Quote Originally Posted by Aethir X View Post
Evil is the deprivation of a due good. That is the purest definition, thousands of years old, tried and true. Basically a metaphysical good that should be there which is not, because of the ability and potentiality in the will to choose a lesser good over the higher good, which in turn evil is achieved. But evil has no substance per se, it is not a thing, it has no essence, meaning THAT it is or WHAT it is, it is not something I can touch or pick up or see, it is always a deprivation in an act that should be a higher good. I can touch the dagger which stabs the man who is committing murder, but the dagger itself is not evil, nor is the body of the man evil, but it is the act itself of the man which is deprived of respecting another's life which is the root of the evil, hence the deprivation of him respecting that man's right to live.

The Cartesian understanding of evil, Kant, Hume, Locke, Descartes, is all very new, this whole idea that if I believe something is true, it is true, if I believe it is evil, it is evil, cogito ergo sum if you will. This is an entirely false view of reality. It goes against the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction is that something cannot both be and not be in the same repsect and in the same manner at the same time in its essence. 2+2 cannot ever equal 3 or 5 the same time it equals 4, if you say it does, you are giving 2 a different value than what it is in its essence, in its very being, the grouping of one and one, if you say it is something else you are living a false reality of warped reasoning. Same goes with let's say a red rose, the rose is always red, but if you say it's black that doesn't mean it's black, it is just that you have labeled it as such and tried to apply your own false perception of the essence of the thing to its essence, when in reality its essence is in the thing itself and cannot change, so even though you call it black, it will always be red. This is the problem with people who say whatever they believe is true is true, that is never the case unless their belief is TRULY in line with the truth. And you cannot know the truth unless you embrace the truth, which is an entire discussion on its own.

Most people don't know these simple philosophical arguments because they have never studied scholastic philosophy or ancient philosophy which is based on knowledge through the senses and metaphysical immaterial realities dealing with the forms, essences, phantasms, goodness, being, oneness, true and their correlations which each other. The "enlightenment" philosophers failed to make these fundamental principles apparent, which is why their systems are so thoroughly entrenched in our society, it caters to the ego instead of what is really the truth in reality.

I hope this helps some people understand just a little why most people's view of reality is wrong. This whole dichotomy of moral relativism all started with the Protestant revolt and the Enlightenment philosophers. I am a traditional Catholic, and have studied master's level philosophy and theology in seminaries, monasteries and universities across the U.S., and I don't need to use scripture to prove what evil is, which is kinda cool, it is not the job of scripture to tell us what evil is per se, although it does, but it is philosophy which is best in order to understand it in a reasonable debate.
I am so happy that you wrote this. I mostly agree with you.

I do think as believers our world view on this has to go back to God. We walk a fine line if we try to define evil apart from good and we open the door for the relativism. Nowhere else, except through the accounts written in scripture do we get a definitive understanding of all parts our nature. We don't get the truths like proverbs, denouncing our most righteous acts or Christ stating that there is none who is good save for one. These are very important grounds to be laid in the definition as they put everything in our current world into perspective as we can understand evil ONLY in light of God who is good. I would say this is what is demonstrated in the Eden account. Only in the presence and under the law of God were men able to understand evil.

Also, moral relativism was big before the Reformation. I can't give Luther that much credit because all he did was set the stage for a greater understanding of grace as taught in scripture. In fact the reformation was started by people who wanted to remove the hierarchical relativism and simply say "hey, we are ALL evil and must have grace in order to commune with God". I would argue that the reason you didn't see more of it was that the church was so dominant. The evidence is in how quickly the reformation took hold demonstrates something that was there under the surface for a long time. The Pope ran the show and nobody would want to threaten his authority because you could be excommunicated and this had drastic results in most agrarian societies. It was a living death sentence (case in point, Luther).

The greek and roman pantheon was a demonstration of this relativism. A god who would punish you for this act, and another god who would encourage you toward this act, therefore in some societies god A was more popular than god B. Its dichotomy is even demonstrated in the bible from the first century. In studying the relationships between Paul and Peter and the orthodox Jewish Christians and the gentile Christians this was one of the issues they had. The orthodox jewish christians wanted the gentiles to conform to their traditions yet the Pauline churches did not need to and this caused some strife. The jewish tradition was completely different from what would form itself into the Catholic church (by catholic, i mean christian). So even in that since, we still have the same separation today. This is all budding from the difference in morality between the Jews and the Gentiles who would both become followers in Christ.

Now I would have to agree that the age of Enlightenment did increase the inward focus on good vs evil, only aiding in turning ridiculous people into even more ridiculous people. but I think we could look at this as a compiled theory structure and see that its mostly the same thing that happens on this forum. The people who said something that seemed popular at the time, became the foundation for the next generations of thought, no matter how wrong they were. And much like the scientific, religious, and government communities of our world today, changing from the popular thought is met with much grief. It is much simpler for people to just jump on the bandwagon.