EVIL
Malice
Wickedness
Deception
Destruction
Cruelty
Covetousness
Corruption
Collusion
Perversity
Darkness
Coercion
Inequity
Natural Evil
Moral Evil
Evil Spirit
Sin
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The Dhammapada.
"The wrong done by oneself
Is born of oneself, is produced in oneself.
It grinds one deficient in wisdom
As a diamond grinds a rock-gem." [v. 161]1a
"Life is easily lived
By a shameless one,
A disparager, crafty as a crow,
An obtruder, impudent and corrupt."[v. 244]1b
"The one who speaks lies,
goes to hell . . . " [v. 306]1c
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Mencius.
"When Humanity and Duty are blocked up
humans are fed to animals. And pretty soon humans will be
feeding on humans." [VI.9]1a
" . . . There's only one way
to know if people are good or evil: look at the choices
they make. . . " [XI.14]1b
"Encouraging a sovereign's
evil is nothing compared to the high crime of collusion in a
sovereign's evil. The high ministers of today
are all colluding in their sovereign's evil. That's why I
say: The high ministers of today are offenders against our
august lords." [XII.7]1c
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Republic.
" . . . [U]nderstanding
. . . is undoubtedly a property of something which is more divine: it never loses its power, and it
is useful and beneficial, or useless and harmful, depending on its
orientation. For example, surely you've noticed how
the petty minds of those who are acknowledged to be bad, but
clever, are sharp-eyed and perceptive enough to gain insights into matters they direct their attention towards. It's not as if they weren't sharp-sighted, but
their minds are forced to serve evil, and consequently
the keener their vision is, the greater the evil they
accomplish."1a
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The
Metaphysics.
"
. . . [D]estruction is an evil."1a
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The
Dead Sea Scrolls.
" . . Cursed be [S]atan in his hostile design, and damned in
his guilty dominion. Cursed be all the spirits of his [lo]t in their wicked
design . . . For they are a lot of darkness and their visitation is for eternal
destruction. Amen, amen. . . [Cursed be a]ll those who practi[se] their [wicked designs] .
. . [plotting against Go]d'[s Covenant] . . . to exchange the
judgemen[ts of
truth for folly.]"1
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The
Old Testament.
"But of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for
in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
[Genesis 2:17]1a
"When I looked for good,
then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light,
there came darkness." [Job 30-26]1b
"That which hath been is
now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth
that which is past. And moreover I saw under the sun the place
of judgment, that wickedness was there;
and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was
there" [Ecclesiastes 3:15-16].1c*
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The
New Testament.
"Ye shall know them by
their fruits. . .
[E]very good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a
corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit."
[St. Matthew 7:16-18]1a*
"[Jesus] . . . said unto
them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man .
. .
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall
gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them
which do iniquity;
And shall cast them into a furnace of fire." [St. Matthew 13:37-43]1b
" . . . [T]o him that
knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin."
[James 4:17]1c
" . . .
[T]he
love of money is the root of all evil." [Timothy
6:10]1d
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On Free Choice of the Will.
"Evodius. Tell me, please, whether God is not the
cause of evil.
Augustine. I shall, if you will explain what kind of evil
you mean. For we usually speak of evil in two senses: one when we
mean that someone has done evil; the other, when we mean
that someone has suffered evil."1a
" . . . [W]e
do not sin by necessity but by free will." 1b
" . . . [A]
wicked will is the cause of all evil." 1c
The Essential
Augustine.
"'The wicked walk in a circle.'"2a*[Contrast
with Ecclesiastes 3:15-16.] |
The
Koran.
"Those that live in usury shall rise up before God
like men whom Satan has demented by his touch; for they claim that trading is no different
from usury." [The Cow 2:275]1a
"Had the People of the
Book accepted the Faith, it would surely have been
better for them. Some are true believers, but most of them are evil-doers." [The
'Imrans 3:111]1b
"God will separate the wicked
from the just. He will heap all the wicked one upon
another and then cast them into Hell." [The
Spoils 8:37]1c
"Surely the hypocrites are
evil-doers." [Repentance 9:67]1d
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The Prince.
" . . . [T]he conqueror must arrange to commit all his
cruelties at once . . . "1a
" . . . [I]n the actions of
men . . . from which there is no appeal, the end justifies
the means."1b
The Discourses. " . . .
[H]ow
easily men are corrupted . . . however good they may be and
however well taught."2a
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Malleus Maleficarum.
" . . .
