Does evil exist? This questions vexes many religious liberals. Of course evil does exist;– but how do we define it, and what forms does it take? Can we call a person evil, or just a mass of persons, a society? Does evil have an existence apart from persons and societies, or does it only manifest in the real world?
To avoid such vexing questions, some religious liberals deny that evil exists. Some others claim that evil is a false construction arising from the errors of religious conservatives or fundamentalists. A larger number of religious liberals simply avoid using the word “evil,” substituting words like “inhuman” (even though it’s quite clear that humans are fully capable of evil), or “pathological” (which may imply that disease is at the root of all evil, or perhaps even that evil is at the root of some diseases).
I think it makes more sense to say that evil does exist, and I think it makes more sense to use the word where I feel that it should be used. I’ll give you an example. I believe that torture is evil. I can’t imagine that there would be any doubt about that fact:– torture is indeed evil. But to say “Torture is evil” causes a small problem, because now you have to define what you mean by torture. George W. Bush has said that torture is evil, and he has asserted that the United States does not use torture (the events at Abu Ghraib prison were an aberration caused by some individuals going against U. S. policy). However, some critics have charged that the United States has engaged in torture. Both these critics and George W. Bush agree that torture is evil, but they have different notions of what constitutes torture, and therefore they have different notions of what is, and what is not, evil.
So while evil certainly exists, we don’t all agree on what is, and what is not, evil. In fact, consensus about what is evil may change over time. Five hundred years ago, there was no world consensus that slavery was evil. People like Paul of Tarsus accepted that slavery was a normal part of the human condition. Most societies around the world had some form of slavery. Yet today, five hundred years later, slavery is illegal in all nations, and there is a worldwide consensus that slavery is evil. Over the course of the past five hundred years, the working definition of evil has changed to include slavery.
I’d say, in fact, that the working definition of evil is always “in play.” Working definitions of what evil is can and do change over time. The important contests about what is, and what is not, evil take place in the public realm, just as the debate about the evil of slavery took place in the public realm.
This may help explain why some religious liberals are reluctant to use the term “evil” — if the definition of “evil” can change and evolve, who are we to make pronouncements about what is, or is not, evil? But this notion may well be based on two false premises. First, it may be that there is no such thing as absolute goodness, or absolute truth, or absolute evil. The accomodationist tendencies of religious liberalism, our willingness to adapt to the changing times, would seem to indicate that we don’t believe in absolutes. The process theologians among us even say that God can change and evolve (assuming that you believe in God) — so how can there be any absolute truth, absolute goodness, or absolute evil?
A second false premise may well be the assumption that one can remove oneself from debates about evil by simply not using the word “evil.” But if the definition of “evil” is a debate that is played out in the public realm, then to remain silent is to participate in that public debate by abstaining (abstention is still a kind of participation). Further, religious liberals act in ways that indicate what they do think is evil — the religious liberals I know believe that sexism is evil, and they act as if sexism is evil, and such actions are (in a very real way) a contribution to the ongoing debate about what is, and what is not, evil.
Fortunately, most religious liberals are willing to use the term “evil.” In one way, it speaks well of religious liberals that they use the term sparingly. On the other hand, it seems to me that we have to be willing to engage in the ongoing public debate about what is, and what is not, evil. If we believe, for example, that torture is evil, we have to talk about what torture is, and we have to talk about whether the actual torturer is evil, and we have to talk about in what way the society that condones torture is itself evil, and we have to talk about what it means that other people have other definitions of torture. If we don’t talk about these things in public, then we are abstaining from deciding such moral questions.
Just some preliminary notes on the topic of evil. Debate and discussion welcomed.
I agree wholeheartedly with you on two points:
1. That evil is in a state of constant flux
2. That we should invoke the word “evil” sparingly.
But as you have noted that the process of evil has evolved throughout time, I would pose this question to you. Does an individual’s conception of what is evil also evolve over a lifetime? The obvious answer is yes, but I’m seeking something a little bit deeper.
I have found that my definition of evil has evolved considerably during my life and although my basic morality framework has not changed, I have made some major adjustments to what I consider to be evil.
To what extent does society have a right to trump what an individual perceives as evil? And under what circumstances?
