What Is the Definition of Evil Purpose

Martin Luther argued that there are cases where a little evil is a positive good. He wrote: “Seek the company of your benevolent companions, drink, play, speak rudely, and have fun. Sometimes you have to commit a sin out of hatred and contempt for the devil, so as not to give him the chance to put you above nothing. [59] The purpose of this excursion is that freedom can be granted gradually, so that with freedom one acquires the ability to use it responsibly and live a responsible life. One might expect an all-wise, good, all-powerful, and all-knowing God to understand this at least as well as we do, and much better. Even if the theodicy of free will deters theists from the atheistic argument about human evil, there is still a big question about the extent of human freedom, the license with which we seem to act without restraint in this worldview, the exaggerated catastrophic consequences of even minor violations, and then, of course, the problem of evils in the world. that are not reasonably the result or product of anything we or any other human being have done anyway. Critics of Steiner`s view argue that it is neither necessary nor sufficient for evil to rejoice in illegal acts. Critics argue that it is not necessary to take pleasure in doing evil to perform an evil act, as it is enough to intentionally cause significant damage to an unworthy goal such as self-interest (Calder 2013). Imagine that a serial killer tortures and kills his victims, but he does not like to torture and kill.

It seems that this serial killer is a malefactor, although he takes no pleasure in doing anything wrong. Metaphysical evil is the mutual limitation of the different components of the natural world. This mutual limitation prevents natural objects from achieving their complete or ideal perfection for the most part, whether through the constant pressure of physical condition or sudden disasters. Thus, animal and plant organisms are influenced differently by climate and other natural causes; Predators depend on the destruction of life for their existence; Nature is subject to storms and spasms, and its order depends on a system of constant decomposition and renewal due to the interaction of its components. If the suffering of animals is excluded, no pain is caused by the inevitable limitations of nature; And they can only be called evil by analogy, in a very different sense from that in which the term is applied to human experience. Clarke also rightly noted (correspondence with Leibniz, letter ii) that the apparent disorder of nature is really not a disturbance, since it is part of a certain scheme and fulfills exactly the intention of the Creator; It can therefore be considered a relative perfection rather than an imperfection. Only by transferring the subjective ideals and aspirations of human intelligence to irrational objects can “evil of nature” be called evil in another sense, but only analogous. The nature and degree of pain in inferior animals is very unclear, and in the absence of data, it is difficult to say whether it should be correctly classified with the purely formal evil belonging to inanimate objects, or with the suffering of humans. This last view was generally held in antiquity and may perhaps be related to the anthropomorphic tendency of the primitive mind that appears in the doctrine of metempsychosis. Thus, it has often been assumed that the suffering of animals, as well as many imperfections of inanimate nature, were due to the fall of man, whose well-being, as the principal part of creation, was connected with the fate of the rest (see Theoph. Antioch, Ad Autolyc., II; cf. Genesis 3 and 1 Corinthians 9).

St. Thomas is of the opposite point of view (I, Q. xcvi, a. 1,2). Descartes assumed that animals were just machines, without sensation or consciousness; closely followed by Malebranche and the Cartesians in general. Leibniz grants sensations to animals, but believes that mere sensory perception, which is not accompanied by reflection, can cause neither pain nor pleasure; in any case, he considers that the pain and pleasure of animals are synonymous with those resulting from the reflex effect of man (see also Maher, Psychology, Supp`t. A, London, 1903). Most theorists who write about bad personalities adopt disposition relationships (see, for example, Barry 2013, 87; Haybron, 2002a, p. 70; Russell, 2010 and 2014, pp.

154-195). Overall, temperament reports claim that someone is a bad person if, and only if, they are willing to have evil qualities. Some people believe that we should not abandon the concept of evil because only the concept of evil can grasp the moral meaning of actions, characters and events such as sadistic torture, serial killers, Hitler and the Holocaust. As Daniel Haybron says, “Precede your adjectives [like `false` or `bad`] with as many `very` as you like; They are still not up to the task. Only `evil`, it seems, will suffice” (Haybron 2002b, 260). According to this reasoning, it is difficult to deny that evil exists; And if evil exists, we need a concept to grasp this immoral extreme. Eve Garrard and David McNaughton also argue that the concept of evil encompasses a certain part of our moral phenomenology, particularly “the collection of those illegal acts to which we … a reaction of moral horror” (Garrard and McNaughton 2012, 13-17). Some theorists argue that the relationship between perpetrators and victims is an important element of evil action. For example, Nel Noddings (1989) argues that a primary form of evil is neglecting relationships, while Zachary Goldberg (2019) argues that to fully understand evil, we need to understand the asymmetric power relations that exist between perpetrators and victims.