Thank you, TG Dee, for this perennial question.
To understand why this seems to be the case, we have to understand what it is to be good or to be evil.
It seems to me that to be good involves acting, desiring, feeling, in accordance with certain standards. For multiple reasons it is not easy for us to live up to those standards. There is, to begin with, a knowledge problem. In many cases we are actually unsure of what to do or how to feel in a morally loaded situation. Moral knowledge involves not only knowledge of principles, but also an ability to apply those principles to novel patterns of fact – a “know-how” that requires much experience and more than a little intelligence. So, sometimes we falter, or depart from standards of the good, because we don’t know what is good or how to be good. Aristotle famously described virtuous action as akin to hitting a bullseye with an arrow. The image emphasizes that virtue requires skill, and perhaps some luck.
Particularly in the case of acting in accordance with standards of the good, we also face a problem of motivation. Moral standards often demand that we act contrary to our inclinations. We often experience our obligations as burdensome, as requiring that we do what, in some sense, we don’t want to do. It can thus be difficult to summon the strength of will to overcome our inclinations and act in accordance with the good. The motivation problem is one reason why Kant actually defined virtue as strength of will; for him, human goodness actually consisted in freedom from inclination.
The knowledge and motivation problems explain why goodness is difficult for us, and so why we are imperfect at it. But why is evil consistent? Why, in other words, do evil people not often fail to be evil, no matter how hard they try? There is certainly an asymmetry here: even people we consider “good” might think goodness is difficult and often fail to be good, but people we consider “evil” are usually consistently evil and don’t seem to have much trouble making or acting on evil choices.
One answer is that evil is just the absence of good, and it’s relatively easy not to be good. Returning to the image of virtuous action as shooting an arrow, if evil is just analogous to anywhere that’s not the bullseye, then we can see why being evil is relatively easy. While in any given situation there is only one, or at most a few good actions – just as there is only one bullseye – there is a wide variety of not good actions. So, it’s relatively easy not to be good.
Kant gives us a different account of why it’s easy to be evil. For Kant, evil is choosing to act from our inclinations. Our inclinations are our self-regarding desires, or desires for what seems good for us. Thus, doing the evil thing means prioritizing self-interest over the good. And since by nature we care about ourselves, we find it easy to put ourselves ahead of the good. That is why people who are evil are consistent, for Kant: they are simply giving in to their natural inclinations.
To conclude, to understand why evil is consistent but good is faltering, we must understand the nature of both. Different accounts of the nature of goodness and evil will yield different answers to this question. But, in general, goodness is faltering because it’s hard; evil is consistent because it’s easy.
What do you think? Do you ever find it hard to be good? Let us know in the comments.
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Image: The Fair Toxophiles, by William Powell Firth (1872)
I received my BA in philosophy from the University of Chicago and my PhD from the University of Notre Dame. I specialize in ethics, with a particular focus on the nature of normative reasons and the ethics of hypocrisy in its myriad forms. My favorite philosopher is Henry Sidgwick, since I believe—to borrow a line from Alfred North Whitehead, speaking about Plato—that much of analytic ethics in the 20th century is a series of footnotes to Sidgwick.