Saturday, October 07, 2006

Q48 A2: Whether evil is found in things?

Yes. Evil is found in things (as corruption also is found, for corruption is itself an evil) because evil consists in the fact that a thing fails in goodness.

Evil is distant both from simple being and from simple "not-being," because it is neither a habit nor a pure negation, but a privation.

As the Philosopher says (Metaph. v, text 14), being is twofold.

In one way it is considered as signifying the entity of a thing, as divisible by the ten categories; and in that sense it is convertible with thing, and thus no privation is a being, and neither therefore is evil a being.

In another sense being conveys the truth of a proposition which unites together subject and attribute by a copula, notified by this word "is"; and in this sense being is what answers to the question, "Does it exist?" and thus we speak of blindness as being in the eye; or of any other privation. In this way even evil can be called a being.

Through ignorance of this distinction some, considering that things may be evil, or that evil is said to be in things, believed that evil was a positive thing in itself.