Demon

Demon – today that sounds of horror, possession and the evil. Yet this aftertaste is culturally grown, not original. The word comes from the Greek δαίμων (daimon) and denoted at first a value-neutral divine force: a spirit of fate or protection that could work as well as ill. That “demon” today means almost only “evil spirit” is the result of a long reinterpretation – and a good example of how a culture shifts the meaning of a word.

Where the word comes from

In Homer, daimon often stands simply for “god” or for an indeterminate divine power that intervenes in a human being or a happening. Linguistically the word is mostly connected with the Greek verb δαίομαι (daiomai) – “to allot, to distribute”: the daimon is then the one who allots fate, an apportioning power. From this also comes the word eudaimonia (“happiness” – literally: to have a good daimon).

In Plato, the daimones are intermediate beings between gods and humans, who mediate between the two worlds (in the Symposium even Eros, love, is described as such a daimon). And Socrates invoked his personal daimonion – an inner, divine voice that warned him before he did wrong. Nothing of this is “evil”. On the contrary: the daimon was often a protective and accompanying spirit, comparable to the Roman genius.

How the demon became evil

The turn came with the rise of Christianity. In the Greek Bible translation (Septuagint) and later in the Latin Vulgate, daimonion / daemonium became the word for “evil spirit”. The many neutral or mixed spirit-beings of the ancient world were theologically reinterpreted: what did not belong to the one God now counted as against-God.

With this, the demon was fixed – finally fallen, subordinate to the devil, without a way back. Out of an open, developable force there became a firmly booked negative figure. This fixing is no linguistic necessity, but a cultural decision – and it is precisely this that becomes visible when one looks beyond one’s own cultural sphere.

Two worldviews, one question

Other cultures answer the question “what is a demon?” markedly differently – especially the East Asian sphere:

• China. In Chinese folk religion and in Daoism, spirit-beings are not morally fixed. The 鬼 (gui) is at first the spirit of a deceased or an ancestor – according to circumstance well-disposed or dangerous. The 魔 (mo) is a younger character, coined to render, on the import of Buddhism, the Sanskrit māra (the tempting, inhibiting force). And the 妖怪 (yaoguai) is a being that can develop, rise or fall through “cultivation” (修炼, xiulian). Decisive is: power and morality are decoupled, and transformation is always possible.
• The West. The Christian-shaped picture scarcely knows this openness. The demon is fallen and remains so; its moral quality is fixed. This binary order (good against evil, above against below) is clear and stable – but it knows no development upward.

That a whole series such as the Chinese production “The Unclouded Soul” can tell of “demons” as developable, ambivalent beings is thus no coincidence, but an expression of this different basic understanding.

Power and morality: coupled or separated?

Behind this stands a question that reaches far beyond ghost stories: is force (or power) already suspect in itself?

The Western pattern tends to regard strength with moral suspicion – a reflex that Friedrich Nietzsche described as the core of the “slave morality”: the revaluation in which the strong is declared “evil” (in detail in the entry loving-kindness & altruism). The Chinese demon-image, by contrast, separates the two: a force is at first neither good nor evil – what matters is what becomes of it and how it develops.

At the Kyborg Institute we find this second view connectable to a basic thought that runs through our whole cluster of terms: values and maturity grow from within and voluntarily, not through rigid ascription from outside. Whoever holds development to be possible need not condemn forces in advance – they can ask where they develop. Related reflections are found under collectivism & individualism, ethics and morality.

What remains

“Demon” is thus a prime example of something larger: how a culture orders reality through language. Out of a neutral, even protective force there became, in the West, a firmly booked negative being; elsewhere the question remained open. Whoever knows the origin of the word reads old texts – and new series – with different eyes.

How this picture – power, morality and the fear of the individual – can be transferred to today’s society and economy, we discuss as an expressly subjective standpoint: From demon to excellence.

Autor: Tobias O. R. Alke