ABSTRACT
Socrates holds that no man does evil voluntarily. Could this be taken as a kind of definition? There is the difficulty that different people call different things evil. This is not decisive.
What is a sense of good and evil? What are we doing when we make this distinction? Not just: ‘I know what I like.’ ‘Murder is evil’ does not mean, ‘Murder does not appeal to me’ (as dancing might not). And if someone tried to persuade me to commit a murder and I refused, this would not be because I had no inclination for it, as I might refuse to do something very unpleasant. If I were destitute and responsible for a family and could earn some money in this way, I might agree to do something I most strongly disliked. But there would be things – say, murder – which I would baulk at even then.
