What are the most important works one must read in order to understand "evil"?

what are the most important works one must read in order to understand "evil"?

The Communist Manifesto. The singular most evil book in the world

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Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death.

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Second wave feminist literature (Solanas, Dworkin, Sontag etc.) and Laci Green vlogs. Evil is petty and subversive and hides behind a mask of righteousness.

I'd say Karamazov is helpful; also, and very differently, John Barth's The End of the Road. Some books are helpful that at first blush seem only remotely concerned: Candide, for instance, or Johnson's Rasselas-- modern tales seem an infallible guide: Gide's Straight is the Gate, Goethe's Elective Affinities are two more helps in this genre. It is important to remember just how competent Evil really is, how persuasive. Every bit the match, if not the double, or the impersonation, of Good....

The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos will be sewn from their passage. So sayeth the wise Alaundo.

thats cyric not bhaal

Zen Flesh
Zen Bones

>eastern phil
ugh

Yeah, but didn't Bhaal murder Cyric during the time of troubles?

Twilight.

the bible.
it's not that difficult user. just make sure you ask much questions and go to biblical study prof's and biblical scholars to find answers to questions you have.

>didn't Bhaal murder Cyric
no cyric murdered bhaal, bhaal saw he going to die and impregnated a lot of women hence the bhaalspawn

all western philosophy is just degenerated, overly verbose eastern philosophy

certainly notbing related to cyric you wretched realmsposter. Bane is the superior evil deity.

my diary desu

City of God

Augustine will redpill you on the fact that evil doesn't exist; there is only lesser good. Turning from an immutable good towards a mutable good is a perversion, and the way by which our free will was able to 'err'.

For example, sexual pleasure is a good, but it is a mutable good and therefore lesser than the immutable good of chastity. Fornication is therefore a sin whereas sex within marriage is not. Sin is perversion.

Pride is the wellspring of all sinful behavior.

Explain this "mutable"/"immutable" distinction? One can move from a state of chastity to lechery, and vice-a-versa, so in what sense is chastity "immutable"?

In that it's an attribute of the unchanging God, who is the Supreme Good, rather than some aspect of the flesh (which is to pass away).

Everything has a 'wise and appropriate' use. e.g. fire can be used to warm and to cook, but it can also be used to torture and destroy. The sun lets plants grow, but if we stare at it we will grow blind. Food gives us nourishment, but if we overeat it makes us sick. Essentially everything natural is good (sin is unnatural) because what is natural is what is rightly ordered. Symmetry and proportion are both incredibly important.

'Good' is like an affirmative duty for our will. It requires our active participation. Therefore an "evil" will is defective rather than effective. It is by failing to do as we ought (the end goal of which is participation in the 'light' of God much akin to crawling out of Plato's cave) that we sin.

I get it, by "an attribute of the unchanging God," you mean it's an attribute of nothing, since nothing doesn't have sex.

>Essentially everything natural is good
So torture is "good" as long as it's natural? What is "rightly ordered"? Let me guess; possessed as or expressing an attribute of the "Supreme Good," or "God."

I agree at the specific level of "my sin," e.g. when I fail to write my quota I've "sinned" against myself, but I know I'm the only one I can sin against. To think otherwise is to open yourself up to situations like are represented in that other thread with the Sean Hastings pasta. But, in any event, I thank you for making that particular Augustinian nonsense clear to me.

>So torture is "good" as long as it's natural?
No, justice is good. Torture is often a wrongly ordered expression of justice. If a man attempts your life without the authorization of your polity, you may take his instead. Nobody disagrees that self-defense is legitimate. However, if you dispatch such an one it should be without malice, and without cruelty. Torturing them to fulfill your own disproportionate desire for revenge would be sinful.

You're writing Augustine off too quickly, and without understanding.

lol what

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what about aquinas' "on evil"?

This. Its the book that made realise that moral relativism isnt real and that some people are objectively evil.

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>no cyric murdered bhaal,
ah yeah, been so long since I played BG

You didn't answer my question. When lions eat a baby elephant alive and it takes the calf more than three hours to die, that's an instance of natural torture. So how is it that everything natural is "good"?

