The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Too human, all too human. 🍏

The Serpent: 👹 As soon as you eat this fruit, your eyes will be opened, and you will see clearly, which were wandering in the twilight. You will be like gods, knowing good and evil.

Eve: 👩 How can I know what I should fear when I don’t know good or evil, but this fruit will give me wisdom. What is stopping me from taking it? She began to eat...

Adam: 👨 Yes! I am resolved to die with you! How can I live without you? To live alone, without purpose, without love, in the forests of Eden is death. But death with you will be life for me!

The Outcome: 🏁 The innocence that served as a veil, concealing knowledge of evil, has disappeared! Yes, our eyes have been opened, and we have come to know good and evil! Passions, hatred, and anger have awakened, along with doubts, distrust, and disagreements, and they have shaken us to the core... sitting side by side, they began to cry! PARADISE IS LOST. THE FRUIT OF KNOWLEDGE IS A SORROWFUL ONE.

Erich Fromm: 💯 The transgression (the fall) is the first act of choice, an act of freedom – without which development is impossible! Now, we can only move forward.

Sources

• John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IX: the source for the Serpent’s, Eve’s, and Adam’s lines and for the account of the Fall’s consequences.
• The closing idea paraphrases Erich Fromm’s 1963 essay “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem,” later collected in On Disobedience and Other Essays.