Is good the lack of evil?

@Watchy,

Good and evil are not opposites of one another. They are both the opposite of neutral, or indifference.

Right and wrong can only be opposites in a situation where there is no gray zone in the middle!

@Watchy,

if by good and evil you mean good or bad decisions ;

I think they are relative to the context, you can always narrow a decision down to a few choices and be required to choose the right or wrong approach

but how does it fit into the greater scheme of things? I think that's impossible to measure

so I think it's good that we have laws, rules, and rights - and allow individuals to do everything in between

@Watchy,

You forgot the aesthetic:

-Is beauty the lack of ugliness... (etc.)

Don't ask me, I just discovered the American Constitution.

Oh Brave New World, that has such creatures in it!

@Watchy,

i second aedes, apathy and neutrality are the result of a complete lack of good or evil, they are unreachable opposites on an infinite spectrum, hitler is widely considered an evil man, but he worked for the cause of bettering life for the people of germany, a decidedly "good" purpose considering post wwI conditions in germany, a far more relevant question would be what defines good and evil.

@Watchy,

I would not say that good is the lack of evil, or that evil is the lack of good; but I would suggest that in the context of their generally accepted definitions, they are opposites of each other. I state this because the opposite of indifference would be passion (of any sort): Good and evil are opposing passions.

Similarly, I consider right and wrong action to be opposites with a varying degree of outcome.

If I kill a boy, my action is wrong to a degree that the only action that could rectify the wrong would be to bring the boy back to life.

I consider Hitler's actions right, until he began convincing his people that interfering in the lives of those unlike themselves was justifyable. At that point his actions became wrong.

What defines good and evil? That's a much more involved question requiring a much more involved answer; one I hope to provide at a later time.

@nicodemus,

nicodemus wrote:

hitler worked for the cause of bettering life for the people of germany

I don't believe that this is true. He believed in an oligarchy and talked a whole lot more about annihilation than anything else. He was a dour, bitter man as is easily evident from his early days in the Beer Hall Putsch and Mein Kampf, and his rhetoric about bettering Germany was a Machievellian strategy for him to consolidate power -- propaganda with one hand and street thugs (the SD) with the other hand. And he deliberately and self-consciously allowed the destruction of Germany in the war because of this strange apocalyptic instinct he had. The best you can say for him is that he was insane -- his generals all thought so.

Goehring summed it up after the war -- it's all the same in a democracy or a dictatorship, just tell the people that their lives are at risk and they'll do anything you say.

@Watchy,

Without good, there is no evil. Without evil, there is no good. Good and evil, right and wrong, they are all subjective. No man wishes to be evil says Socrates.

There is only action and inaction. Good and evil exist only in the mind.

@Icon,

Human concepts of good and evil exist. There are acts we attribute the concepts of good and evil to.

Therefore, good and evil exist. Arguing against that excapes the very point of discussing good and evil, and really isn't very useful then, is it? It's just a poor way to bring a good discussion prematurely to a close.

@Watchy,

If I were to kill a child with a knife, would this be good or evil?

@Icon,

Icon wrote:

Without good, there is no evil. Without evil, there is no good.

You can live your life and know evil without ever having known good. You can live your life and know good without ever having known evil. They are not on a spectrum and they do not counterbalance each other -- they are different things.

@Watchy,

I never did like this argument, it seems to try and deny the existence of evil.

Anyway let's look at some maths. I can ask how evil the murder of an infant can be, in a rating scale, and as some say that evil is a lack of good, and this act would have a rating of 0, as it contains no good. Then I ask how evil the murder of ten infants could be, and the answer would be the same-0. So by this idea of a=b, 1=10. Also general opinion would be that the second is more evil.

Another viewpoint is taken from the examples Augustine gives when he writes this, in Sickness being a lack of Health. Some would say that Health is a lack of Sickness. So by the same logic the argument begins with, we could also say that Good is a lack of Evil.

(*edit, lines were messed up*)

@Icon,

Icon wrote:

If I were to kill a child with a knife, would this be good or evil?

The determination of that would depend on many things including the ethical background of the judge, the reason(s) you killed the child with a knife, etc. But, so long as they're not trying to argue that good and evil don't exist, I doubt you could find someone who wouldn't be able to tell you if they found your act to be good or evil knowing more details like those I've mentioned.

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

You can live your life and know evil without ever having known good. You can live your life and know good without ever having known evil. They are not on a spectrum and they do not counterbalance each other -- they are different things.

Let me try to explain this in another way.

Without good, evil cannot exist because it becomes the norm. This means that it is not percieved as evil but rather just something that is dealt with.

Without evil, good is the norm. So good is not good, it is just what things are like.

Similar to happiness. If you are always happy then you are never happy because you have nothing to compare it to.

