"St. Augustine says that evil is the absence of good." Is this the way you believe?

I don’t think so. I have studied a few serial killers and some people in their lives didn’t know of the evil acts, and commented only on the good person they ‘knew’, so I think even evil people have some good in them.

And let’s face it, in the right circumstances, a lot of us could do evil acts with the best of intentions.

Good is the absence of evil.

Evil is the opposite of good.

Evil is not zero good, it is negative; it negates good.

Sort of like darkness is the absence of light?

Yes. Evil is not a thing. It is a void. It is what occurs when the good is not present. Good is not the absence of evil. Good is a type of action, selected by human choice.

Augie was simplifying things.

He looks at things as an either/or, black/white situation. I think that’s incorrect. There is a middle ground which is neither evil nor good, it just ‘is’.

If evil would truly be the absence of good, then it would be limited. As we unfortunately find out every time, there proofs no limit to it.

So if evil would be the absence of good, then an act can only be less evil than another act, by having a little more good in it. That stance cannot be maintained.

I would say an intentional, orchestrated genocide is more evil than bullying on the school yard. Not because bullying has more good in it.

In conclusion: good and evil are not expressions of the same. They are opposite forces that share a common dimension in their effect.

I think it more accurately expresses Augustine’s view to say that “good is the absence of evil”.

For him, all things having God as their source are good. Since everything—what Aug calls “Nature”—is from God, it’s all good. He then defines Evil as corruption of the form, measure or order of Nature. Which leads him to this: “Nature therefore which has been corrupted, is called evil, for assuredly when incorrupt it is good; but even when corrupt, so far as it is nature it is good, so far as it is corrupted it is evil.”

The default state, in other words is Good. To whatever degree corruption screws up Nature, you get Evil. He goes on to say that something that’s really excellent can be a little corrupt and still be better than something that’s not so great even if it’s uncorrupted. His example is that corrupted gold is still better than uncorrupted silver.

So according to Augustine, you start with Good and get progressively to Evil by corrupting it. That’s very different from saying that you get Good by putting it where there was none.

Determining what is good and what is evil is too subjective for there to be a definitive answer.

No. Nobody’s black or white; we’re all shades of gray. Decent people sometimes do bad things, and the the most heinous ones among us are capable of kindness and compassion.

A few years ago, the I.D. cable network had a series called “Most Evil.” The show’s creator defined evil as a propensity to do harm. I like that definition; it makes sense, and it’s free of any moral/ethical judgments.

Everyone has moments when he’d love to swing a baseball bat at somebody’s head, or when she wishes that someone didn’t exist, or when he notices that it would be very easy to steal from his employer. But, good people don’t act on those emotions. It takes evil to do bodily harm, take another person’s life, or steal somebody’s property.

Another quote from Saint Augustine and one I prefer “There is no possible source of evil except good.”

Augustine was just trying to make sense of a world created by God that still contained evil.

His conclusions are not based on logic, he just tries to rationalize evil in a universe in which all is created by God.

His reasoning is flawed. He is not truly trying to define evil, he is primarily looking to excuse God.

@Judi Yes, that’s the appropriate analogy.

@thorninmud I don’t think it would be more accurate to say that in St. A.‘s view good is the absence of evil, because good is something and evil is nothing—a lack or absence, not a presence. Again, the analogy is with shadows and cold. So it’s more accurate to say that evil is the absence of good.

For St. A., being is a matter of degree. Everything that is, to the extent that it is, is good.

@whitenoise We live in an entropic universe. It will always be easier to destroy than to create. I don’t think that answers any questions about the metaphysics of evil.

@submariner I think I see what you mean. So his “corruption” is a diminution in degree of being.

But since he insists on saying that God made creatures “from nothing”, was he implying that Evil was the condition from which creation emerged in the beginning?

@submariner,

I don’t really understand what you are saying. At least not as a response to my earlier post. Can you elaborate?

Good and evil are social values. In some non-Occidental cultures good and evil are just different places on the the same “table top”, not having a hierarchy.

This will end in semantics.

