Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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 ...
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)
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.
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."
Alvin Plantinga in 2004. Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is a logical argument developed by the American analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga and published in its final version in his 1977 book God, Freedom, and Evil. [1]
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.
He wrote that "evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name 'evil.'" [14] Both moral and natural evil occurs, Augustine argued, owing to an evil use of free will, [4] which could be traced back to Adam and Eve's original sin, [7] which to him was inexplicable given the understanding that Adam and Eve were "created ...