Neoplatonists from Plotinus onward incorporate Aristotle's logic and ontology into their philosophies: this process is of both intrinsic and historical interest and paves the way for subsequent philosophical debates in the Middle Ages and beyond. The ten essays collected in this book focus on the readings of Aristotle by Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Their discussions cover key issues in the history of logic and metaphysics such as substance, hylomorphism, causation, existence, and predication. Among the topics tackled in this volume are Plotinus' criticism of Aristotle's physical essentialism, which is a major chapter in the history of metaphysics, and the interpretation of Porphyry'sIsagoge, one of the most influential and enigmatic works in the history of philosophy. Further essays focus on the readings of Aristotle's categories developed by Porphyry and Iamblichus, which raise interesting questions at the intersection of logic and ontology, and on the integration of Aristotle's ontology into Neoplatonist accounts of being and existence.
Riccardo Chiaradonna, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italien.
This chapter provides a commentary onEnn. 6.2.14, a text which raises some questions concerning the status of quality in Plotinus’ metaphysics. Some interpreters suggest that Plotinus here distinguishes two levels in intelligible οὐσία and that he expresses this view through the distinction between constitutive features and qualities. This distinction had been developed in the commentary tradition on Aristotle’sCategories and Plotinus focuses on it in treatises 2.6 and 6.1 when discussing sensible substance. I aim to show, instead, that Plotinus does not adapt the classification of properties to his account of intelligible being. Rather, he shows that quality is not one of the greatest genera or kinds that define the structure of the Intellect. So the greatest genera are neither accidental qualities nor constitutive features of intelligible being. Furthermore, Plotinus argues that the distinctive type of multiplicity in the Intellect cannot be expressed through the distinction between subject and property, because at the level of intelligible being all multiplicity is substantial and completely internal.
The status of quality in Plotinus’ metaphysics is a matter of discussion. Plotinus seems to be wavering on this issue: more precisely, his views about the status of qualities in sensible particulars leave certain questions open. In his early treatise 2.6 (no. 17 according to the chronological order)On Substance, or on Quality, he identifies substances with intelligible beings, and qualities with their sensible images (i.e. perceptible properties) (2.6.1.7–8; 2.6.1.13–15; 2.6.1.42–49).1 So the distinction between substance and quality and that between intelligible principles and sensible properties come to coincide.Grosso modo, this stance can be traced back to Plato’s anti-essentialist views on sensible beings as qualitative wholes outlined in theTimaeus.2 Yet, in the same treatise Plotinus draws a distinction between two different kinds of perceptible qualities by opposing qualities that are constitutive or ‘completions’ of substance (ὅσαι λέγονται συμπληροῦν οὐσίας, 2.6.2.20–21) — that is, qualities that go into the making of sensible particulars and make of them what they are — and mere qualities that lie outside all substance (2.6.1.15–16; 2.
