What, specifically, does the consistency of the evil person’s vices amount to? A weak version of the consistency view requires only the absence of significant moral virtues—the absence of a significant good side. This account is probably too weak: mere ne’er-do-wells might genuinely care about matters of duty and the good of others, but never be adequately moved or motivated by such concerns. Perhaps their selfish desires always override, or inordinately pull against, their better motives. (Imagine a thief and con artist who acts altruistically only rarely, and even then with unseemly reluctance.) Such persons are consistently vicious, lacking any real good side, yet their concern for duty and other people, however attenuated, makes it implausible to regard them as evil. Chad lacks even these weakened moral sensibilities, and I think that is why we are inclined to call him evil. He is consistently vicious in a stronger sense: he is neither moved nor motivated (positively) by what is morally good or right. Perhaps some trace of the decent impulses has found its way into his psychology, but not enough to make a significant difference to the moral quality of his character. While mere ne’er-do-wells have some modestly redeeming qualities—they do care, just not enough—Chad has none that we can see.
We can generalize the view as follows: to be evil is to be disposed to be neither moved nor motivated (positively) by the good to a morally significant extent. By "moved" I mean affect: crudely, a person’s feelings. The qualifier "positively" allows us to include those who are moved and motivated perversely by the good: they hate it. "Morally significant" here refers to the evaluation of a person’s character: the evil person, if moved and motivated positively by the good at all, is moved so little that it does not make a significant difference to the moral quality of the agent’s character. (We do not want the ascription of evil to hang on the faintest of passions.) Finally, I understand "the good" in a broad manner that can include the right. For brevity I have omitted reference to the agent’s relation to the bad, but we should take as implicit throughout this discussion that being related in a certain way to the good includes being related to the bad in a similarly appropriate or inappropriate way. When I say, for instance, that evil people fail to be attracted by the good, I mean that they also fail to be repelled by the bad. We can ignore cases in which someone is, say, appropriately moved by the good, but inappropriately moved by the bad.
This is not an Augustinian view of evil: evil may, but need not, be nothing more than a deprivation. Evil persons could, like Satan, be actively op-posed to the good.
We can simplify our characterization of this view by thinking of virtue and vice as a matter of a person’s orientation to the good: insofar as we are disposed to be appropriately moved and motivated by the good, we are aligned with the good. (I say "appropriately" rather than positively because someone might be moved too much by some goods. For instance, being too sympathetic can make us squeamish about performing certain duties, like disciplining our children. Also, someone might be positively moved by the good for the wrong reasons. See my discussion of Hitler in the next section.) We are virtuous inso-far as we are at least adequately aligned with the good. Vice consists in failing to be adequately aligned with the good. Evil persons are those who are not aligned with the good to a morally significant extent. They are, morally speak-ing, wholly or almost wholly unaligned with the good, if not actively opposed to it.