Control work on the course

"Professional ethics of police officers"

Topic: "Ideas of good and evil in the history of civilization"

Completed

Work plan:

1. Introduction

2. The concept of goodness

3. Evil concept

4. Dialectic of good and evil

5. The ratio of good and evil

8. Choice

9. Conclusion

Introduction

For many centuries, people have dreamed of a happy and prosperous life, filled with high meaning and based on the ideals of goodness and justice, loyalty and honor, decency and comradely mutual assistance, beauty and harmony.

Conscience and kindness, honor and dignity, duty and responsibility - these moral concepts and values have always expressed the deepest aspirations of mankind in its spiritual development, opened up prospects for human improvement and gave dignity and meaning to his life. In myths and legends, traditions and fairy tales, in religious searches and philosophical teachings, people's dreams of an ideal world order are expressed, in which good and justice, duty and responsibility, honor and dignity are the basis and content of social relations. Religion and art have made and are making a significant contribution to the spiritual quest of mankind.

However, only in ethics, as in philosophical science, the world of moral values and goals, morality as a whole becomes a subject of special interest.

Ethics arose more than two and a half thousand years ago, when, as a result of the social division of labor, cognitive, theoretical activity was separated from directly practical moral consciousness, it provides a direction for solving the same practical problems of a person's moral life, which he constantly has to face in everyday life - what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is not, and why, what should be done in order to maintain a good name and dignity. Ethics was originally formed as a "practical philosophy" that gives a person the concept of a virtuous life. At the same time, the majority of philosophers regarded their philosophical systems as a necessary foundation of "practical philosophy", seeing it as the main meaning and result of their theoretical sentiments.

Ethics has always strived for a theoretical understanding of the value behavioral and life-meaning problems of a person - how and in the name of what one should live, what to orientate on, what to believe and what to strive for.

In order to answer questions related to this topic, you must first of all answer what good and evil are to try to define these concepts.

The concept of goodness

In everyday life, we often use the word "good" and despite the lexical unity ("good wine" "approval", etc.), it is necessary to understand the semantic differences in the use of this word. At the same time, it is important to distinguish between good in a relative and an absolute sense. "Good" in one case is good; pleasant and useful, which means that it is valuable for the sake of something else, valuable for a given individual, in the current circumstances, etc., and in another - there is an expression of goodness, i.e. valuable in itself and not serving as a means for another purpose. Good in the second absolute meaning is a moral, ethical concept. It expresses the positive meaning of phenomena or events in their relation to the highest value - to the ideal.

Good is something that is assessed positively, is viewed as important and significant for the life of a person and society. Good is what allows a person and society to live, develop, prosper, achieve harmony and perfection.

In a non-religious consciousness, good (good) is considered only as a result of our assessment, i.e. a certain subjective position. In religion, good is a characteristic of the world itself. It is given by God, moreover, God himself is the Good, the highest of all possible goods, he is the source and focus of the human world of values. The appearance of good is prefaced to man. People should not reinvent their ideas about good, but seek and discover them as objectively existing. On this path, they will inevitably come to God as the highest Good.

The concept of goodness is related to two concepts - kindness and virtue. We call good a person who brings goodness to people, understood as love, help, benevolence. We call virtues moral - commendable human qualities, and they differ significantly in different cultures and in different eras. So, for example, the main virtues of the Greek sage were dispassion, severity and ruthlessness, courage and strict fulfillment of duty. Pride also refers to the same virtues. In contrast, the leading Christian virtues are humility and indiscriminate compassionate love, which is directed even to enemies. And pride - pride - on the contrary, is ranked among the vices.

Within the same moral system, different virtues express different forms of good. So the virtues are at the same time humility and courage, kindness and severity, generosity and frugality, justice and generosity. Each society and each culture develops a number of techniques that allow to form in the members of the community these highly valued moral qualities that are necessary for the survival and development of society. In all cultures, folk heroes and saints are the bearers of the best virtues.

Since the 17th - 18th centuries, the concept of morality as a system of mutual utility has been formed in Europe. In accordance with the views of the philosophers living at that time, good is everything that is useful, i.e. everything that meets the satisfaction of any human need. As a consequence of this approach, goodness is extremely diverse. At the center of the utilitarian-pragmatic understanding of "good" is a person who is preoccupied with satisfying his needs. He, in principle, can wish everyone else pleasure and happiness, but he cares first of all about his own well-being, about the good for himself. This good turns out to be, first of all, a combination of material and social goods. Bringing good and good together, for a private subject, blurs the criteria between good and evil, and in accordance with this concept, it can be very useful to kill or rob someone in order to obtain certain benefits and satisfy their needs. This will help you achieve your personal goal and get the desired pleasure - wealth and power. In the same way, it can be very useful for yourself to humiliate other people, mock them in order to satisfy your desire for self-affirmation. Such behavior is very far from good, in the modern sense of the word.

In the moral consciousness, true goodness is what is good for everyone, both for humanity and for every individual. But this good is quite abstract in a world where needs, desires and opinions collide. The ideal of good for all is an idea that indicates the direction of human movement. What is useful for humanity may be not useful for a single individual, whose interests can often be ignored and ignored in order to achieve universal "great good".

In religious morality, good is union with God, salvation of the soul, mercy, that is, the highest values, for the sake of which all human efforts should be directed.

Outside of religion, the highest moral values are humanity, justice, love. The highest moral value can be a person's self-realization, understood as his harmony with the world, creativity for the good of the Motherland. These are the types of relationships that do not bring specific material benefits, practical prosperity. On the contrary, for their sake, people sacrifice many others.

The highest values of specific people and specific cultures are different, but in high morality, good always includes only those guidelines that unite people with each other. Purely selfish values cannot be moral good. Even where they are not associated with material benefits and utility, but are expressed only in the desire to prove their creative uniqueness or individuality of self-affirmation without taking into account others, they cannot be recognized as good. Such a person will never yield to others and will not sacrifice anything for their sake, he will always and everywhere strive to affirm his “I”. Good should always be selfless. Otherwise, it is not good, it should be generous, and not demand a reward, but only hope for it. Real goodness can only be done on condition of great spiritual wealth. In order to freely and generously give others favor, care, attention, love, you must have all this in abundance in your soul and not be afraid that, being exhausted, you yourself will be left without it. True goodness is created without calculation, out of the very need to pour out love, to give it to the world and people.

Evil concept

Evil is what destroys a person's life and well-being. Evil is always destruction, suppression, humiliation. Evil is destructive, it leads to decay, to the alienation of people from each other and from the life-giving sources of being, to death. Evil is the opposite of good.

Evil exists in the world in three forms. The first is physical or natural, evil. These are all natural elemental forces that destroy our well-being. Historically, natural evil does not depend on human will and consciousness, biological and geological processes occur in addition to human desires and actions. However, since ancient times, there were teachings that asserted that it is negative human vices that create special vibrations at the subtle levels of the universe, which provoke and cause natural disasters. Thus, the spiritual world of people turned out to be significantly associated with an allegedly purely natural evil. A similar view found expression in religion, which always said that the physical misfortunes that suddenly fell on people were the result of God's wrath, for people had done so many outrages that punishment followed. Later it turned out that many phenomena of natural evil are directly related to large-scale human activities.

