Preliminary Post concerning Theodicy : What is Evil?

Evil - what is evil? Is evil the eternal and equal opposite of good? I am not strictly speaking of evil in the adjectival sense. Philosophically, does it possess its own 'thingness'? Firstly, is evil a thing...does it exist in the same sense that we might say that good exists?

I maintain that it does not. While this short series of statements will prove incapable of summarizing a full argument on this subject, this is still an exercise worth attempting (if only for the exercise of learning from the red marks littered across the pages of this argument). I would maintain in the first that evil does not in fact exist in the same sense that good exists. I would posit that evil can only exist where there is in fact good originally, and when good ultimately ceases to exist, so does evil.

Speaking in terms of analogies, evil exists in the same sense that a typo exists. A typo doesn't possess some alternate existence, but exists in a disordered state. The ordered state is the proper word that was intended by the author. While the error may not reflect the intention of the author, it doesn't possess some alternative existence - it exists in the same basic form as a normative word or phrase but as a word distorted. That is precisely what evil is : a distortion or a disordering. One only has to extrapolate this analogy to the human body (in the form of cancer) to see how much harm disorder can in fact have on an otherwise 'good' body. As far as I have understood the nature of cancer (and that is not much) it is a cluster of disordered cells producing terribly harmful effects in the body.

I don't so much wish to speak at the moment of the nature of the results of evil or begin to formulate a justification for its existence as to discuss the thought communicated by these analogies - that evil only exists as a privation of good. This idea comes from St. Augustine of Hippo. I will attempt to pursue this further in another post or so.

Peace be with you, JRL