A stepmother , stepmum or stepmom is a female non-biological parent married to one's preexisting parent. Children from her spouse's previous unions are known as her stepchildren . A stepmother-in-law is a stepmother of one's spouse.
91-477: Stepparents (mainly stepmothers) may also face some societal challenges due to the stigma surrounding the "evil stepmother" character. Morello notes that the introduction of the "evil stepmother" character in the past is problematic to stepparents today, as it has created a stigma towards stepmothers. The presence of this stigma can have a negative impact on stepmothers' self-esteem. In fiction, stepmothers are often portrayed as being wicked and evil . The character of
182-531: A Proto-Germanic reconstructed form of *ubilaz , comparable to the Hittite huwapp- ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European form *wap- and suffixed zero-grade form *up-elo- . Other later Germanic forms include Middle English evel , ifel , ufel , Old Frisian evel (adjective and noun), Old Saxon ubil , Old High German ubil , and Gothic ubils . Evil
273-516: A fairy godmother , but this figure is very rare in fairy tales. The stepmother may be identified with other evils the characters meet. For instance, both the stepmother and the witch in Hansel and Gretel are deeply concerned with food, the stepmother to avoid hunger, the witch with her house built of food and her desire to eat the children, and when the children kill the witch and return home, their stepmother has mysteriously died. This hostility from
364-532: A quasi-mathematical style and states these further propositions which he purports to prove or demonstrate from the above definitions in part IV of his Ethics : Carl Jung , in his book Answer to Job and elsewhere, depicted evil as the dark side of God. People tend to believe evil is something external to them, because they project their shadow onto others. Jung interpreted the story of Jesus as an account of God facing his own shadow. In 2007, Philip Zimbardo suggested that people may act in evil ways as
455-479: A bundle of wool (or a " hank , or coil" of wool, ullar-hönk ), which she tossed on her bed. Her father returned, searching every corner, and declared "'This place smells of men. What's that you threw on the bed, Helga?" (He begins his line with the Icelandic equivalent of " Fee-fi-fo-fum .." in the original text. ) But Helga was able to explain it was just the wool that he smelled. The next day, Helga returned to
546-463: A complete explanation. Most theorists agree use of the term evil can be harmful but disagree over what response that requires. Some argue it is "more dangerous to ignore evil than to try to understand it". Those who support the usefulness of the term, such as Eve Garrard and David McNaughton , argue that the term evil "captures a distinct part of our moral phenomenology, specifically, 'collect[ing] together those wrongful actions to which we have ...
637-432: A horn to drink out of, which he should accept since a draft of this will make him strong enough to overcome her. He was to repeat the process with her two other giantess sisters. But should Ingiborg's dog appear before him with tears running down its snout, that was the sign that her life was in imminent danger, and he should return to help his stepmother . He followed her directions, finding all three giantesses in turn,
728-476: A kind of personal "militant ignorance". According to Peck, an evil person is consistently self-deceiving, deceives others, psychologically projects his or her evil onto very specific targets, hates, abuses power, and lies incessantly. Evil people are unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim. Peck considers those he calls evil to be attempting to escape and hide from their own conscience (through self-deception) and views this as being quite distinct from
819-441: A name? Some swords have, you know.") Helga gave him "the stick and the stone and the twig" that belonged as a set with the rest. Whoever is on the horse's back can throw the twig and have a great forest appear to hinder his pursuer. If the enemy is not foiled, then he can strike (or prick) the stone with the stick and a hailstorm will kill the foe. Helga finally relented under the condition Sigurd would only ride once around, but at
910-420: A note falsely claiming that the stepson had raped her. Evil Evil , by one definition, is being bad and acting out morally incorrect behavior; or it is the condition of causing unnecessary pain and suffering , thus containing a net negative on the world . Evil is commonly seen as the opposite, or sometimes absence , of good . It can be an extremely broad concept, although in everyday usage it
1001-766: A person is considered, but also the relational distance. Ten Abominations ("十惡") The Ming Legal Code identifies Ten Abominations - categories of prohibited conduct so abhorrent and heinous that the usual considerations of pardon would not apply - these include plotting rebellion, great sedition, treason, parricide, depravity (the murder of three or more innocent persons or the use of magical curses), great irreverence (lese majeste), lack of filial piety, discord, unrighteousness and incest (fornication with relatives of fourth degree of mourning or less, or relationships with one's father's wife and concubines). Other views As with Buddhism, in Confucianism or Taoism there
