Is There More Than One Generation of Matter in the Enneads

Is There More than One Generation of Matter in the "Enneads"?Author(s): Kevin CorriganSource: Phronesis, Vol. 31, No. 2 (1986), pp. 167-181Published by: BrillStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182253Accessed: 22-05-2016 22:16 UTC

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Is there more than one Generation of Matter in the Enneads?

KEVIN CORRIGAN

There has been some controversy, which has not yet been resolved, con-

cerning the generation of the matter of the physical universe in the En-

neads. In an early article O'Brien argued that the partial soul generates

matter.' This was later rejected by Schwyzer.2 By interpreting the protasis

of a crucial sentence in I, 8, 14 (51-53: xaL yC' dQ aELciT i VpvXi% Tljv i5Xrkv ~yEvvrIoE JuaOofjoa, xcai EL EXOLVWVfJlOEV cUvTn xCi syeviVTo xaxiq, in i5XrT atiTa naQo1vaa) as an unreal condition, Schwyzer argued that matter was

eternal and ungenerated. Other relevant passages, he maintained, were all ambiguous, but could be more readily explained as referring to the genera-

tion of body. For Schwyzer, then, there is no generation of matter in the Enneads.

In the present article I shall first attempt to settle this basic debate. Then I

shall go on to argue that the whole question is more complicated than has

been recognized. Plotinus has more than one view of the generation of

matter. In fact, it is possible to argue that there are three different genera-

tions of the matter of the physical universe in the Enneads. Finally, I shall suggest that to regard sensible matter as a static substratum will just not do

for all of Plotinus' thinking.3 Certain passages compel us to the view that

I "Plotinus on Evil, a study of matter and the soul in Plotinus' conception of human evil", Le Neoplatonisme, Paris 1971, 114-146. An earlier version appeared in the Downside Review, 87 (1969) 68-110.

2 "Zu Plotins Deutung der sogenannten Platonischen Materie", Zetesis (Festschrift E. de Strijker), Antwerp 1973, 266-280.

3 This static conception of matter is implicit in O'Brien's recent interpretation of IV, 8, 6, 18-23, "Plotinus and the Gnostics on the Generation of Matter", in Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought, eds., H.J. Blumenthal and R.A. Markus, London, 1981. IV, 8, 6, 18-23 distinguishes two hypotheses concerning matter: either matter existed always and was capable of participation or its generation followed necessarily upon the causes before it and (according to the interpretation of O'Brien, p. 110) was incapable of participation. Since in O'Brien's view, sensible matter cannot participate, the first hypothesis must refer to intelligible matter and the second to sensible matter. I shall argue below that this is mistaken and that both hypotheses can refer to sensible matter.

Phronesis 1986. Vol. XXXJ12 (Accepted December 1985) 167


matter may be more profitably viewed in (at least) two different ways,

simultaneously as a continuum and as an infinite field of discontinuity.

Our first question must be: is matter generated by the partial soul? There

is one major text, not discussed by Schwyzer, which is conclusive. At the

close of V, 2 Plotinus asks if the soul which comes to be in plants generates

anything: and he answers: 'that in which it is'. The end of this treatise looks

forward to III, 4, 1 where the sense of 'that in which it is' is developed. Soul

is present in plants and has, so to speak, become isolated (olov Ro6vn yevoivr). It generates something entirely different from itself. What is generated has no life. "Just as everything which was produced before this

was produced shapeless, but was formed by turning to its producer and

being, so to speak, reared to maturity by it, so here too that which is

produced (6o yEvvqOEv) is not any more a form of soul . . . but absolute indefiniteness (aoQtcTCtv . . . navTAX)" .4 We need no clearer evidence than this to refute Schwyzer's contention. In whatever way we are to

understand it, an isolated or partial soul does generate matter in 111, 4, 1. In

fairness to Schwyzer, however, it should be pointed out that of all the texts

adduced by O'Brien as evidence for the generation of matter Ill, 4, 1 (upon

which O'Brien does not base his argument and which he only cites en

passant in a footnote) is the only text which yields conclusive proof, without

need of further argument, of matter's generation.5

Trans. A.H. Armstrong (Plotinus [Loeb] London, 1966).

Cf. O'Brien (1971), p. 128, n. 6. See also O'Brien (1981), p. 121, n. 19, which refers us

to a forthcoming monograph (La matiere et le mal humain) for discussion. The texts are as follows: V, 2, 1, 18-17, the soul in its lowest descent makes &t6otaotv 6kXrv . . .

zrQO0IW@ TO1V XeiQOV0; V, 1, 7, 47-48, the soul generates what is necessarily worse than

itself; II, 3, 18, 10-13, the soul is a notOlUg EOxaCog. In each of these texts it is not clear what is generated, body or matter. In IV, 3, 9, 20-26 the soul generates place, body, but

only by implication, the darkness. Finally, III, 9, 3, upon which O'Brien places the

weight of his argument, is indeed ambiguous, as Schwyzer claims. Here Plotinus states

that when soul inclines to itself, it makes what comes after it, non-being (10-13: nt(0g aWtTTV yLQ ,ovXosErvvn Tlo jET' am 'V 3EOLELbwXova lcvTrf;, TO Rd Ov). I would propose that this does not refer simply either to matter (O'Brien's view) or body (Schwyzer's

view), but rather to matter as a field of indefiniteness pertaining to soul in which body will

be shaped at a logically later stage (cf. 15-16: naJtXv &E tbouoa oLov 6EUTi( iqOOIkXi TrO ei6wXov ?6Q4'OT' xai o0aoa ?Qerat riS mYt6). But this cannot be proved con-

clusively from III, 9, 3 alone, since, immediately following Plotinus' statement that soul

makes non-being, he adds "and the image of this is the indefinite altogether dark" (12-13:

xaL TOUTOV To EtIbWkOV Tr6 60'rlov l6vm OXOTELVOv). (1) If instead of Toi'Tov in line 12, we read ToiTO with Kirchhoff or (2) if rOi'TOu refers to the soul (as Henry-Schwyzer suggest in the critical apparatus), then there is no question that the partial soul makes

matter. However, it cannot be demonstrated (without appeal to a larger context) that

