Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
3. As these are real beings, and as the first Principle is their
superior, evil could not exist in such beings, and still less in Him,
who is superior to them; for all these things are good. Evil then must
be located in non-being, and must, so to speak, be its form, referring
to the things that mingle with it, or have some community with it. This
"non-being," however, is not absolute non-being.[166] Its difference
from being resembles the difference between being and movement or
rest; but only as its image, or something still more distant from
reality. Within this non-being are comprised all sense-objects, and
all their passive modifications; or, evil may be something still more
inferior, like their accident or principle, or one of the things that
contribute to its constitution. To gain some conception of evil it may
be represented by the contrast between measure and incommensurability;
between indetermination and its goal; between lack of form and the
creating principle of form; between lack and self-sufficiency; as the
perpetual unlimited and changeableness; as passivity, insatiableness,
and absolute poverty.[167] Those are not the mere accidents of evil,
but its very essence; all of that can be discovered when any part of
evil is examined. The other objects, when they participate in the evil
and resemble it, become evil without however being absolute Evil.
EVIL POSSESSES A LOWER FORM OF BEING.
All these things participate in a being; they do not differ from it,
they are identical with it, and constitute it. For if evil be an
accident in something, then evil, though not being a real being, must
be something by itself. Just as, for the good, there is the Good in
itself, and the good considered as an attribute of a foreign subject,
likewise, for evil, one may distinguish Evil in itself, and evil as
accident.
EVIL AS INFINITE AND FORMLESSNESS IN ITSELF.
It might be objected that it is impossible to conceive of
indetermination outside of the indeterminate, any more than
determination outside of the determinate; or measure outside of
the measured. (We shall have to answer that) just as determination
does not reside in the determined (or measure in the measured), so
indetermination cannot exist within the indeterminate. If it can exist
in something other than itself, it will be either in the indeterminate,
or in the determinate. If in the indeterminate, it is evident that it
itself is indeterminate, and needs no indetermination to become such.
If, on the other hand (it be claimed that indetermination exist), in
the determinate, (it is evident that) the determinate cannot admit
indetermination. This, therefore, demands the existence of something
infinite in itself, and formless in itself, which would combine all the
characteristics mentioned above as the characteristics of evil.[168] As
to evil things, they are such because evil is mingled with them, either
because they contemplate evil, or because they fulfil it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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