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#17327972728021092-409: A plus, and pain as a minus". This is because pain is necessary for survival. Renowned orthopedist and missionary to lepers, Dr. Paul Brand explains that leprosy attacks the nerve cells that feel pain resulting in no more pain for the leper, which leads to ever increasing, often catastrophic, damage to the body of the leper. Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia,
1183-586: A response of moral horror'." Claudia Card asserts it is only by understanding the nature of evil that we can preserve humanitarian values and prevent evil in the future. If evils are the worst sorts of moral wrongs, social policy should focus limited energy and resources on reducing evil over other wrongs. Card asserts that by categorizing certain actions and practices as evil, we are better able to recognize and guard against responding to evil with more evil which will "interrupt cycles of hostility generated by past evils". One school of thought holds that no person
1274-714: A result of a collective identity . This hypothesis, based on his previous experience from the Stanford prison experiment , was published in the book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil . In 1961, Stanley Milgram began an experiment to help explain how thousands of ordinary, non-deviant, people could have reconciled themselves to a role in the Holocaust . Participants were led to believe they were assisting in an unrelated experiment in which they had to inflict electric shocks on another person. The experiment unexpectedly found that most could be led to inflict
1365-406: A ride on the horse with all its trappings for one circuit, and Helga refused at first but eventually relented and revealed the name of the horse and sword. Much of the exchanged dialogue inserted here by Lang are his embellishments (e.g., "'My father is a king, but he has not got any sword so beautiful as that. Why, the jewels in the scabbard are more splendid than the big ruby in his crown! Has it got
1456-459: A scorpion is evil in relation to man; a serpent is evil in relation to man; but in relation to themselves they are not evil, for their poison is their weapon, and by their sting they defend themselves." Thus, evil is more of an intellectual concept than a true reality. Since God is good, and upon creating creation he confirmed it by saying it is Good (Genesis 1:31) evil cannot have a true reality. Christian theology draws its concept of evil from
1547-522: A sin out of hate and contempt for the Devil , so as not to give him the chance to make one scrupulous over mere nothings ... " The international relations theories of realism and neorealism , sometimes called realpolitik advise politicians to explicitly ban absolute moral and ethical considerations from international politics, and to focus on self-interest, political survival, and power politics, which they hold to be more accurate in explaining
1638-413: A way to remedy the situation. She gave him a ball (or " clew " hnoða ) of string, and three gold rings. If he let the ball of string roll, it would lead him to a giantess, and though she would threaten to make a meal of him in the pot and seize him with a boat-hook, he should bribe her with the gift of one of the rings. She would then offer to wrestle with him until his strength ran out and offer him
1729-441: A world they view as explicitly amoral and dangerous. Political realists usually justify their perspectives by stating that morals and politics should be separated as two unrelated things, as exerting authority often involves doing something not moral. Machiavelli wrote: "there will be traits considered good that, if followed, will lead to ruin, while other traits, considered vices which if practiced achieve security and well being for
1820-600: Is 'something' that occurs in the experience that ought not to be ." There is no concept of absolute evil in Islam , as a fundamental universal principle that is independent from and equal with good in a dualistic sense. Although the Quran mentions the biblical forbidden tree, it never refers to it as the ' tree of knowledge of good and evil '. Within Islam, it is considered essential to believe that all comes from God , whether it
1911-470: Is a neurological disorder that prevents feeling pain. It "leads to ... bone fractures, multiple scars, osteomyelitis, joint deformities, and limb amputation ... Mental retardation is common. Death from hyperpyrexia occurs within the first 3 years of life in almost 20% of the patients." Few with the disorder are able to live into adulthood. Evil cannot be simply defined as all pain and its connected suffering because, as Marcus Singer says: "If something
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#17327972728022002-465: Is also sometimes perceived in absolute terms as the dualistic antagonistic binary opposite to good, in which good should prevail and evil should be defeated. In cultures with Buddhist spiritual influence, both good and evil are perceived as part of an antagonistic duality that itself must be overcome through achieving Nirvana . The ethical questions regarding good and evil are subsumed into three major areas of study: meta-ethics , concerning
