But as a category of thought, evil is not a product of nature, psychical or physical or metaphysical; it is a product of consciousness.
Application of this principle requires all four conditions to be met: the act must not belong to a category of acts considered evil; the good effect (for the patient), and not the bad effect, must be intended; the bad effect must not be a means to the good effect; and there must be a proportionally good reason for bringing about the bad effect [ 11, 12].
In the also-ran category is Michele Placido's "Angel of Evil," a biography of Renato Vallanzasca, the Milanese thief, kidnapper and underworld matinee idol who in the 1970s and early '80s embarrassed the Italian police before his final apprehension and multiple life sentences.
When Hawkins justified her solidarity with Muslims by noting that as a Christian she worships the same God as Muslims, she committed the unpardonable sin of removing the enemy from the category of "alien" and "purely evil" other.
This is not just about a broad category of those who do evil.
But more exactly the Hebrew reads, "Remember what Amalek did to you". This is not just about a broad category of those who do evil.
It would be much easier if the world were neatly divided into imperial states and helpless, subject peoples (or, for that matter, into forces of freedom and axes of evil), but the categories have a way of getting tangled up -- in the Balkans, in Asia and certainly in the Middle East -- something that Mr. Chomsky, for all his intelligence and discipline, does not always grasp.
Often the underlying idea seems to be that attempting to explain evil signals a failure to understand the nature of evil: a kind of category mistake, for evil is simply not the sort of thing that can be explained.
But for other people, who have, let's say, attained a higher level of enlightenment, the categories of good and evil pass away".
We understand better that in conditions of extremity there are rarely to be found comfortingly simple categories of good and evil, guilty and innocent.