The second type of objective evil is evil in social processes. It takes place with the participation of human consciousness, but still in many respects apart from his will. So social alienation, which finds expression in class hatred, violence, heavy feelings of envy, contempt, is born from the objective process of the division of labor, which inevitably leads to private property and exploitation, after which an objective confrontation of interests occurs - the struggle for land, sources of raw materials that turn aggression, wars, in which many people are drawn against their own will. Social cataclysms begin as spontaneously and uncontrollably as storms, and the hardest wheel of history ruthlessly drives through thousands and millions of human destinies, breaking and maiming them. The resulting force, arising from the interaction and collision of many wills, reveals itself in historical events as a blind and powerful force that cannot be tamed by individual effort, cannot be taken away from oneself. You can be an exemplary moral, good, decent person, but by the will of fate to be in the epicenter of social evil, such as war, revolution, slavery, etc.

The third type of evil is subjective evil in origin, moral evil proper. Moral or moral evil is called evil that is committed with the direct participation of the human inner world - his consciousness and will. This evil that occurs and is done by the decision of the person himself, at his choice is divided into two types - hostility and licentiousness.

Hostility includes the desire for destruction, aggression, violence, anger, hatred, desire for death, suppression of others. Hostility is active, energetic, it strives to destroy someone else's being and well-being. A hostile person deliberately seeks to harm others, damage, suffering, humiliation. However, society often encourages, directs, rewards and praises hostility for it.

Licentiousness - another kind of moral evil - unites such human vices: cowardice, cowardice, laziness, servility, inability to cope with their desires, desires and passions. The whole history of the development of morality and moral philosophy is a stubborn and persistent struggle against licentiousness.

Since ancient times, philosophers have asked themselves the question: where did evil come from? Why does it surround us from all sides in objective and subjective forms? Was reality initially good and perfect, or did it already manifest itself as evil, clumsy and cruel when it appeared?

The 17th - 18th centuries legalize moral and social evil in human nature as a norm. Even such famous authors as T. Hobbes and I. Kant considered a person by nature selfish and evil, seeking to push other people away from the good, and perhaps also make fun of their suffering. Selfishness and evil, they believed, were natural qualities, since in life people compete with each other, and, as you know, whoever dared, he ate. Hobbes believes that the state and morality arise precisely as a mechanism to moderate human malignancy, otherwise humanity would have exterminated itself long ago. According to Kant, a person can and must fulfill the moral law of benevolence, this does not cancel the natural rootedness in evil.

Even the famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche says that cruelty, aggressiveness, ruthlessness are a normal manifestation of the will to power, which is characteristic not only of man, but of all nature.

In one form or another, religious versions of the origin of evil repeat each other, explaining all this by the struggle between good and evil spirits.

For Christianity, evil is fundamentally secondary, because the world is created by one and only God. God is Good and Being, he creates the world because of love, therefore evil cannot be inherent in his offspring.

Theology presupposes explanations for the origin of evil: evil is born of pride and the misuse of freedom. The first evil arose as a result of envy and pride, when the angel Lucifer decided that he was the same as God himself and wanted to take his place. He is overcome by dark passions, selfish self-assertion, hostility to the world created by the Lord, envy to the most important attribute of God - the ability to create.

The reason that played the role of a trigger for evil was the freedom that the Lord gave to the spirits created by him. He created man in the full sense of the word in his own image and likeness, endowing him with freedom and the ability to love. The version that ascribes the origin of evil to freedom removes responsibility for evil from God and transfers it to creatures - spirits and people who have shown rebellion.

Sometimes you can hear words about absolute evil. If we proceed from possible mythological and religious meanings, then absolute evil is embodied in Satan. Talking about "absolute evil" may hide the inability to understand that the real source of evil is in the person himself, as well as the real source of good.

Dialectic of good and evil

1. Good and evil are understood differently in different cultures. If we accept the conditional division of cultural regions into the West and the East, we immediately find differences in moral assessments of the same phenomena. In the West, a person's striving for individuality, uniqueness and originality is highly valued morally. To be a unique person and to declare yourself publicly is a blessing, it is worthy of praise and imitation. In the East, on the contrary, it is not customary to stick out oneself, here it is encouraged to be well “inscribed” into the team, to be one of its “wheels” and “screws”. The blatant manifestation of its originality is seen here as evil and falls into the category of "indecent behavior"

2. The concept of good and evil differs across eras and generations. In traditional society, unquestioning obedience to elders and acting according to the stereotype that they assumed was considered a virtue. The current generation chooses freedom from dictatorship and guardianship, for them true goodness is independence, the ability to act at their own discretion and their own will.

In the past, there was a double standard for assessing the behavior of different sexes everywhere. Women were imputed with the virtue of obedience and patience, they were assigned purely family roles, and the attempt of a woman to be active on her own received sharp moral condemnation in society. In the modern world, women's activity is approved, the desire of a woman to be a person, a professional, a social activist.

3. What is undeniable good for a person or group can be equally unambiguous evil for other people or another group. A vivid example of this is the victory in the war. The winners consider it good, especially if it crowned a liberation, "just" war, rejoice at it, glorify their leaders. And the defeated see in their loss evil, losses, economic, physical, and moral damage.

From the point of view of high morality, any war, for whatever reasons it is conducted, is evil, because it is violence, unleashes aggressive instincts, accompanied by bloodshed and looting. There are practically no bloodless and harmless wars.

The opposition “good for me - evil for another” is encountered not only on the battlefields. It is typical for any kind of competition, and it is on competition that the entire modern market economy is built. You can blame modern society for its brutality as much as you like, but even a worker who is focused on solidarity with other workers, it is a good thing to stay at the machine and get paid while others are laid off. He can go on strike, but he will not give up his place. In the conditions of the modern economy, people are often forced to talk about good for themselves, about good for us, modestly keeping silent about the common good, since this good, available to everyone, turns out to be just an unattainable goal, a myth.

4. What is undoubtedly evil is, under certain circumstances, evaluated by people as good. This applies primarily to murder. The sacred books of different nations contain the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." However, people kill, and their behavior is often regarded as good.

Kills an executioner who carries out the death sentence passed on a cruel criminal. It is believed that he is doing a good deed, realizing justice: the one who villainously killed the innocent should be deprived of his own life in order to avoid new victims on his part and so that others would be discouraged.

Kills the soldier in the war and the general giving orders. A soldier who smashes the enemy risks himself, for he can also be defeated and is ready to give up the most precious thing for the good of his homeland - his life. Therefore, the defenders of the fatherland are glorified as heroes, rewarded, erected monuments, elevated to the rank of saints. But the soldiers violate the biblical commandment "Thou shalt not kill."

Kills the person who is attacked, and such a self-defense killing is not characterized as evil. Thus, the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" develops into the form "where there is a direct threat to your or another life, kill the aggressor."

In these cases, the fundamental command of high morality is transformed, but does not lose its significance. Because killing is still bad, and if you can not kill, then you should do without it. Even the forced deprivation of another person's life is a moral evil. People should tirelessly seek opportunities to avoid mutual extermination, and they do this with the moral guiding principle "Thou shalt not kill." But nevertheless, in the modern world, unfortunately, it is still impossible to do without violence, or at least the threat of violence, when opposing evil, but if possible, it should be reduced to a minimum, otherwise any good deed, abundantly watered with blood, itself turn into evil.