2093-503: Is evil and that only acts may be properly considered evil. Some theorists define an evil action simply as a kind of action an evil person performs, but just as many theorists believe that an evil character is one who is inclined toward evil acts. Luke Russell argues that both evil actions and evil feelings are necessary to identify a person as evil, while Daniel Haybron argues that evil feelings and evil motivations are necessary. American psychiatrist M. Scott Peck describes evil as
2184-445: Is found in every society, and there are more societies that see at least some versions of it, such as marital rape or punitive rape, as normative than there are societies that see all rape as non-normative (a crime). In nearly all societies, killing except for defense or duty is seen as murder. Yet the definition of defense and duty varies from one society to another. Social deviance is not uniformly defined across different cultures, and
2275-528: Is known that stepmothers are evil, the actual stepmother is guilty of nothing more than some carelessness, to Erma Bombeck 's retelling where Cinderella is lazy and a liar. More subtly, Piers Anthony depicted the Princess Threnody as being cursed by her stepmother in Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn : if she ever entered Castle Roogna, it would fall down. But Threnody explains that her presence at
2366-468: Is no direct analogue to the way good and evil are opposed although reference to demonic influence is common in Chinese folk religion . Confucianism's primary concern is with correct social relationships and the behavior appropriate to the learned or superior man. Thus evil would correspond to wrong behavior. Still less does it map into Taoism, in spite of the centrality of dualism in that system , but
2457-552: Is not, in all circumstances, necessarily an aspect of evil. Defining evil is complicated by its multiple, often ambiguous, common usages: evil is used to describe the whole range of suffering, including that caused by nature, and it is also used to describe the full range of human immorality from the "evil of genocide to the evil of malicious gossip". It is sometimes thought of as the generic opposite of good. Marcus Singer asserts that these common connotations must be set aside as overgeneralized ideas that do not sufficiently describe
2548-617: Is often more narrowly used to talk about profound wickedness and against common good . It is generally seen as taking multiple possible forms, such as the form of personal moral evil commonly associated with the word, or impersonal natural evil (as in the case of natural disasters or illnesses), and in religious thought , the form of the demonic or supernatural /eternal. While some religions, world views , and philosophies focus on "good versus evil", others deny evil's existence and usefulness in describing people. Evil can denote profound immorality , but typically not without some basis in
2639-399: Is omnipotent and nothing can exist outside of God's power, God's will determine, whether or not something is evil. In Judaism and Jewish theology, the existence of evil is presented as part of the idea of free will : if humans were created to be perfect, always and only doing good, being good would not mean much. For Jewish theology, it is important for humans to have the ability to choose
2730-452: Is perceived as good or bad by individuals; and things that are perceived as evil or bad are either natural events (natural disasters or illnesses) or caused by humanity's free will. Much more the behavior of beings with free will, then they disobey God's orders, harming others or putting themselves over God or others, is considered to be evil. Evil does not necessarily refer to evil as an ontological or moral category, but often to harm or as
2821-571: Is really evil, it can't be necessary, and if it is really necessary, it can't be evil". The narrow concept of evil involves moral condemnation, therefore it is ascribed only to moral agents and their actions. This eliminates natural disasters and animal suffering from consideration as evil: according to Claudia Card , "When not guided by moral agents, forces of nature are neither "goods" nor "evils". They just are. Their "agency" routinely produces consequences vital to some forms of life and lethal to others". The narrow definition of evil "picks out only
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2912-573: Is shown later on when Giselle marries that girl's father, who had her from a previous marriage, thus becoming a stepmother herself. As Giselle is a sweet and caring woman, she makes a good wife and stepmother. However, it is notable that during much of that film, Giselle was more of an older sister figure than a maternal figure to that little girl. In the movie Nanny McPhee a group of children worry that their father will remarry, believing from their fairy tales that all stepmothers are an "evil breed." Although they help their father marry again to help keep
