§2.5.1. One thing is said to be ‘potentially’ and another ‘actually’. And there is something called ‘actuality’ among things that exist. We must, then, investigate what ‘potentially’ means, and what ‘actually’ means. Is actuality identical with ‘is actually’, and if something is actually, is this also actuality?1 Or are the two distinct, and what is actually is not5 necessarily also actuality? It is clear, then, that ‘is potentially’ is found among sensibles, but we must investigate whether it is also found among intelligibles.
In fact, there is only ‘is actually’ in the intelligible world. Even if there is ‘is potentially’ there, it is always that alone, and if it is always there, it – by being removed from the forces of time2 – will never go over into10 actuality.3
But we must first say what ‘potentially’ means, if indeed ‘potentially’ should not be spoken of without qualification. For it is impossible to be potentially nothing. ‘The bronze’, for example, ‘is potentially a statue’.4 For if nothing was going to come from it or be added to it or it was not going to be something after what it was, and it was not possible for it to become something other than what it was, then it would just be what it15 was. And what it was was already present and not to come. Then, what else was it potentially subsequent to its present self? In that case, it was nothing potentially. So, what is potentially must be said to be potentially because it is already one thing and is potentially something else afterwards, either by persisting in conjunction with producing that thing or else by giving itself up to that which it can become by being destroyed.520 For in one sense, ‘the bronze is potentially a statue’,6 and in another sense the water is potentially bronze and the air fire.7
If this is indeed the kind of thing that ‘being potentially’ is, should we also call it a potentiality relative to what will be? For example, is the bronze a statue-potentiality?
In fact, we should not if potentiality is understood as productive.8 For25 potentiality understood as productive would not be said to be potentially. But potentiality should be potentially, if it is said not only relative to being actually but also relative to actuality. But it is preferable and clearer to speak of being potentially relative to being actually, and potentiality relative to actuality. What is potentially is indeed like30 a kind of substrate underlying affections, shapes, and forms that it is going to receive and is of a nature to receive.
In fact, it even strives to arrive at them, and arriving at some of them is to its great benefit, while arriving at others is for the worse and to the detriment of each of those things that are actually different from what is arrived at.
§2.5.2. We must investigate matter, whether matter is potentially its respective forms while being actually something else, or whether it is actually nothing; and, in general, regarding the other things that we say are potentially and persist after the reception of the form, whether they become actually, or will ‘actually’ be said only of the statue, that is, the5 actual statue in contrast to the potential statue, and not be predicated of that of which ‘potentially a statue’ was said. If this is indeed the case, what is potentially does not come to be actually; rather, what is actually subsequently came to be out of what was previously potentially. For10 again, what is actual is the complex, and not matter here and the form imposed on it there. And this is so if a different substance comes into being, for example, if a statue comes to be out of bronze. For the statue as the complex is a different substance.
Now as for things that do not persist at all, it is clear that what was15 potentially was something else entirely. But when the potentially literate person becomes actually literate, how could we not have a case here where the identical thing, namely, what was potentially literate, comes to be actually so? For the potentially wise Socrates is the identical man who becomes actually wise. Is the one who, then, lacks scientific understanding also a knower? This person was, after all, potentially a knower. The uneducated person becomes a knower in an accidental sense. For he20 is not, qua uneducated, a potential knower; rather, being uneducated was accidental to him. He is a knower due to his soul, and his soul was that which was potentially knowing, since it is intrinsically suited to knowing.9
Does he, then, continue to preserve ‘being potentially’? Is a person who is already literate also potentially literate?
In fact, there is nothing to prevent this from being true according to a different sense of ‘being potentially’.10 Before he was only potentially25 literate, but now the potentiality is in possession of the form of literacy. If, then, the substrate is that which is potentially, and the complex – the statue – is that which is actually, then what should the form that is imposed on the bronze be said to be? It is not absurd to say that the shape or form is the actuality by which the composite is actually and not30 merely potentially; it is not, however, unqualified actuality but the actuality of this thing.11 For we might perhaps more properly say that there is another actuality, one that corresponds to the potentiality that brings about an actuality. For what is potentially gets to be actually from another, but this potentiality can bring about its actuality by itself. For example, a settled state and the actuality said to correspond to this35 settled state – courage and acting courageously. So much, then, for these matters.
