Is there true evil in ASOIAF?

[Jankmaster]

Evil is Evil. This idea didn't grow in a vacuum. To look upon men like Ramsey and Gregor and say they are not evil is futile. Long ago I think humans came to the general concenus that murder, rape, and sheer brutality of that kind are definitely not things that should be done. I happens at times yes, partially because we are human. I don't think anyone can be good all the time, but it is far easier and it seems definitely possible to be malicious and cruel all the time at least the case seems like the Mountain and the Bolton bastard.. A good act does not wash out the bad, and a bad act does not wash out the good. But the complete and utter absence of anything good or redeeming about such characters proves to me that regardless of all this high fangled thinking about there only being shades of grey isn't as prevalent as people think it is.

I don't think it is a bad thing to label things good, and evil. Why should we not give praise to great acts of selflessness and charity, and scorn extreme selfishness and greed? Evil is easy to commit, good is very hard to commit to at times. In this story we see men who commit grevious harm to others for petty rather than any sort of justification can push them through. We categorize on a conscious and unconscious level, and a lot of the times it's bad. But I see no problem in seeing characters like Optimus Prime or Davos as good and characters like Megatron and Tywin Lannister bad. Because I think the idea of good and evil is a very important one, and one that is present in the story.

[ummester]

But I see no problem in seeing characters like Optimus Prime or Davos as good and characters like Megatron and Tywin Lannister bad. Because I think the idea of good and evil is a very important one, and one that is present in the story.

I think that type of comparison is exactly why the OP started this thread :D

ASoIaF the animated series - awesome.

Evil is Evil. This idea didn't grow in a vacuum.

No, it grew in a human mind as a way to describe things the mind perceived.

[Jankmaster]

I think that type of comparison is exactly why the OP started this thread :D

ASoIaF the animated series - awesome.

No, it grew in a human mind as a way to describe things the mind perceived.

Invariably the human mind seems to have grown to associate evil with harm and good with aid. Great heroes of mythology like Beowolf or St. George are men who saved others through their bravery. Those they defeated were monsters and not human yes, but they also embodied vices rather than what were seen as virtues.

[ummester]

Invariably the human mind seems to have grown to associate evil with harm and good with aid. Great heroes of mythology like Beowolf or St. George are men who saved others through their bravery. Those they defeated were monsters and not human yes, but they also embodied vices rather than what were seen as virtues.

Beowulf and St George are fairly modern.

Original pagan pantheons were more about forces of nature, though slaying of serpents (which Beowulf and St George are likely based on) was a common mythology. Best I can tell though, the idea was not that the serpent was 'evil' and the slayer was 'heroric' but rather slaying the serpent ends a time of chaos (this isn't just Nordic, it's fairly widespread). The time of chaos was more like a warning - don't let your humanity get out of control, don't let things become unbalanced or there will be pandemonium and the serpent will come, type of thing. So, if we track the idea of evil back religiously, it was most likely related to a fear of chaos, of human social order breaking down.

Oh, edit - a little more research - human social order seems very related to the pantheon, or forces of nature. So the idea was likely don't panic if nature does something scary because that fear will make people evil and the serpent will come. The other possibility, of course, is that the concept of evil came after a (very ancient) human society panicked and social cohesion broke down following a frightening natural event.

Point being that individual humans, no matter how reprehensible they seem to other humans, are not 'true evil'.

And, in line with what the OP suggests, painting any ASoIaF character as evil is painting them in line with a cartoonish villain, like Sauron or even the religious concept of some type of world serpent. It undermines their characterization and the suggestion of the author that the series is about the conflict within the human heart.

[AyRion]

Invariably the human mind seems to have grown to associate evil with harm and good with aid. Great heroes of mythology like Beowolf or St. George are men who saved others through their bravery. Those they defeated were monsters and not human yes, but they also embodied vices rather than what were seen as virtues.

But is harm through the mutilation of female genitalia evil or good? Also foreskin cutting, a modern controversial issue. Sometimes it's purely a matter of perspective. (see section 1 of my OP)

And Beowulf was fighting against monsters, something that was defined as evil. Something that had to be invented and that doesn't exist outside of fiction.

Pre-Renaissance? Surely you meant pre-19th century?

Some countries started abolishing slavery in the 12th century (Iceland and Japan), the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, the Pope banned it in the 15th century, which is roughly the start of the Renaissance. Sure, there's slavery even today.

