Note: The comment you replied to was edited heavily since after it was posted.
Something about badness, child abuse and Snape still being a @#$% no matter who he is secretly working for.
Ok, what do all these words like “evil” and “badness” and “dickishness” mean? What do they cause you to anticipate? Apart from Snape bullying children, which no one’s denying he does.
Your justification for calling him “evil” is “he bullies children, which is evil, therefore he’s evil”. Your justification for that is “there are certain things that are evil; there just are”. And of course if bullying is evil and doing evil things makes a person evil, then Snape is evil, he’s evil because you’re defining evil that way.
And then you’re sneaking in all the connotations associated with the word “evil”, whether you want to admit to it or not. (If you aren’t, then the only thing you should anticipate from labelling Snape as “evil” is that he bullies children. If that’s the case, it’s a semantic dispute. If it isn’t, you’re sneaking in a connotation somewhere.)
As for Elmer, let me paraphrase his point:
Snape, in the earlier books, performed actions that made me classify him as “evil”. Then, later, her performed actions better suited to the label “good”. No fair! He can’t really be “good”!
Note the conflation of “good” actions with the “good” label, as if doing “good” things was a right exclusive to “good” people.
How is that not a two-color view? Or did I misunderstand something?
Note: The comment you replied to was edited heavily since after it was posted.
Ok, what do all these words like “evil” and “badness” and “dickishness” mean? What do they cause you to anticipate? Apart from Snape bullying children, which no one’s denying he does.
Your justification for calling him “evil” is “he bullies children, which is evil, therefore he’s evil”. Your justification for that is “there are certain things that are evil; there just are”. And of course if bullying is evil and doing evil things makes a person evil, then Snape is evil, he’s evil because you’re defining evil that way.
And then you’re sneaking in all the connotations associated with the word “evil”, whether you want to admit to it or not. (If you aren’t, then the only thing you should anticipate from labelling Snape as “evil” is that he bullies children. If that’s the case, it’s a semantic dispute. If it isn’t, you’re sneaking in a connotation somewhere.)
As for Elmer, let me paraphrase his point:
Note the conflation of “good” actions with the “good” label, as if doing “good” things was a right exclusive to “good” people.
How is that not a two-color view? Or did I misunderstand something?