What is the meaning of TRUE Evil?

In life we have all done something bad, sometimes we commit bad acts without even noticing it, and sometimes we have commited bad acts, noticing it and regretting it.


All these things are normal for human beings to do because we are not perfect, however for some people they commit so many bad acts and atrocities that they are considered 'Evil' whether they are truelly evil or misunderstood is unknown but by many people they are considered evil.



Now their are two types of Evils, one is Natural Evil which is caused by Mother Nature which we cannot control(EX:Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Twisters, Hurricanes, and etc.) the other is Moral Evil, This is evil commited by Mankind(EX:War, Rape, Bullying in Schools, Murder, and Etc.)


However I personally believe their are two branches within Moral Evil: One is where you KNOW you are commiting an evil act but do it anyways, the other is much more complicated because you are evil, but then again you are not, which is what I like to call 'Confused' Evil, in this type of evil you commit evil acts yet you believe yourself that you are doing the right thing.

An example is Hitler, now don't get me wrong Hitler was one mean SOB, but he believed in his heart what he was doing was the right thing.

There is nothing evil that exists or has ever existed.

Something has the property of evil it has to get enjoyment, or do things which it itself genuinely has a full understanding that it is bad, but they also have to be in a rational state of mind.

for Evil to even exist requires that at some point something to have existed that at some point had the property of evil.

In order to be evil it imply's intent, since nature has no intent "it just is" it cannot possess the quality of evil. Morality is a human construct, animals cannot be "immoral" and neither can nature. Incidently I'm not ruling out (though I don't believe in) objective morals, only that only creatures that have consciousness can even have morality applied to them. Evil is not the same as bad.

So in order to even have a meaningful discussion about evil you first have to find something that is evil. As I've already said, if something lacks intentional states it cannot be evil. Since humans are the only beings (we are aware of) that have said states although some may argue differently, and this point I am taking it for granted that is true.

Now for Humans, Humans are animals and are part of the animal kingdom and many Humans are/have been considered "Evil" by the masses. I'm going to just run through some examples and explain why it is wrong to say they are evil.

Hitler is not evil because he believed in what he was doing, he believed he was right and that he was saving the world from the Jews. Psychopaths have a proven medical/biological reason why they do bad things and cannot be said to be evil. Pedophiles like any other person with a particular sexual preference cannot help it and we only need to look at the catholic church to see what sexual repression can do. Notice I am not saying what they did was "good" what they did just was an expression of their internal state of mind which is broken, they can never be evil because they don't qualify. Every so called "evil" act that has ever been committed, every "evil" thought that has been thought. every idea ever held has never been evil because the person who thought it was not in a rational state of mind, they were in a state of desperation almost. No act has ever been evil because the motives have never been evil because the people have never qualified to be evil. Therefore, you cannot have a meaningful discussion about evil.

Nobody can be truly evil you need to have no emotion you have to be not human.

evil is the ability to do the cold heartless thing that is really needed to be done
most may disagree and say it is evil and wrong but it is what is needed to be done

True evil is something total different in my opinion
It is doing wrong things for their own personal amusement and not for the good of the whole with no reason

for example
(extreme example)

Hitler killing thousands of Jewish people in the holocaust for the no reason
That in my opinion is the definition of true evil

Mostly I agree with what fucking faggot says; that natural disasters are not Evil, that Evil is a concept requiring intent and is a moral construction of Humanity, and that Humans, as reasoning beings, are the only known entities who perform Evil acts.

I would say, however, that though a person cannot be True Evil, Evil acts can be done by humans, most certainly in the Hitler example. I agree with Socrates' statement that "No man does Evil knowingly", with the assertion that in each person's subjective point of view, what they do is an action that they have judged to be best, no matter how heinous or Evil the act may seem to others.

So yes, Evil is done, but a person cannot truly BE Evil.

TRUE Evil, as in the topic title, is a fascinating concept apart from all of this, and I'd be fascinated to hear what people think truly evil action entails.
Where do you all think the line is between cold/heartless acts and Evil acts?

I would be willing to accept that an act can be evil, provided you divorce the act from the intent. If you can it just ends up you have non-evil humans doing evil things.

If Hitler was in a sane state of mind and didn't also think his killing of the Jews was not only justified but a good thing I would say he was evil, but Hitler just doesn't qualify because he believed in what he was going.

Or you can say Evil is an opinion. Hitler thought himself a great man for killing almost 10 million people. was he evil, yes. but in our eyes. to Nazi Germany he was a hero and admired.

Agreed.

Agreed, divorcing intent from action again.

I'm not defending serial killers by saying they're all unaware of their actions in some way. Their acts deserve punishment and society must be protected from such people.
I agree that some acts are, and should be, agreed upon as fundamentally Evil, and that Morality is internal and important to living life as a human.
I would certainly not say that because someone sees their actions as right, they ARE right. That's a terrible mistake to make, I just feel that a person cannot be pure Evil. They can possess an Evil nature and act Evilly, but absolute Evil contained in a human being doesn't make sense to me, not in a rational, thinking human with free will.
As to religion, I don't really want to get into that right now, but I would say that evil figures in spirituality and mythology are representations of the Essence of Evil. If someone does Evil by their very nature and lacks free will, then they, themselves, are pure Evil because they lack anything else.