We are not clicking at all.

I just don't see how anybody can say there is no such thing as true evil.

So what would you call people who have committed inhumane crimes when they lack absolutely any guilt for what they have done and would do it again if they could misunderstood?

As already mentioned in the OP and my second comment: insane. That doesn't make them evil like "Satan" or "Sauron", because they are still simply humans with an electro-chemical brain. And with hopes and dreams.

To me, and this is just my personal opinion

1. The person should know what s/he does is wrong and not caring, either because some justification is found or because s/he simply doesn't give a damn.

2. The motivations are completely selfish and mostly driven by selfish feelings like revenge, hate, pride, etc.

But why do you use the same word ("evil") Christianity uses for Satan and Tolkien uses for Melkor/Morgoth, with all that this implies? (see http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/120447-is-there-true-evil-in-asoiaf/page-2#entry6450521)

And where exactly is the threshold of "selfishness and not-caring" upon which we can start to dehumanise a real person?

So? A lot of serial killers have mommy issues and sexual identity issues, everybody has issues they don't become monsters/mass murderers/evil.

Just because characters are complex doesn't mean that they aren't evil.

Many characters in ASOIAF committ some very heinous crimes inhumane crimes, we've seen it all except the complete destruction of the human race yet a lot of people will argue there is no evil.

What does a person have to do to be called evil.

Complexity is not a factor. When I say "simple", I mean the (no offense meant) intellectually lazy act of inventing an extremely far-out fixed point you call "evil" and assigning things you don't like and don't want to bother to understand to this point.

In fantasy we can destroy something/somebody because it's evil. Or doing something is forbidden because it's evil (without further justification). And so on. This is not sufficient in reality.

What's the definition of evil? That would be a good start. Some say it's the absence of good. Some others say evil is just what it's morally wrong. But morally wrong for us or morally wrong for the Westerosi?

This is why I say that we can't limit some characters by his actions only and always consider the context. Many of them act in a way that is required of them, but it's the motivation what defines him in a range of good or bad.

For example, Tywin. Tywin NEEDED to prove the Reynes and the Westerlands that the Lannisters aren't meant to be mocked. Yet, completely annihilating them all, even women and children, are more like actions he took after he felt his own pride hurt. This talks of a man trying to overcompensate his own lacks rather than a men acting out of pure evilness.

Yet, he has unleashed monsters like Gregor. Not only Tywin knows what he's capable of, but Gregor himself knows he can do whatever he likes and there will be no consequences. He can rape, kill and torture others, and even enjoy it. And he doesn't really care. I suppose Ramsay is kinda the same. He really seems to enjoy what he does.

Now, LF enjoys what he does? Cares? Dunno. That's one of the biggest mysteries so far. To me, it looks like he wants to get even to those who belittle them, and he doesn't mind about who gets killed in the process of proving everybody else that he's overplaying those who thought him to be a lesser man. If he's acting out of pure revenge, I suppose I could consider him evil.

But f you agree that evilness depends on the current morality of a society, then what is it more than a statement of "I dislike X" (... very very strongly)?

And how does this compare with Satan and Sauron being factually-evil-without-further-consideration? The real world and (IMO) ASOIAF doesn't have this, most fantasy does.

The practical importance comes from the implications these two questions have. (again http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/120447-is-there-true-evil-in-asoiaf/page-2#entry6450521)

The general issue of governmental and societal breakdown is important. It's possible to have evil without having "truly evil" people. This is a point which is often missed in discussions like the one that is developing here. I say that this is a pretty common tendency in many threads. Someone maintains that characters x, y, and z aren't "truly evil," and then asserts that this indicates that pure evil doesn't exist. Another poster claims that this isn't true because Gregor Clegane is a completely bad person. However, even if Gregor and Ramsay had some redeeming features, that would not establish the "no such thing as pure evil" assertion as fact. I once had an economics professor who said that extreme poverty was evil. Whether you agree with this position or not, you could not legitimately dispose of it by showing that no particular person or group caused extreme poverty.

