For Evil’s Sake Essay
Introduction
Since the beginning of time people used to divide good things from bad ones. We lift up our heroes and banish the villains, glorifying the goodness and punishing the evil. Humans like to standardize and judge products, acts, and other people, prescribing them different intrinsic qualities based on their extrinsic manifestations. When people speak about evil they often mention the worst deeds a being may commit like murders, rapes, genocides, tortures, treasons, wars, and much more. It’s reasonable to categorize those acts as bad ones. Based on this, many people truly believe that evil exists. However, the question of evil isn’t that straight forward as it seems to be. Daniel Defoe said that “[n]o man commits evil for the sake of it; even the Devil himself has some farther design in sinning, than barely the wicked part of it.” (Defoe, Daniel). Dante went even further and stated that people do everything because of love. “From this, then, thou canst understand that love must be the seed in you of every virtue, and every deed that merits punishment” (Alighieri, Dante). Although at first it’s might be tough to agree with, it’s right. People never commit evil intentionally.
Socrates' and Plato's argunents
Is it true that all mentally healthy people want to live a better live? Does it mean that they will intentionally make evil things? In Plato’s famous dialogue “Apology” Socrates was trialed for intentionally corrupting the youth. In his defense he argued that “nobody wishes to be harmed rather that benefited by those around him.” He also stated that it is better to live among good citizens because bad people do bad to people around them, whereas good people do good. “What’s that, Meletus?” claimed Socrates to his prosecutor “Are you so much wiser at your age than I at mine, that you know bad people do something bad to whoever’s closest to them at the given moment, and good people something good? Am I, by contrast, so very ignorant that I don’t know even this: that if I do something bad to an associate, I risk getting back something bad from him in return? And is the result, as you claim, that I do so very bad thing intentionally?” Later he concludes that he wasn’t doing any harm intentionally, in fact he argued that he was actually doing a good thing (Plato). Although Socrates speech was about his specific trial, the idea is very generic. People don’t want to live in a bad society because it makes their life bad as well, hence they don’t intentionally make any harm to the society they live in for the sake of making harm. They either do bad things unintentionally and need to be instructed; or they in fact believe that they’re doing good.
Christianity
Christian religion consider sin as a lie that was brought to people by Devil. “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil” (Bible. “Genesis”). Serpent here represents the Devil himself who deceives Eve so she believes his lie and eats the forbidden fruit, thereby disobeying the God. She does so, however, her point was not to disobey, more like to try something new and get new powers, which was the same with Satan when he wanted to be like God but was overthrown to hell instead. Later God founds out people’s disobedience and banishes them from Eden. Expelled from God’s presence people got more vulnerable to Devil’s lie and sin. Notwithstanding the fact of disobedience, God still loved people and wanted the best for them so He sent Jesus, His son who at the same time was the God himself, to save them. However, as every transitional figure, Jesus was not accepted in the society and was sent to death. Hanging on the cross, beaten and exhausted he asks the God “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Bible. “Luke”). It shows that Jesus didn’t blame the people, hence He knew that they weren’t evil. They just didn’t know what they were doing, confusing good with bad.
Goebbels
“The world that comes after the [defeat of] Führer and national socialism is not any longer worth living in and therefore I took the children with me, for they are too good for the life that would follow, and a merciful God will understand me when I will give them the salvation” wrote Magda Goebbels in her farewell letter to her son Harald who was in POW camp in North Africa (Magda Goebbels). She was so confident in Nazi ideology that she killed her own children. After the injection of morphine, she gave them cyanide. Although it is a terrifying idea, she didn’t do it because she was evil. Magda truly believed that she was doing it for the best. Another example of the believe that a horrible act will serve a good purpose is Adolf Hitler himself. He was so certain in his beliefs about Semitic conspiracy and superiority of German race that started the campaign which later was called The Holocaust. It was the real genocide of 6 million Jewish people. People were killed in mass shootings and deported from the ghettos in sealed freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, they were killed in gas chambers. Although, Hitler didn’t think about the murders this way. Perhaps he knew that killing innocent people is bad, however the political situation in Germany literally promoted the rise of antisemitism. Many Germans didn’t accept their loss in the war, which created the stab-in-the-back myth, the idea about Jewish and communist betrayal of Germany. Hitler believed that Marxism was a Jewish doctrine and Jews had invented communism in order to destroy Germany. His goal was not the evil; what he actually wanted to accomplish was the lebensraum: completely protected from Jewish conspiracy living space for German people (The Holocaust). Although it ended tragically and should never happen again, Hitler wasn’t evil. Rather he was deceived.
Following the Leader
People tend to follow the commands. Hannah Arendt, philosopher and political theorist, introduced the idea about banality of evil. In her book about Adolf Eichmann, who was Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, she wrote that “Eichmann was not a fanatic or sociopath, but an extremely average person who relied on cliché defenses rather than thinking for himself and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology. Banality, in this sense, is not that Eichmann's actions were ordinary, or that there is a potential Eichmann in all of us, but that his actions were motivated by a sort of stupidity which was wholly unexceptional” (Eichmann in Jerusalem). The similar pattern of behavior was studied by researchers in Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures. “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” asked Stanley Milgram, conductor of the experiment. In the study people were asked to give electric shocks to the fake participant. The shock intensity varied from light to very severe and deadly. “If at any time the teacher indicated a desire to halt the experiment, the experimenter was instructed to give specific verbal prods. If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.” 450-volt is deadly. (Milgram Experiment). The research shown that people tend to obey the commands made by authority and don’t take personal responsibility for their acts. These results prove that people are easily manipulated.
Conclusion
Evil by its very nature is nothing more than a weapon that as any means needs the presence of a certain guiding purpose which also serves as its justification. The fact that it itself needs to be justified makes it impossible to be the essence of anything. Evil is never made for the sake of it. Every evil act is made only because of ignorance and blind obedience or confusing good with bad. Hence, the only way to defeat the evil is knowledge and self-discipline. If people will be completely aware of what they’re doing and take all responsibility for their acts they will make less harm.