ABSTRACT
So far we have seen the way early Greek literature – the Iliad and Oedipus Rex – emphasizes the subjection of human life to what were perceived as forms of necessity to which human beings are vulnerable because of their ‘unthinking’ responses. How does Plato fit into this picture and what does he have to say about it? His view is that if one lacks moral knowledge or wisdom one will be inevitably subject to evil; and evil then, in the form of the ruthless exercise of power, insatiable greed, malice, envy, an obsession for revenge for some harm suffered, etc., becomes a form of necessity. Such a man, he argues, does not act with intent, and voluntarily, and so is a slave to the form of evil which has taken hold of his soul. When someone is at one with the good, in the moral necessity that informs his actions such a person is free: his actions come from him and he does what he wills. In contrast, when he is at one with evil or, at any rate, makes concessions to it he is in bondage: his actions do not come from him, for his will does not belong to him, it belongs to the evil that is in him.
