On Providence

“This is one of three short works Proclus wrote, all of which deal with questions about the problems of evil, providence and freedom…On Providence is written in the form of a letter. Proclus addresses someone called ‘Theodore the Engineer’, who had a very mechanistic view of the universe. Theodore basically seems to have thought everything in the cosmos works mechanistically, like clockwork, and ‘everything’ here includes human beings. On this view, there is no human free will, and humans cannot rightly be praised or blamed for anything they do. This is the view Proclus sets out to refute. Proclus argues that if we are to understand what is wrong with Theodore’s view, we have to distinguish rational souls from physical bodies, and relatedly, we have to distinguish between Providence and Fate.” Read more...

The best books on Neoplatonism

Ursula Coope, Philosopher