Why is the idea that evil is the absence of good more commonplace than the idea that good is the absence of evil? The latter seems way more intuitive to me.
Why is the idea that evil is the absence of good more commonplace than the idea that good is the absence of evil?
Because good = light and evil = dark, and dark is the absence of light
Did this understanding originate because ancient philosophers were unaware of the true structure of the universe, which is to say mostly dark.& empty?
>which is to say mostly dark.& empty?
If you look up at the sky you can clearly see that darkness is more present than light. They were aware of this too. Yet all the dark accomplishes is making what little light there is that much more beautiful.
Darkness is literally, mechanically, the absence of light. Light is a thing, darkness is merely what we call the absence of that thing. Same with cold. Cold is not a thing, it is merely what we call the absence of heat
I find it odd to talk about good and evil as if they were objective phenomena, and not "just" guidelines for individual action.
has to do with god, being good, wouldn't create evil bro. So augustine reasons that all existing must be good, evil is also a lack of existing, like a rotting apple is evil nomming away existence.
before christianity and neoplatonism etc the greeks didn't think of evil and good as being opposites, if uncle Nietzsche is right. its' a christian invention
I don't think you understand their arguments.
their? augustine? or the greeks? i didnt give a greek argument. You must think Augustine is theythem. Look up Augustine theocidy if you don't believe me.
Also if you mean that I think A. thinks there's two forces at work, good n evil, no, you're wrong. I think Augustine thinks evil is a privation of existence, a corruption.
anyway OP, its the christians. However they think evil works, it's a b***h to account for if you want to keep God in the story.
Here is a famous writer on the issue
>My friend, there are two patterns set up in reality. One is divine and supremely happy; the other has nothing of God in it, and is the pattern of the deepest unhappiness. This truth the evildoer does not see; blinded by folly and utter lack of understanding, he fails to perceive that the effect of his unjust practices is to make him grow more and more like the one, and less like the other. For this he pays the penalty of living the life that corresponds to the pattern he is coming to resemble. And if we tell him that, unless he is delivered from this ‘ability’ of his, when he dies the place that is pure of all evil will not receive him, that he will forever go on living in this world a life after his own likeness – a bad man tied to bad company.
Guess who wrote it?
Your Christian enemies or someone else?
ok your plato had an idea of opposition, good job.
OP's question was about the commonplace of evil as absence of good instead of the other way around. My answer to the good lad is: under the influence of grecko-christian thought, who insisted that creation=good, because god=good, because god.
Plato never thought this world had any holyness to it, like Augustine. Further the translators who made Plato say God weren't Greeks but deeply religious Arab mystics.
This is why you shouldn't read Nietzsche without a philosophical education or as anything more than mere polemicist.
>good is good
>bad is mixed (or lacking Good)
If your butcher cooms in your ground beef it's all qualitatively tainted and unfit for consumption.
First idea is optimistic, second pessimistic. The blackpill is bitter medicine.
Because evil is not self-sustaining. It is just more present to you.
By the way, distinctions like "blank is the absence of blank" only make sense from a cosmic perspective. Evil is still a force onto itself and something to be reckoned with in the temporal realm.
I still don't know why we decided that evil even exists. As far as I'm concerned, there is only good.
Because for any being, its destruction is an evil. It seems very intuitive to me.
WHAT DOES EVERYONE THINK ABOUT JPG RELATED?
HOW IQfy VIEW A HUMAN WHO DO EVIL FOR EVIL SAKE?
IS ANON ON JPG CORRECT OR NO?.
Read this thread here https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/41811126/#41811126
Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states:[1]
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
It is a philosophical razor that suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior.
Some of the oldest attributions of the idea date to the 18th century.[12] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote in the first entry of his influential epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774, first English translation 1779): "[...] Mißverständnisse und Trägheit machen vielleicht mehr Irrungen in der Welt als List und Bosheit. Wenigstens sind die beiden letzteren gewiß seltener." ("misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do. At any rate, the latter two are certainly rarer.") [13] Another variation appears in The Wheels of Chance (1896) by H.G. Wells:
There is very little deliberate wickedness in the world. The stupidity of our selfishness gives much the same results indeed, but in the ethical laboratory it shows a different nature.[14]
How IQfy feels about this?
Malice and human nature?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Can someone refute this razor right here?.
>There is very little deliberate wickedness in the world
Choosing not to do good is a deliberate wickedness. How many people choose not to do what is right out of fear, anger or resentment etc. There are different shades of evil obviously but very few people do bad things out of stupidity, it's almost always a choice you made if not in the moment then definitely at some point in your life.
>but very few people do bat things out of stupidity
>"Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states:[1]
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
It is a philosophical razor that suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior.
>"Some of the oldest attributions of the idea date to the 18th century.[12] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote in the first entry of his influential epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774, first English translation 1779): "[...] Mißverständnisse und Trägheit machen vielleicht mehr Irrungen in der Welt als List und Bosheit. Wenigstens sind die beiden letzteren gewiß seltener." ("misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do. At any rate, the latter two are certainly rarer.") [13]
And how you view an human being who do evil for evil sake?
