ZEMO (2022) 5:77–82
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42048-022-00121-2
DISCUSSION
Good and Evil in Recent Discussion
Defending the Concept of Evil
Luke Russell
Received: 26 December 2021 / Accepted: 19 March 2022 / Published online: 5 May 2022
© The Author(s) 2022
Abstract This paper addresses the question of whether the concept of evil is philosophically adequate. It sets out a secular conception of evil that is sufficiently clear
to be used in philosophical theorising. Evil, so conceived, is not merely a fiction or
an illusion, but is a moral property possessed by some actions and some persons in
the real world. While several philosophers have claimed that it is inescapably dangerous to use the concept of evil, the reality is that the concept of evil, when used
carefully, is not prohibitively dangerous. Evil actions are not merely the opposite of
good actions. Rather evil actions are are a small subset of extreme moral wrongs.
1 To what extent is the concept of evil (and good) philosophically
adequate?
The concept of evil has been criticised by many people. Some critics are sceptical
of morality as a whole, and attack both the concept of good and the concept of evil.
But there are others who endorse and happily use the moral concepts of good, bad,
right, and wrong but who remain sceptical about evil. These critics claim that the
concept evil is outdated, misleading, and dangerous. Evil, they say, is nothing more
than a fiction.
There are two main kinds of argument that need to be considered here: error
theoretic arguments and pragmatic arguments. Let us focus on the error theoretic
arguments first. These are arguments for the conclusion that evil does not exist,
and they resemble those that are used by error theorists in other domains. We are
all familiar with arguments for the conclusion that ghosts do not exist, or that
God does not exist. The first phase of such an argument specifies the content of
Luke Russell ()
Department of Philosophy, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
E-Mail: luke.russell@sydney.edu.au
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L. Russell
the concept in question. Before we can figure out whether God exists, we need
to know what the word “God” means, or what God is supposed to be. Once we
have a definition or description in hand, we can then move on to the second phase
of the argument, in which we consider whether there is anything that meets that
description. For example, theists and atheists might agree that God is supposed to
be the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creator of the universe, and
then disagree as to whether there is good evidence that such a being really exists.
Philosophers who argue that evil does or does not exist are required to complete
these two phases. But in this case there is deep disagreement in relation to the first
phase of the argument. Philosophers have offered a broad array of definitions of
evil, and it is very difficult to figure out which of these definitions, if any, captures
the real essence of evil. The result of this is that philosophical disagreements over
the existence of evil often rest on deeper disagreements over what the word “evil”
means. People who are engaged in these debates routinely talk past one another,
decrying their naïve or morally corrupt opponents while failing to realise that the
two parties to the disagreement are using the word “evil” to mean very different
things.
For example, philosophers such as Phillip Cole who are sceptical of the existence
of evil assume that evil is by definition a supernatural force, or that “evil” is the
name of a malevolent supernatural being, or that evildoers are supposed to be literal
monsters who are radically distinct from the rest of humanity. These sceptics say that
in reality there are no monsters and no supernatural forces, and thus conclude that
there is no evil. However, there are plenty of people who think that these conceptions
of evil are wildly off-target. Evil is not by definition a supernatural force; an evildoer
is not by definition a literally inhuman monster. Instead, we might claim that evil
actions should be defined as extreme moral wrongs that are performed by ordinary
human beings. This usage of the word “evil” is common in response to atrocities
including the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. If this is what “evil” means,
then it is comparatively uncontentious to claim that evil exists, even if there are no
supernatural beings and no literal monsters. I favour this way of thinking about evil,
and this can also be found in the work of Hannah Arendt and Claudia Card. There
are other philosophers who agree that evil does exist, but who think that evil actions
are more than just extreme wrongs. They say instead that evils are the subclass
of extremely wrong actions that are performed out of a particular set of motives.
Perhaps evil actions are extreme wrongs that are also motivated by malice, or that
are performed with sadistic pleasure, or that are performed in knowing defiance of
morality. According to this way of thinking, evil is not metaphysically strange, but
is psychologically distinctive. I think that there are several defensible conceptions
of evil according to which the real world contains plenty of evil actions, so I reject
the error theoretic arguments. I defend the conclusion that evil is real.
Philosophers who agree that evil, so defined, is real might still claim that the
concept of evil is not philosophically adequate. Perhaps the concept of evil is so
unclear and so obviously in need of refinement and clarification that it is not a suitable tool for use in our moral thinking. Yet this would be an implausibly high bar
for philosophical adequacy. Plenty of other important and legitimate moral concepts
– freedom, responsibility, and forgiveness, for example – also require a great deal
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of disambiguation and clarification before they can be used in careful and clear
philosophical discussion. The concept of evil is in no worse a position than other
moral concepts in the same domain.
