What Is Evil?

Last updated on: October 28, 2026 at 6:54 pm by Barbara O'Brien

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What Is Evil? 2026-10-28T18:54:43-05:00 Barbara O'Brien

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What is evil? People often speak of evil as if it is a self-existent thing that lurks about and infects people. I came across a social media post recently in which someone was ranting that evil exists! To exist is to be. How does it exist? What does it look like? Is it hiding under the bed? Can you poke it with a stick? If it’s something that infects people, could someone develop a vaccine for it? Okay, so maybe it doesn’t exist, exactly. but it’s real, right?

Evil is often personified in myths as a kind of malevolent being that causes all kinds of misfortune. The many devils, demons, and evil spirits of religion and folktales often tempt or mislead humans into wrongdoing. So, as is often said, the Devil made us do it. Whether evil is a being or a self-existent force, we tend to think of it as something separate from ourselves, don’t we?

Another way to think of evil is from its effects. Sometimes any misfortune — a toothache, losing one’s wallet, a death in the family — might be called evil or evil fortune. But in a narrower sense, evil is something connected to morality. And that puts us in the realm of human choices and behavior.

Evil R Us?

Many great theologians and philosophers have disagreed that evil has any sort of self-existence. Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) declared that evil could not be a thing with its own existence, since God is the source of creation and would not have created evil. “Evil has no positive nature;” Augustine wrote in his book The City of God, “but the loss of good has received the name ‘evil.’” Evil, then, is the absence of good. Further, people cannot choose evil, because there is no such thing to choose. But people do turn away from good, and it is in that turning that evil is found. “And I strained to perceive what I now heard, that free-will was the cause of our doing ill.” Augustine wrote in Confessions. Evil, then, is a “perversion of the will,” a turning away from God.

The view of Confucius (Kong Qiu or Kongji, c. 551 – c. 479 BCE) in part agreed with Augustine’s. Like Augustine, he did not believe evil was a self-existing thing. He saw evil as the absence of goodness. And this happens when people do not cultivate their inner virtues. The writings of Confucius focused on morality, ethics, and social harmony, We are all responsible for cultivating the virtues that make life harmonious and good, he said. Confucius taught that the five qualities of a good person are benevolence, righteousness (or a sense of right and wrong), propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness. And of course there are deep teachings beneath all of these subheads. The cultivation of virtues requires us to engage in self-reflection, to be honest with ourselves about our motivations and behavior.

The Buddha (c. 6th-5th century BCE) also taught that evil comes from unwholesome thoughts and intentions. As I wrote in my previous column on the Kalama Sutta, the words in the early Buddhist scriptures often translated as “good” and “evil” more literally mean “skillful” and “unskillful.” To live a skillful life requires us to purify our minds of unwholesome qualities, the chief of which are greed, hate, and ignorance. (In this case, the ignorance is not perceiving the true nature of our existence.) Otherwise, our corrupted intentions will cause us to act in ways that are harmful.

Note also that in Hinduism, evil is not thought of as any sort of independent forcc. Primarily, evil is adharma — thoughts and actions that deviate from dharma, sacred duty, and the cosmic order.

What About Satan?

Before we completely leave Satan out of the mix, we should note that Jesus does speak of Satan in several places in the Gospels. Matthew 4:1-11, for example, tells the story of Jesus being visited by Satan in the wilderness. The conversation ended when Jesus said, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

Muhammad also spoke of Satan, or Shaytan in the Quran. Shaytan is a disobedient angel who is dedicated to leading humans astray. But the Quran also says evil often comes directly from human actions, desires, and selfishness.

However, it’s my understanding that in Judaism, Satan is not a fallen or disobedient angel but more like God’s prosecuting attorney, who sends tribulations to people to test them. He also represents the sinful impulses that prevent humans from submitting to divine will. (See “Do Jews Believe in Satan?”)

There are some Satan-like characters outside the Abrahamic traditions. In Buddhism a malevolent being named Mara personifies the temptations and inner obstacles that prevent us from realizing enlightenment. (Ultimately, however, we are responsible for our obstacles, not Mara.) In Zoroastrianism, Angra Mainyu is the deity of destruction, darkness, and chaos. Angra Mainyu is a co-equal deity locked in a cosmic battle with Ahura Mazda, the creator of light and truth.

What Is Evil? A Personal Observation

The most evil thing I ever saw personally was the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York City. I am an eyewitness, as I wrote last month. Even so, slapping the label “evil” on the event was not personally important to me. It’s a label. Applying it wouldn’t change what happened. But I wondered, did the perpetrators understand what they were doing as evil? I suspect they did not. Very likely, in their minds, this was a righteous act.

Sometimes people must realize they are doing something morally wrong or destructive, and do it anyway. But more often, I think, people are seduced into evil because they don’t recognize evil as evil. They mistake it for justice, or righteousness, or even God’s Will. And the seduction begins with the thought that “I’m a good person,” but “those other people are different from me.” Or, “They are evil, so my hatred of them is justified.” And as soon as we identify ourselves as “good” and the Other, whoever they are, as “evil,” we’re well on the way to giving ourselves permission to do whatever we want to them.

There are psychologists, philosophers, and others who have argued that the concept of evil is dangerous. It is dangerous because it can be misapplied to dehumanize groups of people who are different from us or who may seem threatening to us. For example, the September 11 attacks were perpetrated by a radical faction of a larger purist movement within Sunni Islam, one of the two major divisions of Islam. A sub-group of a sub-group of a division. Yet blame for the attacks is applied to all Muslims. This is a bit like assuming that because the Ku Klux Klan marketed itself as a Christian organization, all Christians must be Klansmen.

Confucius might tell us that this is why righteousness without wisdom doesn’t help us make good choices.