CHAPTER I
EVIL: PRELIMINARY NOTIONS
In the Book of Job we see Job’s sons die in a great storm which collapses their homes around them. Lightning strikes Job’s sheep and his shepherds. Job himself is covered with itchy scabs and boils. Similar disasters are not unknown to us who live in a vastly different world. We need but open our morning newspaper or turn on the television news and we will see the destruction of a tornado, earthquake, flood or crippling disease. We can listen to the victims express their shock at having lost all earthly possessions; we can see their grief at the deaths of loved ones, and often, their gratitude for being still alive. At times we ourselves are victims, and we feel firsthand the pain that at other times appears real but remote. This is natural evil, the kind of evil that impacts on humans through the external forces of nature. It is the kind of evil that humans must suffer because we are part of this mysterious, physical, biological universe.
Generally persons consider genuine evil the destruction and suffering that occurs in such disasters. Broken bodies and devastated homes can hardly escape being called evil. It is rather that the suffering resulting from such occurrences is an unavoidable event that is to be expected in the world as we find it. This attitude is characteristic of the type of scientific mind that accepts the laws of nature as fundamental, assumed starting points. The acceptance of natural evil is rooted in an attitude that inclines one to accept the world as it really is, and not to ask for further reasons why things are as they are. If such persons are caught in a hurricane or tornado and cannot escape, then they see their own suffering as an inevitable and natural consequence of being alive. Those who deny that nature embodies a conscious mind have even a greater tendency to accept natural evil as inevitable, as a necessary part of the world we live in. Both kinds of thinkers would probably deny that humans have some special right to be protected from natural evil. They might bitterly resent the human condition and resolve to live their lives in a grim show of courage. Or they might understand that to prevent such a condition one would have to change the laws of nature, a requirement they would see fraught with difficulties. There is also the possibility that they see natural evil as not truly evil, that all evil is really good in disguise.
Such thinkers would easily mark as genuine evil a second kind, namely, human or moral evil. This second kind of evil, distinct from natural evil if we accept human freedom, results from the way we treat each other; it results from human mistakes and faults, and sometimes malice. We know such evils very well--they are the evils done to us by those closest to us, by our family, by our colleagues, by our neighbors, by those who live in our own city. They can affect us deeply and are especially painful. The evils imposed on us by other human beings we feel more poignantly than those inflicted on us by animals or by the forces of nature. If a branch of a tree falls on us, or a dog bites us, we are physically hurt and we suffer. However, if a son strikes his father, or a trusted friend spreads lies about us, the hurt is on a different level altogether. Even if we merely think that our friend has betrayed us, we suffer.
No doubt, some of the worst evils are inflicted by humans upon their fellowman. The Holocaust, mass murder, genocide, torture, indiscriminate killing--such evils are so destructive that they leave one amazed, terrified and sick. We find it hard to believe that persons can be so cruel and uncaring toward other human beings. The evil of what is done is magnified when we see that innocent people who want to live in peace are put upon or caught up in bitter battles waged by others. In many of the worst instances of evil--those that occur in war, rebellion, and struggles for power and wealth--the agents of evil know full well that some innocent lives will be destroyed. Up until the modern era, civilians in time of war were classified as noncombatants and in general were protected. Now they are attacked as part of the war machine, caught up in the turmoil of destruction. We should not be surprised, then, when we hear of a Coventry or of the way in which the central city of Dresden during World War II was carpet bombed and laid waste in a firestorm that left charred bodies imbedded in the pavement.
1 Or . . . when we hear that innocent members of a local tribe are massacred by a government military. Or . . . when we hear the story of a German officer’s wife in World War II, a beautiful girl who, with her two little boys, by mistake boarded a train headed for the death camp, Treblinka. Once there, her explanations disregarded, she and her sons were gassed lest the secret of that camp be revealed.2Evil, since it is a fundamental, metaphysical term, is not easily defined. And yet, if we take definition as a laying down of some boundaries, as a setting apart, then we can see that some progress can be made. A factor that makes the challenge more daunting is that every person defines evil in his or her own terms. It is as if each person sees it against the background of his/her own life and culture.
- Martin Buber recognizes evil in the conduct of the soul towards itself. A person only knows factually what ‘evil’ is insofar as he knows about himself.
