Comparison On The Thought Of Evil Between Plotinus And Augustine

Evil is a core issue of moral education, the purpose of moral education is going togive up evil and promote good,to train virtuous people is our aim. We hold differentattitudes about the nature of human from west culture, Chinese culture insist on thehuman nature is good，but the West holds the human nature is evil. Study the problemof evil is necessary to explore the origins of Western culture that is western theologicalthinking. Plotinus and Augustine is the opening of this idea in understanding of evil, theideal of them has a heritage of evolution. Their evil thought is a portal to understand theconcept of Western evil. From their thoughts we can get a self-reflection about humannature. Both of their ideas on behalf of the mainstream of ancient Western thought, butalso a necessary stage which stand the development of the modern Western conceptabout good and evil. Chinese culture has a strong inclusive, to study their evil thoughtsgive our socialist moral construction an important reference.This paper strive to explore Plotinus and Augustine’s Evil on virtue education, wediscover the essence from exploring the ins and outs of their evil thought. Plotinusattribute the material to evil, he points out that the human become evil only to their soulsee the materials. Augustine plays the idea of Plotinus “evil is lack of good”, heclassified evil as free will, people proudly abuse of free will away from God to becomeevil Plotinus and Augustine see the deep roots of evil even they are theists, but alsoenough to reflect deeply by ourselves on modern times. Both of them give us a profoundrevelation on how to make our human nature flash, how to avoid our own evil, and howto cultivate virtuous citizens.In the study mainly used the literature research method and comparison method,On the basis of reading and analyzing various of literature to carry out the detailedcomparison on their two evil thoughts. Take the background of their evil thoughts as thefirst step, the second part analyzes the main contents of two evil thoughts in-depth; thethird Part focuses on two idea’s commonalities and differences. Finally the last part points that the two ideas have certain significant reference for our moral constructionand happy life.