. . . “Your anticipation is right; and
as doctors are wont to hope, it shows a lively nature now fit to withstand
disease. But I see that you are very ready in understanding, and I will
multiply my arguments one upon another. See how great is the weakness of these
wicked men who cannot even attain that to which their natural instinct leads
them, no, almost drives them.
“And further, how if they are deprived
of this great, this almost invincible, aid of a natural instinct to follow?
Think what a powerlessness possesses these men. They are no light objects that
they seek; they seek no objects in sport, objects it is impossible that they
should achieve. They fail in the very highest of all things, the crown of all,
and in this they find none of the success for which they labor day and night in
wretchedness.
“But herein the strength of good men is
conspicuous. If a man could advance on foot until he arrived at an utmost point
beyond which there was no path for further advance, you would think him most capable
of walking: equally so, if a man grasps the very end and aim of his search, you
must think him most capable.
“Wherefore also the contrary is true;
that evil men are similarly deprived of all strength. For why do they leave
virtue and follow after vice? Is it from ignorance of good? Surely not, for
what is weaker or less compelling than the blindness of ignorance? Do they know
what they ought to follow, and are they thrown from the straight road by
passions? Then they must be weak too in self-control if they cannot struggle
with their evil passions.
“But they lose thus not only power, but
existence all together. For those who abandon the common end of all who exist,
must equally cease to exist. And this may seem strange, that we should say that
evil men, though the majority of mankind, do not exist at all; but it is so.
For while I do not deny that evil men are evil, I do deny that they ‘are,’ in
the sense of absolute existence. You may say, for instance, that a corpse is a
dead man, but you cannot call it a man. In a like manner, though I grant that
wicked men are bad, I cannot allow that they are men at all, as regards
absolute being.
“A thing exists which keeps its proper place
and preserves its nature; but when anything falls away from its nature, its existence
too ceases, for that lies in its nature.
“You will say, ‘Evil men are capable of
evil’: and that I would not deny. But this very power of theirs comes not from strength,
but from weakness. They are capable of evil; but this evil would have no efficacy
if it could have stayed under the operation of good men. And this very power of
ill shows the more plainly that their power is nothing. For if, as we have
agreed, evil is nothing, then, since they are only capable of evil, they are
capable of nothing.”
“That is quite plain.” . . .
—from
Book 4, Prose 2
It may
seem odd to suggest that evil is really nothing, and that those who do evil are
powerless. I have heard many students proclaim, “That’s the stupidest thing I
ever heard!” But if something is good simply by being itself, then evil, as its
opposite, will be the failure of something to be itself. By extension, if
virtue is a power of living well, then vice is a weakness in living well.
Perhaps
the difficulty comes from thinking that evil is therefore somehow “imaginary”,
or that its effects are not at all “real”. Yes, its effects are quite real, but
as the result of an absence, not of a presence.
Just
like the hole in a doughnut is real only in relation to what exists around it, so
evil is only real in relation to what is good. It is not in itself a presence,
but a privation, the negation of what should be present according to a thing’s
nature.
I first
came across this sort of argument in St. Augustine’s Confessions, where he struggled to make sense of which things in
life were good, and which things in life were bad. Was spirit good, and matter
evil? Was there some line dividing different types of beings that were
beneficial or harmful? Can I even say that a man is evil in himself, or that
his thoughts and actions could more rightly be considered evil?
Boethius
here presents an argument very similar to Augustine’s, one I am sure he must
have been quite familiar with. We speak of darkness as the absence of light, or
hunger as the absence of being fed, and we can also speak of evil as the
absence of good. Things are never the problem; the problem is in our failure to make the right use of things, to fulfill them, to complete the very purpose
within their natures.
I am
misled into believing that wicked people are powerful, because I am looking at
all the wrong indicators of what is strong or weak. I see that they claim to
own so many things, or to have so much influence over others, even as they
really possess none of those things at all.
People
may employ things in certain ways, though always in a manner that abuses
those things contrary to their nature, and most importantly in a manner that
abuses their own nature.
In the
simplest of terms, I should not think of a man as being strong if he is
starving his soul, or somehow bigger if he is hacking away more and more bits
of his humanity. He is becoming less, not more.
If I am
living with vice, is it perhaps because I am ignorant of the good? That is a
weakness, an absence of the wisdom that should be a part of my rational nature.
Is it because I am incapable of controlling my desires? That too is a weakness,
an absence of the choice that should be a part of my will.
Slowly
but surely, I abandon my very identity as a person. Is there still something
there? Yes, but it is the shadow of man, not a complete man at all. It is as if
I am throwing myself off a cliff, into the void, abandoning all that I was made
to be, falling into emptiness.
That is
rather frightening, as it should be, and it should remind me of what I still
can be. No one else has been the cause of the inner corruption, except myself. Those
judgments I thought would increase me were only diminishing me, in the deepest
sense of what it means for me to exist, as a creature given the purpose to know
and to love.
Written in 10/2015
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