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There are, however, at least three texts which compel us to modify even

this account of the partial soul's generation of matter. The first Il, 5, 5,

10-22 has been taken by Schwyzer6 to corroborate his own theory that

matter is not generated; the second, II, 4, 5, 28-39, has been entirely

overlooked; the third, I, 8, 14, 51-53, misinterpreted.7 In my view, II, 5, 5

strongly implies three eternal, but logically progressive, stages of what must

ultimately be sensible matter. II, 4, 5 seems to demand, unless we emend

the text, that sensible matter is generated as an implicit consequence of the

first movement or otherness from the One; and I, 8, 14 requires that matter

be generated by the pure soul. Let us first examine the evidence and then

see whether or not these different views are compatible with each other and

with IIl, 4, 1.

In II, 5, 5 Plotinus appears to deny the generation of matter altogether.

Matter is said to be ungenerated (15, oivTE sy'vETo), it always is "what it

was from the beginning" (12-13). It is "as if cast out and utterly separated"

(11-12) from the Intelligible. "When the realities of the intelligible world

had already come to an end it appeared and was caught by the things that

came into being after it and took its place as the last after these too. So,

being caught by both, it could belong actually to neither class of realities; it

is only left for it to be potentially a sort of weak and dim phantasm unable to

receive a shape"8 (17-22: TOv b' 0vtwv T(Vi1 sawoa?vwv EXbLVwv (xaVEiGa

it0 TE TCiV [rET' av'iv yEvo0Evwv xaTaX?O?E!oa ECXCETov xai toTOTwV XaQTFOt1. 'Y7t' POTEeO)V oiUv xataX'0Eij a EVE(YEiC >Ev oiV6sQ(wV av LTI, bUvcqtEL be iovov EyXaTaXEXEL3tTaL avcaL do0EvCg Tt xai &RtU6p6v Ei6&Aov pioQ4pofoOaL .Lt bvva6iEvov).

Firstly, it is natural to suppose, in the context of II, 5, 5, and on evidence

from elsewhere in the Enneads, that oi5TE ?Ey'vEEo is a denial of temporal generation. Matter is timelessly generated.9 However, the description of

Plotinus is not speaking of two images of non-being here and that TOiV'To refers to the first and higher image, which will have to be then understood as non-being pertaining to body. In other words, the whole passage is much too complicated to yield the conclusive results which O'Brien requires. Instead, a new approach must be found to settle the question.

6 Schwyzer (note 2) pp. 275-277.

For a history of the interpretation of this passage see O'Brien (1971), pp. 135-138. 8 Trans. Armstrong. 9 (1) In II, 4, 5, 25-28 Plotinus indicates the sense in which an intelligible principle can be said to be generated. It is generated in the sense that it has an originating principle (T6

&zXhv EXELV), ungenerated in the sense that it does not have its principle in time (otL piq XQOV(p Qv xiv 9XEL, &X' &6i 7rQa' aAXkou). Although this applies to intelligible matter, I propose that it must also apply to lower, pre-cosmic matter. On this see further

169


what must ultimately be sensible matter is very curious, since there are at

least two, and implicitly three, eternal, but logically progressive, moments

of its unfolding or realization: firstly, matter had to be expelled, cast out

from the Intelligible, thereby implying some sort of initial participation.

Even if we cavil at the oLov in oLov ExQtLOaoa, still Plotinus states with all clarity that matter has been apprehended by both universes, Intelligible and

Sensible, and even that it has "gone out of True Being" (28, ExIXEP4ixo6 Toi6 &kXi0id EvVaL); secondly, matter appeared at the end of intelligible reality

prior to the generation of the physical universe. This is pre-cosmic matter;'0

and thirdly, matter is the final substrate of sensible objects. This is cosmic

or sensible matter. It would seem necessary, therefore, to suppose that the

matter of the sensible universe (in its priority to the things of the time)

includes in itself an eternally progressive unfolding of its nothingness which

commences in some sort of participation in Intelligible reality. If this is so, it

is a real question how matter's expulsion from the Intelligible is compatible

with its generation by the partial soul. Perhaps the best way to start

answering this question is to suggest two other viewpoints on the generation

of matter in the Enneads.

In II, 4, 5, 24-39 Plotinus is discussing intelligible matter and its genera-

tion, but the passage cannot be fully understood, I suggest, if a reference to

the pre-cosmic matter of the physical world is not included. In the intelligi-

ble universe otherness exists always, which produces matter. The otherness

which is from the First is undefined and needs to convert to the First in

order to be defined (28-34). "But before the turning, matter, too, was

undefined and the other and not yet good, but unilluminated from the First.