As you might imagine, evil is a concept I struggle with. About as far as I seem to be able to get is that misconduct and collusion may well be evil, but that doesn’t make the person responsible evil. Of course heaven knows in that model certain people are more prone to evil. I get really confused when I try to apply Buddhist models to this question. I’m far from a theologian, so I may have this wrong. In any event, my understanding and experience is that evil is a Judeo/Christian concept, not Buddhist. The closest that Buddhism comes is that greed, anger and ignorance are the roots of suffering. If you could help me with this confusion, I would be most grateful.
It’s at least a little ironic to substitute the word “inhuman” for “evil.” If humans didn’t exist, would evil? Wouldn’t everything just be “nature?”
Comrade Kevin — I’d agree with you that an individual’s conception of evil can change over a lifetime. I’d suggest two places where an individual’s conception of evil changes in significant ways. First, when an individual experiences serious evil directly and personally (racism, torture, etc.), that experience will certainly have a direct bearing on how the individual thinks about evil. Second, each of us perpetrates a certain amount of evil ourselves (wittingly or unwittingly), and the extent to which we accept our capacity to do evil ourselves certainly also has a cirect bearing on how the individual thinks about evil.
You also ask to what extent society has the right to trump what an individual perceives as evil. The way you frame the question, you seem to think of society as an entity that has rights the same way an individual has rights (maybe you’re a libertarian?). As for me, I don’t believe you can think of society, or individuals, as monads — I’m not willing to play the language game (to use Wittgenstein’s term) that you are. For me, evil is one of the things that gets hashed out in the public realm of cultural politics (rights are another thing that get hashed out in the public realm, which is why I find it hard to say that society has rights). Which also means that it’s not a matter of society trumping the individual (as libertarians would put it), it’s a matter of seeing how the idea of evil plays out among and between individuals — and that’s what I’m interested in here. In short, you’re playing a valid language game, but it’s not a language game I want to get involved in.
uugrrl — Sometimes, I think the person responsible for clergy sexual misconduct does in fact have evil in them — at least, I can think of one or two misconducters about whom I think that. Be that as it may, what you really ask about is Buddhism and evil. I’m no expert on Buddhism (probably know less about it than you!), but I know that Buddhist writers do use the term evil. Take for example the Dhammapada, words that by tradition were spoken by Buddha — verses 116-128 are all about evil (you can read these verses online here: http://www.serve.com/cmtan/Dhammapada/evil.html ).
Does Buddha mean something different by the word “evil” than Western thinkers (Jews, Christians, pagans, and humanists) mean? My guess would be that yes, he did. Not only was he in a different historical period, but he was operating within a different cultural consensus than we are. So here’s another kind of question to ask — as we hash out the meaning of evil today, in the Western world, do we want to bring in Buddha’s insights to the conversation?
Chris — I agree with your first statement. Your second question appears to me to be very difficult to answer, yet I am reluctant to say that human beings are the only beings that can do evil (to prove that human beings are the only beings that can do evil, seems to me that you’d have to prove that all other beings cannot do evil — that’s a tough burden of proof). In your last question, are you contrasting “human” and “nature,” by implying that whatever is not human is (by definition, I guess) therefore nature? But wait a minute, aren’t humans a part of nature, too? Seems to me this leads to a dead end.
I was going to respond here early this morning, but got carried away and ended up responding in a separate post on my blog instead. Hope you don’t mind.
Great topic.
Is the question so much “Does Evil Exist?” or “Does Pure Evil exist?”
It seems to me that we hear more folks talking about Evil as a solid position of complete and total – people dont do evil things, they are evil. nations are totally Evil. Could this new definition be part of the reason that some of us are reluctant to use the term?
Thanks, Dan. Actually one of the things I like about Buddhism is that, like UUism, the forms I know are non-creedal. It’s very much a living tradition. So, what the Dalai Lama has to say about evil has more significance than what the Buddha said. In any event, I asked a UU who is more well-versed in Buddhism than I, and he said that evil is a more central concept in Judeo/Christian traditions than Buddhism. Not that evil isn’t a concept in Buddhism; but delusion is the concept that has Buddhism’s focus.
It’s one of those places where UUism and Buddhism maybe don’t mesh as well, and is fertile ground for us UU-Bus. One of the primary things that drove me from Christianity to Buddhism was the tendency of many Christians to over-simplify. Evil especially is over-simplified in certain Christian circles, and that’s really dangerous. It’s so easy to say X is evil, and then X becomes other, and then that justifies further atrocities. As another friend put it, “evil is a cop-out.”
