PLATO, PLOTINUS, AND EVIL

Plato and Innatism

Was Plotinus influenced by opium?

SOME justification is necessary for adding to the list of suspected opium-takers of the past. The academic game of seizing on certain similarities between the thought of a selected victim and the features supposed to be characteristic of opium dreams long ago became something of a bad habit. In the case of Plotinus (205-270 A.D.), however, grounds for the belief can be found outside his own wri...

Plato and Innatism

Plato and Divination

Plato uses the idea of divinatory knowledge as a metaphorical descriptor for a variety of kinds of daytime, waking knowing. What unites these examples is that they all include discussion of a kind of knowing that cannot account for itself, and that is tentative, imagistic and non-discursive. These metaphorical uses can further be illuminated by his more detailed discussion of divinatory knowled...

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

INTRODUCTION “[D]eath is different.” When used to punish, death taps society’s most primal urges. It is meant to be a deterrent for potential offenders, triggering in them the innate reflex for self-preservation. For society, it is meant to feed the primal desire for retribution. For these very reasons, it is often claimed that death is only reserved for the worst of the worst. However, in tryi...