As I pointed out earlier, some critics of the concept of evil do not focus on whether
there is anything in the real world that fits the description of evil. Rather, they claim
that people who use the concept of evil fall into certain patterns of thought that
have dangerous effects. According to this kind of pragmatic argument we ought to
drop the concept of evil because people who think in terms of evil are thereby led
to mistreat others and to make the world a worse place. Some critics claim that if
we use the concept of evil then we will adopt a Manichean worldview according
to which each person is mistakenly seen as being either wholly good or wholly
evil. Others suggest that if we use the concept of evil then we will demonise our
opponents, or that we will write off wrongdoers who are actually capable of moral
reform and reintegration into society.
How should we respond to these claims that the concept of evil is not practically
adequate? I agree that there are plenty of cases in which people mistakenly judge
that their opponents are wholly evil, and mistakenly write off perpetrators who are
in fact good candidates for reform. But these are cases in which the concept of evil
has been misapplied. Every moral concept is frequently misapplied to bad effect.
Famously, Himmler and Eichmann both mistakenly applied the concept of duty to
their horrendous misdeeds during the Holocaust. Does this imply that we ought to
eliminate the concept of duty? Of course not. Instead, we should encourage the
careful and accurate application of the concept of duty. We should reject the claim
that carrying out mass executions is the duty of a soldier, but not reject the idea that
there are some genuine moral duties. Similarly, we should reject the claim that all
humans can be divided into the wholly good and the wholly evil, but not reject the
idea that there are some evil actions.
2 - What actually is—if the concept of evil is meaningful and
adequate—evil? (actions, people, maxims, ...)
It is commonplace for various things to be called evil, including actions, persons,
motives, institutions, and practices. We might hear someone say that an act of torture
carried out by the military is evil, or that the serial killer Ted Bundy is an evil person,
or that the desire to see your rival writhing in pain is an evil motive, or that the
KGB is an evil institution, or that slavery is an evil practice. This fits the pattern
for many of our moral concepts. An action can be courageous, but so can a person,
and so can an institution. An action can be harmful, but so can a person, and so can
a practice. When a single moral label is applied to many different kinds of thing it is
an open question as to whether each one of those things also bears one and the same
moral property, or whether the single label refers to a different property depending
on the specific kind of bearer. For instance, both a person and an action can be
courageous, but virtue theorists will tell you that the property of courageousness
possessed by a person is not identical to the property of courageousness possessed
by action. Being a courageous person requires you to have a stable character trait
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that disposes you to act in certain ways for certain reasons, but clearly a courageous
action does not itself have a stable character trait. In this case we need to identify
the nature of courageous action, and the nature of a courageous person, and explain
how these two properties are related.
I think that the same is true of evil. The primary concept in relation to evil,
I contend, is that of evil action. An evil action is an action that is an extreme
culpable wrong. (The requisite kind of extremity is outlined in my 2014 book Evil:
A Philosophical Investigation.) I then try to explain what it is to be an evil person
with reference to this prior concept of evil action. Roughly speaking, someone is
an evil person if and only if he or she is strongly disposed to perform evil actions
when given the opportunity, and if we cannot expect that person to undergo moral
reform. The category of evil personhood is more extreme than the category of evil
action. This distinction makes sense of the common claim that not every evildoer
is an evil person, precisely because many people who perform evil actions are not
strongly disposed to do so, or perform evil actions only when under pressure, or are
amenable to moral reform.
Some philosophers including Daniel Haybron have claimed instead that the primary category in relation to evil is that of the evil person, and that we can explain
evil actions via reference to evil persons. For example, they might claim that an evil
action is the kind of action that only an evil person would perform, or the kind of action that is characteristic of an evil person. I think that these purported explanations
do not work. An evil person is disposed to perform all kinds of actions, including
walking to the shops and eating dinner, and the vast majority of these actions are
not evil. Furthermore, it is not true that only an evil person would perform an evil
action. Sometimes non-evil people do horrendously wrong things, but then see the
error of their ways and manage to transform their lives. It is far more plausible that
we can explain the nature of evil personhood via reference to evil actions rather
than vice versa. I am open to the idea that some other things might count as evil as
well, including evil feelings and evil institutions, but I think that the primary focus
for a theory of evil should be on evil actions and evil persons.
3 - How do good and evil relate to each other? Are they adversarial
opposites?
There is an old use of the word “evil” according to which it simply means “bad”.
