Does "pure evil" exist?

The concept cannot be applied, because nobody can establish that nothing further explains an act

Question: Does "pure evil" exist?
Position‹2 of 2: No, "pure evil" does not exist
Argument‹2 of 2: The concept cannot be applied, because nobody can establish that nothing further explains an act

The argument

A second argument concerns what the concept demands of anyone who uses it. To call an act purely evil is to assert that the suffering was the whole of the point: no further end, no belief however deluded, no pressure, no appetite with a history behind it. Proponents of this position argue that no observer is in a position to establish that. What is available is the behaviour, the circumstances, sometimes a confession, and the agent's own account, and agents are notoriously poor witnesses to their own motives, particularly where the motive is one they would rather not own. The practical consequence, they argue, is visible in how the term is actually used. It is applied to the acts people find most appalling, which is a judgement about severity, and then presented as a finding about motivational structure, which is a different thing entirely. Acts of comparable cruelty attract the label or escape it depending on how the agent presented, how much was known about their life, and whether anything was offered that sounded like an explanation. That pattern suggests the term is tracking the observer's reaction rather than the feature it claims to name. Proponents conclude that a category whose application conditions cannot be checked, and which in practice follows severity rather than motive, is better set aside. Nothing needed is lost by doing so. The acts remain available for description in terms that can be defended and that do all the necessary work: deliberate, gratuitous, sustained, indifferent to suffering, unforgivable. What goes is only a claim nobody was ever in a position to make.

Premises

[P1]Calling an act purely evil asserts that no further end, belief, pressure or appetite contributed to it. [P2] That assertion cannot be established by an observer, since motives are not directly observable and agents are unreliable witnesses to their own. [P3] In practice the label follows how severe an act was rather than evidence about its motivational structure. [C] Therefore pure evil should not be treated as existing, since its application conditions cannot be met and other descriptions do the work.

Counter-arguments

Those who disagree answer that unverifiability is a weak objection, since motives are ascribed with confidence throughout ordinary life and in every courtroom, which could not operate otherwise. If an observer may conclude that a theft was committed for money, they may conclude that a prolonged cruelty was committed for the pleasure of it, on the same kind of evidence. They add that difficulty in applying a category is not an argument that nothing falls under it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The assertion attributed to the category is stronger than its users make. Calling an act purely evil ordinarily says that the suffering was the point, not that the agent arrived at that point uncaused. [Rejecting P2] Motives are ascribed with confidence throughout ordinary life and in every court, and if that is sufficient for establishing greed or jealousy it is sufficient here. [Rejecting P3] That a term is sometimes applied loosely is an argument for applying it carefully, not for concluding that nothing answers to it. [Rejecting C] The alternatives offered, gratuitous and indifferent to suffering, make claims about motive of the same kind, so the conclusion does not escape the difficulty it raises.