Neoplatonic Virtue: Suicide, Dionysos and the Two Demiurgies
In order to understand the esoteric argument against suicide in the Phaedo ("according to the language of the mysteries, we are in a kind of custody"), we look to Proclus' distinction between two divine acitivites that sustains the cosmos, the "primary demiurgy" of the whole by Zeus and "the secondary demiurgy" of the parts by Dionysus, and we learn that Dionysus is the lord odf each human because our nous is Dionysian and that we should therefore not end our own lives because we belong to the cosmic plan and our mind is itself a partial version of that plan.
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