Can be a lawyer or an officer etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
This anon not me posted this jpg do you agree or not?
Do you believe too that we're all born evil?.
Perfect world= forms
Illusory lower realm = material world
All evils are tied to the fleeting imperfections of the world which is transitory and fake due to the very structure of its existence as it lies outside the forms so it can not partake of them. That is Platonist thought.
without good how do you know evil is evil?so it would be amorality like calling a storm evil or a lion monster.
>I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt. Leibniz is particularly concerned to defend this absurdity, and he seeks to strengthen his position by using a palpable and paltry sophism. It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end.
Dr. Seuss (or Schopenhauer, I forget)
Because evil is in the last analysis self-contradictory.
Evil, to exist, needs good, but good doesn't need evil.
I am going to put some statements that i saw somewhere and see if you agree with them.
"That's the ultimate difference between Good and Evil that I was trying to point out originally: Evil is never done without the individual either attempting to gain something or gaining pleasure from it. There is a motivation external to Evil itself in either case. Only Good can lead you to do things which you neither believe will benefit you nor will be in any way enjoyable, so only good can be truly done for its own sake.
Socrates and Kant would agree with this i feel.
So where does neutrality or inaction fall into this spectrum of good and evil?
In the middle,in between....
Like the D&D alignment table.
Which by the way is where 99% of humans fit in.
Go read Berserk you fricking midwit. If you're serious with this post, you don't belong on the literature board. You can't just play word games and invert any concepts you want willy nilly like some carnival game in philosophy, the investigation and construction of ideas has meaning. The Good is positive, any conception of Evil as being the positive element at best results in a materialistic worldview which degrades the idea of positivity to a mere fancy and as such neither Evil nor Good have any real ground.
>Berserk
Berserk takes the 'beyond good and evil' thing to a hilarious extreme, wherein Griffith who transcends nominal ideas of evil transforms not just himself but the world into a higher stage of evolution and transcendence, while Guts who would be the nominal 'good' struggles with survival. Hardly a Christian theme and if anything very AntiChristian.
>a hilarious extreme
It just puts those ideas in a fantastical setting. It's ironic that "light gud dark bad" is the actual hilarious extreme, though it's so cliched it doesn't seem that way. Moral relativism is just the banal reality that only appears extreme through the lens of moral "objectivists" who purposefully paint it that way. It is antichristian in that sense as you point out
>actual liberator
Guts isn't the liberator
Griffith is freeing humanity from ignorance of the higher world and mortality. He is basically thrusting humanity into a higher stage of spiritual evolution whether they like it or not.
Guts is the 'things shouldn't change too much' group who is a foil to Griffith's ambition, the 'little guy' that gets walked over.
If anything Griffith is more akin to a mix of Shiva and Revelations Jesus viewed through an occult psychoanalytic lens.
>Guts isn't the liberator
Griffith transforms himself into a demiurgic god figure, ensaring and binding everyone to his reality in the guise of aiding them via a mass human sacrifice. Guts stands with humanity, the source of morality, against him. In no sense is Griffith liberating anyone unless he destroys the godhand, aka the embodiment of order, along with himself in the end. Guts (and the skull knight) battles for freedom against fate itself. He is the epitome of a liberator.
Refute this guy.....
Idea of Evil is literally humanities reflection though, it is canonically stated to be 'what humanity wants' as humanity lives in ignorance of it. Griffith basically said 'frick it' and made the hidden world revealed, which means humanity no longer needs to partake in a subconscious need for self oppression and ignorance.
>but human sacrifice
yeah that's supposed to be the edgy dichotomy, as Griffith who is in effect transcended the Berserk life-and-death dichotomy doesn't care for it because he knows what happens if men die anyway, and doesn't care for it.
Causality in this case is more akin to synchronicity and karma rather than determinism
These 2 paragraphs are where the 'genius' of Berserk involving Griffith are, as all mortals in berserk died and went to a shitty afterlife of their own making, that is causality, their religions are supposed to be cope, and Griffith is the only one doing anything about it.
Skull Knight isn't anti-Order in that sense, he has his own 'mysterious motifs' which are going to be left shrouded for 100 more chapters probably, plus he ended up getting causality'd into the grand scheme by stabbing Ganishka with his Behelit Sword.
IMO the Griffith hate train is vastly overrated as Miura's intent is very much in the Japanese manga style of grey morality, but done in a way that pushes boundaries and is inspired. The view of the world in Berserk is actually very akin to Buddhist view of Samsara (in the more direct meaning as 'confusion' where no one, even the gods are fully in control but delusions of complete control lead to partaking in the confusion).
which is also relevant to how humanity assumes it can shape the world, and how they wish to 'struggle' against causality even though it, as being capable of prediction is not supposed to imply an arbitrary structure but rather a 'higher truth' and understanding akin to dependent origination, wherein concepts like Birth are dependently originated upon Death and so on, with the mortals of humanity just being in denial. Of course there's a very metal undertone of everything being demons and sinners and all, and taking inspiration from Evil Dead everywhere.