There is also the matter of transcendent evil. Such a thing can exist without any single purely evil man or woman. In ASoIaF we have more than a hint there are things people should not do, entities or forces that are inhuman and probably anti-human, etc. Some of us discussed this in a recent thread about shadow babies:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/119903-whats-so-bad-about-shadow-babies/

The matters of relevance to this thread start on page 7, post # 136:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/119903-whats-so-bad-about-shadow-babies/page-7

Illegality, of course, is not the same thing as immorality. Beyond that, there are other important matters here.

If what happened in the case of Jeyne Poole were to be considered "legal," then the "law" of the Seven Kingdoms is meaningless. It isn't just a matter of individual rights, of terrible things happening to a young woman. The issue of total social breakdown, mentioned above, arises here. Does this society, especially the powerful individuals within in it, even live up to its (their) own principles? How can Tywin Lannister be "the actual Hand of the King"? Tommen is not the rightful king. He is sitting on the throne only because of massive and repeated acts of treason. Worse, the Boltons could not possibly have taken control of the north without the Red Wedding. Also, marriage to Jeyne Poole can in no way make any man the Lord of Winterfell. Those who arranged the marriage know full well that the bride is not Arya Stark.

(Edited to add the second, and more relevant, thread above)

Very good points, but I'll refer you to my second post in this thread (linked twice above).

Short answer: :bs:

Long answer: the fact that the evildoer doesn't consider himself evil doesn't absolve him. If it did, you'd have discard the concept of evil also in the so-called "naive" fantasy, because Sauron, Morgoth, Voldemort, Jadis, Palpatine & friends consider themselves in the right, as well. Also: the fact that there are genuinely grey areas between right and wrong doesn't imply that everything is grey. The existential quantifier is not interchangeable with the universal quantifier. There's nothing really ambiguous about the deeds of Ser Gregor fucking Clegane, and you, sir, are abusing logic.

But as I try to portray in the first paragraph of section 1 of my OP, there are such cases where what we consider evil is considered right. The only reason Sauron, Morgoth, Voldemorth, etc. don't do this is because it's a fundamental fact of the narrative that they are evil, a fact that has been invented with the help of fiction.

And I'm honestly curious to see where and how I'm abusing logic!

To c/p what I wrote in original thread:

If I understood your posts correctly, you imply that terms such as good or evil are any useable in simplistic fantasy tales they pure white heroes and battling against irredeemably evil villain; while more nuanced works such as ASOIAF have overcame such simplicities.

I really don't know how to respond to this without invoking common sense. Good, noble, human versus bad, evil, ignoble actions and characters exist everywhere, in every work of fiction. They also exist in real life, and appear in everyday situations on a daily basis. It has absolutely nothing to do with complexity or realism of fictional work, it's the very thing of human (and characters') nature.

Just because Tywin is way more complex and interesting character than e.g. Sauron, does not mean he's not evil. He reguraly engages in behaviour and actions which needlesly harm others and cost them their lives and livelihood. We, as readers, find these action dsigusting and think of Tywin as evil, all while acknowledging his complexity as character. Opposite is also true - e.g. Davos's complexity as character does not diminish his goodness - it rather enhances it, in fact.

Also, you compare LF with Robb on a basis they both acted in a way that caused deaths of others. You do it, IMO, in very simplistic manner, completely ignoring their motivations and other circumstances; comparing similar appearances while disregarding different essences.

Robb is a feudal overlord. Now, feudalism isn't exactly just and fair system, but it's the best one Westerosi know. As overlord, he has certain privileges and duties. He has to govern his people well, judge them, deal with their strifes, make important decisions... And in return, he has power over them - a power which, IMO, he is no way abuses (unlike some of other feudal lords). What happened is that his very state was attacked. His father, previous lord and highest possible representative of Northmen, was unjustly imprisoned. This is an act of enmity against his state, his subjects and his whole society (and not just his person), and as a responsible statesman he has to react to it. Failure to do so could result in bad concequences not just for him, but for all of his subjects. His going to war is not simply a matter of vendetta, but acting in the interest of state he governs.

I don't know why you keep bringing Greatjon into discussion. If anything, it shows Robb's wit and mercy that he managed to turn his wannabe murderer (which Greatjon would be if not for Grey Wind) into his most staunch supporter.

So, to sum up - yes, Robb has power of life and death over his subjects, but what good is that power if he never uses it, even when he obviously should. Freeing Ned from jail (which, as I repeat, is not simply a personal vendetta) is one such occasion.

