Does the existence of evil support an obligation toward good, kindness etc

Question

Most people, maybe not the happiest of egoists, seem to agree that evil exists, that some things are wrong. Does that fact alone suggest that less than evil acts should also be prohibited, that we should be e.g. kind?

I suppose I think of tempered egoism as a kind of cognitive evil, that it feeds something - I don't know how to define it - inside of us that, while it doesn't have the same effects as genocide or rape, is similar in nature. Is this reasonable?

So it's less that being unkind is evil than the ways we try to justify it without giving up all morality. It invariably seems petty, ugly and a denial of human spirit. Is that too far from evil to be reasonable?

Answer 1

According to Hegel, evil can be seen as

Self-subsistence pushed to the point of the one as a being-for-self is abstract, formal, and destroys itself. It is the supreme, most stubborn error, which takes itself for the highest truth, manifesting in more concrete forms as abstract freedom, pure ego and, further, as Evil.

On the other hand we have Heidegger's Mitsein, Being-with. In that we are naturally gregarious, and normally socialise given normal societal norms.

further, as requested, drawing from Derrida

In describing Mitsein, Heidegger is trying to get at a stratum of ek-sistence that is absolutely originary with regard to any modification of relations with the other — for example, in the form of war and peace, domination and slavery, the recognition of consciousnesses especially — because Mitsein and in a general way all the structures of Dasein’s ek-sistence are prior and lower, so to speak, deeper than the strata of knowledge and of consciousness, of Wissen, of erkennen, of anerkennen, of Bewusstsein [awareness], and of Selbstbewusstsein. It is on the ontological basis of the existential structure of Mitsein that all the phenomena described, for example, by Hegel by the name of “struggle for recognition” can possibly come about, come about in a history, or produce a history that will thus be the modification of a deeper historicity.

There is no doubt that, for Heidegger, Mitsein is a co-originary structure of Dasein. Being unable to expand upon this point, I refer you to §26 of Sein und Zeit, [German] pp. 119–21 [Being and Time, 116–17] in particular. The fact that this structure of the Mitsein is existential (i.e., an ontological structure of Da-sein) means in particular that the Geschehen [happening/evenfulness] and the Schicksal [historicity] is also a Mitgeschehen.

A together-happening. We're in it together, in Heidegger's mileage.

Answer 2

We might try formulating the reasoning in such terms as:

1. If a certain family of attitudes leads to evil, we ought to temper those attitudes in ourselves.
2. Prioritizing our own pleasure/calm/excitement over that of others is an attitude that leads towards evil.
3. Therefore, we ought to temper our self-prioritizing.
4. Performing small acts of good for others is the least we can do towards tempering said attitude.
5. Therefore, the least we can do is to perform small acts of good for others.

I also think it's analytic (or close enough thereto) that, "If you help promote a first-order good, you are engaging in a second-order good." Something like, "Two rights make a right," you might say. So if someone else is doing something good (however generic our sense of "good" is here), say living a peaceable, friendly, etc. life, then it is good to support that person's life. Not by being overprotective (much less manipulative "for their own good"!), especially as an outsider, of course, but perhaps just by favoring an ambient sociopolitical system that upholds any such person's life.