3003-412: Is subsumed into three major areas of study: There is debate on how useful the term "evil" is, since it is often associated with spirits and the devil. Some see the term as useless because they say it lacks any real ability to explain what it names. There is also real danger of the harm that being labeled "evil" can do when used in moral, political, and legal contexts. Those who support the usefulness of
3094-706: Is suggested by peculiar wording in John Gamble's "An Irish Wake" (1826). He writes of a woman soon to die, who instructs her successor to "be kind to my children." Gamble writes that the injunction was forgotten and that she "proved a very step-mother." Fairy tales can have variants where one tale has an evil mother and the other an evil stepmother: in The Six Swans by the Brothers Grimm and also in The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen ,
3185-426: Is that there is a qualitative, and not merely quantitative, difference between evil acts and other wrongful ones; evil acts are not just very bad or wrongful acts, but rather ones possessing some specially horrific quality". In this context, the concept of evil is one element in a full nexus of moral concepts. Views on the nature of evil belong to the branch of philosophy known as ethics —which in modern philosophy
3276-410: Is the junior brother; the king pardoned them both for her devotion to duty. The ubiquity of the wicked stepmother has made it a frequent theme of revisionist fairy tale fantasy . This can range from Tanith Lee 's Red as Blood , where the stepmother queen is desperately trying to protect the land from her evil stepdaughter's magic, to Diana Wynne Jones 's Howl's Moving Castle , where, although it
3367-521: Is translated as 惡 in Chinese. The duty of the emperor and of his officials is to restrain it, thus preserving the cosmic order. The nature of good and evil was also ascertainable by natural faculties without the need for revelation - "one will not achieve a perfect perception of good and evil if one has not exactly examined the nature and reason of things." Offenses against the Three Bonds and
3458-624: Is used to refer to opposition to God in the human realm. Officially, the Catholic Church extracts its understanding of evil from its canonical antiquity and the Dominican theologian , Thomas Aquinas , who in Summa Theologica defines evil as the absence or privation of good. French-American theologian Henri Blocher describes evil, when viewed as a theological concept, as an "unjustifiable reality. In common parlance, evil
3549-521: The Bhagavad Gita , speaks of the balance of good and evil. When this balance goes off, divine incarnations come to help to restore this balance. In adherence to the core principle of spiritual evolution, the Sikh idea of evil changes depending on one's position on the path to liberation. At the beginning stages of spiritual growth, good and evil may seem neatly separated. Once one's spirit evolves to
3640-660: The Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella , where Aschenputtel receives her clothing from a tree growing on her mother's grave, the Russian Vasilissa the Beautiful , where Vasilissa is aided by a doll her mother gave, and her mother's blessing, and the Malay Bawang Putih Bawang Merah , where the heroine's mother comes back as fish to protect her. The notion of the word stepmother being descriptive of an intrinsically unkind parent
3731-452: The Buddha that the catalogued causes of suffering are what correspond in this belief system to 'evil'. Practically this can refer to 1) the three selfish emotions—desire, hate and delusion; and 2) to their expression in physical and verbal actions. Specifically, evil means whatever harms or obstructs the causes for happiness in this life, a better rebirth, liberation from samsara, and
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3822-462: The Five Thieves , called such due to their propensity to cloud the mind and lead one astray from the prosecution of righteous action. These are: One who gives in to the temptations of the Five Thieves is known as " Manmukh ", or someone who lives selfishly and without virtue. Inversely, the " Gurmukh , who thrive in their reverence toward divine knowledge, rise above vice via the practice of
3913-650: The National and University Library of Iceland . The Icelandic text was eventually published in volume 4 (1956) of the full expanded edition of Jón Árnason's collection. There are a number of other Icelandic tale specimens in the collection that feature a horse or sword of similar names: Glófaxi og Gunnfjöður , Sagan af hestinum Gullskó og sverðinu Gullfjöður , Þorsteinn karlsson og hesturinn Gullskór , Hesturinn Gullskór og sverðið Dynfjöður . The variants give different names of protagonists, featured motifs, etc. A retelling by Ruth Manning-Sanders under
4004-681: The Old and New Testaments . The Christian Bible exercises "the dominant influence upon ideas about God and evil in the Western world." In the Old Testament, evil is understood to be an opposition to God as well as something unsuitable or inferior such as the leader of the fallen angels Satan . In the New Testament the Greek word poneros is used to indicate unsuitability, while kakos
