Plato’s concept of necessity differs from ours. What is by necessity is without nous or intellect. Necessary causes can act contrary to intelligible causes. What is fixed and unchanging cannot serve as the cause of a world of change, contingency, and chance. It should be noted how often necessity occurs in this story. The various cases helps to give us a better sense of the scope of what necessity means and what it entails — Fooloso4
...there is really intelligence behind the scene which creates the appearance of random chance for all those being selected from, and only a distinct class of people are privy to that information. — Metaphysician Undercover
619d He was one of those who had come down from heaven, having lived his previous life in an orderly constitution, sharing in virtue through habit but without philosophy.
Generally speaking, not the least number of the people caught out in this way were souls who came from heaven, and so were untrained in sufferings. The majority of those from the earth, on the other hand, because they had suffered themselves and had seen others doing so, were in no rush to make their choices.
Unlike most souls who made their choice based upon the habits of the previous life, (620a) Odysseus now chooses a life of moderation. The suggestion seems to be that although he has chosen last he is an example of someone who has attained phronesis, someone who engaged in philosophy, consistently, in a sound manner. — Fooloso4
620d.Remembering its former sufferings, it rejected love of honor, and went around for a long time looking for the life of a private individual who did his own work, and with difficulty it found one lying offsomewhere neglected by the others. When it saw it, it said that it would have done the same even if it had drawn the first-place lot, and chose it gladly.
[emphasis added]What we call "the laws of nature" present us with one's "lot in life", the circumstances of one's being, and this is presented by Plato as random chance, with some sort of "necessity" lurking beneath it, which drives it. That sense of "necessity" is some how comparable, or related to the "necessity" which is "the means to an end", but the relation is not really intelligible to those people involved in that discussion because they have a primitive understanding about the laws of nature and determinist forces. — Metaphysician Undercover
In the eponymous dialogue Timaeus he identifies two kinds of cause, intelligence and necessity, that is, Nous and Ananke. Given the earlier emphasis in the Republic on the Forms, the introduction of ananke is both surprising and significant. Here at the end we must, by necessity, begin again. Forms and their imperfect images do not tell the whole of the story. — Fooloso4
[ emphasis added]In the Timaeus Plato presents an elaborately wrought account of the formation of the universe and an explanation of its impressive order and beauty.
The universe, he proposes, is the product of rational, purposive, and beneficent agency. It is the handiwork of a divine Craftsman (“Demiurge,” dêmiourgos, 28a6) who, imitating an unchanging and eternal model, imposes mathematical order on a preexistent chaos to generate the ordered universe (kosmos).
The governing explanatory principle of the account is teleological: the universe as a whole as well as its various parts are so arranged as to produce a vast array of good effects. For Plato this arrangement is not fortuitous, but the outcome of the deliberate intent of Intellect (nous), anthropomorphically represented by the figure of the Craftsman who plans and constructs a world that is as excellent as its nature permits it to be. — SEP - Plato's Timaeus
Plato’s concept of necessity differs from ours. What is by necessity is without nous or intellect. Necessary causes can act contrary to intelligible causes. — Fooloso4
Thus it is not possible to deceive or elude the mind of Zeus. For not even Iapetus’ son, guileful34 Prometheus, escaped his heavy wrath, but by necessity a great bond holds him down, shrewd though he be. — Hesiod, Theogony, 613, translated by Glenn W. Most
Each soul chooses a daimon and also a pattern of life. (617e) The daimon is the guardian of that life. (620d) Nothing is said about choosing a daimon, on what basis it is chosen, or how closely it reflects the soul that chooses it. — Fooloso4
“So when all the souls had chosen their lives, according to the draw they approached Lachesis in order and she gave each the spirit (daimon) they had chosen to escort them as protector through their lives and as fulfiller of their choices. — ibid. 620d
