Open post

We talked in class about the nature of evil and whether an evil person can be truly happy. First of all, there is a difference between an evil person and a person who commits evil actions. A person who feels remorse for an evil action is not as bad as a person who feels no remorse, but at the same time, some of the greatest atrocities in history have been committed by people who felt they were objectively doing no wrong, or even that they were being brave by doing the right thing, when we would today say that they were unquestionably evil. Take, for example, the Christian crusades, a particularly bloody period in our history when Christianity was forced on many people and those who would not accept it were killed. At the time, the knights on the crusade felt that they were doing something not only good but holy. They felt that they were saints and saviors, bringing people into enlightenment and saving them from the fires of hell. From an entirely objective standpoint, they were murderers, but the Pope absolved them of the murders on the basis that they were doing God's work. Was every knight involved necessarily unhappy, sadistic, or not in his right state of mind?  After all, they murdered people in cold blood. It's hard to ignore the reality that you are causing another human being pain when they're literally dying on your sword. Their belief that they served a higher calling cannot excuse what they did, only explain it. Would these knights, then, never be able to find true happiness, or would they feel that they had fulfilled a higher purpose through their objectively evil actions?