Evil, in a broad sense, can be described as the sum of the opposition, which experience shows that in the universe, desires and needs of individuals, from which arises, among human beings at least, the sufferings in which life abounds. So bad, in terms of human well-being is what should not exist. However, there is no service of human life in which his presence is not felt, and the gap between what is and what should be always called for an explanation in the account that humanity has sought to give of himself and his surroundings. To this end, it is necessary (1) to define the precise nature of the principle that gives the character wrong with such a wide variety of circumstances, and (2) ensure, as far as may be possible, at source which it arises.
With regard to the nature of evil, it should be noted that evil is of three kinds - physical, moral and metaphysical. Physical harm includes anything that causes harm to humans, either by injury, countering her natural desires, or preventing the full development of his powers, whether in the order of nature, directly or through the various social conditions in which humanity exists naturally. Physical ailments directly due to the nature of illness, accident or death, poverty, oppression, and some forms of the disease are instances of harm resulting from the imperfect social organization. Mental suffering, such as anxiety, disappointment, and remorse, and the limitation of human intelligence that prevents to reach the full understanding of their environment, congenital forms are difficult to vary each nature and degree in accordance with natural and social conditions.
The moral evil are included diversion of the human will from the requirements of the moral order and the action resulting from the gap. Such action, if it proceeds solely from ignorance, should not be classified as moral evil, which is properly restricted to the movements of the will by the end of which the conscience condemns. The extent of moral evil is not limited to circumstances of life in the natural order, but also includes the sphere of religion, by which the welfare of man is affected in the supernatural order, and the precepts of which, as ultimately dependent on the will of God, are the strictest possible obligation (See NAS). The obligation of moral action in the natural order is also widely believed to rely on the reasons given by religion, and it is at least doubtful that it is possible for a moral obligation to exist at all outside a supernatural sanction.
Metaphysical evil is the limitation by other components of the natural world. Through this mutual limitation of natural objects are mostly prevented from reaching their perfection or ideal, either by the constant pressure of fitness, or by sudden disasters. Thus, animal and plant organisms are variously influenced by climate and other natural causes; predatory animals depend for their existence on the destruction of life, nature is prone to storms and convulsions, and its order depends on a system of perpetual disintegration and renewal because of the interaction of its components. If the suffering of animals is excluded, no pain of any kind is caused by the inevitable limits of nature, and they can be called by analogy evil, and in a sense very different from that in which the term is applied to the human experience. Clarke, also rightly noted (Correspondence with Leibniz, letter ii) that the apparent disorder of nature is really no trouble, because it is part of a specific plan, and specifically addresses the intention of the Creator, he can be counted as a relative rather than perfection of imperfection. It is, in fact, that a transfer to objects of irrational subjective ideals and aspirations of human intelligence, that "evil nature" can be called evil in every sense, but simply an analogy . The nature and degree of pain in the lower animals is very obscure, and in the absence of necessary data, it is difficult to say whether it should be classified correctly, with evil purely formal, owned objects inanimate, or the suffering of human beings. The latter view was generally held in ancient times, and perhaps it refers to the anthropomorphic tendency of primitive minds that appears in the doctrine of metempsychosis. Thus, it has often been assumed that animal suffering, with many imperfections of inanimate nature, was due to the fall of man, with whom the well-being, as the main part of creation, were linked fortunes of the rest (see Theophe. Antioch, Autolyc, II ... see Genesis 3 and 1 Corinthians 9). The opposite view is taken by Thomas (I, Q xcvi, s. 1.2). Descartes assumed that animals were mere machines, without sensation or consciousness, he was closely followed by Cartesian Malebranche, and in general. Leibniz gives a feeling of animals, but considers that the mere perception, unaccompanied by reflection, can cause either pain or pleasure, at least it holds the pain and pleasure of animals to be comparable in intensity to those resulting from the reflex action in humans (see also Maher, Psychology, Supp't. In London, 1903).
