Good and evil are concepts or notions related to the meaning, value or consequences of human action, and are also understood as what affirms -good- or what denies -evil- certain demands or valuations. Both understood in this way, the good is what conforms to what is demanded or satisfies valuations such as truth, justice, order, harmony, balance, peace or freedom, or everything that favors well-being, whether in the individual or community level. Evil, on the other hand, is the opposite of the above. Fernando Savater -philosopher specialized in ethics- affirms that good is everything that agrees with what we are and what is convenient for the human being, and evil is the opposite: what it means to deny what we are and what it does not suit us as human beings.
When talking about good and evil, three important aspects draw our attention: first, by qualifying something as good or bad we do it from our own personal conscience, and we do it - acting as truthful judges - even when we are children; second, the members of a human group or community -generally- we reach with relative ease a point of agreement or coincidence about what is good or bad with respect to something that we know or affects all of us, and the opposite rarely happens.; and third, the evil specifically related to an ethical or aesthetic assessment - such as love, order, justice, harmony, balance, well-being, peace or freedom - is not defined or described in terms of itself, but is made - direct or indirectly - because it is the opposite of something else that constitutes positive evaluation; for example:disorder is lack of order, hatred is the opposite of love; discomfort is lack or the opposite of well-being.
An attempt to theorize about good and evil -among other methodological options- consists of a scheme represented by a continuum with two poles or extremes, in each of which there is a limiting concept (relative to good or bad). In this continuum, all human action is located at a point, closer to good or closer to evil. Examples of poles: love / hate; order / disorder; Peace war; balance / imbalance.
Now, we realize that in addition to the specificities of significance of each of these dichotomous pairs -love / hate, order / disorder-, each element of the pair impacts us in one sense or another opposite sense. How it impacts us translates into the value, not only of the concept, but of its concretion in our life, which leads us to prefer order over disorder, love over hate. This seems to suggest to us the notion of "underlying supra order" or "invisible superior structure" of the universe, "oriented in a positive sense". This notion is reinforced by our (innate?) Evaluative capacity, present in all cultures, linked to the aforementioned positive notions,Therefore, it is not difficult at all to reach consensus or obtain the support of the people in favor of conditions associated with the concepts of order, balance, justice and love, unless some of them - feverishly or blindly - are in fundamentalist positions, which put doctrinaire or ideological above the common good.
Among animals it is not pertinent to talk about good and evil, but only about what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, what is convenient for them and what is not for them, because they are genetically programmed to do what corresponds to their species, and so they do, within the programmed. Furthermore, the concepts of good and evil arise from our consciousness, and animals have no self-awareness or value consciousness beyond the merely objective (value food, for example). On the other hand, humans can act -and in fact we act- one way or the other, towards the good or the bad, towards what is convenient or what is not convenient, even against the criterion of preservation of life or of simply biological. In other words, humans do good or evil according to our choice, preference or whim, it is what has been called free will.Animals have been shown to move or react according to preferences - although only of a physiological nature - when there are options to choose from, such as being exposed to the sun or looking for shade, or eating certain things instead of others.
Preferences in human beings are not only physiological, but also symbolic, that is, derived from connections between meanings, expectations and values, with a notion of 'meaning'. Values are something abstract, typical of our thinking, and this is developed through symbolism, that is, connections between meanings and signifiers with a value sense. The notion of 'meaning' implies that humans, in addition to satisfying our physiological needs, are heading towards something beyond what is in sight, seeking or pursuing something else. Fernando Savater affirms that humans not only use things, but that we give them value or assign an importance, specific to each one. In this sense, according to him, things are not only what they are, but what they mean for everyone,according to the value we give them.
And humans are also aware that we are subjects, of our individuality. The notion of subject -the perception of the self- is for each one the most important notion, linked to a personal history, very own. And therefore each person, insofar as he can, seeks uniqueness: to be himself, to have and fulfill his preferences, to live his own life, to achieve his own achievements. This, added to the most significant condition of human praxis such as freedom, leads us to a real drama. It is the drama of human performance, which moves 'at will' - or rather, at his personal discretion - between the limits of good and evil.
To what extent does the subject act freely in the face of the ethical dilemma? For free will, as Savater points out, is a concept that presents certain deficiencies of meaning and even of feasibility, due, according to him, to "our impossibility of rationally wanting evil" (The Value of Choosing). Indeed, true free will should mean being able to desire and choose both good and evil as comparable options. And it turns out that we can want good and, in addition, choose rationally. Instead, we can desire evil and even choose it, but such a choice would never be rational or subject to rationality, since it would mean the negation of what we are and how we humans are. And, in extreme cases, evil means the denial of existence. Savater quotes the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy,who points out - in "The Experience of Freedom" - that evil is present in each existent as "… its own possibility of rejecting existence", and even emphasizes that "evil is the hatred of existence as such". This is emphasized by Savater, when saying that "… it is inevitable to accept that the irrational also exists as one of our possibilities".
