/lit/ - Literature

2.3*
>>21555203
2.4 Matter

Most agree that matter is a recipient of Form-Ideas
Some schools believe body-forms are the Real-Beings or incorporeal
If Matter is derived it has a source, if it is eternal, there is some Primal Principle involved
Compounds exist in the Intellectual and physical order

In the Intellectual/eternal sphere, Matter is immutable, and without parts, but there are a variety of entities which are variations of a unity
- archetype
In the physical sphere, Matter is constantly changing into different compounds
- image

The ultimate of every partial thing is it's Matter which is it's darkness
- The Mind as the Reason-Principle only sees the Reason-Principle in any particular object
- Everything else is in the order of Matter, since it is unintelligible

Divine Matter has a defined, intellectual life
- it isn't alive, but is like a "dead thing decorated"
- Divine Ideas/Matter have beginnings, but not in Time since they are eternal, "eternally derived"

6 Bodies must have a substratum different in nature to themselves

Through the changing of solid->liquid->air, there must be a stable element without it
- it is either a form, primal matter, or a compound of these

7 Refutations of Anaxagoras/Empedocles/Anaximander/Democritus beliefs about matter

There are no atoms, all body is divisible endlessly

Matter is the stuff of the sense-world, incorporeal, a simplex, void of quality, of later origin than the forming power, classed as without quantity, indeterminate, a multiplicity

We must conceive of Matter (like Plato) as spurious or unreal to understand it
- It is a base which can receive things like color
- How is this different from someone without intellection conceiving of it?
-- there is still an experience/conscious awareness that Matter is formless/a phantasm

11 Preference of the term "phantasm of mass" to describe matter over "The Void"
- it hints the indefiniteness into which the Soul spills itself

bodiliness is a phase of Reason-Principle, so it is different than Matter

13 Dialogue style counter-arguments + rebuttals all the way down
Is there a substratum for Matter?
Is Matter's Alienism a quality?

14 Is Matter just the Privation of a determinate thing?
Is this privation just a non-existence?
- privation is relative to what the subject lacks/refers to
- direct reference to Matter as the substratum is a different definition

Does Matter not have have attributes defining it? (Indeterminateness, boundlessness)
- for something to take indefiniteness as an attribute, it must be definite beforehand, and Matter is eternally indefinite in itself
- any attribute to any subject must be a Reason-Principle, but Indefiniteness is not a Reason-Principle, and only Definiteness(the Principle) or defined things may take it as an attribute

Matter is surely evil/ugly/disgraceful
..
In the highest spheres near the Good there can be nothing indeterminate but only Form, so why does Plotinus claim there is Divine Matter in the higher sphere?