The Symbolism of Evil.

"This bond between defilement and suffering, experienced in fear and trembling, has been all the more tenacious because for a long time, it furnished . . . a first sketch of causality. If you suffer, if you are ill, if you fail, if you die, it is because you have sinned."^1a

"The cause of man's fall is not the human libido, but the structure of a finite freedom. It is in this sense that evil was possible through freedom."^1b* AUGUSTINE

" . . . [T]he serpent represents the psychological projection of desire. He is the image of the 'fruit' - plus the bad faith of the excuse. . . The serpent is also 'outside' in a more radical fashion . . . in the historical experience of man, every individual finds evil already there; nobody begins it absolutely."^1c*

" . . . [E]vil is an invention of freedom. . . [A]n ethical vision of evil is a vision in which freedom is revealed in its depths as power to act and power to be; the freedom that evil supposes is a freedom capable of digression, deviation, subversion, wandering."^2a AUGUSTINE

" . . . I see in Kant the complete philosophical manifestation that the supreme evil is not the gross infraction of a duty but the malice that makes pass for virtue what is virtue's betrayal. The evil of evil is the fraudulent justification of the maxim by apparent conformity with law - it is the semblance of morality."^2b KANT ORWELL KING

" . . . Saint Paul has said what is essential: sin is not transgression; it is the link between law and covetousness, on the basis of which there is transgression; sin is remaining within the narrow economy of the law, where the commandment excites covetousness. The contrary of sin is not morality but faith."^2c NEW TESTAMENT

* Italics in the original.

¹ Paul Ricoeur. The Symbolism of Evil. Translated by Emerson Buchanan. Paul Ricoeur, 1967. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969. Published by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., New York, NY.
^a Defilement, at 31.
^b The "Adamic" Myth and the "Eschatological" Vision of History, at 255.
^c Ibid., at 257.

² Paul Ricoeur. The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics. Edited by Don Ihde. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974. Originally published in French under the title Le Conflit des interprétations: Essais d'hérméneutique. Paris, France: Editions du Seuil, 1969.
^a The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection: I, at 301. Translated by Denis Savage. The translation first appeared in the International Philosophical Quarterly, Volume II, no. 2 (May, 1962), at 191-218.
^b Ibid., at 303.
^c The Demythization of Accusation, at 347.

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