For if light comes from the First, then that which receives the light, before it

receives it has everlastingly no light; but it has light as other than itself, since

my argument below re II, 4, 5, 28-39. (2) In the history of the interpretation of the two

hypotheses of matter in IV, 8, 6, 18-23 (see note 3 above) it has been thought by Rist

(Plotinus, The Road to Reality (Cambridge 1967) pp. 118-119; "Plotinus on Matter and Evil", Phronesis 6 (1961) 154-11) and by Henry (Les Sources de Plotin, (Vandoeuvres-

Geneve 1957) pp. 236-237) that the second hypothesis (that matter's generation followed necessarily upon the causes before it) refers to temporal creation and that it is not Plotinus' own view. However, as Rist himself has pointed out, the verb ixokou8ioEv (line 20) is peculiarly appropriate to the results of the emanation process viewed dynamically (Plotinus p. 119). This is confirmed by the use ofhaQaxokoOrfiv in a similar

context in II, 9, 3, 17-18, where Plotinus argues that even if matter must follow from prior realities, "the necessity is there now as well", which must mean that matter is an eternal consequence of a timeless generation.

10 Pre-cosmiic matter is also the 'darkness' of IV, 3, 9, 23-25, the 'non-being' of III, 9, 3, 9-14, and the beggar-matter/Poverty of !, 8, 14, 35-40 ('iUt in line 35 is to be preferred to Henry-Schwyzer'suiXk).

170


the light comes to it from something else"' (34-37: 3tQv be a'OQ6LTTov xcl fj

5Xl xcl To ETEov xQOV oXrw M yaO6v, &XX' W XOTLCTOV eXLov. Et yzE' rtcQ'

bXELVOU TO 4@5, TO &EXOREVOV T6O 4d, Q'LV 6ctoOal, 45 OiUX 'EXEL &?1 6XXaz aXo ov EXt, cFluQ T6o +X5g caQ' daXov). Immediately following this, Plotinus cuts himself short with the admission that more than was

fitting has been disclosed about the matter in the intelligibles.

The difficulty of this passage consists in the meaning of a&i at line 37.

How can the recipient everlastingly have no light? Accordingly, Volkmann

altered &EL to &Xrl0Lvov12, but this is impossible since matter cannot have

an illumination before it receives it. Dodds thought that either akti or nQtv bUaaOOL was meaningless." He, therefore, inserted i before &L' and

understood EXEL in the new phrase Ti 6EL EXEL. However, although it is true that Plotinus is on the point of incoherence and that the condition of

everlastingly having no light in such a context is without parallel in the

Enneads, the manuscript reading is, I believe, to be preferred; for the

condition of everlastingly having no light can only be that of the total

darkness of lower14 matter. Although the sentence is incoherent if we think

of formed intelligible matter alone, it does make sense if we understand that

lower matter is also implicitly included in the reference; for it is precisely

the characteristic of lower matter that it is a recipient eternally in the state of

being before receiving (or in the language of II, 5, 5, a recipient remaining

potential to everything, in the language of III, 6, an impassible indeter-

minateness which receives without receiving). In other words, there is a

duality present in the very notion of matter from the beginning. On the one

hand, intelligible matter is perfectly comprehended by form in being

defined; it enters into its own intelligible duality and has light as another. In

the language of V, 3, 11, 7-8 "it came out having grasped another in itself

and having made itself multiple" (EiiOAE 6b 6XXo Xapoikoa 'Ev aruTm a'TO nokXi noL'aa1a). On the other hand, indefiniteness as such, present from

the beginning, only discloses itself by eternally falling below the level of

form and multiplicity. It has no life and can only become an "adorned corpse" in the sensible universe (II, 4, 5, 18). That the ambiguity inherent

in the notion of indefiniteness and of being without light remains implicit

perhaps reflects the fact that at this stage of the argument it is only an

Trans. Armstrong. The italics are mine. 12 See Henry-Schwyzer, critical apparatus ad loc. 13 E.R. Dodds, "Plotiniana", CQ 16 (1922) p. 94. 14 Since, as I have shown above, the matter of the physical world is also the matter which will be of the physical world (i.e. matter is both cosmic and pre-cosmic), I shall use the phrase "lower matter", wherever appropriate, to retain both significations.

171


implicit consequence.'5 This may also help to explain why Plotinus should

immediately cut his argument short with the admission that he has said

more than was fitting about the matter in the intelligibles. For we must

remember that what is everlastingly unlit is a pre-cosmic matter at this stage

in, or at the bottom of, the intelligible world.

Two further points will help to corroborate my argument. In chapter 5

generally Plotinus is not discussing a disembodied intelligible universe, but

rather the totality of intelligibilia and sensibilia considered together, and

even open to the analysis of the discursive intellect (4-7). This viewpoint,

therefore, of pre-cosmic/cosmic matter as the ultimate darkness at the

bottom of any object is the natural viewpoint of the chapter. Secondly,

Plotinus explicitly states that the only difference between intelligible and

sensible matter is "by just as much as the form superimposed on both is

different" (14-15: 6oa xaic Tl OE1o8g no FitLXE(VoV %L40oiv bta6 oeov). It will be natural, therefore, to accept that what receives light but

everlastingly has no light is lower matter, and that this is generated in 11, 4, 5

as an implicit consequence of the first movement from the One. We appear,

then, to have found another generation of lower matter, higher than that of the partial soul, in the Enneads. However, Plotinus' viewpoint in II, 4, 5 is

very different from that of II, 5, 5. II, 4, 5 gives us to understand that pre-

cosmic matter is somehow implicitly included in the indefiniteness gener-

ated by otherness (to the degree that it eternally falls below the level of

form), but it does not help at all in explaining why lower matter should be expelled from the Intelligible. But before we can consider this question, we

must take cognizance of yet another generation of lower matter in the

somewhat vexed passage I, 8, 14, 51-54.