Now, is any of the above applicable to LF? What exactly are his motivations for starting a civil war? Right - greed and personal gain. Did he stand to lose something important if he didn't act? No. Was he or his subjects in any kind of danger? No. Cat's POV chapter show Robb clearly struggling to be just and fair ruler. Meanwhile, all LF is struggling with is how exactly to increase his power at the expense of other people.

And now this:

Sorry, but that's strawman argument. There's a world of difference between the two and we (readers) are capable of acknowledging someone we dislike is not a scumbag. Personally I don't like Blackfish much, but he can't be called evil by any stretch of imagination.

And again, what sets LF apart are his singularly disgusting actions. If I were to put Davos, Brienne, Cat, Ned, Jon Snow or others in LF's shoes, I can't imagine wither of them engaging in stuff LF did. Nor manipulating people into war, not torturing Jayne into prostitution, nor betraying their subordinates etc.

I've tried to address this in my OP (which I've started specifically after reading this comment of yours ;) ), and hopefully what is unclear is explained in my second post (linked twice above).

[Knight Of Winter]

I've tried to address this in my OP (which I've started specifically after reading this comment of yours ;) ), and hopefully what is unclear is explained in my second post (linked twice above).

I've read it and I still don't understand why you insist that "X is evil" actually means "I hate X". These are two seperate statements with less than absolute correlation. One does not mean other and one is not excuse for the other.

Also, I do think that evil people (we're talking about likes of Roose, Cersei and LF here) are actually worth less than other people. If someone's hopes, dreams and aspirations include causing deliberate pain and suffering of others, than yes, his dreams, hopes and aspirations are worth less. I don't know what kind of authority you invoke when saying that we're all arguing from morally unsound position.

I'm also not sure what you're trying to prove by bringing Islam and Christianity into discussion. Concept of morality precedes religion, and I'm somehow sure that some stone-age Gregor was deemed jerkass by his peers.

[AyRion]

I've read it and I still don't understand why you insist that "X is evil" actually means "I hate X". These are two seperate statements with less than absolute correlation. One does not mean other and one is not excuse for the other.

Also, I do think that evil people (we're talking about likes of Roose, Cersei and LF here) are actually worth less than other people. If someone's hopes, dreams and aspirations include causing deliberate pain and suffering of others, than yes, his dreams, hopes and aspirations are worth less. I don't know what kind of authority you invoke when saying that we're all arguing from morally unsound position.

I'm also not sure what you're trying to prove by bringing Islam and Christianity into discussion. Concept of morality precedes religion, and I'm somehow sure that some stone-age Gregor was deemed jerkass by his peers.

So let's have two sets of choices:

If you recognise that somebody is "evil":

A. This person is evil in the light of an absolute knowledge, regardless of your opinion. In every set of societal norms and valid laws.

B. From your perspective, this person is despicable (causes strong negative emotions for you), the opposite of what you want to become yourself or have as a friend, and he/she acts in a (for you) disgusting way.

After you've recognised somebody as "evil":

A. This person is worth less than a normal human being. Societal laws (or human rights, or take your pick) don't really apply to it anymore, putting it at a disadvantage, or stealing from it, or hurting it, or even killing it is tolerable. This is globally true independent of which society this person chooses to flee to.

B. You don't want to associate with this person, and it would please you if this person came to harm. (maybe you'd even personally hurt it if given the chance)

I would pick BB, because either A is against the modus operandi of modern ethics and accordingly Western law.

Of course you're welcome to differentiate more and present a finer grained list, but I hope you understand how I equate BB with being no more than "I despise this person, I hate it and it disgusts me" and similar formulations.

I include Christianity and Islam because they advocate against picking BB (and generally for AA), while at the same time they've had a huge impact on the development of pretty much everything.

And Gregor's stone age peers would maybe pick XA and hunt him down (where X is A or B, or accordingly "don't care").

The abolishment of "an eye for an eye" and similar is what we have achieved since the Enlightenment era.

So I'm curious if you think it's OK to rape somebody you've witnessed raping a child, or even if it's OK to just to steal their car (thus denying their property rights). Because that's what I call an unsound moral position (and rather criminal to boot).

Or is it because Littlefinger is not a real person and it's all through the veil of entertainment fantasy?

[Lord of Nutella]

thank god im finally back from the barracks and can participate with something different than my smartphone. this debate is really interesting.

