Morality tries to both oppose harm in principle and minimize and regulate it in practice, given that perfect purity isn’t possible.
The idea is that the evil that lives in us is the reason we need moral codes and need them imposed on us.
Really? That is not proven. If there is evil in us then letting moral people impose on you means they will set up up for harm in the name of right and wrong.
It seems we make evil inevitable and because we shouldn't, we need them. That is a very fragile argument and may explain why we are so rebellious.
What if evil is metaphysically inevitable? That would imply it acts like a some kind of energy that will come out. This view would suggest that evil is more than just what free agents do.
Imposing is pointless then. And nobody knows if some evil took them over and made them think it was their own choice or not.
If evil is going to happen anyway, if there was some power we could wield to
make it target people we consider dangerous we would. We are only moral for we
don’t think we have such a power. But it does not change how we would do it if
we could. It does not change the corruption in the heart. But if we could and
would, how could morality be real? How could it be real if we have to manage
evil not oppose it and only oppose who it targets not that it targets people?
In fact, while we may send evil to others the fact remains we are invoking and
arousing it in ourselves in a way we think is using it for a purpose and
managing it. The evil is never really fully sent to another.
Redirecting evil or harm to people we think are dangerous so that the good might
be spared does not show good intention.
Immanuel Kant held that the existence of temptation is what gives moral action
its meaning—choosing the right thing despite inclination and having the
faculties and power to give in. If he is right then inevitability makes morality
necessary, not meaningless.
Morality is meaningless if those points are wrong.
But they are irrelevant if we harbour an inner store of actual evil, and a
potentially worse one of malice and injustice.
Morality forbids lying for lying always means you are trying to gain at the
expense of the truth and to gain some advantage over those you lie to. Morality
itself is a lie as we have seen. It is not real.
Even if evil is not meant to be a real power or substance, but only a limit or
failure in principle, in practice we have treated it as something more. It is as
good as a real power now. Through our hearts, actions, systems, and
justifications, we have given it weight, direction, and use. Force or not, it is
a force to us. We have put the meat on its bones. Even if it is not a
metaphysical substance, it matters not if we treat it as one for it so close to
one. No word ever captures what it means fully. Dismissing the view that evils
are truly really substantial on the basis of its harms is foolish when it is
virtually or effectively real in us and society.
You both have an experience and that experience is somehow you. That is the
paradox of consciousness. If each person is, in some sense, constituted by what
they perceive, choose, and enact, then wrongdoing is not just something external
that passes through us. It is us.
OBJECTION: A person is never absolutely evil.
REPLY: True. But in the present instant one doing evil becomes the evil at least
for a moment. There is no danger in recognising that. The only danger is when a
person is defined by others as bad for having done something terrible – they are
more than just the bad deed. But that is another topic.