There is such a thing as a sociopath -- a person commonly described as
without a conscience -- and I suppose if you put that in the same person
with a strong sexual sadism perversion, one would have a product we
would easily call evil.
This however doesn't address the point I was making which is more
philosophical and not psychiatric. To call a person evil is a judgment
and I think it is not only morally wrong but also unscientific and
simply a mistake to make judgment calls about people, good or bad. The
individual described in my first paragraph is extremely unlucky to
have such an inheritance or development, and needs help and deterrence,
but thinking of them as evil distorts the reality. They act out of
internal desires and instincts, not much different from a cat playing
with a mouse it has caught rather than dispatching it immediately.
In short I think evil is a word generally best avoided or just used as a
form of shorthand to indicate strong personal disapproval but not as a
description of something real in the world.
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