Does free will allow us to *choose* to be evil?

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Annie

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This is kind of a spin-off from the thread on forgiveness, because my thinking about that led me to consider that it seems like we always say that people act badly out of ignorance or out of psychological issues, but that seems not to leave room for someone to simply choose to be evil, to commit an evil act out of malice.

And it seems like that way of thinking negates the idea of free will.

So I am not sure how to think about this, esp since St Thomas Aquinas said that people are still seeking the good because evil is only the absence of good, which is also a bit confusing to me.
 
What if you think of sin as “missing the mark?” That is, you, as the archer, did shoot the arrow and aimed at some perceived good. But you just missed the bulls-eye.

Or, think of it like this: every act has some good in it, either intrinsically within the act, or some good result that will come from doing the act. That is, actions can be/often are complex—they can be mixtures of good(s) with varying disorders (less-than-the-best).
 
I find as I get older mot things or people I thought were evil weren’t. People are sometimes weak or scared and react accordingly. We also make many mistakes.

You can I suppose very pointedly put on a villains robe and hate and mwhahahaha but realistically no one wakes up intending to do evil.
Annie said:
So I am not sure how to think about this, esp since St Thomas Aquinas said that people are still seeking the good because evil is only the absence of good, which is also a bit confusing to me.
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There was a saint once I forget his name who was at a bar playing pool and his friends asked him if he knew he was going to drop dead in the next few minutes what would he do with his last moments.

He responded saying he’d finish this game of pool because you give glory and praise to God even in the most mundane of tasks.

I know it sounds black and white but if you aren’t eating babies or plotting to take over the world you are doing good. Reading a comic book? Good! Eating a chocolate cake? Also good!

Now on the flipside reading a bad comic or eating the last slice of cake are sins in themselves but just because you aren’t chanting prayers as you do things doesn’t make it neutral as it were.

Everything in Gods creation gives glory to Him. From swimming in a lake He provided to playing a game of billiards over a pint with friends.
 
Well, in that case, do we actually have free will, if all our bad acts are just due to misunderstandings or misperceptions?
 
Anrakyr said:
There was a saint once I forget his name who was at a bar playing pool and his friends asked him if he knew he was going to drop dead in the next few minutes what would he do with his last moments.
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I heard this was attributed to St Ignatius of Loyola.
Anrakyr said:
I know it sounds black and white but if you aren’t eating babies or plotting to take over the world you are doing good.
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But what about the people who are doing those things?

I’m not really thinking about myself. I’m just wondering about the idea in general. Probably those who would come to my mind would be cruel people, those who not only stab someone but twist the knife as well (in a metaphorical sense).
Anrakyr said:
I find as I get older mot things or people I thought were evil weren’t. People are sometimes weak or scared and react accordingly. We also make many mistakes.
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I too am getting older and see this more clearly. I guess that fact is what causes me to ask this question.
 
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Rather, I would have hoped that it helped to clear matters up. Unless you are studying philosophy or theology, I would not overthink this, but simply review Church teaching via the catechism. Knowing the “why” can be as clarifying as knowing the “what.”
 
Annie said:
Well, in that case, do we actually have free will, if all our bad acts are just due to misunderstandings or misperceptions?
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For sure. At the very least, you are free to make decisions based on misunderstanding reality (or misperceiving what is in your own best interest). Or, by prioritizing pleasure over other goods (e.g., financial well-being, one’s physical health or whatever). That is, you are free to misalign goods–to prioritize them in a disordered way.

But human wills are ordered toward goods. That’s what it is to be a human. So, even evil acts will have an admixture of goods within them. So, as Aristotle states, “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim,” in the opening of his Nicomachean Ethics, so too St Thomas Aquinas affirms in his commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, “There is no problem from the fact that some men desire evil. For they desire evil only under the aspect of good, that is, insofar as they think it good. Hence their intention primarily aims at the good and only incidentally touches on the evil.”
 
It seems to me this might be the reason that some people believe in universal salvation, unless you (or @Magnanimity) understand why people might chose He’ll?
 
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Or maybe it explains why God can forgive us, but can’t forgive demons?
 
Angels have perfect knowledge, they can’t change their minds. We change our minds based on data, they already almost like God know all results so when they pick, its once.
 
Right, so my comments wouldn’t apply to minds that aren’t properly functioning (e.g., psychopaths). This is an illness in need of healing.
 
Annie said:
It seems to me this might be the reason that some people believe in universal salvation, unless you (or @Magnanimity) understand why people might chose Hell?
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Your suspicions are correct. It is definitely a reason incorporated by some who believe in a reconciliation of all things (e.g., David Bentley Hart). Put simply, how does a human (whose choices are invariably oriented to some good) “choose” a neverending state of torment and suffering in which the Good is conspicuously absent?
 
I hesitate to call anybody evil.

But we can definitely choose to do evil. For instance to steal somebody else’s things, or lie, or cheat on their spouse.

At the same time, we humans are wonderful at rationalization, so of course we soothe ourselves with how minimal our sins are, or we just couldn’t help it, or what have you.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
I hesitate to call anybody evil.
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Good because all humans bear the “image and likeness” and thereby possess an intrinsic sacredness/value/worth.
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
But we can definitely choose to do evil. For instance to steal somebody else’s things, or lie, or cheat on their spouse.
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In all of these instances that you list, “evil” is still, properly speaking, a privation of the good (or a missing of the mark). The good is still aimed at.

So, when a person steals, he aims at possessing something of value (which is a good). But, in the act of theft, the privation/disorder consists in depriving the possession from another who properly already possesses it without exchanging anything of value for the item (and without the prior owner’s consent). The same would follow for lying–no one lies merely to commit the act. There is always some further good that is advanced by the lie (I won’t get in trouble, or I save someone from pain by my lie, etc). And we all know that conjugal love is a good available to human adults. The disorder consists in not having that love with the proper party (the spouse). But, the conjugal act is still the good in this example.

And on and on it goes. The church’s greatest minds have unanimously agreed that evil has no ontological status. It is not a “thing” I can desire. It is a lack of some good, less than the best, etc.
 
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Annie said:
How does this explain serial killers? Or people like Dr Mengele?
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Even the most vicious criminals can find ways to justify their evil acts. Very few people are so malevolent that they want to be evil. People can twist their minds into pretzels to justify just about any cruelty. Torture. Murder. Rape. Child abuse.

Hitler thought he was in the right, he didn’t believe he was evil. And even Hitler wasn’t all evil, all the time. He loved animals. He did have a truly deranged, sadistic, angry part to him, which is the part that history recalls and it is reflected on much of his public acts as Fuhrer . But he was also just some guy sometimes. He liked animals. He liked art. He also just happened to be the instigator of the worst war in history and the force behind an incredibly malevolent movement that caused such horrors it is hard to quantify them.

But most of those complicit in this felt they were either right or felt ways to justify their actions. They didn’t see themselves as monsters.
 
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I guess what I was driving at was: while there can be organic or psychological issues that drive objectively immoral actions, we are fully capable of making choices that hurt ourselves or other people, and so we do have free will.
 
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