However, this theory (which describes evil as an absence of the good, and which is known as the privation theory of evil) doesn't seem to recognize that there is something active in evil, and that evil is something embodied, expressed, intended, or committed by a moral agent. Evil may therefore have some embodiedness, expressivity, intentionality, or capability of being performed or committed.
To say that evil is the absence of good is like saying that hate is the absence of love or despair is the absence of hope. However, some people may be unloving without being hateful, and some people may be unhopeful without being despairing. Some people may be unloving by being indifferent, just as some things (like apples, oranges, or tomatoes) may be lacking in goodness by being indifferent. It also seems that some people or things may be neither good nor evil, neither loving nor hateful, neither true nor false, neither right nor wrong. So the absence of one doesn't mean the presence of the other (the absence of goodness doesn't mean the presence of evil, the absence of love doesn't mean the presence of hate, and so on).
If evil were not something done by a moral agent or the evildoer had no moral agency, then we couldn't hold them morally responsible for the evil acts they committed.
So-called "natural evils" (like earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and diseases) are therefore misnamed. They may properly be called natural catastrophes, calamities, or disasters, but they're not properly moral evils. They lack intentionality, and they have no moral dimensions in themselves, unless they're caused by someone or something evil. Of course, they may have tragic and devastating consequences for their victims, but that doesn't make them morally evil, unless their causes can be traced to moral agents who can rightly be held responsible for them.
Furthermore, all evils are moral evils. Evil is a moral category. There are no "natural evils," properly speaking. Describing natural events like hurricanes and earthquakes as disasters or misfortunes rather than evils isn't to try to reduce evil to disaster or misfortune, it's rather to distinguish between them. To describe natural events as natural evils may be to make a kind of category-mistake or to engage in a kind of naturalistic fallacy.
The intentionality of evil consists in its being directed at persons or things, and in its being expressed in an agent's intentional states. Thus, it may be expressed in an agent's motives, desires, attitudes, actions, and the consequences of their actions.
An agent may have an intention to do evil and then actually do evil, but they may also have an intention to do evil and then do nothing. They may also do evil without having had a prior intention to do so. So the intentionality of evil isn't always expressed as intentionally evil actions. It may also be expressed as intentional states of mind (such as desires, attitudes, purposes, and goals) that are evil.
Another way of describing the intentionality of evil may be to say that evil is willful or has a volitional character. Malevolence is involved in evil. This isn't to say that the evildoer always has some clearly defined goal toward which they are aiming or some clearly defined effect they intend to produce by their actions. But bad will (the will to do evil), as well as evil motives and intentions, and the lack of concern and empathy for others, are integral to acts of evil.
This also isn't to say that evil is some kind of malevolent force that's engaged in a struggle with the forces of good or that there's some kind of Manichean struggle between good and evil that takes place in humanity and throughout the universe.
But there couldn't be an "evil genius" (or for that matter, a criminal mastermind) anywhere in the world unless evil had a volitional or intentional character.
For something to be evil is much worse than for it to be wrong. Wrong actions may not be evil, but evil actions are always wrong, and not merely wrong, but extremely or egregiously beyond the limits of morally acceptable behavior. Indeed, evil actions are so beyond the limits of morally acceptable behavior that the evildoer may seem to have ignored, subverted, rejected, or abandoned any accepted standards of right and wrong.
Thus, it would be very callous and insensitive to say merely that "It was wrong for Robespierre to have sent thousands of innocent people to the guillotine," as if he merely made a mistake or tactical error, rather than "It was evil for Robespierre to have sent thousands of innocent people to the guillotine," recognizing his true moral depravity and culpability.
Kant (1793) says that a person who is evil not only performs evil actions, but also performs actions with the conscious knowledge that they are evil and does so on the basis of evil principles. The capacity for evil may then be determined by weakness of the will to follow generally accepted moral principles, as well as by the propensity to mix immoral motives or values with moral motives or values, and the propensity to adopt evil principles.1
Kant, in discussing the origin of evil in human nature, says that we may originally be innocent and without any predisposition toward evil. However, the predisposition toward the good may be corrupted by the adoption of evil maxims or principles. There may be some hope of moral improvement for us, however, if despite having been corrupted, we still have some good will.
Claudia Card (2002) describes evils as "foreseeable intolerable harms caused by culpable wrongdoing."2 Thus, evils have two basic components: (intolerable) harm and (culpable) wrongdoing, neither of which is reducible to the other.3 The severity of the harm and the magnitude of the wrongdoing may determine the degree to which someone or something is evil. Culpability may take the form of intending to cause intolerable harm, being willing to cause harm in the course of pursuing some otherwise acceptable aim, or failing to attend to the risks involved in a particular action or mode of conduct.4 Culpability may also take the form of intentional ignorance or disregard of the possible effects of a particular mode of conduct.
Marcus Singer (2004) argues that evil acts are so horrendously bad or immoral that no ordinary decent human being could conceive of themselves as doing them. Those persons who knowingly perform or order such acts are evil, as well as those who remain indifferent to such acts when they are performed by others, and who take no action when something could be done to stop or prevent them.5
Singer also says that evil acts arise from evil motives or intentions.6 Thus, the intention to deliberately inflict unnecessary pain or suffering on others is evil. Acts of wanton cruelty, willful infliction of pain or suffering on sentient beings, and cruelty inflicted because the perpetrator enjoys inflicting it, are evil. And those who engage in a pattern of such conduct are evil.7
The term "evil," according to Singer, may be applied not only to persons, intentions, motives, and conduct, but also to institutions, practices, arrangements, agencies, endeavors, and programs.8 The nature of the evil act may be determined by (1) whether the evildoer knows it to be evil and does it because it is evil, (2) whether the evildoer knows it to be evil and doesn't care that it is evil, (3) whether the evildoer judges it to be evil when it is inflicted on themselves or people whom they care about, but not when it is inflicted on others or people whom they don't care about, (4) whether the evildoer knows it to be evil, but does it anyway for the sake of convenience or expediency, (5) whether the evildoer knows it to be evil but considers it to be for the sake of some greater good, and (6) whether the evildoer doesn't believe it to be evil, but in fact believes it to be good. It may be difficult in practice to determine which of these motives predominate in a given evil act.9
Literary personifications of evil include Dante's Satan, Milton's Lucifer, Goethe's Mephistopheles, Shakespeare's Iago, Hawthorne's Chillingworth, Melville's Ahab, Dickens's Uriah Heep, Stoker's Dracula, Stevenson's Mr. Hyde, and Wilde's Dorian Gray. Some of the traits shared by some of these characters include their deviousness, dishonesty, unscrupulousness, predatoriness, treachery, mercilessness, cruelty, and thirst for vengeance or retribution. Perhaps their most evil traits may also include their enjoyment of their immoral or criminal behavior and their lack of conscience or remorse. Thus, evil may be characterized by a focal cluster or generalized constellation of traits.
FOOTNOTES
1Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book One, "Concerning the Indwelling of the Evil Principle with the Good, or, on the Radical Evil in Human Nature" [1793], translated by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, online at
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/religion/religion-within-reason.htm
2Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 3.
3Ibid., p. 4.
4Ibid., p. 20.
5Marcus G. Singer, "The Concept of Evil,"in Philosophy, Vol. 79, No. 308 (April 2004), p. 196.
6Ibid., p. 196.
7Ibid., pp. 197-198.
8Ibid., pp. 189-190.
9Ibid., pp. 205-206.
OTHER RESOURCES
Augustine, The Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding (Hyde Park: New City Press, 1997).