Plotinus has been arguing that it is matter, and not soul, which is the

cause of soul's weakness and of vice. He concludes his argument and then

adds the following: xai yat (i E&i a i I' V IX V VXIV E'yEwVVIoc naOoivoa, xa avli xai 6yEVeTo xaxE , iX OVT1 aU(ta nQova ov ya Cv EyEVETo Erg CETTqv Ii TIn 3tCQOU0ULq CUTT tTv yEVEOLV kaX3oi,ca. Schwyzer argues that the condition is unreal, i.e. Plotinus implies that it is not the case that soul generated matter.'6 We should, therefore, translate the protasis: "even if soul herself had" or "were to have generated matter etc." On the other hand, as O'Brien originally pointed out," in an unreal

15 For a similar ambiguity in relation to the One, the intelligible object and Intellect see my "Plotinus, Enneads V, 4, 2 and related passages. A New Interpretation of the Status of the Intelligible Object" (forthcoming in Hermes). 16 Schwyzer (see note 2) pp. 275-277.

17 O'Brien (1971) p. 136.

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condition we might expect jv or av i'jv in the apodosis. In the absence of either expression, it is easier to supply the simple verb. O'Brien argues

further that the introductory particles, xai ya6Q, stress an admitted fact and that the participle naOov6aa does not mean that the soul is subject to an evil

affection. This last statement, however, he does not clarify. On O'Brien's

interpretation we would translate: "in fact if soul herself generated matter etc.", implying that soul did generate matter.

I propose that we can prove the condition to be real if we show: (1) that even if the condition is presumed unreal, it nonetheless entails Plotinus'

position; (2) that from its context and from other passages in the Enneads

the protasis in its present form does represent Plotinus' own thought. Accordingly, I shall start by asking what Plotinus means if the condition is unreal.

Central to the understanding of chapter 14 is the theory that illumination

must be looked at in two ways: as source, illumination remains pure and

self-dependent (38-40: xai aQ' ov3 [tEv E'XaX6?1ETaL OV buvaaTat XacEiv ov , , ,3 % ,~ , , t e c

ya aVEXETaL afrilv exErvo xatOL naQouaav, OT 6 o &g a xaxlv); as illumination descending to an effect, the presence of the effect has to be the

cause of the illumination of the effect and of the darkening of the illumina-

tion (40-43: Ti1v 6U ERXa4vLV xatl T0 XEiWEV 4xi5 E'CXOTOYE Tfi [R'tEL xaL daoOEv;g nEn?toXE Tp V yEVEOLV aclTTI jTaQacoXaa xaL TT1v aLTLav ToU Ea V aiaqv OA v orE yO' av IjOE Tp , taq6vtL). Let us apply this understanding to I, 8, 14, 51-54. If the condition is unreal, we must presume

that it describes an extreme case, the fall of soul itself, a soul which

generates matter and becomes evil in its association with matter, which

association will be implicitly connected with the information and generation of the physical universe. This would correspond to the evil/irrational

world soul theory of Plutarch and Atticus, or of the Gnostics,"8 and might claim to be one interpretation of Plato,19 opposed to Plotinus' own belief. Plotinus would then be understood to argue that even if we adopt the

hypothesis of a world soul which becomes irrational, or at least of some soul which is primarily responsible for the evil in the world, this hypothesis must

18 On Plutarch and Atticus see Proclus, In Tim I, 381, 26-382, 13. For the eternal, independent, irrational soul as a cosmic soul or as in some sense 'thrust from above' see Plutarch, Proc. An. 1014 A-1015 F, De Is. et Os. 373 A-B. For Plotinus' criticism of the Gnostics see II, 9.

19 Laws X, 896 Cff.; 898 C; 904 A. For the problem of the status of evil in Plato generally see P. Merlan ("Greek Philosophy from Plato to Plotinus") in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy, ed. A.H. Armstrong, Cambridge 1967, pp. 25-26.

173


nonetheless be dismissed, since the prior and ultimate cause of soul's

declination anyway will have to be traced to the presence of matter. We

may start from pure soul and end up with an evil soul in matter, but the

cause of the evil must logically be traced to the ultimate effect, the field of

matter's influence, not the universe of discourse pertaining to the pure soul.

Hence, the Plutarch-Atticus theory is self-annihilating; it entails Plotinus'

own position.

A further point will help to support this thesis. The complete argument of

I, 8, 14, 25-54 treats of two kinds of priority. In the earlier lines (25-51)

Plotinus assumes that matter is present from the beginning alongside soul20

and he concludes with a statement of matter's priority as evil over soul (50-

51: lQO6TEQOV aia xaxTj alnt7i xai 3Q(rOV xaxov). In order to complete his own argument, therefore, Plotinus must also take account of soul's priority

over matter, specifically its generation of, and supposed responsibility for,

matter. But this is only necessary to answer all objections if he believes in

the generation of matter. If he does not, he has only to say so.

