Editing Evil (section)

==Question of a universal definition==
A fundamental question is whether there is a universal, transcendent definition of evil, or whether one's definition of evil is determined by one's social or cultural background. [[C. S. Lewis]], in ''[[The Abolition of Man]]'', maintained that there are certain acts that are universally considered evil, such as [[rape]] and [[murder]]. However, the rape of women, by men, is found in every society, and there are more societies that see at least some versions of it, such as marital rape or punitive rape, as normative than there are societies that see all rape as non-normative (a crime).<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Brown |editor1-first=Jennifer |editor2-last=Horvath |editor2-first=Miranda |title=Rape Challenging Contemporary Thinking |date=2013 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9781134026395 |page=62}}</ref> In nearly all societies, killing except for defense or duty is seen as murder. Yet the definition of defense and duty varies from one society to another.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Humphrey |first1=J.A. |last2=Palmer |first2=S. |title=Deviant Behavior Patterns, Sources, and Control |date=2013 |publisher=Springer US |isbn=9781489905833 |page=11}}</ref> Social deviance is not uniformly defined across different cultures, and is not, in all circumstances, necessarily an aspect of evil.<ref>{{cite book |last1=McKeown |first1=Mick |last2=Stowell-Smith |first2=Mark |title=Forensic Psychiatry |chapter=The Comforts of Evil: Dangerous Personalities in High-Security Hospitals and the Horror Film |date=2006 |pages=109–134 |doi=10.1007/978-1-59745-006-5_6 |isbn=9781597450065 |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-59745-006-5_6}}</ref><ref name="Stanley Milgram">{{cite book |last1=Milgram |first1=Stanley |title=Obedience to Authority |date=2017 |publisher=Harper Perennial |isbn=9780062803405 |pages=Foreword}}</ref>

Defining evil is complicated by its multiple, often ambiguous, common usages: evil is used to describe the whole range of suffering, including that caused by nature, and it is also used to describe the full range of human immorality from the "evil of genocide to the evil of malicious gossip".<ref name="Eve Garrard">{{cite journal |last1=Garrard |first1=Eve |title=Evil as an Explanatory Concept |journal=The Monist |date=April 2002 |volume=85 |issue=2 |pages=320–336 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27903775 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.5840/monist200285219 |jstor=27903775 |format=Pdf}}</ref>{{rp|321}} It is sometimes thought of as the generic opposite of good. [[Marcus Singer]] asserts that these common connotations must be set aside as overgeneralized ideas that do not sufficiently describe the nature of evil.<ref name="Marcus G. Singer2004">{{cite journal |last1=Marcus G. Singer |first1=Marcus G. Singer |title=The Concept of Evil |journal=Philosophy |date=April 2004 |volume=79 |issue=308 |pages=185–214 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3751971 |publisher=Cambridge University Press|doi=10.1017/S0031819104000233 |jstor=3751971 |s2cid=146121829 }}</ref>{{rp|185,186}}

In contemporary philosophy, there are two basic concepts of evil: a broad concept and a narrow concept. A broad concept defines evil simply as any and all pain and suffering: "any bad state of affairs, wrongful action, or character flaw".<ref name="Todd Calder">{{cite web |last1=Calder |first1=Todd |title=The Concept of Evil |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/concept-evil/|website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |date=26 November 2013 |publisher=Stanford University |access-date=17 January 2021}}</ref> Yet, it is also asserted that evil cannot be correctly understood "(as some of the utilitarians once thought) [on] a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as a plus, and pain as a minus".<ref name="John Kemp">{{cite journal |last1=Kemp |first1=John |title=Pain and Evil |journal=Philosophy |date=25 February 2009 |volume=29 |issue=108 |page=13 |doi=10.1017/S0031819100022105 |s2cid=144540963 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/abs/pain-and-evil/F3FF667D770E68BE6A9A56A345FBB7D6 |access-date=8 January 2021}}</ref> This is because pain is necessary for survival.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Reviews |journal=The Humane Review |date=1901 |volume=2 |issue=5–8 |page=374 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aCUKAAAAIAAJ |publisher=E. Bell}}</ref>  Renowned orthopedist and missionary to lepers, [[Paul Brand (physician)|Dr. Paul Brand]] explains that leprosy attacks the nerve cells that feel pain resulting in no more pain for the leper, which leads to ever increasing, often catastrophic, damage to the body of the leper.<ref name="Yancey and Brand">{{cite book |last1=Yancey |first1=Philip |last2=Brand |first2=Paul |title=Fearfully and Wonderfully Made |date=2010 |publisher=Zondervan |isbn=9780310861997}}</ref>{{rp|9, 50–51}} Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia, is a neurological disorder that prevents feeling pain. It "leads to&nbsp;... bone fractures, multiple scars, osteomyelitis, joint deformities, and limb amputation&nbsp;... Mental retardation is common. Death from hyperpyrexia occurs within the first 3 years of life in almost 20% of the patients."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Rosemberg |first1=Sérgio |last2=Kliemann |first2=Suzana |last3=Nagahashi |first3=Suely K. |title=Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy type IV) |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0887899494900914 |journal=Pediatric Neurology |year=1994 |volume=11 |issue=1 |pages=50–56 |publisher=Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery |doi=10.1016/0887-8994(94)90091-4 |pmid=7527213 |access-date=8 January 2021}}</ref> Few with the disorder are able to live into adulthood.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Cox |first1=David |title=The curse of the people who never feel pain |url=https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170426-the-people-who-never-feel-any-pain |access-date=8 January 2021 |publisher=BBC |date=27 April 2017}}</ref> Evil cannot be simply defined as all pain and its connected suffering because, as Marcus Singer says: "If something is really evil, it can't be necessary, and if it is really necessary, it can't be evil".<ref name="Marcus G. Singer2004"/>{{rp|186}}

The narrow concept of evil involves moral condemnation, therefore it is ascribed only to moral agents and their actions.<ref name="Eve Garrard"/>{{rp|322}} This eliminates natural disasters and animal suffering from consideration as evil: according to [[Claudia Card]], "When not guided by moral agents, forces of nature are neither "goods" nor "evils". They just are. Their "agency" routinely produces consequences vital to some forms of life and lethal to others".<ref name="Claudia Card">{{cite book |last1=Card |first1=Claudia |title=The Atrocity Paradigm A Theory of Evil |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195181265 |page=5}}</ref> The narrow definition of evil "picks out only the most morally despicable sorts of actions, characters, events, etc. ''Evil'' [in this sense]&nbsp;... is the worst possible term of opprobrium imaginable".<ref name="Marcus G. Singer2004"/> [[Eve Garrard]] suggests that evil describes "particularly horrifying kinds of action which we feel are to be contrasted with more ordinary kinds of wrongdoing, as when for example we might say 'that action wasn't just wrong, it was positively evil'. The implication is that there is a qualitative, and not merely quantitative, difference between evil acts and other wrongful ones; evil acts are not just very bad or wrongful acts, but rather ones possessing some specially horrific quality".<ref name="Eve Garrard"/>{{rp|321}} In this context, the concept of evil is one element in a full nexus of moral concepts.<ref name="Eve Garrard"/>{{rp|324}}