If his god represents the absolute of the good and just, why does the bad and unjust exist? If his god was perfect, why would these opposing ideas exist? Is there an opposite God of evil? — One piece

Christianised Platonism had an answer for that, in the form of Augustine's doctrine of 'evil as the privation of the good'. As illness is the privation of health and darkness the privation of light, then what we call 'evil' is the absence of the good - generally because us hoi polloi are not only ignorant of what is good, but ignorant of the fact of ignorance.

Also I would be very careful saying that Plato himself identified 'the Good' as God. That was very much the invention of the later Greek-speaking theologians who sought to reconcile Plato and Christianity. it was natural for them to say 'ah, Plato meant God', but Plato himself obviously never had a say in that.

This makes me think plato never completed his meditations which would have logically led him to the buddhist concept of the cycle of death and rebirth, where all of this good and bad are simply our own creations, which is a whole other discussion. — One piece

Plato may have believed in Reincarnation, but probably not in Karma. However, there is a more modern assessment of the human condition, that includes an up-dated understanding of History, Physics, and Evolution. It's the notion that Good & Evil are inherent in the Thermodynamic duality of our temporal world. Every physical event in the world results from an exchange of energy from Hot to Cold. So that clash of opposites is inherent in every aspect of the universe, including psycho-social events. Physical Entropy is equivalent to Metaphysical Evil, and Negentropy (Enformy) is analogous to Good.

One proponent of that idea was Harold Bloom in The Lucifer Principle, who "argues that "evil is a by-product of nature's strategies for creation and that it is woven into our most basic biological fabric": His book antagonized lots of people for various reasons, but mostly by those who misunderstood his assessment of individual versus group evolution. My own concept of Enformy is another attempt to answer the age-old plaint, :"why does Evil exist?" : It's essential to evolution in space & time. So, the only way to avoid Evil & Suffering is to go completely out of this world, by the usual means of physical Death, or perhaps by the psychological suicide of Nirvana.


Enformy : In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress.
1. I'm not aware of any "supernatural force" in the world. But my Enformationism theory postulates that there is a meta-physical force behind Time's Arrow and the positive progress of evolution. Just as Entropy is sometimes referred to as a "force" causing energy to dissipate (negative effect), Enformy is the antithesis, which causes energy to agglomerate (additive effect).
2. Of course, neither of those phenomena is a physical Force, or a direct Cause, in the usual sense. But the term "force" is applied to such holistic causes as a metaphor drawn from our experience with physics.
3. "Entropy" and "Enformy" are scientific/technical terms that are equivalent to the religious/moralistic terms "Evil" and "Good". So, while those forces are completely natural, the ultimate source of the power behind them may be supernatural, in the sense that the First Cause logically existed before the Big Bang.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

You cant really get people to talk about philosophy on martial art forums or anime forums, so here i am. — One piece

I noticed that on the forums run on singles' sites there was quite a big talk on philosophy. This was back 10-20 years ago before I got finally banned good on PoF and before I got married ten years ago. There was also good philosophy on CraigsList (does it still exist? I must check.)

Nor is it easy to find people in this ignorant town i live in to have philosophical discussion with — One piece

You live in New York City, too? Try moving to Athens, or to Delphi, PA, (good fortune tellers there), or to Paris, Ontario (great for existentialists), or to Coppenhagen, GA (modern moralists), or to San Francisco (Great drugs, lots of them).

If his god represents the absolute of the good and just, why does the bad and unjust exist? If his god was perfect, why would these opposing ideas exist? Is there an opposite God of evil? — One piece

I don't know how Plato would answer this, but my impression is that the men who live it in a cave there, in dark, deep forest, and essentially who we are according to Plato, are not Bad or Evil or Unjust, just uninformed. We are imperfect in our disability to sense reality. Therefore our creations are also imperfect.

I doubt if Playdo meant that them cavemen's world is populated by bad or evil or unjust; it is just simply removed from the perfect, the good, the just, and this removal makes it imperfect, but not evil, etc.

It's the notion that Good & Evil are inherent in the Thermodynamic duality of our temporal world. — Gnomon

My goodness. So you say that P=V*T is an evil, while V=P/T is goodness?

Are you saying that the preservation of momentum is actually really evil, while the preservation of energy is goodness itself?

or are you actually saying that

mF/t^2 is an evil derivation of energy in terms of mass, force, and time?

Harold Bloom. Ay-vey. Sh'ma o Yisroel.

What do you suppose we do with evil?

Evil that exists in this universe is contained - there is not overwhelming evil.

You can be evil, as long as it's limited.

Why is there pain and suffering?

It's rational to adjurn such diverse lifeform; good hells and good heavens; to punish/reward people.

This universe is a low frequency hell.

Every life must experience old age, risk injury or illness and experience death.

My goodness. So you say that P=V*T is an evil, while V=P/T is goodness? — god must be atheist

You're putting words in my mouth. :grin:

Are you saying that the preservation of momentum is actually really evil, while the preservation of energy is goodness itself? — god must be atheist

No.

I just got done with my second reading of the republic. Anyways, plato mainly speaks of the ideals under the absolute of "good" and that they lead to a perfectly, united-absolute-oneness which he calls God. When he touches on their opposites he only goes so far as to show, essentially, the negative effects they have on your soul, not necessarily where those ideas lead-besides reincarnations into a more unreasonable state; Or why they even exist in opposition to the ideals.

If his god represents the absolute of the good and just, why does the bad and unjust exist? If his god was perfect, why would these opposing ideas exist? Is there an opposite God of evil?

