Perhaps you misinterpreted what I said. There is no way one could defend either person from an ethical standpoint.
I consider true, unadulterated evil to be something that exist skin deep, like in the case of Grindelwald.
I disagree. We can defend both up to a point. Said point depends on personal ethics.
Grindelwald, proved he was not 'skin deep' evil, in how he conducted himself in the face of incoming death. To me, he followed his self righteous fallacy, until a much older age to which he realized, where he had gone wrong.
His last action is to give no help to a person that claimed he would withhold the same fallacy Grindelwald himself once sought and to also advice him, in his harsh way, that it was wrong.
Both are killers, neither are evil. Intentions reflect on the person, consequences reflect on the action.
All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. Doing something has a chance at failure; doing nothing guarantees it.
Debatable, depending on the goal and the means used to achieve it. If the means cause more suffering than the happiness achieved by the goal, then it is not. If there is more suffering is prevented as a result, then it certainly was.
You are saying that if I have good intentions (the greatest intentions ever even) and go on invade a country or more and murder millions, I am not evil (because my intentions were great) but my actions - merely - had consequences that we may describe them as evil?
I disagree of course.
This kind of rhetoric has pervaded in particular the political scenes of the world.
And is both laughable and dangerous. Because people fall for it without thinking it through well enough.
Is the quality of action that will denote it as good or bad/evil and not its reasoning alone. Do take action but that action must NOT be a murder.
History - and even sciences - show time and again that actions have inertia - like you suggest. Is our Fi 'duty' to take counter-action, to react to actions harmful.
But, the actions we do, are what distinguish us from being gullible easily swayed idiots (who usually prove to be scarily evil) in contrast of being somewhat enlightened souls that deserve to be called humans.
Good wo/men
must act. In a Good way.
I will try to explain this in simpler words:
ACT.
But your means, course, procedures, actions in short, must be right TOO.
In my humble opinion, humans anywhere, that are caring, should bust their brains to figure ways of handling issues like the one at hand (murders, violence) in a better way. A murder, to prevent another murder, is world's stupidest "argument". I understand this error of judgement in extreme situations where options seem lacking and clock is ticking too fast. I do not excuse it. I understand it as human shortcoming and imperfection.
Generally, I want to believe, humans CAN and have the ability to, do better. I am not going to nuke country X because it has gone insane and invaded numerous countries in the past decades, murdering and hurting millions so far.
I am going to find a non violent way to make them see what they are doing. Surely had we eliminated them fast, we would have had less casualties but wouldn't that be immensely evil, in spite of its 'righteousness'?
It is our duty as humans to find non violent solutions that are not just optimal but also fast and effective.
Because we can.
