Plato and Christian Beliefs on Good and Evil

Plato

Plato was a Greek philosopher born around 429 BC. He went to listen to Socrates and learnt about philosophy. Plato was disappointed when Socrates was killed in 399 BC and began to write down some conversations they had. Plato then began writing about his ideas on Philosophy as well. Plato believed that everything in the world had an ideal form and used a metaphor about a cave to describe it. If someone was chained up in a cave they could only see things inside the cave. They would only ever see shadows which they would believe the real world is. Plato believed that we could only see what we believed the real world was because we were trapped in our bodies. A tree for example would have an ideal form in our mind yet we cannot see it.

 

According to Plato humans ideal forms were their soul. Plato thought that our soul was divided into three parts. Our natural desire, our will and our reason. Hunger is a natural desire however your will lets you control your hunger and your reason tells you when you should eat or when you shouldn’t eat. If any of these parts are out of balance you would be a bad person.  If your natural desire is too strong you will be unable to control thing such as your hunger, sleep and violence so you will be eating at the wrong time or you would be violent towards others. If your will is too strong you may end up not eating entirely. If your reason is too strong you may be eating at completely the wrong time.

 

 

Christian

Christians believe that God has given them free will to choose between right and wrong. The Ten Commandments are God’s way of showing people the right way to live. According to Christians God is good and Satan is evil. Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. Some Christians believe that humans are born with evil because of the first sins committed by the first humans Adam and Eve. Christians also believe that some people have demons inside them and need to be healed. Jesus was said to of healed many people from demons in the Bible, which is a book that contains the events that Christians believe in.