[Devils] are the
enemies of the human race: rational in mind . . . ; subtle in
wickedness, eager to do hurt; ever fertile in fresh deceptions . .
. ; . . . to the elect they are given as a temptation, and always
they lie in wait for the destruction of men."1a
" . . . [T]he
devil of Avarice and Riches is called Mammon . . . "1b
" . . .
[G]ood can be found without evil, but evil cannot be found
without good . . . "1c
" . . . [A] man's malice may
be either habitual . . . Or it may be actual malice, by which is
meant the deliberate choice of evil . . . "1d
"No one does more harm to the Catholic faith than
midwives."1e
" . . . [S]in is threefold,
involving guilt, punishment, and loss. Good also is
correspondingly threefold, involving righteousness, felicity and
use."1f
" . . . [W]e must consider archer-wizards,
who constitute the graver danger to the Christian religion in that
they have obtained protection on the estates of nobles and
Princes who receive, patronize, and defend them."1g
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Behemoth.
"[Every
man] reads that covetousness is the root of all evil;
but he thinks, and sometimes finds, it is the root of his
estate."1a
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Pens�es.
"Either Jews or Christians must be wicked."1a
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The Ethics.
"If
men were born free, they would form no conception of good and evil
so long as they were free."1a*
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Religion Within the
Limits of Reason Alone.
" . . .
[T]he
wickedness . . . or, if you like, the corruption . . . of
the human heart is the propensity of the will to maxims which
neglect the incentives springing from the moral law in favor of
others which are not moral. It may also be called the perversity
. . . of the human heart . . . "1a*
"The evil is radical,
because it corrupts the grounds of all maxims . . . "1b*
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The Philosophy of
History.
"This is the seal of the
absolute and sublime destiny of man - that he knows what is good and
what is evil; that his Destiny is his very ability
to will either good or evil . . . "1a*
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Democracy in
America.
"Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing. Human beings are not competent to exercise it with
discretion. . . When I see that the right and the means of
absolute command are conferred on any power whatever . . . I say
there is the germ of tyranny . . . In my opinion, the main
evil of the present democratic institutions of the United
States does not arise . . . from their weaknesses, but from their
irresistible strength."1a
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Bertrand
Russell on
God and Religion.
"How
are we to know what really is God's will? If the forces
of evil have a certain share of power, they may deceive
us into accepting as Scripture what is really their work. This
was the view of the Gnostics, who thought that the Old
Testament was the work of an evil spirit."1a
Collected Papers of
Bertrand Russell.
" . . . It became obvious that I had lived in a fool's
paradise. Human nature, even among those who had thought themselves civilized,
had
dark depths that I had not suspected."2
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The Myth of
the State.
"God
is a person - and that means a will. No mere logical
methods of arguing and reasoning can make us understand this will.
. . It is from God himself, from the revelation of his will,
not from dialectic, that man has to learn good and evil."1a
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The Constitution of
Liberty.
"Coercion
is evil precisely because it . . . eliminates an individual as
a thinking and valuing person and makes him a bare tool in the
achievement of the ends of another."4a
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The
Symbolism of Evil.
"The cause of man's fall is not the human libido, but the
structure of a finite freedom. It is in this sense that
evil was possible through freedom."1a*
" . . .
[T]he serpent represents the
psychological projection of desire. He is the image of
the 'fruit' - plus the bad faith of the excuse. . . The
serpent is also 'outside' in a more radical fashion . . . in the
historical experience of man, every individual finds evil already
there; nobody begins it absolutely."1b*
The
Conflict of Interpretations.
" . . .
[E]vil is an invention of freedom.
. . [A]n ethical vision of evil is a vision in which freedom
is revealed in its depths as power to act and power to be;
the freedom that evil supposes is a freedom capable of
digression, deviation, subversion, wandering."2a
" . . . I see in Kant the complete philosophical
manifestation that the supreme evil is not the gross
infraction of a duty but the malice that makes pass for virtue
what is virtue's betrayal. The evil of evil is the
fraudulent justification of the maxim by apparent conformity with
law - it is the semblance of morality."2b
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A Theory of
Justice.
"The bad man desires arbitrary power . . . What moves the evil
man is the love of injustice . . . "1a
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The
Physics of Immortality.
"God alone bears responsibility for
these evils [natural evils], in contrast to moral evils,
such as the Holocaust (in which the Nazis murdered six million
Jews), for which human beings share moral responsibility with God.
Notice that even in the case of moral evil God bears
ultimate responsibility, because He sustains evil humans in
existence."1a*
" . . . [T]he claim that morality is the
central concern of religion is nonsense. Throughout human history,
the central concern of religion has been human self-interest.
