ABSTRACT

This chapter examines two principal Neoplatonic views of evil: that of Plotinus, who held that, while moral evil is a weakness of the individual soul, evil in the cosmos generally must ultimately be traced to matter as non-being, privation, or defect. And that of Proclus, who held that matter is not evil; evil is instead a by-product of the outpouring of being, a sort of parasitical existence. Before examining Plotinus, the reader should be aware of two things: first, the term 'Neoplatonism' is itself problematic and, second, Plotinus' theory is not simply his own. It emerges from the complex tangle of earlier thought that ranges from the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle through the Stoics and Middle Platonists to the Gnostics. Neoplatonism is a modern term that indicates what modernity saw as a 'new' form of Platonic thought.