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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