5. One and the same phenomenon can in one case act as good, and in the other as evil. On the one hand, science is seen as a great blessing for humanity. It allows you to create conveniences, increase material well-being, relieve people from terrible diseases, prolong life, and allow rational use of space and time. On the other hand, science acts as a source of evil. It creates a technique that attacks nature and itself, a weapon of mass destruction, etc. Many phenomena of socio-cultural reality are contradictory and reveal either a light or a dark face, or even both at the same time.

People can sincerely believe that they are doing good, while their actions objectively turn into evil. So sincerely loving parents, who wish only good for their child, can isolate him so much from life with its problems that the child will grow up completely unprepared for the complexities of real human relationships. Or, on the contrary, too modern parents fundamentally give their child complete independence, for which he is not yet ready. As a result of this "action" the child finds himself in a bad company, and the family laments that "they wanted something good."

It often happens when phenomena that not at first glance seem to be completely obvious evil, may in fact turn out to be good. Treatment by a physician can be painful and uncomfortable, but recovery will be the result. The medicine may be bitter, but helpful. Strict, harsh upbringing gives good results: a person grows up capable of leading oneself, independent and strong, ready for an independent life. However, here, as in everything else, one cannot exceed the measure. Too harsh upbringing, drill, become absolutely harmful, give rise to an ugly and inharmonious inner world.

Every phenomenon is tested by time, and an objective assessment can only be given by other generations, when the acts performed can be assessed calmly and reliably.

Differences between good and evil

From the point of view of morality, good and evil are recognized as a special kind of value and characterize intentional actions performed freely, i.e. actions, actions, consciously correlated with a certain standard - ultimately an ideal.

Nature is blind in its elemental manifestations, while man has the power to curb the elements to some extent. At least, the element of your character: do not give in to anger, do not indulge in temptations (fame, power, greed), do not dissolve and refrain from licentiousness.

Good is what brings one closer to the ideal, evil moves away from it. In history, there were different opinions as to what a person should strive for in order to achieve perfection, hence there was a variety in the concepts of good and evil and, as a rule, people understood it as happiness and unhappiness, pleasure and suffering, benefit and harm.

A superficial understanding of good and evil can lead to its inaccurate interpretation as a concept and, as a result, to different assessments in moral judgments and decisions: some like pleasure, others like piety. As a result, this can lead to moral voluntarism, after which it can lead to immorality, since any indifference to good and evil signifies a potential openness to evil.

Good and evil as moral concepts are formed by a person according to the measure of his inner world. Any values can be both good and evil, depending on how the individual experiences his specific experience of "assimilation" of these values in relation to the ideal, to the highest good. External actions, albeit useful for others, but not inspired by a person's striving for good deeds, remain only a formal rite.

The nature and content of good and evil

In terms of their content, good and evil seem to be two sides of the same coin. They are mutually determined and in this they seem to be equal. A person recognizes evil because he has a certain idea of good: he values good, having experienced from his own experience what evil is. One cannot wish only good, and one cannot completely abandon evil without risking at the same time losing good. The existence of evil is sometimes presented as a kind of condition or an indispensable concomitant circumstance for the existence of good.

Good and evil are connected by the fact that they mutually deny each other. Good and evil exist just as light and shadow exist on Earth, these concepts are relative in their relation to the highest good, moral ideals as samples of perfection, or GOOD (with a capital letter). But the opposite of good and evil is absolute. This opposite is realized through a person: through his decisions, actions and evaluations.

In elucidating the nature of good and evil, it would be useless to look for precisely their everyday basis. As human qualities, good, that is, kindness, is manifested in mercy, love, and evil, i.e. malice, hostility, violence.

Determination of good and evil

Good and evil are meaningfully dialectically interdependent and are cognized in unity through one another. But in life, the full use of this principle is undesirable or even harmful, because "trying" one of the concepts without knowing the other can bring a completely opposite result from what was expected. Without willingness to resist evil, understanding evil and resisting evil is not enough; in itself it will not lead to good. It is not enough to study the road to Hell to get to Heaven, although this road must be known: in order not to be on it in your good intentions, remembering the well-known saying: "The road to Hell is laid out with good intentions."

Good and evil are not just mutually determined, but depend on each other: good is practically affirmed in the rejection of evil. In other words, real good is an act of good, i.e. virtue, as a practical and active fulfillment by a person of the requirements imputed to him by morality.

Choice

In situations of conflict, a person sees his task in making the right and worthy choice. The moral choice is between good and evil. A person often happens to choose between positive values, or rather, between lifestyles in which various positive values are affirmed.

At the same time, a person often finds himself in situations where he has to make decisions that do not lie within the framework of an unambiguous confrontation between good and evil. It is a decision in the face of a choice between greater and lesser good or greater and lesser evil.

At this level of morality, the choice is especially difficult. Especially in situations where you have to choose according to the principle of "least evil". In cases where there is a choice between more or less good, there will be good in any case. When choosing even the lesser evil, the chosen one turns out to be evil. The consequences of such a choice - not as a lesser evil, but as an evil, are unpredictable both for the environment and for the one who chooses.

An important aspect of the moral choice of lesser and greater good or evil is related to the fact that these concepts, although “balanced” at the concept level, represent unequal grounds for assessing the corresponding actions. It's one thing to oppose one to the other, and the other to allow evil to happen. "Patronage of evil" is morally reprehensible, "connivance to evil", i.e. contributing to evil is unacceptable and is almost equated by moral consciousness with the creation of evil.

However, “indulgence of good” is in fact morally neutral, and “indulgence of good” is taken for granted and is not given special importance.

From a moral point of view, the harm of evil is more significant than the benefit of good. The avoidance of injustice is, from a moral point of view, more essential than the creation of mercy: the evil of injustice is more destructive to communities than the good of mercy is constructive.

Conclusion

Now, on the threshold of a new millennium, when new information technologies are being introduced into all spheres of public life, the problem of the place and role of moral values in public life has become especially acute, when it became obvious that the most outstanding achievements of technological progress have catastrophic consequences for humans.

The face of the modern world, the nature and way of human communication and production activities are rapidly changing. The course of the historical process is unpredictable.

In our time, progressive thinkers are increasingly turning their attention to man, his life, well-being, freedom, the development of abilities, the realization of creative forces, liberation from ignorance and vices.

The crisis our country is going through is largely caused by the loss of humanistic moral values. It is becoming more and more obvious that socio - economic and political - legal reforms alone are not enough to overcome it. It is necessary to form a new worldview, a new national idea. Any social transformations only have a progressive meaning when they serve the spiritual and moral revival and improvement of society. Therefore, the inherent critical attitude of morality towards reality, dissatisfaction with reality and its assessment are necessary prerequisites for the correspondence of social practice to the proclaimed humanistic goals. Therefore, moral revival and spiritual improvement of a person is both the goal and the means of progressive and successful social transformations. They can be such only if each person is introduced to functional moral values, turning them into stable beliefs and motives of behavior.

On a long historical path, ethics has amassed a rich material that is of universal importance for the education of society and the individual. After all, morality refers to the general conditions of the life of society, and morality is an essential characteristic of a person. Therefore, the study of ethics is necessary for every person, regardless of his type of activity, because ethical knowledge forms in a person, first of all, not special professional knowledge and skills, but the personality itself.

Used Books:

1. Guseinov A.A. Apresyan R.G. "Ethics" M. 1998

2. Zolotukhina – Abolina E.V. "A course of lectures on ethics" Rn-D. 1999 year

3. Kondrashov V.A. "Ethics" RnD. 1998 year

Often we use in everyday speech the words "evil" and good "," good "and" bad ", without even thinking about their meaning. These concepts represent the most generalized forms of moral and ethical assessment, which serve to distinguish between moral and immoral.