And if you mean "everything natural to humans is good," because animals don't have agency, what about natural (as far as we know) psychological states like psychopathy and schizophrenia? You'll probably say they're "wrongly ordered expressions of the will," and thus "unnatural," but then you've set up a logical loop where "if it's good, it's natural, and if it's bad, it's unnatural," and you can simply prescribe "goodness" to whatever you like and "badness" to whatever you don't and the system completes itself through your definition of "natural." In other words, "Torture is bad because it's unnatural, and it's unnatural because it's 'wrongly ordered' (bad)."

But why would animals be moral to different species? You should look how lions interact within their own prides to have a better understanding of their ethics.

You're thinking much, much too narrowly. Read Timaeus, and from a place of humility. It will provide you with a suitable background for approaching Christian philosophy.

>When lions eat a baby elephant alive and it takes the calf more than three hours to die
Part of a cycle of life; demonstrates the 'harmony' of creation. All die so that others may live.

>that's an instance of natural torture.
Animals have no faculty of reason so any moral "transgressions" they commit are purely illusory. They are absolved of all wrongdoing but likewise incapable of righteousness. They are still a part of the beautiful natural world God has created, and they fill their role- in this way they are good.

>what about natural (as far as we know) psychological states like psychopathy and schizophrenia?
(as for as we know) being the operative phrase. But who says that schizophrenics 'must' commit wrongly ordered actions? To say that one 'must' murder or fornicate or whatever else is to rob them of the agency you rightly venerate. One might impute the blame for such conditions to demonic possession, but that is not the only recourse. See: Romans 1: 28-31, Daniel 4:31-33. In any case, God is just and we have no grounds on which to criticize his exercise of authority. We might wrestle with him, but it is we who are mutable that must be broken and reshapen, not he. 1 Corinthians 3:19

If you believe, for example, that murder (not killing, but murder) is always wrong, then you should ride that train of thought to its logical conclusion: that there is a natural law.

However if you believe all morality is a social construct, and that we are all rapists and murderers by a utilitarian nature, whence did such social constructs arise? The stronger would never have allowed themselves to live in submission to the weaker if this arrangement were not preferable to this supposed 'state of nature', in which case you vindicate Jesus in his assertion "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."

>muh 40 gazzilion
SS was a bunch of kids with guns guarding fattened up rich jewish communist which deserved their deaths more or less.

>(as for as we know) being the operative phrase.
I take this to mean we're both assuming them (inherent psychological disorders) to be "natural."

>But who says that schizophrenics 'must' commit wrongly ordered actions? To say that one 'must' murder or fornicate or whatever else is to rob them of the agency you rightly venerate.
I'm not saying a psychopath must "murder or fornicate," I'm saying that such a state of disorder (psychopathy) is natural to humans. By your logic, this disorder is "good" because it is "natural."

>If you believe, for example, that murder (not killing, but murder) is always wrong
That's circular logic, "murder" is defined as "wrongful killing," all you've stated is "wrongful killing is always wrong." It's a meaningless tautology that one can't take a position on as per its complete triviality.

>However if you believe all morality is a social construct
Another tautology, "morality" refers to normative ethical behavior which can't exist outside of a society, even if it's a self-society (solitude), which really is the only kind. If you sustain yourself by hunting and decide not to kill a hypothetical deer, you have to live with the consequences of that ethical decision (potential hunger). So your statement amounts to "all ethical social behaviors are social constructs," i.e. constructed in and around whatever society you're in, which they must be. It doesn't follow from this tautology that all humans are "rapists and murderers by utilitarian nature."

In short, I adhere to neither of the positions (tautologies) you've outlined.

the bible you retard

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Humans or, more probably, AI will create beings or an ultimate being that consumes nothing and that will be ultimate morality. Wouldn't be surprised if that is the end of the universe.

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unfortunate that editors removed a chapter advocating immediate suicide of the reader

you're really riding or dying on our limited knowledge of schizophrenia. I don't think a disorder that you most likely get from smoking crack and being homeless is 'natural', in fact the majority of this argument is you being deliberately obtuse to Augustine's intended meaning of 'natural'. e.g. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome isn't 'natural', because although it exists in nature it results from a wrongful use of alcohol.

If it didn't effect Adam and Eve in Eden, it's more than likely a result of our fallen nature. By turning from God and eating the fruit of the tree which was forbidden them, they introduced disharmony into the known universe.

