Lawrence Upton wrote:
> From: "domfox" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 19 December 2001 08:24
>
> Much of this assumes that there is such a thing as "evil"
>
> and to interpret it we need to know what is meant by "evil" in a particular
> case
>
> It is entirely unclear to me what Dominic means when he says "evil"
>
> I think that there is more likely to be a consensus over the meaning of
> "stupid", but "evil and stupid" is worrying
>
> L
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On Friday evening, on the way to the theater with the friend who told me about
Second Stage ~Metamorphoses,~ I repeated what I think I may have posted here:
that I'm discovering I may have more than a touch of the ~forensic pathologist~
to my character, and that I find myself fascinated/compelled to investigate the
machinations of evil, its structures, how it "works." ("Evil", a word I use[d]
consciously and mischievously, as I know most liberal Americans are quite irked
by George Bush's use of the word. And more dissonant, too, when used between
gay men: gay men are especially touchy about the word because of Vatican's
proclamation that homosexual is "instrinsically evil"/"disordered".) I feel
the word "evil" does legitimately signify, and that the consensus (Kant, etc.)
of "authoritative" definition is:
Good is wishing the best for someone else
Evil is to will someone else harm
Where this is upsetting for us to hear is that, even with Bush and September
11th, we want to believe that what, if anything, establishes the right/wrong
good/bad of something is its ~externals.~ Intentionality goes back to "the
ghost in the machine" and it's so difficult for us to conjecture about others'
motivations, since we can't see into their "hearts." Philosophy's consensus
that the criteria for good and bad are the inner ~will~ of the protagonist is
also disturbing to us because it leads into "good deeds" with bad motivations:
seduction, entrapment, charity out of publicity-seeking, . . . The airplanes of
September 11th become "evil" because it was a really really big horrible
killing mess that causes trouble for everybody. (It's only mediatization and
distance that allows anyone to question otherwise: in person, down-wind, right
there, it's a big stinking nauseating ghastly mess that one cannot help
reacting except with the instinctive revulsion that stench triggers.) The
airplane of October 12th, the American Airlines crash into the New York City
burough, is not something Bush or any of us can speak of as "evil" because we
distinguish between destruction resulting from an act of ~will~ and destruction
resulting from accident, chance or nature.
Part of the problem, in English, even in the communication of the Vatican about
sex (homosexuality, isn't forgotten, was not any more "evil" in that original
1960s proclamation than birth control, The Pill),---
is that we have so many gradations and nuances, synonyms, for the bad: evil,
terrible, . . . (and to quote MSWord Thesaurus: wicked, foul, malevolent, sin,
iniquity, vice, immoral . . .
Where we seem to get uncomfortable (?) is that "evil" is reserved as a sort of
worse-than-worst superlative.
In a language where these confusing nuances hadn't branch off (in English,
branching off mainly because English is a composite language, and the different
words are different words for the same thing but from different source
tongues), like Latin, "bonum"/"malum" is a much simpler
differentiation/dichotomy, and we might ~agree~ that a "malum" is unpleasant,
unproductive, undesireable, or misrouting, where we want to protest if that
"malum" is translated and re-cast as evil, sin, etc.
Communication around these things might work better in Baby Talk: "ba-ba".
It's ba-ba (short vowel "a"). Ba-ba poo-poo. Ba-ba fall-boom. Ba-ba GET UP!
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