EVIL

The truth about evil
"Our leaders talk a great deal about vanquishing the forces of evil. But their rhetoric reveals a failure to accept that cruelty and conflict are basic human traits"

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/oct/21/-sp-the-truth-about-evil-john-gray

"A man lives a certain length of time, until he either enters into the absolute, or into nothingness. In freedom he himself determines his future life: he chooses God or nothingness. He annihilates himself or creates himself unto eternal life. A double progress is possible for him: one towards eternal life (to perfect wisdom and holiness, to a condition fully adequate to the true and the good) and one towards eternal annihilation. In one of these two directions, however, he continually advances: there is no third way."

- Otto Weininger

My word Urquhart, you're really going for the big picture these days in your pursuit of doom and gloom!

Have you read Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong?

Otto was wrong. There is always a third way. Black and white choices are for the simple minded. There are myriad shades of gray.

I believe that "evil" is a judgement call, and the historian, while having a private moral stance on what constitutes evil, may be doing a disservice to the task of accumulating information and analysis of the past if the moral stance impedes the information service. While we need to know what acts are being committed, we can't shrink from documentation of them on the grounds that they violate our private sense of right and wrong.
One can deny that cruelty and conflict are basic human traits. And, while acts of cruelty do occur, they are not the norm of social life. And while conflict is a basic part of social interaction, it doesn't always express itself violently. "Nature, red in tooth and claw", is not good biology, nor good sociology, or even good business. It is a striking figure of speech, but not a rule born out by the practices of man or other species on the planet.

"Cruelty", may often be a trait of character, and isn't found in all humans.. "Conflict" is a description of a process we all engage in.

Having looked up Wieninger at last, I seem to have found that he was a man who was waiting to die. He seems a disciple of Nietzsche , whom "the Abyss" claimed at the age of 23, in 1903. His quotes, do not to me represent a life enriching philosophy. He seems to be singularly lacking in humour.
To commit suicide(which has been defined as killing all other humans) after only sixteen years of examining the human condition seems premature. It's enough time to form an opinion, but I don't think it's enough time to do appropriate research.

It might be well to introduce to this thread the controversy over the review in The Economist of Edward Baptist's new history of slavery, The half has never been told — discussed here, in another History thread.

Quick recap: The reviewer damned the book for failing to be "objective":

Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains. This is not history; it is advocacy.

The review struck many readers as almost an apologia for slavery. The Economist withdrew the review, stating in part:

Slavery was an evil system, in which the great majority of victims were blacks, and the great majority of whites involved in slavery were willing participants and beneficiaries of that evil. (Emphasis added.)

Was the retraction a disservice to history?

The retraction was not a disservice, IMHO, for the reviewer had not done his work. I admit to not having read the book, but a competent reviewer, when discussing the history of slavery, could well bring up the fact that slavery in the larger sense has occurred often in human societies. It's not always racially a black/white circumstance.
Barbary pirates (Brown), often took slaves from European countries until the 19th century. In the Classical and Medieval times other whites were taken for the use of Islamic and Hindu, and even occasional Black owners. If the book deals with the European and North American slave trade of the fifteenth Century and onwards then villainous whites (and Blacks and Arabs) are often to be found.
The book should not be dismissed as history because it contains "advocacy". There are some sterling pieces of "advocacy" that are history. I recommend the autobiography of Frederick Douglass as an example. There is no objective standard for written history. There is only those works that continue to be consulted and those that are not.
For the concept of history as a process in which all human beings are involved, there's no great objective standard in that either.

Hmm, I'm not sure how the global history of slavery affects the question of whether it's a disservice to history to describe slavery as evil.

DF, you wrote that "'evil' is a judgement call," evidently based on a historian's "private moral stance." I'm trying to tease that out a little more. Is there no role for consensus?

I agree with you that it's an overstatement, in the OP essay by John Gray, to insist that we "accept that cruelty and conflict are basic human traits" (unless we trivialize the meaning of "basic"). Gray's essay does make a convincing point, though, about the absurdity of acting as if evil is a thing that can be "vanquished" by the expert application of military might — ideally from as far away as possible.

