/lit/ - Literature

Plotinus’ theological system is undoubtedly impressive: but we may wonder whatever kind of argument he can offer to persuade us to accept
it. To understand this, we have to explore the system from the bottom up, instead of looking from the top down: we must start not with the One, but
with matter, the outermost limit of reality. Plotinus takes his start from widely accepted Platonic and Aristotelian principles. He understands Aristotle as having argued that the ultimate substratum of change must be something which possesses none of the properties of the changeable bodies
we see and handle. But a matter which possesses no material properties, Plotinus argued, is inconceivable.
If we dispense with Aristotelian matter, we are left with Aristotelian forms. The most important such forms were souls, and it is natural to
think that there are as many souls as there are individual people. But here Plotinus appeals to another Aristotelian thesis: the principle that forms are
individuated by matter. If we have given up matter, we have to conclude that there is only a single soul.