What do we mean by Evil?

Few people seem to actively enjoy doing evil acts yet evil seems to be widespread. In this posting I will examine what we mean by evil in order to explain this discrepancy. Evil is a word we use all the time, for instance terrorists and serial killers are often said to be evil. However if saying something or someone is evil is to be useful, to be more than condemnation, then we must be clear what we are talking about. In this posting I will attempt to define a useful definition of evil and I will argue that being evil isn’t a matter of degree, how bad we are, but is concerns with how we are motivated. I will draw a definition between someone who is actively evil and someone who is passively evil, This will lead me to conclude that someone needn’t commit any evil acts or even have a disposition to do so in order to be regarded as evil. Such a position might be regarded as an extreme one by some.

Evil is connected to harm. I will now introduce definitions of an evil act and evil person as suggested by Luke Russell. Russell defines an evil act as follows,

“An action is evil if and only if it is a wrong that is extremely harmful for at least one individual victim, where the wrongdoer is fully culpable for the harm in its extremity, or it is an action that is appropriately connected to an actual or possible extreme harm of this kind and the agent is fully culpable for that action” (1)

Russell defines an evil person as,

“You are an evil person if and only if you are strongly disposed to perform evil action and this disposition is now so firmly fixed that you ought to be treated as a write off.” (2)

These are thoughtful definitions and are a useful starting point for our examination. However accepting these definitions makes it is difficult to account for Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil”. Moreover intuitively whether an act, however bad, is regarded as evil seems dependent on the definition of an evil person.

I now want to suggest a different account of evil. Sometimes an evil person is contrasted with a virtuous person. Very roughly speaking a virtuous person has a disposition to mostly do good. It might then be suggested that an evil person mirrors this and is someone who has a disposition to do evil. If we accept that an evil action is one which causes great harm for which the agent is culpable then we are accepting a definition akin to that of Russell. I now want to propose a different account of evil. According to David Hume

 “Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger”.

Perhaps such a person might be regarded rational, which I wouldn’t, but we would certainly regard her as evil. The above suggests that instead of having a disposition to do evil an evil person is simply someone who lacks any disposition to do good when she is capable of doing so even and when doing so would prevent extreme harm. Evil acts don’t require evil intentions but a lack of motivation to do the good. However such a definition is incomplete because using it someone who feels no moral pull because she is incapable of understanding any moral requirements would be regarded as evil. Surely we shouldn’t regard someone who is severely cognitively impaired as evil. Someone who causes great harm but cannot understand any moral requirements not to cause that harm is no more responsible for this harm than the harm caused by an earthquake. I would suggest that an evil action cannot be understood without reference to an agent understanding that the society she lives in has moral requirements even if she doesn’t feel the pull of these requirements. Moreover she must understand what these requirements entail. It is important to be clear that by the inability to feel any moral pull isn’t the same as the inability to understand moral requirements. It follows that if someone is to be regarded as evil that she must be capable of understanding some moral requirements. An evil person might be defined by the following two conditions.

An evil person is someone who lacks any disposition to do good when she is capable of doing so even when doing so would prevent extreme harm.

An evil person is someone who is capable of understanding moral requirements even if she feels no moral pull.

If we accept this definition then it is possible to define an evil action.

An evil action is an extremely harmful act which an evil person enacts or permits to be enacted.

Accepting these definitions means that we need to be able to understand what it means to be an evil person before we can classify some act as evil. It also means that someone need not be actively evil and she can be passively evil. It is possible to differentiate between active and passive evil. Lastly it means that hatred need play no part in evildoing.

This definition is similar to that of Simon Baron Cohen. Baron Cohen wants to redefine evil as the erosion of empathy. (3) This definition refers to evil acts rather than evil persons because whilst autistic people lack empathy to some degree this lack doesn't make them evil. Indeed many high functioning autistic people are attracted by rules and strongly feel the pull of morality. This pull could be due to ‘caring about’ as the defined by Harry Frankfurt or due to emotions unconnected to empathy. The above definition is slightly different from that of Baron Cohen and might be characterised by the inability or the erosion of the ability to feel the pull of morality rather than empathy.