General definitions

Since ancient times, good and evil have traditionally been interpreted as the main dominant forces. They are endowed with an impersonal nature. These categories are central to moral issues. The essence of good and evil has been studied for centuries by philosophers, scientists, theologians, people of art. Evil is an ethical category that is the opposite of good in its content.

In a generalized form, it refers to everything that is immoral, which contradicts the requirements of public morality and deserves all censure and condemnation. On the other hand, the concept of virtue is inextricably linked with the category of good - a positive property of a person, indicating its high moral value. Vice opposes virtue.

What is good

The concept of goodness means everything that contributes to life, helps to satisfy human needs (both spiritual and material). These are natural resources, education, various items of cultural consumption. Moreover, utility is not always equivalent to good. For example, art has absolutely no utilitarian benefit. On the other hand, the development of industry is leading humanity to the brink of environmental disaster.

Good is a kind of spiritual good. In a moral and ethical sense, this concept is often used as a synonym for “good”. These words (good, good) indicate the most common interests, aspirations - what should happen in life, and what deserves approval.

Modern ethics reveals the concept of good in several different, but related aspects:

Good as the quality of a particular act.
As a set of moral norms of a positive nature.
As the moral goal of the activity.
As a moral quality of a person.

The problem of good and evil: dialectics of concepts

In philosophy, it is believed that the categories of good and bad are in the closest interdependence. There is no absolute good, just as there is no absolute bad. In every evil deed there is at least a tiny particle of good, and in every good there are elements of evil. In addition, good and bad can change places. For example, in Sparta, newborn children with physical defects were thrown into the abyss. And in Japan, once old and helpless people were transported alive into the so-called "valley of death". What is now called barbarism was once considered a good deed.

Even in our time, one and the same deed can be regarded as good and bad at the same time. It directly depends on the context of the situation. For example, if a police officer takes the life of a serial killer in a shootout, then the murder of the offender will be regarded as a blessing.

What is evil

Evil is an ethical category opposite to good. It summarizes in itself a variety of ideas about immoral acts, as well as about personality traits that harm other people. These actions and qualities deserve moral censure. Evil is everything that opposes the good of society and an individual person: disease, racism, bureaucracy, various crimes, chauvinism, alcoholism, drug addiction.

Good and bad in Kabbalah

The adherents of the ancient Jewish teaching called Kabbalah believe: as much is good in the world, there is exactly the same amount of evil. A person should appreciate both the first and the second, accepting with gratitude any gifts of fate.

As a rule, a person tries to avoid evil and strives for good. However, Kabbalists believe that this is not quite the correct approach. Good and evil should be valued equally, because the latter is a necessary element of reality that balances life.

A person should be grateful for evil in the same way as for good. After all, both of these phenomena exist for the sake of one goal - to push people to a higher stage of development. Evil exists only so that God's creation could exist. If only good existed, it would be impossible to consider it. After all, good is the manifestation of the Creator. And in order to feel it, a person must initially have an opposite nature in himself.

Religious views

Religion, in particular Orthodoxy, asserts: good and evil are defining forces in a person's life. It is difficult to disagree with this. Each person says about himself that he strives for good. If a person has not decided what is good for him and what is bad, what is black and what is white, then he steps on shaky ground. Such uncertainty deprives him of any moral guidelines.

The church fathers do not recognize good and evil as two equal principles. A similar dualism arose in the heretical teachings of the Gnostics and Manichees. Creative power belongs to good alone. Evil is corruption, the complete absence of being. It has no independent meaning and exists only at the expense of good, distorting its true nature.

Philosophers' views on human nature

Reasoning about good and bad makes you think about one of the most important questions: what kind of person is good or bad? Some consider him good by his inner nature, others - evil. Still others believe that a person is neither good nor bad.

F. Nietzsche called man "an evil animal". Rousseau, in his Discourse on Inequality, wrote that a person is inherently good in his inner nature. Society alone makes her evil. Rousseau's statement can be considered the antithesis of the religious doctrine of original sin and the subsequent attainment of salvation in faith.

The idea of good and evil in a person by I. Kant is also interesting. He believed that the nature of man is evil. It contains an ineradicable tendency to create evil. However, at the same time, people also have the makings of good. The moral education of the individual should consist in giving life to these inclinations. This gives them a chance to overcome their destructive tendencies to do bad things.

Many philosophers believe that initially a person is still kind. The one who gave preference to evil in his life is an anomaly, a kind of exception to the rule. Good and evil in the world can be correlated as health and disease. The one who chooses the good is morally healthy. The wicked one suffers from moral illness, ugliness.

What is jurisprudence based on?

There is a principle in law based on this concept. This is the benefit of the doubt. According to this concept, a person is considered innocent until strong arguments are presented to prove his guilt. In other words, all citizens are considered initially respectable - not violating laws and morals. A person is recognized guilty only in one case - by a court decision. If people were initially evil or not evil and not good, then this principle would have absolutely no moral justification.

There is another indirect argument in favor of the fact that people are intrinsically good - this is the concept of conscientiousness. Hardly anyone would deny that conscientiousness is an indispensable condition for any professional and creative activity. Everything that is created by man on planet Earth is the result of his conscientiousness.

Was “good” added to the word “conscientiousness” just for the sake of words? Or is it still an essential condition for determining the described phenomenon? The answer here is unambiguous: if a person were not internally directed towards good, then there would be no conscience, honest performance of his work.

What kind of people prevail in the world

It is difficult to give an unambiguous answer to the question of which people are more - good or bad. After all, there are definitely no good and bad. Each personality contains both. But sometimes it happens that a person makes more mistakes than correct actions. And then they can say about him that he is angry, although this will not fully characterize his nature. Errors are an inherent property of Homo sapiens. You cannot avoid them.

Good and evil in the world are often difficult to recognize. Kindness can hide from strangers. For example, a good person does good deeds, guided by the biblical principle: "When you do alms, let your left hand not know what your right hand is doing." On the other hand, evil is always better organized. There are all kinds of criminal groups and gangs, which are ruled by money and robbery. For their "plans" to be fulfilled, the bandits have to be better organized. Since this is noticeable, it seems that there are more evil people in the world.

Confrontation between good and bad: what wins?

People often wonder why good triumphs over evil. Indeed, in many fairy tales and movies, justice ultimately triumphs, and all enemies and negative characters get what they deserve. In life, a person who has done a bad deed also has to "pay the bills" after a while. If he is not punished by his kind, fate itself will take care of it. Good and justice win for the reason that to create good things you need activity, courage, and courage. In other words, being evil is always easy and simple. It takes effort to be kind. Since evil is devoid of creativity, it always turns out to be short-lived.

The concept of good and evil in the history of civilization
Table of contents

Introduction

A lawyer is an extremely broad concept that includes many professions. The activity of a lawyer concerns the most important benefits, interests of people, often associated with invasion of their personal life, and sometimes with restriction of rights, making decisions that affect the fate of a person.

Ethical issues and rules affect the relationship of a lawyer with a client, with other participants in the process, with colleagues in the profession, with government agencies, and with society as a whole. The study of the moral aspects and problems of the profession is necessary for every lawyer, especially in modern conditions, when the task is to humanize public and state life, when legislation attaches great importance to the independent decisions of a professional lawyer: judge, investigator, prosecutor, notary. The decisions they make must be not only legal, but also fair. The lawyer must understand and apply in practice the basic concepts of ethical categories: good and evil, justice and duty, conscience, dignity and honor.

