Abstract Plotinus did not set out to be obscure. Difficulties of interpretation arise partly from his style of writing, compressed, elliptical, allusive. The allusions, easily enough recognisable by those he was writing for, are often not recognised at all by the modern reader who no longer has at his fingertips the texts of Plato and Aristotle that Plotinus undoubtedly alludes to, but whose authors he has no need to name. So it is pre-eminently with his subtle use of earlier ideas (...) in tackling the difficult question of the nature of matter and its place in the scheme of emanation. The frequent references to matter as `non-being' and as `privation' can be understood only if they are seen as a radical adaptation of the paradoxical definition of a `form that is, of what is not' in Plato's Sophist (258 D 5-7) and as a deliberate correction of Aristotle's unsuccessful attempt at including female desire in an analysis of privation in the Physics (i 9, 192 a 22-25). Only when the debt to Plato and Aristotle has been recognised for what it is are we able to appreciate that matter defined as `non-being' is not therefore `non-existent', and that the `privation' that is matter is not a terminus a quo of change, but a permanent substrate of change. The adaptation and the daring syncretism lead to deliberate paradox in Plotinus' own definition of matter as both `so to speak a form of sorts' and `formless' (I 8 [51] 3). The seeming inconsistency is Plotinus' acknowledgment of the use he has made of earlier ideas when he writes of matter, so defined, as `made' by a lower manifestation of soul, and therefore as the last and the least of the products flowing from, but not created by, the One. (shrink)

Does the matter of the sensible world, for Plotinus as for Plato and Aristotle, exist without a cause of its existence? Long divided on the answer to that question, scholarly opinion now veers in favour of a derivation of matter from principles prior to matter, with disagreement limited to the details of the theory. What exactly is implied by the various passages of the Enneads where Plotinus writes of soul or physis in relation to `darkness' and `non-being', matter and form? (...) In the pages that follow, I argue that the soul's `making' of a `non-being' that by implication is matter, in Enn. III 9 [13] 3, is logically antecedent to the `making' of `visible form' ascribed to physis in Enn. III 8 [30] 2. A detailed study of the context and the syntax of the latter passage shows that, contrary to an interpretation put forward recently in this Journal, the two `makings' cannot be the same. (shrink)

Plato tries to explain the becoming of the cosmos by referring to the concepts of order and disorder. Scholars have usually focused on the relationship between the cosmos and the demiurge that Plato puts forward to explain the reasonable development. Along these lines, scholarship has examined the providential role played by both the demiurge and the soul of the world. Yet, an interesting prob­lem still remains open: what exactly is the function of disorder? What is the sense of the concept (...) of a perfectly established order if we do not know the manner in which it is achieved, since we have no understand­ing of the conditions that make it possible? Pursuing this line of thought, one may point to a providential role of the disorder given the balance of forces that operates in Plato’s cosmic becoming. (shrink)