If this is so, and if the notion of a soul somehow primarily responsible for

evil is logically self-defeating, then surely Plotinus himself can already hold

(within his own thought) the theory of soul generating matter and becoming

evil because of matter's causal presence. Any ambiguity in the sentences

under discussion will arise precisely because Plotinus' position is already

more comprehensive than that of Plutarch-Atticus. In fact, the notion that

the pure soul generates matter is already implicit in an earlier treatise, IV, 3, 9, 12-26, where the coming to be of matter/darkness is a consequence of the perfect illumination of the world soul at rest in itself, which sees the

darkness and shapes it (23-26: tij b" oTadoEwg Cn'TTIg Ev awITf TY oCt6oEl OtOVEi Q(WVVUL,EVg OLOV 7[o0i, 4)O ixXVav ?i' axn oi; toe; Eoxto TOV 7VQO% (oXOTog iyLVETO, O3tEQ t6ouoa V X'pV, EnEL;EQ UtEOTT, [toQ4woEv aw'to).

But how can soul itself generate matter in experiencing some affection? Earlier in the chapter Plotinus has stated that the pure soul remains impassible and does not see matter (14, 39-40). Can the two statements be reconciled? It seems necessary that two different points of view are in- volved. In the earlier lines Plotinus contrasts the pure soul with the progressively darkened illumination which is the fall of soul. In lines 51-52 the discourse focusses instead upon the descending soul; and since it is of

the essence of soul to be both indivisible and divisible, it is not precluded

that the soul which is to proceed (as opposed to the other sense in which

20 Cf. I, 8, 14, 34-39.

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soul remains self-dependent) should in its first moment be pure and indivisi-

ble also, since this is the original moment even for its descent;2' nor is it

excluded that the generation of what is lower should be traced to its highest

psychic cause (as in this passage) or to some further psychic specification (as

in III, 9, 3 and III, 4, 1). Therefore, it is possible for accni n lvxv i to refer either to the intelligible soul in general or to the world soul, but with the

understanding (supplied by the context) that it is the pure soul in the first

moment of the discourse of proceeding, of "taking generation" (54). We can now turn directly to the meaning of 3aOovioa. In the Timaeus

(52D 2-4) Plato says, rather cryptically, that Being, Space and Becoming pre-exist the creation of the heaven. "Becoming" can only refer, it would

seem, to soul's movement towards divisibility which is logically prior to the

creation of body. In Plotinus this intelligible affection or experience is

caused by the wish for independent existence. The locus classicus for the

description of this affection is in III, 7, 11, 11-40 where Plotinus speaks of

the "restless power" of soul which produces time. Soul wishes to belong to

itself (15-17); it had "an unquiet power which wanted to keep on transferr- ing what it saw there to something else" (20-23).22 Hence, it is a part of

soul's intelligible nature to undergo this affection. Only then does soul

experience descent itself and next in a secondary and accidental sense

participate in evil (cf. I, 8, 12, 5-7) and finally, in the radical sense which

means a negative transformation of its nature, become evil and even, in

Plotinus' own words, die (I, 8, 13, 14-26).A3 Hence, the order of elements in the protasis coincides with the actual descent and subsequent fall of the

soul. Although Plotinus makes ar'm' r 1i vx1 the subject throughout, the soul which becomes evil is no longer the same as the original soul, for by the

end of the protasis it has already entered the universe of discourse which is matter.

21 Cf. IV, 2, 1, 41-45: I`Q6; b' aiau bCELVf &gL:QLc7Tq) n6M 4o0a 6XXr itij oivoLa dm' ixnEvT1; oi'ioa, gxovaa jiV TO &REQTov &n' XE(vimg x.T.k. 22 Trans. Armstrong. Self-direction or the wish to belong to itself alone is the beginning of soul's particularisation or see e.g. V, 1, 1, 3-8; IV, 8, 4, 12-17; 5, 24-27 (6onfi auhxrgouao'p); III, 9, 3, 7-16. The wish for self-dependence is also ascribed to Intellect in its descent from unity; VI, 9, 5, 29; Cf. III, 8, 8, 32-36. For the notion of ToiRa in Plotinus see Naguib Baladi, La Pens6e de Plotin, Paris 1970, passim. With III, 7, 11 compare Plotinus' description of the Form-logos size, which even when it lies in Intellect

or in Soul "wants to be large" (IIl, 6, 17, 4-5: ,3O,XETaL . . . RtEya ElVaL). 2 On the "experience" of descent, see IV, 8, 5, 16ff. (6 nc'novkE xaTEX00oiia), cf. 1,8,4, 28-32; for soul's secondary and accidental participation in evil, see I, 8,8, 37-41; 12, 6-7; on the negative transformation and death of soul, see I, 8, 13, 12-26.

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We can conclude, therefore, that the protasis of I, 8, 14, 50-52 does

represent Plotinus' own thought and that not only the partial soul, and not

only the first otherness, but also soul itself, the intelligible soul, generates

lower matter in the Enneads. There are, then, at least three different

accounts of the generation of lower matter. In addition, we know from II, 5, 5 that lower matter has "walked out of True Being", that it had to be

expelled and even that it has been apprehended by both the Intelligible and

the Sensible Universes. These two problems, then, remain to be examined:

firstly, are the different accounts of the generation of matter compatible?

secondly, how is lower matter apprehended by the Intelligible Universe?