The main essence of the activities of law enforcement agencies is directly revealed in their name: this is the fulfillment of the most important constitutional duty of the state - the protection and protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen (Constitution of the Russian Federation, Art. 2.)

All their other functions - the protection of public order, property, the fight against crime, the suppression of antisocial manifestations, etc. - are elements of this most important duty. And the law enforcement agencies themselves, in turn, are an element, one of the main structures of the state - that power structure, which is a guarantee of law as a system of social norms and relations, organizing the normal life of a society. That is why ideas about good and evil must be clear and unambiguous. Therefore, the topic of this work is relevant and timely.

The purpose and objectives of the work is to study the concept of good and evil in the history of civilization

1 The concepts of Good and Evil and their criteria. The "golden rule" of morality

Good and evil are the most common forms of moral assessment, distinguishing between moral and immoral. What are they like?

Good is a category of ethics that unites everything that has a positive moral meaning, serving to differentiate the moral from the immoral, opposing evil. Since antiquity, good and evil have been interpreted as two forces dominating the world, supra-natural, impersonal 1 .

The category of good is also associated with such a concept as virtue - stable positive qualities of a person, indicating its moral value. Virtue is opposed by vice.

A virtuous person not only recognizes positive moral principles and requirements, but also does good by acting in accordance with them (goodness is to do good). Ideas about virtue, like goodness, have changed historically. So, in ancient Greece, in accordance with the teachings of Plato, virtue was associated with such moral qualities as courage, moderation, wisdom, justice. The Christian faith in the Middle Ages put forward three basic virtues: faith, hope, love (as faith in God, hope for his mercy and love for him).

With all the variability of views at different times and in different strata of society, honesty, humanity, courage, disinterestedness, loyalty, etc., were assessed and evaluated positively.

In everyday life, good is everything that contributes to human life, serves to satisfy the material and spiritual needs of people, is a means to achieve certain goals. These are both natural and spiritual goods (knowledge, education, cultural goods). Utility does not always coincide with good. For example, art is devoid of utilitarian utility; the development of industry and material production brings mankind to the brink of ecological catastrophe.

Good is a kind of spiritual good. In an ethical sense, the concept of good is often used as a synonym for good.

Good (good) reflects the most common interests, aspirations, wishes and hopes for the future: what should be and what deserves approval. In modern ethics, good is revealed in several different, but closely interrelated aspects:

a) good as a moral quality of an act;

b) good as a set of positive principles and norms of morality;

c) good as a moral motive and the moral goal of an act;

d) good (virtue) as a moral quality of a person, which is expressed in such concepts as conscientiousness, responsibility, unity of word and deed, etc. 2 .

The forms of manifestation of good and virtue are diverse and, in principle, are inherent in every human positive quality, behavior or deed. For example, in relation to work - this is conscientiousness, dedication, accuracy, accuracy, etc .; in relation to a person - this is humanity, justice, benevolence, sensitivity, tact, etc.

Evil is a category of ethics, the opposite of good. It summarizes ideas about immoral acts and human qualities that harm people and deserve moral condemnation. This is all that opposes the public and personal good, everything that is directed against the good: racism, chauvinism, bureaucracy, all types of offenses and crimes, drunkenness, drug addiction, etc.

Good and evil are the most general categories of ethics. All human activity occurs within the boundaries of good and evil. As a result, the categories of good and evil perform a methodological function, because it is practically impossible to consider other ethical categories otherwise than through the prism of these very general categories.

In the system of moral norms of human society, a rule has gradually emerged, which has become a generalized criterion for the morality of behavior and actions of people. It is called the "golden rule of morality." Its essence can be formulated as follows: do not do to another what you do not want to be done to you. Based on this rule, a person learned to identify himself with other people, his ability to adequately assess the situation developed, ideas about good and evil were formed.

The "Golden Rule" is one of the oldest regulatory requirements that expresses the universal human content of morality, its humanistic essence 3 .

The "golden rule" is already found in the early written monuments of many cultures (in the teachings of Confucius, in the ancient Indian "Mahabharata", in the Bible, etc.) and is firmly included in the public consciousness of subsequent eras up to our time. In the Russian language, it was fixed in the form of a proverb: "What others do not like, do not do it yourself."

This rule, which has developed in relations between people in society, was the basis for the emergence of legal norms of an emerging society in conditions of statehood. Thus, the norms of criminal law that protect the life, health, honor and dignity of the individual embody the principles of the "golden rule of morality", humane attitude and mutual respect.

This rule is of great importance, especially in investigative, operational work, since it brings to the fore the norms of criminal procedure law, which prohibit seeking testimony by means of violence, threats and illegal measures. This path only leads to a decrease in the prestige of law enforcement agencies.

2 Problems of the struggle between good and evil. Ethics of nonviolence. Specificity of value judgments of police officers

The categories of good and evil are in close dialectical interdependence and interrelation. There is no absolute good and absolute evil. In every good deed one can find elements of evil and in every evil - even a tiny particle of good. Moreover, good and evil can change places without changing their objective content. It is known that in ancient Sparta, babies born with any physical disabilities were thrown into the abyss, and in ancient Japan, old weak people were carried alive to the valley of death, where they ended their earthly journey. Then it was considered a good deed, but now we consider it barbaric. "The ideas of good and evil changed so much from nation to nation," wrote F. Engels, "that they often directly contradicted one another." 4 ... Nevertheless, as L.N. Tolstoy: "Good is the eternal, the highest goal of our life. No matter how good is understood, our life is nothing but the striving for good." 5 .

It should be emphasized that one and the same phenomenon at the same time can be evaluated both as good and as evil. Killing a person is evil in itself. But if the latter were killed in the fight between the law enforcement officers and the bandits, then this act receives a moral justification and is considered as good, good. Calls for the murder of people from the standpoint of a common moral standard are immoral and represent evil. But Ilya Ehrenburg's article entitled "Kill a German" during the Great Patriotic War became a kind of action program for the soldiers of the Red Army.

It was said above that there is no absolute good or evil. Thus, the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War is a blessing, but the death of many millions of people for the sake of achieving it is evil. It is no accident that they say that there is a silver lining, but a silver lining. There is truth in the statement that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. To achieve a good goal, you often have to resort to compromises, choose the lesser evil. On the problem of moral choice, i.e. the choice of the course of action in which the evil will be the least will be discussed later. Now it is only necessary to emphasize that this is a very complicated matter and requires a comprehensive examination and justification from the executors. Take, for example, the problem of freeing hostages. There are many options here. You can follow the path of fulfilling the requirements of criminals: pay them the required amount of money, give a firm guarantee to save their lives, etc. However, this "easiest" way is at the same time the most ineffective and most immoral, for it only encourages the bandits and provokes them to commit such acts in the future. There is a way of persuasion, there is a way of liberation by force, sometimes it is possible to achieve the desired result by cunning. But in all cases, it is primarily a question of the triumph of good being achieved by a lesser evil.

The objective criterion of good is always the realization of the most essential interests of people, achieved through the harmony of personal and social. Of course, solving this problem, as a rule, is very difficult, but you should always strive for this.

