Abstract

The article aims at illustrating an outline of Proclus’s argumentation leading to the rejection of a thesis about the evil of matter in the context of relevance of objections raised against Plotinus by Diadochus. Proclus, disposing of aporia which Plotinus’s stance is embedded in, creates difficulties instead, which the author of "Enneads" has managed to avoid. An attempt to avert the danger of dualism implies aporetic solutions and, additionally, it generates certain explanatory limitations. These difficulties seem to be the price that Diadochus pays for the axiological neutralization of the matter and apeiron, which happens together with the rejection of parallelism of relation between Good-One and plurality-evil. The existence of relative evil in the forms of parhypostases causes difficulties with the inexplicable presence of irrational elements in the universe, which remain beyond the system of causal influence. Plotinus, in turn, despite the dualistic way of explaining being as a relation of One and Indefinite Dyad may maintain, which even the polemic with gnostics illustrates, that the whole reality is turned towards Good and that everything, including material universe, is essentially good due to unity. Acknowledging evil per se does not lead in "Enneads" to the devaluation of any form of entitativity, even that clearly marked by the influence of the matter.