[Discussion] On the Gods and the World, Ch. XII

[sdi]

Happy Wednesday! Perhaps surprisingly for this week’s controversial subject, none of our three translators give notes for this chapter: so I suppose we are on our own! Boldly, then, let us pick the puzzle-box back up, shall we?

XII. The origin of evil things; and that there is no positive evil.

The Gods being good and making all things, how do evils exist in the world? Or perhaps it is better first to state the fact that, the Gods being good and making all things, there is no positive evil, it only comes by absence of good; just as darkness itself does not exist, but only comes about by absence of light.

If Evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any god, for all god is good. If any one speaks of a 'bad mind' he means a mind without mind. If of a bad soul, he will make soul inferior to body, for no body in itself is evil. If he says that Evil is made up of soul and body together, it is absurd that separately they should not be evil, but joined should create evil.

Suppose it is said that there are evil spirits:—if they have their power from the gods, they cannot be evil; if from elsewhere, the gods do not make all things. If they do not make all things, then either they wish to and cannot, or they can and do not wish; neither of which is consistent with the idea of God. We may see, therefore, from these arguments, that there is no positive evil in the world.

It is in the activities of men that the evils appear, and that not of all men nor always. And as to these, if men sinned for the sake of evil, Nature itself would be evil. But if the adulterer thinks his adultery bad but his pleasure good, and the murderer thinks the murder bad but the money he gets by it good, and the man who does evil to an enemy thinks that to do evil is bad but to punish his enemy good, and if the soul commits all its sins in that way, then the evils are done for the sake of goodness. (In the same way, because in a given place light does not exist, there comes darkness, which has no positive existence.) The soul sins therefore because, while aiming at good, it makes mistakes about the good, because it is not Primary Essence. And we see many things done by the Gods to prevent it from making mistakes and to heal it when it has made them. Arts and sciences, curses and prayers, sacrifices and initiations, laws and constitutions, judgements and punishments, all came into existence for the sake of preventing souls from sinning; and when they are gone forth from the body gods and spirits of purification cleanse them of their sins.*

* Arthur Darby Nock's commentary of the chapter primarily concerns itself with the historical context of the text, noting that while Sallustius is usually theologically aligned with Iamblichus and Julian, in this chapter he is in disagreement with them, rather following Proclus. (For example, Iamblichus speaks of evil spirits.)

Comments

[sdi]

Sallustius' argument that there cannot be any particular source of positive evil has five parts:

1. The Gods are not evil, by definition.
   
2. Mind is not evil, because the nature of mind is that "evil mind" is actually a "lack of mind."
   
3. Soul is not evil, because it is superior to body and body is not evil.
   
4. Body is not evil. [No reason is given.]
   
5. No combination of the above is evil, since "good + good = evil" is absurd.

[1] is an axiom from earlier in the work. I'll also grant the logic of [3] and [5]. (In fact, it seems to me that [3] should apply to the Gods and Mind as well.) But I don't understand what is being said in [2], and no justification is given for [4] at all!

Does anybody else follow those parts of the argument? If not, I may have to take Nock's suggestion and go to Proclus next...

[barefootwisdom]

Nock's advice is excellent... all the more so, since there's now a good translation of Proclus' text! This is one of those places where I really recommend against Thomas Taylor's version, through no fault of Taylor's. In his day, the manuscript of Proclus' three little treatises on providence and evil was in horrific shape, to the point where Taylor himself (as I recall) acknowledges having to skip over some fairly large sections because the received text was utterly incomprehensible, and was only able even to attempt a translation of two out of the three treatises. Since then, new materials have been found and edited that put the text on a much more coherent footing. The translation of Proclus' On the Existence of Evils by Jan Opsomer and Carlos Steel (2003), which draws on those new discoveries, is excellent.

For "lack of mind," you might consider my comment below about "missing the mark" as a starting point. Mind (or intellect) is the metaphysical principle that stands below being and prior to soul in the basic Platonic metaphysics as given by Proclus et al. It's that which eternally and essentially knows the transcendent Ideas as such, and knows material particulars only insofar as those particulars are already pre-existing in their paradigms.

