Secondly...

Secondly, the characteristics of man are omitted from one side of the relation and the relations among all conscious entities which possess desires and inclinations to other things are considered, and in this way, good will be equivalent to desirability for all conscious entities and evil will be equivalent to undesirability for all conscious entities. Here the problem may be raised that sometimes something is desirable for one kind of conscious existent and undesirable for another.

Should we consider such a thing good or evil? The answer to this question is easy. The given thing is good for the first thing and evil for the second. This multiplicity of aspects is true in the case of two individuals of a kind, and even in the case of two faculties of an individual. For example, it is possible for a kind of food to be desirable for one individual and undesirable for another, or for it to be good for one faculty of a body and evil for another.

Thirdly, the characteristic of consciousness is also omitted as a term of the relation or comparison, and, for example, greenness, freshness and fruitfulness are considered to be good for a tree, and wilting, dryness and unfruitfulness to be evil for it.

Here, some people have imagined that such generalizations of the concepts of good and evil originate in a kind of anthropomorphism applied to nature, and others have imagined that its standard is human benefit or harm, e.g., the fruitfulness of a tree is, in fact, good for man, not for the tree. But we think that there is another point to this generalization which will be indicated.

The application of good and evil in ordinary language is not limited to essences and entities, rather it is applied in the case of actions, as well. Some actions are considered to be good and others evil. In this way, the concepts of good and evil are presented in the fields of ethics and values. There has been some controversy among philosophers of ethics about how to explain value concepts and how to determine the standards of moral goodness and evil.

In Lesson Thirty-One, we discussed this problem to the extent appropriate for this work, and more details must be sought in philosophical ethics. A Philosophical Analysis of Good and Evil In order to provide a detailed analysis of good and evil from a philosophical point of view, several issues must be taken into consideration.