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Evil needs agency, so no, I don't see evil in the absence of something.
by Kaiyou 7y ago
Evil needs agency, so no, I don't see evil in the absence of something.
- rbrtl 7y ago"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."
- Kaiyou 7y agoEmphasize on "good men". They're not evil for doing nothing.
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoA convenient abdication of responsibility, isnt it? We we not responsible for plane crash/ financial crysis / climate change, it just happened!
- Kaiyou 7y agoI was talking about evil, not responsibility.
- jhrmnn 7y agoWhat about the absence of resistance to evil? Perhaps not evil per se, but one could call it absence of good.
- Kaiyou 7y agoThat depends on your definition of 'good', I guess. I wouldn't say that you have to fight evil to be good.
- coldtea 7y agoFor one, societies do have agency. People decide every day, with who they elect, where they spend their money, how they live. You don't need a conscious goal of X to act in a way that brings X. And if you know that your actions are part of the problem and you still doing them, that's even worse. Second, evil needs agency only when we talk of evil deeds. An outcome can be evil in itself though - not evil-doing, evil, in the sense of bad, ominous, deleterious, etc.