Philosophical question

[iwunderwhy]

Can you be a good person if you are voluntarily involved / married to a person you know is either personally or professionally evil? Does their badness becomes yours OR can you retain the its-not-me defence?

Well there’s that old quote ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’
So I think it depends on what that person does/says, and whether or not you intervene or call them out.

If you're benefiting financially from their badness then you're also a bad person.

I can see both sides to the argument.

You are only responsible for your own actions. You can't control someone else.

And yet. As we are social animals, social approval/disapproval matters and so voluntarily involving yourself to another person does mean that you implicitly approve of their actions to an extent.

If you have the opportunity to prevent a bad thing and you don't then imo you become complicit in the wrongdoing. If you don't tell the person committing the acts that they are wrong then you are at fault. Not at all to the same degree as the person themselves, clearly.

Agree with PPs, if you’re complicit then you too are bad. Bad sounds like an exaggeration for a professional setting. Maybe shed more light?

Are you Melania Trump???

There are some jobs that you can't do depending on what a person you live with is like, I think teaching is one.

@brizzledrizzle - even basic levels of civil service security clearance can involve screening of your in-laws if they're of a potentially problematic nationality.

Are you Melania Trump

My df always said "if you lay with dogs, you get fleas"

I would rather lay with dogs and get fleas ;)

Whats a "professionally evil" person?

morally bad and causing great harm, especially to society in general

My dad shared with me a saying 'Show me your friends and I will tell you what you are'

I think I would need to know more about what we're classifying as evil in this picture.

My dh Works in an area of law which deals with housing evictions and mortgage sell offs. It can be viewed as morally wrong but it doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person.

Skyler, leave him and tell Hank. You'll regret it if you don't.

S/he is good & loving to you but you know at work they lock little children up in baby border jail or fleece the elderly out of retirement money etc etc. You are not involved in what they do but you KNOW your presence in their life gives them comfort, support, and confidence. Are you innocent or bad too?

Unless you are a child and/or a defendant (such as an elderly mother or disabled so cannot be independent) you are complicit if you never challenge their behaviour. It’s basically the equivalent of being a mobster’s girlfriend where you knowingly enjoy a lifestyle supported by crime. You are definitely responsible for your own behaviour and you are complicit if you make life enjoyable and comfortable for them while they fleece and torture others. You definitely are committed a moral evil, you are just removed from the effects. In fact I would say in some ways worse, because you are reaping all the benefits of a life of crime (for example) without taking any personal risk yourself.

If you knew your husband was a Nazi and sending people to their deaths in gas chambers and yet created a cosy home life for you both, you are condoning his behaviour.

It is what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil”.

I'd say a lot of women in these circumstances end up there for a reason. Case in point Melania Trump. Poverty, gender roles, abuse... Not an excuse but a reason.

or Eva Braun?

I am not sure that generally there are 'evil people' but there certainly are selfish people and there very much are evil acts that a selfish person can choose to do. it is certainly possible for someone to regularly and deliberately commit evil acts as part of their work or just as a hobby, and simultaneously hold a facsimile of a loving relationship with someone where they go through the motions of behaving nicely and with kindness in order to nurture that relationship. however I think such a relationship would be doomed unless it was with a very selfish or shallow person. To regularly harm others requires no compassion for the harm done by those acts, or little enough compassion that their own enjoyment or profit is more important to them, or an active prejudice that allows them to categorise those harmed as unworthy of compassion. How can such a person truly love? doing harm damages ones own humanity permanently, so too does accepting and condoning and supporting someone else doing harm. I don't think either is especially more or less bad.

so yeah, don't be in a relationship with a person who chooses the path of darkness. certainly never have kids with them or allow kids from a previous relationship to be brought up in their household.