This makes me think plato never completed his meditations which would have logically led him to the buddhist concept of the cycle of death and rebirth, where all of this good and bad are simply our own creations, which is a whole other discussion. — One piece

I think we all have a general tendency to want to exclude what we consider to be ‘evil’ from our world - or at least from our conception of it. Plato was no different in this respect. I think that the ‘problem of evil’ derives from what we exclude or isolate from a subjective ‘ideal’ or complete concept of the world.

There is a distinction between what each of us understands this united-absolute-oneness CAN be potentially, and what is POSSIBLE - but language as a system doesn’t point out the distinction to us very well. If we rely on language or logic to enable us to understand everything, then we will always fall short, despite our best efforts.

‘Evil’ is an exclusion of potentiality, a negation of what CAN be in the world. Acknowledging the existence of ‘evil’, ‘bad’ or ‘unjust’ even as IDEAS - that some things in the world SHOULDN’T exist, even though they CAN - is the creation of ‘evil’ in the first place. And this creation is always subjective.

I think it is perhaps the logical nature of Plato’s meditations that limit his ability to grasp this aspect. Buddhism reaches this deeper understanding of the world by venturing beyond what each of us considers logical: by allowing our connection to the universe to ‘show’ us what exists beyond our own capacity to understand. It seems like Plato’s philosophy, being entirely of his own devising and focused on the individual, is necessarily limited in this respect.

Also I would be very careful saying that Plato himself identified 'the Good' as God. That was very much the invention of the later Greek-speaking theologians who sought to reconcile Plato and Christianity. it was natural for them to say 'ah, Plato meant God', but Plato himself obviously never had a say in that. — Wayfarer

According to Christina Schefer, Plato’s Good-One is an image of the god Apollo. For example, see page 135 of her book Platons unsagbare Erfahrung “Plato’s Unsayable Experience”:

With that, however, the sense of the exclamation at the height of the Republic is inverted from the end: It is not the One which is invoked with the vocative “Apollo”, but rather Apollo himself as living acting god. He is no metaphor for the One; rather, the One has to be understood as god image of Apollo.

(My translation from German into English)

If his god represents the absolute of the good and just, why does the bad and unjust exist? If his god was perfect, why would these opposing ideas exist? Is there an opposite God of evil?

This makes me think plato never completed his meditations — One piece

Christina Schefer says that a religious and unsayable experience of Apollo as eternal presentness lies at the heart of Plato’s thought, behind both his Theory of Forms and his unwritten Theory of Principles (see e.g. pages 136, 221, 222 and 225 of her aforementioned book). Because presentness is only one aspect of time, Apollo is only a limited manifestation of the holy, a pure mysterium fascinans (fascinating and wonderful mystery) rather than a full-fledged mysterium tremendum et fascinans (terrifying and awe-inspiring as well as fascinating and wonderful mystery) (see e.g. pages 220 to 222 of her aforementioned book). So if Schefer is right and my understanding of her, of Plato and of your question is also right, it is the limited nature of Plato’s religious experience and Apollo’s inability to reveal the whole nature of the holy (for the latter, see page 222 of her aforementioned book) which caused Plato to have a wanting account of badness and evil.

Possibly, however most problem of evil arguments which use the existence of "evil", so whether or not they invoke a "god" specifically, they are invoking or appealing to some higher ideal of "good".

Conversely, one could use the same arguments (e.x. Epicurus) but in reverse, to argue against that.

Well, that's very interesting, but my brief perusal of Christina Schefer's books leads be to believe that they're untranslated, and also exceedingly expensive (Plato Und Apollon is priced on Amazon at US$724.79!)

Hello, first thread here. You cant really get people to talk about philosophy on martial art forums or anime forums, so here i am. Nor is it easy to find people in this ignorant town i live in to have philosophical discussion.

Anyways, I just got done with my second reading of the republic. Anyways, plato mainly speaks of the ideals under the absolute of "good" and that they lead to a perfectly, united-absolute-oneness which he calls God. When he touches on their opposites he only goes so far as to show, essentially, the negative effects they have on your soul, not necessarily where those ideas lead-besides reincarnations into a more unreasonable state; Or why they even exist in opposition to the ideals.

If his god represents the absolute of the good and just, why does the bad and unjust exist? If his god was perfect, why would these opposing ideas exist? Is there an opposite God of evil?

This makes me think plato never completed his meditations which would have logically led him to the buddhist concept of the cycle of death and rebirth, where all of this good and bad are simply our own creations, which is a whole other discussion. — One piece

I don't like to answer these questions with a 3 page or 20 page answer, but i believe scientific determinism (nurture versus nature) determines all of our bad decisions, our future decisions are based on understanding our decisions and whether we understand scientific determisim. Whether we are born and reborn, is certainly a possibility on the table. My chosen religion doesn't require me to be 100% certain of anything.

It's true that Schefer's books currently only exist in the original German as far as I know, but the price is likely a mistake. Platons unsagbare Erfahrung currently costs US$119.00 on amazon.com, and it cost €88.00 a couple of years ago on amazon.de. Platon und Aplollon was cheaper when last I looked a couple of years ago, somewhere in the fifties (in Euro) I think, so the new price is really weird. On https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/christina-schefer/platons-unsagbare-erfahrung.html, Platons unsagbare Erfahrung currently costs only €54.20.

On JSTOR, there is a free but German-language article on the subject of Plato's unsayable experience of Apollo:
Ein neuer Zugang zu Platon?

In the Homeric tales, gods acted in their self interest and outcomes of mortal affairs were often shaped by that dynamic.

The Republic wrestles with that view. It is not a complete answer to Thrasymachus' challenge but it does put some of the burden on the other side. To liken it to a system of universal judgement misses the margin of separation desired by Plato.

The passion of Socrates' brothers is the central voice of the dialogue.