It is clear that even while evil is essentially negative and not positive, ie it does not consist in the acquisition of something, but the loss or deprivation of something necessary for perfection. The pain, which is the test or criterion of physical harm, has a positive effect, the very existence as a purely subjective feeling or emotion, but its quality is its evil effect of disturbing the victim. Similarly, the perverse action of the will, on which moral evil depends, is more than a denial of the right action, since it involves the positive element of choice, but the moral wrongfulness of the bad action is not constituted by the element of choice, but by its rejection of this right requires reasons. Thus Origen (. In Joh, II, 7) defines evil as stéresis, Pseudo-Dionysius (De Div Name .. iv) That the non-existent; Maimonides (perplex Dux III, 10.) As a "bonus alicujus privato "Albertus Magnus (adoption phrase of St. Augustine) attributes the difficulty" caused deficiens aliquis "(Summa Theol, I, XI, 4.) Schopenhauer, which held the pain of being positive and normal condition of life (the pleasure of being partial and temporary lack thereof), however it is dependent on the failure of the human desire for fulfillment - "the desire is in itself pain." Thus we see that evil is not a real entity, it is relative. What's the harm in some relationships can be good in others, and there is probably not a form of existence that is only evil in all relationships, so it was thought that evil can not really say that it exists at all, and it's really nothing but a "lesser good." But this opinion seems to leave out of account the reality of human experience. Although the same cause can give a pain, and pleasure to the other pain and pleasure, feelings or ideas, can only be mutually exclusive. No one, however, tried to deny this obvious fact, and the opinion in question may be understood simply as a way paradoxical to assert the relativity of evil.
There is almost a general agreement of authorities as the nature of evil, allowance being made to certain modes of expression according to various correspondents philosophical presuppositions. But the question of the origin of evil, there was, and considerable diversity of opinion. The problem is strictly a metaphysical meaning it can not be solved by a simple experimental analysis of real conditions from which the results of evil. The question, as Schopenhauer called "the punctum pruriens of metaphysics," not so much concerned with the various detailed manifestations of evil in nature, as the hidden cause and underlying, which made these events possible or necessary, and it is clear that once the investigation in a region so obscure to be attended with great difficulty, and that the conclusions are for the most part, be provisional and indicative. No system of philosophy has never managed to escape from the darkness in which the subject is involved, but it is no exaggeration to say that the Christian solution offers, overall, fewer problems, and is closer to completeness than any other. The question can be summarized as follows. Assuming that evil is a certain relationship of man to his environment, or that arises in the relationship of the constituent parts of the whole of existence to each other, how it is that although all are alike the results of a universal cosmic process, this universal body is perpetually at war with itself, contradict and counteract its own efforts in the mutual hostility of his descendants? Moreover, assuming that metaphysical evil in itself may simply be the method of nature, involving nothing more than a permanent redistribution of material elements of the universe, human suffering and wrongdoing and as yet essentially opposed to the general natural development, and are hardly to be reconciled in thought with the whole concept of the unity or harmony in nature. For what is evil in human life, physical and moral, must be given as to its cause? But when the universe is seen as the work of a Creator, all-benevolent and omnipotent, a new item is added to the problem. If God is all-benevolent, why did he cause or permit suffering? If he is omnipotent, it can be in no need to create or allow it, and secondly, if it is under no such necessity, it can not be omnipotent. Again, if God is absolutely good, and powerful, how can he allow the existence of moral evil? We must learn, that is, how evil came to exist, and what is its special relationship with the Creator of the universe.
The solution was attempted by three different methods.
I. It has been argued that existence is fundamentally evil, that evil is the active principle of the universe, and not much more than an illusion, the pursuit of what used to induce the human race to perpetuate its own existence ( pessimistic view). This is the fundamental principle of Buddhism, which sees happiness as inaccessible, and believes that there is no way to escape poverty, but by ceasing to exist other than in an impersonal state of Nirvana. The origin of suffering, as Buddha is "the desire to be." It was also among the Greek philosophers, the opinion of Cyrenaica Hegesias (peisithánatos called, counsel for death), which held the life to be worthless, and pleasure, the only good, to be inaccessible. But the Greek character was naturally not inclined to a pessimistic view of nature and life, and while popular mythology embodied aspects most the existence of dark designs such as those of fate, avenging Furies, and envy (phthonos) gods, Greek thinkers in general felt that the supreme evil is universal, but can be avoided or overcome by the wise and virtuous.
