This argument may seem quite paradoxical: how can power “come from weakness?” The answer is that Philosophy is not talking about literal
physical weakness, but rather about the moral and mental weakness that she believes makes people choose evil over good. However, her conclusion might also seem paradoxical for an entirely different reason: there is no question that there are evil events, people, and things in the world. So in this sense, evil does exist. But then how can Philosophy argue that “evil is nothing?” What she really means is that evil is not a real, positively existing thing, like a physical object. Rather, it is a
lack, weakness, or incapacity: evil is the gap between something’s current level of goodness and a perfect level of it. Just like a glass of water can “be” half-empty even though emptiness is not a “real” thing with positive existence, a person can be evil even though evilness does not technically
exist, but is only a
lack of goodness. So evil is “nothing” in the same way as an evil person lacks “absolute and complete existence.” Both lack the goodness that would make them complete, or in Philsophy’s terms, fully real.