A. A. Long’s Ennead II.4: On Matter is, as of this writing, the most recent volume in Parmenides Publishing’s ongoing series that aims to provide faithful, accessible translations of individual tracts in Plotinus’s oeuvre alongside detailed commentaries that help both novice and expert come to appreciate Plotinus’s brilliant, albeit frequently opaque, thought. In II.4, Plotinus sets out his primary account of matter in response both to his philosophical predecessors and to his primary metaphysical commitments adumbrated in earlier tracts. II.4 is a demanding and often obscure early treatise (12th according to Porphyry; see 4.45, 4.66), which sets out Plotinus’s major claims about matter later taken up in coordinate texts, such as I.8 (which returns to II.4.16’s concluding claim that matter is “utterly bad”), II.5 (which fills in the lacuna in II.4 concerning matter’s essential potentiality), and III.6 (which elaborates on the impassibility of both matter and soul on account of their incorporeality). Despite the difficulty of the subject matter and characteristic terseness of Plotinus’s prose, the reader armed with Long’s translation and commentary will be well-equipped to understand Plotinus’s account of matter, to recognize how Plotinus intervenes in prior Greek discourse, and to appreciate the novel insights to which Plotinus comes. This volume will facilitate study of Plotinus’s account of matter and thereby will be of use to anyone interested in the development of the Platonic tradition or in the conceptual history of matter (see Long’s introduction for a history of Greek thought on matter up to Plotinus).
Since II.4 is less commonly studied than other tracts, especially by non-specialists, some discussion of its structure and main content is necessary to appreciate Long’s contribution, which largely takes the form of particular interventions in the literature and comparisons with other translations (especially Gerson 2018) in passing. Plotinus’s primary goal is to unearth the nature of “prime matter,” as distinct from “proximate matter.” Prime matter is the basically amorphous, intrinsically non-qualitative stuff that underlies all bodily beings as opposed to the already qualified and informed particular stuff that underlies particular bodily beings (the gold of which this ring is made, which already possesses certain properties prior to being given this particular shape). Plotinus’s main antagonists throughout are the Stoics, who wrongly take matter to be both corporeal and a quantitatively extended magnitude (cf. 128-129), and Aristotle, who wrongly takes matter and privation to be distinct (Long suggests that Plotinus’s goal is to defend Plato from Aristotle rather than to argue with contemporary Peripatetics; see 174-175).
Plotinus’s treatment begins in a brief “preamble” (ch. 1), with the recognition that matter is commonly, and rightly, taken to be a basically amorphous “substrate” and “receptacle” of forms (79). Plotinus next introduces, and seeks to defend against potential Platonist challenges (cf. 89-90), the idea of “intelligible matter” (the “prior” matter “There”), analogous to the matter (“here”) of perceptible bodies (chs. 2-5). This concept is, perhaps, original to Plotinus (cf. 86). Plotinus’s move is jarring at first glance, but Long rightly notes that it allows Plotinus to more swiftly show that the two types of matter both share this basic nature of “amorphous substrate” and that they are related as archetype and image, a point that will recur in a couple of key places (31). Afterward, Plotinus focuses his attention on the matter of perceptible bodies (chs. 6-16), first returning to the preceding intellectual landscape (chs. 6-8), then arguing that matter is intrinsically without magnitude or other quantitative features, just as it was generally taken to be without qualitative features (chs. 9-12), and finally showing that matter is essentially indefinite, privative, and therefore “utterly bad” (chs. 13-16).