Let us now examine some of the consequences of accepting the above definitions. According to Arendt Adolf Eichmann was an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat who was neither perverted nor sadistic, but ‘terrifyingly normal. His motive according to Arendt motive was simply to advance his career in the Nazi bureaucracy. According to Arendt’s account of Eichmann he didn’t enjoy his evil deeds and didn’t have a strong disposition to perform evil actions. It follows that we must reject either Russell’s definition of an evil person or Arendt’s account of Eichmann. Is the definition of an evil person outlined above more compatible with Arendt’s account of the banality of evil? If we accept this definition then an evil person doesn’t have to like to be attracted to evil she merely has to have no motivation not to do evil, she is passively evil. Perhaps Eichmann didn’t enjoy sending Jews to extermination camps but he had no motivation not to do so. It follows that Eichmann fulfilled the first condition of an evil person. I would further suggest that Eichmann must have understood that killing millions of people contravened moral standards. Someone might object to the above and suggest that the Nazis had introduced new moral standards. She might then suggest that the situation Eichmann found himself was responsible for his evil acts rather Eichmann himself. In response I would suggest the secrecy of the final solution suggests that the Eichmann was well aware that he was breaking moral standards and that even if the situation helped determine his actions that he felt no unease at doing so. This failure to feel any moral unease made him an evil man. Much of the above could be applicable in the case of Harold Shipman the British serial killer who murdered around 250 victims. Except for one case Shipman had no motive for murder and appeared to take no pleasure in his actions. However I would suggest the above definition isn’t completely compatible with Arendt’s views. Arendt suggested Eichmann was an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat I would suggest that someone who lacks any motivation to prevent harm when she is capable of doing so isn’t normal. Perhaps Eichmann was a bland bureaucrat but he wasn’t ordinary, wasn’t orfinary.

A second consequence of accepting the above definition is that someone might be an evil person but never actually do any evil acts, an evil person might never be an evildoer. This consequence accords well with Nicolas Bommarito’s idea of inner virtue and vice. Such a thought seems to run counter to our intuitions. However it seems possible that someone might have a generous disposition but that she has never been generous because she lives in an extremely deprived circumstances. Let us recall that an evil act must be an extremely harmful one. It seems possible then that someone might live in circumstances in which the opportunity for doing extremely harmful actions doesn’t exist. In such circumstances someone might not be an evildoer but would remain an evil person if she had a disposition to do evil even if she never acted on it. However my definition is more radical than this, Someone can be an evil person even if she never acts evilly or doesn’t have any disposition to act evilly provided she doesn’t have any disposition to do good when she is capable of doing so in order to prevent extreme harm. According to David Hume “all that is necessary for evil to flourish is that good men do nothing” but if we accept the above Hume’s ‘good men’ are actually passively evil. Consider someone who sees a frail person fall in the street and struggle to get up and has no motivation to help him then she should be regarded as an evil rather than simply heartless. Omissions can point out evil. Perhaps if Eichmann had been born in different times he would have been an ordinary bland, bureaucrat who did no evil but nonetheless he would have remained an evil person.

According to the definition of evil we have adopted an evil person feels no moral pull but must understand moral requirements. This leads to the third consequence of accepting the above definition. Someone can only be regarded as evil in reference to the moral standards they lived in. Moral standards aren’t changed easily which I have suggested is one reason for the Nazi’s secrecy about the Holocaust. Nonetheless moral standards do change over longer periods of time. Let us consider slavery. Slavery is a great wrong today and in our time anyone who kept a slave would be regarded as an evil person. Let us now consider the Bristol slave trader Edward Colston. Let us accept that he was a racist but was he also an evil person? If he felt the moral pull and understood the moral requirements of his time then perhaps he wasn’t. The question then becomes was slave trading morally acceptable in his times. This is no means clear. Let us move on to consider an easy case, let us consider Aristotle. Let us assume that Aristotle kept slaves if our assumption is correct was he an evil person? If he felt the moral pull and understood the moral requirements of his times then he wasn’t. I would suggest that keeping slaves was morally acceptable in ancient Greece. In the light of the above it would seem that we should judge people as evil or not according to how they responded to the moral requirements of their time.

