Hours after the 2012 shooting in Aurora Colorado, president Obama said “such evil is senseless, beyond reason” referring to the acts of a murderer that killed order of magnitude less Americans, let alone countless more Iraqis, than the war in Iraq that the same president somehow finances. So who makes the moral judgment to term something as evil or good? Ignatieff (2004) writes that “life’s toughest choices are not between good and bad, but between bad and worse (…) the choices between lesser evils (…) these are the kind of choices we face when dealing with terrorist threats, if we do too little we will get attacked again, if we do too much innocent people will die”.  And so it is only natural to ask who can make these decisions and how heavy as burden is it to make such decision? So it could seem natural to look for a moral agent outside of ourselves that would in fact define good and evil and that being would exemplify and embody everything that is good, so a God that is omnibenevolent seems to be a great comfort even to the uninitiated minds.

We explored evil as a concept and an idea and it is interesting to note that the word carries as heavy a religious connotation as the word God itself. One of the great philosophers of the European rise from the dark middle ages in the eighteenth century, Leibniz, explores the concept of a Western God, to whom are attributed the traditional divine characteristics of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence and he tries to reconcile these notions with the concept of evil, in his only full length book Theodicy, evidence that this great philosopher spent a lot of his time thinking this problem in depth. In Theodicy Leibniz argues the possibility of an existence of a God that is good despite the manifestation of evil in its many forms. Leibniz set the stage for asking the question on whether God can exist and evil can also exist at the same time, and moreover what are the implications for the intrinsic goodness of the universe.

Taking the question of the goodness of the universe one step forward, Voltaire makes his satire of Leibniz, in Candide, a comedy describing the life of its hero and point of view character with the same name, in an account that is almost not funny given the overwhelming number of obstacles that the heroes face. Leibniz’s voice echoes in Pangloss’s teachings to his naïve student Candide:

Pangloss gave instruction in metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology. He proved admirably that there cannot possibly be an effect without a cause and that in this best of all possible worlds the baron’s castle was the most beautiful of all castles and his wife the best of all possible baronesses. —It is clear, said he, that things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end. Observe: noses were made to support spectacles, hence we have spectacles. Legs, as anyone can plainly see, were made to be breeched, and so we have breeches. . . . Consequently, those who say everything is well are uttering mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best.

Yet Pangloss’s teachings seems to pale in comparison with the overarching evidence of evil in, well, everything that takes place in Candide’s life. Pangloss keeps his eternal optimism and seems to almost ignore the evidence that there seems to be almost no hope out there for the heroes of this French version of a divine comedy.  Voltaire in his conclusion suggests a stoic approach, reminiscent of Eastern teachings:

“all that is very well” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”

As humans we seem enamored with the idea of order in the chaos that seems to be life. Leibniz seems to think that this is a world that is in its essence a good world and Voltaire looks at the chaos that surrounds us and it is interesting to ask how to live one’s life separately in the midst of this chaos. So yes, “is the word fair?” The categorization in moral evil and natural evil put a judgment both in humans and in nature itself about the acts of life. What if life is simply independent of moral judgment and in fact just happens? By looking at the many examples of evil we can begin to understand that maybe we coin the word evil for everything that happens that we are not very happy about. In Judaism evil was personified as Lilith, in Christianity as the devil, in Buddhism as the Mara. (Ceres, 1900) We want to know that there is someone to blame for what happens and that the pain we go through is not senseless pain caused by random occurrences, coincidences, and probabilities.

We can explore the question of whether there is hope for us if evil is such an overwhelming part of life that it simply dwarfs anything good and pure. We explored the “Bambi case” as an example of gratuitous evil in class, and we found that even asking the question about gratuitous evil in itself implies that there might be evil of another kind. Do we believe that suffering is deserved so we bump into each other in an effort to interact with one another, or should we go around thanking our assailants or turning the other cheek as we are so conveniently taught in Christianity? There seems to simply not be an easy answer on what we are meant to learn as we experience evil in our lives.

We can explore the question of the difference between being passive and accepting life, and by extension evil, and being depressed and having a victim mentality. In the Eastern teachings of Buddhism acceptance is a part of life and it is a high state of Buddha to realize that nothing happens to us, except what we do to ourselves. We are surrounded by mirrors of our own consciousness and these mirrors simply are there to remind us to be mindful and to look within. Should we look at others like a mirror as the teachings of Buddha suggest realizing that everything that happens to us is an outer reflection of an inner struggle and for the manifestation to disappear we need to simply relax the inner tension? We can look at this as a way to live life fully accepting life in life’s own terms.

As we look into the question of evil maybe all we find is the natural manifestation of chaos. Maybe all we see really is life unfolding. It is the nature of life to be an adventure and yes the dream that one day, somehow there will be no more suffering and pain seems to be a Western fabricated utopia that is propagated by Hollywood and Disney and Harlequin novels. We wonder what it means to accept and appreciate life in life’s terms, without trying to control it and at the same time without getting more and more depressed. Life happens. In that short time that we are on this planet we have we are asked to experience life and somehow that experience of life is what is supposed to help us move through the wheels of karma in Hindu Buddhism philosophy, and out of the samsara of rebirth, and help us experience moksha, liberation. (Scherrer-Schaub, 2001) As we look into this deep level of injustice that seems to determine life maybe we realize that the concept itself makes no sense. We have created a concept of justice, of good and evil and like the religions that sometimes become anthropocentric, we have created a concept of human justice that is supposed to be able to explain the concept of divine justice, let alone the idea of what is really justice.

In conclusion as we explore the question of evil in this world and the existence of God, and as we try to reconcile the happenings of life with our idea of a good and evil, and the hope of a better life, somehow, somewhere, it might important as Voltaire suggests to simple take care of “our own garden”. In this world of opposites, we understand in opposition: heat versus cold, light versus dark, good versus evil. We could focus more on exploring happiness as the new wave of psychologist teach us in a landslide fashion and let the world happen, because maybe it is not so much what happens that determines who we are, rather it is our reaction to what happens that determines how happy we can be.

References:

Ceres, P. (1900) “History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil from the Earliest Times to the Present Day” Princeton University Press

Julia Esteve classes on evil – lecture notes (JE)

Ignatieff, M. (2004) “The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror” Kessinger Legacy Reprints

Leibniz, G. W. (1709 ) “Theodicy” The Project Guttenberg

Scherrer- Schaub, C. (2001) “Life after Death in Buddhism” SARS Bulletin des Amis des Sciences Religieuses, 2, pp49-62, Paris (French)

Voltaire (1759) “Candide” The Project Guttenberg