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Originally Posted by roachboy
but good and evil are relational terms. one implies the other. i dont think the question is whether at any given point you can imagine someone acting entirely "for the good" but more whether one can have the good without its opposite.
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Merely because two terms are opposites doesn't mean that one can't exist without the other. For example, you could have light without darkness or darkness without light. And I don't see why you couldn't have the good without its opposite. It may be true that you cannot have good without the possibility of evil (though I would argue that this would be the case if God had not created). But that is merely because good is capable of gradation, so its existence entails the possibility of things having different grades. But this does not imply that the existence of good entails the existence of such things. Possibility is not the same thing as existence.
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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."
"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
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