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Meta-ethics is the study of the fundamental questions concerning the nature and origins of the good and the evil, including inquiry into the nature of good and evil, as well as the meaning of evaluative language. In this respect, meta-ethics is not necessarily tied to investigations into how others see the good, or of asserting what is good.
Phrases similar to forbidding evil and commanding good can be found examining texts of ancient Greek philosophers-- Stoic Chrysippus (d.207 BC) and Aristotle (d.322) -- and the founder the Buddha. [27] A particularly similar formulation is found in the book of Psalms: "Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it". (Psalm 34:14)
Later Scholastics like Pierre D'Ailly and his student Jean de Gerson explicitly confronted the Euthyphro dilemma, taking the voluntarist position that God does not "command good actions because they are good or prohibit evil ones because they are evil; but... these are therefore good because they are commanded and evil because prohibited."
Manichaean theology teaches a dualistic view of good and evil. A fundamental belief in Manichaeism is that the powerful, though not omnipotent, good power (God) was opposed by the eternal evil power (the devil). Humanity, the world, and the soul are seen as the by-product of the battle between God's proxy—Primal Man—and the devil.
The good effect must be caused by the action at least as immediately (in terms of causality, not—necessarily—temporally) as the bad effect. It is impermissible to attempt to bring about an indirect good with a direct evil. [4] Also formulated as: The means-end condition. The bad effect must not be the means by which one achieves the good ...
Adam and Eve - Paradise, the fall of man as depicted by Lucas Cranach the Elder, the Tree of knowledge of good and evil is on the right. In Christianity and Judaism, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Tiberian Hebrew: עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע, romanized: ʿêṣ had-daʿaṯ ṭōḇ wā-rāʿ, [ʕesˤ hadaʕaθ tˤov wɔrɔʕ]; Latin: Lignum scientiae boni et mali ...
The distinction of evil from 'bad' is complex. Evil is more than simply 'negative' or 'bad' (i.e. undesired or inhibiting good) as evil is on its own, and without reference to any other event, morally incorrect. The validity of 'moral evil' as a term, therefore, rests on the validity of morals in ethics.
Since, however, these discover no deviation from the moral norm, they cannot be characterized as evil, and so therefore, it is said, must be considered as indifferent. According to the opinion of Thomas Aquinas, a common one among theologians, it is not necessary, in order to be morally good, that an act should be referred to a positively good end.