The Wise on Evil

The Buddha found the roots of evil in desire, which makes sense. If I don’t ever want anything I’ll never experience conflict. But this observation can be rendered in milder form as well. In an environment where resources are very ample and accessible and people are few in number, the sum total of evil is bound to be less than in a very complex and crowded environment where resources are limited and indeed artificially designed to extract effort to obtain. In a vast, rich society such as ours, no sooner does a baby arrive than some parents already begin to scheme to get it into an elite kindergarten when it’s old enough. Desire rises, waves of it tower up, and the whole civilization behaves like a vast, standing tsunami of desire, millions all yelling, me, me, me. Everything’s in conflict, from social items on my calendar, to getting a word in edgewise, and it just goes on.

In a way the Buddha’s is a fundamental insight because it anchors evil in the subjective experience and leaves out all detail. Neither free will, nor time, nor yet discernment of different kinds of goods are present here, and conflicts between them. The source of desire is left unmentioned. Socrates focus on ignorance, suggesting that whatever people do they view as good; evil deeds therefore arise because apparent good is chosen over real; here it is hard to find a place for the notion of a troubled conscience prospective or otherwise. Plotinus, for whom reality is an emanation from the Ultimate and thinning out with distance, as it were, the material realm is the lowest and least containing genuine being. Hence evil is linked to the material dimension. Augustine echoes this; evil is non-being or, better yet, a privation of being. Free will and knowledge converge in Ockham. Evil for him was failure to do what what we’re obliged to do. That failure is only possible if we know both, can distinguish between them, and are free to choose. But desire is also implicit in it; why would we avoid our obligation if avoiding were not more desirable.

All of these snippets throw varying amounts of light on a vast subject. I’m cribbing here from the Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion’s article on Evil—which doesn’t mention Aristotle or Aquinas. Among moderns it mentions Schelling, of whom I’ve read nothing, and Berdyaev, whom I’ve read very carefully. Berdyaev is a half-forgotten modern apostle of free will.

A distillation of the wise does produce an interestingly strong balsamic vinegar. Desire is rooted in matter most of the time or can be linked back to the presence of others when in manifests it unwholesome but mental forms like dominance and envy, to name two. But is it evil to desire wisdom? I suspect the Buddha might have thought so. Awareness is fundamental. Animals follow their desires without the least tinge of guilt. And an awareness of time is present in it—in that the greater good we are obliged to choose (Ockham) may lie as yet unborn and hidden by the future. Socrates touches upon the paradox of good—namely that once we know it is irresistible. And here concepts like Augustine’s come in handy because he suggests that knowledge is not quite enough if we are a kind of blend of being and not-yet being, a kind of ghost in the solid eternities of matter.