So, accepting evil -as far as desiring it and choosing it as a life option-, if we are sincere, means having to accept that we are bad by personal decision. But here is not the stumbling block, because such a thing can happen -and in fact it happens-, but also, at the same time, it would mean accepting that we choose the negation of existence, that we choose the irrational. This is the problem, since the human being feels the need to believe that he is making correct or at least correct decisions, that he is on the right path. For this reason, such sincerity with respect to evil is problematic, and for this reason we deceive ourselves and, at the same time, we try to deceive others about the 'reasons' or arguments about the choice of evil. Hitler himself invoked sublime reasons to justify his criminal actions,and declared that Providence was on their side.
Above we said that we qualify something 'good' or 'bad' from our own conscience, and we do it acting as truthful judges, that is, capable of understanding and applying criteria of truth. In relation to evil, conscience plays a role of primary importance, and this is indicated by Savater when he believes that if we discharge the conscience of bad choices, that is, that everything is considered good or acceptable "… it ends up disappearing as such conscience" (The Value of Choosing), remaining only a foggy mirror that reflects poorly on reality, a mirror of self-deception. And in relation to that need for self-justification, Aristotle - when referring to the weakness of the will or akrasia - establishes a difference, as Savater comments, between the akrates or the passionately weak, and the akolastos or the unbridled wicked,to whom his "repeated perversions have led him to convince himself that he works well when he does the worst".
Positivists, pragmatists, and relativists claim that the criteria for rating something good or bad are purely cultural, and as culture changes, so can those criteria. Thus, anything can be classified as good - and the opposite of it as bad - if such thing is accepted or endorsed by a community or human conglomerate. However, it is necessary to emphasize that everything we do we do with a purpose or intention. Intention is a central criterion in ethical consideration or evaluation. And every intention is translated into an object and a result. There is no innocent intention, because all human intention is towards an object, with a certain purpose. And there is also no intention practiced without result. The object is what is pursued with the action, and the result is what derives from that action.
When we talk about purposes and their results, we touch on the issue of convenience criteria. According to positivists, pragmatists and relativists, the criteria of convenience are only what each human group chooses as a guide for their own behavior, without there being anything opposite that can be described as true. Undoubtedly, we can choose or practice whatever we feel like - and even justify our choice or practice - against all criteria of convenience, but convenience 'in itself' or per se, as what affirms or supports our existence and favors the achievement of positive results is something that, even if it is ignored or denied, remains as a real reference, as something intangible that continues to impose itself on us, in its importance. It is what some call 'criterion of truth', and what others deny logical validity,for not accepting anything beyond simple immanence.
Luc Ferry - a current French philosopher, not a believer - maintains that there are still clear indications of transcendence that have escaped the Nietzschean deconstruction of ideals -or process of destruction of idols- and refers to examples of transcendence also the notion of justice, the right to life, beauty and freedom - and other principles that underlie human rights - as things that do not find philosophical support from immanence. And Ferry himself stresses that total and pure immanence is nonsense -something that is not real- and gives us to understand that breaking with all kinds of transcendence means breaking with the human as well. For this reason, he affirms: "The truth, the just, the beautiful and love are always present in us", and he comments that "not only can we not, but we do not want to get rid of it, and there is significance".
Ethical evaluations serve as a guide to avoid being overwhelmed, collapsed or annihilated by the results of actions contrary to what we are and what is convenient for us for being what we are. And doing good or doing evil has not only a differentiated meaning in terms of value but also its own implications. It is not a neutral thing to do good or to do evil, or to proceed in one way or another contrary to evaluations and expectations. Certainly, the evaluations - and with them the expectations - change culturally and have changed over the centuries, but the criteria about what we are, how we are and how it is convenient for us to be and live, continue to be the lights that guide our reason in the elucidation between good and bad. We can adapt or force evaluations,change opinions and criteria of acceptance or rejection of things or behaviors, but -without falling into consequentialism- we will say that the consequences or effects of such things or behaviors will then be the criterion of 'a posteriori' value that will indicate whether such evaluations and criteria have been adequate or not.
Bibliography
- Savater, Fernando: "The Value of Choosing", editorial Ariel, 2004.
