In this treatise, Plotinus addresses the problem of the existence of evil given the omnipotence of the Good. He argues against the interpretation of Plato according to which evil is somehow a principle independent of the Good which would establish what Plotinus takes to be an unjustifiable dualism. He argues here extensively for the identification of evil with matter, crucially rejecting Aristotle’s distinction between potency and privation. Matter is both pure potency and unqualified privation which disqualifies it from being a separate principle although at the same time making it an inevitable result of the outflow of the universe from the Good or the One. Where all trace of intelligibility ceases, there matter must be.
§1. What is evil and how is it known?
§2. There can be no evil in the intelligible world.
§3. It must, therefore, be absolutely bereft of intelligibility and measure.
§4. Bodies are evil only in the element of unintelligibility which they necessarily possess and souls are evil only insofar as they associate with the evil in bodies.
§5. Matter is unqualified privation and so evil.
§6. Commentary on Plato’s Theaetetus 176 A in relation to the problem of evil.
§7. The use of Timaeus 47E–48A to interpret Theaetetus.
§8. Evils in the soul are vice and they arise from the association with matter.
§9. How can that which is utterly unintelligible be known?
§11. Evil does not belong to the soul.
§12. Evil is not partial privation.
§13. The distinction between evil and vice.
§14. Vice is psychical illness.
§15. Evil and the Good.