4095-417: The third time too would leave empty-handed, so it seemed, but she cleverly managed to lay a spell, which she said would work on Sigurd if he were within earshot. The spell left him horribly disfigured, half scorched and half withered, with an irrepressible longing to seek out the giantess to gain peace of mind. Ingiborg took Sigurd from his hideout under the bed, and chastised his stubbornness, but prescribed
4186-434: The "evil stepmother" belief, as the villainess is a stepmother, but her wickedness comes from her selfishness and power hungriness rather than the simple fact she is a stepmother. When a little girl tells the heroine Giselle that all stepmothers are evil, Giselle reminds her that she personally knows some wonderful women who were good stepmothers, and the fact a woman is a stepmother does not suddenly change her personality. This
4277-589: The American soap opera One Life to Live . In contrast to many other Disney -related media, the animated series Phineas and Ferb features a stepfamily in which both parents get along well with their three children (avoiding the normal tropes of evil stepparents). 438 BCE: The dying biological mother requests that her husband not remarry, for fear of her children being mistreated by a stepmother. 428 BCE: The stepmother commits suicide to prevent herself from following through on her lust for her stepson and leaves
4368-612: The Five Constants Chinese cosmology, moral philosophy and law regard offenses against the Five Constants with particular abhorrence - anything that diminished the proper relationship between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger, and between mutual friends was a violation of the cosmic order and heinous. Anything that went against the Way embedded in the order of human relationships
4459-531: The Golden Stars . In some fairy tales, such as Giambattista Basile 's La Gatta Cennerentola or the Danish Green Knight , the stepmother wins the marriage by ingratiating herself with the stepdaughter, and once she obtains it, becomes cruel. In some fairy tales, the stepdaughter's escape by marrying does not free her from her stepmother. After the birth of the stepdaughter's first child,
4550-454: The Holocaust. Unlike the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the participants in Milgram's experiment were reassured that their actions would cause little harm and had little time to contemplate their actions. The Baháʼí Faith asserts that evil is non-existent and that it is a concept reflecting lack of good, just as cold is the state of no heat, darkness is the state of no light, forgetfulness
4641-470: The Icelandic text from his contact, "Prof. Steingrimr Thorsteinsson ". This tale was the only one in Poestion's book that he did not derive from Jón Árnason 's Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri Vol. 2 (1862–64), and hence the only one not orally sourced. The Icelandic text " Sagan af hestinum Gullfaxa og sverðinu Gunnfjöður " was in the manuscript JS 287 4to, dated 1857-1870, now in the possession of
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#17327972728024732-582: The apparent absence of conscience evident in sociopaths . He also considers that certain institutions may be evil, using the My Lai Massacre to illustrate. By this definition, acts of criminal and state terrorism would also be considered evil. Martin Luther argued that there are cases where a little evil is a positive good. He wrote, "Seek out the society of your boon companions, drink, play, talk bawdy, and amuse yourself. One must sometimes commit
4823-415: The bed during the king's absence. In a while, a giantess (or Icelandic : tröllkona 'troll-woman' in the original) came to visit, addressing Ingiborg as her sister, pressing to know if Sigurd was home. Ingiborg entertained the giantess but persevered in denying Sigurd's presence. The process is repeated the following day, with another giantess asking for Sigurd, without success. The giantess who arrived
4914-436: The castle caused her father to dote on her and neglect his duties to the destruction of the kingdom; her stepmother had merely made her destructive potential literal, and forced her to confront what she was doing. The character of the evil stepmother can also be found in the genre of young adult fiction or young adult social problem novels. In Lisa Heathfield's Paper Butterflies . the protagonist June suffers horrific abuse at
5005-404: The children of the first marriage for resources; the tales can be interpreted as factual conflicts from history. In some fairy tales, such as The Juniper Tree , the stepmother's hostility is overtly the desire to secure the inheritance of her children. Stepmothers also make many appearances in Chinese tales of family. Wicked stepmothers are common. In Classic of Filial Piety , Guo Jujing told
5096-527: The concept of Dharma or righteousness clearly divides the world into good and evil , and clearly explains that wars have to be waged sometimes to establish and protect Dharma, this war is called Dharmayuddha . This division of good and evil is of major importance in both the Hindu epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata . The main emphasis in Hinduism is on bad action, rather than bad people. The Hindu holy text,
