What is your definition of an evil person?

Question

Is it only people who kill, rape, maim or does it include people who intentionally demoralize, abuse, and mentally screw over others? Like people who reward a good deed with a punishment.

Answer 1

Needless to say, your question is one of the greatest, most enduring, but also most mystifying of all questions.

I think it is risky to attempt to reduce evil to this or that definition. However, because the consequences of evil are so tragic, damaging and unproductive, it is valid to try and get some grasp of what it is.

Is there a difference between an evil act and an evil person? Can a person be evil one minute and good the next? Can they commit an evil act and yet still fall shy of being labeled "evil"?

I think to label somebody evil, or even to call oneself evil, one must either cause terrible harm to another (or others) sensing that doing so is wrong, or one very consciously harms another (or others). I think we tend to call somebody evil when we believe that they are carrying out an evil act with conscious intention. And evil acts can assume many forms. So I would say that there is a distributive property to what we call evil that can be found by degree in many, many people. Managing evil is in fact a shared responsibility, as unpleasant as that responsibility may be. Evil can be committed all at once or it can be carried out gradually, regularly, one small dose at a time. If nothing is capable of transforming it or redeeming it, then it will become for all intents and purposes an evil state with an evil consequence. It still may be mysterious, but it will have become undeniably real.

The problem with evil often seems to be that the individual who has committed the evil act feels completely justified in doing it. They feel justified in lying. They feel justified in stealing from another. They feel justified in slandering another person, ruining their social image, misrepresenting their real intentions, obstructing their real growth. They feel justified in torturing another, however they do that. They feel justified in violating a child, an old person, a sibling, an animal that cannot defend itself. The source of this self-justification is part of the mystery. How can a person justify hurting another or violating the innocence in another?

I have in certain circumstances concluded that a person, or persons, have become evil when they continuously bring injury to another knowing that they are obstructing the other person's path, life or way. If you continuously tie up another person's growth, good will, life energy, you can be considered evil.

However, this still does not necessarily refer to absolute evil. I do think a further distinction has to be made between evil - a state of being shared by the whole human race - and absolute evil which is found much less frequently. Absolute evil seems to result from the complete fusion of conscious will or intention and the evil action itself. Absolute evil refuses to acknowledge that the target of the evil is a human being or creature with feelings, emotions, thoughts, a desire to live, love and pursue happiness. Rather the evil person categorically refuses to, or cannot, feel the true, independent right to live embodied in the other. They cannot sense consequences of the act of violating the other person's 'right'. Even if they themselves have been violated and are reacting to the agony of that violation, their conscious intent still becomes evil.

Some could argue that the evil person is the one who DOES sense the right, the sensitivity, the vitality in another and perpetrates the injury for exactly that reason. One can say that the evil person has severe problems feeling, loving, living, growing and so targets innocent people in order to arouse these morbid states of feeling, etc., from their cold-blooded slumber.

For all these reasons it is not easy to get to the bottom of evil, and yet we recognize it when it stealthily creeps up on us and takes a chunk out of our lives. At that moment we become dangerously (and tragically) entangled with the evil person and the boundaries of evil become horribly blurred. By the same token, though it is easier to recognize evil in others it is much harder to recognize the evil in oneself. Self-justification assumes many masks.

Generally, however, we experience evil as the deliberate attempt by another to harm you or anyone, knowing that the action is wrong, malignant, treacherous, slanderous. Evil eclipses the bonds of love, trust, understanding, compassion and growth that exist spontaneously among all human beings at least potentially.

It is evil not to act in ways that bring benefit to others - real benefit. It is evil to repetitively, or habitually bring harm to another - especially if one knows that it is harmful. Even if the society accepts the harmful habits, if an individual knows he is selling something, or offering something that harms the well-being of others then that individual is on the road toward evil. If he hardens up for any reason and allows the habit to become policy then he or she is flirting dangerously close with absolute evil.

Very significant question. I feel like a dwarf throwing pebbles at a dragon, but I wanted to try and give you some reply anyway. Thanks for asking it.

B. Lyons

Answer 2

Evil Person

Answer 3

Define Evil

Answer 4

First I would like to praise the questioner for this really interesting question. I'm also very much agreeing on the questioners inclusion of people who intentionally demoralize, abuse, and mentally screw over others. I do not want to give a clear cut definition on this one. But just a few thoughts about it.

I think like Buttercups the awareness of the evil the wrongdoer is enforcing is in my eyes the mayor part of the evil.
Maybe Stalin and Hitler aren't the most evil ones. Also their position in power enabled them to enforce these evil acts. The consequences for them where limited compared to people with equally bad intentions but not in power or missing the talents to avoid or eliminate the consequences.

I do also think that the hardship a wrongdoer has suffered in a earlier phase of their lives by a group of people makes their getting-even acts less evil compared to someone with even more violent intentions but an inability to implement them.

Answer 5

people are not evil but people do evil things. People are born without the ability to have empathy (pick your serial killer). Evil is a human term (well ok God brought it in) so evil to me may not be to you. Killings someone who is in horrible pain and is suffering greatly can be evil to one person and the act of an angel in another. It has a lot to do with context.

Answer 6

ones image of an evil person can vary between what type of person you are. I believe an evil person is someone that has no regard for others. some can say that having no regard for others is a sign of courage and self independence, watching their own back and no one else's. So an evil person can be anyone, portraying any image.

Answer 7

Well, now that you asked, there is evil, and there is sadistic, totally different for me....just different levels, and yes I have personally experience the good deeds have been severely punished, just GOD'S way of saying, oh no, not there.

Answer 8

An evil person is a person who takes pride in causing chaos and hurting others - and hurting others doesn't necessarily mean always physically hurting them, but mentally as well.

I know such a person, would you like his email address and you can experience this for yourself? No, I wouldn't do that to you.

Answer 9

I believe that a truly evil person is one who enjoys to see others sufferings and finds happiness in others unfortunate situations

Answer 10

personally I would define evil as the absence of compassion and empathy.

It is those who do not feel the suffering of others that makes this world such a cruel place.

Answer 11

My idea of what evil is in a person:
Someone who is fully aware of what they are doing; yet who creates destructive and bad things for others. To systematically set about destroying someone's happiness, sanity, confidence etc.
Hope that answers your question.