Ayrion, i think you are really on the wrong track regarding what we guys mean when we say "evil".

As said in the other thread, Littlefinger is evil. That means nothing else than that he is a bad person (i guess you wouldnt argue with me about that he is a bad person, would you?). Now calling him evil doesnt mean you inhumanize him. You guys keep bringing up Sauron and Satan as if calling someone evil would mean that you put him in one category with those, but it doesnt. Satan and Sauron are pure evil, incarnations of evil, so-to-speak.

Obviously, humans like Sauron do not exist. Even Hitler had one or two good sides, i am pretty sure about that. He is still evil. Why?Because evil is not the absolute measure that you make it up to be. Every human being has good and bad in it. You can be an overall outrageous human being and still have some bad traits, and vice versa.

Accepting that good and evil are excisting categories for deeds and feelings, and, by summing up the feelings and deeds, some persons that belong to the extremes, does NOT mean you support "an eye for an eye". I wonder where you did get that idea?

[SnowHeart]

There's a difference between illegal and evil, and between good and 'socially acceptable'. Apartheid was socially acceptable in south Africa, doesn't make it ok.

Morally Grey characters don't mean there is no good and evil, it just means that characters don't fall neatly into one or the other, which is how it works in real life.

[A spoon of knife and fork]

Generally, I think evil describes acts rather than people.

But, almost every person has a mostly innate sense of the wrongness of certain actions that cause others to suffer unnecessarily (let's call it empathy), and if they choose to do those actions despite this sense, then they are intentionally doing an evil action. One might call these people evil if this is their general way of behaving and if they do not seem to want to change their behavior, but it's probably better just to say that they DO evil, rather than ARE evil, or at least that they have the potential to no longer be evil.

And then you have a small number of people who lack empathy (which we call sociopaths or psychopaths today), and these people often perform evil acts. In some way, I might consider these people to be less evil than the first class of people, since they do not have an innate moral compass to refer to. Their actions are only constrained by external forces (aka society). However, again it's probably still better to say that they do evil acts, and part of why they do them is because they lack an innate sense of right/wrong.

Finally you have empathetic people who do not perform evil acts, and sociopaths who do not perform evil acts. Are these people good because of the absence of evil acts? I don't necessarily think so.

[AyRion]

thank god im finally back from the barracks and can participate with something different than my smartphone. this debate is really interesting.

Welcome back :)

Ayrion, i think you are really on the wrong track regarding what we guys mean when we say "evil".

As said in the other thread, Littlefinger is evil. That means nothing else than that he is a bad person (i guess you wouldnt argue with me about that he is a bad person, would you?). Now calling him evil doesnt mean you inhumanize him. You guys keep bringing up Sauron and Satan as if calling someone evil would mean that you put him in one category with those, but it doesnt. Satan and Sauron are pure evil, incarnations of evil, so-to-speak.

Obviously, humans like Sauron do not exist. Even Hitler had one or two good sides, i am pretty sure about that. He is still evil. Why?Because evil is not the absolute measure that you make it up to be. Every human being has good and bad in it. You can be an overall outrageous human being and still have some bad traits, and vice versa.

Accepting that good and evil are excisting categories for deeds and feelings, and, by summing up the feelings and deeds, some persons that belong to the extremes, does NOT mean you support "an eye for an eye". I wonder where you did get that idea?

I agree with a lot of what you say. But who is "we"?

When looking through this thread, you will see quite a few opinions along the lines of "Littlefinger is evil like (or more than) Sauron" and "Littlefinger is pure evil".

Or do we have two different kinds of evil?

One emotional, personal view, judgmental, this-is-a-bad-person evil.

And one essence-of-darkness, inhuman (because only possible through definition) and thus dehumanising evil.

So your kind of evil, the judgemental one, can be included in the second kind. And you seem not to apply the second kind.

But LOTR, Harry Potter and the Bible, etc. do, while IMO ASOIAF doesn't.

So it seems we have to carefully qualify which kind of evil we mean.

The kind of evil you describe as "This is bad person" and I put equivalently as "I find this person to be terrible"? Sure.

True evil? Not in reality. And IMO not in ASOIAF.

The "eye for an eye" part comes from the question of what happens after we have declared somebody as evil. See the questions in my post #47 (which I think you're replying to anyway).

