One of the great things about her arc is the way Willow's ability to make moral distinctions actually changes very little between season 1 and season 6. It's just that the personal signposts of what constitutes bad behaviour is FOR HER change completely.
Yes.
In both cases, she has a bit of an essentialist definition--good people do good things, and bad people do bad things--it just gets flipped from "I do bad things, ergo I'm a bad person" to "I am a good person, therefore the things I do are good." (Of course, this also leads to "Cordy/Faith/Anya does bad things, therefore she is a bad person.")
Absolutely.
This is, naturally, not all bad--Willow really does need to ease up on herself from season 2. And she does do a lot of good up to season five.
I would say including s5, though having just rewatched it, I'd say that's where it gets really complicated. The other characters, at this point, have more or less stopped questioning Willow's use of magic and started taking for granted that she can deliver if they need her ("You're my big gun, Willow"). And in the season where Buffy starts to question what being the Slayer is doing to her as a person, nobody - except maybe Tara - thinks to ask that of Willow; she continues to push herself harder, which is necessary in order to defeat Glory, the world would have ended without her, but then you end up in s6 with no big bad, and what do you do with a big gun in peacetime...? Apparently Joss had originally intended to kill Tara off and have Willow go completely dark in s5, and I'm really glad he decided to hold off on that, not just because I'm a huge Willow/Tara fan but because that's a story that needed time to develop.
And we're really getting ahead of ourselves here, aren't we? :)
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Yes.
In both cases, she has a bit of an essentialist definition--good people do good things, and bad people do bad things--it just gets flipped from "I do bad things, ergo I'm a bad person" to "I am a good person, therefore the things I do are good." (Of course, this also leads to "Cordy/Faith/Anya does bad things, therefore she is a bad person.")
Absolutely.
This is, naturally, not all bad--Willow really does need to ease up on herself from season 2. And she does do a lot of good up to season five.
I would say including s5, though having just rewatched it, I'd say that's where it gets really complicated. The other characters, at this point, have more or less stopped questioning Willow's use of magic and started taking for granted that she can deliver if they need her ("You're my big gun, Willow"). And in the season where Buffy starts to question what being the Slayer is doing to her as a person, nobody - except maybe Tara - thinks to ask that of Willow; she continues to push herself harder, which is necessary in order to defeat Glory, the world would have ended without her, but then you end up in s6 with no big bad, and what do you do with a big gun in peacetime...? Apparently Joss had originally intended to kill Tara off and have Willow go completely dark in s5, and I'm really glad he decided to hold off on that, not just because I'm a huge Willow/Tara fan but because that's a story that needed time to develop.
And we're really getting ahead of ourselves here, aren't we? :)