In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, all morality has been
obtained from declarative sentences of the form
'Thou shalt not kill -- because you'll go to Hell if you do!'"1b*
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The Essence
of Capitalism.
"The explicit treatment of
freedom to choose good or evil is missing from current economic
thinking.
Economic outcomes are not just profit or loss, or surplus or deficit. When whole
populations are indentured, the tragic loss of freedom cannot
be dismissed as mere illusion. Surely, a positive NPV for a few quasi monopolies must not
just mean fear, destruction, suffering, misery, and loss of freedom for the multitude.
Such dangerous and blatant disregard in quantitative economics and finance of the human
propensity for good and evil must be remedied. How? We must first understand
how good and
evil are created, transmitted, and propagated in the marketplace. We must understand
how evil maxims corrupt freedom. For this, we must focus the full power
of quantum theory on the problems of economics and law. .
. "1a
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*
Italics in the original.
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1 Buddha (c.563-c.483
BC). The
Dhammapada. Translated with an Introduction and Notes
by John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana. John Ross Carter and
Mahinda Palihawadana, 2000. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
1987.
a Chapter XII. The Self, v. 161, at 30.
b Chapter XVIII. Stains, v. 244, at 44.
c Chapter XXII. Hell, v. 306, at 55.
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1 Mencius. Mencius. Translated with an Introduction
by David Hinton. David Hinton, 1998. Washington, DC: COUNTERPOINT,
member of the Perseus Books Group.
a Duke Wen of T'eng, Book One, VI.9, at 114.
b Master Kao, Book One, XI.14, at 208.
c Master Kao, Book Two, XII.7, at 224.
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1
Plato.
Republic. Translated by Robin
Waterfield. Robin Waterfield, 1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
a The Supremacy of
Good (518e-519a), at 245-246.
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1
Aristotle.
The
Metaphysics.
Books I-IX. Translation by Hugh Tredennick. G.P. Goold, ed.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933, 1989. (The Loeb
Classical Library.)
a
Book IX, at 467.
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1 Geza Vermes.
The Dead Sea Scrolls.
4th ed. G. Vermes, 1962, 1965, 1968, 1975, 1987, 1995. Penguin Group. London, England: Penguin
Books Ltd., at 185. (The liturgical curse identified as 4Q286-7 was published by
J.T. Milik, Journal of Jewish Studies 23, 1972, 126-35.)
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1
The Holy Bible.
The Old Testament. King James Version. London, England: Collins'
Clear-Type Press, 1957.
a
Genesis 2:17.
b Job 30-26.
c Ecclesiastes 3:15-16.
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1
The Holy Bible.
The New Testament. King James Version. London, England: Collins'
Clear-Type Press, 1957.
a
St. Matthew 7:16-18.
b
St.
Matthew 13:37-43.
c
James
4:17.
d Timothy 6:10.
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1 Saint Augustine
(354-430).
On Free Choice of the
Will.
Translated by Anna S. Benjamin and L.H. Hackstaff. With an
Introduction by L.H. Hackstaff. Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1964.
a Book I, at 3.
b Book III, at 90.
c Book III, at 126
2 Saint
Augustine.
The Essential
Augustine.
2nd ed. Selected and with Commentary by Vernon J. Bourke. Vernon
J. Bourke, 1964-1974. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing
Company.
a Critique of Cyclicism, at 243. Source of the
translation: City of God, XII, 13-15; trans. The Works
of Aurelius Augustinus, ed. Marcus Dods, 15 vols, Edinburgh:
T. & T. Clark Co., 1871-1876.
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1 The Koran.
Translated, with Notes, by N.J.
Dawood. N.J. Dawood, 1956,
1959, 1966, 1968, 1974, 1990, 1993. London, England: Penguin Books Ltd.
a The Cow 2:275.
b
The 'Imrans 3:111.
c The Spoils 8:37.
d Repentance 9:67.
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1 Niccol� Machiavelli
(1469-1527). The
Prince (1531). Translated by Luigi Ricci. Revised by
E.R.P. Vincent. Introduction by
Christian Gauss. New York, NY: The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.,
1952. (Reprint of a hardcover edition published by Oxford University Press, Inc.)
a Of Those Who Have Attained the Position of Prince by
Villainy, at 62..
b In What Way Princes Must Keep Faith, at 94.