Pessimism as a metaphysical system, is the product of modern times. Its main representatives are Schopenhauer and Hartmann, who both held the real universe to be fundamentally wrong, and that happiness is impossible. The origin of the phenomenal universe is given by Schopenhauer in a transcendent will, he identifies with being pure and Hartmann the unconscious, which includes both the will and idea (Vorstellung) Schopenhauer. According to both Schopenhauer and Hartmann, the suffering has come into existence with self-awareness, from which it is inseparable.
II. The evil was attributed to one of two opposing principles, respectively, which mix the good and evil in the world because. The relationship between the two is represented differently, and varies coordination envisioned by Zoroastrianism to the relative independence of the mere creation will be held by Christian theology. Zoroaster given good and evil, respectively, two antagonistic principles (hrízai or Archaea) called Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda) and Ahriman (Angra Mainyu). Each was independent of the other, but eventually the right was to be victorious with Ormuzd and Ahriman and his followers were expelled evil in the world. This dualism mythological sectk transmitted to the Manichean, whose founder, Manes, added a third principle, but subordinate, from the source of the property (and possibly corresponding to a certain extent, the Mithra of Zoroastrianism ) in the life "spirit", which was formed by the material world existing well mixed and evil. Manes that matter was essentially evil, and therefore could not be in direct contact with God. It was probably derived from the notion of the Gnostic sects, which, if they differ on many points of each other, were generally agreed to follow the advice of Philo, Plotinus and the neo-Platonist of like the evil of matter . They took the world to have been formed by an offshoot, the Demiurge, as a kind of intermediary between God and impure matter. Bardesanes, however, and his followers viewed evil as resulting from the misuse of free desire to create.
The idea that evil is necessarily inherent in matter, regardless of the divine author of good, and in a sense opposite to him, is common to these systems theosophical, the most purely rational conceptions of Greek philosophy, and provided that has been made on this in later times, the idea of a harmony of Pythagoras that the numerical constitutive principle of the world, good is represented by the unit and evil by the multiplicity (Philolaus, Fragm.) Heraclitus resolve the "conflict", which he held to be the essential condition of life, in front of the deity of action. "God is the author of all that is right and good and just, but men are sometimes good and sometimes chose evil" (Fragment 61). Empedocles, again, given the principle of evil hatred (neikos) inherent with its opposite, love (philia), in the universe. Plato held God to be "free from blame" (anaítios) for evil in the world, its cause is partly the necessary imperfection of material and created existence, and partly the work of the human will (Timeaus, xlii;. Cf. Phaedo. lx). With Aristotle, evil is a necessary part of the ongoing evolution of matter, and itself has no real existence (Metaphysics IX, 9). The Stoics conceived evil in a somewhat similar, as by necessity, the divine power immanent aligns the right and wrong in a changing world. Moral evil comes from the madness of men, not God's will, and is rejected by her to a good end. In the hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus (Ston. Ecl., 1, p. 30) may be perceived approach the doctrine of Leibniz, as to the nature of evil and goodness in the world. "Nothing is done without you in the earth or sea or sky, except that men commit evil by their own folly, so that you have installed all good and evil in one, there might be a reasonable diet and eternal of all things. "In the mystical system of Meister Eckhart (d. 1329), evil, sin included has its place in the evolutionary scheme by which all products and returns to God, and contributes to both the moral and the physical, to fulfill the divine plan. monistic or pantheistic Trends Eckhart seems to have obscured for him, many of the difficulties of the subject, as was the case with those by whom the same trends have been made since an extreme conclusion.
