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Evil and the Evil One
Peter Kopa, Prague, 4.11.2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz5FgAv3iWk
Introduction to the topic
Nordic rationalist intellectuals in the West have no qualms about speaking openly about evil, understood in its full reality as the devil and hell, as it is revealed with astonishing insistence in the Holy Scriptures. On the other hand, in the Latin intellectual world, there is a certain embarrassment to touch on this subject. It is felt as a kind of shyness and shame, especially in spirits of little faith, and a great fear of compromising one’s professional profile as a professor or journalist. In this regard, the Swiss Neue Zuercher Zeitung, the oldest and most prestigious newspaper in the world, is one of the greatest exponents of Nordic freethinking thought. It has recently published in German a very accurate article on evil and the evil one, from the pen of G. Gracia. An commented review follows.
The West does not want to see evil
For centuries, evil was part of the spiritual compass of the West. It is increasingly forgotten. The moral confusion of our time testifies to this, with the risk of losing the foundations on which its greatness has arisen: https://thinktanklatam.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/pexels-omer-derinyar-17709690-1-scaled-e1692023066145-1530×1536.jpg.
In the face of wars and social upheavals it was naively hoped that all this would lead to a better world. But in this hope, evil was not taken into account, drifting towards a materialistic vision. Contemporary enlightened man only counts on nature, cornering moral principles, in an open society that allows everyone to live a self-determined life.
The warning of the French poet Charles Baudelaire is forgotten: “Never forget, when you hear the praise of the progress of the Enlightenment, that the devil’s most perfidious trick is to convince you that he does not exist! In the Bible, evil appears as the serpent in the garden of life, sowing distrust at the very beginning of man’s creation. Perhaps it is the same evil that the American writer Louis Begley denounces when he describes the 20th century as the “satanic requiem”: the century of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, with hundreds of millions of deaths in wars and persecutions.
Faced with such shocks to civilization, bourgeois society likes to resort to academic abstractions, to historical or sociological studies, to repress or not to see the abyss. But every man senses in the depths of his soul that an eternity of glory or damnation awaits him. And this is frightening when man prefers to make like the ostrich, seeking shelter in the rationalist cancellation of the question: judging the subject as a gloomy medieval superstition that survives to this day, or as a tale to frighten disobedient children.
Psychic escapism
The causes of evil are thus attributed to poverty, social injustice or the opportunistic narrative of some political discourse. Thus, modern man tries even to reduce it to a kind of disorder or a clinical problem. The idea of a hell that we all secretly repress within ourselves is all the more undesirable the less we are aware of it.
The illusory peace of prosperity makes us dream that people are intrinsically good. This is precisely what Voltaire and Rousseau have promulgated when thinking about democracy, which flatters our own ego. Therefore, the evil that exists in the world must come only from evil power structures. But the truth is that every human being is not only capable of greatness, but also of baseness, since freedom also implies the power to choose evil at any time. Jordan Peterson tells us about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI49qBpNOts
“In man dwells the concupiscence of the beast and the goodness of the angel, both at the same time,” wrote the 13th century Doctor of the Church Thomas Aquinas. This has been the spiritual compass of the West, which unfortunately we tend to forget every day. The moral confusion of our time bears witness to this, immersed in a relativism that makes it difficult to distinguish good from evil.
The temptation to decide on right and wrong
A civilization of freedom that does not take evil into account obviously does not become better or freer, but loses the ability to recognize evil and its personification, the devil. The free choice of evil destroys freedom itself, behaving as an enemy of life and spreading like a virus that eventually erodes the culture of a country.
This is why it is so important to speak of evil and to become aware of it, which might seem reactionary in the face of today’s dominant relativism that denies universal moral principles. Where evil continues to play a role, in film or in a Netflix series, it is instrumentalized only to raise the tension between good and evil, which is the essence of any narrative: for example, fanatical murders, the power circles of secret Satanists etc.: what is presented here as evil, exacerbated, sinister and abhorrent, is nonetheless a hint that it exists.
In real life, however, the worst evil is that which seeks the applause of the big stage, seeking to be attractive. It promises a better self and a better life. Classic literature knows this well. Like the devil in the form of a serpent in the Garden of Eden, he promises man that he can become like God himself if he does not obey the divine command. Or like Mephisto in Goethe’s “Faust”, where the evil one promises him a knowledge that would elevate him to the level of God himself.
In Dostoevsky, the nihilistic revolutionaries dream of a new man unbound by the old morality, whose demolition the wars have ultimately brought about. In Vladimir S. Solovyov’s “Short Story of the Antichrist,” Satan appears as a humanist. He intends to reunite nations and religions to create a united Europe, with him, Satan, as president, whom the people acclaim. Can we not see in this today’s eagerness to overthrow all authority, sovereignty and homeland, in order to establish the new dystopian world order?
The deceptions of evil and the evil one
The father of lies: in Christian thought, this is the name of Satan. He is described as a disturber of the soul, a flatterer of the ego who leads people astray. He suggests to man to desist from his struggle for the good, calling him to liberation from all bindings.
The Evil One thus deceives man, hiding the good from him. He suggests to him that technical progress is a good that is above the moral values of traditional culture, or that medicine and the law have a license to kill. Smarter, faceless digital civilization is also an evil because it lowers the standards of humanity. People become colder and ultimately ruthless, forming a breeding ground for the alienation, hatred and violence that we so much deplore today.
The concept of evil must help us to recognize the temptations to which we are exposed. This requires a spiritual orientation that enables us to be vigilant and humble, self-critical and therefore self-confident, sober and firm in character.
Evil always remains
Ignorance and indifference in this matter weakens the character, which leads to a behavior analogous to that of a sheep in the flock, without the effort to follow its moral principles. A foolishly passive human flock is the ideal presupposition for tyranny and terror. History teaches us that the silent majority often gives more space to evil out of cowardice and expediency than the extremisms of scattered minorities.
A revitalization of Judeo-Christian realism would mobilize the forces of good, even among the young who ultimately seek depth and meaning in the great amusement park of the present. https://thinktanklatam.org/identidad-verdad-y-sentido/ Is necessary a profound knowledge that includes the experience that freedom and goodness cannot be taken for granted, but must be conquered with effort. And that people are not intrinsically good, but can bring into the world much suffering or much love. The great Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt put it this way: “Love is a miracle that is always possible, evil is a fact that always remains”.