As substrate, both types of matter have the role of receiving forms (whether qua form in the intelligible or qua image in the sensible) and uniting them. In the intelligible, matter always already gathers the forms into unity so that the intelligible can remain qualifiedly simple, whereas in the perceptible matter both serves as the locus for the collocation of all of the forms that pertain to this body as well as uniting all bodies within the living cosmos. (On the unifying role of both types of matter, Gurtler 2022, ch. 3 is clearer.) As Gurtler 2022, 86-87 notes, Plotinus’s account somewhat inverts the Aristotelian conception, for form is now taken as the principle of individuation, whereas matter provides the unity of the things individuated as a common substrate. Long supplies the essential reason for this inversion: only forms and logoi can be causes, since only they, unlike matter, can supply a reason why (115). The forms in the intelligible need a substrate also so that their activity is never ‘empty’ (99). If, further, the perceptible showcases all bodies as matter-form composites, and if the perceptible is an image of the intelligible, then the intelligible must, a fortiori, also have something that plays an analogous role to the matter of perceptible bodies (100). Unlike the matter of perceptible bodies, however, intelligible matter has no potentiality and thus the intelligible “composites” are not subject to change as are perceptible bodies (100-101). The two matters are alike in their receptivity but distinct in their characters, for the intelligible, always informed, is living and intelligent, whereas the matter “here” is akin to an “embellished corpse” since it is the substrate of images of reality rather than beings themselves (105). Likewise, unlike the matter “here,” which is, as we see by the end of the tract, “utterly bad,” intelligible matter, though intrinsically amorphous and thereby “not yet good,” has always already reverted back to the One and thus becomes good (107).
Long’s exposition of intelligible matter is clear and illuminating, and he does a good job motivating this seemingly strange move that Plotinus makes. One thing that would be useful, however, is some meaningful discussion (beyond the brief reference to Berkeley; see 140) of the legacy of Plotinus’s discussion of intelligible matter, especially if Plotinus’s move here is basically innovative, as Long thinks. Intelligible matter becomes the focal point of an important debate in medieval philosophy concerning the individuation of spiritual substances and thereby plays a role in the much larger conversation about the metaphysics of matter and individuation. The lines of transmission are admittedly unclear (i.e., we don’t see direct citations of Plotinus, but we do see citations of the thoroughly Plotinian Avicebron and Augustine). It seems plausible that intelligible matter is doing something for Plotinus analogous to what later medieval thinkers require of so-called “spiritual matter,” and so a discussion of this legacy would be germane to understanding Plotinus’s Wirkungsgeschichte.[1]
Following the discussion of intellectual matter, Plotinus recaps key features of Aristotle’s account of matter (ch. 6), notably omitting Aristotle’s focus on change since, for Plotinus, forms cannot transform from one into another but only kick each other out when they are opposed (109-111, 114; cf. Phaedo 103d); this is an important corrective to Armstrong’s translation (111). Plotinus next briefly resumes doxography (ch. 7); Long notes that doing so allows Plotinus to eliminate remaining competing accounts of the matter of perceptible bodies from Presocratic and Epicurean philosophers (117).[2] Further, Plotinus addresses Anaximander’s concept of the “unlimited” (apeiron), which is ultimately shown to be remarkably suitable for Plotinus’s account of matter “here,” despite the fact that earlier Greek thinkers mistakenly restrict apeiron to magnitudes and thus miss the way in which matter is the unlimited as such (123-124; cf. Gurtler 2022, 96-97). The intervening doxography thus plays an important role in moving the argument forward, contrary to many commentators’ claims that Plotinus here simply rehashes Aristotle’s doxography.
As we move into Plotinus’s focused discussion of matter “here,” two major claims remain to be demonstrated: first, that matter can no more have quantity than it has quality (contra Stoicism), and second, that matter is essentially privation (contra Aristotle). Aside from the possible invention of intelligible matter, these two points appear to be Plotinus’s biggest innovations (though see 164 on Plutarch). The basic gist for the first set of arguments is that since quantities have definite intelligible content just as qualities do, they must come from beings and logoi rather than from matter, which has no definition natively (or, indeed, ever). As Long shows, the first set of arguments allows Plotinus to bring out the curious epistemological status of matter as well as its possible relation to space (though this issue deserves longer treatment from both Long and Plotinus).[3] Long’s translation of onkos (ordinarily, “mass” or “bulk”) as “volume” is a useful corrective here as it makes good sense of the possibility of an onkos that is void. Concerning the epistemological status, Long’s use of the word “residue” to capture the way we apprehend matter through a kind of “bastard reasoning” (Timaeus 52b) when we mentally take away all of the intelligibility-giving form to see what remains in the composite is apt (138-139), as is his insistence that this still counts as an act of reasoning (140). Here, Gurtler’s exposition of Plotinus’s image of seeing the dark, which is the material of light, is helpful as a supplement to Long’s discussion (see Gurtler 2022, 101-102).
