ABSTRACT
The view that the problem of evil and the problem of punishment are inextricably related is very widespread. Even if one does not agree with Jeremy Bentham’s famous dictum whereby “all punishment in itself is evil,” it seems hard to disagree with the view that it is for the evil that they do that people are punished (Bentham 1962: 83). Indeed, the use “evil” as a synonym of “bad,” as an antonym of “good,” as in the opposition between “good and evil” is extraordinarily widespread (Rorty 2001). When people speak of “evil befalling someone,” by “evil” they typically mean “misfortune.” When people wonder about the existence of evil in the world, the question tends to be about the existence of suffering in the world; their question really is: why do bad things happen? Furthermore, choosing the “lesser of two evils” is a common legal (and moral) defense, and, again, the idea here is that an “evil” is just a “harm,” or a “bad thing.” Even those who admit a difference between the evil and the bad often draw it in such a way that the term “evil” functions merely as an intensifier: when something is extremely bad, then they call it evil. Murder, from this perspective, may perhaps count as evil when contrasted against theft, but not when contrasted against genocide, for example.