I seem to have been unclear about the relevance of the global history of slavery. What I was trying to illustrate was that slavery (which I will define as the denial of another human being's right of free agency in the disposal of their actions and of their bodies with a legal status allowing such denial, and enforceable by law) is according to my private moral stance, evil. The act of being a slaver, or slave holder is evil and historically hasn't been completely tied to what Americans call "Race". I am happy to live in a society which at present, agrees with me in this position. (A "Societal Truth", according to Hume). If the Societal Truth was different, I might not have come to that private judgement, but I currently hope so. To that degree consensus counts.

Might can be applied to combat evil, but will be resisted by whatever might the opposite party can muster. To define evil as a condition that can always be dissipated by the application of enough force lays one open to the charge of overreaction in the suppression of that particular evil and instituting another evil in its turn. Better by far to clearly define the evil we wish to combat, and trying to alter that condition. Let's avoid going in shooting, and not stopping until there's no one but you left.

"All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it. Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented. For good to be diminished is evil; still, however much it is diminished, something must remain of its original nature as long as it exists at all. For no matter what kind or however insignificant a thing may be, the good which is its "nature" cannot be destroyed without the thing itself being destroyed. There is good reason, therefore, to praise an uncorrupted thing, and if it were indeed an incorruptible thing which could not be destroyed, it would doubtless be all the more worthy of praise. When, however, a thing is corrupted, its corruption is an evil because it is, by just so much, a privation of the good. Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil. Where there is evil, there is a corresponding diminution of the good. As long, then, as a thing is being corrupted, there is good in it of which it is being deprived; and in this process, if something of its being remains that cannot be further corrupted, this will then be an incorruptible entity natura incorruptibilis, and to this great good it will have come through the process of corruption. But even if the corruption is not arrested, it still does not cease having some good of which it cannot be further deprived. If, however, the corruption comes to be total and entire, there is no good left either, because it is no longer an entity at all. Wherefore corruption cannot consume the good without also consuming the thing itself. Every actual entity natura is therefore good; a greater good if it cannot be corrupted, a lesser good if it can be. Yet only the foolish and unknowing can deny that it is still good even when corrupted. Whenever a thing is consumed by corruption, not even the corruption remains, for it is nothing in itself, having no subsistent being in which to exist."

St. Augustine, Enchiridion On Faith, Hope, and Love
CHAPTER IV. The Problem of Evil

Good and evil are decided by the victors.

"But the rise of Isis is also part of a war of religion. Nothing is more commonplace than the assertion that religion is a tool of power, which ruling elites use to control the people. No doubt that’s often true. But a contrary view is also true: politics may be a continuation of religion by other means. In Europe religion was a primary force in politics for many centuries. When religion seemed to be in retreat, it renewed itself in political creeds – Jacobinism, nationalism and varieties of totalitarianism – that were partly religious in nature. Something similar is happening in the Middle East. Fuelled by movements that combine radical fundamentalism with elements borrowed from secular ideologies such as Leninism and fascism, conflict between Shia and Sunni communities looks set to continue for generations to come. Even if Isis is defeated, it will not be the last movement of its kind. Along with war, religion is not declining, but continuously mutating into hybrid forms."

The Truth About Evil - John Gray

> 13

If John Gray wishes to have a war of religion, let him have a war of religion.

@ #12

Not always; it's possible to lose a war and yet win the peace. cf. the American Civil War, where the South lost the military conflict and yet kept many (though not all) of the essential (to them) trappings of pre-bellum society.

"the banality of evil"

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/opinion/why-old-nazis-are-still-useful.html?ac...

Evil is what horrifies society, but like anything else - one can get used or deadened to it.

The modern society's idea of evil is not the same as that of 1,000 years or even 100 years ago. Where you had human sacrfice as an accepted practice in some ancient societies, it is viewed as evil.

What horrifies current society? What was done to the 300 young girls by the Boko Haram - did that horrify that society, was that evil? http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/30/traumatized-by-boko...

Was what happened to the Disappeared in Argentina evil?

How about how Native Americans in all the Americas were/are treated, or the indigenous Australian people were/are treated, or the Ainu by the Japanese, or how the Untouchables or Dalit by higher cast Indians? Was that evil? Did that treatment corrupt the societies? Lower their values?

Maybe what starts out as evil becomes an accepted way of life. The "banality of evil."

Allowing people to starve on the streets - is that evil? It happens all over the world. It has become banal, an accepted evil. Is the society corrupted, evil, because it has lost or changed it values of life?

In the end - where does evil start? Or as always, evil, as well as history, is defined by the conquerors.

>17 triciareads55: triciareads55

Thanks for your excellent insights.