Plato calls the great first principle “the Good” and says that the Gods are rooted in this Good as the primary agents of providence. He says, in the Republic, that the Gods are the causes of all goodness, and are not the causes of evil; he also says, in the Timaeus, that the universe is good. This presents the philosophers who followed Plato in his tradition with a problem: how can the existence of evil be explained? Where does it come from? What kind of existence can it said to possess? What kind of things can be said to be evil in some way?
We will look at some passages from Plotinus and Proclus, and consider for ourselves how this seemingly intractable issue might be understood.
This event is free but donations are encouraged, circumstances allowing. We’ll start the session at 6.30pm: tea/coffee and cake will be available just beforehand. No need to book.
These evenings include short talks and/or readings from Platonic writings – but we hope they will be genuinely interactive, with all participants invited to contribute to our collaborative search for truth. No previous experience of formal philosophy is required. Every effort is made to make these type of evenings accessible to the newcomer, while allowing the great profundity of the Platonic tradition to step forward and speak to us at whatever level our present understanding sits.
Please download here a PDF of the extracts we’ll be using: The Platonic tradition looks at evil
The Trust has run similar activities for some 18 years, and in our experience they allow the most profound questions concerning human life, the nature of reality, and our interactions, to be explored at once both seriously and with good cheer. Our aim is to provide a forum for honest and straight-forward enquiry, but which is unafraid to explore inward-moving paths too often neglected by modern schools of thought.