Evil Notes

I've been reading Evil in Modern Thought by Susan Neiman.

Some categories, as defined by Neiman:

• Natural Evil - when bad things happen to people. Earthquakes, fires, floods and plagues.
  
  
• Moral Evil - when people do bad things. Crime, abuse, neglect.
  
  
• Metaphysical Evil - The gap between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. The ways in which reality systematically fails to conform to rational values.

In Neiman's account, the Englightenment begins with the human attempt to reconcile the Lisbon earthquake with faith in a benevolent reality. To do her subtle argument great violence, let's say that the Lisbon leads to rejection of the category "natural evil." Destruction wrought by the random and indifferent forces of nature was cabined off from discussion of evil. Human technology could forestall some evils, and with time would ward off more. If contingency should overwhelm our precautions, if nature should cause destruction which we were capable of warding off, then there would be a political question to be resolved, not a metaphysical one. Katrina reveals that governments should build strong levees, draft reasonable evacuation plans, and mobilize strong relief efforts - not that the universe is fundamentally disordered by inflicting suffering upon the innocent.

It's a good book, a great discussion, I recommend it highly. And now I'd like to ignore it completely. Or, to put it another way - I'd like to proceed with some thoughts. Please consider my debt acknowledged in general for I may fail to notice it in the particular, and in no case does a statement necessarily reflect one made by or amenable to Neiman.

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An evil outcome. "That should not have happened to you."

An evil action. "You should not have done that."

An evil essence. "That is not how things should be."

How is evil recognized? Is there an a priori definition of what constitutes an evil?

There isn't. Hence the seduction of relativism. The definition of "evil" relies upon intuitive labels. The state murders its citizens if it determines them guilty of crime. I may consider this justice. You may consider it an abomination. In all likelihood, we reach our initial stance on this issue intuitively. There may be moral propositions which attract a high degree of consensus - "Jews should not be wiped off the face of the earth." But, sadly, I can think of no moral proposition so outre that it has no proponents. And I'm sure if we found such a proposition, its identification alone would cause supporters to gravitate towards it.

None of this is to say that moral propositions can only be considered through intuition. Just because a moral proposition is formulated intuitively, does not mean it is determined by intuition. Moral argument is possible. But it can be very difficult.

Moral persuasion requires justification by alien standards. Moral tolerance requires irresolute moral predicates.

It is often argued that evils cannot be quantified. Toting up body counts or assigning utility values to human suffering and drawing assessments that "this is more evil than that" cannot be done. Such an outlook requires adoption of a moral predicate itself. Obviously it can be done, and is in fact done by folks of a utilitarian bent. In high school I remember encountering a philosophy textbook that refuted the utilitarian argument in something like the following terms:

Imagine a "torture show," in which an individual was subjected to physical torture for the pleasure of a large viewing audience. The small gain in pleasure experienced by millions of viewers may exceed the great loss in pleasure suffered by the victim of torture. But not even utilitarians defend such a scenario.

That was back in the days before Fear Factor. I consider it a "textbook" example (pardon the pun) against resorting to the indefensible imaginary. It is difficult to imagine any behavior which humans have not or will not engage in. It is impossible to imagine any which some will not defend.

These are notes, not a thesis... so some fragments:

• What is suffering? Incomplete destruction.
  
  
• Are aesthetics and morals flip sides of the same coin? Is an aesthetic failure an act of flawed creation while moral failure is an act of flawed destruction?
  
  
• If evil is defined in terms of destructions - lives, joys, objects which should not have been destroyed - is every moral proposition a theodicy of the status quo?
  
  
• Intent - the desire to create an outcome. Motive - the desire to obtain an outcome. Culpability - a legal term of art expressing a variable mental state relative to a given act.
  

Let's elaborate upon that last one for a moment. This distinction has been tormenting me lately, but every time I seem to seize hold of it, it evaporates in my hands.

The law defines as a crime as the commission of a prohibited act (actus reus) with a culpable mental state (mens rea). The Model Penal Code identifies four relevant mental states - purpose, knowledge, recklessness, and neglect. Any legislative definition of a crime should state with specificity which degree of culpable mental states are required to render the prohibited act criminal. There are some rules of construction for determining relevant mental states when the legislative text is silent. A special category of legal wrongs - termed "violations" - are ascribed without reference to any mental state. There's some great potential for mischief in that category, but that's discussion for another time.

It's a commonplace among lawyers that "motive is often confused with intent" by lay people. Motive is not used by the law to determine criminality - rather, it is offered as evidence to establish the existence of a culpable mental state. If I stand to inherit $20 million upon your death, that fact supports the inference that I purposely caused your death. My motive of self-enrichment reinforces the conclusion that I intended to murder. If I shot my best friend under the overpass, my lack of motive may support the inference that I neglectfully caused his death.

Once this legal distinction has been grasped, lawyers are free to snicker at the moral simpletons who ascribe moral value directly to motives. You may find it more abominable that a killer murdered to gratify abnormal sexual lust than that another murdered to acquire financial gain. But the lawyer would reduce both motives to identical significance - they establish that the actions were intended to kill and thus place both murderers in the same category of culpability.

Of course, the law often retains the same categories it licenses its practitioners to demean. Motive does acquire legal significance within the context of "justification and excuse" - moral calculations that are performed subsequent to the determination of criminal guilt. Under the law you may have purposely killed your wife's lover, but your motive of blind rage may yet exonerate you. You may have intended the death of the mugger, but your motive of self-defense may justify it. Your motive doesn't abolish the criminality of your act, but may excuse or justify it.