The fourth consequence of accepting the above definition means that even if a good person can act badly that she cannot act evilly. Evil acts are defined as extremely harmful actions performed by evil persons. Accepting the above seems to run counter to our intuitions and appears to give us a strong reason to reject the above account of evil. In Bernard Shaw's St Joan a soldier is let out of hell for one day because he does a good thing by giving Joan a straw cross. An evil person does a good thing.  Surely if evil people can do good things then good people can do evil things. The Milligram experiment shows good people can do very bad things but is doing very bad things the same as acting evilly? Before answering this question we must provide a rough definition of what we mean by a good person. In what follows a good person will simply be defined as someone who has a disposition to do good in most situations For the sake of argument let us assume that a good person can act evilly. What reasons can be advanced for a good person acting evilly? Firstly a good person might have a failure in cognition and fail to see that she is acting evilly. Secondly her disposition to do mostly good might be overwhelmed by other forces allowing her to act evilly. Let consider the first of these explanations. Perhaps a good person feels the pull of morality in general way but fails to fully understand what a particular moral norm requires of her. For instance someone might understand the moral norm not to be cruel to others but fail to include animals among those others. Let us assume she is cruel to animals. Let us accept she acts badly but it would seem hard to describe her actions as evil. More generally it would seem hard to describe someone’s action as evil when she fails to fully understand the moral implications of the action. If this wasn’t true then it would be possible to describe the actions of someone who is severely cognitively impaired as evil. Such a description seems to run counter to our intuitions. It follows that a good person cannot act evilly because of a failure in cognition.

Let us now consider the second explanation of how a good person can act evilly. It might argued that a good person can act evilly if her moral sentiments are overwhelmed by other forces. For instance a soldier’s moral sentiments might be overwhelmed by rage at some atrocity and she in turn commits a further atrocity. According to Seneca rage is a form of madness. If so when someone’s disposition to do good is overwhelmed by rage she is cognitively disabled and we are able to use the first explanation above to show she isn’t acting evilly. However let us assume that whilst someone’s disposition to do good is completely overwhelmed that she remains aware she is acting badly. Can someone who can do no other said to be responsible for her actions? Can some act be regarded as evil if the agent cannot be held to be responsible for her actions? If the answers to these two questions are both negative then good people can act badly but it would be wrong to describe those whose disposition to do good are over whelmed by other forces as acting evilly. Such a conclusion might have satisfied Socrates. Perhaps whilst good person can act badly she can’t act evilly.

The fifth consequence of accepting the above means we might question whether terrorists are really evildoers. Terrorists should rightly be regarded as cruel and callous but should they also be regarded as evil? Terrorists have some sort of moral code even if we might regard it as a warped one. If being evil depends on a complete lack of any moral pull then it follows that terrorists aren’t evil. Such a conclusion might not be totally unwelcome for perhaps terrorists might be reformed by changing their moral concepts even if this change is extremely difficult bring about, such a change might not be possible with evildoers such as Eichmann.

The sixth consequence of accepting the above definitions means we can’t label any organisation as evil. This seems counterintuitive. We can’t label the Nazi party or a terrorist organisations as evil even if they foster evil. Dictators and party members may be evil but the party can’t be evil for to be evil some creature must be capable of understanding moral requirements.  Organisations can’t understand moral requirements and so can’t be evil.

Definitions should increase our understanding or be useful. Does the above definition do either of these? Firstly the fact that an evildoer doesn’t feel any moral pull doesn’t excuse her evil actions. If someone knowingly does evil and could have acted otherwise then she can be held accountable for her actions. However if the cause of evil is a failure to feel any moral pull then this might be regarded as a mitigating factor. Secondly one way to combat evil might be to look at how people fail to acquire a sense of moral pull. Children naturally acquire some feeling of morality from their parents and society. Perhaps extremely deprived or abusive childhoods erode a child’s ability to acquire moral sentiments. Good parenting and education might help children acquire these sentiments. Unfortunately some people might not acquire these sentiments for physical reasons. Perhaps a low level of these sentiments might be boosted by pharmacological means. In ‘unfit for the Future’ Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu argue that there is a need for moral enhancement in order to counter the existential dangers. (4) Perhaps more limited targeted pharmacological enhancement might be used to prevent some people from becoming evil, see psychopaths and moral enhancement. Lastly the society we should try to make our society one which decreases the likelihood of evil manifesting itself. I suggested above that whilst Eichmann might have remained an evil man but that in a better society that his evil might not have manifested itself.

1. Luke Russell, 2020 Being Evil, Oxford University Press, page 87
2. Russell, page 114
3. Simon Baron-Cohen, 2011, Zero Degrees of Empathy, Allen Lane, page 4.
4. Ingmar Persson & Julian Savulescu, 2012, UNFIT FOR THE FUTURE, Oxford University Press.