| Re: Evil Is Good And God Doesn't Exist???
infinidream,
'evil is necessary to good and thereofre evil is good???'
Great question. loti. Of course, good and evil are superlative conceptual opposites - a dichotomy forged by religious ideation in view of an absolute God. Such ideas are not really useful to an informed ethical/moral outlook, but so imbedded in the language it's difficult to see beyond them.
Nietzsche gave it a go in - 'Beyond Good and Evil' but arrived at the conclusion that ethics and morality are a herd mentality propogated by the weak to subdue the strong. I believe there was some such transvaluation of values in the transition from hunter-gatherer to social life - and that this is the source of this superlative dichotomy, where evil was defined as 'that which is against society' - and good as it's opposite.
Thus, the source of the conceptual paradox is in the supression of the individual good for the social good. This tension remains with us, but i think is more correctly addressed by employing the language of justice - brilliantly explicated by Rawls in 'A Theory of Justice.'
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