Is evil the opposite of good?

[hexgrid]

This question was prompted by the Jack Bauer thread.

In D&D terms, is evil the opposite of good?

The standard reasoning doesn't treat them as opposites- performing good acts only to help obtain a neutral goal wouldn't make you good, but performing evil acts only to help obtain a neutral goal would make you evil.

Another example- if a celestial infiltrated a fiendish organization, and performed evil acts to maintain his cover, would he still be considered good? Probably not.

But if a fiend infiltrated a celestial organization, and performed good acts to maintain his cover, would he still be considered evil? Probably.

I would think that if good and evil were truly opposites, the fiend would lose his evil status by committing good acts in the same way the celestial would lose his good status by committing evil acts.

But if good and evil aren't opposites, what is their relationship?

 

[ceratitis]

they are still opposites, its just that good imposes more restrictions on its self. if a crime lord in the real world donates money to starving africans does that make him less evil? if a terrorist organisation supports schools and they ok?
to be evil is easy unless you have to pay the price society imposses on you. its harder to be good. infact in a philosophical way being good or any kind of morality implies giving something up or paying a price.
that is why a celestial cannot commit an evil act even for "the greater good" while a fiend can do what he wants.
Z

 

[Umbran]

Yes, I'd still call them opposites.

The example of the celestial vs fiend is a bit off, in that we have to consider if they have free will and the ability to change alignment at all. So, let's change it to be mortals...

For me, alignment is the long term average of behavior. If someone has a long history of acts on one side of the line, it is unlikely that a single act will suddenly flop him over. A person already at one extreme has a sort of karmic buffer. One Good act won't redeem an thoroughly Evil person, and a really Good person is not damned for one Evil thing.

If the Evil person infiltrates a Good organization, and does Good acts, as a DM, I'd start to consider - do his Good acts outweigh the evil he intends and/or accomplishes? If so, then he moves toward Good. He's going to have to do a whole lot of Good acts before he's actually going to become Good - it's a long road, and he'll probably just become less evil, possibly makign it to neutral. But eventually, if the results of what he does are more Good than Evil, then he just can't be Evil.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Apathy is the opposite of good.

 

[Nomad4life]

Another example- if a celestial infiltrated a fiendish organization, and performed evil acts to maintain his cover, would he still be considered good? Probably not.

But if a fiend infiltrated a celestial organization, and performed good acts to maintain his cover, would he still be considered evil? Probably.

I don’t have an answer for you, but I just though I’d point out that this example may be a little problematic- Infiltration is itself a form of deception, and deception isn’t generally considered a “good” thing, as it is a perversion of honesty. I'm not trying to say that infiltration is automatically an "evil" action, just that an evil character is a lot less restricted in what they can get away with than a good character would be in this situation... "evil" has more of a "home field" advantage in this case.

Granted, I scraped the entire alignment system ages ago, as it only seemed to muck up the game rather than facilitate good storytelling, so I’m probably not the best person to take advice from.

 

[tzor]

Being opposites does not imply symetry or interchangeability. A good example is up and down. Up is the "opposite" of down, but the two are not interchangeable. It takes more work to go "up" than it does to go "down."

In the case of good and evil, there is a force similiar to gravity that tends to make it easier to do evil (selfish) things than good (selfless). Note that harder does not mean impossible.

It is especially important to have a firm grasp of what good and evil are so that one cannot be fooled by the veneer of goodnes. Doing what appears to be good for a completely selfish reason is not good, it's neutural at best and often might be evil. Politicians kiss babies all the time, but they do it for completely selfish reasons (getting themselves reelected). If an evil creature does seemingly "good" acts for the selfish motivation of going undercover to gain ultimate power over the forces of good.

Now I hope I haven't implied that motvation (a relative notion) must be considered along with acts (a concrete motion) in order to determine good from evil. (Don't worry I haven't.) But good and evil acts must be based upon the person doing the act. Good is placing others at the expense of self, so for an act to be judged good (or evil) one has to look at the impact on both the others and on the self. Helping both others and self at the same time to an equal extent is a neutral act. Evil likewise places self at the expense of others. Killing others at the expense of killing oneself is, for example, not an evil act. It's just dumb. (Note that saving others at the expense of killing oneself is a good act, and that might require killing another set of others. I never said morality was always easy.)

"Another example- if a celestial infiltrated a fiendish organization, and performed evil acts to maintain his cover, would he still be considered good?" Maintaining your "cover" is a selfish act. (That's another thing about good and evil, you need to concentrate on the here and now.) The acts are clearly evil.

"But if a fiend infiltrated a celestial organization, and performed good acts to maintain his cover, would he still be considered evil?" Once again maintaining your "cover" is a selfish act, but because you are helping others it blances as a neutral act.

In order to get a good fiend example you need an example where the fiend helps others at the expense of its own. This isn't all that easy to do. In those cases the fiend would be pulled toward the side of good. Even if just a little.

 

[Deadguy]

We all know that Doog is the real opposite of Good!

 

[WayneLigon]

But if a fiend infiltrated a celestial organization, and performed good acts to maintain his cover, would he still be considered evil? Probably.

Not if he genuinely meant them as good acts. As good can fall, so can evil repent. Both the sinning celestial and the samaritan fiend would gradually move towards neutral, and from that into the opposite alignment if they continued the acts. The 'acts' alone - especially for Good - mean little; it's the spirit behind them. Evil can fake being Good a lot better; they just have to restrain themselves more.

 

[jester47]

I think evil is the lack of good. Thus you can have good in you, but in one case it is enough, but in another it is completely lacking.

 

[Dog Moon]

We all know that Doog is the real opposite of Good!

Pfft. That's some backwards thinking there.

I always assumed that in a general sense, yes, good is the opposite of evil, but there are different types of goods and different types of evils, and they cannot be labeled as opposites so easily. I guess this might be described partly by the whole Law v. Chaos spectrum in Dnd terms, though in real life, it cannot be labeled so easily.