The final set of arguments concern Plotinus’s correction to Aristotle on the nature of privation: for Aristotle matter is contingently privative, whereas for Plotinus matter is essentially and irremediably privative (163). Two points are of particular interest. First, if matter’s essence is absolute privation, then the relationship between matter “here” and intelligible matter seems to invert the ordinary image/archetype relation, for ordinarily the image strives to be like the archetype but falls short, whereas here the image has the character at hand (indefiniteness) even more than the archetype does. Long is here incorrect, I think, to find this inference “fishy” (184; by contrast, Gurtler 2022, 110 takes it as “a perfectly consistent reversal”), though he does not spell out why he does. Second, if matter’s essence is absolute privation, then it must be “utterly bad” as it necessarily lacks all good and must fail to be affected by the presence of any good, even as it participates in the One in its mode (196, 198). Here, Long rightly claims, against many commentators, that we ought not be misled by Plotinus’s use of aesthetic and moral language into thinking that he is condemning matter’s badness as a kind of evil (200; cf. 38); it is neither morally nor ontologically evil, but only privatively, nor is it a productive cause of evil (cf. Gurtler 2022, 112, 118). To claim otherwise would be to run afoul of Plotinus’s most basic metaphysical principle: everything is good insofar as it is, for everything comes from a good source (28-29; cf. Schäfer 2004, 292). There is room to explore this latter issue in greater depth, looking toward both recent articulations of the problem (e.g., Opsomer 2022) and Plotinus’s influence on later philosophers, such as Augustine (cf., e.g., Di Silva 2018), especially since I.8, the locus of the most extreme formulations, admits of some softening (consider Plotinus’s language of inclination, neuein, alongside, e.g., City of God XIV.5).
A brief note on the text: the translation’s heading mistakenly identifies II.4 as the 10th tract chronologically rather than the 12th.
Bibliography
Armstrong, A. H., trans. 1966. Plotinus: Ennead II. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Baracat, José C. 2013. “The Concepts of Space in Plotinus.” Dispontos 10.2: 33-54.
Di Silva, M. F. “Plotinus and Augustine on Evil and Matter.” Archai 23: 205-227.
Gerson, Lloyd P., ed. 2018. Plotinus: The Enneads. Trans. George Boys-Stones, John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R. A. H. King, Andrew Smith, and James Wilberding. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gurtler, Gary M. 2022. From the Alien to the Alone: A Study of Soul in Plotinus. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.
Ninci, Marco. 2016. “Corporeal matter, indefiniteness and multiplicity: Plotinus’ critique of Epicurean atomism in tr. 12 (Enn. II 4) 7.20—8.” Plotinus and Epicurus: Matter, Perception, Pleasure. Eds. Angela Longo and Daniela Patrizia Taormina. New York: Cambridge University Press. 133-159.
Opsomer, Jan. 2022. “Matter and Evil.” The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Ed. Lloyd Gerson and James Wilberding. New York: Cambridge University Press. 341-362.
Perl, Eric D. 2014. Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition. Boston: Brill.
Schäfer, Christian. 2004. “Matter in Plotinus’s Normative Ontology.” Phronesis 49.3: 266-294.
Stepien, Tomasz. 2015. “Aquinas against spiritual matter.” Epekeina 6.2: 1-13.
Notes
[1] On the possible transmission of Plotinus, see, e.g., Stepien 2015. See also Perl 2014, 163 on how Aquinas, who denies spiritual matter, nevertheless tries to retain its function in individuating immaterial realities by articulating a composition of esse and essentia. In de spiritualibus creaturis 1, resp., Aquinas accepts that if by matter and form we really mean potency and act, then there can be “matter” in spiritual realities. On the issue of potency in the intelligible, see Perl 2014, 143-149.
[2] Some deny that II.4.7’s discussion of the atomists is meant to address the Epicureans as well as Democritus. In addition to Long’s comments ad loc., see Ninci 2016.
[3] Long and Gurtler both suggest that matter ought not be understood as space but instead as the condition of possibility thereof (136, 141; cf. Gurtler 2022, 6). Baracat 2013 gives a more thorough account of Plotinus on space.