"The necessary evil means precisely that: it is both 'necessary' and 'evil,' " she said.
Nonresistance to evil, the doctrine that inspired Gandhi, meant not that evil must be accepted but only that it cannot be fought with evil means, especially violence.
We must help those who are suffering, but we may not use a good end to justify an evil means.
Dostoyevsky's first masterpiece, the novel is a psychological analysis of the poor student Raskolnikov, whose theory that humanitarian ends justify evil means leads him to murder a St . Petersburgpawnbroker.
In fact, the US is so checked and balanced it is a small miracle that government happens at all – which if you think government is the source of all evil means the constitution is doing its job.
Neiman herself is understandably reluctant to offer a single, narrow definition of her own for what "evil" means today, but what she does suggest is a useful description of what effect evil has: calling something "evil," she writes, "is a way of marking the fact that it shatters our trust in the world".
When he talked about "The Art of Darkness" — a study of film noir, crime stories, and black comedy, seen in the context of human wickedness — he referred to "What Evil Means to Us," by C. Fred Alford, a political-science professor at the University of Maryland, whose thesis is that "doing evil is an attempt to transform the terrible passivity and helplessness of suffering into activity".
For if God is omnipotent, he could find a way to produce the good without making use of the evil means.
We all think we know what evil means, and there are many who believe - despite what we hear on the news every day - that evil is gradually diminishing in the world as human beings become more reasonable.
