Back to Exponent Menu Printer Friendly Page   LOCAL FEATURES Friday, July 05, 2002 Question of moral evil discussed at Walsh symposium By Joanne Malene Staff Associate NORTH CANTON — Since September 11, there has been much talk in the media and in churches, throughout the United States, about evil – what it is and what is the cause of it. There have been comments by political leaders as they discuss the “war on terrorism,” characterizing it as a struggle of good against evil. But Robert Holmes, Ph.D., a noted philosopher who spoke at Walsh University’s annual Philosophy and Theology Symposium recently, urges caution. “The question is, what exactly is evil?” Professor Holmes said. “We need to distinguish between what is bad and what is evil. Although some people use the word ‘natural evil’ to characterize calamitous natural events, this blurs the distinction between what is bad and what is evil. “We can strive as mightily as we want, but if we don’t know precisely what we are struggling against, we’re unlikely to be successful,” he said. “We can kill plenty of people somebody or the other calls evil, but if we don’t know what it is that makes a person evil, we cannot be confident that those we kill are, in fact, evil.” He noted that Americans need to understand why many in the world, especially in the Islamic world, refer to us as the “Great Satan.” “More importantly, if we don’t know what evil is, we cannot know how to resist it much less (understand) what is morally justifiable in the way of resistance to evil,” he continued. “However great the wrongs done to us by the September 11 attacks, we must be prepared to justify our response to those attacks. What the terrorists did on September 11 is one thing – what we do in response in another. The justifiability of one doesn’t follow from the wrongness of the other.” Professor Holmes, a philosophy professor at the University of Rochester, is a specialist on ethics and social and political philosophy. The author of a book, On War and Morality, and the editor of Nonviolence in Theory and Practice, he is considered an expert on issues of peace and nonviolence. “Evil isn’t part of the natural order,” he said. “It’s not a force in the natural scheme of things. Theologians have often embraced this conclusion. They affirm that evil isn’t a part of ` reality’ because God has created all of reality and if God is perfectly good, He wouldn’t create evil. “In thinking about evil, we need to disentangle it from what is merely bad,” he said. “Destructive hurricanes and earthquakes are bad, but they aren’t evil. One needs to recognize that evil presupposes minds. Without minds, there would be no evil. This is why tornadoes and floods aren’t evil. Evil is produced. And it takes minds to produce it. It is a result of rational thought and action.” Professor Holmes noted that terrible acts performed by human beings aren’t necessarily evil. “(I would) call this use of the term ‘evil’ Descriptive Evil,” he said. “Most of what we call “evil” – that is, most descriptive evil – is caused by people who are acting with good intentions and from good motives. The greatest suffering and death and destruction one finds are inflicted by persons in warfare. And, almost always, at least in modern warfare, each side believes that it is in the right. Both sides believe they have a just cause. … But (this) doesn’t capture the notion I want to get at – the notion of what we may call Moral Evil.” Professor Holmes said he believes there are four elements – beliefs, intentions, motives and feelings — without which there would be no evil in the world. Intention is the purpose behind the action while motive explains why one does the action. The speaker said he believes that to be an evil person, the doing of evil has to have become a part of one’s character. There must be a tendency or predisposition or even a habit of doing evil, he said, before one is transformed into an evil person. “If I am correct, most of the suffering, death and destruction that is caused in the world is a manifestation of descriptive evil, not basic moral evil,” Professor Holmes explained. “It consists of acts of basically good people operating with various mixtures of false beliefs, misperceptions, distorted judgments and outright ignorance. They are governed, for the most part, not by malice, but by fear … including insecurity, apprehension, anxiety, worry, suspicion and a whole host of related notions. “Sometimes people fear for their lives or for the lives of those close to them. At the social and international level, where by far the greatest descriptive evils are found, it is probably more often fear of loss of possessions or political independence or territorial integrity. Often, however, it is fear on the part of individual leaders for their own political careers. They worry how they will be perceived in times of crisis, whether they can be thought to display weakness. This may lead them to take forceful action of a sort that brings great suffering both to those they would protect and those whose actions have caused their