Evil is certainly a matter of opinion, but as pedro says, certain acts are agreed on by much of humanity as fundamentally Evil. Hitler's policies were certainly not evil to his Nazi followers, But to everyone else they were judged as Evil.

Ah, I was not intending to differentiate between those two concepts.
I used Pure Evil to represent Absolute or 100% evil, and divorcing that term from Evil acts, which are subjective. It's the same Evil, just different in mode: Either existing as a concept or given form through human action.

I apologize if I seemed a little defensive or confrontational about the 'defending serial killers' response, I believe I misread your first statement slightly.

Evil is a tricky concept. People like Hitler are often described with it, but he clearly thought what he was doing was the right thing to do. He was delusional, but seeing that he thoroughly believed that what he was doing was right, then is he really evil? He certainly didn't think of himself that way. He has shown himself to be ridiculously idiotic for thinking the way he did, but there really isn't a concrete morality to judge him by. I'm sure that we would all agree that genocide is a horrible, unforgivable crime, but not Hitler. Same with Isabella, who started the Spanish Inquisition, and the slave traders who viewed the people they enslaved as animals and therefore what they did was permissible. I could list a lot of examples, but the point is, basically everyone we could call evil would disagree with us. Evil people don't cause much harm. There aren't enough of them to make a difference. Stupid people are the ones who commit these atrocities.

Even defining what is 'fundementally' evil will be a tricky subject, as there is always two sides to a coin, ANY actions that was made will always have a positive and negative effect, and there is never an absolute answer to whether one outweighs the other.

Obviously I am coming from a consequentialist stand point, if the term 'evil' is to be defined as an action where its negative outcome is to outweigh positives in an overwhelming sense then it is near impossible to determine what evil is, take the Hitler example. Without discussing his intentions he killed people in numbers we can hardly imagine ourselves, however the war (and the ethnic cleansing) tought us a valuable lesson that may benefit generations of people that may outnumber the people that is being killed in the process of the Final Solution.

The term 'Evil' is entirely subjective, as it derives from ones moral belief, and we all know how ethical frameworks vary greatly between people, and if we try to evaluate it from an objective and rational view point, than we are no longer assessing whether something/someone is evil or not, but merely if the person commited the action or the action itself creates more damage or more benifits, which not what 'evil' is about.

Very good points here. I often grapple with the question of whether the Holocaust prevented, another, greater genocide that may have been attempted in future. Additionally, if, as JosefVStalin himself said in a Coffee House Video, the Atomic Bombs had not been dropped on Japan, would they then have been used in Korea, causing a wider nuclear conflict and more collateral damage? Where do the repercussions of actions stop? Where do we stop measuring the ends that the means claim to justify?

Regardless, your rejection of an objective and rational approach to Evil makes sense to me. Moral rights and wrongs should not be totaled up on a score-card that anyone can read. The nature of True Evil remains subjective.

This is the problem I always see in any form of consequentialist thinking; even my own. Costs and benefits are nearly impossible to calculate outside the vacuum of ethical theory, so I question the value of Utilitarian thought quite a bit. Of course, with egoism there is the exact same problem, but I have no issue with making those choices at my expense; society is another matter entirely.

I think that evil is entirely subjective, but that doesn't mean people are going to respect your definition of it. Evil as a concept is just as hard to define as good, but it's generally a good idea to stick to local laws and customs. When in Rome and all that.

Of course there are people who see entirely the opposite, and would prefer to follow Jefferson's words: "In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." Personally I see the idea of standing on principle an inefficient, but simple, method of dealing with issues.

Again no one is 100% evil, not even Hitler. If you did something good in your lifetime then it is impossible to say you are 100% evil because you have done a good deed. Now you can be 99.99999999999% evil, but i believe it is impossible, even for Hitler.


( I AM NOT DEFENDING HITLERS ACTIONS. WHAT HE DID WAS WRONG IN EVER SENSE AND TO US EVIL!!!!!!!!)

nothing can be fully decidied as pure evil, as someone will always agree with the actions committed. In the case of the nazi's, they believed what they did was right, and so not evil

I take a Joseph Campbell Power of Myth approach. No monster exists to devour us on every ocean crossing, no consistent entity has proved its malevolence, so a fairy tale based on fear tells us something about those people who invented it. What was it's a-prior i, to feed on babies? Maybe essences behind each of our communal and individual myths lies the truth. I do not think of true evil as a concept, rather an abstract of horror. When I think of a tribe or my family dying out I am horrified and do not think I am evil for having that thought. Now if I act negatively to that thought- there are psychological scholars that could probably do their worste at explaining that. But having that feeling tells me we ourselves are not evil. We can only be containers for feelings that we have with the methods to express ourselves.

I could go really in-depth about this, but there's a really simple answer to this: Evil is The Dark Knight's interpretation of The Joker. That is all.

Nothings pure Evil. agreed? because that seems to be the ending most of us are getting here.