You can misconstrue and nitpick the 'logic' of my statements all you like, but I will allow Augustine to deliver my rebuttal, pic related. Sit smug, or seek after knowledge- it's your call.

can't believe no one has mentioned Hannah Arendt yet

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

there you go
you begin by discarding the very notion of evil as you currently understand it

give us a short run down missy

Bulgakov - Master and Margarita.
meh. Her answer is "bureaucracy". And "plebs".

>you're really riding or dying on our limited knowledge of schizophrenia
I referred in that post specifically to psychopathy, which is inherent in humans throughout history and can't be pinned to a cause. If you want a more visceral example, take cancer: it occurs naturally. People who have never smoked get lung cancer, for example. I'm not being "obtuse," I'm pointing out the fact that his logic is circular (natural is good, good is natural). You still haven't reconciled this essential problem.

>Fetal Alcohol Syndrome isn't 'natural', because although it exists in nature it results from a wrongful use of alcohol.
This illustrates exactly what I mean: even though it occurs in nature, somehow it isn't "natural," because you're using the word "natural" in way that already implies virtue. You're using "natural" to mean "rightful" as it suits your context.

>You can misconstrue and nitpick the 'logic' of my statements all you like, but I will allow Augustine to deliver my rebuttal, pic related. Sit smug, or seek after knowledge- it's your call.
In what sense have I misconstrued your assessments of murder and socially constructed morality? Don't call me smug because you've run out of arguments. As to your pic:
>replies come from those who cannot understand etc.
Yet you reply to me, and I to you. Augustine seems pretty fucking smug and prideful in the assertion of his "truth"

>meh. Her answer is "bureaucracy". And "plebs".
what do u mean by this?

THe whole point of the Banality of Evil is to kill the idea of evil as an impressive/notable thing.

She uses the trials of the Nazi Eichmann as proof of this. During it, she puts across the image of Eichmann as a dumb, boring, bovine dullard who just went through the motions of the Nazi Party; stamp here, sign that, initials here and here. A lot of the evil of the Reich isn't personally driven but is instead a Kafkaesque nightare of paper and pens causing people to get killed en masse.

There was nothing notable about Eichmann, a war criminal and accomplice of attempted genocide; he was just like all the other idiots you see in cubicles, working day in day out. His job was just killing people.

Obviously, this idea is retarded because it ignores the fact that someone planned, schemed and organised the Holocaust that followed. Someone created this system and dreamed it up. Reinhardt Heydrich was this guy and he, Oskar Dirlewagner and other crazy clowns are all examples from or affiliated with who totally blow this idea of
>banal evil
Out of the water.

The idea that moral relativism is a thing is an out-dated concept because dogs and other socially minded animals have shown their own morality which conforms to the standards humans generally have.

It's quite clear that all higher minded social animals require systems of ethics to co-operate and operate, otherwise their societies don't function.

hi fera

O shit, I'm reading it in a spanish translation rn. How's the chapter called?

kissless virgin detected

Jap here, 100% agree with this one. Really makes one correctly perceive morals, and also manages to shed petty nationalism for some. Also would recommend one to read up on the Nazi experimentation as well.

Is the Nazi experimentation one as well researched? One thing that amazed me about this was how vivid they were able to be with what was going on and how informative it was to read depsite the fact most of the evidence was destroyed or seized.

Do you know any other good books about Unit 731 aas well?

Moby Dick and Blood Meridian, in particular the characters of Ahab and The Judge

Those who attempt to explain Evil away are on par with those who attempt to explain Consciousness away.

There it is, every thread, some inane child posts this "my diary desu"? I bet you don't even keep one, you pathetic whelp. Do you think you're funny, with your diary memes? All you're doing is wasting everyone's time. Fuck off to /pol/ or /v/, you're not welcome on a serious discussion forum.

>Ahab
He was a maniac. Not evil.

>this idea is retarded
Yeah because you misunderstood. Eichmann argued he was following Kant's categorical imperative (which is a bit beyond your "idiots in cubicles"), which shows that in misunderstanding and unintelligent hands you can still twist a perfectly 'banal' and well-meaning philosophy into a justification for committing evil

Wow, reading the text in the image now. Putrid Demiurge apology. Textbook Christo-Scientist sleights of hand and twists of mind. Again, the same exact rhetoric that is used by Materialists. Invoking abstract notions of emergence to invalidate felt experience. Invoking the titanic requirements of keeping the wheel of the world turning as justification for its misery.

Abject garbage. Get behind me.

