Janet, I would agree that some evil is a response to being attacked, etc. But I don’t think all evil can be accounted for in this way. There’s always the case of the Original fall of Adam and Eve, and if you are so minded, also the fall of Lucifer. Anselm treats this topic in his interesting treatise ‘On the Fall of the Devil’. There, he postulates that it was possible for Lucifer (and by extension Adam and Eve) to sin/do evil b/c in Lucifer’s will there are 2 affections: one for the good in itself, and one for the good for oneself. Anselm postulates that at the first instant of Lucifer’s created existence, he could act on one of these two affections; he choose to act on the affection for the good for himself, and this was his sin; for he did not first love the good in itself, who is God. And when asked why Lucifer choose to act on one affection over the other, he appeals to the irreducible decision of the will, ‘the will just wills’. This isn’t a non-rational willing, for it is based on and aimed at particular cognitive content.

If Anselm is right, or close to being right, then this is one instance where ‘being attacked’ is not the basis for doing evil. Unless we take ‘being attacked’ fairly generally to include, ‘being faced with a choice that must be made’. But I would think the ‘evil act’ is the act of willing and not in the moment of decision naturally/logically prior to the act of willing.

Hi y’all. I’m back. Aron, that’s a great thesis you are unfolding about the redemption of the bad guy(s) being the/a source of particular tension/interest in mythic narratives.

Rowling said she was (also) interested in why and how people choose to go along with a status quo or power structure instead of resisting in the name of conscience, something our country was prone to after 911. I wonder if all evil comes out of the sense of being attacked or having been robbed of what is most precious to the self?

Lastly, Aron’s point about the redeemability of all sinners including Dante’s being a point of fascination is upheld by the way in Purgatorio we are fascinated to see a notorious sinner saved in the final instant of his life by turning to Mercy, whereas in the Inferno we meet a sinner who had thought himself perfectly safe from hell, because he had been pardoned in advance for his treacherous acts by the Pope himself.

But I don’t think Dante’s “sinners” are personally in hell. I think the historical persons are chosen to represent “states of the soul” that are in themselves hellish, because they are impenetrable by the divine Goodness, unless they are relinguished in the course of life by turning back to God.

Dante did not presume to know who was in hell or not. This is a commedia, a dramatic presentation of the nature of goodness, evil, and the redemptive power of knowing clearly what makes God God (that is, goodness, mercy, exchange of giving, generosity as opposed to pettiness). This is all dramatized on the back of a fictional or poetical narrative about a journey through the realms of the dead. (In the letter to Can Grande, Dante points out that the literal level of his great narrative is a fiction, the spiritual levels are the reality of the poem. We miss this because we equate literal with real, being the modern little dimwits that we all are!)