According to this sense of the word, evil is the opposite of good. This old sense
of the word “evil” is preserved in the so-called Problem of Evil that is debated by
philosophers and theologians. Theists believe in an omnipotent and omnibenevolent
God. They face a very difficult challenge in explaining why such a God would have
created bad things – toothaches, cancer, deadly natural disasters, and so on – rather
than simply created a world filled with good things. I am not a theist myself, so
I can set aside the Problem of Evil. But it is also important to note that the old
usage of the word “evil” to mean “bad” is not the conception of evil that is in play
in the contemporary debate about the concept of evil. We are not arguing about
toothaches! The contemporary debate about evil assumes that the concept of evil
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picks out some kind of morally extreme or morally distinctive category, and then
addresses the question of whether anything in the real world falls into that category.
The concept of good does not denote an extremity, nor does it apply exclusively
to the morally good. An amateur portrait or an adequately cooked meal both count as
fairly good, but neither is extremely good, and neither is morally good. In contrast,
I think that if something is evil then in must be extremely bad or wrong, and it must
be morally bad or wrong. For these reasons I think that it is misleading to say that
evil is the opposite of good, even though it is true that all things which are evil are
also bad or wrong. Evil is a specific kind of wrongness or badness.
Some philosophers have claimed that an evil person is the mirror image of a virtuous person. This is superficially appealing, but it strikes me as being an unhelpful
metaphor for several reasons. A person’s character is not a three-dimensional object
that can be reflected or inverted, and there are many divergent ways in which someone can fall short of the moral ideal of virtue. Evil persons have a range of very
different psychological profiles. Some evil persons are resolute in their pursuit of
their immoral goals, acting in accordance with strict but deeply corrupt principles,
whereas other evil persons are impulsive, chaotic, and thoughtless. Which one of
these is the mirror image of a principled good person? The one who has bad principles, or the one who has no principles? (I explore the mirror thesis in more detail
in my 2020 book Being Evil.)
4 - Likewise for good: is there a good independent of instrumental
considerations?
The category of the morally good is in some sense distinct from instrumental considerations. Of course, we also say that lots of instrumentally useful things are thereby
good. Money is good in so far as it allows us to buy other good things. Medicine
is good in so far as it allows us to secure the independent good of health. Some
things which are morally good count as morally good because they are instrumentally useful in promoting morally good ends. Giving to a charitable organisation
might be morally good because this gift helps to alleviate the suffering of people
who are in poverty. Some people might suggest that there is no more to goodness
than usefulness, but even these sceptics must agree that some goals are pursued not
merely for instrumental purposes but for their own sake. Happiness, many of us
agree, is good whether it is useful or not. And it also seems that there are some
morally good things that are good regardless of whether they are a useful means of
producing other good things. Respect for other human beings is good even when it
does not produce some other benefit.
There are two aspects to the independence of moral goodness: some things are
morally good regardless of whether they produce other good things (i.e. they have
non-instrumental goodness), and some things are objectively morally good (i.e. they
are good regardless of whether any particular person thinks that they are good).
There is an entire branch of philosophy – metaethics – that is focused on the issue
of moral objectivity, and this is not the time to launch into it. Perhaps it is worth
noting that a philosophical account of moral goodness and of evil is compatible
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with several distinct metaethical views. Someone who believes that morality just
an illusion might nonetheless be interested in the difference between the (false)
judgment that an action is wrong and the (also false) judgment that an action is
evil. Someone who is a non-cognitivist might wonder about the different expressive
functions that characterise talk about wrongdoing and talk about evil. But those of
us who are inclined towards some kind of moral realism are likely to claim that the
category of morally good and the category of evil both pick out objective properties.
In other words, an individual person can be correct or incorrect in judging that
a given action was good or was evil. Indeed, a whole society can get things right
or get things wrong on any given moral issue. The fact that an action is approved
of by the people around here does not make it right, and the fact that an action is
strongly disapproved of by the people around here does not make it evil.
5 Is the argumentative use of the dichotomy of good and evil still
helpful in contemporary (moral) philosophy?
Whether it is helpful or not, it is very common for people to use this language
of good and evil, so we as philosophers are required to make sense of it. I think
that we ought to take great care to disambiguate the word “evil”. Some people
might take “evil” to mean simply that which is morally bad or morally wrong.
On this definition, good and evil seems to be a dichotomy that covers all of the
available territory. Everything will be either morally good, or morally neutral, or
evil. However, many philosophers, myself included, disagree with this definition of
evil. Instead, we take “evil” to refer to a small subset of that which is morally bad
or morally wrong. I think that evil actions are extreme culpable wrongs, and hence
that there are many actions that are morally wrong but that fall short of being evil
because they are not sufficiently extreme. If you share my conception of evil, then
it is a mistake to suppose that all of the moral territory is covered by the category of
good and the category of evil. The spectrum of options will be something more like
this: the morally good, then the morally neutral, then the morally bad, and the most
extreme part of the bad will also be categorized as evil. Lots of things are morally
bad or wrong but not evil, precisely because they are not extreme.
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