Plotinus describes evil as "non-being", associated with matter as formless and indeterminate. Evil is not an independent principle opposed to the Good or the One, but "the incidental consequence of there being a universe at all". Later Neoplatonic commentators and Christian Platonists drew on this account in developing privationist views of evil.

Ancient and medieval Christian thought

Neoplatonism was highly influential on Augustine of Hippo, with whom the privation theory is most closely associated in Christian theology. In

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