The Question of Evil

Throughout time, philosophers have often sought to solve the question of evil: where does it come from? is it a dualistic entitiy (because there is good there is an opposing evil), etc.  According to St. Augustine, “evil exists because people choose it,” thus, man carries with him original sin projected through the catalyst of free will.  Why then do we have free will?  Augustine states that “because people are personally responsible for their actions, it is possible to praise or blame them, and people can feel good or bad about themselves depending on what choices they make.”  Essentially, it causes us to hold ourselves responsible for our actions and leaves us to monitor ourselves by our conscience.  The famed C. S. Lewis was well versed in Augustine, for his writings and ideas line up perfectly with those of Augustine as seen in the following passage from Mere Christianity:

“To be bad, he (man) must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. Therefore he must be getting them from the Good Power: even to be bad he must borrow or steal from his opponent. And do you now beg to see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel?”

Put simply, there cannot be evil without good or dark without light.  Evil is the corruption of good and thus stems from it, not the other way around.

Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, is in agreement with Augustine of evil being the result of man’s choice: “What distinguishes choice is that before a choice is made there is a rational deliberation or thinking of things through.”  Simply put, virtue and vice “are up to us.”

I would like to ponder Aristotle’s view on the golden mean fused with the idea of dualism.  A dualistic way of thinking, such in the case of C. S. Lewis and Augustine, implies that there is an opposing force to good in the essence of evil being the absence of good (ex: because there is God there must be an opposing, fallen evil in Satan).  Aristotle’s golden mean says that virtue is found in the mean of excess and deficiency: too much courage leads to rashness and too little is cowardliness, with courage lying in the middle.  From a dualistic standpoint this could not be, for it implies that virtue, or goodness, falls between two evils instead of being opposed by one.  Would rather an upside down “V” shaped golden mean be more applicable, with the single point being virtue and the opposing sides being excess and deficiency?  Thus, everything in between would also be evil and there would only be one “good” so to speak.  God would of course be the point of virtue and goodness, with Satan being the manifestation of both opposing sides.  Or, one could imagine a circle with the far left side being virtue (good) and the opposing side being vice (evil) with the upper arc connecting the two being excess and the lower arc connecting the two being deficiency, thus gelling the two ideas of the golden mean and dualistic thinking.