Christian philosophy, like Hebrew, consistently awarded moral and physical evil in the action of free will to create. The man brought the disease from which he suffers by transgressing the law of God, obedience to which his happiness depended. The evil is in created things under the aspect of mutability, and possibility of failure, not as existing in itself, and errors of mankind, confusing the real conditions of its own well-being, were the cause of moral evil and physical (pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, De Div Name, IV, 31; .. St. Augustine, City of God XII). The harm suffered by the man, however, the condition of the property, for the sake of which it is allowed. Thus, "God judged it better to bring out good from evil than to suffer no evil to exist" (St. Aug., Enchirid., XXVII). Mal contributes to the perfection of the universe, like shadows in the image of perfection, or harmony to the music (City of God 11). Again, the excellent works of God in nature is emphasized by the evidence of divine wisdom, power and goodness, in which no harm can be caused directly. (Greg. Nyssa., De Opif. HOM.) Thus Boethius demand (De Consol. Phil., I, iv) Who can be the author of good, God is the author of evil? As darkness is nothing but the absence of light, and is not produced by the creation, then evil is simply the absence of goodness. (. Saint-August, General de so on) Saint-Basile (Hexaem., Hom ii.) Emphasizes the educational purposes served by evil, and St. Augustine, holding hard to be allowed for the punishment of the wicked and the trial of the good, he shows, in this respect, the nature of good, and pleases God, not because of what it is, but because of where it is to say that the penal consequence of sin and just (City of God XI.12, De Vera relig. XLIV). Lactantius uses similar arguments to counter this dilemma, as to the omnipotence and goodness of God, which he puts into the mouth of Epicurus (De Ira Dei, xiii). St. Anselm (Monologium) connects the evil by the partial manifestation of the property by the creation, its fullness of being God.
The characteristics that emerged in the previous Christian explanation of evil, compared to non-Christian dualistic theories are
the final allocation to the God of all power and absolute goodness, despite his permission to the existence of evil;
the award of a punitive and moral cause of suffering in the sin of mankind, and
the claim without hesitation the charitable purpose of God in the wrong license, complete with the admission that he could, had he chosen, have prevented (City of God, XIV).
How God's permission of evil of which he knew in advance and could have prevented is to reconcile with his goodness, is not fully taken into account, St. Augustine said the issue in terms of strength, but merely by way Response to follow St. Paul in his reference to the divine judgments unsearchableness (Contra Julianum, I, 48).
The same general guidelines have been followed by most modern attempts to explain in terms of theism of the existence of evil. Descartes and Malebranche believed that the world is the best possible for the purpose for which it was created, namely for the manifestation of God's attributes. Had she been less equipped as a whole to achieve this object. The relation of evil to the will of a loving Creator was perfectly handled carefully by Leibniz, in response to Bayle, who had insisted on arguments based on the existence of evil against that of a good and omnipotent God. Leibniz bases his opinion mainly on those of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and concludes that his theory of optimism. She says the opposite is the best possible, but the metaphysical evil, or perfection, is necessarily involved in the constitution, because it must be finished, and could not have been endowed with the infinite perfection which belongs to God alone. Physical and moral evil is due to the fall of man, but evil is rejected by God for a good cause. In addition, the world with which we know is only a very small factor in the whole of creation, and we can assume that the evil it contains is necessary for the existence of other regions that are unknown to us. Voltaire in "Candide," has begun to cast ridicule the idea of "best of possible worlds," and we must admit that the theory is open to serious objections. On the one hand, it is not compatible with belief in the omnipotence of God, and secondly, it does not account for the authorization (or paternity indirect) of evil by a good God, which Bayle had specifically taken exception. We can not know that this world is the best possible, and if it were, why, because it must include both what is bad, if a God very well have created it? may be required, in addition, there can be no degree goodness over that is not likely to increase all-powerful, without ceasing to below the infinite perfection.
Leibniz was more or less closely followed by many treaties that have been the subject of the Christian point of view. These have mostly said the evidence in the creation of wisdom and goodness of its author, like the Book of Job, and were content to leave uncovered the reason for the creation, by Him, a world in which evil is inevitable. Such was the opinion of the King (Essay on the origin of evil, London, 1732), which placed great emphasis on the doctrine of the best of possible worlds, of Cudworth, which held that evil, but inseparable from the nature of imperfect beings, is largely a matter of fancy and men own opinions, rather than the reality of things, and therefore not be made the ground of charges against the Divine Providence. Derham (physico-theology, London, 1712) has had the opportunity to review the excellence of the establishment to acknowledge an attitude of humility and trust in the creator of "this elegant, well this artificial world, well formed, in which there is everything needed for sustenance, the use and enjoyment of both humans and all creatures here below, and a few whips, few stems, the scourge us for our sins ". Priestly held a doctrine of absolute determinism, and therefore evil attributed solely to the divine will, which, however, justified by the ends right where the damage is done to subserve providentially (doctrine of philosophical necessity, Birmingham, 1782). Clarke, again called attention to evidence of design method, which testify to the benevolence of the Creator in the midst of apparent physical and moral disorder. Rosmini, closely following Malebranche said that the issue the possibility of a better world than it really is meaningless, the whole world created by God to be the best possible according to its special purpose, without which no goodness or badness can be based on it. Mamiani also assumed that evil is inseparable from the finish, but he tended to disappear as the finish approached its final union with the infinite.