The category of good as a category of science does not in all coincide with the ordinary ideas about the good of individual people. Undoubtedly, the most general ideas about good are the same for the absolute majority of people (let's take at least 10 biblical commandments), but for all that, in the motivations of specific actions of individuals, these ideas are characterized by a wide variety. To determine the truth of good in these cases, it is advisable to focus on public opinion, which is, as it were, a generalized view of people about good. It is these generalized moral values that underlie legal norms, it is here that the most important of them are protected by legal sanctions. And it is here that the merging of morality and law takes place, which gives grounds to assert: the fight against evil, protection and assertion of good is the essence and meaning of the work of law enforcement agencies.

The ethics of nonviolence is a completely different approach to conflict resolution that excludes violence. The ideas of nonviolence are formulated in the Bible, in the New Testament, recommending, if, "whoever hits you on the right cheek, turn to him and the other." In this case, a certain ideal was reflected, according to which non-resistance to evil is seen as a manifestation of moral perfection, moral superiority over someone else's sin. Non-multiplication of evil is regarded as a manifestation of good. The corresponding biblical commandments were established with great difficulty in the mind of a person and still seem to many to be impracticable.

The ethics of non-violence received significant development in the works of the outstanding Russian writer and thinker L.N. Tolstoy (1828-1910), who believed that the recognition of the need to resist evil by violence is nothing more than the justification by people of their usual favorite vices: revenge, greed, envy, anger, lust for power. In his opinion, the majority of people in the Christian world feel the poverty of their position and use for their deliverance the means that they consider valid in their world outlook. The means is the violence of some people over others. Some people, who consider the existing state order to be beneficial for themselves, try to maintain this order by the violence of state activity, others, with the same violence of revolutionary activity, try to destroy the existing structure and establish in its place another, better one.

L. Tolstoy finds the error of political teachings in the fact that they consider it possible to unite people through violence so that they all, without resisting, submit to one and the same structure of life.

"Any violence consists in the fact that some people, under the threat of suffering or death, force other people to do what the oppressed do not want." Violence does not create anything, it only destroys. The one who responds with evil for evil, multiplies suffering, intensifies calamities, but does not deliver either others or himself from them. Thus, violence is powerless, fruitless, destructive. It is not for nothing that even in the teachings of the ancient sages, love, compassion, mercy, reward with good for evil were considered the basis of moral relations. Another supporter of this theory, M. Gandhi, who dreamed of gaining India's freedom by peaceful means, considered nonviolence to be a weapon of the strong. Fear and love are contradictory concepts. The law of love works the way the law of gravity works, whether we accept it or not. Just as a scientist works miracles by applying the law of nature in different ways, so a person applying the law of love with the accuracy of a scientist can perform even greater miracles.

Nonviolence does not mean passivity, it is active and presupposes at least two forms of struggle: non-cooperation and civil disobedience. The idea of rejection of violence as a means of resolving conflicts and problems is finding an increasing number of its supporters all over the world.

The main methods through which law enforcement agencies carry out their activities are crime prevention (i.e. educational work with citizens) and coercive sanctions, which in extreme cases take the form of direct violence. Moreover, as can be seen from the above definition, the concept of "power of power" (ie actions based on coercion, on violence) is the main characteristic of the activities of law enforcement agencies.

And here the question arises: can coercion, especially direct violence, be moral? In principle, there is no doubt that it is necessary at a given level of development of society, and, therefore, it is expedient and inevitable (the discussions are only about the scope, degree and forms of violence), but as for the morality of violence, then a positive or negative decision For a long time and to this day, this issue has divided scientists (and practitioners, of course, too) into two directions: the moralistic and the realistic.

The first direction is well known to everyone since school, when, thanks to the work of Leo Tolstoy, we got acquainted with the concept of "non-resistance to evil by violence" (believers get acquainted with it even earlier, since it is set forth in the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ). The same concept underlies the movement of pacifists and a number of others based on the principles of humanism. A similar point of view is shared by many modern scientists, such as, for example, the outstanding philosopher, sociologist and historian of the 20th century Max Weber, who argues: “From a moral point of view, coercion is always evaluated negatively, even in cases where it is perhaps the only policy tool " 6 .

The realistic direction proceeds from the fundamental unity of law and morality as a reflection and expression of the general interests or common interests of certain social groups and classes, which in these two forms acquire normative, regulatory and imperative meaning and, therefore, differ from each other not in essence , but on the mechanisms of their implementation. It is the realistic trend that has become widespread in Russian thought, which considers coercion and violence to be a necessary component of any form of social life. From this point of view, to talk about the immorality of violence means to tear morality away from social practice and move it into the sphere of empty abstractions. This position is very clearly formulated by the modern Russian philosopher V.V. Denisov: "Social violence finds its concrete expression in the use or threat of use by a certain group, class, state, social system of various forms, methods and means of direct or indirect coercion and suppression (political, economic, military, legal, etc.) in in relation to other groups, classes, states, social systems ... in order to impose their will on someone. Thus, social violence is practically used in all spheres of public life - economic, political and spiritual " 7 .

However, the above definition requires some clarification. All activities of law enforcement agencies are based on confronting aggressive evil. This confrontation is carried out in two main forms: in the form of violent resistance, which is defined by a number of articles of the Law "On the Police", and non-violent resistance, which is considered preferable in the practice of official activity.

While the first form seems more or less clear, the second requires some explanation. The essence of nonviolent resistance (which is also to a certain extent coercion, because it is aimed at imposing one's will on someone) lies in persuading the opponent, in an effort to replace his behavioral attitude with a moral and law-abiding one. Of course, in this case, we are not talking about a committed crime, but about criminal intent, about the elimination of a conflict situation, about the reorientation of the individual to socially useful behavior. In other words, we are talking only about situations that are in the sphere of morality and have not yet passed into the sphere of law. There are certain rules and techniques for implementing nonviolent resistance. Let's name the main ones:

1) You should abandon the claim to absolute truth and be ready for dialogue and compromise.

2) Be self-critical of your arguments and behavior, try to find out what in them could cause a hostile attitude of the opponent.

3) You should mentally put yourself in the opponent's place and analyze the situation through his eyes - this will make it possible to understand him and help him find a decent way out of the situation, preserving his face.

4) In no case show your opponent your dislike, but, on the contrary, in every possible way to emphasize your friendliness.

5) Be extremely sincere, do not use any lies, hidden intentions, tactical tricks, etc.

Of course, this form is much more complicated than the first one. It is much easier to handcuff a person than to convince him or her. Moreover, for this you need to have knowledge of logic, psychology, and the culture of speech, and you yourself need to be a model of moral behavior and communication. However, there is probably no need to prove how much this form of coercion, which even coercion can only be called conditionally, is more effective than the form of direct violence.

Violence can be said to be neither moral nor immoral in itself. In an abstract form, it is extramoral.

In this form, it can be likened to a knife: you can kill a person with a knife, but you can also cure it (if, for example, it is in the hands of a surgeon). The criterion for the morality or immorality of violence is the purpose for which it is committed and the means by which it is carried out. A goal aimed at the good, even if it is achieved by violence, is moral, provided that the means will be optimal and will more or less exactly correspond to the nature of this goal.

Thus, the concept of morality does not contradict violence, but interacts with it. In other words, violence, like any other act, can be both moral and immoral in nature. This approach allows us to move on to considering the moral content of law enforcement.