I wonder what role evil plays in the mind of the MFC and the UUA as they make their poor decisions about misconducting ministers. Do they think people like me think the perpetrators are evil, and therefore they must defend them? The real question they face is are perpetrators fit for ministry. When the answer is so obviously no, but the MFC won’t go there, is it because they are over-dramatizing? Are they afraid that in saying someone is unfit for ministry they are saying they fellowshipped someone who is evil?
Forgive me for going on. I think this is an incredibly important topic you’re on to — one very much worthy of an A. Powell Davies-level analysis. (Which I’m not doing, by the way. I rely on you for that.)
you can’t say that “evil certainly exists” until you’ve defined what you mean by evil. While it’s objectively true that human do horrible things; evil, to most people, means something more. Those who admit the existence of evil are working with a definition something like “intent to do something horrible” while those who deny the existence of evil are working with a definition something like “a negative spiritual force outside human persons that causes them to do something horrible.” The real difference is whether evil is the horrible action itself, the intent to do something horrible, or the spiritual force (opposed to God) that compels humans to do horrible things. Because those three definitions are quite distinct it’s important to be very clear what you’re talking about.
laura — Thanks, and I added a direct link to that post within your comment (hope you don’t mind!).
StevenR — But what’s the difference between “Evil” and “Pure Evil”? By positing something called “Pure Evil”, you seem to be saying that there is something like a Platonic form that exists outside ordinary, everyday reality.
uugrrl — Great thoughts, and you’re going where I’m most interested in going, which is to look at actual evil as it exists in the world. You write: “I wonder what role evil plays in the mind of the MFC and the UUA as they make their poor decisions about misconducting ministers.” Maybe the real problem is that the MFC and the UUA don’t really recognize the evil that is out there? If you’re not acknowledging that something even exists, you’re not going to do a good job in dealing with it. So step one might be to name it:– “That’s evil! yes, that over there, what I’m pointing at” — and then go on from there.
In the specifi instance that you bring up, what we have to decide is what to do after a minister engages in the evil act of serious clergy sexual misconduct. Where does the evil lie in such a situation? What do we do about that evil? Are the MFC, the UUA, other ministers, congregations, etc., complicit in that evil — and if so, in what way(s)? For me, this is where the questions get really interesting — and this is where we really start to figure out what evil is. Abstract definitions of evil, it seems to me, miss the mark by neveer getting to such practical questions.
revricky — You write: “you can’t say that “evil certainly exists†until you’ve defined what you mean by evil.” Actually, you can. Depends on which intellectual tradition you want to follow. In the American pragmatist tradition, C. S. Peirce argued that the way we make our ideas clear is to engage with a community of inquirers to come up with an approximation of a definition (of evil, or of anything), and that over time, the approximation gets closer and closer to what we actually experience. This is parallel to (though different from) what scientists do with scientific method — scientists develop a hypothesis, test it, and revise your hypothesis in light of new data — but you don’t define something first, and then make your test data fit your initial definition.
From my frame of reference, I’d say we mostly don’t have the luxury of time to engage in the abstract definition-making you’re calling for. Evil happens — torture, clergy sexual misconduct, child abuse — and we have to deal with it here and now. If I see torture taking place, I’m going to want to say, “Hey, what you’re doing is evil!” (or, worst case scenario, “Hey, what they’re doing to me is evil!”). While it can be interesting to engage in the kind of definition-making that you’re describing, I’d rather sit down with uugrrl and figure out where the evil lies in clergy sexual misconduct. Ludwig Wittgenstein would say that we’re playing different language games — no judgment on either one of us, by the way — but I still want to say that yes, within my language game, actually I can talk about evil before I’ve adequately defined it!
Now the question is (from within my frame of reference) — how can you and I, with our different language games, create public policy? That becomes a very interesting question!
I think I need to extrapolate upon my argument a bit better.
I’m not a libertarian, though I grew up in a libertarian household, so maybe that tinted my own personal viewpoint. I don’t see a society as having rights on par with an individual, hence the reason I find it downright frightening that corporations have the same legal rights as individuals in this country.
I suppose what I was asking is this: and maybe this falls under the umbrella of cultural relativism. Should the “evil” defined by society, particularly as regards laws, mores, and customs supersede any individual’s conception of “evil”? The first example that comes to my mind…obviously it does, because society considers murder evil even if some misguided individual sees it as merely natural selection and a natural process of weeding out of the gene pool. I’ve literally had people defend serial killers based on that sort of convoluted logic. But then again, in times of war, many of us don’t consider murder evil–rather they consider it heroic.