[Lord of Nutella]

thx :)

You are probably right that "we" was not the smartest way to put it. So im gonna go forth and say "I".

to the "eye for an eye part" first. If I declare someone as evil doesnt matter for my actions, or at least it does not have to because I have other things that define how I react to certan people. As an modern example,I claim that ISIS is evil. but I do recognize that such a big organization by no doubt includes a big chunk of persons that are simply dumb/ mislead, so I am aware that we can have an endless discussion if generalizing ISIS as evil is okay. But this discussion does not matter for the decision about what we have to do about ISIS. Obviously, we need to destroy them. But not because they are evil, but because they committed terrible crimes and want not only to commit much more of them but expand their power to do so and the territory where they can do so, too. If they are evil or not doesnt matter for the decision that they have to be destroyed.

Very much alike, it doesnt matter for the society's decision to pursuit serial killers if they is evil or not. They may have a grieveous personal history and whatnot, maybe the guys they kills are total douches. It doesnt matter, the police still pursuits them, because a crime is a crime, no matter if the one committing it is evil or not.

So from my POV, "good" and "evil" are just jugdementory categories.

To your two kinds of evil...my "evil" is the second, but I do apply it, I just dont claim that all persons are only evil or only good, nor that the evil persons are purely evil without a good side. The human heart constantly struggles between the two and within its lifespan developes more into one or another direction.

[Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it]

Some countries started abolishing slavery in the 12th century (Iceland and Japan), the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, the Pope banned it in the 15th century, which is roughly the start of the Renaissance. Sure, there's slavery even today.

1. Iceland, yes, it banned slavery in 1117. But Iceland was only a small and unimportant part of Norway, which banned slavery in 1848.

2. Japanese slavery had fallen out of fashion by the time Europe was undergoing the Renaissance, but it was only officially abolished in 1590 by Hideyoshi, and the Japanese happily enslaved Koreans during the Korean wars in the 1590s anyways. The Edo shogunate brought back slavery, though it was only reserved for traitors.

3. Slavery was abolished by London in 1833, which is more than 600 years after the Magna Carta. Saying that the Magna Carta ended slavery is even more wrong than Thatcher's claim that the Magna Carta established human rights.

4. The French, the Portuguese and the Spanish (and France, Portugal and Spain were all very Catholic states) practiced very brutal slavery long after the Renaissance. Moreover, the Pope in question, Eugene IV, only banned slavery of Christians, and endorsed the Portuguese slavery of Muslim Africans in West Africa. Eugene IV's ban had about as much results as the Hongwu Emperor's ban on slavery.

[Avlonnic]

I wonder, if someone were to do a word search on all of the ASoIaF PDFs, is the word evil ever used?

Per your request, my search revealed the term "evil" used 77 times in 62 chapters. The word is used to describe people, actions, eyes and grins, death, sorcery, words, names, places, tales, beasts, giants, demons, ghosts, weather, and the overarching non-specific Evil ("There was no evil in her." or "...good men must fight evil..."

[Salafi Stannis]

There is most certainly, without a shadow of a doubt, absolute evil in ASoIaF. Case in point, Ramsay Bolton. Anyone who says anything other than that he is true, pure evil, is just, plain, WRONG! There are characters I think are evil, and others disagree, and I can see why, but there is no argument against the absolutely, unequivocally true statement that Ramsay Snow is truly evil.

[Volantene Republican Army]

Good and evil exist in the books, but not any personalized form. As has been pointed out above, in the SOIAF universe there aren't evil people just evil actions. Gregor, for being a murdering rapist, isn't Sauron. Probably even the Others aren't Sauron. But simply because there isn't a Sauron in the book doesn't mean that rape and murder are somehow morally permissible in SOIAF. Or another way to put it, rape and murder are evil (in the fullest moral sense of the word) but Gregor is not categorically evil (again in the fullest moral sense of the word) because he does those things. Even though he does terrible things, Gregor is still capable of morally praiseworthy action (not that he ever really steps up to plate in even the smallest way, but the capacity is still there), thus why he is not categorically evil. But, again, just because Gregor's not categorically evil doesn't make rape and murder not categorically evil.

GRRM gets credit, justly IMO, for pointing this out. People do both good and bad things (that can be morally judged) without ever becoming "evil" or "righteous" in some sort of ultimate sense.

[Parwan]

...

