The structures of evil
28
Sep
If evil is the absence of good, it is also possible
that in our individual actions, through carelessness, intention or even malice, wanting to do good we do evil, as Ricoeur explained in symbolic evil.
After evil is socially structured, it seems to give meaning to what in full awareness we know is not moral or socially correct, it is not about political correctness here, but that structure of meaning that is given through symbolic language, a crude example, but what is the point here, the different types of prejudice that enter society.
It can be didactically divided into three topics, the first being within human experience, the second within various discourses where evil has a philosophical importance of aporia, this is part of philosophical thinking, and the third as a determination of the language that asks whether evil exists in itself or is a reality of naming things and actions around existence.
It is therefore possible to discuss it outside the Manichaean sense, they are not opposing poles, but rather symbolic structures that penetrate our daily lives as experience, as aporia (difficulty or rational doubt about their objective existence) or symbolic element of language.
The symbolism of evil was deeply developed in Paul Ricoeur’s book, it is linked to human transcendence that somehow determines the denial of the positive values of human existence: defense of life, appreciation of solidarity, protection of the weakest, etc. aporia is one that, due to its clear indefiniteness, falls into the indeterminacy of good.
Aporia not only denies evil, it denies human evolution (social, technological, ecological and moral), it ignores the imaginary, transcendence and moral values beyond the apparent ones, it denies the Other, imagining that in this way I will be affirming its Being, which in truth does not understands it or is not integrated, thus prevailing an idealistic rigidity about what transcendence would be.
Building our inner being, placing it at the service of society in every way, in solidarity with everyone else, is not just a good thing, it is a condition for civilizational evolution (ecological cities, for example, image)
Civilization evolves not only because it builds new structures, technologies and human values, but because at some point in this process it goes through imagination, transcendence and looking at the Other and around.