I propose that the three accounts of the generation of matter cannot be

understood as three different generations, but only as three different viewpoints. Lower matter is generated as an implicit consequence of the first movement from the One. Thus it is what it is from the beginning. But if

emanation is understood to be implosive rather than explosive, intensional

rather than extensional, then the whole content of soul is contained within that first movement. Therefore, lower matter is nonetheless really posterior to the whole order of soul. And since in the logical order the lowest creative part of the World Soul is higher than the whole of physical existence, then it is the partial soul which generates it as such, although this does not preclude Plotinus from tracing the cause of generation higher still to the soul which "is going to go forward".24 With such an understanding it seems possible to reconcile the three different accounts and also another of Plotinus' viewpoints that matter was there eternally from the beginning like an exclusus amator.

Our second question requires a more complicated answer. In what way is lower matter apprehended by both Intelligibles and Sensibles? Does lower matter participate in some way in the Intelligible, as Plato also suggests it does?25 O'Brien has recently denied this in an interpretation of IV, 8, 6, 18-23, where Plotinus distinguishes two hypotheses: either matter existed always and it was impossible for it not to participate in that which grants goodness to all things in so far as each is capable, or its generation followed

24 IV, 3, 9, 22. It might also be helpful to point out here that the World Soul and the

partial soul are not situated simply at opposite ends of the psychic spectrum. There seems

also in Plotinus' many different viewpoints to be an overlap between the two. For

example, the partial (ReQtx') soul is still soul as substance, as the phrase koyoL ElDLXOi xaL atuXoL (IV, 3, 5, 18) attests. Similarly in III, 9, 3 the partial soul is intelligible if it remains intent upon what is before it (cf. 7-8; 14-15). Conversely, the World Soul in other

passages (IV, 3, 2, 58ff.; III, 3, 1, 4) appears to be a partial soul.

25 Timaeus 51 A.

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necessarily upon the causes before it.26 O'Brien argues that sensible matter

cannot "participate". Therefore, the first hypothesis refers to intelligible matter, the second to sensible matter.27

Our previous argument has already shown that Plotinus can hold both

hypotheses simultaneously to be true of lower matter. But, given all the necessary qualifications concerning the use of the term 'participation' in the

case of matter,28 O'Brien is very much mistaken in thinking that lower matter has no "participation" in the Intelligible; for obviously if pre-cosmic

matter does not participate (in some puzzling manner albeit) in the Intelligi- ble, there can be no descent of the soul. In order to prove this, we shall have to give a new interpretation of two, much misunderstood, passages in 111, 5. Plotinus, at the close of III, 5, 6, proposes an intermediate "intelligible matter", intermediate between complete incorporeality and material em-

bodiment, in order to explain how spirits (daimones) are subject to affec-

tions and inhabit the physical universe, while not participating in bodily matter. This "intelligible matter", it is thought, has no parallel in the rest of the Enneads.29 It is also thought that in the subsequent argument (chapters 7-9) Plotinus interprets the Diotima myth of the birth of Love as meaning

16 O'Brien (1981), see note 3. IV, 8, 6, 18-23: ELT' oiUv iv &ci fq Tig iikT;g 4?UioLq, o1'x o16V V iTjV avTI1v p' AETWyELV oXLoV v norT 7U0 To dyaOv xaMaoov bivvaTaL ExCruov XOeiyOivtO; E1T' i'.xokoviOcEv Et &v6yxNS 1 yEVWJtc acTI5r TOL JtQ6 (oU'Ti QLiOL;, ov ' w; E&L XWQLg ElVaL, aQ6v%tuCa, tQLV ViS avT'lV WXEiV OT'VT0 tOv xaL T6 ELVaL OlOV tV XQQLTL b6VTOg. 27 O'Brien (1981), p. 115. 18 Two points can be made against O'Brien's argument here. Firstly, matter's puzzling participation in the intelligible is a part of Plotinus' inheritance from the Timaeus and (in the Platonic tradition) the Symposium (in the figure of Poverty). When Plotinus argues in III, 6,11-14 that thisparticipation cannot mean either that matter takes somethingfrom the intelligible or that matter takes any single form into its own nature, he is doing no more than expressing his own normal thought on this question (see e.g. 11, 4, 6-16) and, arguably, making explicit the total lack of characteristic which Plato argues for the receptacle in the Timaeus. "Participation" may be a misleading term in this context (and this may indeed cause Plotinus in subsequent treatises to suppress it in favour of the term illumination (cf. I, 8, 14, 38-43) or of Form's control of matter). However, it does not mean that in the unique sense specified by the argument of these chapters, and by the required interpretation of Timaeus 51 A, that matter cannot be said to 'participate'. Secondly, apparent evidence from 111, 6 (26th treatise in the chronological order) cannot on its own be used to prove the contention that in IV, 8 (6th in the chronological order) Plotinus could not have spoken of matter's participation.

2 See Armstrong, Plotinus (Loeb) v. 3, p. 189, note 2; cf. R. Harder, Plotins Schriften, Bd vb, "Neubearbeitung" by R. Beutler and W. Theiler (Hamburg 1960), p. 399, note to III, 5, 6, 24f.

