Evil Perception and the Existence

¶ … Evil

Perception and the Existence of Good and Evil

Questions of morality -- specifically the question of morality; namely whether morality can truly be said to exist in an objective way -- have increasingly been a matter of importance in literature and thought as religion has faded in importance. It has been suggested that good and evil exist only in the mid of the beholder and are determined based upon how one perceives any specific action or event. There is certainly abundant literature and published philosophical thought supporting this theory, and it is certainly enticing for many in the modern age to believe they have the full and sole responsibility for defining their own moral worth not through their actions, but through they themselves perceive these actions. An examination of four texts that appear to support this argument, at least in part, reveals the ultimate instability and, to put it bluntly the complete fallacy of this assertion.

W.S. Merwin's "The Stranger" relates the story of a man and a snake, at once invoking biblical illusions and yet providing a very different view on good and evil than does the Book of Genesis. I this poem, the snake attempts to demonstrate that all who practice good receive evil as their reward. Though the terms "good" and "evil" are still attached to acts traditionally associated with one or the other -- such as killing vs. saving a life -- it is clear that the snake believes these to be rather subjective terms dependent on context and perception. The dog in the poem, however, recognizes evil and kills it despite the ambiguity the poet attempts to asset in his closing lines: "and the stranger took the dog home with him / and treated him the way the stranger would treat a dog" (73-4).

William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," which is as much as philosophical treatise as it is a poem also comes to the conclusion -- and in much more explicit if more complex terms -- that good and evil are fully in the mind of the beholder. His general philosophy is espoused in the lines, "2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy / 3. Energy is Eternal Delight" ("Voice of the Devil," 7-8). Despite the large amounts of complex reasoning and spiritual pondering that accompanies Blake's argument and purport to support it, it becomes clear that this very belief is the source if its own destruction as it is built on absolutes that need not exist. If Desire is cast as inherently evil as Blake asserts it is in traditional views, then his argument holds some merit but simply by acknowledging that desire need only be restrained when it causes harm the need for the marriage of good and evil disappears.

In the poem and essay "Compensation," Ralph Waldo Emerson makes a much more cogent and coherent assessment of how perspective seems to determine good and evil. His examples, however, are purely situational and do not adequately support his central thesis. For example, he compares a farmer jealous of power to the President examining what he has had to sacrifice to earn the White House (par. 11). While it is true that what one might see as a "good" here might be seen as an "evil" by the other, this has nothing to do with real morality. It is not what the President sacrificed of himself that determines the evil of this situation, but whether he sacrificed others for his own personal gain.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the most well-known pieces of literature in the Western world. Robert Louis Stevenson shows the novels protagonist, Dr. Jekyll, at first pleased with his ability to transform into the conscious-free Mr. Hyde, making it clear that evil only exists for those that feel a need to perceive it. Ultimately, however, Mr. Hyde's evil ends up destroying both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When Dr. Jekyll writes, "I am careless" just prior to his final transformation into Mr. Hyde and his subsequent suicide, he seems to have not more regard for morality at this point than does his darker counterpart (chapter 10). It is only because Hyde's evil has brought his life to a close, however, that he feels this way. While this fact could be used as further fodder argue that good and evil truly are a matter of pure perception, in that even Jekyll no longer cares about the difference, it is more potently read as evidence of the degradations that evil causes.