I think there is no safe way to determine what is evil or not. If I go hunting and shoot a deer my friends and I won’t consider hunting as evil, but for an animals right activist it’s pure evil to hunt down an animal and kill it for sport. (I don’t hunt and don’t kill for sport) I think evil have to do what is acceptable according to set rules of principle in society, it’s safe to say that there are things that is not acceptable to society that we can consider it as evil. Like raping a child is pure evil and excreta or to torture. I think evil is the absence of good and that statement seems to be right.

@antimatter,

One can discuss the relationship between evil and good, without being able or implying that one can decide objectively and conclusively of what acts are evil and what acts are not.

Personally I feel a lot of the world is grey. Neither pure good nor pure evil. That being said, there are acts that are on the edge of the spectrum and that most if not all people would agree on.

For instance raping little children, burning food crops of hungry people, for no other reason than personal fun.

It’s like discussing temperature. Whether 100 Fahrenheit is hot, is up for personal interpretation. We can still discuss the relationship between hot and cold though.

(Actually cold is another example of something defined as the absence of something else: cold is the absence of heat.)

The concept of good vs evil to me is more like pushing versus pulling. Pulling is not ‘the absence of pushing’ it is its opposite.

I can’t find that quote attributed to St. Augustine. I was curious as to the context. Can someone post a source, please?

@bkcunningham

Try here, for instance. It is not a direct quote, but it seems to be his view.

http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/evil_cause_of.htm

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

No, because I don’t good and evil are polar opposites. There is often an element of each within the other.

Look at good and evil as aspects of “color”. We can call “good” white and “evil” black, traditional.

The light spectrum would say that white includes all colors. If you’re painting and you mix all the colors you have together, you get a muddy sort of black.

If you mix white and black; well, you will get one, if not many shades of grey.

How can you know what evil is if there is an absence of good. One thing does not exist with out the other.

No. Evil is the absence of conscience, nothing more, nothing less.
If one cares not for any other living things well being, and puts their own greedy and selfish and perverted desires above the greater good, enter “evil.”

St Augustine grass is pretty fucking evil…..walk on it barefoot and its like 1,000’s of tiny paper cuts on your feet.

@kitszu shades of grey can’t be all that evil can it?

I prefer operational definitions. Good behaviour improves the quality of life for all individuals affected by it and its consequences.

Evil is characterised by the high frequency of behaviour that diminishes the quality of life for all those affected by it and its consequences.

Does that work for anyone?

@whitenoise The line about entropy was a very elliptical response to your claim that evil is unlimited.

About your bully/genocide example: I think St. Augustine would predicate good and evil of entities, not actions (i.e., people or things might be good / evil; actions would be just / unjust or right / wrong). So a bully would better than a genocidal dictator insofar as the bully comes closer to being what a human being should be. They both are lacking (as are we all, to some degree), but the dictator lacks more.

@thorninmud Sorry I overlooked your question. God created the universe “from nothing” in the sense that God didn’t fashion it out of any preexisting stuff. But in another sense God created it “from everything” insofar as God is all, and God’s creation is a manifestation of God’s perfect power. It was the free act of the completely actualized perfect being that God is.

(But, departing from orthodoxy on this point, I’m inclined to say that only by creating could God actualize himself as the Creator.)

@submariner I’m having a hard time reconciling your explanation—which seems a reasonable one—with St. A’s representation: “Therefore of whatever measure, of whatever form, of whatever order, they are, they are so because it is God by whom they were made; but they are not immutable, because it is nothing of which they were made. For it is sacrilegious audacity to make nothing and God equal, as when we wish to make what has been born of God such as what has been made by Him out of nothing.

This makes it sound like “nothing” refers to a characteristic intrinsic to the nature of created things, and not just to the absence of matter that preceded creation.

I’d need more context to interpret that quotation. Where is it from? I’m not sure what he’s talking about here. Is St. A. contrasting the second person of the Trinity (“begotten not made, one in being with the Father” = “born of God”?) with things created by God? Responding to pagan critics of creation ex nihilo? Denying the existence of eternal Platonic forms that exist independently of God? In any case, I’m sure he didn’t intend to suggest that nothingness is substantial. I guess one could say that it is intrinsic in the sense that any created being is necessarily going to be less perfect than the Creator.

@submariner This is from “On the Nature of Good” in the “Retractions”, a refutation of the Manichaean heresy. The immediate context of the passage is drawing a distinction between that which is “of God” (Spirit) and that which is “from God” (Nature).