Zoroastrian Philosophy: Dualism, Evil, and Greek Influence

Good explains that Zoroastrianism posits two divine beings, Ohrmazd (good) and Ahriman (the contrary, evil), with history structured into creation, mixture, and a final separation. The one-time resurrection, rather than a cycle, gives the tradition a built-in optimism that evil will ultimately be removed.

Good distinguishes Mani's view, where light and dark are two infinitely large physical substances mixed together, from the Zoroastrian view, which includes both physical and spiritual substances. He notes that a Neoplatonist, Alexander of Lycopolis, compared Mani's physics to Stoic physics because both allow bodies to mix completely.

Good presents a Zoroastrian argument that if body and soul are fully separate substances, as Manichaeans hold, repentance makes no sense: the soul cannot repent for the body's acts, and a body that repented on its own would have to change its essentially bad nature into good, which neither side accepts as possible.

Good recounts Mardan Farrokh's doctor-and-patient analogy, which argues that a God who is the sole source of good and evil either reduces people to mere means, makes the world valueless, or gives sufferers no rational basis to trust his goodness. Adamson summarizes this as forcing a choice between denying God's goodness or his omnipotence, which Zoroastrians resolve by positing a second principle.

Good describes Mardan Farrokh's parable of a gardener who lures the evil principle into the physical world as a trap, letting it exhaust itself before expelling it for good. A modal argument backs this up: destroying or transforming evil's essential substance would count among impossible actions, like creation from nothing, that not even an omnipotent god can perform.

Good describes a Zoroastrian soul-body dualism, with an intangible sentient soul directing an insentient body like a rider on a horse. This picture gets complicated because the four elements derive from primary qualities split between the good and evil principles, so the physical world ends up thoroughly mixed rather than simply evil.

Good cites Dēnkard 4's naming of Ptolemy's Almagest and Sanskrit works, plus the presence of exiled Athenian Neoplatonists like Priscian at the Sasanian court, as direct evidence of Greek and Indian material entering Zoroastrian intellectual culture. This marks Sasanian Iran as a crossroads linking Greek, Indian, and Islamic philosophy.

Adamson and Good discuss how Zoroastrian texts argued against Manichaeans and Muslim theologians using rational, often Greek-derived tools rather than scripture alone. They agree this built a culture of cross-religious philosophical debate that never produced agreement, since each side turned the same methods toward opposing conclusions.