Badness Quote by John Banville
““By the way, leafing through my dictionary I am struck by the poverty of language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state. Then there are the adjectives: dreadful, heinous, execrable, vile, and so on. They are not so much as descriptive as judgmental. They carry a weight of censure mingled with fear. Is this not a queer state of affairs? It makes me wonder. I ask myself if perhaps the thing itself - badness - does not exist at all, if these strangely vague and imprecise words are only a kind of ruse, a kind of elaborate cover for the fact that nothing is there. Or perhaps words are an attempt to make it be there? Or, again, perhaps there is something, but the words invented it. Such considerations make me feel dizzy, as if a hole had opened briefly in the world.””
About This Quote
Source Interview: The New Yorker, 2022
The quote questions how language struggles to capture the concept of badness, suggesting words may create or conceal the idea rather than describe an existing reality.
In simple terms: Language can’t fully describe badness; words may shape or hide it.
Key Takeaway
Question how language frames moral concepts.
Themes
philosophy
language
ethics
metaphysics
semantics
Mood
contemplative
curious
Type
philosophical
reflective
When to use this quote
- academic discussion
- creative writing
- philosophical debate
- personal reflection
- critical analysis
Key Concepts
concept of evil
linguistic relativity
ontological status of badness
Questions to Reflect On
- Do words shape our perception of morality?
- Can we think of badness without language?
A Different Perspective
The argument may overlook that some moral concepts are intuitively understood regardless of linguistic precision.