2 Niccol� Machiavelli. The
Discourses. Edited with an Introduction by Bernard
Crick using the translation of Leslie J. Walker, S.J. Revisions by
Brian Richardson. Bernard Crick, 1970. London, UK: Penguin Books
Ltd. (Penguin Classics.)
a Book One, Discourse 42, at 217.
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1 Heinrich Kramer (died
1505) and James Sprenger (c. 1437-1495).
Malleus Maleficarum.
The Classic Study of Witchcraft.
Translated with an Introduction, Bibliography and Notes by
the Reverend Montague Summers. First published in 1928 by
John Rodker, Marianne Rodker and Loan Rodker, 1928. London, UK:
Bracken Books, an imprint of Random House UK Ltd., 1996.
a Part I, Question 3, at 23.
b Part I, Question 4, at 30. (Cf., "Ye
cannot serve God and mammon," St. Matthew 6:24.)
c Part I, Question 4, at 30.
d Part I, Question 5, at 38.
e Part I, Question 11, at 66.
f Part I, Question 14, at 74.
g Part III, Question 34, at 269.
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1
Thomas Hobbes. Behemoth
or the Long Parliament. Edited by Ferdinand
T�nnies, with an Introduction by Stephen Holmes. Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press, 1990.
a
Dialog 1, at 54.
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1 Blaise Pascal
(1623-1662). Pens�es (1670).
Translated with an Introduction by A.J. Krailsheimer. A.J.
Krailsheimer, 1966, 1995. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.
a Causes and Effects, 102, at 26.
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1 Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). The
Ethics. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Selected
Letters . Translated by Samuel Shirley. Edited,
with Introductions, by Seymour Feldman. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 1992.
a Proposition 68, Part IV, at 192.
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1 Immanuel Kant. Religion
Within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793). Translated
with an Introduction and Notes by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H.
Hudson, with an essay by John R. Silber. La Salle, IL: The Open
Court Publishing Company, 1934. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers,
1960.
a Concerning the
Propensity to Evil in Human Nature, at 23-27.
b Man
is Evil by Nature, at 27-34.
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1 G. W. F. Hegel.
The
Philosophy of History.
Translated by J. Sibree. Prefaces by Charles Hegel and J. Sibree.
Introduction by C.J. Friedrich. New York, NY: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1956.
a Introduction, at 34.
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1 Alexis De Tocqueville (1805-1859).
Democracy in America. Edited
and Abridged by Richard D. Heffner, 1956, 1984. New York, NY:
Penguin Books USA Inc.
a Tyranny of the Majority, at 113-115.
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1 Bertrand Russell.
Bertrand Russell on
God and Religion.
Edited by Al Sekel.
a An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, at 215.
2 Bertrand Russell. Selected
Papers of Bertrand Russell. New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1927, 1955, at
xi.
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1
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945).
The
Myth of the State.
Yale University Press, 1946. Henry Cassirer and Anne Applebaum,
1974. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
a
The Religious and
Metaphysical Background of the Medieval Theory of the State, at
82.
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4 F.A. Hayek. The
Constitution of Liberty. Chicago, IL: The University
of Chicago Press, 1960, 1978.
a Liberty and Liberties, at 21.
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1 Paul
Ricoeur. The Symbolism of Evil.
Translated by Emerson Buchanan. Paul
Ricoeur, 1967. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969. Published by
arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., New York, NY.
a The "Adamic" Myth and the
"Eschatological" Vision of History, at 255.
b Ibid., at 257.
2 Paul
Ricoeur. The Conflict of Interpretations:
Essays in Hermeneutics. Edited by Don Ihde. Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974. Originally published in
French under the title Le Conflit des interpr�tations: Essais
d'h�rm�neutique. Paris, France: Editions du Seuil, 1969.
a The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical
Reflection: I, at 301. Translated by Denis Savage. The translation
first appeared in the International Philosophical Quarterly,
Volume II, no. 2 (May, 1962), at 191-218.
b Ibid., at 303.
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1 John Rawls (1921-2002). A Theory of Justice.
Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press,
1971.
a The Definition of Good Applied to Persons, at 439.
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1 Frank J. Tipler. The
Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection
of the Dead. Frank J. Tipler, 1994. New York, NY:
Doubleday, a division of Bentam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.,
1995.
a What Happens After the Resurrection: Heaven, Hell,
and Purgatory, at 260.
b Conclusion: Theology as a Branch of Physics, at 330.
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1 Edward E.
Ayoub, with the assistance of
Trudé K. Ayoub.
The
Essence of Capitalism. Toronto, ON: Macroknow
Inc., 2000.
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