III. The third way of understanding the place of evil in the general scheme of the existence of these systems is that of monism, whereby evil is simply seen as a mode in which certain aspects of development moments of nature are apprehended by human consciousness. In this view, there is no principled distinction that evil can be attributed, and its origin is one with that of nature as a whole. These systems reject the idea of special creation, and the idea of God is to be rigorously excluded, or identified by an impersonal principle, immanent in the universe, or as a simple abstraction of the methods of nature, which, if considered in terms of materialism or that of idealism, is the only ultimate reality. The problem of the origin of evil is merged into that of the origin of being. Moral evil, in particular, stems from the error and should be phased out, or at least reduce, through a better understanding of the conditions of human well-being (meliorism). Of this kind, of all the doctrines of the Ionic Hylozoists, whose basic concept was the essential unity of matter and life, and partly, also, that Eleatics, who founded the origin of all things in the abstract being. The atomic Leucippus and Democritus, held what might be called a doctrine of materialist monism. This doctrine, however, found its first full expression of the philosophy of Epicurus, which explicitly rejected the idea of any external influence on the nature, whether it's "destiny", or divine power. According to the Epicurean Lucretius (De Rerum Natura, II, line 180) the existence of evil was fatal to the supposition of the world was created by God:
Nequaquam nobis esse divinitus creatum
Naturam mundi, Quae tanta culpa prædita EST.
Giordano Bruno was God the immanent cause of all things, acting through an inner necessity, and produce the relations considered evil by humanity. Hobbes regarded God as merely a physical cause first, and the application of his theory of civil government in the world, defended the existence of evil by the mere assertion of absolute power with which it is due - a theory which is almost anything but a statement of materialist determinism in terms of social relations. United Spinoza spirit and matter in the notion of a single substance, which he attributes to both thought and extension; error and perfection are the necessary consequence of the order of the universe. Hegelian monism, which reproduces many of the ideas of Eckhart, and is broadly adopted by many different systems of recent origin, gives the wrong place in the unfolding of the Idea, in which both the origin and the inner reality of the universe are to be found. The evil is discord between what is temporary and what needs to be. Huxley was content to believe the ultimate causes of things are currently unknown and perhaps unknowable. Evil is to be known and fought in the concrete and detailed, but professed agnosticism, and named by Huxley refuses to entertain any question on the causes transcendent, and merely experimental facts. Haeckel advance a dogmatic materialism, in which the substance (ie material and strength) appears as the eternal and infinite base of all things. Professor Metchnikoff, on similar principles, places the cause of evil in "disharmony" that exist in nature, and which he thinks may have finally removed, the human race at least, in collaboration with anger that pessimistic arise, for the progress of science. Bourdeau said in express terms the futility of seeking a transcendent or supernatural origin for evil and the need to confine the access to natural causes, and determinable (Revue Philosophique, I, 1900).
The system recently built, or a method, called pragmatism, has this in common with the pessimism, which he considers evil as an inevitable part of reality that human experience which is actually identical to the truth and reality. The world is what we make, the damage tends to decrease with the growth of experience, and may finally disappear if on the other hand, it can always be the irreducible minimum of evil. The origin of evil is, as the origin of all things, inexplicable, it can not be installed in any design theory of the universe, simply because no theory is possible. "We can by no possibility understand the nature of the cosmic mind whose purpose is fully revealed by the strange mixture of good and evil found in the peculiarities of the real worlds - the design simple word, by itself has no consequences and explains nothing. "(James, Pragmatism, London, 1907. Cf. Schiller, Humanism, London 1907.) Nietzsche is wrong with being purely relative, and moral aspects at least, a transient and non-fundamental concept. With him, the humanity in its present form, is "the animal is not well adapted to its environment."