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Desire, Evil and Grace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Lloyd Reinhardt
Lloyd Reinhardt
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Extract

In Plato's Meno, there is a famous discussion of desire and evil. This paper is not a contribution to Platonic scholarship, but a direct taking up of the issue whether someone can desire evil. One stock interpretation of the putative impossibility of desiring what is evil or bad is the interpretation which emphasizes an internal or conceptual tie between desire and good. This interpretation compares pairs of terms such as ‘fear—danger’, ‘belief—truth’ and ‘desire—good’. To fear something is to regard it as, or believe that it is, dangerous (or harmful); to believe something is to regard it as, or believe it to be, true (in this case the connection is trivially obvious); to desire something is to regard it as, to believe it to be, good. Since it is obvious that people believe things which are false, it is maintained that it is equally obvious that people may desire what is (in fact) bad and fear what is (in fact) harmless or of no danger. Let us call this interpretation of the doctrine that it is impossible to desire evil the weak thesis. The weak thesis allows what seems a plain fact of human reality, that people believe falsehoods, fear things that cannot harm them and desire things which are not good. Equally obviously, it allows that people fail to believe truths, fail to desire goods, and fail to fear things that are dangerous. On this weak interpretation, the manner in which wickedness to others and self-destructiveness are due to ignorance is that people are ignorant about the nature of things and ways of acting, ignorant about what it would be like to possess something or ignorant about what it would be like to do something or other.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 53 , Issue 205 , July 1978 , pp. 325 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1978

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References

1 The idioms of the appreciation of sport can hardly be strong arguments for a conceptual thesis. But it is interesting to note the widespread use of the word ‘desire’ in talking of athletes. An athlete is assumed to want to win and to want to do the best he can in his assigned team role or individual competition. When an athlete shows particular tenacity and determination he is said to have ‘desire’; other athletes who do not try so hard are often said to lack ‘desire’. It appears that the criteria for applying this notion are not necessarily success; rather it is a tendency on the athlete's part to try incredibly hard to do things often hitherto not done. Such a field of cases seems to fit Plato's theory perfectly. Every athlete will say he wants or would like to do certain things; but failure to try to his limit in relevant circumstances will incline commentators, perhaps even the athlete himself, to say that the desire was not, after all, really there.