§2.5.3. But the discussion of these matters was preliminary to our main goal, and now we must say how exactly ‘actually’ is said among intelligibles, and whether each intelligible simply is actually or is also an actuality, and whether all are an actuality, and whether ‘potentially’ is also to be found in the intelligible world.
If there is indeed no matter in the intelligible world, which is where ‘potentially’ is, and if none of the things there is about to become what it5 is not already, and if there is no transformation into something else – either by one thing persisting while generating something else or by one thing departing from its own nature and so allowing something else to exist in its stead – then that in which ‘potentially’ is will not be there where the Beings possess eternity and not time.
Regarding intelligibles, then, if someone were to ask those who place10 matter in the intelligible world, too, whether ‘potentially’ is not also there on account of the matter there – for even if the matter is there in a different manner, there will nevertheless be in each Being one component that serves as matter, another that serves as form, and the complex – what will they say?
In fact, even the component that serves as matter is a form there, since the soul, too, although it is a form, can be matter for something else.12 Is it, then, potentially with respect to that?15
In fact, no. For its form was there, and the form did not come in later nor is it separate except in thought, and it has matter in the sense that it is conceived of as double, though both are a single nature. Even Aristotle, for example, says that the fifth body is immaterial.13
What, though, are we to say about the soul? For it is potentially a living being whenever it is not yet a living being but going to become20 one, and it is potentially musical and all the other things which the soul comes to be but is not always. So, [on this line of reasoning] ‘potentially’ is also found among intelligibles.
In fact, these things do not exist potentially; rather, soul is the potentiality of them.14
And how is ‘actually’ in the intelligible world? Is it in the manner that the complex statue is actual, because each intelligible being has received its form?
In fact, it is because each intelligible being is form and is what it25 is perfectly. For Intellect does not go from a potentiality for being able to think to the actuality of thinking – for this would necessitate another, prior Intellect that does not start from a potentiality – rather, the whole intelligible content is within it. For that which is potentially wants to be induced to actuality by the approach of something else in order that it might become something actually,30 but what itself possesses its eternal identity from itself, this would be actuality.
All the first principles, then, are actuality. For they possess what they should possess, from themselves and always. And Soul is indeed like this, too, I mean the one that is not in matter but in the intelligible region, while the soul that is in matter is a different actuality, for example, the growth soul. For what this soul is is actuality, too. But granting that all intelligibles are actually in this manner, are they all35 actuality? Why is this a problem? If that intelligible nature was indeed rightly said to be sleepless15 and life and the best life, then the most beautiful actualities will be in the intelligible world. All things in the intelligible world, therefore, are actually and are actuality, and all things there are lives, and the place there is the place of life and40 principle and source of true Soul and Intellect.16
§2.5.4. Everything else, then, that is potentially one thing is also actually something else that is already a being and that is said to be potentially with respect to the other. Yet what about so-called matter, which we say is potentially all beings? How can we say that it is actually any of5 the beings? For in that case it would not be all beings potentially. If, then, matter is none of the beings, it is necessarily not even a being. How, then, could it be anything actually, if it is none of the beings? True, it might not be any of those beings that are added to it, but nothing is to prevent it from being something else, if indeed not all10 beings are added to matter. Indeed, insofar as it is none of those things added to it, and those are beings, matter would be non-being. And since it is indeed represented as being something formless, it would certainly not be a Form. So, it would not be counted among those intelligible Beings, either. In this way, too, therefore, it turns out to be non-being. Since it is, therefore, non-being on both sides, matter turns out to be non-being even more.
If matter has indeed taken flight from the nature of the true Beings,15 and if it is not even able to achieve the status of the things falsely said to be because it is not even a reflection of an expressed principle as they are, in what mode of existence could matter be captured? And if it is captured in no mode of existence, what could matter be actually?
§2.5.5. How, then, are we to speak of matter? How is it the matter of beings?
