Philosophy of Evil, #2

Ramzey Sidani
4/28/2018

Looking back to the opinions of Epicurus and Freud, their opinions have a

different site of origin when it came to understanding the universe and how the human

mind is to understand different aspects of it. Being in this case the embodiment of evil.

Both consider the interpretation of Evil as a form of the human mind that is to be

constructed. Epicurus’s sensations define the idea that many of us will prefer to act upon

the sensations that we perceive as pleasurable, but pleasurable for certain individuals is

vastly different for a different group of people. The range of Epicurus’s interpretation of

good and evil solely relies on how the individual interprets pleasure and pain. Though

this is a typical way of interpreting the world their begs the question of how does one

interpret necessary evil? For example Working the job that is far below what you want in

life, you clearly do not enjoy it so in the eyes of Epicurus the job is evil and therefor

should change. Though Epicurus’s ideas are right when interpreting signs of stress it does

not account for the almost real-life situations.

Freud on the other hand focuses on the idea that no matter what conscious

decision is determined it was subconsciously provoked. The factors that associate an

individual will in turn always reach back to the underlying cause which for Freud was

childhood. Those that came from a difficult background will have a unstructured

adulthood that did not go through the proper levels of psyche. Now in terms of evil,

Freud would look at it from the unconscious level so the subconscious determines

whether evil in the world is actually evil or not evil. His focus is interesting to say the

least, but lacks a certain depth those individuals that had a difficult childhood and

become unsuccessful members of society have a deranged form of good and evil. The

mind of a serial killer is much different than the mind of an ordinary person. A serial

killer will act upon their underlying thoughts and continue to do so because that is how

they interpret the world, how can the world benefit me. For the mind of a ordinary

person, thoughts will arise that are in nature unpure/evil, but acting on them is what

defines the individual.

I consider both forms of interpreting evil unique. Both have an advantage side and

a side that clouds the judgement of either theory. In my eyes the idea of evil is that of

how society will determine. A collective mind is always more sufficient than that of a

single one track mind. So when determining evil focusing on how we as a species will be

affected with the decisions made by each other will determine good or evil in that if the

decision are advantageous or a disadvantage for us. While certain decisions have almost

little to no impact on various groups of people deciding what is good and evil almost

always comes down to the individual.