Matter: From Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics to Plotinus

Plato does not use the term matter (hylê) as such.14 _{Instead, in the Timaeus he}

speaks of the “receptacle” or “place” of coming-to-be in which the forms of things flicker in and out of existence so that we even have difficulty calling these particular things individual “thises” since they are always changing. So the “mate- rial principle,” if we can call it this, has a kind of illusory or dream-like quality to it, and particular things find themselves poised uncomfortably between “being” and “non-being,” as in the Republic (and the Sophist).

Aristotle discovers matter as such, we might say. He takes the word hylê, which means “wood” or “stuff,” and makes it the underlying matter that, together with shape, form, and the definite natures we actually find in our experience, makes up individual compound things. Matter is a real underlying subject of change, for it acts as a subject in which change of form, or privation of that change (i.e., a blush or a blanch), can occur. These are the subjects we talk about and refer things to, the subjects of grammar and syntax that look so trivial and boring when we study them at school but that are in fact the “first substances” upon which our being able to talk intelligibly at all actually hinges. So much de- pends upon a red wheelbarrow, the poet William Carlos Williams writes; that is, upon an apparently insignificant but definite substance capable of moving the earth. So much also depends upon being able to distinguish subjects from adjec- tives, adverbs, verbs, prepositions, and other parts of speech and then to see the often overlooked significance of substances themselves.

But what happens when a new substance emerges or an old one disappears? In this case for Aristotle, given the absence of microscopes, we have to understand the form-matter relation analogously since we cannot determine exactly what the matter is at certain moments in the change. When we blush or blanch, these quali-

13. See II, 7 (37) 3; III, 3 (48) 29–34.

14. For “matter” in ancient thought generally and in Plotinus see H. Happ, 1971; F.-P. Hager, 1987; D. O’Brien, 1971, 1981, 1991; H. Benz, K. Corrigan, 1986a, 1992, 1993b, 1996a; H.-R. Schwyzer, 1973; J. M. Narbonne, 1993. On the question of the generation of matter in Plotinus (i.e., matter is not an independent principle but is generated from and by the One) see H.-R. Schwyzer, 1973; D. O’Brien, 1971, 1981, 1990, 1991, 1996; K. Corri- gan, 1986, 1996a.

tative changes depend on us as already formed substances. But when we come-to- be or perish, a substantial change occurs, and the matter that is not a definite “this” (e.g., I can no longer say that it is you, me, frog’s tails, or maggot soup) is in process of becoming a new substance. Even here, for Aristotle, the matter is not just nothingness but a sort of bare potential—with the emphasis on potential.

So matter is a positive notion in Aristotle’s thought, as it is in a different way for the Stoics, since the divine logos and everything in the universe is actually ma- terial. Spirit and matter are not two separate realms but two different ways of looking at anything: plants, animals, human beings, demons, even god. I touch di- vinity even in the humblest righteous task. The great Benedictine motto, “to work is to pray,” is not too far removed from this spirit.

What happens then with Plotinus to muddy this positive picture? It is a little like quantum physics or non-Euclidean geometry meeting a Newtonian or Euclid- ean view of the universe. Things appear to be so solid until we start to look at them and then, unfortunately, as Bertrand Russell observes in his little book The

Problems of Philosophy, their solidity dissolves, and we seem to be left only with

an enigma.

Before III, 8, Plotinus had already written three treatises on matter: II, 4 (12), entitled On the two kinds of matter (Plotinus assumes two matters: intelligible matter and the matter of the physical world); II, 5 (25), entitled On what exists po-

tentially and what actually; and III, 6 (26), entitled On the impassibility of beings without body. Each work actually contributes a new perspective upon his overall

theory, so we can only give a potted version of that theory here. Plotinus would later write one further work just before his death: I, 8 (51), On the origin of evils; we shall take up the question of matter-evil in V, 8. But the really significant point to be aware of is this: the question of matter troubled Plotinus in different ways throughout his writing career. So he evidently must have felt that he had not said the last word on this puzzling question.

The problem for Plotinus is what we mean and refer to when we speak, think about, and experience matter. The Aristotelian analysis is fine as far as a positive conception goes, but in Plotinus’ view, philosophical analysis has to go a little further than Aristotle was prepared to take it. Yes, matter makes a positive contri- bution to the formation of bodies, but if we suppose that quality, quantity, and the like are forms and we therefore push further toward the indeterminacy of matter (an indeterminacy that Plotinus argues we experience even in ordinary life as ab- sence, or non-being), we find a different picture. As contained by form, matter is positive, but as indeterminate, matter is “other” than everything else, bearing a kind of negative relation to form; nor even is it simply “other” if the word “other” implies a unitary, formal notion. Instead, Plotinus argues, at this level of analysis we should refer to it as “others”; that is, indeterminate plurality negatively charac- terized by privation or absence of form. Aristotle had made privation a formal concept (i.e., form and privation are contrasted with matter as their underlying

