What is good, and what is evil?

[renkinjutsushi]

That's either a very good or a very bad question to be asking a Shinigami. It's usually when we start asking ourselves that kind of thing that Enma starts looking for someone to ascendFor me? Good and evil are ideal terms- by defining ideal as follows: existing only as an idea, confined to the imagination, visionary, not practical.

Comments

[kage_no_hisho]

I will firstly apologise for using a reply to your comment as the venue for my answer to that week's topic. I had thought it a harder question to answer than you seem to have found.

I believe that good and evil can be present absolutes. I acknowledge that there can be gradations in the amount of one or the other present in a given person, action or situation, but surely gradation implies end points with more substance than imagination?

I notice that despite your definitions of ideals, you do not define 'good' or 'evil'. I would define as 'good' that which produces happiness, 'evil' that which produces misery. In the rather obvious case of something causing both misery and happiness (for there are many unnatural individuals whose happiness rests on the misery of others), I would class it as being 'good' if it brought happiness to a greater number of people, or conversely 'evil' if it brought misery to a majority.

I would be pleased to know how you would define the concepts.

Perhaps this difference in our opinions accounts for your

[renkinjutsushi]

A continuum of different gradations certainly implies theoretical endpoints, but can you actually think of anything either wholly good or wholly evil?

My definitions would have to be in terms of helping or harming, rather than relative happiness. A 'greater good' above people's level of knowledge can still bring misery- like it does for those close to the ones we take. Your definition is probably equally applicable.

[kage_no_hisho]

Yes.

I would think that in the majority of cases, those who were genuinely helped would be happy and vice versa.

[renkinjutsushi]

Well, yes, but there are always the cases that aren't part of that majority.

Does a precise definition really matter so much as having one's own conviction of the difference and being able to act on it?