Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!mit-eddi!rh From: rh@mit-eddi.UUCP (Randy Haskins) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: re: What evil is Message-ID: <331@mit-eddi.UUCP> Date: Mon, 27-Jun-83 01:59:56 EDT Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.331 Posted: Mon Jun 27 01:59:56 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 27-Jun-83 06:15:55 EDT References: utcsstat.722 Lines: 30 On good w/o evil and vice versa: it's a sort of Zen thing, I didn't realize it was wanted to be proved. Well, I'll try: Zeno, the Greek philosopher, was mostly responsible for Stoicism. While all but forgotten today, the Stoics believed that pain was good. The best argument I heard went something like: "Say you're walking down the beach, and you cut your foot on some glass. You can't, however, in a 'perfect' world feel pain, so you bleed to death. If the world were less than perfect, you would feel the pain of the cut, would look down and realize you were bleeding profusely, and do something about it." Also, they (sort of) held that without pain, you would have nothing against which you could compare pleasure (the joke "Why did the moron hit himself in the hammer? Because it felt so good when he quit." is a manifestation of this sort of thing. Similarly, without the presence of EVIL, how do we know what is GOOD? Do we assume that good is that which pleases people? Then what about rape and other forms of sadism? The person on the perpetrating end is more than likely being pleased (in his own sick, twisted way). Is it a majority kind of thing? So, if ten people get together and decide the world is a happier place if someone is dead, does that mean that it is GOOD to kill that person? GOOD and EVIL are difficult to define, but I think you can't even talk about one without assuming the existence of the other. --Randy