Plato vs Dostoevsky in a certain phrase

[Kyriakos]

I recall reading Dostoevsky's The Underground, for the first time, when i was 17,5. It made a great impression on me, although at the time i had a very different view of it than i now possess. But this thread is not so much about the book, as about a certain argument in it.

Dostoevsky mentions Plato's idea that all evil is created from ignorance of good, ie that if a person is evil, he is so because he has not known what it is to be good. Dostoevsky calls that sentence "childish naivety", and argues that one can be evil for many reasons, for example so that he can prove to himself that he can go against his morality.

At the time i first read it i tended to agree with Dostoevsky, since i too felt the pain of adolescence, and moreover thought i knew what good is, and that there is a lot of evil, and one must be evil in retaliation, or just so as to survive. That was not particularly close to Dostoevsky's argument, but i projected my own pain of the time onto the quote.

Now i am of the view that "good", while largely objective, can be defined by a moral compass, which possibly does not differ that much from individual to individual- counting out, or not counting out, pathological cases. And natural morality of this kind (not to be confused with christian morality, of which i have a similar view as Nietzsche, namely that it is a forced and artificial morality and not one which is natural for the individual) can be said, in my view, to be beneficial, if not for other reasons then because everyone seems to tend to want to be able to trust the other person, and that trust is based on the idea that that other person is something known. Now being known also goes with being good, unless one seeks pathological qualities in relations.

Dostoevsky, though, already has presented morality as important. He argued that one can be evil so as to show oneself that he has a free will, which goes beyond norms, either social, but mostly personal. In a way i think this means that he did not wish to negate morality, while being evil periodically was understood as having more freedom to act and think.

I would be interested to read your own view on this. Do you think Plato's argument was correct, or Dostoevsky's? And is the one really against the other (like Dostoevsky seems to think)?

 

[galdre]

I would agree with Dostoevsky; evil is not caused by a lack of knowledge of good

 

[Kyriakos]

I would agree with Dostoevsky; evil is not caused by a lack of knowledge of good

Maybe Plato's argument though was that people who wish to be evil have not really experienced being good, or to project even further: have not been accepted as being good.

 

[galdre]

Maybe Plato's argument though was that people who wish to be evil have not really experienced being good, or to project even further: have not been accepted as being good.

So if they tried being good, and were accepted by others as being good, they would find they like it and changed?

I think people do what we consider evil simply because they put their own desires/needs above the desires/needs of others. We all tend to do this to a degree, it just some go far enough to be considered 'evil'

 

[Kyriakos]

I agree. But like you said it is one thing to be occasionally 'evil' due to sporadic lack of understanding or care for others, and quite another to be empty of all care for other people, and then maybe even be evil on account of some conscious decision. The last would seem to require in my view that one has not really experienced being good and accepted for it, or of course they may have lingering issues which negate the ability to be 'good'.

 

[galdre]

I think someone who was completely empty of care for all others would be considered to have mental health concerns.

I don't think it's a lack of experience or acceptance at being good that keeps some people from doing good. The motives vary though; some do it for the sense of power - if I do something good to someone else, of course they will accept it, but if I do something bad to them and get away with it, I've shown my power over them. Other 'evil' acts are pure greed and selfishness: a person wants something that another has, and feels their desire for it outweighs that person's right to it. Some evil is a lashing out: a wounded person (emotionally that is) strikes out at another as a way of feeling in control (since the wound makes them feel out of control). As I said, the motives are many and varied, but I think desire for power (in it's many forms) is the biggest single motivator.

 

[Kyriakos]

Very nice points

I would like to note some things about them.

1) The sense of power seems to come from a starting position which lacks power. Moreover the very intrusion of "Power" into the equation of human relations does seem to me to stem from a feeling of lack of power.

2) I have heard that thieves sometimes "reason" that the object they want to steal belongs to them due to their need for it, which they think is not existent in the person who owns it. Thus in a way their hostile action of robbing can be seen as a defensive action, twisted, of protecting something they falsely deem to belong to them from someone who currently controls it.Here too we have lack of power as a motive.

So i think that we agree, only you seem to paint the desire for power in a more positive light than me.

 

[galdre]

If I portrayed the desire for power as anyway positive it was unintentional - I think it is natural since we really don't have much power over the world around us, and therefore can have feelings of powerlessness, and will have a desire to change that situation. But our ability to reason puts the responsibility on the individual to acknowledge that and not act on it when it would result in harm to another.

 

[Ayatollah So]

I hate to be seen as lining up with Dostoevsky on anything , but Plato's just wrong on this one. Some people just aren't interested in some aspects of the good.

BTW, doing good can be just as much a demonstration of power as doing evil. Doing good for yourself, included.

 

[galdre]

I hate to be seen as lining up with Dostoevsky on anything , but Plato's just wrong on this one. Some people just aren't interested in some aspects of the good.

BTW, doing good can be just as much a demonstration of power as doing evil. Doing good for yourself, included.

I think the dynamic is very different. If I give a meal to someone, all I've shown is my power to provide a meal. If I take a meal from someone, I've shown I have power over that person. Those who desire power seem to enjoy taking more than giving.

 

[Kyriakos]

True, it is often said that sadism is the desire to prove to oneself than another person can be seen as weaker than you, thus giving the sadistic individual the satisfaction that there are others who are, in his way of thinking, below him or her.
On the contrary having someone (eg a beggar) see you are his benefactor does not seem to convey a sense of power you have, other than the obvious, that he is the beggar and you are not him (so in theory some people may even give food to beggars so that they may feel they are better off than them, and enjoy this sentiment).

Goes without saying that this matrix has uncountable connections between its dots, so all chances can materialize

 

[Mr. Dictator]

People do things because they benefit them, or because they reduce their suffering.

"Good" and "Evil" are just useful ways for society to try and influence what those things are.

 

[galdre]

People do things because they benefit them, or because they reduce their suffering.

"Good" and "Evil" are just useful ways for society to try and influence what those things are.

Do you feel then that what is considered good or evil is completely subjective?

 

[Kyriakos]

I think, personally, that even thinkers who were known for presenting "good" and "evil" as subjective, still had some yardstick according to which there were positive and negative phenomena, of social magnitude and not just personal. An example being Nietzsche and his theories of an advanced civilization, which would have been brought again by ethics, albeit a new ethics of power.

In the animal world, on the contrary, you have no distinctions of such elegance. It is at the same time pure evil, and pure good, for the gazelle to be eaten, and for the lion to eat the gazelle respectively.

In the OP i mentioned that both Plato and Dostoevsky linked good and evil to some ethics, so again they did not view them as something chaotically subjective