What is Evil?
The Theory of Evil as Privation Explained
One of philosophy’s oldest questions is on the nature of evil. What is it? Where is it? Why does it exist at all? It's a problem that confronts every person. Sickness, death, sin, vice, weakness all affect us throughout the whole of our lives. The problem is commonly pointed towards religious people. If there is a God, why does evil exist? In this article, I don’t intend to answer this so-called “Problem of Evil.” Rather, I want to look at the nature of evil.
A lot of this philosophical work was done by Saint Augustine. He spent several years of his life belonging to a religious group known as the Manichees. One of their core beliefs was that you need to distinguish between the good God of the New Testament and the vindictive God of the Old Testament. In this way, evil is rather intelligible. Evil comes from the vindictive God of the Old Testament. Although most people don’t subscribe to this exact belief, I think that most people think about evil in this general way. Evil comes from some principle. There is something that brings evil into the world. Many political thinkers argue that poor political or economic structures cause this (think Marx, Rousseau, Hobbes, etc). Some Christians may argue that the Devil is the principle of evil in the world.
As Saint Augustine outlines in his Confessions (and elsewhere), he came to find this to be a weak philosophical belief. It is incorrect to say that evil has a singular principle agent as its cause. He proposed an alternative description of evil that is still defended by Christians today. The idea that Saint Augustine proposes is that evil is parasitic on the good; it is a defect or a corruption of a good thing.
For example, this watch is a good watch because it keeps time accurately. It becomes a bad watch when it fails to keep time appropriately. Similarly, an eye is a good eye if it gathers light correctly on the retina to produce visual images in the brain. The eye is good if it can see well. The eye becomes evil when it ceases to see well. It is evil in degrees, too. An eye that is totally blind is worse than an eye with mild astigmatism. It has an even greater corruption from its original purpose or use. Similar things can be said about storms. Severe storms are evil because they corrupt goods like safety, protection, shelter and sometimes even life. Perhaps most importantly, though, this conversation also applies to human beings and their actions. Human beings are good to the degree that they live and act in accord with their human nature. When they sin, or do something that is morally wrong, they have acted against goods that ought to be there (friendship, justice, decency, etc).
So evil is a privation on goodness. In the same way that a parasite requires the health of the host to survive, evil requires good qualities or beings to corrupt to exist. There are a couple of important qualifications that follow from this.
First, substances cannot be evil in and of themselves. Things are good at least in the fact that they exist, and probably in many of their qualities too. Pure evil does not exist with substances or things. Evil is always derivative, and so has to have goodness to steal its being from. Let’s look at some examples.
What about genocidal tyrants like Mao, Hitler, etc? Isn’t it right to say that they are pure evil? No. While their actions are absolutely reprehensible, it remains the case that these despicable actions are parasitic on goods that should have been there. As leaders, they have duties towards the common good of their communities, and so their failures demonstrate just that: failure. They are lacking in qualities that ought to be there. Each of them also had good qualities, like existence, rhetorical power, political savvy, etc. So, we would say that they are good by nature, but wicked or evil because of their massive moral failings.
Similar logic is done when applied to the fallen angels or demons. This includes Satan or the Devil. The demons are good in that they exist, they are very intelligent, and so on. So, by their angelic nature, they are good. However, because they fail to live up to their angelic nature, they are evil. Again, evil is parasitic on already existing goodness.
Second, some actions are intrinsically evil, or pure evil, or evil in and of themselves. This again will stem from the goodness inherent in the nature of some thing, but these types of moral actions can never be justified. Things like rape, murder, genocide, are immoral by their very nature. I would argue that lying fits into this category as well, although there is disagreement from moral philosophers. With each of these definitions would have to be applied, terms would have to be cleared up, and subjective circumstances will alter the gravity of particular cases. But, because some actions are directly opposed to the goods of our nature, they can never be morally justified.
In conclusion, we should view evil as a privation on already existing goods. Evil is not a principle but a privation. This has ramifications for how we see creation, but it also helps us view the moral life. Rather than evil being something that is equal to goodness that can bring me happiness, it is something that is going to bring me deep unhappiness. Evil, then, is not simply an arbitrary law or command. It is rather the very corruption of nature. Whether it's the fall of angels, natural evils like storms and disease, or moral evil, evil stems from nature not operating the way it's supposed to. We should seek to understand human nature better, and act in ways that perfect it.