make a meaningful repentance and reconciliation. And the gods themselves are accused of using us "for their sport."

So, the play seems to contrast active evil with passive evil. The selfish can be compared to the oblivious. This later meditation on the many ways suffering is perpetrated because of our moral blindness, or the privilege that allows us to not see "feelingly" indicts everyone who does not actively pursue good.

Kent, the Fool, and Cordelia offer examples of goodness. Kent and the Fool refuse to abandon Lear even though he has been foolish and cruel, even though they stand to gain nothing by it, and even though they both suffer for their loyalty. This is gratuitous goodness in an unjust world. Lear also shows incredible kindness—a great king hesitates in the storm and insists that his servant the fool find comfort before he enters the cave. The nameless servant who vainly seeks to defend Gloucester from Cornwall and Regan's attempt to blind him is a reminder that in the midst of horrific evil one can still stand up for virtue.

Finally, Cordelia is the best example of active virtue. She forgives her father and returns to comfort him. At their reconciliation, she offers Lear what he most needs—dignity and respect:

O, look upon me, sir,
And hold your hands in benediction o'er me:
No, sir, you must not kneel.

Her gestures do not change outward political reality, yet they address the problem of the play: man's inhumanity. In the play's most tender moment, Lear seeks to spend the rest of his days reliving in an endless loop that moment of reconciliation and forgiveness, the greatest gift one can give:

No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness

The world is somewhat restored at the end, though nearly everyone has died. Edgar and Albany are left to pick up the pieces of the kingdom, and both seem to somewhat misinterpret the magnitude of the tragedy that has just played out, but the audience should be moved to see that the final good of the play is the empathy that the best characters have been taught to "see feelingly." The audience then is gifted this deep wisdom without having to live through the suffering, and that too is an example of the play's good.

In King Lear, good and evil are represented by truth and falsehood. Good people tell the truth: their words and their deeds match. Evil people tell lies: their words are the opposite of their actions. Lear's tragedy is that he puts too much faith in words and fails to understand that what people say can differ from what they do.

Cordelia is one example of goodness. She is so sickened by her sisters' false flattery at the beginning of the play that she refuses to exaggerate her love for her father. She keeps her words of affection plain and simple. This enrages her father, who wants an extravagant show of love and loyalty. He disinherits her. However, she is true and faithful to him, which he understands too late. The king's fool is also a good character; he speaks the truth to Lear.

General and Regan, the two older sisters, represent evil. They will promise their father anything and tell any lie to get hold of his kingdom. They profess undying devotion and adoration, but, as soon as they get power, they treat their father horribly. When he is too weak to do anything about it, they break all their promises to him and show him disrespect and contempt. 

These are just a few examples of  good and evil in the play. Anyone can speak flattering words. Evil people lie. Good people tell the truth. 

The good/evil dichotomy doesn't appear to have much purchase in the pagan world of King Lear. Good and evil as we commonly understand them today derive largely from the Judeo-Christian tradition, so they are not really intrinsic to the action as it unfolds. All we can do, then, in examining King Lear, is to project our notions of what constitutes good and evil onto the characters and their actions.

If we say, then, that according to the moral standards of the Judeo-Christian tradition, characters such as Regan and Goneril are indeed evil, then it can be seen that they come to grief not through the superior forces of good but because of their own evil. Goneril murders Regan and then commits suicide—not out of remorse, but because she realizes that the game is up and that she's lost the battle. There's certainly no sign of good triumphing over evil here.

By the same token, one could argue that whereas Regan and Goneril are undoubtedly evil, Cordelia is the nearest thing in the play to someone who is unequivocally good. Even if we accept this assessment, however, Cordelia's goodness doesn't do anything to mitigate the dark forces of evil as represented by her sisters.

In the overall scheme of things, Cordelia's goodness is pretty much useless. If Regan and Goneril are ultimately defeated, it's not because they've been vanquished by the forces of good, but because they've been overpowered and outsmarted on the field of battle, by a military force that is as motivated by the desire for power and territorial acquisition as they are themselves.

Like so much with King Lear, this is far from an easy answer.  Much of it is going to depend on your own personal view of what is presented. The idea of evil destroying itself is representative of a Modern reading of the text.  Evil is shown to be intrinsic to human nature.  When one strips away the trappings of what human beings wish to project, they, like Lear, can be reduced to a "mortal worm."  In the ending of the drama, the worms end up feasting upon and destroying one another. Evil becomes cannibalistic, devouring one another until there is nothing left, an idea revealed through a Modern reading of the drama.

If one views King Lear from a Classical or traditional interpretation, the perception of good and evil might be different.  Certainly, the follies and frailties of human beings are intrinsic to consciousness. Yet, there can be something redemptive in Lear's narrative.  In order for the natural order of good to present itself again, there has to be a complete eradication of evil in order to be restoration.  In the name of Classical moral and ethical restoration, evil is destroyed. Whether it feasts on itself is secondary to the fact that there is restoration.  This mode of thought suggests that human beings have learned from Lear's mistake and the absolute disaster present at the end of the drama enables a new moral and spiritual order of righteousness to emerge.

There is more to this question than you might imagine. Traditionally, it has been thought that in the character of Cordelia, Shakespeare has good win out over evil. In spite of her terrible treatment by her father, she rallies her troops and tries to help Lear regain  his kingdom. They restore their fractured relationship, but she dies, he dies, the kingdom is still a mess in the end.

I really like the analysis here on eNotes that explores an alternate interpretation of King Lear as "an absurd, nihilistic vision" because in my view, the ending of the play has always been unsettling to me when viewed through the traditional interpretation. If Cordelia had lived, and Lear had lived, and the kingdom had been restored, and Lear had admitted to Cordelia that her love redeemed him, then maybe one could say that "good" wins in the end. Good, though it exists, does not seem to be strong enough to redeem anything in this play, so it is very depressing in the end and one does not get that "fuzzy, feel-good" feeling.

I don't agreed that good always wins in the end in literature. This only happens in fairy tales, and then not even always in them either. As long as evil exists in the world, there is going to be the constant battle of good vs evil. Sometimes good wins, sometimes evil wins, in THIS world.........

What do you think? Read about it here on eNotes.