The Quotable Jung by Jung C. G.; Harris Judith; Woolfson Tony

The Quotable Jung by Jung C. G.; Harris Judith; Woolfson Tony

Author:Jung, C. G.; Harris, Judith; Woolfson, Tony
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2015-02-06T16:00:00+00:00


12

Good and Evil

Human nature is capable of an infinite amount of evil, and the evil deeds are as real as the good ones so far as human experience goes and so far as the psyche judges and differentiates between them. Only unconsciousness makes no difference between good and evil. Inside the psychological realm one honestly does not know which of them predominates in the world. We hope, merely, that good does, i.e., what seems suitable to us. No one could possibly say what the general good might be. No amount of insight into the relativity and fallibility of our moral judgment can deliver us from these defects, and those who deem themselves beyond good and evil are usually the worst tormentors of mankind, because they are twisted with the pain and fear of their own sickness.

Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 97.

One must be positively blind not to see the colossal role that evil plays in the world. Indeed, it took the intervention of God himself to deliver humanity from the curse of evil, for without his intervention man would have been lost.

Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 114.

Only an infantile person can pretend that evil is not at work everywhere, and the more unconscious he is, the more the devil drives him. It is just because of this inner connection with the black side of things that it is so incredibly easy for the mass man to commit the most appalling crimes without thinking. Only ruthless self-knowledge on the widest scale, which sees good and evil in correct perspective and can weigh up the motives of human action, offers some guarantee that the end-result will not turn out too badly.

Aion (1951), CW 9ii, § 255.

It should never be forgotten—and of this the Freudian school must be reminded—that morality was not brought down on tables of stone from Sinai and imposed on the people, but is a function of the human soul, as old as humanity itself. Morality is not imposed from outside; we have it in ourselves from the start—not the law, but our moral nature without which the collective life of human society would be impossible. That is why morality is found at all levels of society. It is the instinctive regulator of action which also governs the collective life of the herd. But moral laws are valid only within a compact human group. Beyond that, they cease. There the old truth runs: Homo homini lupus [man is a wolf of man]. With the growth of civilization we have succeeded in subjecting ever larger human groups to the rule of the same morality, without, however, having yet brought the moral code to prevail beyond the social frontiers, that is, in the free space between mutually independent societies. There, as of old, reign lawlessness and licence and mad immorality—though of course it is only the enemy who dares to say it out loud.

On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1917/1926), CW 7, § 30.

Of course I am unable, as anybody is, to define what evil is in itself.



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