So, given that there are only paradigms of goods and not of evils (per my comment below), and given that intellect only knows ideas/paradigms, then it follows that intellect can only know goods. And it likewise follows that anything which knows evils must be other than intellect/mind.

[sdi]

Thank you, that clarifies Sallustius' argument immensely.

(And also thank you for the Proclus edition recommendation!)

[sdi]

For my own part, I am not even convinced that negative evil exists.

[boccaderlupo]

I can't answer for the 5-part argument above, but yes, a lot of the points in this chapter seem to do with "negative evil," or evil as a lack of The Good. Pseudo-Dionysius goes extensively into this area, and I find it persuasive on an ontological level, though less so as a lived reality (i.e. it is my experience that there are people who derive pleasure from suffering).

I would have to go back and review the text some, but...does Sallustius not even bother to define evil? That in itself is interesting.

Even in the above case (of people who derive pleasure from evil), though, Sallustius (and Pseudo-Dionysisus, perhaps) might reiterate the points about the adulterer and the murderer: even if the outcomes of these folks' actions is suffering for other, yet it is the very pursuit of gratification itself which is a refraction, as it were, of The Good itself...in this case, pleasure, which, however distorted, remains an inclination toward the positive (regardless of how repugnant the outcomes may seem to us, the observers). In these cases, the seeking of pleasure (a manifestation of The Good) only benefits the person seeking it, but even in this, the argument goes, it is still a measure of The Good.

How compelling such an argument remains to someone on the receiving end of gross misfortune or other sufferings remains open to question, I would say...

[barefootwisdom]

Yes, this is one of the many places where Pseudo-Dionysius is plagarizing Proclus' treatise on evils. (Often whole paragraphs verbatim.)

Of course, that doesn't make him wrong. I give him credit for recognizing a good argument, even if he felt unable or unwilling to acknowledge his sources.

[boccaderlupo]

On that point, I have often wondered whether Pseudo-Dionysius's "Saint Hierotheus" and his "Elements of Divinity" isn't a nod to Proclus...

It also strikes me as somewhat humorous that, despite the Biblical reference to the disciple of Paul, one of the foremost exponents of Christian Neoplatonic thought bears such a Bacchic name. :)

[barefootwisdom]

For whatever it's worth, there's at least a sense in which Proclus agrees with this claim. His ordinary term for something that exists (or, as it's sometimes rendered, "subsists") is a hypostasis. No evils are things of that sort. Rather, he describes evils as having only a parhypostasis, sometimes rendered as "parasitic existence." The key difference comes down to, real beings have a paradigmatic cause, while parasitic existences do not.

Thus, we swing back to the notion of hamartia, which our translator here renders as "sin." This is orignally a term from archery, where it literally means "missing the target." So, for each kind of good/real being, there is some single, uniform ideal target which a thing can come closer to or fall farther away from, while for evils, there is no such single, uniform ideal that they're trying to reach. There is a single bullseye at which the arrow is aimed, but so many ways (and so many degrees) in which it can miss: too high, too low, too far to either side, flying past the target or never making all the way forward to it... In other words, both hitting the target and missing it can only be defined by reference to the good ideal.

As another example, we might think of a line. There's only a single way for a line to be straight, but an indefinite multiplicity of ways to be crooked, or (more accurately) to fall away from, or miss the mark of, straightness.

[sdi]

I like your analogy of a bullseye.

I didn't even think of Sallustius' use of the word "sin", but now that I double check, hamartia is the word translated as "sin" in the Septuagint and Greek New Testament.

[boccaderlupo]

This is a very good write-up. Thank you.

The idea of a "parasitic existence" for evils hearkens to a phrase I've read elsewhere among the Neoplatonists, where evil is merely an "admixture of the good" (not 100% sure on that reference, but I remember stumbling across it somewhere). To me, suggests that evil has only a kind of shadowy, partial life, as it were...