More on providence: the theodicy from Plato’s Laws. Plato doesn’t say the divine punishes or spites people for failing to be as virtuous as they could be. Instead, he says the cosmic ruler figures out where people with less-than-perfect characters in this life are most likely to succeed in the next one, and makes sure that’s where they end up. Didn’t make it as a good human? No problem—in the next round, maybe you can make it as a good bird or fish. The idea is that the cosmos has been set up so that we’re always given a chance to excel, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of being a part of a process of making everything as good as possible.

“Athenian: This. When the ruler of the cosmos saw that all our actions are ensouled, and that in them there is much virtue and much vice, and that soul and body, once they came into existence, were indestructible—for, had either of them been destroyed, there would never have been a generation of animals—, but they were not eternal like the customary gods, and when he saw by how much the good of the soul is always by nature beneficial, and the evil harmful—when he saw all these things, he determined where, if placed, each individual would make virtue victorious and vice defeated in the universe. And he made it so that, depending on what we are like, we must make our home always in a certain abode and ever in certain places. The causes of becoming the way we are, however, he left to our individual choices. For how we desire and what our soul is like—in just about every case, all of us for the most part come to be the way we are by this.”

ΑΘ. Ὧδε. ἐπειδὴ κατεῖδεν ἡμῶν ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐμψύχους οὔσας τὰς πράξεις ἁπάσας καὶ πολλὴν μὲν ἀρετὴν ἐν αὐταῖς οὖσαν, πολλὴν δὲ κακίαν, ἀνώλεθρον δὲ ὂν γενόμενον, ἀλλ' οὐκ αἰώνιον, ψυχὴν καὶ σῶμα, καθάπερ οἱ κατὰ νόμον ὄντες θεοί – γένεσις γὰρ οὐκ ἄν ποτε ἦν ζῴων ἀπολομένου τούτοιν θατέρου – καὶ τὸ μὲν ὠφελεῖν ἀεὶ πεφυκός, ὅσον ἀγαθὸν ψυχῆς, διενοήθη, τὸ δὲ κακὸν βλάπτειν· ταῦτα πάντα συνιδών, ἐμηχανήσατο ποῦ κείμενον ἕκαστον τῶν μερῶν νικῶσαν ἀρετήν, ἡττωμένην δὲ κακίαν, ἐν τῷ παντὶ παρέχοι μάλιστ' ἂν καὶ ῥᾷστα καὶ ἄριστα. μεμηχάνηται δὴ πρὸς πᾶν τοῦτο τὸ ποῖόν τι γιγνόμενον ἀεὶ ποίαν ἕδραν δεῖ μεταλαμβάνον οἰκίζεσθαι καὶ τίνας ποτὲ τόπους· τῆς δὲ γενέσεως τοῦ ποίου τινὸς ἀφῆκε ταῖς βουλήσεσιν ἑκάστων ἡμῶν τὰς αἰτίας. ὅπῃ γὰρ ἂν ἐπιθυμῇ καὶ ὁποῖός τις ὢν τὴν ψυχήν, ταύτῃ σχεδὸν ἑκάστοτε καὶ τοιοῦτος γίγνεται ἅπας ἡμῶν ὡς τὸ πολύ.

Plato, Laws 904A6–C4