Aerosol spray, ink and brush on canvas. OST: PUTRID PILE "Food For The Maggots" [link]

The concept of evil has been assigned many layers of meaning over the course of centuries. However, it begs the question: How is ‘evil’ stopped when definitions vary from it being non-existent according to Machiavellian philosophy to the real fear conveyed by moralists? Attempts to define good and evil in Western philosophy has haunted writers for centuries which has developed profoundly differing views in what is and is not evil.

A Classical Greek philosopher, Plato is among the most influential philosophical thinkers. In The Republic, Plato states that what is not good for the cultivation of the soul is resultantly evil. Therefore, Plato spends much of his reflection on exploring the good in society in order to confirm what is evil. In The Republic, Plato presents a tripartite account of the soul. He considers the souls appetites (passions, emotions) to have the least ethical value. Our selfish and lustful urges are one form of evil because they compromise our rational and good nature. As a result, the rational portion of the soul – or the ‘good’ – should take precedence over the irrational and evil. In order to be of good character, the rational part of our soul needs to embody four key virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. Any deviation from these virtues, in the form of behaviors such as recklessness, cowardice, excess, and prejudice, is viewed to be ‘evil.’ Unlike other Western philosophers, Plato did not assume that humans were inherently good or evil. We share elements of both. It is a matter of cultivating our soul to control our evils in a proper and healthy manner that makes us good.

A trend concerning the concept of evil in Western philosophy is the belief that unfettered human freedom is a gateway to evil itself. English philosopher, John Stuart Mill warns that the greatest evil is not within the individual, but collectively in any society. Understanding good and evil are only as legitimate as the society that experiences and defines them. In his text On Liberty, Mills warned that democracy could lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’ where the minority’s culture and views would be crushed by the majority. For Mills, this is evil in its purest form because it’s horrifying in its result and for its flagrant hypocrisy under the banner of democracy. As a result, Mill champions that the only freedom worth having the name is “that of pursuing our own good so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.” The sole end of any form of interference is to prevent harm to others – otherwise known as the harm principle. Any violation of this Harm Principle is evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche shook the attitudes of the Western philosophers towards evil up again by challenging notions of right and wrong. Morality, he asserted, was a defense mechanism for the weak. In the whole, many of these ideas of what it is to be ‘good’ are life-denying, while ‘evil’ behavior is life-affirming. For example, wealth and societal inequality is viewed as a form of evil in popular imagination. Yet, who is to deny that inequality is not a natural part of all biospheres, whether in all living and non-living entities? What is viewed as evil in Western philosophy, according to Nietzsche, is often amorally natural. Our system of ‘slave morality’ has concretized a particular idea of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that Western philosophers have accepted as the base of their philosophy. Nietzsche asserted that teal philosophical courage requires us to challenge the foundations of what ‘good’ and ‘evil.’