People who are far from a true understanding of the activities of law enforcement agencies, as a rule, do not ask the question about the moral content of this work. From the point of view of the layman, these units use only means of intimidation and direct violence - legal and physical. And, as they believe, the existing requirements in this area are the requirements for the ability to use these tools. They do not know that moral qualities are of great importance in the work of law enforcement officers: honesty, love for people, justice, dedication, courage, benevolence and many others, including a sense of high responsibility for their actions in front of society. The presence of these qualities in an employee serves as an obligatory measure of his professionalism, and considerable efforts of managers, employees of educational and cadre apparatuses, and service teams are directed to foster these qualities. Requirements for this side of the service are imposed both by the society and by official documents, in particular, for example, article 58 (clause "l") of the "Regulations on service in the internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation", according to which an employee for committing misconduct incompatible with the requirements, presented to the personal, moral qualities of an employee of the internal affairs bodies, is dismissed from service.

Therefore, it is quite natural that law enforcement officers constantly have to wonder how fair their actions and actions are. And the truly professional is the one who evaluates his actions not only from the point of view of the law, but also according to honor and conscience, the one who, according to V.G. Belinsky, "does not want happiness and for nothing" if he cannot be sure of the fairness of his actions (remember that justice is one of the main categories of both morality and law).

It will not be superfluous to remember that as early as 1782, the police regulations clearly defined the qualities that were put forward in the first place in the activities of officials: "1. common sense; 2. goodwill in sending the entrusted; 3. philanthropy; 4. loyalty to the service. imperial majesty; 5. zeal for the common good; 6. zeal for office; 7. honesty and selflessness " 8 .

In the first part of the "Order of the Deanery Council," the moral principles of the Code of Honor were formulated: "1. Do not do something to your neighbor, which you yourself don’t want to endure; 2. Do not only do it hard for your neighbor, but you can do good to him as much as you can; 3. If someone has done to your neighbor personal grievance, either in name, or in a good title, may satisfy as far as possible; 4. help each other in good; 5. lead the blind, give a roof to the poor, give water to the thirsty; 6. blessed is he who has mercy on the cattle, be your beast and your villain stumble - lift it up; 7. show the way to the one who has gone down from the path " 9 .

Man does not live by bread alone, not only by material goods, but above all by truth and freedom, conscience and honor, morality and humanism. And those properties of the human character, which were traditionally considered as highly moral foundations of the personality, are an integral part of the official activity of a law enforcement officer, an indicator of the perfection of his professional skills, the level of his moral and cultural development.

conclusions

A law enforcement officer is constantly in the sphere of the moral influence of society and his service structure. On the one hand, he experiences the educational moral impact of society, which forms it in accordance with the principles of public morality, and on the other hand, through his activities he himself exerts an educational influence on citizens - positive, if his fulfillment of the requirements of the law serves the cause of social justice and is perceived by citizens as deeply moral, negative, if his actions are perceived by citizens as unjust and thus immoral.

These are the foundations on which the educational service in law enforcement agencies is built. It has many aspects, but moral education, which organically includes instilling in employees a sense of patriotism and collectivism, a sense of social justice, respect for people, is the most important form of educational work for both the heads of bodies and departments, and employees of educational and personnel departments, service collectives.

It should be recalled that the police service forges strong and noble characters worthy of universal respect. Unlike a person who either does not allow himself to "not notice" anything bad, or is limited by internal indignation, a real law enforcement soldier under any circumstances comes into battle with evil, since his official duties organically merge with moral requirements, with a life attitude.

Today, more than ever, the rule worked out over the years for every commander is relevant: "To lead is to educate." And first of all, on the examples of courage, dedication, nobility, high business and moral qualities of the best employees, and on this basis to form in the young recruits a sense of pride in their profession, the desire to increase military and labor traditions.

List of used literature

Guseinov A.A. The Golden Rule of Morality. M., 2008.
Koblikov A.S. Legal ethics. M, 2009.
Kolontaevskaya I.F. Pedagogy of professional education of police personnel in foreign countries: Monograph. Moscow: Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, 2002.
Kushnarenko I.A. Professional ethics of police officers. Tutorial. M., 2008
International Seminar on Police Ethics: Proceedings of an International Seminar (May 14-15, 2002). M .: Moscow University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, 2003.
Professional ethics of law enforcement officers. Textbook / Ed. G.V. Dubova. M., 2006. Ch. NS.
A.V. Shcheglov Professional ethics of employees of internal affairs bodies: Teaching materials. M .: YI Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, 2002.

1 Arakelov Yu.S., Dzhegutanov B.K., Oleinikov V.S. Professional ethics of a lawyer: answers to exam tickets. - SPb .: Peter, 2006.

2 Ibragimov M.M., Kulichenko V.V., Syedin B.G. Professional ethics and aesthetic culture of police officers. Kiev, 2010.

3 Guseinov A.A. The Golden Rule of Morality. M., 2008

4 Professional ethics of law enforcement officials / Ed. G. V. Dubova, A. V. Opaleva. M., 2009.

5 Professional ethics of law enforcement officials / Ed. G. V. Dubova, A. V. Opaleva. M., 2009.

6 Professional ethics of law enforcement officials / Ed. G. V. Dubova, A. V. Opaleva. M., 2009.

7 Professional ethics of law enforcement officials / Ed. G. V. Dubova, A. V. Opaleva. M., 2009.

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9 Professional ethics of law enforcement officials / Ed. G. V. Dubova, A. V. Opaleva. M., 2009.

1. One of them every day asks his friends to help him: to borrow money, food, provide other services. Addressing them, he says that if they are really his friends, then they will not refuse him this and, in the end, are simply obliged to help him. After a while, all his friends turn away from him. They stop calling and visiting him. 2. Another gets up early every day to be in time. He is loyal to his friends with all his heart, so he often visits them, helping them as much as he can. After a short time, all acquaintances consider him the best friend, trying to be closer to him. They tell others about him, and he becomes everyone's favorite.

Test "Am I kind" 1. You have money. Could you spend everything you have on gifts for friends or family? 2. A friend shares his problems or troubles in a conversation with you. If the topic is not interesting to you, will you let the interlocutor understand it? 3. Your partner plays poorly at chess or any other game. Will you give in to him so that he doesn't lose interest in the game? 4. Do you like saying nice things to people to lift their spirits? 5. Do you often use evil jokes? 6. Are you typical of vindictiveness, rancor? 7. Will you keep up a conversation with a friend if this topic does not interest you at all? 8. Do you willingly use your abilities for the benefit of other people? 9. Do you quit the game when it is already obvious that you have lost? 10. If you are confident that you are right, will you listen to the arguments of the other person? 11. Will you do work at the request of your parents if it is not your responsibility? 12. Will you imitate someone to amuse your friends?

A kind word Not clothes that paint a person, Hurry up for a good deed, Do not boast in silver, Who does good, In whom there is no good, Do not look for beauty - but boast of good. seek kindness. but the bad will ripen by itself. there is little truth in that. that God will thank. and the cat is pleased. and his good deeds.

