No Such Thing As Good and Evil? – Dialectic Two Step

Estimated reading time: 5 minute(s)

Is There No Such Thing As Good and Evil?

Questions: Why do some people (Buddhists?) believe evil does not exist??

Good and evil exist, in the same way that everything else exists. You will find objections to different views on good and evil. For instance, many people will balk at the claim that there is absolute good and absolute evil.

Take killing as an example. Is killing an absolute evil? If you eat meat, are you absolutely evil? If you hunt, are you absolutely evil? Can you adjust your definition of killing to differentiate between good killing or bad killing? Sure, but you will always be tinkering.

You have to cede the point that some types of killing are worse than others. Killing a human child is extremely evil from the perspective of a parent. But from the perspective of a fly or a bacterium it’s great news. It’s a new meal.

Morality is always subjective in that it depends on your perspective. We can certainly agree that some things are better or worse than other things, but there is no perspective available to any of us from which things are black and white.

Buddhists do speak of transcending good and evil, but this is in the context of our own actions, not from the perspective of assigning objective moral judgement.

The reasons we adopt a moral approach to living, is fundamentally self interest. Our experience is shaped – in part – by the consequences of our own actions. For this reason we are constantly struggling to define a rubric for acting morally. The moral landscape of our lives is confusing and always shifting.

The Buddha offered a way to transcend that struggle, by correcting our delusions about who we are as moral agents.

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

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