I defined “evil” as any act that is of net-negative to the well being of the individual and therefore collectively to humanity. Generally what is not good is ‘evil.’
I quoted the following to Phyllo, but there was no response to this;
During the past thirty years, moral, political, and legal philosophers have become increasingly interested in the concept of evil.
This interest has been partly motivated by ascriptions of ‘evil’ by laymen, social scientists, journalists, and politicians as they try to understand and respond to various atrocities and horrors of the past eighty years, e.g., the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and killing sprees by serial killers such as Jeffery Dahmer.
It seems that we cannot capture the moral significance of these actions and their perpetrators by calling them ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ or even ‘very very wrong’ or ‘very very bad.’ We need the concept of evil.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/
To ensure full coverage of those negative acts, including ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ or even ‘very very wrong’ or ‘very very bad,’ vile, abominable, evil, etc., I find it effective to generalize all these acts as into one general term i.e. ‘evil’ with a qualification in term of degrees for the various range of evil from Low [1/100] to very high [99/100].
In addition, I believe the term ‘evil’ [which is appropriate anyway] do trigger greater attention than those wide varieties of words represent the various types of negative acts by humans.
Any thing wrong with the above views?
Btw, the above is not related to any ontological evil such as the existence of Satan, the devil and other beings who seduced vulnerable humans into committing evil and sins.