Actually no, you don't have to be a bitter virgin to realize they were a bunch of hateful nihilistic harpies.

:^)

no one writes about evil. good people write about good and evil people write badly or not at all.

POST MORE BOOKS PLEASE

user, your focusing on his justifications for his actions and not why he actually made them. THere's a reason it's pointed out that he's a joiner/unable to think for himself and just uses rhetoric he doesn't really understand/his bland normalacy and the fact that he saw people as being upper class endorsing Heydrich's plans.

It's important to remember that, in the end, his justiifactions are not essentiial to the point of the banality of evil because even the book admits he likely didn't fully understand the topic and wanted to seem educated. His entire life, he was a sheep.

The book's insipid anyway. I'd have a higher esteem for it if it looked at more Nazi war criminals than just Eichmann and also if it it wasn't as biased in it's depiction of him.

Depressing how long it took to be posted. And then it was completely ignored.

Stop confusing theologians, novelists and political theorists with philosophers.

1984
Most post modernist and existential literature

Evil is simply the absence or misdirection of good.

Read Plotinus. Read Augustine.

But that's completely not true at all, as the Holocaust, Unit 731 and the American HIV trials on Africans show.

Anyone who posts otherwise either has no real life experience or is a fuckwit who thinks moral relativism is true.

If you want to understand the idea of evil as privation: Plotinus and theologians like Aquinas
If you want to understand the idea of evil as something positive: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche
Spinoza is somehow a middle ground: "evil" is how we feel the decrease of our power, an idea akin to Nietzsch's amoral definition of good and evil in the Antichrist.
Also, study about psychopathy/sociopathy, war crimes, and read stuff like Marquis de Sade.

Unironically a good book. It shows that you can thoroughly condemn the Material without even mentioning the Spiritual.

Of course ethics are constructed by voluntary, beneficial assent. The dogs in the pack don't follow the alpha if it doesn't benefit them i.e. if the alpha is weak. Another dog takes the alpha position and is justified by doing so (much like the Mandate of Heaven). But to try to prove that a morality exists separated from the particular physical situation it is employed in is nonsense: without this or that particular pack, there is no particular alpha from which we can derive the idea of "being alpha."

Recommending this.

dumb recommendation
Manson and his crew weren't evil they were dumb
most of them were out of their minds from trauma and drugs (plus general stupidity)
charlie is the closest to evil but really he's just an insecure ego-maniacal sociopath who, in a way, you kinda have to feel bad for

No, your post is dumb and you don't understand evil at all.

2666

nah you just dont understand manson.
do you really think they thought they were the bad guys?
evil isnt a real thing moron.

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arendt isnt very good and her relationship with heidegger contradicts her thesis of the banality of evil

heidegger was neither a bureaucratic nor a pleb, nor merely following along, and yet she basically condones his nazism and focuses entirely on a strawman of evil

Can't we interpret the Holocaust as a perverted form of justice (from the viewpoints of the evildoers?)

Nazis believed that the Jews were oppressing them and had to be exterminated for Germans to thrive. Even internet Nazis today complain about how the Jews are oppressing them, destroying good Aryan morals, genociding them through immigration, and so on, and so killing the Jews is the only just course of action - in their view Holocaust unfortunately never happened, but they deserved it.

Almost everyone would agree that the Nazis were profoundly immoral. The Nazis would accuse them all of being subhumans, Jews, or race traitors.

All good choices.

Is this deleted chapter available anywhere?

are you implying Solanas is not petty?

Most "evil" as you define it doesn't exist. It's either
1. Horrific acts committed in the heat of the moment. Subsequently regretted by criminal for the rest of their life. Either due to consequences or genuine remorse.

2. Acts not thought evil because of the stupidity of the perpatrator or inherent weakesness of character, rather than out right maliciousness.

See Adolf Eichmann, Banality of Evil

3. Patterns of harmfulness due to effects in growing enviroment or abuse. I.e Ted Bundy or mental illness.

You should read Thomas Aquinas as he defined Evil as a lack of Goodness or a removal from God.

normie self-help books about image-building/business

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima. It's about a Buddhist monk who commits a series of evil acts over the course of his life, culminating in the historical arson of said temple. The character's first person narration to the reader is an account over the whole story of his own self described descent into "an inner world of evil."

>Holohoax didn't happen!
>I... I wish it did!

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