And I do see where you’re going. Some individuals think of evil in dramatically different terms than others. Clearly we can have a semantical argument about what constitutes evil from now until the end of time.
I wasn’t aware that there had been any evidence of clergy sexual misconduct in UU churches. I must say that if it has happened then it’s totally deplorable. But to expand this argument further, what actions or inactions by UU clergy besides sexual misconduct would you deem “evil”?
to say “x exists” or “x certainly exists” but then to not define what x stands for is to make a meaningless statement. The statement could be true, if x stands for something which does exist. Or the statement could be false if x stands for something that doesn’t in fact exist. Without knowing what you mean by x then there is no way to judge whether the statement is true or false. The staement has no content. You haven’t said anything beyond the tautology that existence exists. No actual assertion or hypotheis has been made. And it doesn’t lead to further investigation or argument. Which is why your post actually begins with the questions “does evil exis?t” and then “but how do we define it?”
I realize the point of your post is not to talk about logic but about evil. But the reason that at least a preliminary definition of evil is necessary before you can have a conversation is that people have very different referents in mind when they use that word. For some people evil simply means generic horrible actions, for some people evil means the intentions motivating evil actions. And for some people evil is not a part of human nature but a negative spiritual force, opposed to God, that seeks destruction and chaos.
Of course, like much of theology, practically, it makes no difference. We can easily identify destructive individual actions, and systems and structures that lead to destruction, in our world, and we can and should do the work to combat them. And it doesn’t really matter for that work whether we use the label “evil” or just call them horrible. But if you’re going to bring up the word evil you have moved the discussion into theology, and therefore a good definition (at least preliminary) of that theological term is essential.
Comrade Kevin — You write: “Should the ‘evil’ defined by society, particularly as regards laws, mores, and customs supersede any individual’s conception of ‘evil’?” — That’s pretty much the direction I’m headed in, though I’m framing the question differently. I think the way society defines evil is in the process of change, and the change happens through ongoing public discourse. Thus in many states in the U.S., marriage between same-sex couples has been defined as wrong (and there are many who openly call it evil), whereas here in Massachusetts, the public conversation has changed to the point where this state has affirmed that marriage should be legal, and opinion polls are now showing a majority of people believe same-sex marriage should be legal.
You also write: “But to expand this argument further, what actions or inactions by UU clergy besides sexual misconduct would you deem “evilâ€?” — I would add abuse of authority, and absconding with funds. I add those two based on observing congregations where ministers had engaged in such things, and then observing the negative effects on the congregation as a whole.
revricky — You write: “to say “x exists†or “x certainly exists†but then to not define what x stands for is to make a meaningless statement.” — Well, if you stand within a certain philosophical tradition, that might be true. But I would counter with this argument, based on what little I know of mathematical logic:– Kurt Godel proved, in his famous “Unprovability Theorem” (sometimes called the “Incompleteness Theorem”) that for any logically consisten system, there have to be unprovable axioms. (The proof is long and complicated, and I’m no longer conversant enough with the mathematics to go over the proof for you, but you can easily look it up.) Anyway, accept that Godel is correct. In that case, for any given logically consistent theological system, one is necessarily going to have unprovable axioms. That implies that I will have two standards of definitions:– on the one hand, I will be able to define many things from within the logically consistent system, and on the other hand, the unprovable axioms will have definitions that are not provable from within that system. So based on that, I could produce the second kind of proof for “evil” — e.g., “Evil is badness.” — and the rest of my argument would logically follow.
But I don’t want to play those kinds of language games. The logical background to what I am saying is along the lines of what Wittgenstein says in the Philosophical Investigations when he talks about language games, and how the effort to match a word to a reality beyond the word just doesn’t work out. But really, I’m more in the intellectual tradition of American pragmatism (at least, insofar as I understand that tradition, which isn’t all that far), where the search for truth is an ongoing process. I would say that you’re more in the intellectual tradition of Platonism, where you’re positing the existence of eternal Forms, which our words and language have to match up to.
I acknowledge that the ideas of Platonism have dominated Western thought for millennia (which does not equate to those ideas being correct or truthful), and I submit that I am engaging in a perfectly valid argument within a related, but different, intellectual tradition. So I repeat my earlier statement — Actually, yes I can engage in a perfectly valid discussion of evil without meeting your standards of definition. Indeed, I would assert that mostly that’s what we do, and I would assert that your standards of definition are impossible. So maybe we need to agree to disagree?