predicament.” Professor Holmes said he sees the biggest problem in the world is finding ways to deal with descriptive evil. Quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, Professor Holmes said violence only begets violence. “If those who cause harm to others are motivated ultimately by fear,” he said, “then threatening them with violence won’t remove the fear. It will only intensify it. “On the international scene, peace is commonly sought by means of war. But it fails over and over. That is why the so-called ‘war’ on terrorism will fail. Inflicting pain, suffering, death and destruction on more Muslims will only increase the bitterness that has bred terrorism in the first place. “To deal with violence nonviolently requires courage,” he added. “This means that fear is central. We must overcome the fear within ourselves in order to act nonviolently. To dispel fear in others, we must overcome it within ourselves. Hatred is intensified fear, which thrives on threats. We must look for creative solutions.” Two philosophy professors from Walsh, Dr. John G. Trapani and Ms. Bonnie Gromann, responded to his comments. Ms. Gromann pointed out that that evil doesn’t always need to be about people. “People lie to themselves and complicate the issues,” she said. “There is ill feeling, a lack of passion or empathy for the suffering of others. It doesn’t need to be about people, but it could be about environmental issues – the trees, the rivers that man has subdued and put into service for us. “I agree that evil does not come from natural things,” Ms. Gromann continued. “The older notion of evil is that it is a force of its own and stands in opposition to the forces of good. The battleground is the soul – the human soul. If there is some cosmic battle between good and evil, then the spot where that is happening is within us. Apathy is an insensitivity or absence of emotion … (but there is also) empathy – which is a way out of evil through the intellectual identification of the thoughts of another person.” Prof. Trapani noted that throughout the study of philosophy, ideas are sifted and sorted. “There is both experienced reality and analyzed reality,” he said. “The experience of one who suffers, who experiences the pain or suffering of what occurs in life, is what happened on September 11. There was loss of life and the effects of it for family members and loved ones. “Analyzed reality is what we are doing this morning, analyzing evil as it is out there in the world. This in no way trivializes, patronizes or explains away the suffering of our neighbors. Analyzing can appear cold and unfeeling, but we need to distinguish between the empathy. We are looking to expand our understanding. “In the Catholic universe, referring to the tradition of (St. Thomas) Aquinas in the 13th century, we have natural and a supernatural. God is eternal – He always was an always will be. “We can’t always understand,” Professor Trapani continued. “We may not understand why things happen as they do. This defect on our part is not any reflection of God. God desires only goodness, but He permits human moral evil because we share in the likeness of the divine. We have this freedom of likeness in ourselves. The price of love is the possibility of evil. In the history of salvation and redemption, the center is the realization of our own sinfulness.” This was the 27th annual philosophy and theology symposium at Walsh, revolving around a disputed question. Before the Saturday lecture, a concert was held Friday evening featuring Charlie King and Karen Brandow. Joanne Malene covers new for the Exponent in Stark and Portage counties   Back to Exponent Menu Printer Friendly Page   Other Articles of 2002   Christmas letter from El Salvador missions thanks diocesan Catholics   Bishop shares views, discussion with Central students   ETC slates Christmas specials throughout the season   My Favorite Christmas Memories   Guidelines on religious ed homeschooling are issued   Local Catholic radio station targets Feb. 1 date   HMs end 98-years of service to Salem St. Paul Parish   Learn ‘language’ of young, youth meet speaker urges   Bishop Tobin: Meeting in D.C. on norms was ‘anxious, tense, difficult’   Priests must ask one another the tough questions, speaker says   Catholic death and funeral rites   Deacons mark 25th with Mass, dinner, memories   Diocesan Ministry Convocation Speaker: Global solidarity, not globalization, should be aim   Jusseaume inaugurated as sixth Walsh president   Diaconate marks 25th anniversary with Oct. 27 fete   New norms sent to priests, deacons on Communion under both kinds   Ashtabula parishes are ‘one Catholic community’   Jusseaume to become Walsh’s sixth president   Charismatic speaker: ‘Church being tested in faithfulness’   Lutheran/Catholic covenant event draws 140 to Walsh   Canton St. Joseph Parish observes centennial celebration   HMHP CEO Michael Rowan   Stewardship speaker: It’s about gratitude and thanking God first   Imagination is key to resolving crisis, priests told   War with Iraq? 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