3 Evil is a problem which every individual must face for himself, for it involves placing a value on things. It involves making a decision as to what is good and what is evil, and developing an attitude toward the possibility of avoiding evil or transforming it into good. In his Between Man and Man Buber calls evil the "aimless whirl of human potentialities" which by themselves will make things go awry. Evil in the soul is "the conclusive shirking of direction."4- Josiah Royce, the early 20th century American philosopher, takes evil as that which man finds repugnant or intolerable. Humans shrink from evil. We flee from it, we try to expel it and try to put it out of sight. Man resists evil, assails it, and struggles to overcome it.
5- J.L. Mackie considers real evil to be physical evil: pain, suffering, and disease. These he calls first-order evils which he contrasts with second-order evils, namely, malevolence, cruelty, callousness, cowardness, and situations in which things get worse rather than better.
6- Norman Pittenger’s process view calls evil that which holds back, diminishes, or distorts the creative advance of the cosmos toward the shared increase of good.
7 Evil occurs when in a necessary adjustment of disharmony there is a contrast too great to be subsumed in a richer pattern. It is a violent opposition between two possible goals.- Donald Walhout calls evil what hinders and destroys a thing’s being. With evil we connect lack, real failure, stifling incompleteness, limited achievement, imperfection.
8- Frederick Sontag sees evil to be the blocking or cutting down of a person’s ability to exercise his power.
9- Austin Farrer, the Anglican theologian, speaks of evil as the spoiling of a nature, the inhibition of an activity, the frustration of an aim, or the saddening of an existence which we take to be good.
10- Sri Aurobindo, the Indian philosopher, talks about evil in terms of whatever hurts a person’s self-expression, self-development, satisfaction of the progressive play in himself of the conscious force of existence.
11- M. Scott Peck, the psychiatrist, defines evil as "the use of political power to destroy others for the purpose of defending or preserving the integrity of one’s sick self."
12- Errol Harris calls good and evil "epithets indicating opposites on a scale of values." The terms `good’ and `evil,’ strictly speaking, have moral reference only.
13- Samuel Proctor, professor emeritus and author of Sermons from the Black Pulpit, eloquently states that evil is the condition that falls short of the good, that opposes the good, or that defies, threatens, jeopardizes, or defeats the good. It is conflict and war rather than concord and peace. It is racism and xenophobia rather than appreciation and understanding. It is hunger and want rather than adequacy, ignorance and dullness rather than enlightenment and curiosity.
14In many of the above attempts to convey the meaning of evil, we can see it as a shortcoming, an absence of something that should be present. Traditional theists would call it a privation, but Pittenger reminds us that, while privative, it is not merely a matter of appearance.
15 Evil is there--in the world--because we recognize what the world is and what it ought to be. That we consider it as a privation or an absence of something that should be present, or a disorder, does not mean that it is not real. The traditional philosophers knew this. The blind man cannot see, but, as a man, he should see. The cheated customer has been done out of her money, but as a customer she should have been treated fairly. These are evils, and they are real.We can also see in these attempts to "define" evil a strong subjective strain. Immediately above we see that we judge evil to be present because we have the capacity to judge what should be. Royce speaks in gut-response terms. Buber underscores the certainty of our knowing evil in ourselves--only. Harris and Peck are concerned with humans hurting others unjustly. Farrer and Sontag focus on the frustration and stifling of a person’s activities. Surely, the subjective dimension of good and evil is real and demands attention.
The pervasiveness of the subjective aspect of good and evil can be seen in Jean Paul Sartre’s The Devil and the Good Lord.
16 Sartre’s protagonist, Goetz, is deeply troubled by the difficulty in determining long run good or evil. He sets out to do evil in order to provoke God. He wants to do evil for evil’s sake, but when Heinrich, the pessimist priest, tells him that it is impossible to do anything except evil, the contrary Goetz decides to devote himself to doing good. In his evil days Goetz wanted to take the city of Worms, to burn it, and to kill its inhabitants. The reformed Goetz issues a decree to spare the town. He establishes the City of the Sun, a place where no evil is supposed to exist, wherein violence, drinking, stealing, and spanking of children are forbidden. When those outside the City rape, murder, and plunder, Goetz’s citizens, who detest violence, refuse to aid those who need their help. Goetz refuses to assume command of the army, for as commander he would have to discipline men and this would lead to hanging some of them. The rebels then attack the City of the Sun, murdering the inhabitants who refuse to defend themselves. Twenty-five thousand deaths occur before the rebels are defeated. Heinrich criticizes Goetz’s actions as objectively evil, even though they were done with good intentions. In Heinrich’s opinion, "God doesn’t give a damn" whether man tortures the weak, kisses the lips of a whore, or dies of privations. Eventually, Goetz believes that everything he has done is evil and that God had nothing to do with it. He, Goetz, alone decided what was good or evil. He alone invented good. God is merely absence, loneliness, a hole in the ground, a crack in the door, silence.The subjective dimension was expressed by Nietzsche when he claimed that what was called good by those in power was called evil by those out of power. The weak and subservient resented the powerful and sought dominance for themselves. They had a distinctive and different view of what was good or evil.
