Dialectic Two-Step – Is There No Good Without Evil?

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. – Octavio Paz  

Question: Are Good and Bad separate things? Is it true that there is no good without evil?

Response: No good without evil? Good and the absence of good (evil?) are opposites on a continuum. I think we need to have the complete picture of good and evil to clearly see their relationship.

Goodness and evil come in shades. This is captured in language as relative superlatives; good, better, and best.  The nature of internet comment threads show that good is something that we each perceive uniquely.   It seems obvious that Charles Mason and Jesus would have very different opinions on what good is and where actions might fall on the spectrum.

Everyday experience tells us that goodness is a matter of perspective. Take as an example a situation with three people; a bystander and two people in an argument.  One of the quarrelers makes a particularly insulting remark. The other, angered, strikes out and causes physical harm.

The bystander may feel that while both parties wronged the other – i.e. they were both low on the good index – one of them did more wrong (or evil). At the same time, each feels they were justified in their actions and don’t see themselves as evil at all.  Each person has a very different perspective on what happened.

I’m sure you can recall similar experiences in your life where you may have been in one or more of these roles. Recall your inner experience in the conflict and how the others obviously felt different.  Each person’s view of the good and evil in a situation is going to differ.   Conflict is the function of disparate moral views, not just a binary disparity (good OR evil), but a disparity along a spectrum.

Good and evil are entirely subjective. The terms good and evil describe our inner experience in relationship to our perceptions. They do not exist outside of our inner experience.

There is of course a desire to externalize good and evil. This is a very good thing.  We can and do agree on shared values.  These values allow us to move beyond the fear and distrust that unbridled lust, anger, and aggression breeds. These shared values form the basis of our social contract.

To summarize, here are three important points on good and evil:

First the ideas of good and evil are products of the minds effort to make sense of experience. They do not exist outside the mind.Second as mental formations good and evil are relative to each other.  They are two ends of a linguistic continuum.Finally, external notions of good and evil are linguistic. They are shared values that offer mutual benefit to a community of individuals.  But, they do not exist outside of the realm of the mind.

So, yes I do believe that good cannot exist without evil. To use Thich Nhat Hanh’s language, good is interdependent with evil.

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