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that Love is a spirit (daimon) born from intelligible parents, Poros and

Penia, which latter is understood to be intelligible matter, stricto sensu.3"1

But this is mistaken. Intermediate "intelligible" matter in III, 5, 6 must be

lower/pre-cosmic matter (i.e. as Plotinus himself states, "before the sense

world") at the edge of the Intelligible universe. This is also the position of I,

8, 14, 36-39 (cf. VI, 5, 10, 3-6). Matter cannot take from its source, but it is

illuminated. And where there is only the intelligible and lower matter, if

there is to be anything else produced, matter must be illuminated by (or

"participate" in) the intelligible, although in itself it always remains what it

is: non-being. In the participation of III, 5, 7 Poverty forms a new kind of

compound, not with the source and not with the father of the child, but with

a logos proceeding from the source and from the father, Plenty. This logos

in the mother, Poverty, comes to birth as a spiritual being composed of

logos and shaped indefiniteness, i.e. a spiritual, invisible, but nonetheless

lower, matter.

That this interpretation is necessary can be seen more clearly if we

examine the opening nine lines of chapter 7. Here, in interpreting the

Diotima myth, Plotinus states that Love is born before the sense world, and

that Poverty participates in the intelligible nature, not in an image of the

intelligible nor in an image reflected from the intelligible (3-5: 64 nQo T0 aco'nTOio To0i EQoTog YEVORE'Vou xac Tj; [IEv'ag REtEXoUkg pvoEw; V07TOI,, &X' ovUx 'bxW'oU votpoTv ob' EX6a0EV E'R4avTaS0EVTog). It should be pointed out that intelligible matter as such does not "participate"

in the intelligible; it is intelligible substance. But lower matter must partici-

pate, as it does in VI, 5, 10, 3-5 and I, 8, 14, 37-49, since there is as yet no

image, visible or invisible, for it to be apprehended and shaped by. Its

participation, however, does not mean direct contact, for matter cannot

take anything from its source (I, 8, 14, 38-39), it does not associate with real

being (III, 6, 14, 15-16: ov' -p 6vC owV y vrVOtal), it is present "from

outside" (VI, 5, 10, 4: nacQv 6w wev). Rather, it participates in the intelligible by associating with an intelligible logos (cf. III, 5, 9, 1-6; 7, 9-15

and III, 6, 14, 15-23). This logos is Plenty and, strictly speaking, it does not

become mixed with Poverty in the sense that it forms a compound with her (cf. III, 5, 7, 15-19 and III, 6, 14, 12-13). Only the logos which comes from

Plenty (i.e. the child, Love), is mixed with Poverty (III, 5, 7, 18-19).

'I See I2. Br6hier, Plotin, Enngades, t. 3 (Paris, 1925), Notices p. 72 and p. 93; Armstrong, Plotinus (Loeb) pp. 268-269, note 1 (to III, 6, 4); Harder, Plotins Schriften, Bd. vb, p. 399, note to III, 5, 7, 1.

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Poverty takes what she can get (III, 6, 14, 13; cf. I, 8, 14, 40-41, matter

darkens the illumination by mixture).

Plotinus continues: "but Poverty comes to be there3' and having been

mixed as from form and indefiniteness, the indefiniteness which soul has

before hitting upon the good, when it divines that there is something by an

indefinite and unlimited phantasm, it gives birth to the reality of Love"

(5-9: &'X' iXEL yEvo0LEvTrg xCa o14p.t0FiL5O7cg 4; Et 'LoU; xa1L CEOQUYUag, qV E)(OUCFC q VUX' 7EQ'V TVXEIV TOiV CEayauo, RaVTFUREvo>e &s TL ElVaL XaTa aoQ6LOTov xaL anELQOv 4xivTao,a, TTIV ur6CoTaoLv32 Toil 'EQxTog TExo13o1s). Poverty forms a compound, makes a new lesser unity with form. We find this echoed in different ways in many passages

throughout the Enneads. In 1, 8, 14, 30-32 the separation of intelligible soul

from matter is T6o [Ti Ev TL et acnsUT xac vUXs yEvFoOaL. Earlier in I, 8, 4, 28-32 the soul proceeding into matter is filled with indefiniteness to the

degree of its descent. Or again in II, 4, 10, the intellection (VO6ro5t) of

matter "wants to be intellection, but is not intellection, but a kind of

mindlessness". It is an illegitimate phantasm, Ex OaTEQou ovx aWX0jofv xai. Ela tOV ET?QOU Xoyov VyXElsEVov. The language of compounding, then, is better understood in the context of lower matter at its pre-cosmic

stage, which is the field of indefiniteness pertaining to soul. However, what

of the indefiniteness which soul has before "hitting upon the Good"? What

does this mean? This phrase (and others like it) has to be interpreted, I

believe, in a similar manner to the peculiar eternally unlit substratum of II,

4, 5, with the proviso that it reflects a slightly changed viewpoint, namely

indefiniteness as it relates to soul instead of lack of light as it implicitly

characterizes lower, ultimate matter. The field of indefiniteness is only

delimited by soul's hitting upon the Good; before that, in V, 3, 17, 33-34,

for example, the soul is CL4O'TLO10g MOEco ENdvou. Hence indefiniteness is

31 'EXEi is the "Garden of Zeus". But this garden is not simply the indivisible Intellect. According to Plotinus' description in III, 5, 9, it is all the unfolded adornments of soul (9-15; 17-24), but in descent and as having admitted something from outside into the plenitude of its logoi (3-6). The Garden of Zeus, therefore, is the intelligible world in a much wider sense than usual, the intelligible world in so far as it is unfolded right down to its "touch upon" matter (cf. VI, 2, 22, 1-32; II, 3, 17, 15-25; 18, 9-14). And since this unfolding of the intelligible (cf. III, 9, 1, 29-34) is at once the descent of the soul into the indefiniteness of pre-cosmic matter and the beginning of the generation of the whole content of the physical universe in the continuum of shaped matter, the two viewpoints of pre-cosmic and cosmic matter coalesce.

