In the 5th century C.E. the Greek philosopher Proclus wrote that “the same argument that keeps the whole world perfect posits evil among beings.”
In the eighteenth century, the satirist Bernard Mandeville would inspire the economist Adam Smith with his poem describing a city where “every Part was full of Vice, Yet the whole Mass a Paradise.” Connecting these two distant thinkers is the claim that evil somehow contributes to the good of the whole. How can such an articulation of good and evil make sense? And how can studying such historical arguments be relevant to understanding our situation today?

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