17Surely, the degree to which the subjective dimension of good and evil plays a role in our judgment of good and evil is considerable.
We see easily that every person knows what evil is--at least in his own life. No human being can escape its challenge. Intelligent and willful creatures that we are, we recognize and evaluate actual and possible objects and events. The realities that we value favorably we accept, enjoy, and seek as good for us. We celebrate when we succeed in attaining them and are sad and disappointed when they elude us. Their opposites, the objects and events we value unfavorably, we call evil. From these we recoil when they confront us, we try to avoid them, and suffer when we must endure them. No person who is really alive can avoid such experiences.
The evil of disappointment is probably the best known to all. Often it is relatively minor, as when miserable weather spoils a weekend outing, or we misplace a favorite book. At other times it is more serious, as when we fail to receive an important document in the mail, or when we make a mistake and ruin an expensive object in our home, are turned down for a job, or become ill. It is a blow to our expectations and hopes of achieving something worthwhile, or, in some cases, to attain a place or status that we truly need in order to live our desired kind of life. In many cases it is not life threatening. And yet, it can be a real danger to our spirit, our sense of self, that inner dimension of our being.
Interestingly, the interior approach can be the means whereby we overcome evil. One way to do this is to deny its reality, to see the evil as non-existent or as essentially good. Some eastern views ascribe reality to the One alone and claim that all individuality is illusion. In the West, some who believe in God see everything that happens as the hand of God leading one to perfection. For them, the evil that makes us suffer is really good, something made good by its end. There is something to be said for the objection that these believers do not want to face up to the reality of evil. A more realistic approach would be that of the believer who recognizes the reality of evil and is determined to bring good out of it. Both approaches could be seen as an attempt to maintain an optimistic approach to life.
The way we interpret things that happen to us is crucial. The fact that, in many instances, our mental attitude can affect the type and amount of our pain leads us to take seriously the placebo effect, hypnosis, and psychosomatic medicine. The human spirit has remarkable resources which we can develop. We rightly praise a person for not caving in under the weight of unfortunate events, for often, as long as we are alive, we can do something about the evil that we must suffer. Intractable terminal illness, of course, is another matter.
We see the importance of the subjective dimension of evil when we understand that evils done by those closest to us are more painful. If a man is delirious and hurts us, we do not blame him. But our suffering becomes more acute, and we rebel if we know that someone is deliberately trying to harm us. This is what makes the torturer so detestable. He is a human being who intentionally causes his victim to suffer. If we see the torturer inflicting pain in the presence of the victim’s loved one, the subjective dimension becomes even more prominent and the evil is intensified. Added to the physical pain of the victim is the mental anguish of the onlooker, as he sees himself as the cause of his beloved’s pain.
The subjective aspect of evil again stands out when we experience the great intensity of unexpected, untimely evil. When a man in his nineties with a number of painful physical problems dies of a heart attack, we feel a certain sadness, but wonder whether his death is truly evil. Our feelings are more intense, more poignant, however, when an auto accident takes the life of a favorite twenty-two year old nephew, a mysterious disease strikes down a gifted person in the prime of life, or a child is run over in the driveway of her home. We are shocked when we hear that a terrorist bomb exploded under a politician’s parked car, just as a brilliant cancer specialist walking his dog passed by. We are affected deeply by the news of the death of a young tourist who was stabbed to death in a subway as he fought off a gang attack on his father and mother.
18We are affected even more deeply if the death is not only untimely, but excruciating, as when a man is mangled in a piece of machinery or impaled on a steel shaft in a wreck; or . . . not only untimely but unjust and sickening as when we see a man lynched for a crime he did not commit.