5187-467: The consequence of free will and an individual's struggle against the non-existence embodied by Apep, as evidenced by the fact that it was born from Ra's umbilical cord instead of being recorded in the religion's creation myths. The primal duality in Buddhism is between suffering and enlightenment , so the good vs. evil splitting has no direct analogue in it. One may infer from the general teachings of
5278-427: The electric shocks, including shocks that would have been fatal if they had been real. The participants tended to be uncomfortable and reluctant in the role. Nearly all stopped at some point to question the experiment, but most continued after being reassured. A 2014 re-assessment of Milgram's work argued that the results should be interpreted with the "engaged followership " model: that people are not simply obeying
5369-422: The end of the circuit, Sigurd rode away. Helga's father returned to discover the theft and ran after Sigurd riding away on Gullfaxi. (Lang's tale calls the father a giant, but the original merely refers to him as a man or "carl". ). Sigurd cast the twig to make a thickly wooded forest emerge, hoping to block his pursuer, but the giant retrieved an axe to cut it down, and was hot on his tail. So Sigurd hit (or poked)
5460-446: The family together, their soon-to-be stepmother is very cruel, as they suspected. When the wedding to her is called off, the father decides to marry the much kinder scullery maid, causing one child to comment that the evil stepmother personification does not apply to her. Stepmother relationships are often examined in soap operas . An example of this is the long-running rivalry between Victoria Lord Banks and stepmother Dorian Lord on
5551-581: The hands of her stepmother, a fact that she conceals from her father. Despite many examples of evil or cruel stepmothers, loving stepmothers also exist in fiction. In Kevin and Kell , Kell is portrayed as loving her stepdaughter Lindesfarne, whom her husband Kevin had adopted during his previous marriage. Likewise, Lindesfarne considers Kell her mother, and has a considerably more favorable view of her than Angelique, Kevin's ex-wife and her adoptive mother, due to feeling neglected by Angelique during her childhood. The Disney film Enchanted also makes references to
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#17327972728025642-482: The heroine is persecuted by her husband's mother and in another one by her stepmother, and in The Twelve Wild Ducks , by his stepmother. Sometimes this appears to be a deliberate switch: The Brothers Grimm , having put in their first editions versions of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel where the villain was the biological mother, altered it to a stepmother in later editions, perhaps to mitigate
5733-468: The high virtues of Sikhism. These are: A fundamental question is whether there is a universal, transcendent definition of evil, or whether one's definition of evil is determined by one's social or cultural background. C. S. Lewis , in The Abolition of Man , maintained that there are certain acts that are universally considered evil, such as rape and murder . However, the rape of women, by men,
5824-429: The intention and consequence of an action, but also to unlawful actions. Unproductive actions or those who do not produce benefits are also thought of as evil. A typical understanding of evil is reflected by Al-Ash`ari founder of Asharism . Accordingly, qualifying something as evil depends on the circumstances of the observer. An event or an action itself is neutral, but it receives its qualification by God. Since God
5915-486: The lacking of memory, ignorance the lacking of knowledge. All of these are states of lacking and have no real existence. Thus, evil does not exist and is relative to man. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá , son of the founder of the religion, in Some Answered Questions states: "Nevertheless a doubt occurs to the mind—that is, scorpions and serpents are poisonous. Are they good or evil, for they are existing beings? Yes,
6006-470: The lake with the wool bundle and restored Sigurd back to shape with her glove, and they played at the lake during the day. On the third day, her father was going out into town, which meant they had the house to themselves the whole day, and since she was given custody of all the keys, they played games opening every room. But Sigurd noticed there was one key she did not use, and asked her about it. She blushed and did not answer. He tried to sway her to show him
6097-422: The most morally despicable sorts of actions, characters, events, etc. Evil [in this sense] ... is the worst possible term of opprobrium imaginable”. Eve Garrard suggests that evil describes "particularly horrifying kinds of action which we feel are to be contrasted with more ordinary kinds of wrongdoing, as when for example we might say 'that action wasn't just wrong, it was positively evil'. The implication