Very good points, but I'll refer you to my second post in this thread (linked twice above).

...

I don't see that your second post has much to do with the points I made. Your question is, "Is there true evil in ASOIAF?" That is not the same as asking, "Are there truly evil people?" Let's ignore my points about social and governmental breakdown. I'll focus on spiritual/metaphysical possibilities.

If we were to establish that no single human on earth is "truly evil," would that disprove the existence of Satan? Clearly, it would not. In the text of ASoIaF, are there at least indications that evil entities or evil powers exist? I maintain that the answer is "yes." Thus, there is at least a reasonable possibility that evil exists in the universe that Martin has created. This is true no matter what any reader can establish about Gregor, Tywin, Ramsay...

[ummester]

There is another thread regarding the origins of the Wildlings. In this thread the idea of the Self and the Other was discussed with the OP.

I think this is relevant to interpretations of evil - the wiki page describing self/other is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other

This is not the Others (thought GRRM may well be playing on the idea of the self and the other with them). This is the idea that at an individual and social level human mentality requires something that is opposite, foreign or not aligned.

Calling and action evil is a way to justify our own actions as good, or assure ourselves that the Self, or our social sense of justice is correct and that the Other way is wrong. Yet the Self and the Other cannot exist without each other.

If we think about Optimus and Megatron, as mentioned before, we know they co-exist. Because we are meant to side with Optimus as the hero, he becomes the Self and Megatron the Other. I don't know about anyone else, but when I saw the 3rd Transformers film, it seemed to me the Autobots were behaving more violently and evilly than the Decipticons. This is what GRRM means by one man's hero is another's villain, they are interchangeable depending on where the sense of Self is aligned.

Evil is only evil if it opposes either an individual or social sense of right, or Self. In single lifetimes these senses of what is right and socially acceptable can change dramatically, even in the real world. 40 years ago everyone would have thought that bailing out a bank that was 'too big to fail' was against the social good, now we are forced to accept it is in society's best interests. In ASoIaF I don't believe any characters or perspectives are portrayed as absolutely evil, they are more in line with real life, where things are only evil from a given perspective. The mother of a rapist may admit their child is wrong but would be less likely to see their child as evil, whereas the mother of the victim would be more likely to see the rapist as evil. It's more about perspective than any kind of definitive. I'm certain readers judge ASoIaF characters evil on their own sense of Self, in the same way they judge criminals that go against their socially instilled sense of justice as evil.

To flip it around, for those that are sure evil characters exist in ASoIaF, tell me who the Optimus is? Who is the hero? Which character in ASoIaF entirely represents your sense of Self, or social justice. I don't think there are any, because like evil villains, ASoIaF doesn't have true hero figures.

[ummester]

If we were to establish that no single human on earth is "truly evil," would that disprove the existence of Satan? Clearly, it would not.

This is a pointless comparison, or perhaps, the perfect comparison on which to make a point.

Satan, like God, can only exist if the 'faithful' believe in their existence. If either Satan or God were to manifest in reality, we would know that they exist and would no longer be required to have faith in them and hence their theological existence would be disproved.

And this reflects the whole point about judging a human evil - it's a personal call, an individual faith in that person going against your sense of good. YOU have faith that Gregor is evil because YOU have faith in your sense of good and Gregor contradicts this, in exactly the same way that a theist has faith in whichever theological entity they pray to. The existence of Satan or 'true evil' logically negates the need for the ideal or faith in righteousness, justice, God, true good or any of that stuff because the existence of true evil would also propose the existence of true good. If true good exists in humankind, we don't need God, or ideals like justice, do we?

[Lord of Nutella]

You are right about how the word "evil" is oftentimes used. That doesnt change anything about the fact that good and evil exist and that they are not just relative. Your bank example is esspecially bad, sorry. A choice of economics has little to do with good and evil.

And regarding God and Satan...if you dont believe in them, they obviously play no role in your philosophy. If they exist and you just dont believe in them, your philosophy is obviously wrong. So unlike you said it doesnt matter if anyone believes in them if they exist, because then good and evil exist regardless of what people think. It only matters if they dont exist, because then their only way to have an impact is when people make them up in their head.

Regardless, I dont get the point of relativism. It brings no good, it only opens up endless possibilities for endless excuses. You could even try and excuse Hitler. Denying the existence of wrong and right undermines the basis of human coexistance.