Our subjective view of events becomes evident, too, when we see that someone deserves the evil of punishment. We do not feel bad about imposing a jail term on a rapist or a swindler. There is something right about the inconvenience and trouble I must go through when, living in the north, I go into midwinter without equipping my car with a powerful battery and good tires. If I do something stupid and harm a friend, I rightfully suffer his coolness toward me. Nor should we complain when we feel the pain of remorse that arises from failing to do our duty. Clearly, at times, we feel that it is right to suffer some evil. In such circumstances, the evil is more easily endured.
On the other hand, those who do not deserve to be on the receiving end of evil suffer more intensely. Feminists rightly complain at the effect of a male-dominated culture with the two-tier pay scale and the glass ceiling on advancement. The suffering of the victim and the parents of a twelve year old girl who was brutally raped is on an almost inconceivable level.
Many understandings of evil depend on tradition or taboos, as when we might judge people to be poor because they reject our culture and its emphasis on material values.
The powerful, interior factor can be appreciated when we see that there are healthy, handsome and talented people who think that life has not dealt them a suitable hand, and truly wish they had not been born. In contrast, there is the paraplegic who paints while holding a brush in his teeth. A wealthy matron, unhappy and bored, searches for meaning and excitement in a never-ending succession of parties. A young girl crippled for life is happy because she can write poetry. Could it be that human beings have it within themselves to become happy or miserable under a wide range of conditions, and that to a great extent they alone decide what they will become? Could it be that, to some degree, Goetz is right, for, in many instances, whether something is good or evil depends on how we look at it?
Subjectivity plays one of its most important roles in our determination of the amount of evil in the world. A number of the critics of the good and omnipotent God claim that there is too much evil relative to the amount of good, and that God is to be held responsible for it. A serious difficulty arises here when we realize that there is so much about the world that we do not know. Moreover, we see things selectively, which not only causes so many of our mistakes in our effort to predict the future but also limits the accuracy of all our judgments of good and evil.
Does our judgment not depend on how we look at things? And does this not depend on our background and upbringing? How much is it a result of our training? We know that the training of an aircraft pilot enables him to see things that other people miss. A musician picks up what others do not hear. A basketball coach watching a game judges a player in a much more accurate way than does an ordinary spectator.
Is there a kind of training that would be necessary and sufficient to enable someone to make an accurate judgment on the amount of evil in the world? Is it possible that some people are in a better position to judge it than others? Are some people better equipped to appreciate the amount of good?
What is the function of an optimistic or pessimistic personality on such a judgment? We know that some persons emphasize the negatives of life--they see a glass as half empty rather than half full. Can we really justify such a pessimistic attitude toward life? Could it be that I alone decide whether to become an optimist or a pessimist?
Could it be that the assessment of evil ultimately depends on how we want or choose to look at things? If this is so, then each of us has a license to see the world as he or she wants to see it. We would decide whether or not there is too much evil in the world. And yet, if we should give this much weight to the subjective dimension of evil, we then must ask whether there is anything of the objective in it. The consequences of a verdict in favor of the complete subjectivity of evil are momentous.
If evil is basically subjective, then it cannot function as a part of the problem of evil.
19 If we judge evil to be basically subjective, then the evil of the world is a problem only if we want to make it a problem, or happen to see it as a problem. And yet, if the problem of God and evil deservedly has the serious intellectual status generally attributed to it, the evil that functions independently as a challenge to the good and all-powerful God must be real, objective, genuine evil.Even though everyone defines evil in his/her own terms, against the background of his own culture and in the light of his own goals and hopes, still much can be said for the view that evil really exists somehow independently of our own evaluations--as a standard according to which they are judged. Most of us feel ourselves drawn to mark certain events as truly evil. That is, we declare them evil not merely because we decide that they are evil, but because we are convinced with good reason that they are evil. We have the sense of discovering something real, something that is there. It is hard to see how anyone can say that killing someone merely because he belongs to a different race or nationality (as happens in genocide) is not evil. Or . . . that it is not evil to steal a child from its parents. Or . . . for a parent to abandon a helpless child. When we hear of a child left in a trash bin, it is as if evil is permeating our very being, taking over someone’s life at that instant. We know that evil exists if we encounter a man who feels so alone, so alienated from society that he thinks nobody cares for him.
