Still about evil
30
Jan
We do not complete our reasoning on evil, two analyzes can still be made, and if we wish to comment
Kant three analyzes: Kant, Paul Ricoeur and Gadamer.
I shall be brief with Kant (1724-1804), although a deeper analysis is required going to Hegel, the central point of his thinking in this question is that evil as to origin is unfathomable, but for him there is the “idealist” clear) of radical evil, and so would be the choice between a good or a bad maxim, from which all others derive.
Paul Ricoeur affirms that Kant explains freedom for evil and evil for freedom, in a tautological reasoning therefore, Ricoeur will look for in source origin, that is, the rescue of the concept of evil must come based on original sources, from them we find the existential origin of evil, and so it is in symbols and myths.
We are interested in putting the technique and technology (study and development of the technique) in question, analyzing the original anthropological steps, so the question that the nomadic groups of 200 thousand years ago of homo sapiens migrate and incursions into new territories in groups is meaningful because it reveals an intension of expansion and “occupation.”
In an embryonic way, this reasoning is also written in Paul Riocuer, the author speaks of the influence in his thinking of Jean Nabert of Spinoza’s lapidary phrase “desire to be and effort to exist”, and that exerted decisive influence in the thought of Ricoeur (RICOEUR, 1995, p.23)
Ricoeur calls his vision of evil as “small ethics” as that which the subject finds himself involved with, is with a mal-being, a bad substance, a bad doing that results from the mistaken use of his freedom, there is still in him a remnant of Manichaeism.
Only then does he go to the symbolic evil (name of his main work on the theme), on a path from the symbolic to the mythological, and from there to the texts, implies the concept of evil linked to culture.
RICOEUR, P. Da Metafísica à Moral (From Metaphysics to Morals). Translate: Sílvia Menezes. Lisbon – Portugal: Piaget Institute, 1995
