The knowledge of good and evil occupies a singular position in the depth-psychological corpus, functioning simultaneously as mythological cipher, developmental threshold, and ethical aporia. Its locus classicus is, of course, the Genesis narrative, which the corpus reads not as a historical event but as a symbolic account of the emergence of human consciousness from an undivided, paradisiacal unity into the tormented awareness of opposites. Jung, working through the imaginative idiom of the Red Book, treats this knowledge as an 'insurmountable curse' that paradoxically cannot be renounced: once the poles of good and evil are distinguished, the psyche is condemned to navigate between them. Von Franz sharpens this into an ethical demand: the relativization of opposites through self-knowledge does not dissolve the categories but makes ethical decision more exacting, not less. Campbell reads the Fall as cosmogonic—the necessary shattering of primordial oneness that makes individuation possible. Maximos the Confessor, via the Philokalia, locates the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the visible created world itself, identifying sensory engagement with the mingling of good and evil in experience. McGilchrist holds the tension between coincidentia oppositorum and the irreducible reality of moral distinction. Across these voices, a persistent tension obtains: whether this knowledge is curse, gift, developmental necessity, or all three simultaneously.
In the library
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because of this the knowledge of good and evil was an insurmountable curse. But if you return to primal chaos and if you feel and recognize that which hangs stretched between the two unbearable poles of fire, you will notice that you can no longer separate good and evil conclusively
Jung argues that the knowledge of good and evil constitutes an inescapable psychic bind—a curse that dissolves only in the chaos of undifferentiated growth, yet reasserts itself the moment growth ceases.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
eating always from the tree of disobedience - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - in this way he acquired experientially through sense-perception a knowledge in which good and evil were intermingled. And it would not be untrue to say that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the visible created world.
Maximos the Confessor identifies the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with the visible created world itself, interpreting sensory experience as the vehicle through which good and evil become intermingled in human consciousness.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981thesis
When you eat the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, however, you know about pairs of opposites, which include not only good and evil, light and dark, right and wrong, but male and female, and God and Man as well.
Campbell reads the consumption of the fruit as the mythological origin of all differential consciousness—the moment when undivided paradisiacal unity shatters into the awareness of opposites across every dimension of existence.
Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001thesis
We must beware of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites. When the opposites are consciously recognized, then both good and evil are thereby relativized. This by no means implies, however, that these categories have therefore become invalid.
Von Franz, following Jung, argues that the relativization of good and evil through conscious recognition does not abolish moral categories but intensifies ethical responsibility, requiring thoroughgoing self-knowledge.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975thesis
the tree of life is productive of life; the tree that is not called the tree of life, and so is not productive of life, is obviously productive of death. For only death is the opposite of life.
The Philokalia distinguishes the tree of life from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by aligning the latter with death, not wisdom, fundamentally separating moral discernment from spiritual vitality.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
The tree of mortality (or death) is also the tree of consciousness---you can't have one without the other---the lesson being that increased consciousness is accompanied by a spiritual death, a gift from the gods even more precious than eternal life in their presence.
Peterson frames the knowledge afforded by the tree as inseparable from mortality, reading the Fall as a necessary developmental passage in which consciousness and death are co-emergent.
Peterson, Cody, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024supporting
The coincidentia oppositorum involves both the union and separation of good and evil. It is not possible to get round that.
McGilchrist insists that the coincidentia oppositorum cannot short-circuit the genuine tension between good and evil, resisting both simple moral dualism and any facile non-dual dissolution of the distinction.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
we cannot know what good may flow from what we now call evil, or what evil may flow from what we now call good – Jung's enantiodromia – my response to 'not two' is 'yes, but …two'
McGilchrist invokes Jungian enantiodromia to hold that good and evil interpenetrate without collapsing into identity, preserving both poles of the moral distinction as irreducible.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
He who persuades his conscience to regard the evil he is doing as good by nature reaches out with his moral faculty as with a hand and grasps the tree of life in a reprehensible manner; for he thinks that what is thoroughly evil is by nature immortal.
The Philokalia warns against the self-deception that rationalizes evil as natural good, framing this as a distorted and illegitimate grasping of the tree of life.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
Cain, who represents evil, kills Abel, who stands for good. God accepts sacrifices of Abel instead of Cain, whom He banishes but does not kill; this throws a glaring light upon the conflict of the opposites, since Cain still seems to be necessary.
Sanford reads the Cain and Abel narrative as an extension of the knowledge of good and evil into human history, where the persistence of the evil figure indicates that the conflict of opposites cannot be resolved by elimination.
Sanford, John A., Dreams: Gods Forgotten Language, 1968supporting
Carl Jung recognized that, even at best, goodness is no substitute for wholeness; he frequently said that in the long run what matters is not goodness or obedience
Hoeller frames Jung's position, aligned with Gnostic insight, that ethical goodness alone is insufficient for psychological wholeness—implicating the limits of any purely moral reading of the good-evil distinction.
Hoeller, Stephan A., The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
Early Christianity also placed the capacity for both good and evil in the hands of God. Clement, Bishop of Rome in the first century, taught that God rules the world with a right hand and a left hand – the right hand being Christ and the left hand Satan.
Nichols traces the historical theological containment of both good and evil within the divine, pointing to the subsequent one-sided elevation of the good as a cultural and psychological impoverishment.
Nichols, Sallie, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
there is no absolute of falsehood, no absolute of evil; these things are a by-product of the world-movement: the sombre flowers of falsehood and suffering and evil have their root in the black soil of the Inconscient.
Aurobindo denies the ultimate absoluteness of evil, situating good and evil as relative products of partial consciousness rather than co-eternal metaphysical principles.
the humans will not be able to re-enter the Garden, psychologically speaking, until that 'paradoxical knife-edge'
Peterson reads the flaming sword guarding Eden as a psychological barrier, suggesting that re-entry into undivided consciousness requires passage through a paradoxical threshold that is itself defined by the tension between opposites.
Peterson, Cody, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024aside
evil is nothing else than absence of goodness and a lapsing from what is natural into what is unnatural: for nothing evil is natural.
John of Damascus articulates the privative theory of evil—evil as the absence of good rather than a co-equal force—which stands in contrast to depth-psychological accounts that grant evil a positive psychic reality.
John of Damascus, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016aside
Today we know-and know right well-that there was never anything of the kind: no Garden of Eden anywhere on this earth, no time when the serpent could talk, no prehistoric 'Fall,' no exclusion from the garden
Campbell dismisses the literal historicity of the Garden narrative while insisting on its symbolic universal currency, framing the knowledge of good and evil as a mythological rather than cosmological event.