In philosophy, “good” and “evil” are moral and ethical categories in which the moral assessment of the behavior of people (groups, classes), as well as social phenomena from certain class positions, is expressed. Good is what society considers moral and worthy of imitation. “Evil” has the opposite meaning: immoral, condemnable. In substantiating good and evil, each thinker, in essence, defended the moral position of this or that class to which he himself belonged. Idealism looked for eternal and unchanging foundations of good and evil, seeing them in the divine will or absolute spirit. Representatives of pre-Marxian materialism most often found the source of good and evil in the abstract nature of man, in his desire for pleasure and happiness. Even those of them who linked morality with the conditions of human life and upbringing, declared the ideas of good and evil to be eternal and unchanging. In fact, socially conditioned traits characteristic of representatives of a certain social community have always been hidden under “extrahistorical human nature”. Therefore, in substantiating good and evil, each thinker, in essence, defended the moral position of this or that class. “The ideas of good and evil have changed so much from people to people, from century to century, that they often directly contradicted one another” (K. Marx, F. Engels). But these changes are not the result of arbitrariness, do not depend only on the opinion of the subject. Their source is rooted in the conditions of life of the society, and because of this they are objective in nature. The actions of people are assessed as good or evil according to whether they contribute or hinder the satisfaction of the historical needs of society as a whole, i.e. the interests of the progressive class that expresses these needs. Ideas about good and evil are expressed through a set of specific moral requirements that determine the norms of human behavior in a specific historical society. Even at the dawn of the development of human civilization, morality and religion arose and formed in parallel. Moral norms give people the opportunity to evaluate their own and others' actions, compare them with the standard, direct and regulate relations with other people. Simple moral norms - people's ideas about good, evil, duty, happiness, justice - are passed down from generation to generation. Naturally, they are specifically historically determined, they reflect the contradictions of certain periods of the life of society, social cataclysms. But the general humanistic foundation remains unchanged. Morality is equally demanding on all people.

Good is associated with the concept of good, which refers to what is useful to people. From this follows the judgment that it is not a good that is useless, unnecessary or harmful to anyone. However, it is necessary to clarify that the good is not the benefit itself, but only that which is beneficial; so evil is not harm itself, but that which causes harm, leads to it.

The good can exist in the form of a variety of things and states: it can be a book, food, attitude towards a person, technical progress and justice. All of the above concepts have one feature that unites them: they have a positive meaning in a person's life, they are useful for satisfying his needs - everyday, social, spiritual.

The good is relative: there is nothing that would be only harmful, as such, that would be only useful. Good in one respect can be evil in another. The good for people of one historical period may not be so for people of another period. Benefits have unequal value in different periods of an individual's life (for example, in youth and old age). In addition, not everything that is useful to one person is useful to another. So, social progress, bringing certain and considerable benefits to society (improvement of living conditions, mastery of the forces of nature, victory over incurable diseases, democratization of social relations, etc.), often turns into equally considerable disasters (invention of means of mass destruction, wars for the possession of material goods, technical disasters) and is accompanied by the manifestation of the most base human qualities (anger, vindictiveness, envy, greed, meanness, betrayal).

Ethics is not interested in any, but only in spiritual benefits, which include such higher moral values as freedom, justice, love, happiness. In this series, Good is a special kind of good in the sphere of human behavior. In other words, the meaning of good as a quality of actions is how these actions are related to good.

Good, like evil, is an ethical characteristic of human activity, people's behavior, and their relationships. Therefore, everything that is aimed at creating, preserving and strengthening the good is good. Evil is destruction, destruction of what is good. And since the highest good is the improvement of relations in society and the improvement of the personality itself, that is, the development of man and humanity, then everything that contributes to this in the actions of an individual is good; everything that hinders is evil.

Proceeding from the fact that humanistic ethics puts a Man at the forefront, his uniqueness and originality, his happiness, needs and interests, we can define the criteria for good. This is, first of all, what contributes to the manifestation of the true human essence - self-disclosure, self-realization of the individual. In this case, another criterion of goodness and, at the same time, a condition that ensures human self-realization is humanism as the “absolute goal of being” (Hegel).

And then good is everything that is connected with the humanization of human relations: it is peace, love, respect and attention of a person to a person; it is scientific, technical, social, cultural progress - not only in those aspects that are aimed at affirming humanism.

Thus, in the category of Goodness, society's ideas about the most positive in the sphere of morality, about what corresponds to the moral ideal are embodied; and in the concept of Evil - the idea that opposes the moral ideal, hinders the achievement of happiness and humanity in relations between people.

Like all moral phenomena, good is the unity of motivation (motive) and result (action). Good motives, intentions that are not manifested in actions, are not yet real good: they are potential good. A good deed that is the accidental result of malicious motives is also not good.

Both the goal and the means to achieve it must be good. Even the most benevolent, good goal cannot justify any, especially immoral, means. Thus, the good purpose of ensuring order and safety of citizens does not justify, from a moral point of view, the use of the death penalty in society.

As personality traits, good and evil appear in the form of virtues and vices. As properties of behavior - in the form of kindness and malice. Kindness, on the one hand, is a line of behavior (a friendly smile or a courtesy uttered in time). On the other hand, kindness is a point of view, a consciously or unwittingly professed philosophy, and not a natural inclination. Moreover, kindness is not limited to what is said or done. It contains the whole being of a person. A kind person is always responsive, attentive, cordial, able to share someone else's joy, even when he is preoccupied with his own problems, fatigue, when he has an excuse for a harsh word or gesture. A kind person radiates warmth, generosity and generosity. He is natural, approachable and responsive, while he does not humiliate with his kindness and does not set any conditions.

So, Good, in the broad sense of the word, as good, means a value concept that expresses the positive meaning of something in its relation to a certain standard, or this standard itself. In living speech, the word "good" is used to denote a variety of benefits.

Evil includes such qualities as envy, pride, met, arrogance, and atrocity. The feeling of envy disfigures the personality and relationships of people, it arouses in a person the desire for the other to fail, unhappiness, discredit himself in the eyes of others. Envy prompts a person to commit immoral acts. It is no coincidence that envy is considered one of the most serious sins in the Christian religion, for all other sins can be viewed as a consequence or manifestation of envy.

Arrogance, on whatever achievement or merit it may be based on, is also considered a manifestation of evil. It is characterized by a disrespectful, contemptuous, arrogant attitude towards others (towards everyone or towards an individual, in particular). The opposite of arrogance is humility and respect for people.

One of the most acute manifestations of evil is revenge (a kind of it is blood feud, rooted in the traditions of some peoples).

The differentiation of culture highlights various plans in the general concept of Evil:

· Cosmic plan (evil as impersonal chaos threatening the world order).

· Social (evil, acting in the guise of a social force - layer, group, personality - opposes itself to the whole and decomposes it).

· Human (evil as disharmony of bodily and spiritual qualities of a person).

So, although according to the imperative-value content, good seems to be proportionate to evil, their ontological status can be interpreted in different ways.

According to one point of view, good and evil are the same-order principles of the world, which are in constant combat.

According to another point of view, the real absolute world principle is divine good, and evil is the result of erroneous or vicious decisions of a person who is free in his choice.

In relation to Being, evil is nothing. Thus, good, being relative, as opposed to evil, absolutely in the fullness of perfection; evil is always relative. This explains the fact that in a number of philosophical and ethical concepts (Augustine, V. Solovyov, D. Moore) Good was considered as the highest and unconditional moral concept.

To the extent that good is understood as an absolute, total-unity, the source of evil is seen in man himself, in his original sinfulness, in his natural primordial egoism (Hobbes, Simmel). According to the third point of view, the opposition of Good and Evil is mediated - by God (L. Shestov), "the highest value" (N. Berdyaev), and ontologically and axiologically Good is not a final concept.