Night bore loathsome Doom and black Fate and Death, and she bore Sleep, and she gave birth to the tribe of Dreams. Second, then, gloomy Night bore Blame and painful Distress, although she had slept with none of the gods, and the Hesperides, who care for the golden, beautiful apples beyond glorious Ocean and the trees bearing this fruit. And she bore (a) Destinies and (b) pitilessly punishing Fates, (a) Clotho (Spinner) and Lachesis (Portion) and Atropos (Inflexible), who give to mortals when they are born both good and evil to have, and (b) who hold fast to the transgressions of both men and gods; and the goddesses never cease from their terrible wrath until they give evil punishment to whoever commits a crime. Deadly Night gave birth to Nemesis (Indignation) too, a woe for mortal human beings; and after her she bore Deceit and Fondness and baneful Old Age, and she bore hard-hearted Strife. — ibid. 211
I don't see where Plato's concept differs from ours. — Amity
(889b-c) Emphasis added.Fire, water, earth and air all exist by nature and chance, they say, and none of these exist by artifice. And the bodies that then come after these, those of the earth, sun, moon and stars, have come into being through these four, entirely soulless entities. They move by chance, each according to its particular power, in such a way that they come together, combining somehow with their own, hot with cold, dry with moist, soft with hard and so on for any mixture of opposites that is produced, of necessity, according to chance. In this way, based upon these processes the whole heaven has come into existence and everything under heaven, including animals and indeed all the plants too, and from these all the seasons have arisen, not through intelligence, they say, or through the agency of a god, or through artifice, but, according to them, through nature and chance.
The relationship between the choosing and the daimon seems to be an assignment by a daughter of Necessity:
“So when all the souls had chosen their lives, according to the draw they approached Lachesis in order and she gave each the spirit (daimon) they had chosen to escort them as protector through their lives and as fulfiller of their choices.
— ibid. 620d — Paine
When the souls arrived, they had to go straight to Lachesis. A sort of spokesman 29 first arranged them in ranks; then, taking lots and models of lives from the lap of Lachesis, he mounted a high platform, and said:
“The word of Lachesis, maiden daughter of Necessity! Ephemeral souls. The beginning of another death-bringing cycle for mortal-kind! Your daimon will not be assigned to you by lot; you will choose him.
The one who has the first lot will be the first to choose a life to which he will be bound by necessity.
Virtue has no master: as he honors or dishonors it, so shall each of you have more or less of it. Responsibility lies with the chooser; the god is blameless.”
After saying that, the spokesman threw the lots out among them all, and each picked up the one that fell next to him—except for Er, who was not allowed. And to the one who picked it up, it was clear what number he had drawn. After that again the spokesman placed the models of lives on the
ground before them—many more of them than those who were present.
Note 29: Prophêtês: a prophet. Here in the sense of someone who speaks on behalf of a god.
[emphasis added]620d When all the souls had chosen lives, in the same allotted order they went forward to Lachesis. She assigned to each the daimon it had chosen, as guardian of its life and fulfiller of its choices. This daimon first led the soul under the hand of Clotho as it turned the revolving spindle, thus ratifying the allotted fate it had chosen.
After receiving her touch, he led the soul to the spinning of Atropos, to make the spun fate irreversible. Then, without turning around, it went under the throne of Necessity. When it had passed through that, and when the others had also passed through, they all traveled to the plain of Lethe, through burning and choking and terrible heat, for it was empty of trees and earthly vegetation. — As above
This does not make sense to me. If people were in heaven, then they will already have been judged as good. Even if their virtue is through habit, it is part of their character, formed and informed by life experience and doesn't mean 'without philosophy'. — Amity
'untrained in sufferings' — Amity
(329e)... for they say that wealthy people have consolation in abundance.
(331b)Indeed, the possession of wealth has a major role to play in ensuring that one does not cheat or deceive someone intentionally ...
No academic philosophers required. — Amity
(64a)... all who actually engage in philosophy aright are practising nothing other than dying and being dead.
(617e)... each will have more of her or less of her, as he honours her or dishonours her.
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