>Causality in this case is more akin to synchronicity and karma rather than determinism
Those aren't mutually exclusive
>IMO the Griffith hate train is vastly overrated
He just isn't a heroic figure imo. Neither is guts. It's a matter of who people admire more, the misanthropic underdog protagonist or the diabolical cunning antagonist. IMO the wyald hate train is vastly overrated.
Read this chapter and this Berserk FAQ if you have answers.
http://skullknight.net/idea/
https://www.skullknight.net/forum/index.php?threads/berserk-mythbusters-answers-to-common-questions.15556/
https://readberserk.com/
You got it all wrong
Humanity all humans in this world created this god.
In Berserk Humanity is responsible for its own suffering
Jpg related by an anon who posted in 2013
>the idea of evil is a collective wish granter so to speak
>most humanity wants suffering and reasons for grief, getting caught up in their own master-slave morality
>Griffith wants wings to soar and transcend
>for some reason I keep getting recommended a shitty youtube video calling Griffith EVIL for that
oh the ironing
Today I learned Schopenhauer is a midwit.
>any conception of Evil as being the positive element at best results in a materialistic worldview which degrades the idea of positivity to a mere fancy
OP is wrong because it would hurt my feefees if good and bad were mere fancies.
>Go read Berserk
>calls op a midwit
lol
The world of Berserk is literally what OP wants. The creator of the universe is evil, he created Berserk-world as a hellscape to torture his puppets in, the ascension of man is about getting as far away from the origin point as possible (no, Griffith got closer, after death he'll be tortured to an even greater degree, he just gets a reprieve in life by providing the creator with more suffering).
you should write a book about this anon , you seem very smart.
Luckily I don't have to, there's already a manga that details what OP is asking about! They even made an anime and a few videogames based off of it.
Yeah Jojo's Bizzare Adventure is really good~
what's some good secondary lit on plotinus ?
Unity and coherence is fundamental. Good is defined by it, rather than the other way around as you can't really define evil without good, as there's no 'life' so to speak in such a dynamic, only confusion itself (which is the evil, and if confusion accurately defined itself it would solve itself thus no longer being confused). Evil stems from regression from this whole, but different places argue what exactly this regression is - the best perspective IMO being that all bad things are just confused fragments of good that need to be purified per each person
My proof? Look at the fat guy, he's laughing and so the whole statue is uplifting even though being fat would normally be problematic. The whole trumps confusion and it's consequences.
Are you fricking stupid? Stop asking stupid questions.
because good requires a conscious effort of empathy and self sacrifice.
evil can just flow naturally from egoism which in turn can flow naturally from self preservation.
think of a group of kids that has 1 bully amongst them... this one bully, for a myriad of reasons and most not even conscious, can single out another kid, mock and bully him and the group will probably join in or laugh along and most of them will do it out of a sense of self preservation, not wanting to be next. Some of these kids are even good kids normally but fear causes inaction and inaction allows evil to prosper.
tourist btw, dont hate on my brainlet take
>Why is the idea that evil is the absence of good more commonplace than the idea that good is the absence of evil?
Because this would require you to believe that the world is fundamentally evil and that the world's origin is thus evil, therefore the goal of philosophy would be getting as far away from the world's origin as possible. Western Philosophy descends, chiefly, from the works of Plato and Aristotle, both of whom were practitioners of an Indo-European religion. Indo-European religions posit that the world was created by a loving and benevolent deity and that this deity's family of deities watch over the world and maintain it. Thus, the world is fundamentally good and the goal of philosophy is to get closer to these loving deities.
With the Greek invasion of Israel and the ending of the israeli mass infant sacrifice various Gnostic philosophies arose which posited that Yahweh was the true deity, and that Zeus was merely an evil intermediary who was the creator of the material plane, hence why the Greeks were able to prevent the Chosen Tribe from enacting the commandments of Yahweh. Thus, the Gnostics argued that the material plane was evil because it was actually ruled over by Zeus and his family, while the israeli deity was the REAL deity. So, you wanted to get away from Zeus and closer to Yahweh.
This idea would go on to influence Christianity, and when they aren't trying to use Hellenistic thought as a tool of obscurantism many Christians will happily profess what you're suggesting (the idea that the world is evil and that it's origin is fundamentally evil as well), they just don't have the Gnostic dualism so they just believe that Yahweh is evil.
Because like Schopenhauer said, lack of pain leads to boredom. So "good" must be a positive experience, not just lack of evil or boredom
Innocence is the absence of evil. Evil serves good because it tests and strengthens it. Yet evil is weak so it needs the complete absence of good to prevail otherwise it will crumble immediately.
>Why is the idea that evil is the absence of good more commonplace than the idea that good is the absence of evil?
Because the former disposes toward abandoning responsibility for the overprivation of good, whilst the latter merely implies the nonbeing of evil.
I dont fricking know; have you tried reading them, you dickhead?