What makes a good person? Intention? You would be happy if someone told on you because it was for your own good? They would be a good person because they wanted to do what was right even if it pissed you off? There's a transition from bad to good as there is from good to bad.
Yes, there's a transition, but that's a different issue. And it's quite possible for a good person to piss me off, although if they have insufficient regard for my feelings that is a sense in which they are not so good. A standard thought experiment in philosophy. A wicked uncle goes up to the young heir who is having a bath, with the intention of murdering him in the bath and getting the inheritance. When he gets there, he finds that the heir has already drowned accidentally. Is the uncle evil or not? After all, going upstairs and going into the bathroom is not an evil action -- a caring parent would do the same, with the intention on checking the wellbeing of the heir.
Philosophy can be liken to trashy thinking. You cannot fault those that have done nothing wrong no matter how much you dislike them. Innocent Man by John Grisham talks about a man that was accused of something he did not do and he was not a well liked man. Just because you dislike them doesn't mean that you get to mistreat them for an event they had no part in. Their insufficient regard for your feelings isn't bad. You might be the one that is bad and therefor their reaction can be good.
Doesn't mean they're not evil, it just means you don't know it (but an omniscient narrator might). That was rather the point I was making.
Or it means they're not evil, fleeting thoughts are not evil. Or Teenagers would all be evil without a single doubt. Then we don't disagree.
Oh, the line between good and evil goes through every human heart. But somebody might have really evil intent and be very good at keeping it under wraps until their plans come to fruition. Does that mean that they flip from good to evil once they flip from planning to implementation?
You must not have any friends or relatives that have mental disorders. That would test your idea to the brink of, well, sanity. Planning isn't evil. Actions are.
Yes I have, and my wife is a mental health professional. But we were talking about whether people are evil. I reckon that intent can be evil even if that intent is frustrated.
Every child born can be good or bad. Actions dictate good or bad. Actions dictate lots of things. You can talk all you want, but that doesn't mean much unless there's actions behind it.
Agreed. I would say that actions reveal good and bad. Agreed, but that can just be the difference between efficient evil and inefficient evil.
are you talking about percentages? Are you saying that people have failed evil? That it didn't work as they wanted so they went to do good instead?
In the real world it probably comes down to something like that, although I doubt we can be so quantitative. In fiction things can be more clear-cut. That would be a change of heart. I'm thinking just at the stage of "that didn't work as they wanted". Most likely the actions have no significant effect at all. Maybe they have unwanted good consequences, but the person would be frustrated by that.
You could argue that, since you don't really know if a person will act on their thoughts until the situation presents itself. For example, someone could carry a lot of anger and hatred within themselves, and plan a murder, but when it's time to carry it through, they realise they can't do it. There's no way to be sure what their "real" intent is without placing them in the actual situation and see how they act. You could also place the person in a candid-camera-like situation, and justifiably say they're good or evil based on how they act in the faked situation - for example, if they attempt to steal when they believe nobody is watching them. With this thought experiment, you could argue that evil depends on both the intent and the action, but not on the outcome.
A man could plan a thousand murders and really intend/want to kill, but can you call him evil if he never goes through with it? Actions define us. As long as his action's ain't evil, then neither is the man. I have had some quite dark thoughts and ideas in my head during my life, it doesn't make me an evil person. That's my take on it, anyway. No, when they go from planning to implementation is when you know if they really were evil all along, or just good guys with a bit of a mad mind.
You might not have murdered thousands of people, but how are you going to treat people if the only thing stopping you from massacring them is the fact that you might get imprisoned for doing so? Characters who seriously consider murdering others and can rationalise doing so, but don't for fear of punishment or retribution are probably quite different from those who have felt angry enough to kill but who consider murdering people wrong on ethical grounds. While the would-be murderer might not actually do it, there's probably going to be hints in their character that they don't consider others quite as deserving of existence as a more virtuous character.
Who doesn't? You're the author, so you will likely need to know how your characters rationalise their actions. A character whose rationale for not doing some evil act to his benefit is because it might get him punished very well might do it if the likelihood of getting caught diminishes.
who says evil has to = illegal often it isn't. The main antagonist I am trying to pin down has not done much that is illegal - not practising her meditation/prayer/exercise was not illegal - twisting the same meditation so that it used huge chunks of elemental magic rather than cleansing an replenishing was not illegal. Even her beginning the evil group that acted in her name was not illegal. When she enticed people to take on a false bird form and got them killed it was not illegal. As far as I am aware in thousands of years the only illegal act the 'devil' in my book actually ever comitted was to pull a gun on my MCs lover and try to kill both of them. My MC on the other hand has commited some terrible atrocities in the name of good - he has done far worse and is seen as noble, my angel, chief prophet type character, than my devil or even most of her demons/combination members have ever done.
I'm not saying that evil must be illegal, punishment isn't always getting thrown in jail- to be honest it's a rather unsubtle evil who draws his limits solely on what will get him imprisoned. Social penalties, maintenance of a facade and the subversion of his plans are other restrictions on what an evil character will do. Iago is unarguably evil, but it's not until he incites murder that he's done anything particularly illegal, and he certainly wouldn't want his actions to be brought to light.
Wow, how did this thread get so long? A villain can also be evil by being passive. Suppose a person is drowing in a river. It's within the villain's full power to save the person, but he doesn't for whatever reason. Maybe the drowning man stands in his way somehow.
Passive evil is a good point- although of course choosing not to do something is a choice a character makes that has to be reconciled with his character as a whole. Villainy through calculated inaction is often a lot more engaging than villainy through overt acts- again, Iago's suggestion and manipulation work because of the flaws of those he manipulates, he works because his victims let him. I don't see Dick Dastardly coldly watching as Penelope Pitstop drowns in a river, but it would make for an interesting episode.
You are assuming that the only thing that is stopping my hypothetical individual is fear of the law, and not his morality. Also, one can be evil without breaking the law. An evil thing might be something as small as saying that someone's clothes are ugly. You might think they are ugly, and you might imagine yourself saying it, but you can not be said to have done an evil thing or be evil before you actually say it.
Without getting into the theory of intention (a philosopher once said "Imagine if I had a glass of deadly poison that would kill you instantly- I offer you a million dollars if you intend to drink it") I'd say that somebody who genuinely wants to kill others but doesn't might well be externally compelled not to (after all, how much does he want to kill others?). If he intends to, that almost sounds like he set a bomb that was defused. You would find out just how evil your character was if he found, or was presented, a way of killing those people and getting away with it. Ninja edit- presumably there is a reason as to why he wants to kill them that makes sense to him, as otherwise we're back to Dick Dastardly. It's already been said that you can be evil without breaking the law, and indeed somebody can make evil choices that lead to no action at all, as has been said. Being evil entails some kind of moral deficit, and there can be perfectly good reasons for criticising clothes. An evil character could just as easily do so with some ulterior motive in mind- indeed maintaining an illusion of good, internal and external, is close to a requirement for evil characters.
I agree, it's a good way to find out if the character is evil, but it still boils down to the fact that his choice of actions make him evil or not. Fair enough, but I never argued about the motivation of the character, only whether or not actions define if you are good or evil. If you can be evil without doing evil things. I must have read the earlier post without noticing the part about breaking the law. I don't know what you want with the cloth part, though. Of course there are situations where criticising is allright. But if the illusion of good is maintained forever, then the character will be considered good. If the illusion is broken, with or without other characters knowledge, then that character is evil. What I am trying to say is that if a character, or a real person, never does anything evil, then that character is not evil. Whatever the character planned, wanted or thought about doesn't matter, because he never did anything evil.
