Good and evil are still the moral categories through which we judge people’s actions. But these seemingly universal and inescapable moral concepts are anything but. They are the product of a European history and power structure that construed the perceived inferiority and weakness of the ‘other’ as evil. The universality of ‘good and evil’ is a mythology that was used to legitimate the atrocities of Western civilization.  To move beyond the dichotomy of good and evil would be to strip away the pretense at the heart of modernity: that ethics is founded on the autonomous rational individual, rather than on power, argues Tommy Curry. Read the full interview below.

Good and evil are arguably still the main moral categories through which we judge people’s actions. Is this moral distinction useful, or is it overly reductive as a way of understanding human behaviour as either pure and good, or corrupt and evil?

Good and evil remain categories of morality because they indicate how the ordination of people, institutions, and leaders with power and being in possession of the good are distributed throughout a society. These categories indicate which entities are charged with protecting civilization and saving others from evil. Historically the idea of good and evil have been concepts that have married individuals to the will of groups and permitted individuals entrance into a social contract with states.