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Among Plato's successors, the most remarkable thinker to pick up this strain of argument is Plotinus. He offers little to those who would pin him down to rational argument. His intricately defined system combines ideas owed to both Plato and Aristotle. He categorizes our world in terms of four hierarchical steps, each of which is subtended between two quantities that have no existence of their own. At the upper end there is the abstract quantity he calls the One, or the Good. It cannot be described by any sequence of positive terms. Every other existence can be so described, but the One the Good, cannot; we'll leave that to Plotinus. Now to the lower end of our range of observation: That is where we find matter miserable, contemptible, poor to the degree that it, again, has no existence of its own. But it contains a potential for all physical phenomena. We might say that it is fighting for its existence: "Its Essence can be described in some measure by such images as utter poverty, constant want, perennial longing for making its appearance in the realm of reality." In and by itself, matter is shapeless; as Plotinus says: "The very idea of matter implies absence of form." As a result, it will not make its appearance in the real world. If, however, it does show up, that must be due to its having taken on a specific form,
to its having changed. This feature of Plotinus's matter- its ability to take on shapes notwithstanding its own lack of all shape-reminds us of Aristotle's Materia Prima. Matter, according to Plotinus, is the carrier of all properties of bodies. This includes all physical extent: "Absolute matter must take its magnitude, as every other property, from outside itself." Plotinus also mentions a different form of matter, a form tied to the spiritual world-but I will not discuss this here.
"Matter," he says, "is understood to be a certain base, a recipient of Form-Ideas...There is, therefore, a matter accepting the shape, a permanent sub stratum....The matter must be...ready to become anything....Matter, not delimited, having in its own nature no stability , swept into any or every form by turns, ready to go Here, There, and Everywhere becomes a thing of Multiplicity: driven into all shapes, becoming all things....The distinctive character of Matter is unshape, the lack of qualification and form....Matter is therefore nonexistent." The concept of existence is rooted deep in Plotinus's mystical thinking. It can be rationally approached only to the extent that thing's immutable were distinguished by the ancient philosophers from things that are subject to transformation, change, passing.
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