32 Hypostasis is not used in the strict sense here. Plotinus can anyway apply the term even to matter (I, 8, 15, 21).

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not just intelligible indefiniteness, i.e. intelligible matter, but necessarily the whole soul and the indefiniteness of lower matter (which includes in V, 3, 17 the frustrating indefiniteness and lack of illumination of our own historical experiences). Finally, our general interpretation is confirmed by the fact that in the final chapter of the treatise III, 5, 9, 45 ff. Plotinus explicitly states that Poverty is matter, because matter too is altogether in

need (. . . 9 i5Xn 'v&ET' Tla atvta). Such a statement can only have its full meaning if Poverty is lower matter.

In conclusion, even if matter is ultimately impervious to all reality (III, 6), it is nonetheless present in compounds, while in its own nature falling utterly below the level of form. Therefore, the two hypotheses of IV, 8, 6 reflect these two senses of the term matter, just as in I, 8, 14 the argument treats first of matter's eternal presence and its illumination, and secondly of its generation (cf. "following upon" in IV, 8, 6) as a result of prior realities. Hence, both the hypotheses of IV, 8, 6 refer to lower matter.33

Our analysis has also uncovered the following: lower matter is apprehended by both the intelligible and the sensible, and yet in both cases it

also falls below the level of each universe. This explains its expulsion, its "walking out of True Being". When matter is apprehended by the intelligi-

ble, what is produced is a spiritual being, either the creative soul descending into indefiniteness or a spirit who will inhabit the physical universe. How-

33 This does not exclude the possibility that the first hypothesis could also refer to intelligible matter both stricto sensu and latiore sensu, i.e. in the sense in which the

intelligible is an undivided unity and also in the sense in which it is an unfolded unity stretching down to touch upon matter (see note 31 above). The argument of O'Brien

(1981), however, assumes that intelligible matter is as static a notion as sensible matter. But not only does Plotinus view intelligible matter in terms of the hierarchy within the

intelligible universe (soul matter, intellect matter). He also, I propose, when he speaks of

a logos of matter (111, 3, 4, 37-40), or of indefiniteness prior to absolute darkness being ?V EL,6l (III, 4, 1, 12-16), or, in the lengthy argument concerning the intelligibility of apparently senseless animals in VI, 7, when he concludes that a horse has to be an

intellect of a particular kind (VI, 7, 9, 29), in all these manners of speaking he implicitly presents two simultaneous ways of talking about the matter of any object, a sort of double

field theory of matter; on the one hand, the definition of matter is implicitly intelligible because the intelligible is unfolded to it and has, indeed, already contained it; on the

other hand, out of this defining intelligible power appears a qualified thing, which in

Plotinus' analysis ultimately discloses itself as a field of negative influence (this field theory is worked out in the late treatise 1, 8, see especially, chapter 6). Nonetheless, even this ultimate non-being, which can cause the 'soul' to die, is covered by "golden fetters" (I, 8, 15, 24-28), is still "a last Form" (V, 8, 7, 22-23: 160g Tl 'EcqaTov). I propose, therefore, that intelligible matter and lower matter in Plotinus may be viewed as two distinct, but partly overlapping, fields of reference.

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ever, as the soul progresses further into the field of its indefiniteness, an

image of intelligible reality comes to be, an aesthetic image in which matter

is shaped/apprehended, while also falling even further below this. This field

of indefiniteness, therefore, a field which pertains both to soul and to body,

can be regarded as a hierarchical continuum, commencing from the greater

unity of the invisible spirit compounds and of the visible heavenly bodies (in

which the matter is controlled) to the less perfect unities of animals and

plants, and finally even to the point of greatest dispersion in inanimate

nature. This view of lower matter will, perhaps, seem new to some readers

of Plotinus, but it is necessitated by a frank and close look at the passages

we have been discussing. But not only is matter a hierarchical continuum.

Since in each compound it also eternally falls away from form, it is an

infinite field of discontinuity, of isolation and of darkness in itself. 4 In this

sense matter possesses a negative polarity to which every object in its field is

in process of infinite approximation.35 As Plotinus states at the end of II, 4,

matter's nature is infinitely self-expanding non-being: "what it is it becomes

still more" (II, 4, 16, 15-16: o ?CnT RXkXov yLyvETaL.

St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan

34 Cf. I, 8, 13, 14-26; 14, 44-48.

35 The theory of matter as a Field of negative, corrupting polarity is developed principally in I, 8, 6-15. Chapter 6, 31-59 sets out the theory that matter-evil constitutes anti- substance and an antisubstantial whole. Chapter 15, 9-12 gives a short summary: E'va

REv orv &i xCai &yatOv xCt'L &VIXTOV yaOov, Tlo be [LRLyLvov 'n1 Ex xCtxov, xai ayaHov, xCa 7tXELOvog tofi xxovi VETaCXaPov iib1 xai auTo o(vVTEXAav ?XEiVO ?V l(i oAw xaxov, MXaXTTovog be, ij (TWaL, t yao.

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Is There More Than One Generation of Matter in the Enneads

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