I was just thinking to myself today, having kind of allowed myself a lull in between work, that the number one evil in life was boredom. But upon a moment's reflection I thought, no, the number one evil must be temptation, so that the number two evil must be boredom.
I hate being bored. I hate it with a passion. I take the malaise of being bored very personally. But I suppose doing evil is worse. So if temptation flows from desire, then if one does not desire, perhaps one can avoid evil.
What is evil? I think the logical or theoretical definition of evil might be, the opposite of good. And of course, the corresponding definition of good is the opposite of evil. This might not take us very far but it does not seem to me a deficient understanding of these concepts. If we use the terms "good" and "evil" purely as descriptions of fact or opinion, i.e. in their linguistic sense, as adjectives, then yes, they are opposites of each other. However if we want to use them in their thick sense, as in a value-laden judgment of something, well, perhaps something more is needed than this sort of circularity.
After some deliberation I thought, well, evil is the infringement of some inherent (or indivisible) necessary element of human life or flourishing, without appeal to a universal maxim. There's a bit of Hart's "minimum content" theory (which of course has its roots in natural law, re Fuller and Finnis) and the second proviso has a lot of Kant's "categorical imperative". It's also a little open-ended, in so far as it's not specifically fixed to human agency (at least as far as the first proviso goes). Whether this is correct or not, well, we shall see.
As far as dictionaries go, evil comes from yfele in ye Olde English and means immoral, wicked or harmful. But that does not necessarily take us much farther than my own short definition. Relatedly, malum is the Latin cousin of the word and basically represents the same idea, if with a little less sinister connotations.
Take then my long definition. It would appear to include forces of Nature, wouldn't it? So if a meteorite smashes into and annihilates a part of the Earth, that would be evil? If a toad dies and poisons a well used by a village, would that be evil? But then, could Nature be capable of having an evil nature, or put more accurately, are the acts of Nature properly to be described as being good or evil? How far can we, collectively taking the natural movements of individual ants, trees and stars, anthropomorphise Nature? Is Nature a sort of "being" insofar as certain types of physical consequences can be conveniently ascribed to it where beyond the power of man? You know, once upon a time, cows were put to death for goring men - over time, it was the owners of these cattle that were made to compensate victims where they had been negligent in herding. But let's leave aside acts of Nature - it benefits our analysis little to label such acts as being good or evil. I suppose also that for us and for our evolutionary ancestors who have been weaned for millenia on the fantastical conditions of this earth, gravity, nuclear forces, the sun's fusion, the chemical properties of oxygen and nitrogen, etc., it seems a little incongruous to begrudge the universe a meteorite or two. After all, it is generally perceived that the great reptiles would still roam the earth were it not for one or two of those types of extinction event.
Let me refine my definition thus: evil is the infringement of some inherent (or indivisible) necessary element of human life or flourishing, without appeal to a universal maxim, provided that there exists a causal nexus between the infringement and the agency of some moral being.
But perhaps this misses attempts. So for example a person might attempt to injure another by repeatedly wishing bad consequences to be visited on him, and believing that wishes come true. So the definition should include attempts, whether workable or not. Of course, for a man to pray for the deliverance of his enemies into his hands is not necessarily evil, depending on the sort of holy writings he subscribes to. Not to say that everything should properly be viewed as being relativistic, but I think as far as this analysis goes we should only properly allow appeals to universal maxims. Anyway for now it suffices to take the word "infringement" as being shorthand for "infringement (or attempted infringement)".
What then is a "universal maxim"? I don't even know if Kant ever had such a list. For Kant, he proscribed that one should only do that which one could, at the same time, will it a universal maxim. So, for example, love your parents if it is universally a maxim that one should love one's own parents. Don't kick the cat if it is not universally a maxim that one should kick cats, or if somewhere out there someone might disapprove of cat kicking behaviour. Kant also went on to say that one should always treat humanity, whether your own or that of others, as an end in itself, and not only as a means to an end. This is interesting, if a little difficult to pin down precisely. Perhaps as an example, if one happened to have slaves for labour, one should imagine that those individuals might benefit from being paid for their labour.
So let's say there is a plot of land and someone wants to hire a labourer for fair wages. Two such labourers for hire turn up. Is it evil not to find some way to hire both? For in hiring only one, we would necessarily be denying the other the benefit of pay. While we do not deny him the possibility of finding alternative labour, let us assume that there is no other means of self-provision available. Would it then be evil? Well, I don't think so. I think in this case we can appeal to a universal maxim, which is this: it is fair for men to compete, within legal bounds, for resources in a free, egalitarian and competitive society.
What about omissions? Should I, seeing a child floundering in a pool of water, reach out a hand to right the child? Perhaps I should, but I think the universal maxim in this case would probably have an element of reasonableness. If there were two thousand such children within a hundred kilometers of me I could not possibly be expected to help them all. So here we find echoes of the Atkin's neighbour principle.
Should then all evil, according to this definition, be avoided? What about an argument for efficiency? Suppose pee splashing outside the urinal is evil - it forces one to clean the floor, which is definitely an infringement along the lines postulated above (and even though it is probably a negative externality in so far as generally the hired cleaner does the cleaning). But can one always pee cleanly within the urinal? From my own anecdotal (but substantial) experience, I rather doubt it. So it is generally efficient to use the urinal standing up and going full blast, even if it results in say 0.05% of all discharge ending up outside of the urinal. Then there must be a utilitarian argument for the universal maxim, which might be posited as this: One should not avoid evil where it is extremely inefficient to do so. But that seems to offend the senses in a quite primary way: shouldn't that be exactly when evil should be avoided, i.e. when it is the most inconvenient? And also, who gets to decide on the balance of cost of evil vs cost of avoidance? Does this not then bring on the spectre of well, option A which kills 1 and option B which causes the death of 2?
Let's discuss that last part for a minute. If we were compelled to take the lesser of two evils, should we still be considered to have performed an evil act? This perhaps is where the dichotomy of the "justification" and "excuse" theories come into play. If we kill an armed robber in self-defence, we say we are justified. If under gunpoint we allow a robber to take someone else's gold, we say we are excused. Where justified, presumably, we have committed no evil, or perhaps we say we have committed good, which presumably whitewashes the base act. Where excused, conversely, we say that the evil committed was reasonable (if internally consistent) given the circumstances. Does that make sense?
I think this analysis has more or less canvassed what evil is generally thought to be. For my part I think that very often when people do use the word "evil" they tend to base it on or around maxims which are far short of universal, and that sort of looseness gives them free reign to apply the label, and with it, the sorts of dark connotations that the word carries. I think this could be the kind of demagoguery that Orwell warns about in his Politics and the English Language. But you know we are so accustomed to our own societal mores and values that given a certain consensus we often neglect stopping to think about the underlying nature of our ideas and concepts, not to mention I think the possibility of our own personal characteristics. But that would go a couple of steps beyond the scope of the present essay.