Some other instances that most persons would call evil in an objective sense, a sense which would not depend on the subjective disposition of the one judging: A man cheats another out of a large sum of money. An investment banker reveals confidential information about a client’s intentions to the latter’s competitor. A man tells lies about and destroys the reputation of a rival for promotion. In medical ethics it is generally acknowledged as wrong for a doctor to give a highly dangerous drug to a patient when another safer and effective drug is available. In the Tuskegee Experiment,
20 a somewhat similar case, it was wrong to keep effective available medicine from a control group of syphilis patients whose disease was allowed to progress unchecked when a proper medicine was available. Other actions that are open to serious moral censure are the birth control experiment in which placebos were given to a control group of unaware Mexican-American women, while genuine pills were given to other subjects,21 and the World War II bombing of Dresden, a German city of no strategic value but overrun with refugees.22 Such actions admit of little or no justification.Should one doubt the reality of evil, consider seriously J. Glenn Gray’s remark in The Warriors: that any sensitive man who walks across a battlefield after the guns have stopped would be oppressed by a spirit of evil that surpasses human malice.
23In the problem of God and evil, it is necessary to consider both natural and moral or human evil. This, of course, assumes that humans act freely, and that humans are genuinely free. Otherwise, all evil (including infidelity, cruelty, murder) would be natural evil, with the clear cut blame laid at the feet of the Creator who would be seen as not omnipotent or not good.
Although an inquiry into the fundamental moral values and principles and their influence our judgment of good and evil is a respectable project, I will not take it up in this work. As for the subjective-objective problem, I am convinced that in each culture there is something objective about evil, and I will assume that position: that evil is objective--that it is not wholly subjective in any and every instance--that evil can exist whether or not one thinks it to be such--that the problem of God and evil is a real problem.
NOTES
1. Cf. David Irving, The Destruction of Dresden (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), pp. 161, 188, 195. Irving puts the number of dead at 135,000, but a report in the "New York Times" of 7 March 1985 has the number not exceeding 35,000. Cf. Sec. A, p 26. The source is Dresden im Luftkrieg, Cologne, 1977, republished in Munich by Wm. Heyne Verlag, 1979.
2. Jean Francois Steiner, Treblinka (London: Corgi Books, 1969), pp. 346-348.
3. Martin Buber, Good and Evil, Two Interpretations (New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1953), p. 88
4. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. R. G. Smith (Great Britain: Collins-Fontana, 1961), pp. 103-104.
5. Josiah Royce, Studies of Good and Evil (Hamden, Ct.: Archon Books, 1964), p. 18.
6. J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 152-155.
7. Norman Pittenger, Catholic Faith in a Process Perspective (Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis Books, 1981) p. 52.
8. Donald Walhout, The Good and the Realm of Values (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), Ch. 3 and 9.
9. Frederick Sontag, The God of Evil--An Argument from the Existence of the Devil (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 28.
10. Austin Farrer, Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p 30.
11. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1982), p. 97.
12. M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie--The Hope for Healing Human Evil (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 241.
13. Errol Harris, "Atheism and Theism," Tulane Studies in Philosophy, vol. xxvi (1977), pp. 105-132. P. 113.
14. Samuel D. Proctor, "Evil: the Unfulfillment of the Good," Facing Evil?Light at the Core of Darkness, ed. Paul Woodruff and Harry Wilmer (LaSalle, Ill.: 1994), pp. 209-226; p. 211.
15. Pittenger, Ibid.
16. Jean Paul Sartre, The Devil and the Good Lord, trans. K. Black (New York: Alfred Knopf, Inc., 1960).
17. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin, 1973), sec. 260.
18. "New York Times," Sept. 4, 1990, B 1.
19. Larry Hitterdale, "The Problem of Evil and the Subjectivity of Values are Incompatible," International Philosophical Quarterly, xviii, no. 4, pp. 457-469.
20. James H. Jones. "The Tuskegee Legacy: AIDS and the Black Community." The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 22, Nov.-Dec. 1082. pp. 38-40.
21. Robert M. Veatch. "Experimental Pregnancy," ibid., Vol. I (June 1971), pp. 2-3. Robert Hunt and John Arras, ed. Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine (Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1977), pp. 265-270.
22. Cf. David Irving, "The Destruction of Dresden," Ibid.
23. J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors, Reflections on Men in Battle (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 51.