“Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you. Nor can the shifts and changes in the world around you. Then where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4:39
The Claim
I don’t personally believe that people do “evil” in general—much less willingly.
I can see the look in someone’s eye when I say it. It’s not neat and tidy; it’s a pretty blunt, black-and-white statement. I can see the gears turning behind a puzzled, annoyed face, as who knows what atrocity is playing in their mind’s eye—standing there judging it, and judging me.
For most, evil is a non-negotiable concept. A built-in assumption that came with the package of life.
It’s real. It’s not up for debate. No need for an upgrade.
I get it. We like to treat things as if we humans are over here, and that thing is over there—different and apart from us. I disagree, and I think that mindset costs us something.
When we reach for the word “evil,” we’re not describing something out there in the world. We’re describing our reaction to it.
Socrates’ Point
I’m not the first person to arrive at this conclusion. In Protagoras, Socrates argues much the same thing. People don’t go toward the bad—or away from virtue—willingly. They stride toward what their intellect tells them is good in the moment. Protagoras couldn’t possibly teach people how to be, or do, good because people already, instinctively head toward good—or at least their version of it.
It’s not a moral failing. When people fail to act in their own or others’ best interests, it doesn’t come from “evil.”
What Does It Measure?
Taking that into account, the words we use start to look like a system of measurement. A ruler, perhaps—or maybe a scale. Virtuous. Good. Bad. Evil.
According to us, people day in and day out find themselves at different readings on that scale. You trust someone who is usually more honest day to day than a part-timer. We can be more or less brave. There’s a spectrum between faith and fear.
When an event doesn’t just land on the far end of the scale, but slides off it—when real cognitive dissonance descends because it’s outside the norm—we call it evil. We slap a label on it, trade curiosity for certainty, and stop asking questions.
Ignorance (Not Evil)
When someone does something we perceive as wrong—genuinely, deeply wrong—I think they had a rational system of reasoning for it in the moment. Not a good one. Not necessarily a defensible one. But a system. A logic that made sense inside the life they were living, the information they had, the lived experience they’re carrying.
The Stoics had a word for this. Not evil. Ignorance.
Marcus Aurelius comes back to it repeatedly in the Meditations—this idea that people act in accordance with their own nature. They may be ignorant of the virtues. Their actions may cause real harm. But Marcus doesn’t respond with condemnation. He responds with patience, understanding, and something that looks a lot like acceptance.
During the writing of Meditations, Christianity was a troublesome cult—persecuted, marginalized, not exactly at the table of Roman intellectual life. And yet: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Two very different traditions. Christians absolutely believe in evil as a concept; they give it a name, a place, a presence. But in the face of this phenomenon, they arrive at a similar method of coping. You acknowledge that it happens, accept it for what it is, and move through it to the next thing.
Whether you believe in determinism, or the logos, a cosmic order, or chaos—if different thought processes, with and without labels, use the same techniques to move through it, does the “it” deserve a label?
Hume: Verdict First
I don’t want to enter into this with heavy-hitting ancients like Marcus and Socrates as my only backup. I find David Hume’s moral philosophy relevant here as well. Hume refused to look at morality as a math problem. When you solve a math problem, it’s clean and definitive. You can prove it with more math.
Moral judgments, however, arrive first. The verdict presents itself, and then we start trying to figure out what math problem justifies how we’ve decided to feel. We begin with the end in mind.
By the time reason shows up, the verdict has already been delivered. We’ve already decided that the event, person, thing is evil. We’re well into the sentencing phase, trying to decide what punishment is the best fit. We’re done asking what led here. We don’t care what happened inside you. You’re evil. You deserve what’s coming. Now let’s figure out why.
What This Series Is Doing
We must not give external events—whether natural disasters, violent acts, or conflicts—psychological life by labeling them as “evil.” When we assign that label, we’re giving these phenomena moral significance based on our perceptions, and it distorts our peace and our understanding. It comes up short on positively affecting outcomes.
The harm is still real. The consequences are very much present. But the label doesn’t heal anything—it mostly just freezes us in place. It turns pain into a verdict, and a verdict into a story where we no longer feel the need to ask why.
I’m not trying to convince you evil doesn’t exist so I can win an argument.
I’m trying to demonstrate that, through a different, more Stoic lens, we can face these events without handing our peace over to a word that’s nothing more than a placeholder for something we don’t fully understand. Something we could still examine.
Not denying it.
Not excusing it.
Just refusing to let one word end the conversation or dictate what we do next.
By asking ourselves whether the way we currently look at it is worth questioning.
Calling something evil doesn’t illuminate it. It ends the conversation. It lets us stop asking why.
Doubt
There’s a quote I wanted to use here—you’ve probably seen it:
“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
It’s attributed to Feynman. It’s not his. What he actually said, in a 1981 BBC interview:
“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing anything than to have answers which might be wrong.”
That works too. Maybe better.
A Question for You
I’m more interested in how the word works for the individual—what it does to our thinking.
When you call something “evil,” what part of that is a description of the act—and what part is your emotional reaction to it? Where do you draw your line, if there is one?
Plain truth. Rough edges.
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