In fact, it is because it is [those beings] potentially. So, given that it is already potentially [the beings], is it, then, already just as it is going to be? Rather, its existence is only a profession of what is to come. Its existence is, in a way, deferred to that which is going to be. So, its being5 potentially is not anything; it is rather everything potentially. And it is not anything actually, since it is nothing in itself; rather, it is what it is – matter. For if it is to be anything actually, it would actually be what that thing is and it would not be matter. It would not, then, be absolutely matter, but like bronze.17
This, then, should be non-being, but not in the sense of being different from Being, as Motion is.18 For Motion rides upon Being, as10 if it were coming from Being and in Being, but matter is, in a way, cast forth from Being, and absolutely separate from it, and not able to transform itself, but whatever it was originally – and this was non-being – this is how it always remains.19 And it was neither originally anything actually since it was removed from all the beings, nor did it15 become anything [actually]. For it could not be stained by the things that it wanted to slip under; rather, it remained directed to something else since it is potentially for subsequent things; and once those beings had come to an end, matter appeared, and it was seized by the things that came into being after it, and it was established as the last even of these.20 Since, then, it was seized by both, it could not actually be either one of20 them, and it remained for it to exist only potentially, as a kind of weak and dim image that cannot be formed.
So, it is actually an image; and so, actually a falsehood. And this is identical to saying that it is a ‘true falsehood’, and this is ‘real non-being’.21 If, then, it is actually non-being, it is non-being to a greater25 degree, and therefore real non-being. Since, therefore, it has its truth in non-being, it is far from actually being any of the beings. Since, therefore, it must exist, it must not exist actually in order that, having departed from true being, it might have its being in non-being. For when you have stripped what is false from the beings that exist in a false30 manner, you have stripped them of whatever substantiality they had, and for those things that have their existence and substantiality potentially, by introducing actuality you have destroyed the explanation of their real existence, because existence for them consisted in being potentially. Since, therefore, we must keep matter safe from this destruction,22 we must keep it as matter. We must, therefore, say, as it seems, that matter35 exists only potentially, in order that it might be what it is, or else these arguments must be refuted.
1 Reading ἐστιν ἐνεργείᾳ […] καὶ ἐνέργεια with HS4.
2 Reading οὕτω τῷ in line 9 with Igal and HS4. See Ar., Cat. 10.13a30–31.
3 Cf. 5.3.5.38–43; 5.9.10.14.
4 Cf. 5.3.15.32–35. See Ar., Phys. 3.1.201a30; Meta. 11.9.1065b24.
5 Cf. 3.9.8.5.
6 See Ar., Phys. 3.1.201a30; Meta. 11.9.1065b24.
7 Cf. 2.4.6.12–13.
8 See Ar., Meta. 4.12.1019a15–20, 9.1.1046a26–27.
9 Cf. 3.9.5.3.
10 Reading κωλύει κατ᾽ ἄλλον with HS4.
11 See Ar., Meta. 8.2.1043a17–18, 9.8.1050b203; DA 2.2.414a16–17.
12 Cf. 5.9.4.11–12.
13 Aristotle does not say that the fifth body is immaterial. See Meta. 8.4.1044b6–8. HS point to DC 1.3.269b29–31, 270b1–3 as passages that might have motivated this view. See also Atticus, fr. 5.71.74; Origen, C. Cels. 329.13–115. Plotinus himself does not think that the heavenly body is immaterial, cf. 2.1. It is possible that Plotinus is relying on Ar., Meta. 8.5.1044b27–29, 12.6.1071b21, 14.2.1088b14–28 which suggest that the eternal is immaterial. If that which is composed of a ‘fifth element’ is eternal, it is at least not material in a narrower sense. Then, by extension, the eternality of the intelligible world would have no matter.
14 Cf. supra 2.33–36.
15 See Pl., Tim. 52B7; Ar., EN 10.8.1178b19–20.
16 Cf. 6.9.9.17. See Pl., Phdr. 245C9.
17 Cf. 2.4.8.3–10.
18 Cf. 1.8.3.7–9; 2.6.1.1ff. See Pl., Soph. 256D5–6.
19 Cf. 3.6.11.18.
20 Matter is the end-point, really ‘beyond’ the end-point of the emanation from the One. The beings that come ‘after’ it are bodies formed by the combination of matter and sensible form.
21 Cf. 6.2.1.29–30. See Pl., Rep. 382A4; Soph. 254D1.
22 See Pl., Tim. 52A2.