A Platonic Form of Evil

[Ripheus23]

I was reading on Quora (IIRC) a post where someone asked about a Form of Evil in Platonism, like the Form of the Good. Like, why does Plato not speak of an FOE? The trend in the answers seemed to be that evil is nothingness/absolute chaos, which is formless, so a Form of Evil would be like a Form of Formlessness, which seemed contradictory. However, I think you could easily fit a Form of Evil into Platonism. First, you might just say that the Form of Good, via the Form of Difference (which Socrates does speak of in a dialogue, IIRC), is really the Form of the Difference Between Good and Evil. Also, since the Forms of the virtues are said to exemplify those virtues (e.g. the Form of Honesty is honest), which means they're kind of like personal agents themselves, you could just say that there were Forms that personally used their free will to do evil, and these would be Forms of Evil.

[Silverblade5]

1 hour ago, Ripheus23 said:

I was reading on Quora (IIRC) a post where someone asked about a Form of Evil in Platonism, like the Form of the Good. Like, why does Plato not speak of an FOE? The trend in the answers seemed to be that evil is nothingness/absolute chaos, which is formless, so a Form of Evil would be like a Form of Formlessness, which seemed contradictory. However, I think you could easily fit a Form of Evil into Platonism. First, you might just say that the Form of Good, via the Form of Difference (which Socrates does speak of in a dialogue, IIRC), is really the Form of the Difference Between Good and Evil. Also, since the Forms of the virtues are said to exemplify those virtues (e.g. the Form of Honesty is honest), which means they're kind of like personal agents themselves, you could just say that there were Forms that personally used their free will to do evil, and these would be Forms of Evil.

One could say  that a form of evil could be a distorted form of good, or a form of absence of good. Augustine had a bit to say on that matter.

[Ripheus23]

IIRC, Augustine's description of sin in itself was not turning towards X = evil, but the turning away from the good itself (so sort of like "the absence of good," though as per the story this is related to (in my writing project set), the doctrine of evil-as-the-absence-of-good is the intellectual mistake that causes the apocalypse...). It's in the turn... You could, I suppose, even refer to this as the Augustine-Kant thesis (since Kant's doctrine of radical corruption is equivalent).

Now, in the story I'm working on in which all this is relevant, the turning-concept of evil is used to "explain" the existence of subjective time. The argument goes something like:

1. Goodness in itself is mapped by a triangular diagram.
2. This diagram is automatically embedded in physical space.
3. Everything in space is subject to motion.
4. The simplest motion of the triangle would be rotation.
5. The rotation of the triangle of evil, or the anti-triangle, is counter to the rotation of the triangle of good.
6. If there were no subjective difference between the rotations, each would trace an indistinguishable circle overlapping the other.
7. Therefore, to differentiate between the rotation of the triangles of good and evil, you need subjective time.