"Yet there are many who fully understand that they are doing evil, and still do it; and this is because, like thieves and murderers, they are more conscious of the pleasures of the moment than the punishment the fear in the future." Castiglione-- The CourtierOttaviano claimed that people unconsciously sinned and shouldn't be held accountable. Gaspare argued that humans that humans are self-conscious beings, and sin for the pleasure of the moment. While reading this dialogue I was reminded of Carl Jung's concept of The Shadow.
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The idea behind The Shadow is that every individual has a dark side. Jung described this dark side as the unconscious malevolent part of our personality that has the potential to corrupt what we do, say, and think. According to Jung's description of the shadow, we won't truly know the difference between good and evil until we are aware of The Shadow and make it conscious.
My explanation of The Shadow does not do it justice so I would recommend researching it for yourself. However, I do think its logic contains elements of both Gaspare's and Ottaviano's claims. It supports Ottaviano's argument that we do evil things unconsciously. The way to overcome this would is to internalize the shadow and make it conscious. Or as Gaspare might say it, we must understand the temptations to do evil acts that bring pleasure at the moment and withstand these temptations.
The realization of the terrible things we are capable of gives us a greater capacity for virtue as we choose not to do evil. We can thank Castiglione for introducing these concepts of the nature of good, evil, and the divine individual. Revolutionary thinkers like Carl Jung looked to these renaissance pioneers to better understand who we are as human beings.
I think this concept is very accurate and pertains to all of humanity. On a broader scale, I think this is how diversity works and allows a society to flourish. While I don't think society should be tolerant of sin or lawbreaking, experiencing diversity of religion and culture can either further ground someone in what they believe or change their perspective, similar to how if someone is evil, they may understand the good in themselves or they make continue to do evil.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a very good point--that we have to recognize the evil in order to combat it. You said that recognizing the terrible things we can do increases our capacity for virtue; I think the opposite is also true. As we discover how truly good we can be, we're motivated to do better. Humanism demonstrated an aspect of this this in the Renaissance: as man saw his potential, he embraced it.
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