6188-430: The nature of evil. In contemporary philosophy, there are two basic concepts of evil: a broad concept and a narrow concept. A broad concept defines evil simply as any and all pain and suffering: "any bad state of affairs, wrongful action, or character flaw". Yet, it is also asserted that evil cannot be correctly understood "(as some of the utilitarians once thought) [on] a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as
6279-508: The nature of good and evil; normative ethics , concerning how we ought to behave; and applied ethics , concerning particular moral issues. While the term is applied to events and conditions without agency , the forms of evil addressed in this article presume one or more evildoers . The modern English word evil ( Old English yfel ) and its cognates such as the German Übel and Dutch euvel are widely considered to come from
6370-474: The next giantess increasingly larger and more hideous. Sigurd had to offer a larger ring as bribe at each turn, but he also grew more powerful with the drinking-horn offered by each of the giantesses. The last giantess, after her defeat at the end of their bout, now steered Sigurd towards a fresh adventure, declared him "stronger than ever you were" (that is to say, no longer withered and restored to full health " orðinn frískur aftur "), and wishing him luck. He
6461-458: The opposite of the cardinal virtues of Taoism, compassion, moderation, and humility can be inferred to be the analogue of evil in it. In response to the practices of Nazi Germany , Hannah Arendt concluded that "the problem of evil would be the fundamental problem of postwar intellectual life in Europe", although such a focus did not come to fruition. Baruch Spinoza states Spinoza assumes
6552-515: The orders of a leader, but instead are willing to continue the experiment because of their desire to support the scientific goals of the leader and because of a lack of identification with the learner. Thomas Blass argues that the experiment explains how people can be complicit in roles such as "the dispassionate bureaucrat who may have shipped Jews to Auschwitz with the same degree of routinization as potatoes to Bremerhaven". However, like James Waller , he argues that it cannot explain an event like
6643-403: The path of goodness, even in the face of temptation and yetzer hara (the inclination to do evil). Evil in the religion of ancient Egypt is known as Isfet , "disorder/violence". It is the opposite of Maat , "order", and embodied by the serpent god Apep , who routinely attempts to kill the sun god Ra and is stopped by nearly every other deity. Isfet is not a primordial force, but
6734-482: The point where it sees most clearly, the idea of evil vanishes and the truth is revealed. In his writings Guru Arjan explains that, because God is the source of all things, what we believe to be evil must too come from God. And because God is ultimately a source of absolute good, nothing truly evil can originate from God. Sikhism, like many other religions, does incorporate a list of "vices" from which suffering, corruption, and abject negativity arise. These are known as
6825-637: The prince." Notes Further reading The Horse Gullfaxi and the Sword Gunnfoder " The Horse Gullfaxi and the Sword Gunnföder " is an Icelandic fairy tale , included by Andrew Lang in The Crimson Fairy Book (1903). It was adapted from " das Pferd Gullfaxi und das Schwert Gunnfjödur ", a German translation by Josef Poestion [ de ] in his Islandische Märchen (1884). Poestion acquired
6916-405: The stepmother and tenderness from the true mother has been interpreted in varying ways. A psychological interpretation, by Bruno Bettelheim , describes it as "splitting" the actual mother in an ideal mother and a false mother that contains what the child dislikes in the actual mother. However, historically, many women died in childbirth, their husbands remarried, and the new stepmothers competed with
7007-407: The stepmother kills her own stepdaughters. In many stories with evil stepmothers, the hostility between the stepmother and the stepchild is underscored by having the child succeed through aid from the dead mother. This motif occurs from Norse mythology , where Svipdagr rouses his mother Gróa from the grave so as to learn from her how to accomplish a task his stepmother set, to fairy tales such as
7098-631: The stepmother may attempt to murder the new mother and replace her with her own daughter—thus making her the stepmother to the next generation. Such a replacement occurs in The Wonderful Birch , Brother and Sister , and The Three Little Men in the Wood ; only by foiling the stepmother's plot (and usually executing her), is the story brought to a happy ending. In the Korean Folktale Janghwa Hongryeon jeon ,
7189-440: The stone causing the hailstorm killing the giant. Had Sigurd hit the stone without turning it over on the other side, he himself would have been struck and killed by the hail. As Sigurd was riding towards his home, his stepmother's dog came running for him, and he hastened back to find nine man-servants (or þrælar ' thralls ') ready to burn Ingiborg at the stake. He struck out in anger and killed all of them with his sword (in
