Mani Musings
In the this month's Atlantic Monthly, an insightful article about the transition of the Papacy. In describing Ratzinger's most admired book, the writer says "Belief in our time, [...] is formed in the crucible of unbelief, and unbelief is formed in defiance of the yearning to believe. The unbeliever is the believer's secret sharer, and vice versa"
Lately my thinking has been drifting in the Manichaean direction. Can one discern Good without the contrast of Evil in the world? Is Evil necessary? (No pun intended)
This will be explored further in the follow up to my Foxes and Hedgehogs post.
Lately my thinking has been drifting in the Manichaean direction. Can one discern Good without the contrast of Evil in the world? Is Evil necessary? (No pun intended)
This will be explored further in the follow up to my Foxes and Hedgehogs post.
posted by e-kvetcher at 7:26 AM
3 Comments:
I've had this discussion on occasion with people. In order to be able to recognize good, don't you have to know it's opposite, bad? It's hard to know, though I often wonder if the opposite of good has to be bad (or evil), or whether it can just be the absence of good, like mundanity. Not bad, necessarily, but nothing special either. I think we can ask this question about many things in life, and honestly, I think you have to have the counterbalance in order to see the first. Which saddens me, because it would be nice to know that the negative doesn't have to be there.
Shoshana,
Glad to see you're still around! I totally agree with your statement "I think we can ask this question about many things in life". That's kind of the point I was trying to make.
Well, is evil really that evil if it leads to some things that are good later?
For example, you're rejected from a college of your choice and go to some other college, which you love, and where you meet your best friend. Or something like that. There's absolute evil like the Holocaust... but then there are relative evils
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