Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Nature of Evil
From the Thomistic Philosophy website
The ultimate motivation even of moral evil, though, still arises from a desire for some good, but for a lesser good when one is supposed to choose a higher one. Or it arises from the desire for a good that is not appropriate to a given time or place of circumstance.
Some good, lesser good, higher good. Yours or mine? Here and now or there and then? In reaction to what situation we are all likely to be familiar with?
In a world where what some construe to be a moral good others construe to be a moral evil.
Instead, as per usual, let's keep it all up in the stratosphere of the abstract:
So, for Aquinas (following Aristotle), no one chooses evil as evil; rather one makes an evil choice when one chooses a good which reason should know is lesser or inappropriate instead of the true good. The evil, then, of moral evils depends entirely on the free agent who deprives their own actions of the moral goodness, or rationality, which such acts are due as acts of a rational, human, agent. The free rational agent is solely responsible for the act being deprived of the goodness it should have.
I am often baffled by this. Don't those who note a conclusion like this ever stop to think that out in the real world of actual human interactions, it can be made applicable to those all up and down the moral and political spectrum?
Even the assumption of autonomy, free will, volition, etc., often never goes much beyond a conceptual, theoretical "world of words" philosophical assessment.
Getting back to natural or physical evil, it may be hard to see how such evils are supposed to be privations. We tend to view the natural evils that tell against God’s goodness as natural disasters, diseases, birth defects and ultimately death. Earthquakes that devastate whole cities and cripple or kill thousands or tens of thousands of innocent people. Virus outbreaks which kill millions or cancers which slowly and painfully take the life of innocent children. The earth or water which move and bury or drown people are real things, not privations; the viruses and cancers which take the lives of their victims are not the lack of something, but biological entities with a kind of life of their own.
Please. As though "natural disasters, diseases, birth defects and ultimately death" are not directly linked to a God, the God, your God bringing them about in the first place. It's not for nothing that whenever the media is covering the latest natural disaster, you often find references to God among those being interviewed. Often in a place of worship. Mostly they revolve around God's mysterious ways, but every once in a while, you have someone bitterly rejecting their God. "How could God let this happen?!!"
Then, for others, cue Harold Kushner.