“I’ve got evil in me as much as anyone, some desires that scare me. Even if I don’t give in to them, just having them scares the living bejesus out of me sometimes. I’m no saint, the way you kid about. But I’ve always walked the line, walked that goddamned line. It’s a mean mother of a line, straight and narrow, sharp as a razor, cuts right into you when you walk it long enough. You’re always bleeding on that line, and sometimes you wonder why you don’t just step off and walk in the cool grass.”
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
I’ve always wondered if anyone can know what evil is without having done some evil in their past, seems obvious to me, as Rasputin said how can a man know what evil is if he has never done any wrong with which to judge his actions? And more if indeed Christ can judge Satan as evil with no ability to experience it for himself in his perfect state. How can Satan be evil and Christ be good in antithesis? Surely tritely and obviously both have to exist and both have to be comprehended or religion is a sacrifice on the altar of odd.
So what exactly is evil, is everyone good, or evil; well no obviously we are partly both. What makes us good though and what makes us evil? How do we make good and evil morally adjunct, is it the case even that they are? Does even the term evil have a value, given the way the world is. Isn’t good and evil just a case of perspective, after all no evil dictator ever called himself evil, and no saint ever claimed he was purely good. So to sum up are we just fooling ourselves that we can somehow judge good-evil, moral-immoral. Is there any way out of the problem we face realistically?
What do you mean when you use the word evil?
Is it different for you than the word bad? What is it more than a perspectival judgment?
What is evil but simply something one disapproves of? Why would you have to commit a type of act to be able to condemn such acts?
Or is this about evil as an objective state of being?
The quote seems to speak of a chasm between the instincts and the rational mind. The organism has urges which the rational mind categorizes as “to be rejected”.
Is there more to it?
What is the misguided origin, I would like to know, of the notion of Christhood or sainthood in general as free of any kind of evil? On the contrary, the greater the saint the more evil their insides. They admit as much themselves, outrageously claiming to be the worst sinners under the sun etc., whilst to others seeming to be impossible models of otherworldly refinement and goodness.
Let’s not imagine the figure of Christ as an exception from this rule, either. The general form is this: as greatness increases, so does the evilness that inwardly threatens it. The personage who has accomplished the complete nullifcation of evil inside themselves (to begin with, assuming they are not a delusional hypocrite) has at once assured their own complete stagnation.
If somebody comprehended this, their understanding of colloquial advice such as “oppose not evil” could profoundly change overnight.
Yeah that’s not very informative though is it. I mean if Nietzsche would of said that in his oft cited work: Beyond Good and Evil I’m pretty sure people would think he was lazy.
There’s no need for morals? Does that extend to ethics too? Surely there’s a need to discuss the subject? Maybe that’s why I’m lost, there no longer is anything we can count on, just relativism and a pancake. It can’t bet that bad? The fields been around for thousands and thousands of years, I can’t believe we have just given up and said, it’s all good, depends on whatever…
Great I’m off to rape a child, kill them and then dig a shallow grave. I may afterwards masturbate on the earth that embalms the child, and then kill again. Never ceasing until I become the greatest child killer the world has ever known, loved by paedos hated by parents.
Clearly there’s more to raping and killing a child than just going meh, who cares it’s good in the hood?
In general classical western moral philosophy evil is generally comprehended as a specific lack of the good observed in an action. Therefore, one does not need to experience evil to understand it, only to
I read a biography of Rasputin when I was a teenager. He did preach as you said that there is no knowledge of sin without experience of sin. The problem I see here is that the thread invites the unwinable battle between absolutism and relativism.