If we were speaking of something physical, such as light, then we could say that without light there is only darkness. But in the world of perceived notions and internal judgement, one cannot exist without the other and all is merely a perception of truth.

My example of, if I were to kill a child with a knife, would be perceived as evil, unless I told you that I was performing surgery on the child, trying to save his life and he died before I could save him. Then my actions would be good. We can never know everything about a situation and we can only perceive things from our own view. This prevents us from making a proper judgement of good and evil because we are not capable of thinking globally. In nature, it is not evil for an animal to kill one of its own kind to eat and yet cannibalism is considered evil by human standards. Until you know purpose, you can never know the true essence of good and evil.

Thus, good and evil do not exist but in the mind. Something which is created in the mind is subject to the whim of the creator. Subjective truth is not truth. It is merely a fabrication of the idea of truth in order to compensate for the lack of viable alternatives.

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

You can live your life and know evil without ever having known good. You can live your life and know good without ever having known evil.

Explain how it is possible for someone who lives their lives knowing evil, not to understand that it is possible for someone to exist in a manner free from the evil they live knowing.

Aedes wrote:

They are not on a spectrum and they do not counterbalance each other -- they are different things.

Again, in the context of their generally accepted definitions, they are opposites of each other.

@Icon,

Icon wrote:

Let me try to explain this in another way.

Without good, evil cannot exist because it becomes the norm. This means that it is not perceived as evil but rather just something that is dealt with.

Without evil, good is the norm. So good is not good, it is just what things are like.

Similar to happiness. If you are always happy then you are never happy because you have nothing to compare it to.

If we were speaking of something physical, such as light, then we could say that without light there is only darkness. But in the world of perceived notions and internal judgement, one cannot exist without the other and all is merely a perception of truth.

My example of, if I were to kill a child with a knife, would be perceived as evil, unless I told you that I was performing surgery on the child, trying to save his life and he died before I could save him. Then my actions would be good. We can never know everything about a situation and we can only perceive things from our own view. This prevents us from making a proper judgement of good and evil because we are not capable of thinking globally. In nature, it is not evil for an animal to kill one of its own kind to eat and yet cannibalism is considered evil by human standards. Until you know purpose, you can never know the true essence of good and evil.

Thus, good and evil do not exist but in the mind. Something which is created in the mind is subject to the whim of the creator. Subjective truth is not truth. It is merely a fabrication of the idea of truth in order to compensate for the lack of viable alternatives.

At the start of this statement you say that we just view the norm if there is a lack of some opposite, of sorts. Corruption on a corporate level is quite common and is fairly normal yet most still see it as wrong...Unless you were referring to norm as what the majority of people do and see happen on a daily basis.

Who can truly decide what is "evil" and what is not? I agree when you say that "good" and "evil" are nothing more then views or standards created by the mind.

@Watchy,

Good and evil are two things that sustain each other. To have flaw is to be truly perfect, for to be perfect one must know flaw. Such is the way for good and evil. Is Isreali the antonym of Palestinian?

@MuseEvolution,

MuseEvolution wrote:

Explain how it is possible for someone who lives their lives knowing evil, not to understand that it is possible for someone to exist in a manner free from the evil they live knowing.

That's not a response to my point -- I was contending something entirely different.

@Watchy,

Watchy wrote:

At the start of this statement you say that we just view the norm if there is a lack of some opposite, of sorts. Corruption on a corporate level is quite common and is fairly normal yet most still see it as wrong...Unless you were referring to norm as what the majority of people do and see happen on a daily basis.

Who can truly decide what is "evil" and what is not? I agree when you say that "good" and "evil" are nothing more then views or standards created by the mind.

Corruption on a corporate level is quite common but it is not without an opposite.

Here is a good example. The sun rises everyday without fail. This is the norm. What if it didn't one day?

You see, the sun not rising isn't really something which we have experienced and so it is not uncommon for us to take the sun rising for granted.

If you do not know anything but good or anything but evil, it is like the sun. It is all you know and all you expect. Without a frame of reference for the opposite, you do not know that something is a miss.

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

That's not a response to my point -- I was contending something entirely different.

Absolutely, it was in response to your point. You stated:

Aedes wrote:

You can live your life and know evil without ever having known good. You can live your life and know good without ever having known evil. They are not on a spectrum and they do not counterbalance each other -- they are different things.

By my statement:

[quote="MuseEvolution:] Explain how it is possible for someone who lives their lives knowing evil, not to understand that it is possible for someone to exist in a manner free from the evil they live knowing.[/quote]

I am challenging your statement that it is possible to live life knowing evil without ever having known good. If they understand that it's possible to exist free from the evil they know, then they know good in contrast to evil. Without this argument, the rest of your point carries little weight. There's a bit of semantics involved here, and I hate to argue them, but they are also pertinant.

[edited for a spelling correction]

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Is good the lack of evil?

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