Evil-skeptics

Evil-skeptics are honest people who doubt that evil is a real thing.  We have discussed a few of them  HERE. 

The only way an Evil-skeptic can become an evil person is is to do something truly evil like murder.

When the word evil is carelessly used as an adjective to describe a person, it loses almost all objectivity.  An evil skeptic may be a skeptical person that becomes a serial killer.  Or in the eyes of an Islamic Fundamentalist, a skeptical sectarian Muslim may be called  Kafir (كافر) or Murtadd (مرتد) and labeled as evil. 

Robert De Niro has famously called President Trump evil in speeches including  including an appearance at The New Republic’s Stop Trump Summit in New York City.  A few other people on the left end of an ideological spectrum have used similar language. 

The gap between obnoxious and evil is vast and emotional people are prone to exaggerate when they describe the actions of people with whom they disagree. 

When is skepticism considered a virtue?

Skepticism is generally considered a virtue when it promotes intellectual humility, careful reasoning, and a rigorous pursuit of truth. Specifically, skepticism is virtuous when it:

• Encourages critical thinking: Questioning assumptions helps avoid dogmatism and fosters rational inquiry.

• Leads to open-mindedness: It prevents premature judgments and promotes willingness to adjust beliefs based on evidence.

• Prevents manipulation: Healthy skepticism guards against deception, propaganda, and misinformation.

• Promotes intellectual humility: It acknowledges human fallibility and uncertainty, thus facilitating constructive dialogue.

This form of skepticism is embodied historically by philosophers like Socrates, who famously embraced skepticism as a method of intellectual and ethical inquiry. Later philosophers, notably Montaigne and David Hume, reinforced the virtue of skepticism by underscoring human epistemic limitations.

Pyrrhonian skepticism, founded by the Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–270 BCE), emphasizes suspending judgment (epoché) in response to the inherent uncertainty of knowledge. Pyrrhonists argue that, because opposing arguments often hold equal validity, absolute truths are fundamentally unknowable. Rather than endorsing any particular belief, they advocate maintaining a state of intellectual neutrality, ultimately aiming for mental tranquility (ataraxia), a peaceful state achieved by recognizing and accepting uncertainty and withholding definitive conclusions about reality.

Does skepticism have underpinnings in Stoic philosophy?

While Stoicism isn’t explicitly a skeptical philosophy (in the sense of Pyrrhonian skepticism), it shares some fundamental attitudes:

• Epistemic humility: Stoics emphasized the importance of recognizing limits in human understanding and the role of assent—carefully deciding which perceptions to accept.

• Critical examination of impressions: Central to Stoicism is the practice of epoche (ἐποχή), a suspension of immediate judgment, which resembles skeptical methodology. Stoics like Epictetus consistently urged students to question their assumptions before accepting impressions as truths.

Thus, Stoicism indirectly embodies skeptical virtues through its rigorous practice of questioning initial judgments and impressions. Stoics had a distinct view of “good” and “evil.” For Stoics like Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca:

• External events are morally indifferent (“adiaphora”): They are neither inherently good nor evil; moral value arises solely from one’s judgments and responses.
  What matters morally is virtue or vice, which exist entirely within human control.

• Natural events such as death, disease, poverty, and misfortune are not considered “evil.” Rather, evil stems only from wrongful internal judgments and moral corruption.

As Marcus Aurelius succinctly put it:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” (Meditations, Book VIII)

In other words, Stoicism explicitly questions and re-frames the moral relevance of conventional ideas about evil. Evil, according to Stoicism, is not an external destructive event, but rather internal moral failure: ignorance, irrationality, and vice.