[Roark66]

Seriously, why do we so often see mental illness as an excuse for simple evil? As far as I know in most non-authoritarian countries if a mentally ill person commits a crime the factor that decides if they get punishment, treatment, or both is not if they are mentally ill, but if they knew what they were doing at the time was wrong. The burden of proving that is on the defense and it's not easy to do so as it should be.

Someone could say, but his mental illness made him believe he has to kill those people for the good of humankind. Firstly, how do we truly know this as true? Perhaps he just loved the feeling of power it gave him so he came up with the justification. Being an intelligent man he came up with a convincing story.

[PartiallyTyped]

I don’t think it’s an excuse or justification, but rather an explanation or motive.

Unfortunately the brain is rather complex and can break in surprisingly many ways. One such example is the shooter who had cancer that pressed against his [iirc] amygdala.

For Ted, we know that he was a subject of mkultra experiments, and that he was tortured. We know that he was deeply troubled and had communication issues. Perhaps he felt that the bombings were the only way he could garner focus on the problems he saw; but that is likely rationalisation on my end. It should also be noted that Ted lived very isolated, and that can cause severe damage to the brain. If you find yourself alone in a foreign country that you work in and no social support system or many interactions, you might experience this and see yourself changing.

In Greek αιτιολογώ and δικαιολογώ exist, where the former identifies causality and uses that to reason on the events and the latter is the same as justifying. To my knowledge the former doesn’t have a translation in English.

[SllX]

> In Greek αιτιολογώ and δικαιολογώ exist, where the former identifies causality and uses that to reason on the events and the latter is the same as justifying. To my knowledge the former doesn’t have a translation in English.

In an effort to understand your post, I ran those through the English Wiktionary which some may not know, also has foreign words.

αιτιολογώ: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B1%CE%B9%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%B...

δικαιολογία: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%B...

My personal interpretation is that this like the difference between an explanation and an excuse, but perhaps someone here has a better interpretation.

[stavros]

No, you (and PartiallyTyped) are right, αιτιολογώ is more or less "to explain" (but in a sense of trying to find the causes for), δικαιολογώ is basically exactly "to excuse".

[PartiallyTyped]

Αιτιολογία and Αιτιολογώ are a noun and a verb derived from αίτιo (αίτια for plural) and λογος, which roughly speaking mean a [set] of identified cause(s) and “reason” respectively.

So this is purely causal without imposing the person’s subjective judgement onto the action or event; simply expressing that given the circumstances, it makes sense that the events occurred, whether the person was right or justified in acting as they did is a different story. So given the events I can reason why the action occurred.

For δικαιολογία / δικαιολογώ, the words are derived from δίκαιο and λόγος again; the former meaning the person is in the right, or is morally correct from the perspective of the person expressing it. Thus, justifying is closer to δικαιολογώ.

For an example; chores are boring, so I didn’t do them even though I promised I would. You can reason why I didn’t do them but you can’t claim I was justified in not doing them. I promised I would and breaking promises is generally immoral without s good justification or a reason.

[spiralx]

Are you talking about the difference between proximal and ultimate causes? As in the proximal cause of these people dying was an explosion from a bomb set by Kaczynski, while the ultimate cause was that the things that caused Kaczynski's poor mental health that led him to those actions.

Separately I like the phrase "a reason is not an excuse" quite a lot. I can empathise with people who make terrible decisions and understand their reasoning, but that doesn't make me excuse the choices that they made.

[ramblerman]

It's not an excuse, but at some point there is little else to be done. The benefit of society as a whole must be considered.

Take as an example pedophiles. There is a movement in the netherlands which tries to implore them to speak up about their "dark" desires and seek help. In which case they should be helped. But once they have acted on their inner demons I don't see how we should just say well they weren't themselves.

[egorfine]

> mental illness as an excuse for simple evil

It's not an excuse, it's an explanation for simple evil. At times I feel like people confuse these two.

[denton-scratch]

> an excuse for simple evil

What sort of thing does this word "evil" refer to? Is it simply the wish to do harm? Is it evil to want to harm someone that is harming you?

I think the word only makes sense in the context of religious (or pseudo-religious) beliefs about metaphysical forces that drive events. I don't believe in such forces. Believing in evil is like believing in God.

One problem I have with the word is that once you define a person as evil, you've placed them beyond the reach of reason or persuasion. The only reasonable response becomes to remove them completely.

[dudeinjapan]

Surely Ted believed what he was doing was a great good, a service to rouse the masses to revolt against modern society (or something like that.)

[inferiorhuman]

  Surely Ted believed what he was doing was a great good

Hardly.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65867291

  In his own journals he wrote that he didn't claim to be "altruist or to
  be acting for the 'good' (whatever that is) of the human race", instead
  insisting that he acted "merely from a desire for revenge".

[11235813213455]

When you target a plane, it's quite symbolic for the pollution and destruction of the environment

[JKCalhoun]

I'm not so sure. It's hard to take a murderer at their word — especially one who is trying to justify their crimes.

[11235813213455]

Aren't many aspect of this society, like overconsumerism, overpollution, waste, disrespect for the environement, air flights and other kind of avoidable impactful leisures pure evil too?

[saberience]

You say "evil" as though it's something separate or different from basic chemical brain processes, i.e. something inherent to the person or something mystical like it came from the devil. There is no such thing as "evil", all our behavior stems from chemical/biological processes in the brain, and if you have a brain defect or chemically imbalances then yes, you too could end up murdering people. Get hit in the head enough times and you can end up murdering your wife and children, evil doesn't come into it.