7280-518: The story of Min Ziqian , who had lost his mother at a young age. His stepmother had two more sons and saw to it that they were warmly dressed in winter but neglected her stepson. When her husband discovered this, he decided to divorce her. His son interceded, on the ground that she neglected only him, but when they had no mother, all three sons would be neglected. His father relented, and the stepmother henceforth took care of all three children. For this, he
7371-413: The story's violence. Another reason for the change from a villainous mother to a villainous stepmother may have been the belief that mothers were sacred, as well as the belief that people would not believe that a mother could harbor such ill-will and animosity toward their child. The Icelandic fairy tale The Horse Gullfaxi and the Sword Gunnfoder features a good stepmother, who indeed aids the prince like
7462-424: The term say there is a secular view of evil that offers plausible analyses without reference to the supernatural. Garrard and Russell argue that evil is as useful an explanation as any moral concept. Garrard adds that evil actions result from a particular kind of motivation, such as taking pleasure in the suffering of others, and this distinctive motivation provides a partial explanation even if it does not provide
7553-522: The title "Sigurd, the King's Son" is in her anthology, A Book of Ogres and Trolls (1972). Author Angus W. Hall also adapted the tale as Sigurd in Icelandic Fairy Tales , where the horse is named Gullfaxi ("Golden-Mane") and the sword Gunnfjöden ("Fighting Blade"). There was once a king whose queen bore him one son named Sigurd ( Icelandic : Sigurður ), but she died when the prince
7644-419: The true and complete enlightenment of a buddha (samyaksambodhi). "What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil: envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil." Gautama Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism, 563–483 BC. In Hinduism,
7735-533: The understanding of the human condition , where strife and suffering ( cf. Hinduism ) are the true roots of evil. In certain religious contexts, evil has been described as a supernatural force. Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its motives. Elements that are commonly associated with personal forms of evil involve unbalanced behavior, including anger , revenge , hatred , psychological trauma , expediency , selfishness , ignorance , destruction and neglect . In some forms of thought, evil
7826-620: The unopened room, when he caught glimpse of an iron door, and sweet-talked her into opening it, which she agreed to do so only partially. Inside was a horse named Gullfaxi ( Icelandic : gull [kʏtl̥] + faxi [faxːsɪ] ) "Golden Mane" and a sword named Gunnfoder ( Icelandic : Gunnfjödur ) "Battle-Plume". The sword was richly ornamented, and had an inscription on its hilt that read "He who rides this horse and wears this sword will find happiness" ( Icelandic : Hver sem á þessum hesti situr og með þessu sverði gyrðir sig mun gæfumaður verða ). Sigurd wanted to take
7917-754: The wicked stepmother features heavily in fairy tales ; the most famous examples are Cinderella , Snow White and Hansel and Gretel . Stepdaughters are her most common victim, and then stepdaughter/stepson pairs, but stepsons also are victims as in The Juniper Tree —sometimes, as in East of the Sun and West of the Moon , because he refused to marry his stepsister as she wished, or, indeed, they may make their stepdaughters-in-law their victims, as in The Boys with
8008-425: Was considered vile, and invited the displeasure of Heaven and ghosts, who were seen as inflicting retribution through the instrumentality of legal punishments on earth. Chinese moral and legal philosophy views the violation of family and kinship order with particular abhorrence, considering it especially heinous. In assessing the degree of evil, not only the severity of the effect against the life, health or dignity of
8099-427: Was held up as a model of filial piety . Conversely, the exemplary stepmother prefers the stepson to her own child, in recognition that his seniority makes him superior. The "righteous stepmother of Qi", faced with her son and stepson having been found by a murdered man, and both having confessed to shield the other, argues for her son's execution because her husband had ordered her to look after her stepson, and her son
8190-497: Was ten years of age. The king grieved his loss for a long time, until one day at the queen's grave (or haugr , a burial mound) he struck friendship with a woman named Ingiborg ( Ingibjörg ), and some days later the king married her. Sigurd became very fond of his stepmother. One evening Ingiborg spoke to Sigurd and advised him to accompany the king on his hunt the following day. When Sigurd refused, Ingiborg predicted nothing good would come out of his refusal, and hid Sigurd under
8281-476: Was to go to a nearby lake, find a little girl (called Helga) playing with a boat, and befriend her with the gift of a little gold ring that the last giantess provided. Sigurd became the girl's playmate during the day, and when evening fell, persuaded Helga to take him to her home, past her initial objection, on account of her father being a "fierce giant". But as soon as they approached the door, Helga brandished her glove ( glófi ) over him, transforming him into
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