Plotinus on the Making of Matter Part II: ‘A Corpse Adorned’

International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 5 (2):209-261 (2011)
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Abstract

Soul springs from Intellect, Intellect springs from the One. But quite how does the sensible world arise? A pair of almost successive treatises points to the answer. A lower manifestation of soul `makes' or `gives birth to' what is variously described as `non-being', `utterly indefinite' and `utterly dark', before covering what she has made with form, specifically the form of `body', and before `entering rejoicing' into the object that, by its reception of form, has been made ready to receive her and that, as the `dwelling place' of soul, will be none other than the visible cosmos. A pair of earlier, again almost successive treatises, spells out the implication. The matter of the sensible world, covered with at least a minimum of form, is described as a `corpse adorned'. The same object, but prior to its `adornment', prior therefore to its appearance as a `body' that is a `corpse', and prior to any `indwelling' of soul, is specifically said to be `non-being' and the `darkness of matter', a transparent allusion to the product of soul in the two later treatises. The soul's making of `darkness', so we may infer, is a making of `matter', the final act in the drama by which everything that exists, including the material substrate of the world we see and feel around us, stems ultimately from the One

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Feelings.[author unknown] - 2011
.Dan O'Brien (ed.) - 2010 - Blackwell-Wiley.
Lexicon plotinianum.J. H. Sleeman - 1980 - Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. Edited by Gilbert Pollet.
Plotinus on the Generation of Matter.John Phillips - 2009 - International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 3 (2):103-137.

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