The evil

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The evil ( ahd .: abel, ibel, ubil) is a concept in philosophy that describes everything that is opposite to the good . It is to be distinguished from evil , with which it is often confused. Evil is the more general term that encompasses evil. All evil belongs to evil, but not all evil belongs to evil.

Concept history

The word already occurs in Old High German as ubil . The etymology is uncertain; apparently the term originally referred to something that goes beyond what is perceived as natural and “good”, an exaggeration that disturbs the natural order. Originally - and also later most frequently in Old and Middle High German - actions were meant that violate the accepted moral world order and are therefore "evil deeds".

The meaning of the term evil was discussed primarily because it occurs in the Lord's Prayer , where the Latin Bible ( Vulgate ) phrase "libera nos a malo" was translated as "deliver us from evil". Already in Old High German, ubil was used as a translation of the Latin word malum , which, like the ancient Greek kakón, denotes both general evil and specifically evil. This is how Martin Luther translated : “deliver us from evil”. In his “Interpretation of the Our Father's German for the simple-minded layperson” (1519), he notes that evil should be understood to mean “unrest, dearth , war, pestilence , plagues as well as hell and purgatory and all embarrassing evils in body and soul”. The term malum or evil was not narrowed down to moral evil, but was also used for natural disasters and diseases. In today's ecumenical version, however, the translation is “deliver us from evil”.

A remarkable analysis of the debate on the question of evil and at the same time a response to the theodicy problem-is found in Lactantius , one of the Fathers of the Church :

“God can do everything he wants, and there is no weakness or resentment in him. So he can take away the evils, but he doesn't want to; and yet he is not disapproving of it. He does not take it away because, as noted, he has at the same time given man wisdom (reasonableness), and because there is more good and pleasant in wisdom than difficulty in evils. For wisdom causes us to know God and through this knowledge to attain immortality, and this is the highest good. So if we do not see the evil beforehand, we cannot see the good either. But neither Epicurus nor anyone else made it clear to himself that with the abolition of evils wisdom would be taken away at the same time, and that no trace of virtue would remain in man; for the essence of virtue lies in enduring and overcoming the bitterness of evil. "

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz differentiates between metaphysical , physical and moral evils. The metaphysical evil consists in the inevitable imperfection of everything created, which must necessarily lag behind the perfection of the Creator. He describes suffering as physical evil and sin or guilt as moral evil.

Immanuel Kant emphasizes that the Latin language only knows the term malum , while the German language differentiates between evil and evil. For Kant, evil is dependent on human will; it is the result of a moral decision and therefore ethically relevant from a philosophical point of view. On the other hand, something is called evil when it causes a state of discomfort or pain; from Kant's point of view this is in and of itself not philosophically relevant. Hegel, on the other hand, defines evil as the inappropriateness of being to ought. In contrast to Kant's, this definition does not aim to distinguish evil from evil.

In the philosophical and theological discussion of evil since antiquity, the question of whether the evil is just an absence of the good (Latin privatio boni , “lack of good”), for which the late antique church father Augustine argued, or whether it or evil has an ontologically independent existence.

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: evil  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Laktanz: De ira dei, 13, in: Des Lucius Caelius Firmanius Lactantius Schriften, translated from Latin by A. Hartl, Bibliothek der Kirchenväter 36, Kösel, Munich 1919, 103