Are good and evil opposites?

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I’m just a beginner and so this is probably a very elementary question. Are good and evil opposites?

:thankyou:
Poustinia
 
I would guess that Spiritual Good and Spiritual Evil are opposites while Phisical Good and Phisical Evil are not as they can be perceived in different ways.

Tell me if I need to explain myself better.

Thanks,
Rob
 
Poustinia said:
Are good and evil opposites?
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Yes and no. Good is a being while evil is nonbeing. For example, the condition of having two good eyes is good for a dog, but the condition of not having eyes would be bad for it. Having is the opposite of not having, so in that sense they are opposites. But opposites cancel each other out, like a profit cancels out a debt so you wind up breaking even. But there is no such thing as having two eyes that both are 50-50 existing and not existing, so in that sense they are not opposites. Pure good can exist, but there is no such thing as pure evil, not even the devil, for the devil has at least the good of existence.

Augustine, Enchiridion 11:
What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good? In animal bodies, for instance, sickness and wounds are nothing but the privation of health. When a cure is effected, the evils which were present (i.e., the sickness and the wounds) do not retreat and go elsewhere. Rather, they simply do not exist any more. For such evil is not a substance; the wound or the disease is a defect of the bodily substance which, as a substance, is good. Evil, then, is an accident, i.e., a privation of that good which is called health. Thus, whatever defects there are in a soul are privations of a natural good. When a cure takes place, they are not transferred elsewhere but, since they are no longer present in the state of health, they no longer exist at all.
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And what he goes on to say in the paragraphs that follow answer your question directly, but they are too long to quote here.
 
To love your neighbour as you love your self is good
to covet your neighbours wife / husband & or his goods is evil

what kind of good & evil you are looking at?

Stanley lobo
 
Hey Poustinia. Apollos is correct. But I like to put it this way, real simple. Evil is like a shadow. A shadow isn’t really a thing itself, but the absence of light. So evil isn’t really a thing itself, but rather the absence of good.
 
A good this is; and is something; the being of evil is apparent and not real; an evil thing seems to be; but in truth they are not; and they are nothing.

De divina omnipotentia 602A-C, 608B-610D, 618B-C.

It follows from this; that because nothing is a contrarity of something; it is it’s formal opposite. The two cannot inhere together; as that would entail contrarity.
 
Since God created everything everything must be good! Nothing is intrinsically evil. Brain tumours and earthquakes are not evil, nor is our power of choice, but when they cause unnecessary suffering and death they produce evil.** Dis**eases, disasters, defects and deformities are negative consequences which are dysteleological, i.e. they frustrate and interfere with the purposes of Creation.
 
Poustinia said:
I’m just a beginner and so this is probably a very elementary question. Are good and evil opposites?
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No. Evil is an absence (privation) of good.

From the article on evilCatholic Encyclopedia:
A complete account may be gathered from the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, by whom the principles of St. Augustine are systematized, and to some extent supplemented. Evil, according to St. Thomas, is a privation, or the absence of some good which belongs properly to the nature of the creature. (I,Q. xiv, a. 10; Q. xlix, a. 3; Contra Gentiles, III, ix, x). There is therefore no “summum malum”, or positive source of evil, corresponding to the “summum bonum”, which is God (I, Q. xlix, a. 3; C. G., III, 15; De Malo, I, 1); evil being not “ens reale” but only “ens rationis”–i.e. it exists not as an objective fact, but as a subjective conception; things are evil not in themselves, but by reason of their relation to other things, or persons. All realities (entia) are in themselves good; they produce bad results only incidentally; and consequently the ultimate cause of evil if fundamentally good, as well as the objects in which evil is found (I, Q. xlix; cf. I, Q. v, 3; De Malo, I, 3). Thus the Manichaean dualism has no foundation in reason.
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JohnDamian said:
A good this is; and is something; the being of evil is apparent and not real; an evil thing seems to be; but in truth they are not; and they are nothing.
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This reminds me of the 1973 movie *The Exorcist *and of one of the interviews of Charles Manson.

There was a scene in The Exorcist in which the demon says something unintelligible, and the priest later discovers through playing the tape backwards that it was saying “I am no one”.

An interviewer asked Manson something like “Who are you?” or “Who is the real Charles Manson?”, and Manson’s immediate reaction was a visible convulsion of total confusion.
 
Poustinia said:
I’m just a beginner and so this is probably a very elementary question. Are good and evil opposites?

:thankyou:
Poustinia
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Good can exist on its own. Evil has no existence without good present; evil is the perversion, defilement and destruction of the good. So in my opinion, given this relationship, they cannot be true opposites.
 
timotheos said:
Good can exist on its own. Evil has no existence without good present; evil is the perversion, defilement and destruction of the good. So in my opinion, given this relationship, they cannot be true opposites.
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A very good point but when evil arrives on the scene opposition does arise. And, a sobering thought, it will last forever if we believe in the reality of hell…
 
Poustinia said:
I’m just a beginner and so this is probably a very elementary question. Are good and evil opposites?

:thankyou:
Poustinia
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It is a perfectly good question,

God - being the good - has no opposite. Evil is not and never will be the opposite of the good that God is.

It is merely against the good that God is. Since God is perfectly good and evil is not perfect (or is actually a lack of perfection), evil will never be the opposite…just the “against” or “anti”.
 
Virtue is a habit exercised in the mean. That is, it is neither too much, nor too little. In this sense, the good, virtue, has 2 opposing vices, evils. But in line with previous posts, these are not real “opposites”, but rather privations of the good.
 
Thank-you all for your insightful answers.

:thankyou: and God bless!
Poustinia
 
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