“stuff”), but Plotinus insists that this is to leave indefiniteness unexamined; that is, to be satisfied with it as a purely formal concept and not to get at the negative, in- determinate plurality that for him is part of the analysis and experience of a non- formal matter (see II, 4 [12] 6–15). At the same time, matter’s indeterminacy is such that it is potentially everything, while actually being no one thing (a formula employed in different ways by Plato, Aristotle, and the Peripatetics). So its posi-

tive quality (that it is potentially everything) is paradoxically a function of its very negativity (that it is actually no thing). The two, positive and negative, have to go

together; but in terms of its negativity this means we cannot speak about truth or falsity in the same way that we can for a world of determinate, definite things (like you, me, or trees), for there are no things or distinct formal points of refer- ence in an indeterminate landscape. Consequently, in II, 5 (25) and other works, Plotinus develops a kind of logic of the indeterminate in which the principle of non-contradiction no longer strictly applies because no principle of identity can be found in matter’s indeterminacy as such. Instead of making true or false state- ments, we have to approach the puzzling character of indeterminacy by combin- ing apparently opposite statements: x both is and is not. Plotinus does not, of course, anticipate quantum physics, but there is a certain similarity between the two insofar as contemporary physics has been compelled to think and speak of probabilities instead of precise scientific measurements and to recognize the inde- terminacy of descriptions such as wave and particle, or again, velocity and posi- tion.

This is certainly more than we need for our purposes here in III, 8, or V, 8, but itprovidesadditionalbackgroundtohelpyoumakeupyourownmindontheis- sue.

How do we modern readers find our bearings in this strange world? Well, we could suppose that Plotinus is somehow committed to an actual “infinite-in-itself” or an essential indeterminacy in some way separate from things or that he simply wants to outdo Aristotle and get back to a Platonic “non-being” view of things. But in the first case, Plotinus argues precisely against an essential indeterminacy (II, 4 [12] 15), and in the second, he is much more interested in the philosophical problem than scoring sectarian points. We might then suppose that Plotinus’ analysis anticipates the death-knell of such thinking in the British Empiricists. John Locke (1632–1704) supposes matter (and mind also) to be an “I know not what” indeterminate substratum. Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753) (a reader of Plot- inus, by the way) consequently does away with the matter-hypothesis and puts everything into spirit as the true substratum or underlying “I know not what,” on the (arguable) grounds that mind or spirit is knowable, whereas matter is not. Fi- nally, David Hume (1711–1776) comes along and dispenses with both indetermi- nate substrata, mind and matter, in favour of “bundles,” “constant contiguity,” and “psychological association.” Then Kant (1724–1804) tries to make the phoenix rise out of the ashes by arguing for the grounding of phenomena in the transcen-

dental unity of apperception. Hegel more or less ignores (and yet incorporates) them all by unpacking the complete world of “spirit” out of the naïve immediacy of the sense-object.

This certainly might be one way of situating Plotinus’ theory as one logically disastrous step toward the apparent absurdity of the problem in modern philoso- phy, but we should at the same time take account of some of the subtleties in his position. First, even the indeterminate substratum for Plotinus is not a quasi- independent “I know not what” principle. Plotinus argues, in fact, that we have a special form of “cognition” of such indefiniteness (II, 4 [12] 8–10), as Sartre (1905–1980) and Heidegger (1889–1976)15 _{would also argue many centuries}

later. Second, the meaning of matter emerges in the light of form; matter is not done away with, as in Berkeley’s imaginative universe, but rather comes into its own proper nature as fully expressive of form in the world of “intellect.” By con- trast, Plotinus’ notion of matter, therefore, is multidimensional, ranging from pure indefinite multiplicity to formed physical things and ultimately to intellect (for evil see chapter 4.13 below).

Does Plotinus’ theory of matter really do away with actual material subjects in the physical world, as is sometimes thought? Not according to III, 8, 2, at least, for matter comes in proximate (i.e., more developed or less developed forms, as we have seen [2, 23–25]). Matter could not, of course, be a genuine subject in the absence of form, but together with form it can assume all the different grades of subject-complexity that we find in Plotinus’ thought, from elements or elementary compounds to human beings and their organizing principles, namely, souls and intellects. The matter of soul and intellect, however, is already a complete activity, or energeia, without physical potentiality, for it is identical with form and ex- presses perfectly the nature or substance of the thing. Plotinus calls this “intelligi- ble” matter “whole illuminated substance” (II, 4 [12] 5, 22–23: “the subject there [i.e., in the intelligible world] is substance [ousia]”), and the only potentiality such substance has is in relation to its origin and return to the One. So for Plotinus matter is an authentic subject and substance only in the intelligible world; this does not mean, however, that the physical world is illusory but only that physical subjects are not capable of expressing completely what they are. What it means to call intellect a subject or substance we shall examine below.

15. See, for example, how absence foregrounds perception for Sartre: “The figure which slips [qui se glisse] constantly between my look and the solid, real objects of the café is precisely a perpetual disappearance; it is Pierre raising himself as nothingness on the ground of the nihilation of the café” (L’Etre et le Néant, 1943, 15th ed., Paris, 47–52;

Being and Nothingness, tr. Hazel E. Barnes, Philosophical Library, New York, 1956. For

Heidegger in his early lecture What is Metaphysics? the “Nothing” is essentially repulsion that does not annihilate or spring from a negation but rather nihilates: Das Nichts selbst

nichtet (“The Nothing itself nihilates”) (Wegmarken II, Klosterman, Frankfurt, 1967). For

3.9. Logos and action, a way of understanding